Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Antioxidant activities in mycorrhizal soybean plants under drought stress and their possible relationship to the process of nodule senescence.

• The mechanisms by which the mycorrhizal symbiosis protects soybean ( Glycine max ) plants against premature nodule senescence induced by drought stress is investigated here by evaluating the activity of a set of antioxidant enzymes in relation to nodule senescence. • Superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT), ascorbate peroxidase (APX) and glutathione reductase (GR) activity was determined in well watered or drought-stressed soybean plants inoculated with Bradyrrhizobium japonicum alone or in combination with Glomus mosseae . • In roots, only GR activity was higher in mycorrhizal than in non-mycorrhizal plants. The other antioxidant activities were similar, or lower (APX), in droughted, mycorrhizal plants than in the corresponding nonmycorrhizal ones. Similarly, in nodules, SOD, CAT and APX activities were lower in droughted, mycorrhizal plants than in nonmycorrhizal plants whereas, again, GR activity was higher in nodules from mycorrhizal plants. • We propose that the consistently higher GR activity in roots and nodules of mycorrhizal plants might have contributed to decreased oxidative damage to biomolecules, which are involved in premature nodule senescence. Additional drought-avoidance mechanisms induced by the AM symbiosis might also contribute to the lower oxidative stress in mycorrhizal plants.
Seasonal variations in the ovaries of the great scallop (Pecten maximus) from western Norway

Changes in weight, histology and visual appearance of ovaries from a field population of Pecten maximus (Pectinidae: Bivalvia) were followed for one year. Ovaries containing fully-grown oocytes were found throughout the year, though the degree of filling varied. Spawning activity of varying intensity occurred from late March to September. Recovery with increase in gonad index followed the spawning in spring, but there were no signs of gonad growth during a stepwise decline in gonad index from June to September. Gonad index increased to a new maximum between October and December. Oogenesis seemed to be active in filled ovaries throughout the year, and no classical resting period with empty gonads was seen. Prior to and during the spring phytoplankton bloom, recruitment of young oocytes appeared inhibited in some ovaries, leading to increased accumulation of large oocytes.
Using network science to map what Montréal bilinguals talk about across languages and communicative contexts

Recent work within the language sciences, particularly bilingualism, has sought new methods to evaluate and characterize how people differentially use language across different communicative contexts. These differences have thus far been linked to changes in cognitive control strategy, reading behavior, and brain organization. Here, we approach this issue using a novel application of Network Science to map the conversational topics that Montréal bilinguals discuss across communicative contexts (e.g., work, home, family, school, social), in their dominant vs. non-dominant language. Our results demonstrate that all communicative contexts display a unique pattern in which conversational topics are discussed, but only a few communicative contexts (work and social) display a unique pattern of how many languages are used to discuss particular topics. We also demonstrate that the dominant language has greater network size, strength, and density than the non-dominant language, suggesting that more topics are used in a wider variety of contexts in this language. Lastly, using community detection to thematically group the topics in each language, we find evidence of greater specificity in the non-dominant language than the dominant language. We contend that Network Science is a valuable tool for representing complex information, such as individual differences in bilingual language use, in a rich and granular manner, that may be used to better understand brain and behavior.
Seasonal variation on size and chemical constituents of Sargassum sinicola Setchell et Gardner from Bahía de La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico

Investigation on seasonal variation in size and chemical constituents of Sargassum sinicola Setchell et Gardner from Bahía de La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico, was carried out from a control bed and compared with an experimental bed with artificial nutrients added. No significant differences were found between the control and experimental thalli for size or chemical composition, except for iodine and raw fiber. For control thalli the results were: size 7.5–56.0 cm, alginate yield 7.2–13.7%, viscosity 58.7–191.7 millipascal seconds (mPa s), mannitol 2.9–8.1%, raw fiber 5.5–7.5% and iodine 0.020–0.141%; while in the experimental thalli the size ranged from 7.5 to 80.3 cm and the alginate yield was 7.8–10.4%, viscosity 41.4–163.4 mPa s, mannitol 2.9–8.3%, raw fiber 5.9–10.7% and iodine 0.021–0.098%. These variations were related to its natural growth cycle, and showed reductions during the senescence period. Results suggest that S. sinicola is not affected by relatively low nutrient concentrations, and could be considered as raw material for alginate production.
Predicting and Mapping the Potential Distribution of the Painted Devil Crayfish, Cambarus ludovicianus Faxon (Decapoda: Cambaridae)

Abstract Oklahoma currently has 29 recognized species of crayfish. We introduce the thirtieth documented species, Cambarus ludovicianus, and use Maxent ecological niche modeling to predict potentially suitable habitat based on known distributions throughout its range. We used the Maxent algorithm with and without points of occurrence in Oklahoma to examine if the niche model predicts suitable habitat in Oklahoma where we found C. ludovicianus. Occurrences in Oklahoma were not predicted present based on the projection of the model using the previously known distribution of the species, except for the location of the Red Slough Wildlife Management Area in southeastern Oklahoma. However, including the new records in the model changes the predicted suitable habitat for the species in Oklahoma, encompassing all new locations and a large portion of eastern Oklahoma. We suggest that eastern Oklahoma and Texas represent the western edge of the range of C. ludovicianus. Further surveys in the field for C. ludovicianus at the limits of its range are required to understand detailed requirements of its habitat.
Effects of Different Grafting Density of Amino Silane Coupling Agents on Thermomechanical Properties of Cross-Linked Epoxy Resin

In order to study the influences of amino silane coupling agents with different grafting densities on the surface of nano silica on the thermomechanical properties of cross-linked epoxy resin, the molecular dynamics method was used to establish an amorphous model and calculate the mechanical properties, glass transition temperature, mean square displacement, hydrogen bond, binding energy, and radial distribution function of the composite models in this paper. The results are as follows: with the increase of the grafting density of an amino silane coupling agent on the surface of nano silica particles, the mechanical properties and glass transition temperature of epoxy resin showed a trend of increasing first and then decreasing. When the grafting ratio was 9%, the mechanical properties and glass transition temperature of the epoxy resin were the largest, and the glass transition temperature was increased by 41 K. At the same time, it was found that the higher the grafting ratio, the lower the chain movement ability, but the higher the binding energy. Besides, the binding energy between the nanoparticles of the grafted silane coupling agent and epoxy resin was negatively correlated with the temperature. By analyzing the hydrogen bond and radial distribution function, the results showed that the improvement of the grafted silane coupling agent on the surface of the nanoparticle to the thermomechanical properties of the epoxy resin was related to the OH···O and NH···O hydrogen bonds. The analysis results indicated that the proper grafting density should be selected based on the established model size, selected nanoparticle diameter, and epoxy resin materials in order to better improve the thermomechanical properties of the epoxy resin.
Additive Uncorrelated Relaxed Clock Models for the Dating of Genomic Epidemiology Phylogenies

Abstract Phylogenetic dating is one of the most powerful and commonly used methods of drawing epidemiological interpretations from pathogen genomic data. Building such trees requires considering a molecular clock model which represents the rate at which substitutions accumulate on genomes. When the molecular clock rate is constant throughout the tree then the clock is said to be strict, but this is often not an acceptable assumption. Alternatively, relaxed clock models consider variations in the clock rate, often based on a distribution of rates for each branch. However, we show here that the distributions of rates across branches in commonly used relaxed clock models are incompatible with the biological expectation that the sum of the numbers of substitutions on two neighboring branches should be distributed as the substitution number on a single branch of equivalent length. We call this expectation the additivity property. We further show how assumptions of commonly used relaxed clock models can lead to estimates of evolutionary rates and dates with low precision and biased confidence intervals. We therefore propose a new additive relaxed clock model where the additivity property is satisfied. We illustrate the use of our new additive relaxed clock model on a range of simulated and real data sets, and we show that using this new model leads to more accurate estimates of mean evolutionary rates and ancestral dates.
Transcriptomic analysis of tomato lines reveals putative stress-specific biomarkers

Different abiotic stresses recruit dedicated signaling and regulatory genes in plants. Genome-wide stress-specific biomarkers were investigated in tomatoes. Three major abiotic stresses were compared: drought, heat, and salinity. For each stress type, 2 different tomato lines were included: susceptible and tolerant. Gene expression was examined by hybridizing to an available tomato microarray. Several stress responsive genes were upregulated in tolerant as well as in susceptible lines for each stress. Comparative analysis of gene expression in response to stress (drought, heat, or salinity) resolved a number of common biomarkers, while other groups of putative biomarkers were associated with each abiotic stress. MYB transcription factors, SAUR family proteins, and NAC domain proteins were among the highly upregulated genes under drought, while both proteinase inhibitors and heat shock proteins were prominent in the heat-tolerant line. For salinity stress, the expression of phosphate starvation-induced proteins was observed. Putative abiotic stress biomarkers can be utilized in breeding programs to improve the selection process and to aid in gene stacking.
A comparison of tree replacement models in old fields at Hutcheson Memorial Forest

Abstract In order to understand how trees replace themselves during the conversion from agricultural field back into eastern deciduous forest, I first used data sampled in ten old fields over the first 20 years after abandonment to generate six different models of tree replacement. Each of the six models was then used to generate abundance predictions for six common tree taxa (species or genera) from year 21 to 30. Finally each model tested those predictions against the actual data sampled during those same years (21–30) focusing on the predicted rank abundances of the six test tree taxa using Spearman's rank correlation coefficients. I found that: 1) models generally predicted tree abundances and tree replacements well, with the exception of Juniperus virginiana, 2) although some matrix models became constant and some patch models became zero over time, most of the time matrix models had a higher abundance prediction than the patch models for the same species, and 3) among the matrix models, model 3 (which used cover values) had the highest values—especially for the wind-dispersed species—and among patch models, model 4 (which used the number of plots) was often as great or greater than models 5 or 6 (which used stem counts and cover values, respectively)—especially for the bird-dispersed species. Taken together the results suggested that models using cover were closer to the data sampled in the fields compared to the other models within their type (matrix or patch), and that patch models were better estimators of stem densities than matrix models, perhaps due to the inherent dampening properties of matrixes.
REDUCING RADIO BANDWIDTH LOAD IN NANOLOC-BASED WIRELESS NETWORKS THROUGH SELECTING APPROPRIATE SUBSET OF BASE STATIONS FOR RANGING

In wireless sensor networks based on nanoLOCTM standard and using server-centric control, the overall performance of radio segment and location accuracy depends amongst other on the efficiency of the location engine. The efficiency may be increased by selecting an appropriate subset of base stations for ranging. This paper describes the experiments dealing with this problem, and discusses the ways of saving radio bandwidth.
SLUA-WSN: Secure and Lightweight Three-Factor-Based User Authentication Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are composed of multiple sensor nodes with limited storage, computation, power, and communication capabilities and are widely used in various fields such as banks, hospitals, institutes to national defense, research, and so on. However, useful services are susceptible to security threats because sensitive data in various fields are exchanged via a public channel. Thus, secure authentication protocols are indispensable to provide various services in WSN. In 2019, Mo and Chen presented a lightweight secure user authentication scheme in WSN. We discover that Mo and Chen’s scheme suffers from various security flaws, such as session key exposure and masquerade attacks, and does not provide anonymity, untraceability, and mutual authentication. To resolve the security weaknesses of Mo and Chen’s scheme, we propose a secure and lightweight three-factor-based user authentication protocol for WSN, called SLUA-WSN. The proposed SLUA-WSN can prevent security threats and ensure anonymity, untraceability, and mutual authentication. We analyze the security of SLUA-WSN through the informal and formal analysis, including Burrows–Abadi–Needham (BAN) logic, Real-or-Random (ROR) model, and Automated Verification of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) simulation. Moreover, we compare the performance of SLUA-WSN with some existing schemes. The proposed SLUA-WSN better ensures the security and efficiency than previous proposed scheme and is suitable for practical WSN applications.
Slow associative learning in alcohol dependence and the Alcohol Cue Exposure Treatment Paradox.

AIMS To examine two explanations for the observation that cue-exposure treatment has not been clearly effective in the treatment of alcohol dependence: do alcohol dependent individuals have either 1) slower extinction and/or 2) greater contextual specificity of extinction than non-dependent individuals? DESIGN In two exploratory laboratory experiments we used mixed factorial designs with two-group between-subjects factors and within-subjects factors corresponding to performance in different parts of a computer-based learning task. SETTING University of Southampton psychology research laboratories and two addiction treatment services in the city of Southampton, UK. PARTICIPANTS Experiment 1: Seventy-four (54 female) undergraduates from the University of Southampton (age M=20.4 years). Experiment 2: One-hundred and two (40 female) participants from the University of Southampton, the local community, and from two Southampton alcohol treatment services (age M=41.3 years). MEASUREMENTS The Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test, a 1-week time-line follow-back alcohol consumption questionnaire, the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (11th Ed), and a computerised learning task. Experiment 2 additionally used the 44-item Big Five Inventory, a drug use history checklist, and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. FINDINGS Experiment 1: light and heavy drinkers did not differ significantly in extinction (extinction block x drinking status interaction, p=.761, η p 2 = .005 , 95% confidence interval (0,.028)) or on contextual control of extinction (recovery block x drinking status interaction, p=.514, η p 2 = .009 , 95% confidence interval (0,.084)). Experiment 2: slower extinction in abstinent alcohol dependent participants compared with light drinkers (extinction block x drinking status interaction, p=.023, η p 2 = .031 , 95% confidence interval (0,.069)) but no significant difference on contextual control of extinction (recovery block x drinking status interaction, p=.069, η p 2 = .033 , 95% confidence interval (0,.125)). CONCLUSION Abstinent alcohol dependent people may have slower extinction learning for alcohol-related cues, than non-dependent light drinkers.
Formation of Ethanol, Higher Alcohols, Esters, and Terpenes by Five Yeast Strains in Musts from Pedro Ximénez Grapes in Various Degrees of Ripeness

The behavior of four Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains and Torulaspora delbrueckii toward fermentation of sterile musts from Pedro Ximenez grapes in different degrees of ripeness is studied. Ethanol production by the four Saccharomyces strains was similar and higher than that of T. delbrueckii , particularly in those musts of high glucose content devoted to sherry wine making. However, the Saccharomyces strains, especially cerevisiae A and cerevisiae B, produced more volatile acidity. Regarding the aromatic fraction, neither cerevisiae A nor chevalieri stood out in any respect, while the remaining yeasts investigated showed unlike behavior and yielded significantly different amounts of various compounds and fractions.
A Pharmacokinetics‐Informed Approach to Navigating Hydroxychloroquine Shortages in Patients With Rheumatic Disease During the COVID‐19 Pandemic

The recent hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) shortage due to use in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) has forced some rheumatic disease patients to choose between continuing their current dose of HCQ but exhaust their supply early or ration it in order to prolong its use. Blood HCQ concentrations are directly correlated with disease activity in rheumatic diseases such as systemic lupus erythematosus. We sought to model how changes in HCQ dosage will best maintain sufficient blood HCQ concentrations for the longest period of time in order to avoid potential future flares.
Advances in assays of matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) and their inhibitors

Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) play an important role in many physiological and pathological processes. To assay the activities of MMPs is important in diagnosis and therapy of the MMPs associated diseases, such as neoplastic, rheumatic and cardiovascular diseases. Several assay systems have been developed, which include bioassay, zymography assay, immunoassay, fluorimetric assay, radio isotopic assay, phage-displayed assay, multiple-enzyme/multiple-reagent assay and activity-based profiling assay. The principle, application, advantage and disadvantage of these assays have been reviewed in this article.
Quelques ecdyonurus et rhithrogena européens de la collection navás [Ephemeroptera]

Un recensement des types d'especes europeennes d'Ecdyonurus et de Rhithrogena decrites par le Pere NAVAS, et existant encore au Musee de Zoologie de Barcelone et dans la collection NAVAS au Colegio del Salvador a Saragosse, est propose.Des specimens de 10 especes ont pu etre retrouves, dont 6 holotypes ♂ ; 3 lectotypes sont designes.Une espece d'Ecdyonurus est redecrite (E. codinai) et deux autres tombent en synonymie (E. bollenganus et E. rivulorum). Six especes de Rhithrogena (R. cincta, diaphana, ferruginea, gorrizi, loyolae et soteria) sont redecrites; en l'absence d'exuvies larvaires, aucune synonymie n'est encore proposee sur ce genre.
AN ARCHITECTURE FOR DISTRIBUTED INTRUSION DETECTION SYSTEM USING AUTONOMOUS AGENTS

Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs) are security tools that attempt to detect malicious activities, which are targeted against a network and its resources. As internetworking among computer systems via the internet becomes more widely and keeps rapid increase, widespread attacks involving those networks occurs more frequently which present a new challenge to IDSs. Many approaches have been used in implementing a reliable IDS like neural networks, statistical analysis. etc, but they have some limitations. In this paper we propose a multi-agent based intrusion detection system, which will satisfy not all but most of the requirements of reliable and secure IDS. The main goals of this system, which distinguish it from other solutions, are its distributed architecture, scalability, efficiency and the use of Agent concept.
The reaction of the immune system of fish to vaccination

Abstract. The development of immunological memory was investigated in carp following direct immersion in Aeromonas hydrophila bacterin. A single bath did not induce an increase in serum antibody (Ab) levels. A second bath at 1, 3 or 8 months resulted in clear secondary Ab responses. The highest Ab levels were reached in the group boosted after 3 months. However, at 12 months a second bath gave no further significant response. When a booster was given at the same intervals by intramuscular injection, instead of immersion, the induced memory was not expressed as a clear secondary response. It is concluded that direct immersion in a bacterial antigen did induce immunological memory. The duration of this slowly developing memory is limited in time (less than 12 months) and was only demonstrated following a second immersion. This last feature suggests the existence of a local or mucosal activity during the immune response after bath vaccination.
Statistical approaches to interpreting diversity patterns in the Norwegian mountain flora

The richness of Norwegian mountain plants in 75 grid squares is mapped from published distributional data for 109 species. Eleven explanatory variables representing bedrock geology, geography and topography, climate, and history (relative abundance of unglaciated areas) for each square are used in multiple regression analysis with associated Monte Carlo permutation tests to find statistically significant predictor variables for species richness. The variance in richness explained by the four major groups of explanatory variables is established by (partial) multiple regression analysis in which the groups of predictors are entered in different orders. The variance in species richness explained by the predictor variables is partitioned into four independent components. A predictive model for species richness using partial least squares regression and all explanatory variables has a coefficient of determination (R(2)) of 0.79. The statistical results consistently show that species-richness patterns are well explained by modern-day factors such as climate, geology, elevation, and geography without recourse to historical variables. The nunatak hypothesis of plant survival on unglaciated areas within Norway does not explain the observed richness patterns when modern ecological factors are considered first. The nunatak hypothesis thus appears to be redundant, a view supported by recent palaeobotanical, biosystematical, and evolutionary studies.