Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Growth of the earthworm Eisenia foetida in relation to population density and food rationing

At 250C Eisenia foetida hatches from its cocoon about 3 weeks after fertilization and follows a logistic growth pattern. It grows slowly for about three weeks and then enters a rapid phase whose slope is useful as an index to the nutritional quality of its food. The rapid phase is followed by a steady state maintenance phase, or by a phase of weight decline whose slope can be used as an index to a property of the food which is related to starvation latency. The slope of the rapid phase for individually grown worms was steeper on activated sludge than on cow manure and steeper on the latter than on horse manure. The maximum weight achieved by individually tested E. foetida was significantly greater with activated sludge than with either manure as food. The manures provided nutrients at a rate suboptimal to genetic capability for growth but either served as a better source of food than sludge when submaintenance levels remained, or were less toxic as castings. In a volume of about 30 cc over an area 78 cm2 the carrying capacity of 250 g horse manure on 50 g silt loam was 6 g live weight E. foetida; this value for these periodically disturbed systems is considerably less than what can be achieved in undisturbed systems published elsewhere. Carrying capacity was not achieved in the same volume-area-time relation with activated sludge in place of manure, though more than 23 g could be supported; more than ten times as much biomass of E. foetida can be supported per unit area of soil overlain by activated sludge than has been reported for earthworms in natural ecosystems.
The natural history of lianas on Barro Colorado Island, Panama

Liana (woody vine) abundance, height, diameter, and climbing mode were studied in the mature tropical moist forest on Barro Colorado Island, Panama (BCI). Because lianas are capable of extended horizontal as well as vertical growth, sample plots were 100—m2 cylinders extending from the ground up to the treetops. The plots were randomly located in areas representing different stages of regeneration following treefalls. In order to examine canopy lianas closely, trees in or adjacent to the sample plots were climbed freehand or with the aid of mechanical rope ascenders. Lianas are abundant on BCI and play important roles in forest dynamics. A hectare of old—growth forest had 1597 climbing lianas distributed among 43% of the canopy trees. Trees with a least one liana has higher than random probability of having more than one liana, and individual lianas connected an average of 1.56 canopy trees. In the understory, 22% of the upright plants <2 m tall were lianas, and, depending on the species, between 15 and 90% of these plants were vegetative offshoots (ramets) and not true seedlings (genets). Lianas were most abundant in recent treefall gaps and decreased in abundance with time since last disturbance. Trellis availability was found to be a major factor limiting liana access to the forest canopy. Experimental manipulation of supports and experimental planting of Dioclea reflexa seedlings revealed that trellises consisting of small diameter, closely spaced supports are most abundant on the edges of treefall gaps. Tree and liana stems on the edges of treefall gaps provided a major pathway to the canopy for climbing plants. Trees carrying lianas suffered higher mortality rates and upon falling caused more other trees to fall than did liana—free trees. Few lianas died when their host tree fell, and many grew back to the canopy using the abundant trellises that occur on the edges of treefall gaps. Tree sapling growth rates in treefall gaps and Luehea seemannii growth rates in the canopy were slower where lianas were abundant.
Interaction of a Foliar Application of Iron HEDTA and Three Postemergence Broadleaf Herbicides with Soybeans Stressed from Chlorosis

Abstract Soybeans stressed from chlorosis are often treated with postemergence herbicides to coincide with susceptibility of control of weed seedlings. Three postemergence herbicides, acifluorfen, imazamox, and lactofen were applied to chlorosis stressed soybeans with and without iron HEDTA. At one location, iron amendment resulted in lower yields with acifluorfen and lactofen. Yields were higher with iron amendment in the imazamox treatment, but lower crop injury and poorer weed control was also observed, suggesting that iron amendment antagonized imazamox. Iron amendment did not reduce visual symptoms of chlorosis, herbicide injury, nor did it result in yield increase at any location. Application of iron HEDTA with these herbicides would not be recommended for chlorosis relief.
Mechanical disruption of seagrass in the digestive tract of the dugong

The cheek teeth in dugongs are considered to be largely non-functional whereas the oral horny pads are important both in mechanical disruption of the diet and in conveying seagrass through the mouth. Particle size distributions of digesta from 41 dead stranded dugongs were examined to investigate the relationship between degree of food breakdown, gut region and functional surface area of the mouthparts. The in vitro ease of fracture of major dietary seagrass species were compared. The rate of food breakdown through the gut appears to be more closely linked to fibre level of the diet than to size or age of the dugong and its mouthparts. Low fibre seagrass, for example Halophila ovalis, breaks down at a faster rate than high fibre seagrass, for example Zostera capricorni both in dugong guts and in vitro. Several structural characteristics of seagrass, including level and arrangement of fibre, and water content, make it particularly amenable to mechanical breakdown. The soft mouthparts of the dugong are highly modified so that the entire oral cavity functions to crush low fibre seagrasses. Thus, the dugong has developed an efficient method of food ingestion and mastication that is suited to processing large quantities of soft seagrass during short dive times. The potential cost to the dugong in having lost its hard dental surfaces is that it has become restricted to a low fibre diet.
Colorblind and multicultural diversity strategies create identity management pressure

Colorblind and multicultural diversity strategies may create identity management pressure , leading minorities to assert or distance from their racial identity. In two experiments ( N = 307, 279), Asian and Asian American participants in the United States completed racial identification measures, contemplated employment at a company expressing a multicultural, colorblind, or control strategy, and completed measures assessing ingroup similarity and comfort in the company. In the colorblind condition, participants who were strongly identified with their racial ingroup downplayed similarity to the ingroup and expressed less comfort relative to multicultural and control conditions. Participants who were weakly identified reported more similarity (but inconsistently) and more comfort in the colorblind relative to multicultural and control conditions. Thus, diversity strategies convey different meanings to strongly and weakly identified Asian individuals, with the former responding to colorblindness with identity distancing and the latter with identity assertion. Multiculturalism does not alter the typical pattern expected, with strongly identified asserting their identity more than weakly identified.
Embriões de pacu submetidos a diferentes protocolos de resfriamento

The objective of this work was to evaluate the percentage of hatching after cooling of pacu (Piaractus mesopotamicus) embryos at -8oC for six hours, treated with cryoprotectant solutions, to obtain a cooling protocol for the specie. There were 2.400 embryos in post-gastrula stage development, in seven cryoprotectants solutions and control with three replicates, in completely randomized design. Ethylene glycol and honey-jelly were inappropriate. The substitution of 50% sucrose did not produce positive results. The combination of methanol (9%) and sucrose (17.5%) performed 69.2% of hatching and is recommended for cooling of pacu embryos at -8 oC for six hours.
PRODUCTION OF CAROTENOIDS BY RHODOTORULA RUBRA AND R. GLUTINIS IN CULTURE MEDIUM SUPPLEMENTED WITH SUGAR CANE JUICE

ABSTRACT Sugar cane juice, an abundant agricultural product in Brazil, was investigated as the main substrate for the culture of Rhodotorula rubra and R. glutinis. In order to evaluate yeast growth and carotenoid production, an experimental factorial design (24−1) was used for the following variables: sugar concentration in the sugar cane juice, yeast extract concentration, absence or presence of peptone and absence or supplementation with a solution of inorganic salts. In all experiments, the major carotenoids were quantified by HPLC, these being torularhodin, torulene, β-carotene and γ-carotene in different proportions depending on the medium composition. In general, greater carotenoid production was accomplished by lower cell growth. The maximum productivity obtained, as total carotenoid per g of dry mass, was 427 µg for R. rubra and 197 µg for R. glutinis.
Effects of season and level of grazing on the utilization of heather by sheep. 2. Diet selection and intake

The effect of level of removal of current season's shoots of heather (0,40 and 80% of the dry matter of the shoots) in the summer and autumn on the intake and diet selection by grazing Scottish Blackface wether sheep was examined in an experiment conducted over two years in which all combinations of level and season of grazing were provided. The treatment plots were grazed for 5 weeks at any one time and measurements made of intake and diet selection in weeks 2 and 5. In both the summer and autumn grazing periods level of removal in week 2 had little effect on the quality of the diet selected. In week 5, digestibility of organic matter was higher for the 40% than the 80% level of removal in the summer (0·543 vs 0·508) and particularly in the autumn (0·503 vs 0·449). Digestibility of the diet selected was higher in week 2 than in week 5 in both the summer (0·555 vs 0·525) and in the autumn (0·511 vs 0·476). Mechanisms of diet selection are discussed. In the summer grazing period only small differences existed in intake of organic matter between levels of removal but in the autumn intakes were higher at the 40% than the 80% level of removal. In a clipping experiment in which 0, 40 or 80% of the length of current season's shoots was removed in May, July and September in 3 consecutive years the nitrogen content of clippings in May and July was higher and the cell wall constituent lower at the 40% level in comparison to the 80% level of removal. Higher levels of removal at the previous clipping increased the nitrogen content of the clippings in May, July and September and reduced the cell wall constituent content in September.
Targeting Amoebiasis: Status and Developments

Abstract : Amoebiasis, a disease caused by Entamoeba histolytica , remains a major health problem that afflicts several million people worldwide. Moreover, in recent years there has been a rise in the number of reports with amebic brain abscess as well as in developed countries the microorganisms that cause diarrheal diseases are a cause of concern because of their potential to be used as bioterrorist agent. Metronidazole, an antiamoebic agent, is the drug of choice for treating amoebiasis in humans, but it has been shown to be both mutagenic and carcinogenic in bacteria and rodents respectively. The completely safe treatment for this disease does not exist at present and therefore newer and safer agents are required either from synthetic or natural resources. This review covers brief description of the disease, plant secondary metabolites and synthetic compounds that have exhibited moderate to high activity in vitro and in vivo bioassays against E . histolytica . The review also discusses some of the key biochemical targets that are unique and vital for the existence and growth of the parasite which are being further exploited so as to search for therapeutically active antiamoebic agents.
Biotransformation of podophyllotoxin by Hordeum vulgare cell suspension cultures

Hordeum vulgare cell suspension cultures were used to modify podophyllotoxin (1) One major product (1a) and one minor product (1b) were detected in both the culture medium and cells. To optimize the yield of compound 1a, we showed that: (1) the optimal concentration of added podophyllotoxin (1) was 33 mg L−1; higher concentrations caused cell toxicity; (2) the stage of the cell cycle (lag/log/stationary) at which podophyllotoxin was added only marginally affected the yield of compound 1a; the optimal addition time was after lag phase, in which the yield of compound 1a reached ca. 76%, and (3) biotransformation of podophyllotoxin (1) was relatively slow; podophyllotoxin fed at 4 days after subculture resulted in yields of compound 1a of ca. 56, 64 and 76% after an additional 3, 6 and 10 days of incubation, respectively. Product 1a was purified and identified as isopicropodophyllone (1a) based on MS and NMR data.
Deep Learning Based Automatic Multiclass Wild Pest Monitoring Approach Using Hybrid Global and Local Activated Features

Specialized control of pests and diseases have been a high-priority issue for the agriculture industry in many countries. On account of automation and cost effectiveness, image analytic pest recognition systems are widely utilized in practical crops prevention applications. But due to powerless hand-crafted features, current image analytic approaches achieve low accuracy and poor robustness in practical large-scale multiclass pest detection and recognition. To tackle this problem, this article proposes a novel deep learning based automatic approach using hybrid and local activated features for pest monitoring. In the presented method, we exploit the global information from feature maps to build our global activated feature pyramid network to extract pests’ highly discriminative features across various scales over both depth and position levels. It makes changes of depth or spatial sensitive features in pest images more visible during downsampling. Next, an improved pest localization module named local activated region proposal network is proposed to find the precise pest objects positions by augmenting contextualized and attentional information for feature completion and enhancement in local level. The approach is evaluated on our seven-year large-scale pest data-set containing 88.6 K images (16 types of pests) with 582.1 K manually labeled pest objects. The experimental results show that our solution performs over 75.03% mean average precision (mAP) in industrial circumstances, which outweighs two other state-of-the-art methods: Faster R-CNN with mAP up to 70% and feature pyramid network mAP up to 72%.
Laboratory‐made particles as a useful approach to analyse microbial processes in marine macroaggregates

Two kinds of particles were created in the laboratory in rolling tanks to simulate natural macroaggregates. Laboratory-made particles type 1 were formed under sterile conditions from a mixture of cells and extracellular products of four diatom species in artificial seawater, and inoculated with a marine microbial assemblage. Laboratory-made particles type 2 were created directly from natural seawater. These particles were characterised in terms of maximum length, volume and abundance. Chemical composition (carbohydrates, amino acids and total organic carbon) and bacterial and flagellate abundances were measured in the particles and ambient water. We found that both kinds of laboratory-made particles were similar in terms of size, chemical composition and microbial abundance. Moreover, they resembled natural marine aggregates in size and volume. However, laboratory-made particles showed higher concentrations of carbohydrates, amino acids and total organic carbon as well as higher microbial abundance when compared to natural macroaggregates. This difference can be explained by the sampling method, since natural aggregates are frequently collected in the sea with syringes including ambient water, and consequently diluted, whereas in this study the laboratory-made particles were carefully collected without ambient water. Thus, both kinds of laboratory-made particles might be a good alternative for the analysis of microbial processes in marine macroaggregates. Advantages and disadvantages of these two types of laboratory-made particles are discussed.
Vegetation community selection by ungulates on the Isle of Rhum. III. Determinants of vegetation community selection.

(1) This paper describes and discusses possible determinants of seasonal vegetation community selection of cattle, red deer, goats and ponies on the Isle of Rhum in the Inner Hebrides, Scotland. (2) The feeding strategies of each species are discussed with respect to a theoretical framework of constraints on diet selection in ungulates based on mouth size, body size and the digestive system within species of ruminant, their rumen morphology and digestive function. (3) Throughout the year the goats fed on vegetation communities containing high biomasses of live dwarf shrubs and forbs. The other species all fed predominantly on the grassland communities. (4) Cattle, having a large body size and rumen, a long passage rate of food material through their digestive tract and small incisor breadth: metabolic requirements ratios, fed on communities containing the highly digestible live mesotrophic graminoids and forbs when these were abundant and on communities containing live oligotrophic graminoids when the former declined in abundance. (5) Red deer stags and hinds, which are smaller and have larger incisor breadth: meta-bolic requirements ratios than cattle, selected vegetation communities containing live mesotrophic graminoids and forbs throughout the year. (6) Goats, having digestive systems adapted for fast passage rates, fed predominantly on communities containing live dwarf shrubs and forbs. Because of their high cell content concentration, this type of plant material will release most nutrients in the shortest time. (7) Ponies, being hindgut digesters, have relatively low digestive abilities and, as a result, high intake requirements. Consequently, they fed on communities with high biomasses of live mesotrophic graminoids and forbs when these were abundant and on communities with high biomasses of both live and dead mesotrophic graminoids and forbs when the biomass of the live component declined
Physiological and biochemical aspects of cadmium toxicity and protective mechanisms induced in Phragmites australis and Typha latifolia

Summary The capability of common reed and cattail (Phragmites australis (Cav.) Trin. ex Steud. and Typha latifolia L. ) to accumulate and translocate Cd2+ from roots to shoots and their defense mechanisms induced by Cd2+ at the levels of thiol metabolism and antioxidant enzyme activity were studied. Experiments were carried out using young, small sized plants grown hydroponically and originating either from regenerating tissue culture (reed) or aseptically germinated seeds (cattail). Cadmium treatment was applied as a concentration series between 0.1 and 100 μmol/L for 40 and 100 days for reed and cattail, respectively. For assays and analysis, plant samples were taken in 2-4 week intervals. Most of the Cd2+ taken up was retained in roots in both species, however, Typha accumulated more cadmium in the shoot compared to Phragmites. In Typha, increasing accumulation of cadmium was in positive correlation with the increase of free thiol content while in Phragmites increased glutathione reductase, catalase and peroxidase activities were found. It is shown for the first time that under Cd2+ stress different defense strategies operate in Typha and Phragmites. In Typha, this strategy relies more on thiol induction and metal binding leading to heavy metal avoidance, while in Phragmites it is based on increased antioxidant enzyme activities and thus scavenging of active oxygen species.
Mineral diversity in wild plants: benefits and bane for moose

We studied the mineral nutrition ecology of moose, Alces alces, by a comprehensive examination of concentration levels of 18 elements in browsing plants, and in rumen and distal colon contents, respectively. The plants, in total 14 species, included deciduous and evergreen trees, shrubs, herbs, grasses and aquatic macrophytes. Our study was done in four sites in southern Norway and the plants were sampled in spring, summer, autumn and winter to document seasonal trends. The plants were generally characterized by low concentrations of major elements, very low phosphorus: calcium ratios, and the willow Salix aurita - a preferred browse - had high cadmium concentrations, up to 9 ppm (dry mass). Sodium concentrations in terrestrial plants were significantly under the dietary requirement, while levels were sufficient in aquatic plants, which, however, had high concentrations of toxic heavy metals. We suggest that the moose experience a nutritional dilemma as a strong physiological need for sodium results in an overintake of heavy metals. A selective intake of plants rich in heavy metals was corroborated by high heavy metal concentrations in rumen and distal colon. Over all, the plants were characterized by a marked mineral diversity due to element concentration levels that were highly variable between species and sites. Thus, there is a strong link between plant species diversity and mineral diversity, which has a pivotal role for herbivores. It is concluded that a diversity of plant species is a prerequisite for the mineral diversity that the moose needs to obtain essential minerals, not only in sufficient amounts, but also in physiologically balanced proportions.
Nutritional Augmentation of Jeffrey Pine Saplings on a Harsh Sierran Site

Broadcast fertilization with an array of amendments was examined for its capacity to reinvigorate growth and enhance nutrition of a 12-yr-old Jeffrey pine (Pinus jeffreyi Grev. & Balf.) plantation growing on an acidic Sierra Nevada surface mine site. Selected amendments consisted of Viking Brand 21-7-14, Free Flow 29-3-4, High N 22-4-6 + Minors, and Milorganite 6-2-0 + Iron—formulations that differed substantially in critical characteristics including N sources and the duration of release, and each was administered using three rates of application. All formulations stimulated sapling growth during some stage of the study, especially when applied at the highest rates, but the Free Flow amendment, which features urea as the predominant N source, the High N formulation, which is a controlled release fertilizer, and Milorganite, an organic amendment based on municipal biosolids, sustained growth enhancement longer than the Viking amendment, which relies exclusively upon ammoniacal and nitrate N forms and lacks any provision for metering nutrient release. As indicated by foliar analysis, increased availability and uptake of N probably accounted for most of the added growth induced by fertilization, although improved P nutrition likely contributed as well. However, in addition to the N and P responses, fertilized saplings were frequently lower in Mn, B, and Al—all of which may be phytotoxic at elevated concentrations. Further support for the possible linkages between foliar concentrations noted above and sapling growth responses were provided by the concentrations of these elements in the mine soil, which was low in N and P but high in Mn, B, and Al. This study reports approaches to nutritional augmentation on degraded sites suitable for use during the sapling stage of tree development.