Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Organic matter fractions in areas Oxisol under different management systems in Cerrado the State of Goiás, Brazil

O objetivo deste trabalho foi avaliar as fracoes quimicas e fisicas da materia orgânica do solo (MOS), bem como realizar a analise espectroscopica na regiao do ultravioleta-visivel do acido humico em amostras de um Latossolo Vermelho sob sistema de plantio direto (SPD) com diferentes anos de implantacao, e compara-las a areas de cerrado nativo e pastagem. Foram avaliadas cinco areas, a saber: cerrado nativo (CE) “ stricto sensu ”; pastagem plantada (PA) com Brachiaria decumbens ; SPD com 3 (SPD3) anos de implantacao; SPD com 15 anos (SPD15) de implantacao e SPD com mais de 20 (SPD20) anos de implantacao. Os teores e estoques de carbono total e das fracoes humicas da MOS, aumentaram em funcao do tempo de implantacao do SPD em todas as profundidades analisadas, tendo as fracoes humicas apresentado a seguinte ordem: fracao acido fulvico > fracao acido humico > fracao humina. Os resultados obtidos demonstraram que em funcao do tempo de implantacao do SPD esta ocorrendo um aumento das fracoes mais estaveis das substâncias humicas e das fracoes fisicas da MOS, proporcionando uma maior estabilidade deste sistema. Verifica-se aumento da relacao E4/ E6 dos acidos humicos em funcao do tempo de implantacao do SPD, demonstrando um aumento de estruturas alifaticas. A area PA avaliada apresentou os menores teores e estoques das fracoes humicas, carbono associado aos minerais (CAM) e relacao E4/E6, demonstrando estar em um estadio avancado de degradacao em relacao as demais areas avaliadas.
Growth and Development of Ecotypes of Arabidopsis thaliana: Preliminary Experiments to Prepare for a Moon Lander Mission

Abstract NASA is planning to launch robotic landers to the Moon as part of the Artemis lunar program. We have proposed sending a greenhouse housed in a 1U CubeSat as part of one of these robotic missions. A major issue with these small landers is the limited power resources that do not allow for a narrow temperature range that we had on previous spaceflight missions with plants. Thus, the goal of this project was to extend this temperature range, allowing for greater flexibility in terms of hardware development for growing plants on the Moon. Our working hypothesis was that a mixture of ecotypes of Arabidopsis thaliana from colder and warmer climates would allow us to have successful growth of seedlings. However, our results did not support this hypothesis as a single genotype, Columbia (Col-0), had the best seed germination, growth, and development at the widest temperature range (11–25 °C). Based on results to date, we plan on using the Columbia ecotype, which will allow engineers greater flexibility in designing a thermal system. We plan to establish the parameters of growing plants in the lunar environment, and this goal is important for using plants in a bioregenerative life support system needed for human exploration on the Moon.
Role of Corporate Governance in Bank’s Efficiency in Pakistan

Abstract The purpose of this research paper is to explore the role of corporate governance of banks (independence of the board, board size, CEO duality, audit committee independence, managerial ownership) to boosting up the bank’s efficiency. The study uses bank size, macro-economic conditions, banking structure and economic freedom as control variables. The sample size of the study is 21 Pakistani banks for the period of 2007-2016 and fixed effect panel regression estimation technique is used for data analysis. The results suggest that corporate governance has a statistically significant negative impact on management efficiency, positive effect on profit efficiency and cost efficiency of the banks. Moreover, the findings show that operating efficiency turned out to have a statistically insignificant relationship with corporate governance. Reforms of corporate governance should be adopted efficiently and effectively to boost the banking sector efficiency.
Geographic distance is more relevant than elevation to patterns of outbreeding in Ranunculus bulbosus

Mountain ecosystems can exert different selection pressures on plant populations over small scales due to steep environmental gradients. Gene flow between lower‐ and higher‐elevation plant populations could lead to the increased integration of potentially adaptive genes and thereby to outbreeding vigour under current rapid climatic changes. Alternatively, gene flow across elevation could disrupt gene complexes leading to outbreeding depression. We explored the responses of higher (1800 m a.s.l.) and lower (1200 m a.s.l.) Ranunculus bulbosusL. populations to intra‐ and interelevational and short‐ as well as long‐distance gene flow by means of controlled crosses and assessment of the offspring's germination, growth and fitness. Outbreeding differed between elevations of origin: higher populations were negatively affected by pollen flow from lower populations at the earliest life stages, but tended to be positively affected in terms of growth later on while gene flow across small vs. large distances had no impact on growth traits. Lower populations were not significantly affected by the elevational origin of pollen per se. However, fitness of offspring of populations from both higher and lower elevations was jointly affected by elevational and regional origins of pollen, in which case the gene flow distance had a comparatively stronger positive impact on fitness (outbreeding vigour) than elevational origin. Synthesis: Our results indicate that compared to gene flow at regional scales, gene flow across elevational gradients has a minor effect on R. bulbosus. The lack of outbreeding depression suggests that potentially adaptive genes might well be integrated across populations resulting in an increased resilience of R. bulbosus and potentially similar montane plant species in changing climatic conditions.
The effect of collagen solutions on drug release rate from liposomes

An approach to use of liposomes (phospholipid bilayer vesicles) as a sustained release drug delivery system, should focus on stabilizing the liposomal membrane. Recently, gel matrices or solutionsof collagen attracted much attention for th~s purpose. In this study we tested the effect of collagen solutions (COLLAPUR=COL & COLLAPURON DAK= CD, from Iran H d e , Representativeof Henkle, Tehran, Iran) on the release rate of I(2CrO-l (Merck) as a water soluble substance from Stable PluriLamelar Vesicles (SPLVs).
A study on photo-oxidation under high-NOx conditions forming secondary organic aerosols from isoprene

The oxidation of isoprene (2-methyl-1,3-butadiene) is known to play a central role in the photochemistry of the troposphere, but is generally not considered to lead to the formation of secondary organic aerosol (SOA), due to the relatively high volatility of known reaction products. However, in the chamber studies described here, we measure SOA production from isoprene photo-oxidation under high-NOx conditions, at significantly lower isoprene concentrations than had been observed previously. Mass yields are low (0.9-3.0%), but because of large emissions, isoprene photo-oxidation may still contribute substantially to global SOA production. Results from photo-oxidation experiments of compounds structurally similar to isoprene (1,3-butadiene and 2and 3-methyl-1-butene) suggest that SOA formation from isoprene oxidation proceeds from the further reaction of first-generation oxidation products (i.e., the oxidative attack of both double bonds). The gas-phase chemistry of such oxidation products is in general poorly characterized and warrants further study.
A Coreference-Annotated Corpus for Machine Translation Research

The annotator selection process also took place during the first months. We were able to recruit an experienced annotator for our project. This annotator had been involved in the annotation of coreference and other discourse-related structures in the project GECCo, which was advantageous for us. At the same time, since this person already had a Master’s degree in Translation and Interpreting and was therefore more expensive as an annotator, we reduced her working hours. However, since we saved time that we would have needed for training a less experienced annotator and this annotator works very fast, we achieved the planned aims at lower than budgeted cost despite the higher remuneration.
Improving the Reliability of Bluetooth Low Energy Connections

o sustain a reliable data exchange, applications based on Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) need to effectively blacklist channels and adapt the physical mode of an active connection at runtime. Although the BLE specification foresees the use of these two mechanisms, their implementation is left up to the radio vendors and has not been studied in detail yet. This paper fills this gap: we first investigate experimentally how to assess the quality of a BLE connection at runtime using information gathered from the radio. We then show how this information can be used to promptly blacklist poor channels and select a physical mode that sustains a high link-layer reliability while minimizing power consumption. We implement both mechanisms on two popular platforms and show experimentally that they allow to significantly improve the reliability of BLE connections, with a reduction in packet loss by up to 22 % compared to existing solutions.
Learning Labeled Robot Affordance Models Using Simulations and Crowdsourcing

—Affordance models are widely used in robotics to represent a robot’s possible interactions with its environment. However, robot affordance models are inherently quantitative, making them difﬁcult for humans to understand and interact with. To address this problem, previous works have constructed affordance models by grounding (connecting) them to natural language, but primarily used expert-deﬁned actions, effects, or labels to do so. In this paper, we use short text responses provided by humans and simple randomized robot manipulation actions to construct a labeled affordance model that deﬁnes a relationship between English-language labels and robots’ internal affordance representations. We ﬁrst collect label data from a combination of crowdsourced real-world human-robot interactions and online user studies. We then use this data to train classiﬁers predicting whether or not a particular quantitative affordance will receive a speciﬁc label from a person, achieving an average affordance prediction score of 0.87 (area under Receiver Operating Characteristic curve). Our results also show that labels are more accurately predicted by affordance effects than affordance actions—a result that has been hypothesized in prior work but has never been directly tested. Finally, we develop a technique for automatically constructing a hierarchy of labels from crowdsourced data, discovering structure within the learned labels and suggesting the existence of a more universal set of affordance primitives.
Different mechanisms of carbapenem resistance among blood isolates of Klebsiella pneumoniae and Escherichia coli

The purpose of this study was to characterize the different mechanisms of carbapenem resistance among blood isolates of Klebsiella pneumoniae and Escherichia coli. Meropenem resistant isolates were included. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing, phenotypic and genotypic detection of carbapenemase production were performed. Genetic relatedness of blaNDM-1 producers was determined by pulsedfiled gel electrophoresis (PFGE) typing. The relatedness of blaNDM-1 carrying plasmids was studied by plasmid restriction fragment length polymorphisms (pRFLP) and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) based replicon typing (PBRT) . For the carbapenem gene negative isolates, other possible mechanism of carbapenem resistance such as role of outer membrane porin loss with ESBL or AmpC production, and efflux pumps were analyzed. Among the 162 isolates studied, 1 (0.6%) was found to be blaKPC-3 producer and 42.5% were blaNDM-1 producers. All the isolates were multidrug resistant; two isolates carried both blaNDM-1 and blaVIM-2. PFGE determined blaNDM-1 producers were nonrelated. The plasmids harbouring blaNDM-1belonged to two major incompatibility plasmid types, IncL/M and IncA/C. IncL/M is a novel plasmid group reported firstly from this region. A clonal outbreak of blaIMP-1 K. pneumoniae was identified during this study. This is the first report on the emergence of K. pneumoniae producing blaIMP-1 from South India and blaKPC-3 from India. The study suggest including ertapenem in the routine susceptibility screening to find the true rate of KPC producers in Indian hospitals. Colistin and tigecycline are two drugs that have activity but both have developed resistance. Selection of an appropriate initial antibiotic regimen for empiric therapy, rotation of different antibiotic classes and judicious use of antibiotics are essential.
Is cotton-strip tensile strength a surrogate for microbial activity in groundwater?

The cotton strip assay uses the loss of tensile strength of cotton strips as a measure of microbial cellulolytic activity. Its suitability for measuring general microbial activity in groundwater was tested by examining the relationship of tensile strength, abundance of cellulolytic organisms and general microbial activity on cotton strips deployed in bores. The hypothesis was that the strength of cotton strips would decline with increasing abundance and activity of cellulolytic organisms, and as cellulolysis makes resources available to other microbial groups, cotton strength loss should also be related to increased overall microbial activity. The correlation between the abundance of cellulolytic organisms and cotton strength was not significant. Two main factors influenced this relationship: (i) effectiveness of the media in detecting cellulolytic moulds and (ii) inter-community interactions. After accounting for the presence of moulds through partial correlation, the relationship between tensile strength and abundance of cellulolytic organisms was stronger and significant. Both cotton strength and abundance of cellulolytic organisms correlated significantly with general microbial activity. These results support the use of the cotton strip assay, and cotton tensile strength as a surrogate for microbial activity in groundwater.
DNA methylation during antheridial filament development and spermiogenesis in Chara vulgaris (Charophyceae) analysed by in situ nick-translation driven by methylation-sensitive restriction enzymes

DNA of Chara vulgaris thalli contains target sequences for the methylation-sensitive restriction enzymes, Sau3A, HpaII and MspI. These enzymes were used with the in situ nick-translation radioactive technique to evaluate by grain counting in autoradiograms changes in cytosine methylation during antheridial filament development and spermiogenesis. In successive generations of dividing antheridial filaments the level of DNA methylation gradually increases, then decreases slightly in the early stages of spermiogenesis. Spermatozoids display the highest level of DNA methylation.
Antidepressant use and colorectal cancer morbidity and mortality

Supplemental Digital Content is available in the text Abstract The risk of colorectal cancer associated to antidepressant use remains unclear. The purpose of this meta-analysis was to investigate the risk of colorectal cancer associated to antidepressant use. Medline, Embase, Web of Science, and Cochrane Database were accessed from the dates of their establishment to October 2018, to collect study of antidepressant use and colorectal cancer morbidity and mortality. Then a meta-analysis was conducted using Stata 12.0 software. A total of 11 publications involving 109,506 participants were included. The meta-analysis showed that antidepressant use was not associated with colorectal cancer morbidity (relevant risk (RR): 0.97; 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.94–1.01) and mortality (RR: 1.08; 95% CI: 0.99–1.17). Subgroup analysis showed selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (RR: 0.99; 95% CI: 0.96–1.03) or serotonin norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor (RR: 1.04; 95% CI: 0.86–1.26) were not associated with colorectal cancer risk; however, TCA was associated with colorectal cancer risk decrement (RR: 0.92; 95% CI: 0.87–0.98). Furthermore, the results also showed that antidepressant use was not associated with colorectal cancer risk in Europe and North America (RR: 0.97; 95% CI: 0.92–1.02) and Asia (RR: 1.00; 95% CI: 0.95–1.26). Additionally, a dose-response showed per 1 year of duration of antidepressant use incremental increase was not associated with colorectal cancer risk (RR: 0.96; 95% CI: 0.87–1.09). Evidence suggests that antidepressant use was not associated with colorectal cancer morbidity and mortality. The cumulative duration of antidepressant use did not utilized played critical roles.
Natural cryptic variation in epigenetic modulation of an embryonic gene regulatory network

Significance It has become apparent in recent years that the DNA code is not the sole basis for biological inheritance. Epigenetic tags including DNA methylation, histone modifications, and regulatory RNAs can be transmitted across generations. However, the impact of heritable epigenetic factors on embryonic development is not well understood. We found that starvation-induced developmental diapause triggers transmission of epigenetic memory that affects the specification of the endoderm for multiple generations. These results demonstrate that early life history and cryptic epigenetic factors can impart transgenerational effects that shape embryonic development. Gene regulatory networks (GRNs) that direct animal embryogenesis must respond to varying environmental and physiological conditions to ensure robust construction of organ systems. While GRNs are evolutionarily modified by natural genomic variation, the roles of epigenetic processes in shaping plasticity of GRN architecture are not well understood. The endoderm GRN in Caenorhabditis elegans is initiated by the maternally supplied SKN-1/Nrf2 bZIP transcription factor; however, the requirement for SKN-1 in endoderm specification varies widely among distinct C. elegans wild isotypes, owing to rapid developmental system drift driven by accumulation of cryptic genetic variants. We report here that heritable epigenetic factors that are stimulated by transient developmental diapause also underlie cryptic variation in the requirement for SKN-1 in endoderm development. This epigenetic memory is inherited from the maternal germline, apparently through a nuclear, rather than cytoplasmic, signal, resulting in a parent-of-origin effect (POE), in which the phenotype of the progeny resembles that of the maternal founder. The occurrence and persistence of POE varies between different parental pairs, perduring for at least 10 generations in one pair. This long-perduring POE requires piwi-interacting RNA (piRNA) function and the germline nuclear RNA interference (RNAi) pathway, as well as MET-2 and SET-32, which direct histone H3K9 trimethylation and drive heritable epigenetic modification. Such nongenetic cryptic variation may provide a resource of additional phenotypic diversity through which adaptation may facilitate evolutionary changes and shape developmental regulatory systems.
Does anthropomorphic model design in ex vivo studies affect diagnostic accuracy for dental root fracture using CBCT?

OBJECTIVES The evidence for diagnostic accuracy using CBCT for dental applications depends heavily on ex vivo research, but there is little knowledge of whether the model used affects the diagnostic accuracy results. The objective of this study was to determine the impact of different designs of anthropomorphic models on diagnostic accuracy for the specific task of dental root fracture detection. METHODS Horizontal or oblique root fracture was induced in 24 of 48 permanent maxillary incisors. The 48 teeth were scanned by CBCT using standard clinical exposure factors on five occasions, each with a different model design. Scans were viewed by five dental and maxillofacial radiologists, who each made a forced diagnosis of fracture or no fracture in each root and a judgement on root fracture using a five-point confidence scale. Sensitivity (Se), specificity (Sp) and areas under receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (Az) were calculated for each observer for each model. RESULTS There were no significant differences between the diagnostic accuracy measurements recorded using different models. There were, however, numerous significant differences between observers using the same anthropomorphic model. CONCLUSIONS Despite the differences in X-ray attenuation between the five model designs, the results suggest that the anthropomorphic model does not affect the results of diagnostic accuracy studies on root fractureusing this CBCT machine at standard clinical exposures. This provides some confidence in the previously published evidence. The inter observer diagnosis differences indicate that research using only two observers could provide misleading results.
Conditioned food aversion to control poisoning by Ipomoea carnea subsp. fistulosa in goats

Para testar a tecnica de aversao alimentar condicionada como metodo de controle para a intoxicacao por I. carnea, foram realizados 3 experimentos administrando cloreto de litio (LiCl) na dose de 175-200mg kg-1 apos a ingestao da planta por caprinos. No primeiro, foram induzidos a aversao 10 caprinos que tinham o habito de ingerir a planta e com sinais clinicos da intoxicacao. Apesar da realizacao de diversos tratamentos aversivos, apos os animais ingerirem a planta, a aversao nao foi eficiente, demonstrando que a tecnica nao e eficiente em caprinos que ja estao habituados a ingerir a planta. No segundo experimento, 14 caprinos foram adaptados a ingerir a planta na pastagem e, apos ingerirem a planta a campo, foram induzidos a aversao com LiCl. Neste grupo, a aversao persistiu ate o fim do Experimento, 2 anos e 8 meses apos a aversao. Em outro experimento, 20 caprinos foram adaptados a consumir I. carnea e, em seguida, induzidos a aversao com LiCl. Esses animais foram transferidos para uma propriedade na Ilha de Marajo, onde foram realizadas 9 visitas com intervalos de 2-3 meses para verificar a duracao da aversao. Apos 2 anos de observacoes, nenhum animal voltou a ingerir a planta na pastagem e nao foram observados casos de intoxicacao, enquanto que, em 6 propriedades vizinhas, a doenca foi observada com uma prevalencia de ate 60%. Esses resultados demonstram a eficiencia da aversao alimentar condicionada para evitar a ingestao de I. carnea em caprinos recem adaptados a ingerir a planta, nas regioes invadidas por esta planta e nas condicoes naturais da Ilha de Marajo.
Comparative Study on Antioxidant Potential and Phytochemical Composition of Cumin and Fennel

Antioxidant potentials of methanol extracts of cumin and fennel were determined using free radicals scavenging activity, reducing activity and lipid peroxidation inhibition potential. Phytochemical constituents were identified, and total phenols and flavonoids were quantified to compare between the extracts. Methanol extracts from cumin revealed greater free radical scavenging activities, reducing activity and peroxidation inhibition potential compared to fennel. Total phenolic and flavonoid contents were also higher in cumin seeds than in fennel. Results suggested that free radical scavenging activity of cumin correlated well with polyphenolic concentration, enabling it to serve as a better natural antioxidative source.