Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Demography and adaptation promoting evolutionary transitions in a mammalian genus that diversified during the Pleistocene.

Species that evolved in temperate regions during the Pleistocene experienced periods of extreme climatic transitions. Consequent population fragmentation and dynamics had the potential to generate small, isolated populations where the influence of genetic drift would be expected to be strong. We use comparative genomics to assess the evolutionary influence of historical demographics and natural selection through a series of transitions associated with the formation of the genus Capreolus, speciation within this genus during the Quaternary and during divergence among European roe deer (C. capreolus) populations. Our analyses were facilitated by the generation of a new high-coverage reference genome for the Siberian roe deer (Capreolus pygargus). We find progressive reductions in effective population size (Ne), despite very large census sizes in modern C. capreolus populations and show that low Ne has impacted the C. capreolus genome, reducing diversity and increasing linkage disequilibrium. Even so, we find evidence for natural selection shared among C. capreolus populations, including a historically documented founder population that has been through a severe bottleneck. During each phylogenetic transition there is evidence for selection (e.g. using evidence from non-synonymous change or population data), including at loci associated with diapause (delayed embryonic development), a phenotype restricted to this genus among the even-toed ungulates. Together these data allow us to assess expectations for the origin and diversification of a mammalian genus during a period of extreme environmental change.
A critique of Paulo Freire's perspective on human nature to inform the construction of theoretical underpinnings for research.

This article presents a critique of Paulo Freire's philosophical perspective on human nature in the context of a doctoral research study to explore "muchness" or nurses' subjective experience of well-being; and demonstrates how this critique has informed the refinement of the theoretical principles used to inform research methodology and methods. Engaging in philosophical groundwork is essential for research coherence and integrity. Through this groundwork, largely informed by Freire's critical pedagogy and his ideas on humanization, I recognized the need to clarify my understanding of the concepts of persons and personhood and how this related to Freire's use of the term human beings. This clarification process is essential to ensure congruence between the theoretical principles that I draw from his work and my beliefs about persons, personhood and person-centredness. The article begins with a brief introduction to the research, followed by an overview of Freire's philosophical perspectives, and subsequently, the critique process is presented and discussed. This process involved engaging with the vast literature and debates about what it means to be a person, to make sense of the often complex and contradictory arguments. Eventually, three headings emerged that helped me to frame my evolving understanding: Our species: human beings; The kind that we are: human nature; and This person that I am: personhood. Through this process of exploration, I recognized that Freire's perspective on human nature (a) foregrounded cognitive rationality, which presented itself as a limitation when considering my ontological beliefs and the focus of my research, leading me to draw on the work of Mark Johnson and his ideas about embodiment to help me to further develop my theoretical principles; (b) focused on the "collective" rather than individuals, which is a shortcoming in relation to person-centred research that acknowledges the uniqueness of participants.
Molecular networks in Network Medicine: Development and applications

Network Medicine applies network science approaches to investigate disease pathogenesis. Many different analytical methods have been used to infer relevant molecular networks, including protein–protein interaction networks, correlation‐based networks, gene regulatory networks, and Bayesian networks. Network Medicine applies these integrated approaches to Omics Big Data (including genetics, epigenetics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, and proteomics) using computational biology tools and, thereby, has the potential to provide improvements in the diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of complex diseases. We discuss briefly the types of molecular data that are used in molecular network analyses, survey the analytical methods for inferring molecular networks, and review efforts to validate and visualize molecular networks. Successful applications of molecular network analysis have been reported in pulmonary arterial hypertension, coronary heart disease, diabetes mellitus, chronic lung diseases, and drug development. Important knowledge gaps in Network Medicine include incompleteness of the molecular interactome, challenges in identifying key genes within genetic association regions, and limited applications to human diseases.
Intra-operative hyperoxia and the risk of delirium in elderly patients after cardiac surgery

Delirium is a common complication after cardiac surgery. The aim of our study was to determine the impact of hyperoxia episodes occurring during cardiopulmonary bypass (CBP) on the rate of delirium episodes in the postoperative period. 93 patients, aged ≥ 65, who underwent elective cardiac surgery (CBP <90 minutes) were enrolled. The occurrence of delirium episodes was examined every 12 hours for three days after surgery. Eleven patients (11.8%) developed postoperative delirium (POD (+)) and 83 did not (POD (-)). More incidences of severe hyperoxia (PaO2 ≥ 26.6kPa) during CBP were observed in the POD (+) group: 64% had ≥ 2 episodes of hyperoxia, 27% ≥ 3, and 18% ≥ 4, while in the POD (-) group: 42%, 13% and 1%, respectively (P=0.02). Patients in the POD (+) group had a higher maximum PaO2 during CBP than the POD (-) group (37 ± 5.8 vs 31.6 ± 6.6 kPa; P=0.01) and a higher mean PaO2 (30.1 ± 4.5 vs 26.1 ± 5.6 kPa; P=0.01). The optimal maximum PaO2 cut-off point for the occurrence of delirium was 33.2 kPa (AUC 0.72, P=0.001, sensitivity 75%, specificity 38%). We conclude that CBP hyperoxia episodes may be a risk factor associated with the occurrence of postoperative delirium.
Photoperiod and CO2 elevation influence morphological and physiological responses to drought in trembling aspen: implications to climate change-induced migration.

Past research suggests that climate change will cause the climate envelopes of various tree species to shift higher latitudes and can lead to a northward migration of trees. However, the success and scope of the migration are likely affected by factors that are not contained in the climate envelope, such as photoperiod and interactive effects of multiple environmental factors, and these effects are currently not well understood. In this study, we investigated the interactive effects of CO2 concentrations ([CO2]), photoperiod, and soil moisture on the morphological and physiological traits of Populus tremuloides Michx. We grew seedlings under two [CO2] (AC 400 vs. EC 1000 μmol mol-1), four photoperiod regimes (growing season photoperiods at 48 (seed origin), 52, 55, and 58°N latitude) and two soil moisture regimes (high (HSM) vs. low (LSM, -2 MP) for two growing seasons in greenhouses. Both morphological and physiological responses were observed. The LSM reduced leaf size, total leaf area and height growth by 33%, 46%, and 12%, respectively, and increased root/shoot ratio by 20%. The smaller leaf area and increased root/shoot ratio allowed the seedlings in LSM to maintain higher Vcmax and Jmax than control seedlings (55% and 83% higher in July, 52% and 70% in August, respectively). Photoperiod and [CO2] modified responses to LSM and LSM altered responses to photoperiod and [CO2], e.g., the August photosynthetic rate was 44% higher in LSM than in HSM under EC but no such a difference existed under AC. The increase in Vcmax and Jmax in response to LSM varied with photoperiod (Vcmax: 36% at 52°N, 22% at 55°N, 47% at 58°N; Jmax: 29% at 52°N, 21% at 55°N, 45% at 58°N). Stomatal conductance and its reduction in response to LSM declined with increasing photoperiod, which can have significant implications for soil moisture effect on northward migration. This study highlights the need to consider the complex interactions of [CO2], photoperiod and soil moisture when planning assisted migration or predicting the natural migration of boreal forests in the future.
The Changes in Intraocular Pressure and Central Corneal Thickness in The First 24 Hours of Life of Full-term Newborns

Methods: The IOP and CCT measurements were determined by using Tono-Pen XL tonometer and portable pachymeter. In this prospective study, we evaluate IOP and CCT of the 32 right eyes of 32 newborn infants born by vaginal delivery. The IOP and CCT measurements taken at the fifth minute just after the delivery and 24th hour of the first day of the postpartum period were recorded. Infants’ weights, heights, gender, APGAR (appearance, pulse, grimace, and respiration) scores, and gestational ages were obtained.
The Incidence and Severity of Drug Interactions Before and After Antiretroviral Therapy Simplification in Treatment-Experienced Patients With HIV Infection

Background: Current guidelines advocate for antiretroviral therapy (ART) simplification in patients on complicated regimens. Simplifying ART improves patient adherence and quality of life, but changes in drug interactions (DIs) are uncertain. Objective: This study assessed changes in DIs following ART simplification in patients with HIV. Methods: This was an observational, retrospective cohort study of patients attending an urban HIV clinic. Patients were included if they had ART simplification (a decreased number of daily tablets) and ≥1 concomitant medication (CM). Total DI scores were generated for each patient pre–ART simplification and post–ART simplification using an online DI database. Each ART-CM pair labeled as “do not co-administer” was given a score of 2, “potential interaction” a score of 1, or “no interaction” a score of 0. Differences in total DI scores following simplification were analyzed with a Wilcoxon Signed-Rank test. Predictors of DI score reductions were examined with linear regression. Results: A total of 99 patients were included. Their median age was 54 years, and 79% were male. The median durations of HIV infection and ART were 16 and 10 years, respectively. Patients were receiving an average of 4.5 CMs. Median interaction scores presimplification and postsimplification were 3 (interquartile range [IQR], 1-6) and 1 (IQR, 0-2) respectively (P < 0.001). Predictors of score reductions were the patient’s number of CMs, discontinuing a protease inhibitor, and switching to a dolutegravir-based regimen. Conclusion and Relevance: ART simplification decreased the incidence of DIs in this analysis of patients with advanced age who had ART experience and polypharmacy.
Nurses' Moral Experiences of Ethically Meaningful Situations in End-of-Life Care

Nursing ethics in end-of-life care is often framed in reference to dramatic moral dilemmas and resulting moral distress that nurses experience in practice. While important, this framing obscures the moral significance of nurses’ everyday practice. The purpose of this study was to explore nurses’ moral experiences of palliative and end-of-life care, including situations that are enriching. The research question was: What are the moral experiences of nurses engaged in ethically meaningful situations in end-of-life care? Semi-structured interviews were conducted with five nurses from across Canada who practice in settings where palliative and/or end-of-life care are an important part of their role. Informed by interpretive description and a theoretical scaffold about nurses’ moral practice, a descriptive and thematic analysis of the data was performed. The participants described ethical challenges relating to patient autonomy, futility, prognostication, and navigating requests for medical assistance in dying. Experiences that were ethically enriching involved situations where the nurse, patient, and family worked together to create a peaceful and dignified death. Taken together, the participants’ narratives revealed them as morally engaged in their everyday practice, where such moral engagement is both reflective and relational. This study expands understanding about how nurses’ stories of end-of-life care reveal their capacity for moral sensitivity. This study also contributes to the articulation of a theoretical lens for examining the moral dimensions of nursing work. By explicating the relational dimensions of ethically meaningful experiences, including relationships with wider structures that facilitate and constrain the possibility for ethical action, this theoretical lens can support researchers to think creatively about palliative and end-of-life nursing from an explicitly ethical perspective.
First Molecular Characterization of Trichostrongylus colubriformis Infection in Rural Patients from Chile

The aim was to characterize the infection by Trichostrongylus spp. in patients from Chile using a combination of molecular detection techniques and phylogenetic analysis relating the findings to clinical and epidemiological reports of the patients Strongylid eggs were detected in seven patients by coproparasitological techniques. From each sample a fragment of the ITS-2 ribosomal gene was amplified by PCR, sequenced and analyzed by the Neighbor-Joining method. All the sequences and phylogenetic clusters corresponded to T. colubriformis. Two samples presented a single nucleotide polymorphism showing two possible haplotypes. Six patients presented gastrointestinal symptoms. All of them lived on farms and used sheep manure as fertilizer. T. colubriformis was the strongylid involved in the infections of these Chilean patients associated with the presence of livestock and agricultural practices that favor infection by this type of nematode.
Audio-Visual Speech Recognition and Synthesis

Understanding speech in the absence of audio, from the visual perception of lip-motion can aid a variety of computer vision applications. System comprehending ‘silent speech presents a promising potential for low bandwidth video-calling, speech transmission in auditory noisy environment to aid for hearing impaired. While presenting numerous opportunities, it is highly difficult to model lips in silent speech video by observing lip-motion of speaker. Albeit developments in automatic-speech recognition (ASR) has yielded better audio-speech recognition systems in last two decades, in the presence of noise their performance drastically deteriorates. This calls for a computer vision solution to the speech understanding problem. In this thesis, we present two solutions for modelling lips in silent speech videos. In the first part of the thesis, we propose a word-spotting solution for searching spoken keywords in silent lip-videos. In this work on visual speech recognition our contributions are twofold: we develop a pipeline for recognition-free retrieval, and show its performance against recognition-based retrieval on a large-scale dataset and another set of out-of-vocabulary words. 2) We introduce a query expansion technique using pseudo-relevant feedback and propose a novel re-ranking method based on maximizing the correlation between spatio-temporal landmarks of the query and the top retrieval candidates. The proposed pipeline improves baseline performance by over 35% for word-spotting task on one of the largest lipreading corpus. We demonstrate the robustness of our method through a series of experiments, by investigating domain invariance, out-of-vocabulary prediction and careful analysis of results on dataset. We also present the qualitative results showing success and failure cases. We finally show the application of our method by spotting words in an archaic speech video. In the second part of our work, we propose a lip-synchronization solution for ‘visually redubbing speech videos in a target language. Current methods of adapting a native speech video in foreign language either through placement of subtitle in the video, which distracts the viewer or through audio redubbing the video in the target language. This causes unsynchronized lip-motion of the speaker with respect to the redubbed audio, resulting in video appearing unnatural. In this work, we propose two lip synchronization methods: 1) cross-accent lip-synchronization for change in accent of the same language audio dubbing, and 2) cross-language lip-synchronization for speech videos dubbed in a different language. Since viseme remains the same in cross-accent dubbing, we propose a dynamic programing algorithm to align the visual speech from the original video with the accented speech in the target audio. In cross-language dubbing overall linguistics changes, hence we propose a lip-synthesis model conditioned upon on the redubbed audio. Finally, a user-based study is conducted, which validates our claim of better viewing experience in comparison to baseline methods. We present the application of
Genetic studies in colour-cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) genotypes for seed cotton yield and fibre quality traits

The success of plant breeding depends on the existence of genetic variability present in the experimental material. Assessment of the extent and distribution of genetic variation in a crop species is essential in establishing the pattern of diversity and evolutionary relationships. We evaluated 240 colour-cotton genotypes of varying shades of brown and green lint with five white genotypes as checks during Kharif 2016 in Agricultural Research Station, Dharwad Farm, University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad using an augmented design. Analysis of variance indicated that there was a significant variation in the experimental material. Ample variability was observed in the experimental material studied for all the characters. Fibre colour exhibited high values of PCV, GCV, heritability and genetic advance as per cent of mean (GAM). It indicated that there was less influence of environment on the expression of colour and selection can be effective based on this trait. Whereas, fibre strength and length exhibited low PCV and GCV values, low heritability coupled with low genetic advance indicating a greater influence of environment on the fibre traits and thus may show low response to selection. Most of the traits studied were negatively associated with the fibre colour indicating the difficulty in the improvement of fibre colour along with other yield-related traits. It is challenging to break the negative association of these traits by transgressive breeding approaches to select for transgressive segregants with high yield along with good fibre colour.
Genetic variability and association analysis in barnyard millet mutants

The present study was carried out using 40 mutants along with two check varieties CO(Kv)2 and MDU1 during Kharif 2019. Sixteen characters were studied and out of which only 11 traits showed significant variation. Correlation and path analysis were done for 11 traits viz., number of basal tillers, days to fifty percent flowering, flag leaf length, panicle length, plant height, number of raceme, number of productive tillers, number of leaves in main tiller, average leaves in side tiller, single ear head weight and single plant yield. Among the eleven biometrical traits, high heritability was recorded by traits such as number of basal tillers, days to fifty percent flowering, flag leaf length, plant height, number of racemes, number of productive tillers, number of leaves in main tiller, single ear head weight and single plant yield. Correlation studies showed that number of productive tillers, single ear head weight and plant height possess significant positive correlation with yield at both genotypic and phenotypic level. Path analysis showed that traits like number of basal tillers, single ear head weight and panicle length had high direct effect on yield. Thus, selection of these traits would be rewarding for yield improvement in barnyard millet.
Pharmacological characteristics of a phyto steroidal food saponin: Diosgenin

© 2020 African Journal of Biological Sciences.This is an open access article under the CC BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. Volume 2, Issue 2, April 2020 Received : 22 September 2019 Accepted : 03 December 2019
Efficacy of bioagents and fungicide against root rot of chilli caused by Rhizoctonia solani Kuhn

Efficacy of antagonists and fungicide were evaluated under in vitro conditions for the mycelial growth inhibition. The antagonistic actions of three species of Trichoderma and two spp. of bacteria were evaluated against the test fungus by dual culture and paper disc technique, respectively. It was observed that all the biocontrol agents were significantly superior in inhibiting the mycelial growth of test fungus over control. Maximum growth inhibition was recorded in T. harzianum (64.81%) followed by T. viride and T. atroviride. Among the bacterial bioagent Pseudomonas fluorescens inhibit (41.48%), this was statistically at par with Bacillus subtilis (34.81%). The efficacy of Tebuconazole 2DS on mycelial growth of R. solani was recorded after 3, 5 and 7 days with the concentrations of 1.0, 10, 25, 50 and 100 ppm. The maximum inhibition of mycelial growth was observed in100 ppm where it was 16.66 mm, 17.33 mm after 3, 5 and 7 days respectively followed by 50 ppm where it was 34 mm, 35.70 mm and 36.33 mm after 3, 5 and 7 days, respectively. While 10 ppm and 1 ppm concentration was not much effective and it was descending order of merit. Thus 100 ppm and 50 ppm concentration effectively check the mycelial growth of R. solani in all the growth stage period i.e. 3, 5 and 7 days.
Role of ormeloxifene, a selective estrogen receptor modulator in heavy menstrual bleeding (abnormal uterine bleeding)

Background: During womens reproductive years, heavy menstrual bleeding (HMB) (abnormal uterine bleeding; AUB) is the most common reason for abnormal vaginal bleeding. Evidence is lacking for medical management of HMB (AUB). Ormeloxifene a selective estrogen receptor modulator (SERM) has emerged as one of the safe and effective candidates for the management of HMB (AUB). Objectives: The objectives of this study were to study the efficacy and safety of SERM, ormeloxifene in the treatment of HMB (AUB). Material and Methods: A total of 65 patients of HMB (AUB) were studied in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, GR Medical College, Gwalior, from September 2011 to December 2013. Detailed history, clinical examination, and laboratory investigations including hemoglobin percentage, blood sugar, paps smear, transvaginal ultrasonography, and dilatation and curettage were recorded for each patient. Tablet containing 60 mg of ormeloxifene was given for twice a week for first 12 weeks then 60 mg once a week for next 12 weeks. All the patients were followed up for 6 months till the 6 months. Results: Maximum patients had age between 31 and 40 years (46.5%). The most common parity was one to three (53.4%). Most of the cases complained of menorrhagia (41.8%). Majority of the cases showed proliferative endometrium (49.18%). Of 65, 5 could not be followed up due to various reasons. At 12 weeks of treatment, most of the cycles exceeded their pretreatment cycle length; improvement in duration of blood flow and dysmenorrhea (from 76.7% case to 19%) was observed; spotting and passage of clots were not observed in 58% by 12 weeks and 96% patients by 24 weeks. Most frequent side effects complained by patients were prolonged cycle beyond 35 days (50%). Conclusion: Ormeloxifene is a good choice for the treatment of HMB (AUB) due to its excellent efficacy and safety profile.