Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
In vitro study of the effect of quinoa and quinoa polysaccharides on human gut microbiota

Abstract It has been shown that whole grains and dietary fiber are important for their fermentation characteristics in the large intestine, drawing more and more attention to quinoa and quinoa polysaccharides. In this study, we evaluated the prebiotic effect of quinoa seeds and quinoa polysaccharides after human simulated digestion. The modulatory effect of the quinoa and quinoa polysaccharides (QPs) on the gut microbiota was evaluated by the in vitro fermentation using human fecal microbiota. The yield of polysaccharides extraction was 15.45%. The digestibility of the cooked and uncooked quinoa after simulation of human digestion was 69.04% and 64.09%, respectively. The effect on the microbiota composition and their metabolic products was determined by the assessment of pH, short‐chain fatty acids (SCFAs), and changes in the bacterial population. After 24 hr anaerobic incubation, the total SCFAs of cooked, uncooked quinoa, and quinoa polysaccharides were 82.99, 77.11, and 82.73 mM, respectively with a pH decrease. At the phylum, genus, and class level, it has been found that the quinoa substrates enhance the growth of certain beneficial bacteria such as Prevotella and Bacteroides. Quinoa polysaccharides can be considered prebiotic due to their ability to increase Bifidobacterium and Collinsella. Principal component analysis (PCA) showed that there was a distinct modulating effect on the fecal microbiota which represents different distribution. Our research suggests that quinoa and quinoa polysaccharides have a prebiotic potential due to their association with the positive shifts in microbiota composition and short‐chain fatty acids production, which highlights the importance of further studies around this topic.
Do Situations Influence the Environmentally Responsible Behaviors of National Park Visitors? Survey from Shennongjia National Park, Hubei Province, China

Natural ecological protection in protected areas involves the restriction of land use patterns and their intensity. Typically, the goal of land use is to balance environmental protection with community development. Nature education and ecological experiences in protected areas encourage visitor environmentally responsible behavior (ERB) which supports the sustainable use of land in national parks and reduces the degradation of natural environments. The existing research literature has a focus on ways of facilitating ERB through rational and external influences. However, individual behaviors are contextual and specific situations affect behavior. This research used environmental knowledge as a rational factor and situations were viewed as a moderator in stimulating ERB based on situational cognition theory. A knowledge-situation-behavior latent variable moderator model was constructed and tested with visitor survey data from Shennongjia National Park, Hubei Province, China. The findings showed that situations had a significant positive moderating effect on the relationship between environmental knowledge and ERB. Books, articles, authors and familiar people had a significant positive moderating effect on ERB, as did environmental interpretation and staff guidance. Precise measures to promote the ERB of national park visitors were proposed.
Screening of Suitable Plant Regeneration Protocols for Several Capsicum spp. through Direct Organogenesis

Peppers (Capsicum spp.) are recalcitrant to in vitro culture regeneration, making the application of in vitro-based breeding strategies difficult. We evaluated the impact of different combinations of auxins, cytokinins and micronutrients on the induction of direct organogenesis in cotyledon and hypocotyl explants of C. annuum, C. baccatum and C. chinense. We found variation in the regeneration response among species and type of explant. In this way, the average numbers of shoots per cotyledon and hypocotyl explant were, respectively, 1.44 and 0.28 for C. annuum, 4.17 and 3.20 for C. baccatum and 0.08 and 0.00 for C. chinense. Out of the six media, the best overall results were obtained with the medium Pep1, which contained 5 mg/L BAP (6-benzylaminopurine), 0.5 mg/L IAA (indole-3-acetic acid) and 0.47 mg/L CuSO4, followed by a subculture in the same medium supplemented with 10 mg/L AgNO3 (medium Pep1.2). The best result for the Pep1 + Pep1.2 medium was obtained for C. baccatum using cotyledon explants, with 8.87 shoots per explant. The explants grown in medium Pep1 + Pep1.2 were the ones with greener tissue, while overall the hypocotyl explants were greener than the cotyledon explants. Our results indicate that there is wide variation among Capsicum species in terms of regeneration. Our results suggest that the synergistic effect of copper and silver resulted in a higher regeneration rate of Capsicum explants. Explants with shoots were transferred to different media for elongation, rooting and acclimatization. Although acclimatized plantlets were obtained for C. baccatum and C. chinense, an improvement in these latter stages would be desirable for a high throughput regeneration pipeline. This work contributes to the improvement of Capsicum regeneration protocols using specific combinations of medium, explant and genotype, reaching the levels of efficiency required for genetic transformation and of gene editing technologies for other crops.
Impact of different artificial light intensities on some reproductive, productive performance aspects and blood picture of male quail

Article history: Received July 24, 2020 Accepted August 30, 2020 Available online October 1, 2021 This experiment was designed to determine the influence of various white light intensities on spermatogenesis, hematology and growth performance of male quail. A total of 80 birds of one day aged had been assigned to four equal groups: G1 control group was kept under natural light program 12h light:12h dark. G2, G3, G4 were exposed to artificial white light emitting diodes at 0.6, 45 and 25 Lux for 5 hours daily for 8 weeks starting at 14 days of age. The result showed that the application of Lux 0.6, 45 and 25 caused a significant increase in heart weight relative to control. Lux 0.6 led to decrease in total body weight, left testis weight and foam weight. The result revealed that exposure to 0.6 Lux caused significant decrease in sperm count and live sperm percentage and increase in dead sperm percentage. Program of 25 Lux generated a significant increase in RBC counts compared to 0.6 Lux. Exposure to 45 Lux and 25 Lux triggers a significant increase in PCV and hemoglobin concentrations. Exposures to 0.6 Lux and 25 Lux resulted in a significant increase in mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration, while apply to program 0.6 Lux cause increase in stress index. The best feed conversion ratio was detected in normal daylight, 0.6 Lux and 25 Lux respectively. In conclusion, exposure of male quails to different intensities of white LED bulb had an effect on the some physiological and reproductive parameters.
ORSI Salient Object Detection via Multiscale Joint Region and Boundary Model

Salient object detection (SOD) in optical remote sense images (ORSIs) is a valuable and challenging task. The factors in ORSI, such as background clutter, lighting shadows, imaging blur, and low resolution, significantly degrade the completeness and accuracy of salient objects. To handle this problem, we propose a novel model to learn robust multiscale region features of salient objects by simultaneously optimizing their boundaries. First, we extract multiscale region features of salient objects through a hierarchical attention module. Second, we generate the boundary features by combining the local cues and the global information generated by pyramid pooling. Finally, we embed the boundary features into region features at multiple scales. In particular, we design a joint learning scheme based on a bidirectional feature transformation to optimize boundary and region features simultaneously for accurate ORSI SOD. To provide a comprehensive evaluation platform, we construct a new dataset called ORSI-4199 for ORSI SOD. It contains 4199 finely annotated image pairs with diverse scenes, in which nine attributes (i.e., challenge types) are annotated to facilitate analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of SOD models from different perspectives. Extensive experiments on the public dataset ORSSD, EORRSD, and the newly created dataset ORSI-4199 show that the proposed approach achieves promising results against state-of-the-art methods. https://github.com/wchao1213/ORSI-SOD.
Ozone-aerosol and land use reversed temperature increase over some northern mid-latitude regions between the 20th century and the Little Ice Age based on the CESM-LME

Global warming is a widely concerned topic, and the surface temperature has shown an accelerated warming trend during the past several decades. From the perspective of a longer time scale, the 20th century (1900–2000) could be the warmest period in the last millennium, and the global or hemispheric averaged temperature over this period is higher than that over other centuries, particularly compared with that over the Little Ice Age (LIA; 1450–1850). However, we recently found that, in the reconstruction, the 20th-century temperature over some northern mid-latitude regions could be significantly lower than that during the LIA, which contradicts our previous perceptions regarding global warming. Modeling results from the Last Millennium Ensemble Project also reproduce a similar phenomenon, that is, the 20th-century cooling over some northern mid-latitude regions (CNMR). The simulated CNMR can be found in all four seasons. Further analysis indicates that the cooling effects from ozone-aerosol and land use forcings, overcoming greenhouse gas and solar forcing induced warming, play dominant roles in causing the CNMR. The ozone-aerosol forcing reduces the surface net shortwave flux through both direct aerosol–radiation interaction and atmosphere–cloud feedback, while the land use forcing causes negative net shortwave flux anomalies through modulation of surface albedo. Overall, the ozone-aerosol and land use forcings shape the CNMR phenomenon by inducing anomalous surface net shortwave flux, with the ozone-aerosol forcing playing a dominant role. This study highlights the important influences of ozone-aerosol and land use cooling effects on local climate.
Norms, Norm Sets, and Reference Groups: Implications for Household Interest in Energy Technologies

Household adoption of rooftop solar panels and battery storage can potentially reduce the negative environmental impacts of the electric grid. We argue that the number of socially close (friends and family) and geographically close (neighbors) others who have rooftop solar panels will affect norm expectations regarding how much others approve of solar panels and battery storage and expectations about how personally beneficial those technologies are likely to be. We test our hypotheses using survey data collected from California homeowners and find partial support. We find evidence for the significance of socially close others (rather than neighbors), highlighting the importance of identifying the appropriate reference groups when studying norms. Our results also provide insight into how one category of behavior (adoption of solar panels) can influence norm expectations about another less visible behavior (battery storage), suggesting a mechanism that may contribute to norms regulating private behaviors.
Application of intermittent warming to enhance postharvest quality and extend the shelf life of pomegranate fruit (Punica granatum)

Intermittent warming (IW) cycles slow down the physiology of fresh horticultural commodities, thereby extending their storage life. We investigated the effects of IW on physiological disorders, physicochemical, sensory parameters and the emission of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) of pomegranate (Punica granatum; cv. Wonderful) fruit during a 3-month cold storage period. Pomegranate fruit batches were subjected to IW cycles of 3d at 5°C, followed by 1 d at 20°C (IW 3d) and 6 d at 5°C, followed by 1 d at 20°C (IW 6d). During cold storage at 5°C, fruit samples were transferred to shelf-life conditions at 20°C for 4 d before analysis was performed monthly. Continuous fruit mass loss was observed across all treatments during storage but was highest (p < 0.05) for untreated samples at the end of this study. Fruit decay was minimized by 15% and 16% for IW 3d and IW 6d, respectively, compared to 42% for the control. In contrast, a higher incidence of chilling injury was observed in the treated fruits than in control. Therefore, IW 3 d at 5°C is recommended for decay reduction in pomegranate fruit (cv. Wonderful) and shelf-life extension for up to 3 months of storage.
Aestivation as a response to climate change: the Great Banded Grayling Brintesia circe in Central Europe

1. Climate change has forced species to shift distribution, alter migration behaviour, or change phenology. One of these adaptation strategies is aestivation to overcome hot, dry summers. For example, the abundance of the Great Banded Grayling Brintesia circe Fabricius (Lepidoptera, Nymphalidae) in Southern Germany used to show one flight peak between June and August, while now, a bimodal phenological record suggests 3–4 weeks of aestivation during the driest summer weeks.
Preparation of Zygotes and Embryos of the Kelp Saccharina latissima for Cell Biology Approaches

[Abstract] Embryogenesis and early development in kelps are poorly studied and understood. Cultivation protocols focus mostly either on the preparation of large volumes of vegetative gametophytes or on the production of conspicuous juvenile sporophytes as starting materials for aquaculture to grow large adult organisms for biomass. Hence, our protocol describes the optimal conditions for a) efficient gametogenesis, b) synchronization of egg release, c) control of zygote density, and d) optimal embryonic development of the kelp Saccharina latissima. This species is currently subject to aquaculture development in Europe, but the aim here is to provide tools for academic research aiming to identify the mechanisms underlying embryogenesis. These protocols, adaptable to different volume scales from Petri dishes to up to ten-liter containers, are the required first steps for robust downstream experiments scaled at the cytological level (immunochemistry, microdissection, laser ablation, and cell transcriptomics) and for physiological and phycopathogenesis studies at very early stages.
A Multi-Electron Transporting Layer for Efficient Perovskite Solar Cells

In this work, a multi-electron transporting layer (ETL) for efficient perovskite solar cells is investigated. The multi-ETL consists of five conditions including SnO2, SnO2/SnOx, TiO2, TiO2/SnO2, and TiO2/SnO2/SnOx. The best performance of PSC devices is found in the SnO2/SnOx double-layer and exhibits a power conversion efficiency equal to 18.39% higher than the device with a TiO2 single-layer of 14.57%. This enhancement in efficiency can be attributed to a decrease in charge transport resistance (Rct) and an increase in charge recombination resistance (Rrec). In addition, Rct and Rrec can be used to explain the comparable power conversion efficiency (PCE) between a PSC with a SnO2/SnOx double-layer and a PSC with a triple-layer, which is due to the compensation effect of Rct and Rrec parameters. Therefore, Rct and Rrec are good parameters to explain the efficiency enhancement in PSC. Thus, the Rct and Rrec from the electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) technique is an easy and alternative way to obtain information to understand and characterize the multi-ETL on PSC.
FPGA‐based HPC accelerators: An evaluation on performance and energy efficiency

Hardware specialization is a promising direction for the future of digital computing. Reconfigurable technologies enable hardware specialization with modest non‐recurring engineering cost, but their performance and energy efficiency compared to state‐of‐the‐art processor architectures remain an open question. In this article, we use FPGAs to evaluate the benefits of building specialized hardware for numerical kernels found in scientific applications. In order to properly evaluate performance, we not only compare Intel Arria 10 and Xilinx U280 performance against Intel Xeon, Intel Xeon Phi, and NVIDIA V100 GPUs, but we also extend the Empirical Roofline Toolkit (ERT) to FPGAs in order to assess our results in terms of the Roofline model. We show design optimization and tuning techniques for peak FPGA performance at reasonable hardware usage and power consumption. As FPGA peak performance is known to be far less than that of a GPU, we also benchmark the energy efficiency of each platform for the scientific kernels comparing against microbenchmark and technological limits. Results show that while FPGAs struggle to compete in absolute terms with GPUs on memory‐ and compute‐intensive kernels, they require far less power and can deliver nearly the same energy efficiency.
The implementation of instructional supervision in Indonesia and the Philippines, and its effect on the variation of teacher learning models and materials

Abstract One of the most dominant variables that determines student learning outcomes is the teacher. Therefore to improve student achievement, it is necessary to improve teacher competence. The main program to improve teacher competence is instructional supervision though its effectiveness is still questionable. This study aims to describe the implementation of instructional supervision in Indonesia and the Philippines. The research design used a survey and the research sample was taken from 212 primary school teachers, divided into 176 Indonesian and 36 Filipino teachers. A questionnaire was used to collect the data, and it was then processed using descriptive statistics, t-test, correlation, and regression. The results showed that there were differences in the frequency using techniques and principles of instructional supervision both in Indonesia and in the Philippines, but there was no significant difference in their effectiveness. Of the 26 supervision techniques, the most widely used in Indonesia are teachers’ meetings, trainings, peer discussions, seminars, and upgrading programs, while in the Philippines they are seminars, lesson study, self-evaluation, peer discussions, and teacher’s meetings. On the other hand, there is a significant influence on the use of techniques, principles, and instructional supervision approaches on the variations of teacher learning models. The principle of instructional supervision has the most dominant effect on the variations of teacher learning models and materials.
Chronic acidosis rewires cancer cell metabolism through PPARα signaling

The mechanisms linking tumor microenvironment acidosis to disease progression are not understood. Here, we used mammary, pancreatic, and colon cancer cells to show that adaptation to growth at an extracellular pH (pHe) mimicking acidic tumor niches is associated with upregulated net acid extrusion capacity and elevated intracellular pH at physiological pHe, but not at acidic pHe. Using metabolic profiling, shotgun lipidomics, imaging and biochemical analyses, we show that the acid adaptation‐induced phenotype is characterized by a shift toward oxidative metabolism, increased lipid droplet‐, triacylglycerol‐, peroxisome content and mitochondrial hyperfusion. Peroxisome proliferator‐activated receptor‐α (PPARA, PPARα) expression and activity are upregulated, at least in part by increased fatty acid uptake. PPARα upregulates genes driving increased mitochondrial and peroxisomal mass and β‐oxidation capacity, including mitochondrial lipid import proteins CPT1A, CPT2 and SLC25A20, electron transport chain components, peroxisomal proteins PEX11A and ACOX1, and thioredoxin‐interacting protein (TXNIP), a negative regulator of glycolysis. This endows acid‐adapted cancer cells with increased capacity for utilizing fatty acids for metabolic needs, while limiting glycolysis. As a consequence, the acid‐adapted cells exhibit increased sensitivity to PPARα inhibition. We conclude that PPARα is a key upstream regulator of metabolic changes favoring cancer cell survival in acidic tumor niches.
Robust Analysis of Sample Selection Models through the R Package ssmrob

The aim of this paper is to describe the implementation and to provide a tutorial for the R package ssmrob, which is developed for robust estimation and inference in sample selection and endogenous treatment models. The sample selectivity issue occurs in practice in various fields, when a non-random sample of a population is observed, i.e., when observations are present according to some selection rule. It is well known that the classical estimators introduced by Heckman (1979) are very sensitive to small deviations from the distributional assumptions (typically the normality assumption on the error terms). Zhelonkin, Genton, and Ronchetti (2016) investigated the robustness properties of these estimators and proposed robust alternatives to the estimator and the corresponding test. We briefly discuss the robust approach and demonstrate its performance in practice by providing several empirical examples. The package can be used both to produce a complete robust statistical analysis of these models which complements the classical one and as a set of useful tools for exploratory data analysis. Specifically, robust estimators and standard errors of the coefficients of both the selection and the regression equations are provided together with a robust test of selectivity. The package therefore provides additional useful information to practitioners in different fields of applications by enhancing their statistical analysis of these models.
Supplemental Material: Latest Quaternary slip rates of the San Bernardino strand of the San Andreas fault, southern California, from Cajon Creek to Badger Canyon

Additional details on methods and for descriptions and interpretations of geologic units at the Badger Canyon site. Additional trench logs and photographs showing locations of dated samples that were not shown in other figures. Tables providing latitude and longitude for all dated samples, as well as field and lab data for terrestrial nuclide dating and complete soil descriptions.
Sustainable Loyalty of Employees in Poland as a Result of the COVID-19 Pandemic

The pandemic has triggered, on one hand, a wave of employee disloyalty in the form of quitting from non-functioning companies and choosing those seeking employees, and on the other hand, reinforcing their relationships with those companies that made a lot of effort to prevent quitting or letting employees go. The cognitive aim of this article is to answer the question of whether this transition is intended to be temporary or permanent—an issue which has not been recognized in the literature on the subject so far. The planned cognitive contribution is the verification of the hypothesis pertaining to the uneven occurrence of individual types of loyalty. The study was conducted on a nationwide, representative sample (n = 1000) with the use of the CAWI questionnaire. Research has confirmed that sustainable loyalty occurs more often than other types of loyalty. This is a balanced type of loyalty in which the commitment of the employer and the employee is equal, and the employee is attached to the organization and puts their trust in it. The obtained results were interpreted in the context of the influence of the pandemic.