Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Physiological Effects of Insecticides and Fungicide, Applied in the Treatment of Seeds, on the Germination and Vigor of Soybean Seeds

The initial protection of plants through the use of insecticides and fungicides has been shown to be efficient for a good management of pests and diseases, however the molecules used in seed treatment have demonstrated a physiological effect on germination and initial vegetative development. The present work had as objective the evaluation of the physiological effect caused by two insecticides and a fungicide on the germination and vigor of the seeds. A randomized block design with six treatments and four replications was used. The treatments were: T1-water; T2-Rocks® insecticide; T3-Insecticide Cruiser 350 FS®; T4-Maxim XL® fungicide; T5-Rocks® + Maxim XL® and T5-Cruiser 350 FS® + Maxim XL®. The application of the treatments was performed according to the manufacturers’ recommendations and the percentage of germination of the seeds was evaluated, on paper and sand roll substrates, the rate of emergence, the total length of seedlings, the electrical conductivity of the imbibition and aging solution accelerated, with a later pattern of germination. The data were submitted to Analysis of Variance and the means were compared by the Tukey test. The results indicated that there were statistically significant differences for all variables except paper germination. The treatments that received the application of the Maxim XL fungicide demonstrated superiority, both in the evaluation of germination in sand substrate, and in the vigor evaluations of seeds and seedlings, while the treatments that received application of Rocks insecticide were inferior to the other.
Effect of GA3 and IAA on growth and flowering of carnation.

A field experiment was conducted to find out effect of plant growth promotors (GA3 and IAA) on growth and flowering of carnation under open field condition of Western Uttar Pradesh. Four levels of each of gibberellic acid (0, 50, 100n and 150 ppm) and IAA (0, 100, 200 and 300 ppm) were sprayed on standing crop of carnation in factorial R.B. D. with three replications. Results revealed that higher concentration of GA3 (150 ppm) or IAA (300 ppm) applied individually responded favourable effects on most of the paramaters studied. The interaction of higher levels of both the hormones (150 ppm GA3 300 ppm IAA) influenced significantly to all the characters except no. of side shoots and diameter of stem.
Identification of the peripheral niche controlling CD4 homeostatic proliferation

iii Table of contents . iv List of figures . viii List of abbreviations . ix Acknowledgments . xii Chapter 1: Introduction . 14 1.1 The innate immune system . 14 1.1.1 Cells of the innate immune system . 14 1.2 Dendritic cells . 15 1.2. 1 Conventional DCs (cDCs) in non-lymphoid tissues . 17 1.2. 2 Tissues resident CD103 cDCs . 17 1.2. 3 Tissues resident CD11b DCs . 18 1.2. 4 Langerhans cells . 18 1.2. 5 Function of non-lymphoid tissues cDCs . 19
Potential health impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic for New Zealand if eradication fails: report to the NZ ministry of health

Aims: While New Zealand may hopefully succeed with its current eradication strategy for COVID19, this modelling aimed to considered the health outcomes if this strategy fails. Methods: A SEIR model designed for COVID-19 (CovidSIM) was adapted and utilised. It was populated with NZ demographic data and relevant parameters sourced from the international literature. Different scenarios varied the basic reproduction number (R0) and levels of disease control, and involved threshold analyses for controls to push the epidemic peak into the next year (ie, a point where a vaccine might become available). Results: We found that it would be relatively easy to push some epidemic curves into the subsequent year (ie, for R0 = 1.5). This would be harder for the more plausible R0 = 2.5 scenarios, but still potentially feasible eg, via over 41% of “general contact reduction” for nine months, combined with over 50% of cases having hospital isolation for nine months. When considering the two highest levels of R0 (2.5 and 3.5), and the two levels of “general contact reduction” (at 25% for six months and 50% for nine months), the estimated health impacts were: 44% to 64% of the population sick; 18% to 26% seeking a medical consultation (including Healthline and internet consultations); 22,200 to 32,000 people needing to be hospitalised; 5,540 to 8,000 people needing critical care (in an intensive care unit [ICU]); 2,770 to 4000 requiring ventilators; and 8560 to 14,400 dying (0.17% to 0.29% of the population). On the worst day for the worst scenario (R0 = 3.5, 25% contact reduction), there would be 11,200 people needing to be hospitalised and 2,800 needing to be admitted to critical care. For this scenario ICU capacity would be full on day 92, at a very early point in the epidemic curve. Such demands are unprecedented in New Zealand’s history and unless there was a major reconfiguration of services, would be overwhelming, with a risk of this pushing up the case fatality rate. The mortality burden would almost certainly be much higher in older age-groups (eg, 89% of the deaths estimated to be in the 60+ age-group), and also would probably be patterned by ethnicity (higher for Māori and Pacific peoples), and for people living in deprived areas. Conclusions: If New Zealand fails with its current eradication strategy toward COVID-19, then health outcomes for New Zealand could be very severe. If interventions were intense enough however, in some scenarios the epidemic peak could still be suppressed or pushed out to the following year (at which time a vaccine may be available). Due to the high levels of uncertainty with some of the parameters used in this modelling work, it should be regularly repeated as new information on the epidemiological characteristics of COVID-19 become available.
Spatial Distribution of Perfluorinated Organic Compounds in Surface Marine Sediments from the Seto Inland Sea, Japan

Perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) such as perfluorocarboxylic acid (PFCAs) and perfluoroalkane sul fonates (PFSAs) are persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic substances that are distributed worldwide. Here we investigated the current concentrations of PFASs in the surface sediments from the Seto Inland Sea, Japan. The concentrations of PFCAs in surface sediments from the Sea ranged from 0.05 to 0.67 ng g −1 . Perfluoroundecanoic acid (PFUnDA) was detected at all 15 sampling stations; its concentration was 0.05–0.24 ng g −1 . Perfluorohexanoic acid (PFHxA), which is used as an alternative to perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), was detected in Osaka Bay and Kii Channel. The contamination of PFCAs in the sediment from Osaka Bay and Kii Channel is shifting to PFHxA. In contrast, only perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) was detected at the center part of the bays in the Sea. The sig nificant positive correlation between the PFCAs concentrations in the sediment and the sedimentation rates was observed in the Sea. Hence, the concentration of PFCAs in surface sediments from the Sea was controlled by the sedimentation rate.
Deep Convolutional Neural Network applied to Chagas Disease Parasitemia Assessment

​ — Chagas Disease is a tropical parasitic disease endemic to Latin America, and it is caused by ​ Trypanosoma cruzi. It occurs in two phases. The acute phase takes place shortly after infection, and it is characterized by fever, lymphadenopathy, and chagoma symptoms. The chronic phase, which happens from a few months up to several years after infection, is generally asymptomatic, but it may also be associated with megacolon, megaesophagus, or cardiomegaly symptoms. Other heart illness symptoms may be present as well. In the acute phase, standard diagnosis is based on T. cruzi visualization through microscopy applied to blood smear slides. In the present work, we apply a deep convolutional neural network (namely, a pre-trained Mobile NetV2 feature extractor followed by a fine-tuned single-neuron top classifier) to the binary classification of image tiles of size 224 × 224 × 3, which are extracted from acute-phase blood smear samples. The data set corresponds to blood smear sample images taken from twelve different slides. We achieve 96.4% accuracy on a balanced validation subset within the twelve-slide data set. The respective precision, sensitivity, and F1-score values are 95.4%, 97.6%, and 96.5%. In a cross-validation experiment with five folds inside the twelve-slide data set, validation accuracy varies from 88% to 98%. From image tiles extracted from a thirteenth blood smear slide (i.e. tiles outside the train/validation sets), we estimate test accuracy equal to 72.0%, which suggests that data set size and overtraining issues must be addressed in future work.
Improving Service Quality of Smart Banking using Quality Management Methods in Uae

The banking service has evolved with advancements in the field of technology. Many Banks work very hard to provide all services that customers need through different applications. All these services are always under improvement to ensure a more flexible, collaborative, and engaging experience. Banks need to ensure continuous improvement in their service, which can help them to attract more customers. Mobile banking is an advancement in banking to provide access from around the globe. This study is based on finding the impact of dimensions of service quality that effect that mobile banking. The data for the study was collected from mobile banking users in the UAE. A total of 325 surveys were distributed using random selection. Two hundred eighty-five responses were received from the respondents. The questionnaires had dimensions as are assurance/security, reliability, responsiveness, tangible, and empathy. The result was analyzed using descriptive analysis. The study concludes that mobile service quality has a substantial positive impact on customer satisfaction. Managerial and decision-makers need to employ a professional expert who can continuously improve on mobile bank service and provide customer requirements to reach customer satisfaction.
Lizard nest environments differ between suburban and forest habitats

Nesting success is critical for oviparous species to maintain viable populations. Many species often do not provide parental care (e.g. oviparous reptiles), so embryos are left to develop in the prevailing conditions of the nest. For species that occupy diverse habitats, embryos must be able to complete development across a broad range of environmental conditions. Although much research has investigated how environmental conditions influence embryo development, we know little about how nest conditions differ between diverse habitats. Anolis lizards are commonly found in various habitats including those heavily modified by humans (e.g. cities). We describe nest sites of anoles in two different habitat types: a suburban area and a nearby forest. The suburban area had less total nesting habitat but a greater variety of microenvironment conditions for females to use for nesting, compared to the forest. Suburban nests were warmer and drier with greater thermal variance compared to forest nests. Finally, we use data from the literature to predict how nest conditions may influence development. Our study provides the first quantitative assessment of anole nest sites in human-modified environments and shows how suburban habitats may generate variation in developmental rate.
Risk Assessment and Development Cost Optimization in Software Defined Vehicles

Vehicle design has entered a new stage, namely, Software Defined Vehicles (SDV), where functional safety is required to be guaranteed for risk control, and development cost needs to be optimized for profit maximization. This paper targets to optimize the development cost under the functional safety requirement for a safety-aware SDV, based on the automotive safety integrity level (ASIL) decomposition defined in ISO 26262. For this, a two-stage solution is proposed, which includes functional safety risk assessment and development cost optimization. The first stage develops a new fast risk assessment (FRA) algorithm to assess the functional safety risk, including the joint reliability risk and the real-time risk, of the SDV functionality. The second stage proposes a dual requirement guarantee (DRG) algorithm to optimize the development cost considering reliability and real-time requirements jointly. Our experiments demonstrate that the proposed two-stage solution guarantees the functional safety requirement while reducing the development cost by 20%-24%.
A Comprehensive Model of Teaching Digital Design in Architecture that Incorporates Sustainability

Digital technology and its use in architecture support the construction industry in transitioning to more sustainable building development. Digital technology is widely taught in architecture programs in China, but there are few consistent strategies for combining digital architectural design with traditional architectural design in architectural education. Consequently, sustainable design concepts are not included in digital architectural design courses, and thus architectural education is not concerned with sustainable development. In this paper, we focus on the teaching of digital design in architecture and investigate how digital architectural design teaching can incorporate sustainability. Data from 15 universities were qualitatively analyzed, leading to the development of four models of teaching digital architectural design. Development of the models revealed that there are three increasing levels in digital architectural design teaching and that there is a close relationship between the teaching level and the transfer of architectural knowledge. This recognition led to the development of a single comprehensive model of digital architectural design teaching that is universally applicable. This research increases our understanding of digital architectural design teaching in architecture programs and strengthens the multi-level connections between digital architectural design teaching and designing and constructing sustainable built objects.
Modified culture protocol for testing anti-fibrotic drugs using precision-cut liver slices

Precision-cut liver slices (PCLS) have been widely utilized in various multicellular studies due to liver architecture and intercellular communication remain preserved. In studying anti-fibrotic drugs using PCLS, the culture method is currently based on a protocol for applications in drug metabolism and toxicity. This published protocol requires the pre-incubation step to incubate PCLS in a drug-free condition. However, this lag period may limit the effect of anti-fibrotic drugs. Therefore, we aimed to study whether a modification of culture protocol provided benefits in studying anti-fibrotic drugs. In this study, PCLS were cultured with LY2109761, the representative anti-fibrotic drug, by either published or modified protocol. Tissue viability and gene/protein expression of fibrosis-related markers of cultured PCLS were assessed. We found that, despite slightly depressed viability (ATP/protein of PCLS was 71-77% of those cultured by the published protocol), spontaneous fibrosis which is a distinctive feature of PCLS was greatly pronounced by the modified culture protocol. As a result, this novel culture protocol demonstrated apparent inhibitory effect of LY2109761 on the gene expression of fibrosis markers, particularly heat shock protein 47 and alpha smooth muscle actin
Pathology of induced Velogenic Viscerotropic Newcastle Disease (VVND) in Japanese Quail and Myna

Muhammad Faisal Ayoob1,2, Zaheer Ahmed Nizamani1, Asghar Ali Kamboh3, Mansoor Ayoob4, Waseem Ali Vistro3 and Abdul Sattar Baloch3* 1Department of Veterinary Pathology, Sindh Agriculture University, Tandojam. 2National Veterinary Laboratories, Ministry of National Food Security and Research, Islamabad 3Department of Veterinary Microbiology, Sindh Agriculture University, Tandojam 4Department of Animal Products Technology, Sindh Agriculture University, Tandojam
Antenna Feed Array Synthesis for Efficient Communication Systems

Accurate synthesis of antenna radiation behavior is a complementary step towards simulation in antenna systems design process. In this paper, a spherical harmonic decomposition (SHD) and coupled structure electromagnetic statistical model (CSESM) methods are hybridized and adapted for the first time, to actively synthesize radiation characteristics using antenna feed array. The problem of finding the feed array aperture size, capable of synthesizing a required field intensity distribution, within a specified region for a reflector system signaling a satellite is also addressed. Relationship that exist between the required number of elements in feed array, frequency of operation, volume of the synthesis region, and the required reflector size is theoretically benchmarked. EM radiation behavior via antenna feed array is optimally synthesized using the proposed SHD-CSESM-based method. With this approach, operation limits on the synthesis of the signal field within a test volume of a given radius is predicted. Efficiency and effectiveness of SHD-CSESM-based EM field synthesis scheme unveiled are investigated for structures in a region where feed antennas are positioned distance away (focal point) from reflector system operating at Ka band. Experimental measurement data of a circularly polarized Ka-band <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$2\times2$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-antenna feed array is compared with the proposed theoretical method, and results obtained demonstrate the validity of the proposed algorithm. Furthermore, for any wave number <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${k}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> or frequency <italic>f,</italic> the field radiation behaviour within the sphere can be accurately synthesized using an <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${N}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> order expansion and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${V} \ge (4{N}+1)/{N}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> array size. Results obtained show that the proposed synthesis method handles constrains related to both aperture domain and radiation domain. Hence, SHD-CSESM-based technique is a good candidate for EM field synthesis, with the notion of automating system design processes in the emerging and future EM field applications.
Selection for hypocotyl diameter results in genetic gain in common bean plant architecture

Studies highlight the hypocotyl diameter (HD) as an effective indicator of plant architecture (PA). Here, we estimated the genetic gain based on HD to improve PA. Twenty populations of cycles zero (C0) and one (C1), both in the F4 generation, were evaluated for PA, grain yield (GY) and HD. Plants with thickest HD in C0 were intercrossed in a circulant diallel mating design. In cycle C1, an estimated genetic gain of 4.93% was achieved for PA and 4.95% for HD. The populations with the highest probability of breeding lines with a thicker HD belong to cycle C1, and this selection strategy did not alter the GY of the populations of this cycle. Thus, indirect selection based on HD is promising for breeding for common bean PA by recurrent mass selection.
Role of toll-like receptor 4 in eliciting adaptive immune responses against recombinant BCG expressing the C-terminus of merozoite surface protein-1 of Plasmodium falciparum

Objective: To determine the role of toll-like receptor 4 (TLR-4) in eliciting cellular and humoral immune responses against recombinant Mycobacterium bovis bacille Calmette-Guérin (rBCG) expressing the C-terminus of merozoite surface protein-1 of Plasmodium falciparum. Methods: Six groups of mice (n=6 per group) were injected with phosphate buffered saline T80, BCG or rBCG intraperitoneally, in the presence or absence of a TLR-4 inhibitor; TAK-242. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay was carried out for serum total IgG, IgG1, IgG2a and IgG2b determination. Spleens were also harvested and splenocytes cultured for determination of intracellular cytokines; IL-4 and IFN-γ via enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Results: The production of total IgG, and the subclasses IgG1, IgG2a and IgG2b was significantly higher in rBCG-immunised mice than BCG and phosphate buffered saline immunised mice in the absence of TAK-242. A significant rise in total IgG occurred with more booster immunisations. The level of IgG2a was highest, followed by IgG2b, then IgG1. The production of both IL-4 and IFN-γ was also highest in the rBCG immunised groups. These significant rises were inhibited in the presence of TAK-242. Conclusions: We present evidence of the role of TLR-4 in the increased production of total IgG, IgG1, IgG2a and IgG2b, as well as IL-4 and IFN-γ in response to our rBCG construct.
Influence of management type and stage of lactation on the performance and milk fatty acid profile of dairy camels (Camelus dromedaries)

Abstract The current research paper addresses the hypothesis that management system (grazing vs. stabling) and/or stage of lactation (early- to late-lactation) can influence the lactation performance and milk fatty acid (MFA) profile in dromedary camels. The results obtained revealed that milk and protein yields of stabled camels were higher, while milk fat content was lower compared to grazing camels. In addition, stabled camels produced milk richer in short- and medium-chains fatty acids but lower in long-chain fatty acids and fatty acids linked with possible health benefits such as oleic acid, vaccenic acid (VA) and rumenic acid (RA), when compared to grazing camels. Moreover, atherogenicity index was higher, while overall Δ9-desaturase and health-promoting indices were lower in stabled camels. In a similar way, results demonstrated an increase in milk fat and protein contents as lactation advanced. In fact, camels at mid-lactation produced milk richer in short- and medium-chain fatty acids as well as total saturated fatty acids but poorer in oleic acid, VA, RA, long-chain fatty acids and total unsaturated fatty acids, when compared to milk samples collected at early stage of lactation. Moreover, compared to early- and late-lactations, atherogenicity index was higher while overall-Δ9-desaturase and health promoting indexes were lower at mid-lactation. In conclusion, the intensive stabling system and mid-lactation stage can alter lactation performance and MFA profile in dairy dromedary camels.
Cyberbullying and condom use among tertiary education students

Abstract South Africa has a high incidence of HIV. Violence in the country is also high and often perpetrated by dating partners. Dating violence can make it difficult for partners to negotiate safe sex practices. Moreover, the field of interpersonal violence is changing as social networking sites redefine interpersonal boundaries. To our knowledge, there are no studies that have examined the influence of cyberbullying on safe sexual practices. This study investigates the relationship between cyberbullying, physical violence and sexual behavior (i.e., condom use and number of sexual partners). A cross-sectional study was conducted among students at a South African university. Only 28.5% reported using a condom at every sexual intercourse during the last 3 months. Cyberbullying was reported by 76.2% of respondents. Physical assault from an intimate partner was endorsed by 50.6% of respondents and 42.2% perpetrated physical assault on a dating partner. Both victims of cyberbullying and dating violence as well as perpetrators of dating violence reported lower condom usage. There was an inverse relationship between cyberbullying and the number of sexual partners. It is concluded that high levels of cyberbullying and intimate partner violence are present among students and that these are linked to low rates of condom use.