Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Native Microbiome Member Chryseobacterium sp. CHNTR56 MYb120 Induces Trehalose Production via a Shift in Central Carbon Metabolism during Early Life in C. elegans

Aging is the system-wide loss of homeostasis, eventually leading to death. There is growing evidence that the microbiome not only evolves with its aging host, but also directly affects aging via the modulation of metabolites involved in important cellular functions. The widely used model organism C. elegans exhibits high selectivity towards its native microbiome members which confer a range of differential phenotypes and possess varying functional capacities. The ability of one such native microbiome species, Chryseobacterium sp. CHNTR56 MYb120, to improve the lifespan of C. elegans and to promote the production of Vitamin B6 in the co-colonizing member Comamonas sp. 12022 MYb131 are some of its beneficial effects on the worm host. We hypothesize that studying its metabolic influence on the different life stages of the worm could provide further insights into mutualistic interactions. The present work applied LC-MS untargeted metabolomics and isotope labeling to study the impact of the native microbiome member Chryseobacterium sp. CHNTR56 MYb120 on the metabolism of C. elegans. In addition to the upregulation of biosynthesis and detoxification pathway intermediates, we found that Chryseobacterium sp. CHNTR56 MYb120 upregulates the glyoxylate shunt in mid-adult worms which is linked to the upregulation of trehalose, an important metabolite for desiccation tolerance in older worms.
ENHANCING THE PERFORMANCE OF SMEs POST COVID-19: THE ROLE OF STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP CAPABILITIES

Small and medium enterprises had difficulty coping with the Covid-19 pandemic as very few SMEs have made it through it, particularly in Nigeria. Strategic leadership has been acknowledged as a crucial asset and one of the driving forces of success among SMEs. This study examined the impact of strategic leadership on the performance of SMEs in Lagos, Nigeria, adopting a mixed-method approach. A total of 400 complete responses from SME managers were analyzed. While simple regression was applied for the analysis of the returned copies of the questionnaire, the qualitative interview results were obtained through thematic analysis. The results indicate that innovation capabilities significantly impact organizational performance. Hence, the study recommends that focusing on innovative capability of strategic leadership such as new product development, innovation activities, marketing intelligence, value creation and new ideas with radical changes are germane for enhancing performance.
Tropical Cyclone Forecasts Impact Assessment from the Assimilation of Hourly Visible, Shortwave, and Clear-Air Water Vapor Atmospheric Motion Vectors in HWRF

The assimilation of atmospheric motion vectors (AMVs) provides important wind information to conventional data-lacking oceanic regions, where tropical cyclones spend most of their lifetimes. Three new AMV types, shortwave infrared (SWIR), clear-air water vapor (CAWV), and visible (VIS), are produced hourly by NOAA/NESDIS and are assimilated in operational NWP systems. The new AMV data types are added to the hourly infrared (IR) and cloud-top water vapor (CTWV) AMV data in the 2016 operational version of the HWRF Model. In this study, we update existing quality control (QC) procedures and add new procedures specific to tropical cyclone assimilation. We assess the impact of the three new AMV types on tropical cyclone forecasts by conducting assimilation experiments for 25 Atlantic tropical cyclones from the 2015 and 2016 hurricane seasons. Forecasts are analyzed by considering all tropical cyclones as a group and classifying them into strong/weak storm vortices based on their initial model intensity. Metrics such as track error, intensity error, minimum central pressure error, and storm size are used to assess the data impact from the addition of the three new AMV types. Positive impact is obtained for these metrics, indicating that assimilating SWIR-, CAWV-, and VIS-type AMVs are beneficial for tropical cyclone forecasting. Given the results presented here, the new AMV types were accepted into NOAA/NCEP’s operational HWRF for the 2017 hurricane season.
The North American Breeding Bird Survey Results and Analysis

An electron gun for use in a cathode-ray tube is provided with two control grids between the cathode and an accelerating electrode. The control grids are both provided with separate control voltages bearing the same intensity-modulation information for control of the electron beam from the cathode. The two control voltages are caused to vary, one according to a linear function of the variation of the other. When this linear function is caused to have a particular slope, the area of the cathode which emits the electron beam remains approximately constant over a wide range of control voltage.
TCP-Puerto-Londero: A New Approach for End-to-End Queue Length Control

This paper presents a new TCP protocol called TCPPuerto-Londero, which makes dynamic tuning in the congestion window (cwnd) by means of adaptive control theory aiming to keep stable and small the queue length in the bottleneck link located on the path from source to destination. This adaptive control loop has the relative delay in the forward path measured as an input and the cwnd value as an output. Thus, unlike classic TCP protocols, TCP-Puerto-Londero does not use Round Trip Time (RTT) information. Also, unlike classic Active Queue Management (AQM) strategies and Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) based protocols, TCP-Puerto-Londero employs end-to-end queue management without the need for ECN resources. Moreover, TCP-Puerto-Londero also aims to attend to the new challenges of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). Its performance has been tested in a Dumbbell network topology shared by TCP and UDP-like Networked Control Systems (NCS) flows. Therefore, TCP-Puerto-Londero performance has been compared with ECN-based protocols like DCTCP, E-DCTCP, TCP-Jersey, and ENCN. Furthermore, this paper employs an approach for modeling, analysis, simulation, and verification of the communication network and NCS employing UPPAAL simulation software tool, where all network constituents (transmitters, channels, routers, receivers, controllers, and plants) were modeled employing timed automata, simplifying a formal verification of the complete studied system. Simulations and statistical verification indicate that even though utilizing fewer resources (as it does not require the AQM/ECN information) TCP-Puerto-Londero overcomes TCP-Jersey, DCTCP, and EDCTCP with regard to throughput and fairness for TCP flows. Also, TCP-Puerto-Londero flows are capable to keep the queue length more stable and smaller than other protocols that were compared, and consequently, it reduces the impact in NCS-UDPlike flows sharing the same network, whose performance was measured employing the Integral Time Absolute Error (ITAE), which is a desirable feature for Industrial IoT.
Temporal Dynamics of Soil CO 2 Efflux in Thinned and Un-thinned Stands of Cupressus lusitanica in Munessa Forest, Southern Ethiopia

Background and aims: Variability of soil CO2 efflux strongly depends on forest management, soil temperature and soil moisture. A field experiment was carried out in Southern Ethiopia to investigate the effect of thinning on soil CO2 efflux dynamics and associated soil temperature and soil moisture of 6-year old C. lusitanica stands. Methods: Soil CO2 flux was measured every week using a portable infra-red gas analyzer (LI-COR 8100). Along with soil CO2 flux measurements, soil moisture content (%) was measured with a Delta-T soil moisture meter and soil temperature was monitored using a temperature probe attached to the LI-COR 8100. Results: Mean monthly soil respiration was consistently higher in thinned than un-thinned stand. In both stands, soil respiration was significantly higher for the major rainy season and lowest for the dry season. Maximum soil respiration rate for thinned and un-thinned stands during the major rainy season were 5.48±0.15 and 5.36±0.16 μmol -1 m -2 /s respectively. 27-38% of the variation in soil CO2 efflux can be explained by soil moisture content and 21-53% by T°soil. Conclusions: Seasonal dynamics in soil respiration could be driven by seasonality in soil resources (moisture & nutrients) and soil temperature. Thinning greatly influenced annual fine root production, mortality and decomposition and thus soil nutrients. Soil respiration might also be influenced by soil moisture and temperature to differing degrees.
TIRgel: A Visuo-Tactile Sensor With Total Internal Reflection Mechanism for External Observation and Contact Detection

This letter proposes a vision-based tactile sensor named TIRgel, leveraging visual integration to simplify the sensing system. First, the sensor achieves conversion of visual and tactile modality via focus adjustment. Under far-focus imaging, the camera can observe external environments; Under near-focus imaging, we perform total internal reflection (TIR) within the lenticular elastomer to visualize tactile features. The effectiveness of the sensing mechanism is verified via MPM (Material Point Method) simulation. Second, the TIRgel can capture and extract micron-scale tactile details based on luminosity information. Tactile imaging has the natural fusion of visual and tactile information, where the luminosity boundary reflects the texture feature, and the background contains the object's appearance information. Inherent data fusion simplifies multimodal data acquisition and reduces the information processing difficulty. Finally, the TIRgel can resist the interference of ambient brightness via internal illumination and has a higher adaptive capacity to the environment than unidirectional perspective VBTSs. We believe that it has the potential to provide visual-tactile integration for robot operation.
Small Molecules against Metastatic Tumors: Concrete Perspectives and Shattered Dreams

Simple Summary Recent advances in anticancer drug research led to the approval of new small molecules with different mechanisms of action, therapeutic indications, and adverse reactions. In this review, small molecules recently approved for metastatic cancer therapy or in trials belonging to different pharmacological classes are described. Particularly, we focus on receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitors, which are the largest category, and on other small molecules interfering with cell cycle mechanisms. Special attention is devoted to mutated KRAS inhibitors, which probably represent the first dream come true in anti-metastatic cancer therapy of pharmacology researchers and open the way to potentially very broad therapeutic indications. A second section deals with another family of small molecules, integrin antagonists, that has gone through light and shade moments, and the molecules of still relevant interest are critically discussed. Abstract Metastasis is the main cause of anti-cancer therapy failure, leading to unfavorable prognosis for patients. The true challenge to increase cancer patient life expectancy by making cancer a chronic disease with periodic but manageable relapses relies on the development of efficient therapeutic strategies specifically directed against key targets in the metastatic process. Traditional chemotherapy with classical alkylating agents, microtubule inhibitors, and antimetabolites has demonstrated its limited efficacy against metastatic cells due to their capacity to select chemo-resistant cell populations that undergo epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT), thus promoting the colonization of distant sites that, in turn, sustain the initial metastatic process. This scenario has prompted efforts aimed at discovering a wide variety of small molecules and biologics as potential anti-metastatic drugs directed against more specific targets known to be involved in the various stages of metastasis. In this short review, we give an overview of the most recent advances related to important families of antimetastatic small molecules: intracellular tyrosine kinase inhibitors, cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitors, KRAS inhibitors, and integrin antagonists. Although the majority of these small molecules are not yet approved and not available in the drug market, any information related to their stage of development could represent a precious and valuable tool to identify new targets in the endless fight against metastasis.
Emotional Intelligence in Spanish Elite Athletes: Is There a Differential Factor between Sports?

Emotional intelligence is a determinant factor in sports performance. The present study analysed differences in total emotional intelligence and its four dimensions in 2166 Spanish athletes (25.20 ± 10.17 years) from eight sports (volleyball, track and field, shooting, football, basketball, handball, gymnastics, and judo). A total of 1200 men and 966 women answered anonymously using a Google Forms questionnaire sent via WhatsApp about demographics and psychological variables. A Pearson correlation was conducted to assess the age–emotional intelligence relationship. An independent T-test and One-Way ANOVA were carried out to check for age differences between biological sex and sport and a One-Way ANCOVA to determine differences between sports controlled by age. Age differences were observed by sex and sport (p < 0.001). An association was found between age and emotional intelligence dimensions (p < 0.001), except for other’s emotional appraisal (p > 0.05). Judo was the sport with the highest levels of regulation of emotions, other’s emotional appraisal, use of emotion, and total emotional intelligence (p < 0.05). Generally, emotional intelligence was found to be more developed in individual sports than in team sports, except football. Consequently, psychological skills like emotional intelligence could be critical to achieving high performance, depending on the sport.
Genetic diversity of Leptospira strains circulating in humans and dogs in France in 2019-2021

Leptospirosis is a bacterial zoonotic disease. Humans and dogs are susceptible hosts, with similar clinical manifestations ranging from a febrile phase to multiple organ dysfunction. The incidence of leptospirosis in mainland France is relatively high, at about 1 case per 100,000 inhabitants, but our knowledge of the strains circulating in humans and dogs remains limited. We studied the polymorphism of the lfb1 gene sequences in an exhaustive database, to facilitate the identification of Leptospira strains. We identified 46 species-groups (SG) encompassing the eight pathogenic species of Leptospira. We sequenced the lfb1 gene amplification products from 170 biological samples collected from 2019 to 2021: 110 from humans and 60 from dogs. Epidemiological data, including vaccination status in dogs, were also collected. Three Leptospira species displaying considerable diversity were identified: L. interrogans, with eight lfb1 species-groups (including five new lfb1 species-groups) in humans and dogs; L. kirschneri, with two lfb1 species-groups in humans and dogs; and L. borgpetersenii, with one lfb1 species-group in humans only. The lfb1 species-group L. interrogans SG1, corresponding to serovar Icterohaemorrhagiae or Copenhageni, was frequently retrieved from both humans and dogs (n=67/110; 60.9% and n=59/60; 98.3% respectively). A high proportion of the affected dogs developed the disease despite vaccination (n=30/60; 50%). Genotyping with the polymorphic lfb1 gene is both robust and simple. This approach provided the first global picture of the Leptospira strains responsible for acute infections in mainland France, based on biological samples but without the need for culture. Identification of the Leptospira strains circulating and their changes over time will facilitate more precise epidemiological monitoring of susceptible and reservoir species. It should also facilitate the monitoring of environmental contamination, making it possible to implement preventive measures and to reduce the burden of this disease.
Analysis and interpretation of relative displacements on the Intra-Sudetic Fault

Geodynamic investigations conducted in the Sudeten Mts. and on the Fore-Sudetic Block indicate contemporary mobility of the geological structures, occurred in this region. The researches of the Intra-Sudetic Fault’s geodynamic mobility are conducted on the geodynamic polygon of Janowice Wielkie, in the appropriate measurement and control system [1]. In this paper there are presented the results of analysis of relative displacements, measured with the TM-71 crack gauge in the period from October 2001 till November 2006. It was taken into consideration both the analysis of the investigated phenomenon in time (time series analysis) and the causal-consecutive analysis (the research of causes for registration of the variations of the relative displacement values and the type identification of their occurrence). The relative measurements, carried out during next years (December 2006 – May 2009), show relative stable values of each three-dimensional relative displacement vector’s component. However, they are not of the main interest of this paper.
Evaluation of E-Commerce Systems: Comparative Study Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The increasing use of e-commerce, stimulated by the period of social isolation given the pandemic of COVID-19, requires accompanying measures, among them, the evaluation of the success of the Information System (IS). A stream of research has been dedicated for over 30 years to evolving / adapting IS evaluation models. This investigation empirically tests the theoretical model of DeLone & McLean (2004) in two distinct periods, before (model 1) and during (model 2) the COVID-19 pandemic. A survey was conducted with 329 consumers of business to consumer e-commerce in Brazil. This research is quantitative and used structural equation modeling to analyze the data. The results showed that, before the pandemic, e-commerce users did not perceive value in the quality of the system’s information while, during the pandemic, perceived this aspect as important. That is, they also started to recognize more value in the quality of the system during the pandemic. This was the result of the increased use of the e-commerce system during the period of social detachment. This quantitative study has some limitations. First, the survey was conducted twice, before and during the Covid-19 pandemic specific on the Brazilian e-commerce consumption context. Second, the sample size is limited. The study contributes academically by applying the model quantitatively in a Western context. Furthermore, it has strategic potential, as positive experiences in the IS lead the consumer to reuse it, generating revenue.
Editorial: Community series in body representation and interoceptive awareness: cognitive, affective, and social implications

COPYRIGHT © 2023 Raimo, Martini, Guariglia, Santangelo, Trojano and Palermo. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Editorial: Community series in body representation and interoceptive awareness: cognitive, a ective, and social implications
An economic evaluation of impact of soil quality on Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) cotton productivity

The study was conducted with the aim to determine the impact of soil quality on the Bt cotton productivity. A sample of 150 farmers was selected by using multi-stage sampling technique from three districts i.e. Rahim Yar Khan, Multan and Mianwali. A Cobb Douglas production function was employed to assess the effect of various agronomic and demographic variables on the Bt cotton productivity. Results of the analysis indicated that land preparation cost, seed cost, fertilizer cost, labour cost and dummy variable of soil quality were significant and positively contributing towards higher Bt cotton yield. While the spray cost and irrigation cost variable were found positive but non-significant. Findings of the study suggested that focusing on maintaining and improving the quality of soils is necessary to obtain higher crop yields. All this needs attention of agricultural extension department to provide information about advance techniques to farmers for improving soil quality.
NuMY—A qPCR Assay Simultaneously Targeting Human Autosomal, Y-Chromosomal, and Mitochondrial DNA

The accurate quantification of DNA in forensic samples is of utmost importance. These samples are often present in limited amounts; therefore, it is indicated to use the appropriate analysis route with the optimum DNA amount (when possible). Also, DNA quantification can inform about the degradation stage and therefore support the decision on which downstream genotyping method to use. Consequently, DNA quantification aids in getting the best possible results from a forensic sample, considering both its DNA quantity and quality limitations. Here, we introduce NuMY, a new quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR) method for the parallel quantification of human nuclear (n) and mitochondrial (mt) DNA, assessing the male portion in mixtures of both sexes and testing for possible PCR inhibition. NuMY is based on previous work and follows the MIQE guidelines whenever applicable. Although quantification of nuclear (n)DNA by simultaneously analyzing autosomal and male-specific targets is available in commercial qPCR kits, tools that include the quantification of mtDNA are sparse. The quantification of mtDNA has proven relevant for samples with low nDNA content when conventional DNA fingerprinting techniques cannot be followed. Furthermore, the development and use of new massively parallel sequencing assays that combine multiple marker types, i.e., autosomal, Y-chromosomal, and mtDNA, can be optimized when precisely knowing the amount of each DNA component present in the input sample. For high-quality DNA extracts, NuMY provided nDNA results comparable to those of another quantification technique and has also proven to be a reliable tool for challenging, forensically relevant samples such as mixtures, inhibited, and naturally degraded samples.