Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Larval fish of the Campos Basin, southeastern Brazil

Studies on the vertical distribution of larval fish in water masses along the Brazilian coast are very rare. The present study aimed to identify larval fish occurring in the surface (1 m) layer and at depth in four water masses of the Campos Basin, southeastern Brazil: South Atlantic Central Water (SACW) (250 m), Antarctic Intermediate Water (AAIW) (800 m), Upper Circumpolar Deep Water (UCDW) (1,200 m) and North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) (2,300 m). Material used in this study was obtained in 2009 through nocturnal horizontal stratified hauls using a Multinet (500 μm mesh size) during both rainy (February to April) and dry periods (August to September). A total of 10,978 fish larvae comprising 169 taxa were identified during the rainy (n = 6,015) and dry (n = 4,963) periods. The number of taxa decreased as the sampling depth increased. Larvae of Clupeidae, Engraulidae and Scombridae dominated in samples collected in the surface layer, while Sternoptychidae and Myctophidae were the most representative families in SACW. The other three water masses were dominated by Gonostomatidae larvae.
Application of multifactorial discriminant analysis in the morphometric structural differentiation of West African Dwarf (WAD) and Yankasa Sheep in South West

A total of 264 adult sheep comprising WAD and Yankasa rams and ewes traditionally managed in flocks within the south West Nigeria were investigated. Ten zoometrical variables were monitored in order to contrast their validity as racial markers and breed discriminants and identify metric characters which can be valuable for population classification within the species. Descriptive statistic showed that the Yankasa generally appear superior to the WAD in all variables measured except for shoulder width where WAD appeared superior giving the breed a blockier look than Yankasa which is relatively narrower. Neck circumference exhibited the highest variability in both sheep studied, c. v. being 18.34 and 20.12% respectively. These were followed by shoulder width in WAD and body length in Yankasa. The cephalic characters (head width and face length) exhibited the lowest variability in both breeds (c.v. being between 3.62 and 5.67%). High environmental sensitivity of neck circumference and shoulder width in WAD population explains the observed variability although measurement of neck circumference were affected by the neck ruff of the rams. The low variability exhibited by the cephalic characters in both breeds is a reflection of their relative insensitivity to environmental elements resulting from their close association with cranial bone growth. Stepwise discriminant analysis showed that tail length (the most discriminant variable between the breeds) was followed by shoulder width, the cephalic characters, body length and wither height in that order. Other variables did not qualify to enter the model. The small number of variables exhibiting high discriminant power (i.e. tail length, shoulder width, and head width) are explained by the genetic exchange that has existed between the breeds. Keywords: Discriminant analysis, morphometry, structure, differentiation, sheep, breeds
Population dynamic consequences of direct and indirect interactions involving a large blue butterfly and its plant and red ant hosts

Caterpillars of the butterfly, Maculinea rebeli, feed sequentially in flower-buds of Gentiana cruciata and in nests of Myrmica schencki ants, with which they have a sort of'cuckoo bird' relationship. Ants feed them in preference to their own larvae, reducing the production of new workers and hence the colony size the following year. Other Myrmica compete with M. schencki for nest-sites. They adopt caterpillars with equal facility, but fail to rear them to maturity and are consequently less damaged. Using a mathematical model we explore how species interactions can influence the populations of the butterfly, M. schencki, and other Myrmica species. The model assumes a 1 ha square of 900 cells with a fixed population of gentians
The Effects of Established Trees on Woody Regeneration during Secondary Succession in Tropical Dry Forests

Understanding the mechanisms controlling secondary succession in tropical dry forests is important for the conservation and restoration of this highly threatened biome. Canopy‐forming trees in tropical forests strongly influence later stages of succession through their effect on woody plant regeneration. In dry forests, this may be complex given the seasonal interplay of water and light limitations. We reviewed observational and experimental studies to assess (1) the relative importance of positive and negative effects of established trees on regeneration; (2) the mechanisms underlying these effects; and (3) to test the ‘stress gradient hypothesis’ in successional tropical dry forests. The effects of established trees on seed dispersal, seed survival, and seed germination—either through direct changes to moisture and temperature regimes or mediated by seed dispersers and predators—are mainly positive. The balance between positive and negative effects on seedling establishment is more complex and depends on the season and leaf phenology of both trees and seedlings. Seedling survival is generally enhanced by established trees mitigating dry conditions. Established trees have counteracting effects on water and light availability that influence seedling growth. The probability of a positive effect of established trees on seedling survival decreases with increased rainfall, which supports the stress gradient hypothesis. Priorities for future research are experiments to test for facilitation and competition and their underlying mechanisms, long‐term studies evaluating how these effects change with ontogeny, and studies focusing on the species‐specificity of interactions.
Spartina anglica as a carbon source for salt-marsh invertebrates: a study using b1C values

Relative and absolute assimilation rates in macro-invertebrates on a salt-marsh in east England, dominated by Spartina anglica, were calculated for 1979 and 1980, using a combination of 513C values and faecal analyses. Total assimilation of S. anglica was around 40-45 g C m-2, which represents up to 20% of annual net primary shoot production (ANPPs). Of this, Nereis diversicolor accounted for >85% of the collective S. anglica assimilated by all macro-invertebrates. Fauna associated with the vegetation canopy assimilated only 0.5 g C m-2 (or < 0.3% of ANPPs). Analysis of bt3C values appears to offer a relatively simple means of investigating sources of carbon assimilated. Nevertheless, the limitations of the method are discussed.
Female body condition and breeding of the Ural owl Strix uralensis

Female body condition affects reproductive success in birds of prey. Females with ample body reserves lay early and large clutches. Body reserves also act as a buffer against short-term food shortage. We analysed variation in the body condition of female Ural owls Strix uralensis in 1978-1991. Depending on the year, 80- 100 pairs occupied 160 nest-boxes in an area of 1500 km 2 in southern Finland. The weights of 199 females were converted into condition indices by calculating the difference between the observed body weight and the expected minimum weight, which was calculated from the regression equation between observed (at least three observations from different years) minimum weight and arm (ulna + radius) length. Female body condition depended on food supply and varied in accordance with the vole populations
Weed management in rice as influenced by nitrogen application and herbicide use

A field experiment was conducted for two consecutive rainy seasons of 2010 and 2011 at Varanasi (U.P.) to evaluate the effect of nitrogen application and weed management on transplanted rice and associated weeds. Puddled transplanting recorded significantly reduced weed density and heigher weed control efficiency at 60 days after transplanting (DAT) as compared to unpuddled transplanting. Butachlor 1.5 kg/ha followed by cono-weeding at 20 and 40 DAT recorded significantly higher plant height, no. of tillers/hill, dry matter accumulation, leaf area index, 1000-grain weight, no. of panicles/hill, grains/panicle and grain yield as compared to pretilachlor 0.75 kg/ha followed by azimsulfuron 35 g/ha at 15 DAT, and butachlor 1.5 kg/ha followed by azimsulfuron 35 g/ha at 15 DAT. Significantly higher yield components and rice grain yield were recorded with the application of 1/4 at 10 DAT, 1/2 at tillering and 1/4 N at panicle initiation as compared to conventional scheduling of nitrogen application.
Detection of frequent MET Exon 14 skipping events in pulmonary sarcomatoid carcinoma and response to targeted inhibition.

8020 Background: Pulmonary sarcomatoid carcinoma (PSC) represents a category of highly aggressive carcinomas associated with a poor prognosis. New therapeutic strategies based on better knowledge of the molecular pathogenesis of PSC are needed. We recently identified a high frequency of a unique type of MET alterations leading to exon 14 skipping (exon 14Δ) in PSC. Methods: Whole-exome sequencing in a discovery set and targeted MET mutation screening in an independent validation set of PSC were performed. RT-PCR and Western blotting were performed to validate MET exon 14Δ. A lung adenosquamous cell line H596 (MET exon 14Δ and PIK3CA mutated) and a gastric adenocarcinoma cell line Hs746T (MET exon 14 Δ) were used for functional studies. Ablation of MET signaling by siRNA or pharmacological inhibitor (Crizotinib) was conducted, and subsequent MTS assays and Western blotting were then performed. Simultaneous MET signaling blockade and PIK3CA signaling inhibition using PIK3CA inhibitor (GDC0941) were performe.
Molecular analysis of mitochondrial DNA of lines representing a specific CMS-fertility-restorer system of pearl millet [Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R. Sr.] by RAPD markers

Molecular characterization of the mitochondrial DNA [mtDNA] from the etiolated pearl millet [Pennisetum glsucum (L.) R. Br. ] seedlings of cytoplasmic male sterile (CMS) line having A1 cytoplasm alongwith Its maintainer, restorer and restored lines of hybrid RHRBH-8609 (Shradha) revealed polymorphism by 10 RAPD primers. Only four primers showed polymorphism between a CMS, RHRB-1A and Its fertile Isonuclear line, RHRB-1B. However, 5 primers showed polymorphism between the CMS line and its restorer line, RHRB-138R. The primers OPC15, OPC16 and OPG13 generated fragments of ∼3.90 kb, 1.59 kb and 1.02 kb size only In the mtDNA of a male sterile line which might be associated with the CMS phenotype of RHRB-1A in pearl millet.
Parents' perceived benefits of full-time online K-12 education as an educational replacement option

Given the federal thrust for educational reform and the growth of school choice options, parents are faced with increasing opportunities for educational placement options for their children including the recent composition of full-time online K-12 schools. Understanding parents’ perceived benefits, which inform their decision-making when choosing from a multitude of educational placement or school choice options, provides the educational community with information to better increase parent satisfaction. The potential increase in parent satisfaction has the ability to simultaneously increase student achievement. The purpose of this mixed methods study was to examine which perceived benefits parents held when choosing a full-time online educational placement for their child. This research study examined Middle Tennessee parents’ perceived benefits of full-time online education that led them to select this educational delivery model for their child. Additionally, this study utilized an online survey and interviews to obtain quantitative data and qualitative data in the form of descriptions of the participants’ shared experience with the phenomenon. Qualitative data were recorded and transcribed verbatim for each participant before the data was coded. This enabled data organization into significant statements for the development of essential structures of the parents’ experiences. Analytical and descriptive statistics were conducted prior to a synthesis of the quantitative and qualitative data, which rendered a comprehensive representation of the summary of both data sets. Trends from the survey data were compared to five identified themes generated from examining significant statements in the qualitative data. The findings of the study indicated parents’ perceived benefits of full-time online education center on academic quality, a safe educational environment, and an individualized learning pace for their child. The findings of
An ecological comparison of Cephalopholis argus between native and introduced populations

Feeding Ecology and Diet Study The blue-spotted grouper, Cephalopholis argus, was introduced to the Hawaiian islands from Moorea, French Polynesia in the late 1950s in an attempt to establish a grouper fishery in Hawaii (Randall 1987). C. argus was introduced from a region of high grouper diversity (14 species) into an environment with little competition from other large sedentary piscivorous species, and has flourished over the last 50 years. In these circumstances, changes in diet and habitat use, resulting from a reduction in interspecific competition, is known as competitive release (Larsen 1986). The present study found that total length, weight, and body condition were each significantly greater in introduced populations of C. argus in Hawaii than in native populations in Moorea. Both regions showed significant positive relationships between the total length of C. argus and: 1) the total length of prey, and 2) prey body depth. There were significant regional differences in diet; C. argus of a given length in Moorea consumed significantly deeper-bodied prey than their counterparts in Hawaii. These differences are consistent with competitive release experienced by C. argus in Hawaii.
Invariant representation learning for robust deep networks

Deep neural networks are often brittle to superﬁcial perturbations of their inputs; models that perform well ofﬂine on held-out data can still break under small amounts of naturally-occurring or adversarial shifts. We consider invariant representation learning (IRL), ﬁrst proposed in the domain of speech recognition, as a simple, effective, and general extension to data augmentation. Rather than only presenting original and noisy inputs as having the same label, IRL also promotes similar intermediate representations for original examples and their noised counterparts. The approach penalizes the distance (typically L 2 and cosine distances) between their activations, at every layer above a chosen bottleneck. We motivate IRL from vicinal risk motivation and existing regularizers, formulate IRL for image classiﬁcation, language modeling, speech recognition
The Basis for a Functional Response to Variable Food Quantity and Quality in Cockles Cerastoderma edule (Bivalvia, Cardiidae)

Combined effects of food quantity and quality on physiological components of growth (feeding rate, absorption efficiency, and metabolic rate) were analyzed in cockles (Cerastoderma edule). Associated processes of digestion were given special consideration, including determinations of gut passage time of food particles and gut contents. Experiments were designed to provide independent variations of both dietary descriptors that were standardized on a volumetric basis: cubic millimeters of particles per liter and milligrams of organics per cubic millimeter of particles, respectively. Feeding response to increasing food availability appears to be characterized by regulation of ingestion rate. As ingestion increases, absorption rate tends to be constrained by morphological limits imposing a faster passage of food throughout the gut; however, within the limits set by regulation, the indirect costs of digestion represented by organic endogenous losses become the main limiting factor acting to restrict net absorption. With increasing food quality, net energy gain is maximized through a combination of enhanced feeding rates and increased absorption efficiencies. Enlarged gut capacities were recorded with high-quality particles enabling increased rates of ingestion along with extended gut residence times of food. Direct metabolic costs of feeding and growth represent a constant fraction of absorption (≈10%), which implies that no extra expenditure is incurred with increasing rates of food processing.
Identification of bacterial leaf blight resistance genes in wild rice of eastern India

An experiment was conducted during the 2013 monsoon season to screen 35 wild rice accessions against the BX043 strain of Xanthomonas oryzae pv. Oryzae and identify the presence of bacterial blight resistance genes Xa21, xa13, xa5, Xa4, and Xa2. Among the accessions the area under the disease progress curve ranged from 174.88 (NKSWR-65) to 680.54 (NKSWR-34) compared with resistant controls RP bio-226 (93.92), CRMAS 2231-37 (097.28), CRMAS 2232-71 (098.58), and Tetep (178.62) and susceptible control PB-1 (1065.56). On the basis of disease severity 11 accessions showed moderate resistance, 21 were moderately susceptible, and 3 accessions showed susceptible response to the BX043 strain of Xanthomonas oryzae pv. Oryzae, while none of the accessions were found to be resistant. The genetic frequency of the 5 resistance genes varied from 00.00% to 45.71%. The accession NKSWR-25 harbored 3 resistance genes, xa5, Xa4, and Xa2, while accessions NKSWR-16, NKSWR-32, NKSWR-36, NKSWR-41, NKSWR-42, NKSWR-53, NKSWR-64, NKSWR-97, and NKSWR-99 each possessed 2 resistance genes of those 3 (xa5, Xa4, and Xa2). Therefore, these accessions could be used for the transfer of specific bacterial leaf blight resistance genes into well-adapted high-yielding rice cultivars.
OBSERVATIONS ON THE INTRACYTOPLASMIC MICROSPORIDIAN Steinhausia mytilovum, A PARASITE OF MUSSEL (Mytella guyanensis) OOCYTES FROM THE AMAZON RIVER ESTUARY

Microsporidians (Microsporidia) can parasitize commercially important marine mollusks, including bivalves. In this report, we provide a brief description of the ultrastructure of the microsporidian Steinhausia mytilovum that occurs in the oocyte cytoplasm of the mussel Mytella guyanensis (Mollusca, Bivalvia, Mytillidae) from the Amazon river estuary. Mussel ovaries were fixed, stained and examined using differential interference contrast optics (DIC). The parasite developed in an intracytoplasmic vacuole containing a variable number of spores (up to 14). Mature spores were 2.3 ± 0.3 μm long and 1.7 ± 0.3 μm wide (n = 25 each). Transmission electron microscopy revealed two types of intracytoplasmic vacuoles, one containing spores with a light (less dense) cytoplasm that corresponded to the maturation phases, and the other containing mature, dense, granular spores that showed specific microsporidian structures. The anchoring disc and the anterior zone of the polar filament were surrounded by the polaroplast. The polar filament was isofilar and consisted of a double (rarely triple) coil with 9-10 turns. The ultrastructural morphology of these spores suggested that they belonged to S. mytilovum.
Effect of Feeding Low Phosphorus Diet on Feed Intake, Nutrient Utilization, Growth and Certain Blood Parameters in Calves

Twelve 7–9 m old crossbred calves were randomly divided into two equal groups and fed straw based semi-synthetic diets complete with regards to other nutrient constituents but different in their P contents (3.41 and 1.28 g P/kg diet) for a period of 17 wks. A metabolic trial of 7 d collection was conducted after 12 wks. Low P diet significantly reduced DM intake and cumulative body weight gain in calves after 6 wks. Despite similar Ca intake faecal losses of Ca were significantly higher (P<0.05) and balance of Ca significantly lower (P<0.05) on P deficient diet. P intake was markedly lower (P<0.01) in P deficient group but no difference were observed with regards to faecal or urinary P losses among two groups. P balance, blood P and plasma inorganic P concentration were greatly reduced (P<0.01) in P deficient calves whereas plasma urea concentration tended to rise. There was no change in Hb and PCV. Pica was noticed in 4 out of 6 P deficient calves while haemoglobinuria and stiffened gait in one calf.
Impact of Habitat Destruction on the Population of Amphibians with Reference to Current Status of Frogs and Toads in Karachi and Thatta (Sindh)

Description: The present study included the impact of habitat destruction on the population of amphibians with reference to status of frogs and toads in Karachi and Thatta districts of Sindh. On the basis of present study, it is concluded that the permanent habitat alternation, destruction of habitat, use of indiscriminate toxic material such as pesticides, chemical fertilizers and increase of human population, three species Hoplobatrachus tigerinus, Tomopterna breviceps and Limnonectes limnocharis are declined and rated as threatened species in Thatta district, while two species Hoplobatrachus tigerinus and Tomopterna breviceps were rated as rare in Karachi district. The research techniques and information are helpful for graduate and research students of wildlife, National Parks managers, wildlife biologists, wildlife conservation organizations etc.
The search for archaeal pathogens

Archaea were only classified as a separate kingdom in the late 20th century. Archaea are associated with the ancient origins of life on earth and were assumed to inhabit only extreme environments like hydrothermal vents and salt lakes. However, the surprising discovery that Archaea are widespread and include mesophiles has led to the question of what role these organisms might play in human health and disease. In contrast to hundreds of bacterial species, only a few archaeal species have been identified in humans. These are predominantly the methanogens found in the oral cavity and the gastrointestinal tract. In addition, an extreme halophile in colonic tissue and a thermoacidophile in subgingival plaque have been detected. Although these organisms appear to have less stringent growth requirements than many extremophiles, they may inhabit extreme microniches that could exist within the human body. In addition to these Archaea that are members of the phylum Euryarchaeota, faecal samples were found to contain phyla of the Crenarchaeota, whose divergence from Euryarchaeota is far greater than phyla within bacteria or Eukarya. Many of these were identified as Sulfolobales, of which the only cultured examples are thermoacidophiles. How these organisms have adapted to their human environments remains unknown. This review presents the diversity of Archaea identified in human samples, as well as factors limiting their detection. The known associations of Archaea with disease that may indicate a possible cause will be explored. Finally, a comparison will be made with known pathogens to address the possibility that Archaea could evolve virulence and cause disease.