Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Human—Wildlife Conflict and Attitude of Local People Towards Conservation of Wildlife in Chebera Churchura National Park, Ethiopia

Human—wildlife conflict is a serious challenge undermining the integrity of protected areas in developing countries. Developing effective human—wildlife conflict mitigation strategies requires an understanding of the conflict patterns, species involved and attitudes of local people living along protected area boundaries. We hypothesised that (1) there was a high level of human—wildlife conflict and (2) the local people would have less favourable attitudes towards problematic wild animals. We assessed patterns of human—wildlife conflict and attitudes of local people along the boundary of Chebera Churchura National Park, Ethiopia from 2012 to 2014. A total of 354 households were selected randomly for interview. A questionnaire survey, focus group discussions and direct field observations were carried out in the selected villages. The major types of human—wildlife conflict in the area include crop raiding, livestock predation, increased risk of livestock diseases and direct threats to human life. A majority of the respondents (68.1%) faced crop damage and domestic animal loss, 12.3% reported threat to humans and 0.3% reported that the wildlife might cause diseases. Close proximity of the villages to the park and seasons influenced livestock predation intensity with highest predation in the wet season (56.0%). To mitigate these problems, the local people utilised various traditional methods, including guarding. Most respondents had positive attitudes towards the conservation of wildlife. However, as the frequency of conflicts increased in the last five years, the attitudes of local people might change. Active measures are to be implemented to mitigate the problem and safeguard the future of the wildlife around the park. The park has enormous potential to benefit more local people by implementing a participatory management approach to conservation.
Detritus Quality Produces Species-Specific Tadpole Growth and Survivorship Responses in Experimental Wetlands

Abstract Although many non-native species negatively influence amphibian populations, non-native aquatic vegetation has been documented to have positive, negative, and neutral effects on anuran larvae. To evaluate the response of anurans to non-native plants, we exposed two frog species, Gray Treefrog (Hyla versicolor-chrysoscelis) and Southern Leopard Frog (Lithobates sphenocephalus), to detritus from either native hardwood trees, non-native purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria), or a mixture of both. Experiments were conducted in artificial ponds, and we recorded the survival, growth, and metamorphic size of larvae. Gray Treefrog survival was highest in tanks with native leaf litter. Developmental time did not differ among treatments, but tadpoles in tanks with purple loosestrife were significantly larger than those in tanks with native leaf litter. Southern Leopard Frog survival was lowest in the mixed vegetation treatment. As with Gray Treefrogs, developmental time was not influenced by treatment, but larvae from tanks with purple loosestrife were significantly larger than those from other treatments. Lower survival in the presence of purple loosestrife has been linked to secondary compounds in the plant, and the higher growth rates we observed are consistent with recent findings on response of anuran larvae to other non-native plants. Our results suggest the negative effects of purple loosestrife detritus on the species examined are manifest at the individual and (perhaps) population level. Because the fewer animals that did survive in tanks with purple loosestrife grew larger, overall ecosystem-level effects may not be present; however, larger scale experiments are needed to evaluate this hypothesis.
Three-dimensional skeletal patterning during sea urchin embryogenesis

Multi-tissue pattern formation during development is a complex process in which extracellular communication events specify distinct cell types and regulate exquisite embryonic morphogenesis. The sea urchin embryo provides an excellent model for studying pattern formation due to relative genetic and morphological simplicity. The larval skeleton is secreted via biomineralization by the skeletogenic primary mesenchyme cells (PMCs). The PMCs undergo an epithelial-mesenchymal transition and migrate as individual cells within the blastocoel into stereotypic positions; this regulated PMC migration and positioning is required for normal skeletal patterning. Elegant PMC transplant experiments have demonstrated that PMC positioning, and thus skeletal patterning, is directed by ectodermal cues, and not by cues internal to the PMCs. In recent years, new efforts have been made to identify the ectodermal gene products that regulate skeletal development. The transcription factors Otp, Pax2/5/8 and Strim1, signaling by FGF, VEGF, and Wnt5a ligands have all been implicated in skeletal development in the sea urchin embryo; however, loss-of-function analysis for most of these gene products results in inhibition of skeletogenesis, suggesting that they regulate biomineralization and not PMC positioning and patterning. Notably, no skeletal patterning genes have viii previously been identified that pattern specific parts of the larval skeleton. This dissertation takes candidate-based and systems-level approaches to identify novel skeletal patterning genes that pattern distinct parts of the larval skeleton. We find that activation of the Alk4/5/7 receptor is required during gastrulation for anterior PMC positioning and skeletal patterning. We next test the function of the TGF-ß ligand Univin and find that it is necessary and sufficient for secondary skeletal patterning, indicating that Univin is a likely signaling ligand in anterior skeletal patterning. We also report a ventral accumulation of sulfated proteoglycans that requires function of the sulfate transporter, SLC26a2/7. This SLC-dependent sulfated proteoglycan accumulation is necessary and sufficient to attract PMCs to the ventral territory, and thereby pattern the ventral transverse skeletal elements. Finally, BMP5-8 function is required for left-side skeletal and serotonergic neuron development. Together, these studies reveal novel ectodermal genes that specifically regulate skeletal patterning across the anterior-posterior, dorsalventral, and left-right axes in Lytechinus variegatus embryos.
Baicalein and U0126 suppress bladder cancer proliferation via MAPK signaling pathway

Purpose : To investigate baicalein and 1,4-diamino-2,3-dicyano-1,4-bis[2-aminophenylthio] butadiene (U0126)effects on human bladder cell line T24 proliferation and related mechanisms. Methods : Twenty micromoles of baicalein or 10 μM U0126 were incubated with T24 cells. Cell viability was tested by CCK8 assay. Cell cycle was evaluated by flow cytometry while cell apoptosis was detected by Annexin V/PI and TUNEL assay. MAPK signaling pathway was evaluated by real time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and western blot. Results : Baicalein and U0126 suppressed bladder cancer cell T24 proliferation by blocking cell cycle in G0~G1 phase. TUNEL and Annexin V/PI detection showed both baicalein and U0126 induced T24 cell apoptosis. Baicalein and U0126 significantly down-regulated MAPK signaling pathway related molecule activity in both mRNA and protein levels (p < 0.05). Conclusion : Baicalein and U0126 restrain bladder cancer cell proliferation and promote cell apoptosis by affecting MAPK signaling pathway. Thus, they have potentials for use in the treatment of bladder cancer. Keywords : Bladder cancer, Baicalein, 1,4-diamino-2,3-dicyano-1,4-bis[2-aminophenylthio] butadiene, MAPK signal pathway, Apoptosis
Studies on variability, heritability and genetic advance for yield and yield contributing characters in Pointed Gourd (Trichosanthes dioica Roxb.)

In order to determine the magnitude of variability, 35 genotypes of pointed gourd have been evaluated at Vegetable research centre, Pantnagar during rainy season of 2014. Through analysis of variance, a high significant difference was found for almost all characters indicating a greater opportunity of exploit variability. PPG-26 has obtained highest mean for fruit length (10.39) and PPG-2 for fruit diameter (4.35) while PPG-31 genotype was resulted as the earliest among all. High GCV along with high PCV was found for the characters like Number of seeds per fruit (33.22 and 33.45), Fruit yield (q/ha) (31.38 and 33.09), Node number to first female flower (29.39 and 30.26) and Number of fruits per plant (29.29 and 29.70). Whereas, high heritability coupled with greater genetic advance was observed for number of fruit per plant and fruit yield per hectare which indicates that these characters are govern with additive gene effect with minimum environment effect so we can go for direct selection of pointed gourd genotypes for further improvement.
Evaluation of phytotoxic potential and identification of phytotoxic compounds in Rumex maritimus

Abstract Rumex maritimus (Polygonaceae) is an annual herb and is well known for its use in medicinal treatments. Although the pharmacological properties of R. maritimus are well documented, no phytotoxic activity of R. maritimus has yet been found. Therefore, we investigated the phytotoxic potential of R. maritimus to identify phytotoxic compounds. Inhibitory activity was found in aqueous methanol extracts of R. maritimus on the seedling growth of cress, rapeseed, barnyard grass, and foxtail fescue, in which inhibition increased with increasing extract concentration. Two compounds were isolated using chromatography, and using spectroscopy their structure was determined as 5,7-dihydroxyphthalide and altechromone A. 5,7-Dihydroxyphthalide significantly inhibited cress seedling growth by 27.2–43.0% of control seedlings at 3 mM, whereas altechromone A inhibited seedling growth by 65.4–66.3% at 0.01 mM. The concentrations required for 50% inhibition of cress seedling growth were 1.73–2.48 mM for 5,7-dihydroxyphthalide and 0.66–1.41 mM for altechromone A. These results indicate that the compounds 5,7-dihydroxyphthalide and altechromone A may contribute, to a certain extent, to the phytotoxic activity of R. maritimus.
Clinical immunology Road-like pattern of HLA-ABDR-based genetic distances between populations

Genetic distances between populations may indicate the optimal direction of hematopoietic stem cell donor search. In some extent straight-line spatial geographic distances are similar to genetic distances. We tested the hypothesis that natural barriers, such as mountains, water reservoirs, desert and permafrost areas can change simple correlation between geography and genetics. We typed 200 healthy individuals of Polish population in HLA-A, B and DRB1 at the allelic level and compared allele group frequencies with 38 world populations. Standard Nei’s pairwise genetic distances were estimated and correlated with land road distances in kilometres and straight-line spatial geographic distances. The genetic distances between all 39 populations were highly correlated with road distances (r=0.499, P=0.0012, df. =37). The correlation was much higher when estimation was limited to non-admixed and non-transferred populations (ie. when African American 1998, African American 2007, Argentina Buenos Aires, Belgian Total and Turkish minority in Germany, have been removed) (r=0.831, P=1,2E-09, df.=32). Simultaneously the straight-line spatial geographic distances correlated with genetic distances even higher (r=0.699, P=7.3E-07, df.=32 and r=0.848, P=2.4E-10, df.=32, respectively, for all 39 and 34 non-admixed/nontransferred populations). The preliminary analysis of a limited number of populations (N=20) has shown that the straight-line geographic spatial distances correlated with genetic distances much less than road distances (r=0.442, P=0.051, df.=18 vs. r=0.550, P=0.012, df.=18, respectively for straight-line and road distances). Simultaneously, geographic-like pattern of gene frequency low dimensional correspondence analysis was displayed in three dimensional projection. These results confirm considerable dependence of genetic and geographic distances. The results support the hypothesis that natural gene spread-out must have been more similar to waves and water circle-like propagation than to journeys along single paths. Natural barriers such as water reservoirs and mountains have had limited influence.
Very Early Responses to Colour Stimuli Detected in Prestriate Visual Cortex by Magnetoencephalography (MEG)

Our previous studies with the visual motion and form systems show that visual stimuli belonging to these categories trigger much earlier latency responses from the visual cortex than previously supposed and that the source of the earliest signals can be located in either the prestriate cortex or in both the striate (V1) and prestriate cortex. This is consistent with the known anatomical connections since, in addition to the classical retino-geniculo-striate cortex input to the prestriate visual areas, there are direct anatomical inputs from both the lateral geniculate nucleus and the pulvinar that reach the prestriate visual cortex without passing through striate cortex. In pursuing our studies, we thought it especially interesting to study another cardinal visual attribute, namely colour, to learn whether colour stimuli also provoke very early responses, at less than 50 ms from visual cortex. To address the question, we asked participants to view stimuli that changed in colour and used magneto-encephalography to detect very early responses (< 50 ms) in the occipital visual cortex. Our results show that coloured stimuli also provoke an early cortical response (M30), with an average peak time at 31.7 ms, thus bringing the colour system into line with the visual motion and form systems. We conclude that colour signals reach visual cortex, including prestriate visual cortex, earlier than previously supposed.
Decoupled cell association towards device-centric 5G cellular networks

5G will be different from previous cellular generations in the fact that it will enable the cellular industry, besides offering superior broadband services, to conquer vertical industries such as vehicular communication, factory automation, healthcare and many more. Many of these use cases have challenging and quite often contradicting requirements in terms of data rate, latency, power consumption and so on. This suggests that 5G needs to adopt a flexible architecture that can adapt to different devices and traffic requirements. Consequently, a fresh look onto how cellular networks are currently designed and deployed is needed. Historically, cellular networks have relied on the axiomatic role of cells as the cornerstone of the radio access network. Cellular systems have witnessed several recent trends such as the increased heterogeneity in infrastructure and spectrum as well as the rise of different traffic types with different requirements. These trends have called for a shift from the cell-centric architecture approach to a more device-centric architecture where a user or a device should be able to communicate with the network by exchanging information over multiple traffic flows through several sets of heterogeneous nodes. This design concept suggests to drop the rigid cell-centric concept and move to a more flexible design where information is exchanged in the most efficient way possible disregarding in which cell the device is located. This thesis features a comprehensive study of some of the technological enablers of the device-centric 5G architecture vision where we start by motivating the need for this architectural change by presenting the envisioned use cases and requirements of 5G and how the current cellular designs are lacking the flexibility and agility to satisfy the 5G ambition. The main contribution of the thesis is on Downlink and Uplink Decoupling (DUDe) where we pioneered the research on this disruptive 5G architectural design. The traditional way for users to associate to the cellular network is through coupled association where a device associates in both uplink (UL) and downlink (DL) to the same cell. However, the ever increasing density and heterogeneity of cellular networks have rendered the traditional design concepts such as coupled cell association obsolete
The phylogeny of lance lacewings (Neuroptera: Osmylidae)

The first phylogeny of the lacewing family Osmylidae is presented here based on a total evidence analysis of DNA sequences for multiple gene loci and morphology for representatives of almost all extant genera. Our phylogeny shows a basal dichotomy in the family, with subfamilies Protosmylinae, Spilosmylinae and Gumillinae comprising one lineage, and the other lineage including Osmylinae, Porisminae, Eidoporisminae, Kempyninae and Stenosmylinae. The status of Paryphosmylus Krüger and Lysmus Navás as members of Protosmylinae is affirmed as well as the placement of Gumillinae near Protosmylinae and Spilosmylinae. Our results suggest that Porisminae, Eidoporisminae and Stenosmylinae evolved from a common ancestor, and their relationships, including likely paraphyly of Stenosmylinae, requires further assessment. Divergence time analysis revealed that the family originated during the Late Permian before the break‐up of the supercontinent Pangaea and that present generic distributions are not due to Gondwanan biogeographic events. All major subfamily‐level lineages were present by the end of the Triassic, in agreement with the rich Mesozoic‐aged fossil record for the family.
Application of PLS and Sparse PLS regression in genomic selection

Genomic selection is based on the estimation of gen omic estimated breeding values (GEBV). In this way, a prediction equation based on the estima tion of a large number of DNA marker effects, such as SNP (Single Nucleotide Polymorphis m) markers and a limited number of genotyped animals must be established. The most sig nificant difficulty is to find performing methods when the number of explanatory variables is much higher than the number of individuals. In this study, we compare two such app roaches. The first one is the Partial Least Squares (PLS) regression, which reduces the number of variables in the final model, by projecting independent variables onto latent struct ures. The second method is the Sparse PLS regression which derives from PLS regression: a ste p of penalization is added to PLS in order to select the most important variables.
Attributing changes in the distribution of species abundance to weather variables using the example of British breeding birds

Modelling spatio‐temporal changes in species abundance and attributing those changes to potential drivers such as climate, is an important but difficult problem. The standard approach for incorporating climatic variables into such models is to include each weather variable as a single covariate, whose effect is expressed through a low‐order polynomial or smoother in an additive model. This, however, confounds the spatial and temporal effects of the covariates. We developed a novel approach to distinguish between three types of change in any particular weather covariate. We decomposed the weather covariate into three new covariates by separating out temporal variation in weather (averaging over space), spatial variation in weather (averaging over years) and a space–time anomaly term (residual variation). These three covariates were each fitted separately in the models. We illustrate the approach using generalized additive models applied to count data for a selection of species from the UK's Breeding Bird Survey, 1994–2013. The weather covariates considered were the mean temperatures during the preceding winter and temperatures and rainfall during the preceding breeding season. We compare models that include these covariates directly with models including decomposed components of the same covariates, considering both linear and smooth relationships. The lowest QAIC values were always associated with a decomposed weather covariate model. Different relationships between counts and the three new covariates provided strong evidence that the effects of changes in covariate values depended on whether changes took place in space, in time, or in the space–time anomaly. These results promote caution in predicting species distribution and abundance in future climate, based on relationships that are largely determined by environmental variation over space. Our methods estimate the effect of temporal changes in weather, while accounting for spatial effects of long‐term climate, improving inference on overall and/or localized effects of climate change. With increasing availability of large‐scale datasets, need is growing for appropriate analytical tools. The proposed decomposition of the weather variables represents an important advance by eliminating the confounding issue often inherent in analyses of large‐scale datasets.
#4 Carbonated Drinks Impact Follicle Development, Expression of Ovarian FSHR and Serum Caspase-3 in Mice

Objectives: The present study aimed to assess the effects of Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola on the development of ovaries and follicles, and on the reproduction of animals. Methods: 150 female non-cycling mice weighing 20.36±2.28g were divided into five groups (n=30). COC-1 and COC-2 mice drank freely 50% and 100% Coca-Cola for up to 25 days. PEP-1 and PEP-2 mice received orally 50% and 100% Pepsi-Cola. Mice in the control group (CG) drank tap water. Another five mice were used as a normal control per group on day 0. Ovarian and follicle indices were measured under the microscope. Western blotting was utilized to ascertain the expression levels of FSHR protein in ovaries. Serum concentrations of caspase-3, epidermal growth factor (EGF) and vascular endothelial growth factor receptor (VEGFR) were measured by ELISA. Results: The ovarian weight of PEP-2 was significantly lower than that of CG ( P < 0.05) on day 25. Ovarian cortex thickness (OCT) of PEP-2 was significantly reduced in comparison with CG (P <0.01). In the COC-2 group, values of follicle longitudinal diameter (FLD), follicle transverse diameter (FTD), follicle wall thickness (FWT), oocyte longitudinal diameter (OLD) and oocyte transverse diameter (OTD) were less than those of CG on day 25. FWT and OLD of PEP-1 were reduced as compared to CG . In COC and PEP groups, numbers of POF and MF were reduced slightly. Follicles developed poorly. FSHR protein was decreased slightly and EGF levels increased in Coca-Cola treated or Pepsi-Cola treated mice. Serum caspase-3 levels of COC-1 and PEP-1 were significantly lower than those of CG. Conclusion: Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola treatment could reduce ovarian weights, inhibit the ovarian cortex thickness and impair the development of follicles.
Sensory tuning does not match behavioral relevance of communication signals in free-living weakly electric fish

Sensory systems evolve in the ecological niches each species is occupying. Accordingly, the tuning of sensory neurons is expected to be adapted to the statistics of natural stimuli. For an unbiased quantification of sensory scenes we tracked natural communication behavior of the weakly electric fish Apteronotus rostratus in their Neotropical rainforest habitat with high spatio-temporal resolution over several days. In the context of courtship and aggression we observed large quantities of electrocommunication signals. Echo responses and acknowledgment signals clearly demonstrated the behavioral relevance of these signals. The known tuning properties of peripheral electrosensory neurons suggest, however, that they are barely activated by these obviously relevant signals. Frequencies of courtship signals are clearly mismatched with the frequency tuning of neuronal population activity. Our results emphasize the importance of quantifying sensory scenes derived from freely behaving animals in their natural habitats for understanding the evolution and function of neural systems.