Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Carrion decomposition and nutrient cycling in a semiarid shrub–steppe ecosystem

Vertebrate carrion decomposition and nutrient cycling have both direct and indirect effects on the soil properties, fauna, and flora associated with an animal's carcass. While few comprehensive quantitative studies have been undertaken, those that have show considerable variability in decomposition processes and rates, their regulating variables, and the resultant ecosystem effects. In this two-part study, decomposition rates of vertebrate species were measured in a semiarid, shrub–steppe environment (Wyoming, USA). First, decomposition loss rates of mass, energy, and nutrients were measured for rat carcasses (Rattus norvegicus) in four seasons and two microsites (surface and underground burrows). Decomposition rates varied significantly between microsites (burrow > surface in spring and summer) and among seasons (spring > summer > autumn ≈ winter), with mass loss amounts linearly correlated with ambient air temperatures. Energy and nutrient losses were related to phased carcass organ/tissue losses, with .
Design, modeling, and performance of a bidirectional stick-slip piezoelectric actuator with coupled asymmetrical flexure hinge mechanisms

A stick-slip piezoelectric actuator with bidirectional motion is proposed and measured, which uses coupled asymmetrical flexure hinge mechanisms and symmetrical indenter to generate controllable tangential displacement. The operating principle of the proposed stick-slip actuator is illustrated, and the normal force variation between the stator and slider is analyzed. A dynamic model based on the method of dimensionality reduction is established to simulate the displacement and load capacity. In order to obtain improved actuator properties, the design rules of the coupled flexure hinge mechanisms are discussed, and the tangential and normal displacements of the indenter are investigated by the finite element method. A prototype is fabricated, and the experiment investigation of the actuator characteristics is presented. Testing results indicate that the actuator achieves the maximum output velocity of 10.14 mm/s and its maximum load reaches 1.5 N under a voltage of 100 Vp–p and a frequency of 850 Hz in the positive x-direction. The maximum efficiency of the actuator is 0.57% with a load of 90 g, a locking force of 5 N, and the actuated velocity of 5.48 mm/s. In addition, experimental results confirm the feasibility of the presented model by comparing numerical simulation results.
Balancing Assembly Line of Sofa Sets in a Furniture Factory and Measuring the Efficiency of the System by A Simulation

The assembly line is a system which is formed by the integration of some workstations by a material handling system. The purpose of the system is to achieve a finished product by the assembly of the components of it. Assembly process is composed of the order of the components of the work, or of the tasks that have to be performed in order. The assembly of the components is performed by considering the priority of them in the related workstations which are decided previously Position Weighted Balancing Method which is one of the intuitive solution methods of the Assembly Line Balancing Problems is used in this study. By this method, the manufacturing operation time in a production line of the workflow plan in a furniture factory has been examined; and conclusions have been proposed accordingly. Within the study, time measurements, data from work study and workflow plans during the production process have been modeled with the help of Arena simulation software. The weak points of the system have been detected according to simulation data of the current state. Considering these weak points, Position Weighted Balancing Method has assigned operations to the workstations. According to the results of the simulation, improvements have been observed on the parameters of product quantity and the system performance (the duration of supply, the rates of capacity utilization of personnel, cycle time and the workstations).
Chlorophyll metabolism in higher plants. VII. Chlorophyll degradation in senescing tobacco leaves; phenolic-dependent peroxidative degradation

Not only solubilized chlorophyll but also membrane (thylakoid) and protein (light-harvesting chlorophyll–protein complex) bound chlorophyll of tobacco plants was bleached by a phenolic–peroxidase–H2O2 system. The bleaching rate of thylakoid membranes in old leaves was higher than in young leaves. A similar phenomenon was observed in thylakoid membranes prepared from aged leaves. Peroxidase activity, peroxide content, and total phenolic content were high in senescent tobacco leaves. The defence mechanism against peroxidative chlorophyll degradation was less active in senescent leaves than in young leaves. These results suggest that deterioration of the subcellular environment induced by senescence accelerates chlorophyll bleaching by a peroxidase-catalyzed reaction.
The interplay between bacterial community composition and the environment determining function of inland water bacteria

We hypothesized that habitats differing in water flow regime would differ in bacterial function either because of differences in the local environment, in bacterial community composition (BCC), or in the mechanism shaping BCC (community assembly). In 20 lakes and 17 inlet streams BCC was analyzed by terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism of the gene coding for 16S ribosomal RNA, and bacterial function was estimated as bacterial production rate (BP, measured as leucine incorporation) per content of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) (BP : DOC). BCC in both lakes and streams appeared to be shaped by local environmental forces (i.e., species sorting according to metacommunity theory), but not by massive introduction of cells from the drainage area (mass effect). BP :DOC was lower in streams than in lakes, which appeared to be both because of differences in BCC and environment between lakes and streams, independent of each other. We found no support for an effect of water flow regime in itself (i.e., cell dispersal rate) causing the lower functionality of the streams. In streams, BP :DOC was correlated to both BCC and environment, independent of each other, while in lakes function could not be explained by either BCC or environment. The greater environmental variability among our streams than among our lakes may be the cause for the stronger BCC‐function coupling in our streams, since smaller environmental variation among our lakes would allow a greater functional redundancy.
Density and species diversity of trees in four tropical forests of the Albertine rift, western Uganda

We assessed tree species density and diversity in 12 1‐ha plots in four forests of the Albertine rift, western Uganda. There were 5747 trees of diameter ≥ 10 cm in 53 families, 159 genera, and 212 species. Density ranged between 344 and 557 trees ha−1 (average 479 trees ha−1). Tree species diversity was highest in the Bwindi and Budongo forests. The Euphorbiaceae family was the most species rich (25 species) followed by Rubiaceae and Meliaceae with 16 species each. Canonical Correspondence Analysis (CCA) showed that major gradients in environmental variables influenced tree species distribution. Sample scores on ordination axes 1 and 2 were strongly correlated with pH and altitude, respectively. Correlated with rainfall and other soil factors, pH and altitude are presumed to be among the most important in influencing the distribution of tree species in the Albertine rift forests. Strategies that take account of variations in pH and elevation are required to conserve tree species in forests of the Albertine rift.
Deoxynivanol (DON) and fumonisins B 1 (FB 1 ) in artisanal sorghum opaque beer brewed in north Cameroon

The production and consumption of artisanal home-brewed sorghum beer (Bil-bil and Kpata ) is a widespread traditional practice in the northern Sudan-Sahelian zone of Cameroon. Deoxynivanol (DON) and fumonisins B 1 (FB 1) in these home-brewed artisanal opaque beer samples extracted by HPLC method, before analysis by the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) procedure, showed a wide range of levels. All samples were positive for DON and FB 1. DON levels varies from 140 to 730 ng/ml with a mean of 450 ±90 ng/ml for Bil bil and from 0.0 to 680 ng/ml with a mean of 520±70 ng/ml in Kpata . The recorded levels of fumonisin B 1 varies from 0.0 to 230 ng/ml with a mean of 150±24 ng/ml in Bil-bil and from 0.5 to 340 ng/ml with a mean of 210±10 in Kpata . On the basis of published data for the consumption of artisanal home-brewed sorghum beer (Bil-bil and Kpata ) in Cameroon, the fumonisin and deoxynevanol exposure in these regions among the consumers was found to be well above the provisional maximum tolerable daily intake.
Second heart sound splitting as an indicator of interventricular mechanical dyssynchrony using a novel splitting detection algorithm

Second heart sound (S2) splitting results from nonsimultaneous closures between aortic (A2) and pulmonic valves (P2) and may be used to detect timing differences (dyssynchrony) in relaxation between right (RV) and left ventricle (LV). However, overlap of A2 and P2 and the change in heart sound morphologies have complicated detection of the S2 splitting interval. This study introduces a novel S‐transform amplitude ridge tracking (START) algorithm for estimating S2 splitting interval and investigates the relationship between S2 splitting and interventricular relaxation dyssynchrony (IRD). First, the START algorithm was validated in a simulated model of heart sound. It showed small errors (<5 ms) in estimating splitting intervals from 10 to 70 ms, with A2/P2 amplitude ratios from 0.2 to 5, and signal‐to‐noise ratios from 10 to 30 dB. Subsequently, the START algorithm was evaluated in a porcine model employing a wide range of paced RV‐LV delays. IRD was quantified by the time difference between invasively measured LV and RV pressure downslopes. Between LV pre‐excitation to RV pre‐excitation, mean S2 splitting interval decreased from 47 ms to 23 ms (p < .001), accompanied by a decrease in mean IRD from 8 ms to −18 ms (p < .001). S2 splitting interval was significantly correlated with IRD in each experiment (p < .001). In conclusion, the START algorithm can accurately assess S2 splitting and may serve as a useful tool to assess interventricular dyssynchrony.
Detecting and Analyzing Text Reuse with BLAST

We present a software for retrieving and exploring duplicated text passages in low quality OCR historical text corpora. The system combines NCBI BLAST, a software created for comparing and aligning biological sequences, with the Solr search and indexing engine, providing a web interface to easily query and browse the clusters of duplicated texts. We demonstrate the system on a corpus of scanned and OCR-recognized Finnish newspapers and journals from years 1771 to 1910.
Revision der von E. Goeldi aus dem Amazonasgebiet beschriebenen Chironomiden (Diptera) Chironomidenstudien X

Resumen Os primeiros chironomideos conhecidos na Amazonia foram descritos como Chironomus calligraphus e. Chironomus holoprasinus de E. Goeldi em 1905. Larvas, pupas e imagines, que tem sido criadas no loco tipico, foram novamente trabalhadas. Para a especie de E. Goeldi nomeada C. holoprasinus foi instituido o genero Goeldichironomus, que tem certas relac[otilde]es de parentesco com o genero Chironomus, contudo marcado de alguns caracteristicos plesiomorphos e apomorphos. A especie Chironomus fulvipilus Rempel e um sinonimo da Goeldichironomus holoprasinus, que se extende do Sul dos Estados Unidos da Central America ao Nordeste do Brasil. Chironomus calligraphus corresponde ao tipo do genero, mas nao pode‐ser classificado no agrupamento larval. Chironomus aversa Roback 1962 de Panama e um sinonimo desta especie.
Trophic Changes in Reservoirs; An Hypothesis Using Phosphorus Budget Models

Current empirical models used to predict phosphorus concentration from loading, retention and discharge data assume a phosphorus load which is constant in time. Such models are clearly inappropriate in relation to reservoirs. In a study of several lakes and a reservoir in western Labrador, the phosphorus budget model was found to be an excellent predictor of phosphorus concentration in the natural lakes, but seriously underestimated phosphorus concentration in the reservoir. Since leaching of nutrients from inundated soils and vegetation is generally considered to be the cause of trophic changes in reservoirs, a time dependent “leach loading” component was built into the steady state phosphorus budget model. This component not only allowed the budget to be balanced, but allowed the estimation of leaching coefficients describing the rate of phosphorus loss from submerged soils and vegetation. Using literature data from other reservoirs, the modified model predicted phosphorus dynamics consistent with other observed trophic status indicators.
MAJOR TRANSITIONS IN ANIMAL EVOLUTION : A DEVELOPMENTAL GENETIC PERSPECTIVE

SYNOPSIS. Several phases of animal evolution have undergone radical change in developmental mechanisms. I refer to these as major transitions in animal evolution. The six most important transitions in the lineage leading to humans are proposed to be: the origin of multicellularity, the origin of two-germ layers and radial symmetry, the origin of three-germ layers and bilateral symmetry, dorsoventral axis inversion, the origin of vertebrates, the origin of gnathostomes. Here I discuss the genetic changes that may have underlain these transitions. The last two transitions were accompanied by, and possibly facilitated by, large increases in gene number. This probably occurred by tetraploidy, with some of the duplicate genes being subsequently lost. The origin of three germ-layers, bilateral symmetry and a through gut also probably involved gene duplication; in this case, duplication of an ancestral ProtoHox gene cluster to yield two paralogous homeobox gene clusters, Hox and ParaHox, with roles in patterning different germ layers along the anteroposterior body axis. This event may provide a partial genetic explanation for the Cambrian explosion.
PHYLOGENETIC ANALYSIS OF IRANIAN POWDERY MILDEW FUNGI USING NUCLEOTIDE SEQUENCES OF 28S RIBOSOMAL DNA

The nucleotide sequences of 28S nuclear rDNA were determined for 34 powdery mildew taxa mostly collected from Iran in order to infer the phylogenetic relationships of these fungi. Total DNA was isolated from cleistothecia or mycelia using the chelex method. About a 650 nucleotide length of the 5´end of the 28S rDNA was amplified twice by the PCR using a nested primer set, PM3, TW14 and NLP2. Direct sequencing of the PCR product was done in an Applied Biosystems 373A sequencer. The results showed that powdery mildew taxa are divided into five groups, which were distinguished by their morphology. Members of Erysiphe section Erysiphe, Microsphaera and Uncinula clustered together. E. sect. Galeopsidis and E. sect. Golovinomyces were seperated from E. sect. Erysiphe and formed the Euoidium without fibrosin bodies group. Leveillula and Phyllactinia showed a close evolutionary relationship and clustered together. The genera Cystotheca, Podosphaera, Sawadaea, and Sphaerotheca formed a monophyletic group (fibrosin body lineage) with 98% bootstrap support. These fungi are well characterized by the presence of fibrosin bodies in their conidia. Blumeria graminis, which is characterized by some unique morphological characters, clustered with fibrosin body lineage with a low bootstrap value. This result shows that B. graminis is not closely related to the Erysiphe species. The nucleotide divergence between the genera analyzed in this study ranged from 0.50 to 14.10%. The lowest nucleotide divergence was found between Microsphaera and E. sect. Erysiphe (0.50–4.50%). Podosphaera and Sphaerotheca showed a low level of divergence, too (2.30-2.60%), which suggests a close relationship between these two genera.
The semantic interpretation of compound nominals

This thesis is an investigation of how a computer can be programmed to understand the class of linguistic phenomena loosely referred to as nominal compounds, i.e. sequences of two or more nouns related through modification. Examples of the kinds of nominal compounds dealt with are: 'engine repairs', 'aircraft flight arrival', 'aluminum water pump', and 'noun noun modification'. The interpretation of nominal compounds is divided into three intertwined subproblems: lexical interpretation (mapping words into concepts), modifier parsing (discovering the structure of strings with more than two nominals) and concept modification (assigning an interpretation to the modification or one concept by another). This last problem is the focus of this research. The essential feature of this form of modification is that the underlying semantic relationship which exists between the two concepts is not explicit. Moreover, a large number of relationships might, in principal, exist between the two concepts. The selection of the most appropriate one depends on a host of semantic, pragmatic and contextual factors. As a part of this research, a computer program has been written which builds an appropriate semantic interpretation when given a string of nouns. This program has been designed as one component of the natural language question answering system JETS. The interpretation is done by a set of semantic interpretation rules. Some of the rules are very specific, capturing the meaning of idioms and canned-phrases. Other rules are very general, representing fundamental case-like relationships which can hold between concepts. A strong attempt has been made to handle as much as possible with the more general, highly productive rules. The approach has been built around a frame-based representational system which represents concepts and the relationships between them. The concepts are organized into an abstraction hierarchy which supports inheritance of attributes. The same representational system is used to encode the semantic interpretation rules. An important part of the system is the concept matcher which, given two concepts, determines whether the first describes the second and, if it does, how well.
A simplified method to test cereal frost tolerance

Testing cereal frost tolerance goes back for decades in the Agricultural Research Institute, Martonvasar, Hungary. The climatic programmes used in the plant growth chamber have proved to be fairly efficient, but these methods are time-consuming and have become quite expensive in recent years. An attempt was made to shorten this process by reducing the cold hardening phase, and the freezing test has been simplified and shortened by measuring the relative conductance of leaf segments frozen in a liquid freezer. Frost-tolerant and sensitive wheat lines were tested, and the sensitivity of the system was checked by testing single chromosome substitution lines. Differences were found for all lines frozen at different temperatures. To reduce the costs of the experiment it was attempted to cold-harden the plants not only in a growth chamber but also in a cold room under very low light intensity and it was found that even under thess unfavourable conditions the plants developed a certain level of frost tolerance.
Analysis of molecular and morphological characteristics of plants transformed with antifungal gene

A defensin gene isolated from chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.), Ca-AFP in the background of pCAMBIA1301 was transferred into tobacco (Nicotiana tabaccum L. var. petit havana) genome following transformation using Agrobacterium tumefaciens strain LBA4404. Although all the explants showed GUS activity after co-cultivation, transgenic tobacco shoots were regenerated only from those explants cultured in presence of bacteriostatic antibiotic carbenicillin under hygromycin selection. Presence of the antifungal gene in the regenerated plants was confirmed by PCR, while integration of the whole T-DNA was demonstrated by southern blot hybridization. Furthermore, southern blot hybridization revealed that most of the transgenics contained single copy of the T-DNA while few were found to have multiple copies. Expression of the GUS and Ca-AFP genes in the transgenic plants was observed. Morphological analysis demonstrated that presence of the transgenes produced no morphological abnormality or yield discrepancy in the transgenics.
Phylogenetic community structure when competition and environmental filtering determine abundances

Aim: Ecologists have long been concerned with understanding how local communities are assembled from the pool of species present in the broader biogeographical region. Although there has been considerable interest in the use of measures of species relatedness as tools to detect community assembly process, empirical and simulation studies have produced mixed results on the effectiveness of the technique. Here, we ask how well the most commonly used metrics of such community phylogenetic patterns detect the operation of filtering and competition in simulated communities where filtering and competition determine species abundances as well as co-occurrence patterns. Location: Simulated local communities assembled from a simulated regional species pool. Methods: We simulate the evolution of niche traits for a regional species pool on a phylogeny, and then simulate the assembly of a local community from this regional species pool using a Lotka–Volterra model. We then test whether the net relatedness index (NRI) or the nearest taxon index (NTI) can detect the assembly process. We compare the performance of abundance-weighted (NRIAW and NTIAW) and occurrence-based (NRIO and NTIO) versions of the metrics along a gradient of local community size as a percentage of the regional pool. Results: We find that abundance weighting can substantially increase the power to detect assembly processes. Moreover, clustering and over-dispersion are, in fact, most detectable when assembly processes act mainly on abundance rather than occurrence. Where they differed, NTIAW tended to outperform NRIAW at detecting limiting-similarity competition. NRIAW outperformed NTIAW at detecting filtering except when filtering was very strong compared with limiting-similarity competition. Main conclusions: Our findings imply that phylogenetic information is more likely to yield information about community assembly when abundance information is incorporated, and local communities contain a relatively large fraction of the regional species pool.
New Technologies for Treatment of Coronary Artery Disease

Despite tremendous advances in therapy and prevention, cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), including acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and its complication heart failure, are the leading causes of death worldwide [1-3]. Therefore, translational research and basic science becomes necessary to discover the novel mechanisms responsible for cardiovascular repair during athero-thrombosis which results in to AMI [4-6]. The inflammatory tissue in the myocardium and the intensity of neuro-humoral dysfunction after AMI are important determinants of complications as well as subsequent healing process. The increase in leucocytes; neutrophils, macrophages and lymphocytes in the myocardium contribute to the clearance of dead cells from the myocardial tissues while activating reparative pathways necessary for myocardial remodeling [5,7]. The thinning of the wall occurs due to apoptosis of cardiomyocyte with triggering of ventricular dilation and subcellular remodeling, leading to left ventricular dysfunction [7-9]. The underlying mechanisms appear to be increase in cortisol and vasopressin causing neuro-humoral dysfunction and oxidative stress, leading to inflammation and apoptosis [8-10].