Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Identification of key nutrients for gonadal development by comparative analysis of proximate composition and fatty/amino acid profile in tissues and eggs of Chinese sturgeon (Acipenser sinensis Gray, 1835)

Summary The present study was conducted to characterize the proximate composition and fatty/amino acid profile in muscle, liver and gonads obtained from farmed male and female Chinese sturgeon (Acipenser sinensis) with gonad development at stage II, and to discern the key nutrients for gonads by comparing the nutrients between tissues and between fish at different gonad stages. Chinese sturgeon were reared in an outdoor circular cement pool at temperatures ranging from 8°C to 26°C, and fed with 70% artificial diets and 30% frozen forage fish at a feeding rate of 0.2%–1.5% body weight according to the water temperature. Three male and three female A. sinensis were sampled for analyses. Results showed that the lipid content in gonads was significantly higher than in other tissues in both males and females (p < .05). The protein content in male and female gonads was significantly lower than that in the muscle (p < .05). Total content of mono-unsaturated fatty acids (MUFA) in females was significantly higher than in males (p < .05), while the total content of n-6 PUFA in females was significantly lower than in males (p < .05). Palmitic acid (C16:0) and oleic acid (C18:1n9) were the major saturated fatty acid (SFA) and MUFA, respectively, in both females and males. The contents of C18:2n6, C20:4n6 (ARA), C18:3n3 and C22:6n3 (DHA) in male gonads were significantly higher than in females (p < .05). The contents of ARA, EPA and DHA in gonads were lower, possibly playing a pivotal role in gonad development. Comparing the nutrients of ovaries in broodstocks at stages III and IV and the eggs at stage IV, the present study suggests that the lipid and fatty acid profile in fish is vital to the gonad development and that proper improvement of lipid nutrition in the broodstock diet to provide sufficient energy and essential fatty acids would be beneficial for the gonad development of Acipenser sinensis.
Comparison of the Asteroseismic Mass Scale of Red Clump Giants with Photometric Mass Estimates

Asteroseismology can provide joint constraints on masses and radii of individual stars. While this approach has been extensively tested for red giant branch (RGB) stars, it has been more difficult to test for helium core–burning red clump (RC) giants because of the lack of fundamental calibrators. To provide independent mass estimates, we utilize a number of widely used horizontal-branch models in the literature and derive photometric masses from a comparison with photometry. Our selected models disagree with each other on the predicted mass–luminosity–temperature relation. We adopt first-order corrections on colors and magnitudes to minimize the dispersion between different models by forcing models to match the observed location in the solar-metallicity cluster M67. Even for these calibrated models, however, the internal consistency between models deteriorates at higher metallicities, and photometric masses become smaller than asteroseismic masses, as seen from metal-rich field RC stars with Gaia parallaxes. Similarly, the average photometric mass for metal-rich NGC 6791 stars ranges from 0.7 to 1.1 M⊙, depending on the specific set of models employed. An ensemble average of the photometric masses (0.88 ± 0.16 M⊙) in NGC 6791 is marginally consistent with the asteroseismic mass (1.16 ± 0.04 M⊙). There is a clear tension between the masses that one would predict from photometry for metal-rich field RC stars, asteroseismic masses, and those that would be expected from the ages of stars in the Galactic disk populations and canonical RGB mass loss. We conclude that standard RC models need to be reexamined in light of these powerful new data sets.
ANTIBACTERIAL AND ANTIFUNGAL ACTIVITIES OF OCIMUM GRATISSIMUM L.

The development of antibiotic resistance in microorganisms is a global challenge for the clinicians, pharmacist and research scientists leading to development of new medicinal formulations that are effective and easily consumable. The plant yielding essential oil with chief constituent as eugenol has been identified as an important compound with strong inhibition of bacteria, and storage fungi. Ocimum gratissimum is an aromatic shrub occurring in warm tropical regions has been used in traditional medicine in India to cure various ailments in general and as an antimicrobial agent in particular. The literature surveyed reveals that the plant oil exhibit strong potentiality against gram negative and gram positive bacteria along with diverse human and plant fungi. As a natural product the plant oil is safer as food preservatives and stored grain protectant and has wide application in cosmetics and perfumery industries. This comprehensive review is attempted to provide the valuable information on antimicrobial activities of the plant essential oil that will be used to explore and develop a standard therapeutics system for the management of clinical and multiple drug resistant microorganisms.
Vivipary in Ferocactus herrerae (Cactaceae) in northern Sinaloa, México

Summary: Vivipary implies an active embryonic development with seed germination in the mother plant. The viviparous species are concentrated mainly in tropical and coastal areas with temporary flooding; thus, salinity and moisture are the main factors related to vivipary. This reproductive strategy is a rare event in the Cactaceae; however, vivipary in this family has been reported for 53 species (3.7% of the family). Ferocactus herrerae is a viviparous cactus native of northwestern Mexico, for which it has been suggested that the overall proportion of viviparous plants is higher in coastal flooding areas relative to halophytic, nonflooding areas. Thus, in this research we determine the correlation of the salinity/moisture with the vivipary incidence in Ferocactus herrerae. We performed Independence Tests between the reproductive types (viviparous/non-viviparous) and three salinity/ moisture conditions in experimental sites in northern Sinaloa, México. We had irrigation (Pueblito site), irrigation-salinity (UAS site), and control (San José site) sites. The Pueblito and UAS sites had 82% and 100% of viviparous plants compared with 56% recorded in the control. The UAS site produced 7 fruits per plant on average, with 43% viviparous, whereas the San José and Pueblito sites produced 18 fruits per plant with viviparous averages of 7.6% and 16.7% respectively. These results confirm that humid tropical and coastal environments are important in the development of vivipary in F. herrerae.
LightChain: A DHT-based Blockchain for Resource Constrained Environments

As an append-only distributed database, blockchain is utilized in a vast variety of applications including the cryptocurrency and Internet-of-Things (IoT). The existing blockchain solutions have downsides in communication and storage efficiency, convergence to centralization, and consistency problems. In this paper, we propose LightChain, which is the first blockchain architecture that operates over a Distributed Hash Table (DHT) of participating peers. LightChain is a permissionless blockchain that provides addressable blocks and transactions within the network, which makes them efficiently accessible by all the peers. Each block and transaction is replicated within the DHT of peers and is retrieved in an on-demand manner. Hence, peers in LightChain are not required to retrieve or keep the entire blockchain. LightChain is fair as all of the participating peers have a uniform chance of being involved in the consensus regardless of their influence such as hashing power or stake. LightChain provides a deterministic fork-resolving strategy as well as a blacklisting mechanism, and it is secure against colluding adversarial peers attacking the availability and integrity of the system. We provide mathematical analysis and experimental results on scenarios involving 10K nodes to demonstrate the security and fairness of LightChain.
Liana density declined and basal area increased over 12 y in a subtropical montane forest in Argentina

Abstract: Changes in density and basal area of lianas ≥2 cm diameter were monitored in two 1-ha permanent plots in a subtropical montane mature forest of north-western Argentina. Liana stems were identified and measured at 130 cm from the main rooting point in two censuses conducted in 2003 and 2015. Between censuses, the density of liana stems decreased 13.3%, while basal area increased 11.5%. Density and basal area decreased mainly among lianas of 2–3 cm diameter, but increased in lianas ≥4 cm diameter. Quechualia fulta (Asteraceae), Serjania meridionalis (Sapindaceae) and Chamissoa altissima (Amaranthaceae) suffered large reductions in stem density and basal area. Dissimilar responses of density and basal area of lianas might be a consequence of the suppression of anthropogenic disturbances (e.g. livestock browsing) and the decrease of treefall gap frequency in the studied forest in recent decades. Light-demanding liana species decreased and shade-tolerant species increased possibly in response to the decline in the light availability associated with forest recovery from past disturbance. Lianas increased in basal area to a lesser extent compared with reports from several tropical and subtropical forests where lianas are increasing dramatically.
Frame-dependence of inflationary observables in scalar-tensor gravity

By means of the Green's function method, we computed the spectral indices up to third order in the slow-roll approximation for a general scalar-tensor theory in both the Einstein and Jordan frames. Using quantities which are invariant under the conformal rescaling of the metric and transform as scalar functions under the reparametrization of the scalar field, we showed that the frames are equivalent up to this order due to the underlying assumptions. Nevertheless, care must be taken when defining the number of $e$-folds.
Genetic Structure of Wild and Domesticated Grasscutters (Thryonomys Swinderianus) from South-Western Nigeria

Grasscutter (Thryonomys swinderianus) is a large rodent distributed across sub-Saharan Africa that is highly valued as a source of protein. There has been little effort to evaluate the genetic structure of grasscutters despite long-term harvesting pressure and over 40 years of grasscutter domestication in West Africa. Our objectives were to quantify the genetic structure of wild grasscutters, and to compare genetic variation from wild samples to those from various farmed samples within south-western Nigeria. We genotyped 145 wild and 88 domesticated individuals at 11 microsatellite loci and present results quantifying regional genetic structuring and the relative patterns of diversity among wild and domesticated grasscutter populations. Our data reflect high differentiation between wild and domesticated grasscutters, and significantly greater allelic richness and gene diversity in the former. Despite this, domesticated populations appear to have similar levels of observed heterozygosity and comparable levels of differentiation among domesticated samples relative to wild samples. This may be the result of high turnover within captive colonies, or frequent infusion of new animals. More detailed molecular and quantitative genetic studies are recommended on this species to be able to understand their natural variation, degree of connectivity and to improve strategies for domestication.
Nitrate leaching losses are lower from ryegrass/white clover forages containing plantain than from ryegrass/white clover forages under different irrigation

ABSTRACT The aim of this research was to assess the potential of using perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne) and white clover (Trifolium repens) forages containing plantain (Plantago lanceolata L.) (PRGWC + Plantain) to mitigate nitrate (NO3−) leaching in grazed grassland. Lysimeter studies were carried out to determine NO3− leaching losses from the PRGWC + Plantain forage, compared with the standard perennial ryegrass and white clover forage (PRGWC) under three different irrigation conditions (flood, rotorainer and pivot). Fresh dairy cow urine (700 kg N ha−1) was applied to these lysimeters in early summer (December) and late summer (February). Nitrogen (N) dynamics and the abundance of ammonia oxidising bacteria (AOB) and archaea (AOA) were also determined in companion mini-plots alongside the lysimeters. Nitrate leaching losses from the PRGWC + Plantain forage were 82% lower than those from the PRGWC forage when urine was applied in December and 74% less when urine was applied in February (P < .05). This was possibly due to the release of biological nitrification inhibitors by plantain which slowed down the nitrification process and this, combined with a lower drainage volume, was largely responsible for the lower NO3− leaching losses in the PRGWC + Plantain forages. The three different irrigation schemes did not significantly affect NO3− leaching losses under the two forage types. These results demonstrate the potential of using PRGWC + Plantain forages as an effective mitigation option for NO3− leaching in grazed grasslands.
Regulation of human pituitary growth hormone gene (hGH1) expression by energy homeostasis

III ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.V CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE AUTHORS . XI TABLE OF CONTENTS . XII LIST OF FIGURES . XIX LIST OF TABLES . XXIII ABBREVIATIONS . XXIV CHAPTER 1 .
Investigation Of Metabolism And Mitochondrial Function In A Drosophila Model Of Fragile X Syndrome

As early as 1943, reports first emerged of sex-linked transmission of intellectual disability. Several decades later, a cytogenetic variant found to segregate with intellectual impairment allowed for the localization and identification a pathogenic lesion in the fragile X mental retardation 1 (FMR1) gene. Subsequently, it was determined that loss-of-function mutations in the FMR1 gene result in the aptly named Fragile X Syndrome (FXS). The landmark discovery of FXS etiology engendered a plethora of advances in the field of intellectual disability and autism. Notably, as the most common heritable form of intellectual disability and the leading monogenetic cause of autism, FXS is an ideal genetic paradigm for the study of the cellular and molecular underpinnings of the multifarious forms of intellectual impairment and autism. Moreover, the generation of animal models of FXS has greatly facilitated progress in the field. One such model, Drosophila melanogaster, is uniquely suited to rapid genetic and biochemical approaches to probe the processes and pathways involved in FXS pathogenesis. Recently, work from our laboratory implicated brain insulin signaling dysregulation in the development of behavioral and cognitive deficits in the Drosophila model of FXS. This finding, along with reports that FXS patients with metabolic disturbances have a higher prevalence of clinically defined autism, prompted me to explore the metabolic implications of loss of FMR1 expression. In my thesis, I uncovered striking differences in metabolism in the Drosophila model of FXS. The metabolic alterations that I revealed provide clues about the biochemical pathways that are perturbed in FXS. Further, my efforts to elucidate the mechanism underlying the observed metabolic changes precipitated the exciting discovery of a novel, clinically relevant phenotype in feeding behavior. I also uncovered new evidence that aberrant mitochondrial function and morphology are involved in FXS pathophysiology. My findings provide a solid foundation for future dissection of the precise mechanistic links between metabolism, mitochondria, and behavioral and cognitive output in the context of FXS. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Cell & Molecular Biology First Advisor Thomas A. Jongens
DEVELOPMENT OF ALKALI-ACTIVATED SCC: MICROSTRUCTURE AND PERFORMANCE UNDER SULFATE ATTACK

Alkali activated systems are getting popular in construction sector. This increases the demand to understand the performance of conventional and special types of concrete such as Self-consolidating concrete. An overview of the advances in alkali activated self-compacted concrete (AASCC) produced through activating aluminosilicate raw materials (i.e. precursors) is presented. A discussion for advantages of using different precursors and associated problems were also reviewed. Various attempts to produce AASCC based on fresh and hardened properties, durability performance and microstructure analysis were highlighted. There is a clear knowledge gap in durability performance of AASCC that requires research attention.
EFFECT OF DEGREE OF RICE MILLING ON ANTIOXIDANT COMPONENTS AND CAPACITIES

De-husking and milling-induced changes in the content of antioxidant compounds and the antioxidant capacities of rice fractions were investigated in this study. Six fractions rice husk, brown rice, and milled rice (MR) after four different degrees of milling (MR-3.5, MR-5.3, MR-7.1, and MR-9.9) were extracted with 70% aqueous ethanol or water. Total phenolic and flavonoid contents decreased significantly (p < 0.05) as the degree of milling increased. Rice husk and brown rice fractions showed higher 1,1-diphenyl-2picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) and 2,2-azino-bis-(3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid) (ABTS) radical scavenging activities than those of the MR, as well as higher levels of antioxidant components (total phenolics and total flavonoids). Phytochemicals such as phenolic compounds and vitamin E are mainly concentrated in the outer layers of the grains rather than in the endosperm. These findings suggest that consuming rice milled to a lesser degree may have certain health benefits.
The role of osteopontin in liver fibrosis

Osteopontin (OPN) is a cytokine and matrix molecule that is upregulated in human and mouse models of chronic liver injury and directly promotes liver fibrogenesis by activating hepatic stellate cells (HSC) and liver progenitors (LPC). OPN is secreted by multiple cell types including HSC, LPC, as well as recruited immune cells such as natural killer T (NKT) cells, which amplify the fibrogenic response. In vivo, OPN neutralization abrogates the LPC response, inhibits HSC activation, and reduces liver fibrosis, thus demonstrating that targeting OPN is a potentially attractive anti-fibrotic strategy.
Consequences of Altered Short-Chain Carbon Metabolism in Heart Failure

Myocardial fuel and energy metabolic derangements contribute to the pathogenesis of heart failure. Recent evidence implicates posttranslational mechanisms in the energy metabolic disturbances that contribute to the pathogenesis of heart failure. We hypothesized that accumulation of metabolite intermediates of fuel oxidation pathways drives posttranslational modifications of mitochondrial proteins during the development of heart failure. Myocardial acetylproteomics demonstrated extensive mitochondrial protein lysine hyperacetylation in the early stages of heart failure in well-defined mouse models and the in end-stage failing human heart. To determine the functional impact of increased mitochondrial protein acetylation, we focused on succinate dehydrogenase A (SDHA), a critical component of both the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle and respiratory complex II. An acetyl-mimetic mutation targeting an SDHA lysine residue shown to be hyperacetylated in the failing human heart reduced catalytic function and reduced complex II–driven respiration. These results identify alterations in mitochondrial acetylCoA homeostasis as a potential driver of the development of energy metabolic derangements that contribute to heart failure.
The Number of Roots and Canals in the Maxillary First Premolars in a Group of Jordanian Population

Objectives: To investigate clinically and radiographically the number of roots and root canals in the maxillary first premolars in a group of Jordanian population using magnifying loupes while carrying out routine endodontic practice. Methods: A total of 176 patients 87 female (49.4%) and 89 male (50.6%) received root canal treatment of maxillary first premolar at King Hussein Medical Centre from January 2012 till January 2015. The age of the patients was ranging from 18 to 60 years. The teeth included in the study were both clinically and radiographically examined for the number of root canals using sharp endodontic explorer and magnifying loupes. Diagnostic preoperative radiographs were taken for evaluation. Two radiographs in two planes (parallel and 20o40o horizontal angle cone shift) were taken during routine endodontic treatment for these teeth. The number of roots and root canals in the maxillary first premolars was recorded. Results: Out of the total of 176 maxillary first premolars 56 teeth had one root (31.8%), 118 teeth had two roots (67.0%) and two teeth had three roots (1.1%) . Based on Vertucci's classification of root canal morphology: one tooth (0.6%) had type I canal configuration (one canal), 17 teeth (9.7%) had type II (two canals with shared apical foramen), 156 teeth (88.6%) had type IV (two canals with separate apical foramen) and two teeth (1.1%) had type VIII ( three canals with separate apical foramina). The percentage of two canals (type II and IV) is 98.3%. Conclusion: The percentage of two canals (either with shared or separate apical foramina) is very high in the maxillary first premolars in Jordanian population. Inspection should be done for the presence of second canal whenever endodontic treatment is planned for this tooth.
The Correlation between Gene Effects and Mid-Parent Heterosis in Selected Crops

This study was conducted to investigate the relationship between heterosis and gene effects estimated by the generation mean analysis. Nine traits with 74 cases of combinations cross-sit and cross- abiotic or biotic stress levels were assessed in three crops (durum wheat, pepper, and oat) and evaluated by lines crosses analysis. Trait performances of the F1 hybrid showed evident mid-parent heterosis varying from 0.6% to 89% for the 74 cases investigated. Results of Generation mean analysis revealed that the additive-dominance model was demonstrated adequate in 7 cases. Therefore the epistatic model was found appropriate in 67 cases. Analysis of correlations between gene effects estimated by the generation mean analysis revealed that heterosis was not correlated to additive, dominance or epistasis effects. Therefore, the majority of geneticists considered the non-additives effects as the genetic basis of heterosis. Thus, the lower correlations obtained between heterosis and non-additives effects were due to the bias of the classical approach’s models of genetic quantitative. In fact, many assumptions were proposed to develop this model. To conclude, non-additives results are apparently of great importance in the inheritance of quantitative traits and their roles in the heterosis expression are not to discuss. However, the quantitative genetic interpretation of mid-parent heterosis as a function of genetic effects was not possible basing on the model of line crosses analyses.