Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Gas exchange in young plants of Tabebuia aurea (Bignoniaceae Juss.) subjected to flooding stress

The Paratudo (Tabebuia aurea) is a species occurring in the Pantanal of Miranda, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil, an area characterized by seasonal flooding. To evaluate the tolerance of this plant to flooding, plants aged four months were grown in flooded soil and in non-flooded soil (control group). Stomatal conductance, transpiration and CO2 assimilation were measured during the stress (48 days) and recovery (11 days) period, totalling 59 days. The values of stomatal conductance of the control group and stressed plants at the beginning of the flooded were 0.33 mol m-2s-1 and reached 0.02 mol m-2 s-1 (46th day) at the end of this event. For the transpiration parameter, the initial rate was 3.1 mol m s-1, and the final rate reached 0.2 or 0.3 mol m-2 s-1 (47/48 th day). The initial photosynthesis rate was 8.9 mmol m-2s-1 and oscillated after the sixth day, and the rate reached zero on the 48th day. When the photosynthesis rate reached zero, the potted plants were dried, and the rate was analyzed (11th day). The following values were obtained for dried plants: stomatal conductance = 0.26 mol m-2 s-1, transpiration rate = 2.5 mol m-2 s-1 and photosynthesis rate = 7.8 mmol m-2 s-1. Flooded soil reduced photosynthesis and stomatal conductance, leading to the hypertrophy of the lenticels. These parameters recovered and after this period, and plants exhibited tolerance to flooding stress by reducing their physiological activities.
Genome size predicts frost resistance in British herbaceous plants: implications for rates of vegetation response to global warming.

1. Simulated late frost was applied to five herbaceous plant communities in Derbyshire, UK. The results establish a clear positive relationship between the frost resistance of the above-ground biomass and independently published estimates of genome size. 2. Previous studies have established that in small genome species the dependence of growth upon current cell divisions dictates that development is delayed until warmer summer conditions. As a result of this, we suggest that selection pressures promoting frost tolerance will have been less pronounced in these species and that in temperate climates their potential responsiveness to global warming could be curtailed by the continued occurrence of late-frost events
PREDICTING BODY WEIGHT FROM BODY MEASUREMENTS IN ASIAN ELEPHANTS (ELEPHAS MAXIMUS)

Accurate estimates of body weight can be useful in the evaluations of feeding programs, nutritional status and general health, and in calculation of dose levels (such as for anesthesia)? thus providing a valuable tool for captive elephant management. We used body measurements of 75 Asian elephants {Elephas maximus) to predict body weight. Weight, heart girth, height at the withers, body length, and foot-pad circumference were measured. All possible linear regressions of weight on one, two, three, or four body measurements were calculated. The highest correlation with a single measurement was that between heart girth and weight {R2 = 0.90). The data were also divided into age groups (1-13, 18-28, 29-39, and 40-57 yr), and all possible linear regressions were calculated for each group (there were no elephants aged 14-17 yr). Adding body length or pad circumference to heart girth resulted in a slight increase in R2. We conclude that body weight in Asian elephants can be predicted from body measurements and that heart girth is the best predictor. A second body measurement might improve predictive accuracy for some age groups.
Cryptoendolithic growth of the red alga Galdieria sulphuraria in volcanic areas

The habitat of the acido- and thermophilic red algae Galdieria sulphuraria and Cyanidium caldarium was examined in acidic hot sulphur springs in the vicinity of Naples (Italy). These species grew on soil and rocks, but a large part of the populations was cryptoendolithic. The endolithic algal layer (1–3 mm in thickness) was covered by amorphous silica (1–2 mm in thickness) containing traces of hydrotroilite (FeS.nH2O) and elemental sulphur. Organotrophic bacteria and fungi were not found in the algal layer. Light penetration measurements showed that 0·1–1% of the sunlight reached the upper part of the algal layer. Thus, low-light-adapted algae should be able to perform some photosynthesis in this endolithic habitat. Under conditions where light is even more limited, e.g. in winter or after darkening of the covering layer, many of the cells might not survive. Aqueous extracts of these algae are excellent growth substrates for Galdieria sulphuraria. Therefore, we propose that compounds released from dead ce.
Applied Transport Economics: Policy, Management and Decision Making

this third edition of applied transport economics has been completely revised and updated to cover the latest developments and thinking in transport economics. professor stuart cole examines the application of economics techniques first to commercial transport operations, and second to public policy issues such as investment, integrated transport and competition, and third to the role of transport in its wider economic context. the style and approach, which proved so popular in the first two editions has been retained. this approach provides a transport economics text book for a) managers who are not familiar with economics techniques, b) students preparing for examinations in transport and other areas of business and public policy where an applied approach to economics is required, and c) economists entering the transport field. fully and extensively updated throughout, this third edition will contain: *new information on se asia and eastern europe *updated and extended case studies *a new bibliography; *an extended further reading section.
Sites of nitric oxide (NO) actions in control of circular muscle motility of the perfused isolated canine ileum

In the isolated intra-arterially perfused canine ileum, N omega -nitro-L-arginine (L-NNA, 3 x 10(-4) M) increased tonic and phasic motor activity of the circular muscle. As has previously been shown, L-NNA enhanced contractions to electrical field stimulation at sites proximal to the serosal electrodes and converted initial relaxation when present at distal sites to contraction. L-NNA shifted the acetylcholine dose-response curve to the left and amplified the response to low-dose acetylcholine. Following L-NNA, addition of 10(-5) M sodium nitroprusside (NO donor) returned the tonic and phasic activity, the electrical field stimulation responses, and the acetylcholine dose-response curve to control values. Tetrodotoxin (TTX, 10(-6) M) increased tone (less than L-NNA) and abolished responses to both electrical field stimulation and motor activity induced by prior L-NNA. Subsequent L-NNA did not alter TTX-induced tonic motor responses. TTX also shifted the acetylcholine dose-response curve leftward and increased the responses to low-dose acetylcholine. After TTX, sodium nitroprusside returned the low-dose acetylcholine responses to control values and, after L-NNA, failed to restore them to control values. After L-NNA and TTX, sodium nitroprusside restored responses to low-dose acetylcholine to control values, Thus, removal of inhibition of the release of excitatory neurotransmitters, not removal of actions of NO on the muscle, accounted for the increases in tonic and phasic activity from L-NNA. Uninhibited release of excitatory transmitters augmented circular muscle responses to low-dose acetylcholine. TTX eliminated effects of excitatory transmitters, allowing exogenous NO to reduce low-dose acetylcholine contractions. No treatment affected the maximum responses to acetylcholine, produced by a contractile mechanism independent of muscle excitability and unaffected by exogenous NO or release of neurotransmitters.
Evidence for synonymy between Tetranychus urticae and Tetranychus cinnabarinus (Acari, Prostigmata, Tetranychidae): Review and new data

The species status of Tetranychus cinnabarinus remains uncertain for some acarologists. In the present paper, we propose to examine the taxonomic status of this tetranychid mite through a review of studies that aimed to clarify its taxonomical position. We present and discuss the main results concerning the principal aspects investigated literature published since the description of Boisduval in 1867. These studies concern morphological, biological and molecular data which have been used to separate or to synonymise T. cinnabarinus and Tetranychus urticae. Additional new morphological and biological data are also included. In light of the data presented, the authors conclude that T. cinnabarinus should be considered as a synonym of the polymorphic species T. urticae to which it constitutes the red form.
Leaf Morphology and Predators: Effect of Leaf Domatia on the Abundance of Predatory Mites (Acari: Phytoseiidae)

Tritrophic-Ievel studies of predator–prey interactions on leaves have emphasized the role of plant secondary chemistry, but leaf morphology can also influence predation. We found that domatia, structures with mite-sized spaces in the vein axils of leaves on many woody angiosperms, often sheltered predatory mites (Phytoseiidae and Stigmaeidae). Leaves with domatia generally had much higher numbers of phytoseiid mites, especially their eggs, than those without domatia. This occurred within plant species, between congeners, and across unrelated species of rain forest trees and vines with and without domatia. When leaf domatia of a rain forest tree, Elaeocarpus reticulatus Smith, were blocked with a bitumen paint, numbers of phytoseiid mites per leaf were reduced to 24% of controls. These results show that morphological traits of plants can have a strong effect on the distribution and abundance of predators. Such predator enhancement may complement plant allelochemical defenses.
The Light Threshold Controlling the Periodicity of Invertebrate Drift

It is now established that invertebrate drift is a normal feature of the lotic system (Borgh 1927; Ide 1942; Muller 1954; Waters 1961). Also studies on the periodicity of this phenomenon have shown that there is an increase in the level of drift at sunset which is maintained throughout the night (Muller 1963a, b, c; Tanaka 1960; Waters 1961) and analysis of the actual mechanism of this periodicity has resulted in an increased interest in the factors which control it. It was concluded from a recent laboratory study (Chaston 1968a) that possibly themost important exogenous control factor is light, and that the initial nocturnal increase is a reflection of a rise in the activity level of the benthic animals induced by the decreasee in the level of light at dusk. Muller (1965) has examined this light threshold by artificiallyilluminating a stream and measuring the level of drift. He concluded that the nocturnal increase occurred below 5 lx and in this present study the value of the threshold was examined more fully by (a) field experiments without artificial illumination to measure the variation in the level of drift under the rapidly changing light conditions between sunset and complete darkness, and (b) exposing a number of aquatic insect larvae to controlled light conditions in the laboratory and using the results to calculate the absolute threshold, i.e. the minimum level of light at which the nocturnal increase does not occur. In addition it has also been suggested that even light levels below the threshold can quantitatively affect drift (Waters 1962) and data supporting this hypothesis have been produced by Anderson (1966) who found, in one sample, a 600% difference between the levels of drift on nights of a full and no moon. Samples were taken during this present study to examine this effect further. During all this work, measurements of light were made in lux to assist the comparison of the results with those of other workers. Lux, however, is a quantitative estimate of illuminance based on that part of the spectrum visible to the human eye and thus it was necessary to obtain some indication of the action spectra of the animals involved in drift to discover if they are within the same spectral range as man, that is that the animals. are most stimulated by light between 500 and 600 m,u. For without this information a, statement of the optomotor response is useless as one may be stating a light threshold in terms of wavelengths that may not even stimulate the animals.
Identification of superior parents and hybrids for improving pigeonpea [Cajanus cajan (L.) Millsp.] yield

A study involving three cytoplasmic-genetic male sterile lines and 14 diverse pollinators were crossed in a line × tester design during Kharif 2011. The resultant 42 hybrids and their parents were evaluated in a lattice design. Analysis of variance revealed that the ratio of variance due to GCA to SCA was less than unity for all the traits except secondary branches indicating that these traits may be under the influence of non additive gene action and these characters are more likely to be improved through heterosis breeding. The gca effects of parents revealed that ICPA-2043, ICPA-2047, GRG-2009-4 and ICPL-20 were good general combiners for seed yield and it’s direct components. The top three crosses exhibiting high specific combing ability effects along with their Per se performance, standard heterosis and gca status of the parents indicated that the cross combination ICPA-2047 x GRG-2009-4 was good specific combiner for seed yield per plant, number of secondary branches and number of pods per plant.
International Management in China : Cross-Cultural Issues

The greatest challenge to international business today is how to manage business operations across cultural boundaries. This is especially true in the case of China, which has attracted a massive amount of foreign investment and international trade recently. This new study examines three main themes: the partnership of management through joint ventures the human resource aspects of management the management of communication, co-operation and negotiation The crucial issue of trustworthiness, the different managerial practices in China and the West, the importance of being well-prepared and understanding Chinese negotiations are major contemporary issues identified and discussed in this book. It concludes that future cross-cultural management in China will not be much easier than today, since essential elements of Chinese culture will most probably prevail and also shape Chinese organizational behaviour in the future.
A detailed mathematical theory of thalamic and cortical microcircuits based on inference in a generative vision model

Understanding the information processing roles of cortical circuits is an outstanding problem in neuroscience and artificial intelligence. Theory-driven efforts will be required to tease apart the functional logic of cortical circuits from the vast amounts of experimental data on cortical connectivity and physiology. Although the theoretical setting of Bayesian inference has been suggested as a framework for understanding cortical computation, making precise and falsifiable biological mappings need models that tackle the challenge of real world tasks. Based on a recent generative model, Recursive Cortical Networks, that demonstrated excellent performance on visual task benchmarks, we derive a family of anatomically instantiated and functional cortical circuit models. Efficient inference and generalization guided the representational choices in the original computational model. The cortical circuit model is derived by systematically comparing the computational requirements of this model with known anatomical constraints. The derived model suggests precise functional roles for the feed-forward, feedback, and lateral connections observed in different laminae and columns, assigns a computational role for the path through the thalamus, predicts the interactions between blobs and inter-blobs, and offers an algorithmic explanation for the innate inter-laminar connectivity between clonal neurons within a cortical column. The model also explains several visual phenomena, including the subjective contour effect, and neon-color spreading effect, with circuit-level precision. Our work paves a new path forward in understanding the logic of cortical and thalamic circuits.
Action-value processing underlies the role of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex in performance monitoring during self-regulation of affect

In this study, we merged methods from engineering control theory, machine learning, and human neuroimaging to critically test the putative role of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) in goal-directed performance monitoring during an emotion regulation task. Healthy adult participants (n = 94) underwent cued-recall and re-experiencing of their responses to affective image stimuli with concurrent functional magnetic resonance imaging and psychophysiological response recording. During cued-recall/re-experiencing trials, participants engaged in explicit self-regulation of their momentary affective state to match a pre-defined affective goal state. Within these trials, neural decoding methods measured affect processing from fMRI BOLD signals across the orthogonal affective dimensions of valence and arousal. Participants’ affective brain states were independently validated via facial electromyography (valence) and electrodermal activity (arousal) responses. The decoded affective states were then used to contrast four computational models of performance monitoring (i.e., error, predicted response outcome, action-value, and conflict) by their relative abilities to explain emotion regulation task-related dACC activation. We found that the dACC most plausibly encodes action-value for both valence and arousal processing. We also confirmed that dACC activation directly encodes affective arousal and also likely encodes recruitment of attention and regulation resources. Beyond its contribution to improving our understanding of the roles that the dACC plays in emotion regulation, this study introduced a novel analytical framework through which affect processing and regulation may be functionally dissociated, thereby permitting mechanistic analysis of real-world emotion regulation strategies, e.g., distraction and reappraisal, which are widely employed in cognitive behavioral therapy to address clinical deficits in emotion regulation.
Let Me Make You Happy, and I'll Tell You How You Look Around: Using an Approach-Avoidance Task as an Embodied Emotion Prime in a Free-Viewing Task

The embodied approach of human cognition suggests that concepts are deeply dependent upon and constrained by an agent’s physical body’s characteristics, such as performed body movements. In this study, we attempted to broaden previous research on emotional priming investigating the interaction of emotions and visual exploration. We used the joystick-based approach-avoidance task to influence the emotional states of participants, and subsequently, we presented pictures of news web pages on a computer screen and measured participant’s eye movements. As a result, the number of fixations on images increased, the total dwell time increased, and the average saccade length from outside of the images towards the images decreased after the bodily congruent priming phase. The combination of these effects suggests increased attention to web pages’ image content after the participants performed bodily congruent actions in the priming phase. Thus, congruent bodily interaction with images in the priming phase fosters visual interaction in the subsequent exploration phase.
Spatial Structure and Population Genetic Variation in a Eucalypt Species Complex.

In this study, the relative influences of selection, gene flow, and other evolutionary forces on the spatial structure of genetic variation within a eucalypt species complex (the spotted gums: genus Corymbia, section Politaria) were assessed. The study investigated the spatial genetic structure among four putative species of spotted gum (broad-scale), as well as within a single population (fine-scale)of one species, using both molecular and quantitative markers. The spotted gum complex occurs naturally across a range of 2500 km in eastern Australia. Spatial genetic variation within and between the four putative spotted gum species was examined using both chloroplast and nuclear markers. No significant differentiation was found between the three northern species of the complex, C. citriodora, C. variegata and C. henryi. The southern species, C. maculata, shared no haplotypes with any of the three northern species. These results disagree in part with those reported in a previous allozyme based study in which C. henryi was found to be significantly divergent from C. variegata (with which it is sympatric) and more closely aligned with C. maculata. Re-analysis of the allozyme data provided evidence of selection acting at the PGM2 locus within populations of C. variegata and C. henryi. The exclusion of this locus from the data set led to concordance between the cpDNA and nDNA analyses. Restricted gene flow and evidence of isolation by distance were identified as the dominant processes influencing the contemporary distribution of the cpDNA haplotypes. No geographic structure of haplotypes was found and complex genealogical relationships between haplotypes indicated the combined effects of past fragmentation, range expansion and possible long distance dispersal events. The variation and spatial structure in both neutral molecular markers and quantitative genetic traits were compared to explore the relative influences of dispersal and selection within a single eucalypt population. Both mature trees (n=130) from a natural population of C. variegata and their progeny (n=127) were sampled. A very high outcrossing rate (98%) was estimated for the population based on data from seven microsatellite loci. This suggested regular pollen–mediated gene flow into the population, further supported by the observed high levels of genetic diversity and
Adsorption of Lead, manganese, and copper onto biochar in landfill leachate: implication of non-linear regression analysis

The feasibility of using wood-derived biochar (BC) to remove Pb, Mn, and Cu from landfill leachate was investigated and modeled in this study. BC was produced under the pyrolytic temperature of 740 °C. The effect of contact time, BC dosage and particle size on adsorption of the heavy metals onto BC was examined. BC was used in two forms i.e., pulverized (PWB) and crushed (CWB) to evaluate the effect of BC particle size on adsorption characteristics. The kinetics of Pb, Mn, and Cu adsorption onto PWB and CWB were assessed using the pseudo second-order and Elovich models, where both applied models could well describe the adsorption kinetics. Removal efficiencies of the heavy metals were increases by 1.2, 1.4, and 1.6 times, respectively, for Pb, Mn, and Cu, when PWB content of the leachate increased from 0.5 to 5 g L − 1 . Equilibrium adsorption capacity of the heavy metals onto BC in leachate system was evaluated using the Langmuir, non-linearized Freundlich, linearized Freundlich, and Temkin isotherms and found to have the following order for PWB: Non-linearized Freundlich > Temkin > Langmuir > Linearized Freundlich. The Langmuir and linearized Freundlich models could not adequately represent adsorption of the heavy metals onto BC, especially for CWB. The highest removal of 88% was obtained for Pb, while the greatest adsorption intensity was found to be 1.58 mg g − 1 for Mn. Using the non-linearized Freundlich isotherm significantly reduced adsorption prediction error. The adsorption affinity of PWB for Pb, Mn, and Cu was greater than that of CWB in all treatments. Wood-derived BC is suggested to be used for the removal of heavy metals from landfill leachate as an economical adsorbent.