Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Diet-dependent gut microbiota impacts on adult neurogenesis through mitochondrial stress modulation

Abstract The influence of dietary factors on brain health and mental function is becoming increasingly recognized. Similarly, mounting evidence supports a role for gut microbiota in modulating central nervous system function and behaviour. Still, the molecular mechanisms responsible for the impact of diet and associated microbiome in adult neurodegeneration are still largely unclear. In this study, we aimed to investigate whether and how changes in diet-associated microbiome and its metabolites impact on adult neurogenesis. Mice were fed a high-fat, choline-deficient diet, developing obesity and several features of the metabolic syndrome, including non-alcoholic steatohepatitis. Strikingly, our results showed, for the first time, that animals fed with this specific diet display premature increased neurogenesis, possibly exhausting the available neural stem cell pool for long-term neurogenesis processes. The high-fat, choline-deficient diet further induced neuroinflammation, oxidative stress, synaptic loss and cell death in different regions of the brain. Notably, this diet-favoured gut dysbiosis in the small intestine and cecum, up-regulating metabolic pathways of short-chain fatty acids, such as propionate and butyrate and significantly increasing propionate levels in the liver. By dissecting the effect of these two specific short-chain fatty acids in vitro, we were able to show that propionate and butyrate enhance mitochondrial biogenesis and promote early neurogenic differentiation of neural stem cells through reactive oxygen species- and extracellular signal-regulated kinases 1/2-dependent mechanism. More importantly, neurogenic niches of high-fat, choline-deficient-fed mice showed increased expression of mitochondrial biogenesis markers, and decreased mitochondrial reactive oxygen species scavengers, corroborating the involvement of this mitochondrial stress-dependent pathway in mediating changes of adult neurogenesis by diet. Altogether, our results highlight a mitochondria-dependent pathway as a novel mediator of the gut microbiota–brain axis upon dietary influences.
Heat Transfer Enhancement of Plate-Fin Heat Sinks with Different Types of Winglet Vortex Generators

Because the delta winglet in common-flow-down configuration has been recognized as an excellent type of vortex generators (VGs), this study aims to experimentally and numerically investigate the thermo-hydraulic performance of four different forms of winglet VGs featuring sweptback delta winglets in the channel flow in the range 200 < Re < 1000. Both Nusselt number and friction factor of plate-fin heat sinks having different forms of winglets, including delta winglet pair (DWP), rectangular winglet pair (RWP), swept delta winglet pair (SDWP), and swept trapezoid winglet pair (STWP), were measured in a standard wind tunnel without bypass in this study. Four rows of winglets with in-line arrangement were punched on each 10-mm-long, 0.2-mm-thick copper plate, and a total of 16 pieces of copper plates with spacing of 2 mm were fastened together to achieve the heat sink. The projected area, longitudinal and winglet tip spacing, height and angle of attack of those winglets were fixed. Besides that, three-dimensional numerical simulation was also performed in order to investigate the temperature and fluid flow over the plate-fin. The results showed that the longitudinal, common-flow-down vortices generated by the VGs augmented the heat transfer and pressure drop of the heat sink. At airflow velocity of 5 m/s, the heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop of plain plate-fin heat sink were 50.8 W/m2·K and 18 Pa, respectively, while the heat transfer coefficient and the pressure drop of heat sink having SDWP were 70.4 W/m2·K and 36 Pa, respectively. It was found that SDWP produced the highest thermal enhancement factor (TEF) of 1.28 at Re = 1000, followed by both RWP and STWP of similar TEF in the range 200 < Re < 1000. The TEF of DWP was the lowest and it was rapidly increased with the increase of airflow velocity.
The relevance of sources of support for teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs towards students with special educational needs

ABSTRACT The move to include students with special educational needs (SEN) in mainstream education is one of the priorities of educational reform agendas in many countries. In Flanders (Belgium) the aim is to implement a more inclusive school system, but it faces resistance from practitioners. The aim of this study is twofold: (1) to compare teachers’ student-specific self-efficacy levels in relation to students with and without SEN, and examine the contribution of teacher-related and student-related variables in predicting teachers’ self-efficacy (TSE); (2) to examine how sources of teacher support that favour including students with SEN influence TSE. A survey was conducted among regular primary and secondary school teachers (N = 629). The results showed that TSE is lower regarding students with multiple diagnoses compared to students with one diagnosis, and lower regarding students with socio-emotional and/or behavioural disorders compared to students with learning disabilities. In addition, teachers’ use of Cooperative sources of support, such as team teaching, observation and feedback, supervision, and student support within and outside the classroom for students with SEN, predicted higher levels of TSE. These findings suggest that investing in these forms of support can improve teachers’ competency in dealing with students with SEN and reduce their resistance to inclusive education.
The impact of bike network indicators on bike kilometers traveled and bike safety: A network theory approach

There has been recent interest in the use of network analysis to quantify bike network features and their impact on biking levels and safety. However, limited bike network indicators have been evaluated. This study introduces a list of network indicators to quantify the bike network and study its effect on bike kilometers traveled and bike–vehicle crashes. Data from the city of Vancouver, Canada, are used as a case study. Full Bayesian modeling incorporating spatial effects is employed to develop Bike Kilometers Travelled (BKT) and bike–vehicle crash models. The developed BKT models show that the bike network centrality, assortativity, and weighted slope have negative associations with BKT, while the bike network directness, length, complexity and development, and connectivity have positive associations with BKT. The developed crash models show that the bike network length, centrality, assortativity, and continuity have negative associations with bike–vehicle crashes. On the other hand, the bike network complexity and development, connectivity, and linearity have positive associations with bike–vehicle crashes. The models provide insights that can be useful for planning bike networks to increase bike traffic and improve bike safety. The models also show that some changes to a bike network to increase bike traffic should be accompanied by crash risk-mitigating measures. As well, the models can be used to identify zones within a city that require safety improvements.
Use of Soil Enzymes as Indicators for Contaminated Soil Monitoring and Sustainable Management

Diagnosis of the risk of soil pollution and the performance of measures for the recovery of contaminated soil requires proper monitoring of the extent of soil function damage and its recovery process. Soil enzymes reveal ecosystem perturbations, are sensitive to management choices, and have been used as indicators of biogeochemical cycles, organic matter degradation, and soil remediation processes. Thus, enzymes can indicate, along with other physical or chemical properties, soil quality. In this paper, we review the effects of soil pollutants [toxic trace elements (TTE), and petroleum hydrocarbons (PHC)] on enzymatic activities and evaluate the usefulness of soil enzyme’s activity for monitoring recovery processes in contaminated soil. Soil enzymes can be said to be a powerful means of monitoring to properly indicate the degree of deterioration of soil quality caused by soil pollution and to diagnose the process of functional recovery of contaminated soil. Further research is needed to establish the quantitative relationships between the soil physico-chemical properties and enzyme activity and the effect of soil remediation on the functional recovery of soil-related to soil quality.
Catalytic activity of using tungsten oxide with hydrogen peroxide for methyl orange degradation

In this work, a tungsten oxide nanoparticle was developed with a simple method, using tungsten powder. The orthorhombic, hexagonal and monoclinic crystalline structures obtained were characterized by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, as well as Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The coupling of these tungsten oxide nano particles with hydrogen peroxide is carried out on methyl orange removal from wastewater. The use of Hydrated orthorhombic particles showed the highest removal rate up to 89.7% comparatively to hexagonal and monoclinic crystalline structures respectively. The reusability of these particles showed a good stability with monoclinic crystalline structure after four cycles. Key words: Dyes, Tungsten Oxide, Catalysis, H2O2.we
Heterosis Studies for Yield and Yield Component Characters in Maize (Zea mays L.)

21 F1s obtained by crossing seven inbred lines in diallel fashion (without reciprocals) over parents and standard check were evaluated for grain yield and its component characters to study the heterosis over better parent and standard check. Thirteen crosses registered significant positive heterosis over both mid and better parents for grain yield per plant. The crosses, DHK-12-2002 × DHK-12-2036, DHK-12-2002 × DHK-12-2035 and DHK-12-2003 × DHK-12-2068, recorded highest significant relative heterosis and heterobeltiosis for grain yield per plant. The cross, DHK-12-2003 × DHK-12-2068, registered significant positive heterosis over standard check (DHM 117) for grain yield per plant indicating that the cross may be exploited for commercial release.
The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on ethnic discrimination on the housing market

ABSTRACT This explorative study examines the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on ethnic discrimination. By means of 482 pairwise matched correspondence tests in pre-Covid times and 440 tests in Covid times, we examine discrimination against candidates of Maghrebian and Congolese origin on the housing market of a metropolitan city in Belgium. While the absolute invitation rates decreased for both Maghrebian and Belgian candidates at almost the same pace in Covid times, the relative net rate of discrimination of Maghrebian candidates increased significantly from 20% to 36%. With respect to candidates of Congolese origin, the absolute invitation rate only decreased sharply for Belgian candidates but not for Congolese candidates, with declining relative net rates of discrimination from 17% to 6% as a consequence. This suggests that the effect of Covid-19 on discrimination is different for different ethnic groups.
Lived Experiences of Females With Entrepreneurship in Sudan: Networking, Social Expectations, and Family Support

Extensive research exists on female entrepreneurship in developed countries such as North America and Europe; however, there is limited research on women entrepreneurs in African nations, specifically in Sudan. This descriptive phenomenological research was designed to explore, discover, and describe the perceptions and lived experiences of successful Sudanese female entrepreneurs concerning overcoming the challenges and obstacles faced in the beginning and managing new businesses in the region of Khartoum, capital of Sudan. This article uses the salient theories and concepts of entrepreneurship value creation theory, social role theory, challenges, and barriers facing women entrepreneurs. All these theories and concepts have been instrumental in understanding the lived experiences of challenges and barriers facing women entrepreneurs in Khartoum, Sudan. Data gathered from 19 female entrepreneurs purposively selected across Khartoum, Sudan, revealed that women struggle (a) having to secure funds; (b) society’s perception of suitable work for women; (c) access to networking; and (d) inadequate support from the government. The research also revealed that factors that influence factors to be successful are women’s family support and motivation; adjusting to social expectations. In addition to the strategies used to manage a successful business, there is a need for training and development skills and being persistent and believing in oneself. The research results showed that women experience mixed feelings during establishing and operating the business. The experience of women with the barriers and challenges includes fear, frustration, stress, and anger when they begin to manage the business. However, women also experienced positive feelings include risk-taking, courage, passion for learning, empowerment, fearlessness, ambition, determination, persistence, and believing in oneself. The women in this research were creative and initiative and managed to begin and operate a successful business.
The 2019 Raikoke volcanic eruption: Part 1 Dispersion model simulations and satellite retrievals of volcanic sulfur dioxide

Abstract. Volcanic eruptions can cause significant disruption to society and numerical models are crucial for forecasting the dispersion of erupted material. Here we assess the skill and limitations of the Met Office’s Numerical Atmospheric-dispersion Modelling Environment (NAME) in simulating the dispersion of the sulfur dioxide (SO2) cloud from the 21–22 June 2019 eruption of the Raikoke volcano (48.3° N, 153.2° E). The eruption emitted around 1.5 &pm; 0.2 Tg of SO2, which represents the largest volcanic emission of SO2 into the stratosphere since the 2011 Nabro eruption. We simulate the temporal evolution of the volcanic SO2 cloud across the Northern Hemisphere (NH) and compare our model simulations to high-resolution SO2 measurements from the Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) and the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) satellite SO2 products. We show that NAME accurately simulates the observed location and horizontal extent of the SO2 cloud during the first 2–3 weeks after the eruption, but is unable, in its standard configuration, to capture the extent and precise location of very high-concentration regions within the volcanic cloud. Using the Fractional Skill Score as metric for model skill, NAME shows skill in simulating the horizontal extent of the cloud for 12–17 days after the eruption where vertical column densities (VCD) of SO2 (in Dobson Units, DU) are above 1 DU. For SO2 VCDs above 20 DU, which are predominantly observed as small-scale features within the SO2 cloud, the model shows skill on the order of 2–4 days only. The lower skill for these high-concentration regions is partly explained by the model-simulated SO2 cloud in NAME being too diffuse compared to TROPOMI retrievals. Reducing the standard diffusion parameters used in NAME by a factor of four results in a slightly increased model skill during the first five days of the simulation, but on longer timescales the simulated SO2 cloud remains too diffuse when compared to TROPOMI measurements. We find that the temporal evolution of the NH-mean SO2 mass burden simulated by NAME strongly depends on the fraction of SO2 mass emitted into the lower stratosphere, which is uncertain for the 2019 Raikoke eruption. When emitting 0.9–1.1 Tg of SO2 into the lower stratosphere (11–18 km) and 0.4–0.7 Tg into the upper troposphere (8–11 km), both NAME and TROPOMI show a similar peak in SO2 mass burden (1.4–1.6 Tg of SO2) with an average SO2 e-folding time of 14–15 days in the NH. Our work demonstrates the large potential of using high-resolution satellite retrievals to identify and rectify limitations in dispersion models like NAME, which will ultimately help to improve dispersion modelling efforts of volcanic SO2 clouds.
Complete mitochondrial genome of Bombus consobrinus (Hymenoptera: Apidae)

Abstract The complete mitochondrial genome of Bombus consobrinus was sequenced. This circular mitogenome is 17,966 bp (86.7% of AT) in length, which contains 22 tRNA genes, 13 protein-coding genes and two rRNA genes. All protein-coding genes are initiated with the typical ATN codon and terminated by TAA codon except an incomplete stop codon T for ND4 gene. tRNA-Ser (AGN) lacks a dihydrouridine (DHU) arm while other tRNA genes form a typical cloverleaf structure. The complete mitochondrial genome of B. consobrinus will be useful to understand the inter-species relationship and genetic diversity of bumblebees.
Empirical variogram for achieving the best valid variogram

Modeling the statistical autocorrelations in spatial data is often achieved through the estimation of the variograms, where the selection of the appropriate valid variogram model, especially for small samples, is crucial for achieving precise spatial prediction results from kriging interpolations. To estimate such a variogram, we tradi-tionally start by computing the empirical variogram (traditional Matheron or robust Cressie-Hawkins or kernel-based nonparametric approaches). In this article, we conduct numerical studies comparing the performance of these empirical variograms. In most situations, the nonparametric empirical variable nearest-neighbor (VNN) showed better performance than its competitors (Matheron, Cressie-Hawkins, and Nadaraya-Watson). The analysis of the spatial groundwater dataset used in this article suggests that the wave variogram model, with hole e ﬀ ect structure, ﬁtted to the empirical VNN variogram is the most appropriate choice. This selected variogram is used with the ordinary kriging model to produce the predicted pollution map of the nitrate concentrations in groundwater dataset.
GROSS AND ULTRASTRUCTURAL DETAILS OF THE SWIM BLADDER (GAS SECRETING COMPLEX IN PARTICULAR) OF TWO MASTACEMBELLIDS- Mastacembelus armatus AND Macrognathus aculeatum.

The swim bladder of Mastacembelus armatus and Macrognathus aculeatum (family: Mastacembelidae) are silvery white, elongated and tubular structures. The swim bladder of Mastacembelus armatus is semitransparent while in Macrognathus aculeatum, it is absolutely transparent in texture. The gas secreting complex in M. armatus is present in the form of five to six curved patches while in M. aculeatum it is in the form of a single unit which is an inverted ‘U’ shaped structure. The surface ultrastructure of the gas secreting complex in both these fishes shows a central depressed area and slightly raised or bulging marginal areas. The region near the middle depressed core are characterized by some raised microvillous cells along with some typical rosette like structure scattered over the surface in M. aculeatum whereas the same area in M. armatus has some round structures with pores along with a few microvillous cells.
Roles of Teacher Feedback in Promoting Effective English-Medium Instruction of a Business Subject

Despite the recent expansion of English-medium instruction (EMI) in a non-English speaking educational context, few studies have investigated teaching methodology for EMI. Using a mixed method, this study examines the effects of teacher feedback on college students’ their perspectives of learning a business subject through EMI. The quantitative part of the study investigated questionnaire responses of two groups of students enrolled in a course on entrepreneurship: the control group of the lecture-style class offering little teacher feedback (n = 158) versus the experimental group featuring extensive feedback (n = 153). For the cross-examination of these quantitative results, a semistructured interview with four respondents followed. The analysis showed that the students’ disciplinary backgrounds (general studies, business, and engineering) create differences in their perspectives of EMI and learning the business subject. Among the three major groups, the business major students ranked English proficiency as the most important for their career purposes. The feedback-concentrated instruction contributed not only to learning the subject, but it also moderated the differences between the disciplines. Notably, the participants’ comprehension of the subject significantly correlated with their evaluation of EMI. These findings highlight the crucial effect of teacher feedback on acquiring discipline-specific knowledge and cultivating new perspectives of EMI.
Assessing genetic diversity of various Canadian sheep breeds through pedigree analyses

Abstract: The loss of genetic variability in a population will drastically affect the success of a breeding program by reducing selection response and fitness and, consequently, affecting reproduction, resilience, and production efficiency. The objective of this study was to perform an in-depth analysis of the pedigree of the Canadian sheep breeds to assess the levels of inbreeding, effective population size, and other metrics of genetic diversity, which included the five most important sheep breeds in Canada: Dorset, Polypay (PO), Rideau-Arcott, Romanov (RV), and Suffolk, using a large dataset (1 336 926 animals). As measures of genetic diversity, effective population size, inbreeding coefficient, effective number of founders, effective number of founder genomes, effective number of nonfounders, and effective number of ancestors were estimated. The completeness and depth of the Canadian sheep pedigree datasets were reasonably high, with <20% parental information missing. More attention should be given to PO breed, which was found to have the smallest effective population size (55), and RV breed, which had the highest average level of inbreeding (4.8%). Techniques such as optimum contribution selection and minimum coancestry mating could be used to minimize the inbreeding of future generations, while maintaining genetic progress at a desirable level.
Potential worldwide impacts of sea level rise on coastal-lowland anurans

Amphibians are the most severely threatened terrestrial vertebrates and we are witnessing a global decline phenomenon, which is even suggested to be of the same level as the historical mass extinctions. Albeit the myriad of causative stressors identified in the last decades, future sea level rise (SLR) and its impact on coastal terrestrial fauna remains essentially unreported. Even if there is no consensus on the magnitude of the future SLR, several studies suggest that it is likely to be greater than previously reported by the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Therefore, it is reasonable to expect severe impacts on the coastal terrestrial fauna at a worldwide scale. Here, we assembled a worldwide data set of coastal-lowland anuran species in an attempt to quantify the potential habitat loss caused by flooding according to different SLR scenarios. We also assessed potential habitat suitability under climate change (CC) in order to evaluate its expected effects on species’ climatic niches, by building species distribution models for three future scenarios (A2a, A1b and B2a). Our results revealed that SLR has the potential to produce negative impacts on ~ 86% of the selected coastal-lowland species in different magnitudes, whereas CC is expected to produce a greater impact on the same taxa. Thus, species predicted to persist under the new climatic conditions may be exposed to effects associated with SLR. Breaking our results down to biogeographic realms, we found that Australasia harboured most amphibian species suffering the dual impacts of SLR and CC. Based on our results, we advocate for the inclusion of potential future impacts of SLR in conservation action plans, anticipating and preventing biodiversity loss.