Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Use of silicon in rice crop in coastal region of Maharashtra: A review of research

Silicon (Si) is a tetravalent element and the second most abundant element after oxygen in soil which comprises about 28% of the earth's crust. Silicon is required by the every crop but the role of silicon is not specific in every crop that’s why the application of the silicon and essentiality of the silicon is not specified yet with the crop and soil. If we think about the water storage, we are now a days taking tube wells at different depths and accordingly, we are opposing the practice of boring the tube wells because it is our very basic need and without which we cannot survive so we are trying to conserve the water by reducing the practice of boring. At the same time, if we think about the crop cultivation, we are cultivation different crops without application of the silicon to it but when we analyse the yield of plant and residue of the plant in that residue and yield components silica is present at varying level from the silica accumulator to less silica accumulator. The things are just telling that the continuous mining without application of the silicon to the soil it may hampers the content of silicon in the earth crust which has been approximately 28% since I am studying but I am not sure about that the same per cent of silicon is present today also in the earth crust. So I tried to point out the importance of silicon in agriculture in this review article along with the different forms of the silicon present in the soil and different methods by which different scientist have been analysed till today.
Taxonomy and Biology of Calonectria in Brazil

___________________________________________________________ vii GENERAL INTRODUCTION ________________________________________ 1 CHAPTER 1 _____________________________________________________________ 7 Calonectria metrosideri, a highly aggressive pathogen causing leaf blight, root rot , and wilt of Metrosideros spp. in Brazil ________________________________________________ 7 CHAPTER 2 ____________________________________________________________ 29 A new species of Calonectria causing leaf blight and cutting rot of three forest species in Brazil __________________________________________________________________ 29 CHAPTER 3 ____________________________________________________________ 50 Taxonomy of Calonectria in Brazil ___________________________________________ 50 CHAPTER 4 ___________________________________________________________ 118 Resistance of Eucalyptus species to Calonectria pteridis leaf blight ________________ 118
A Weighted Multi-Criteria Decision Making Approach for Image Captioning

Image captioning aims at automatically generating descriptions of an image in natural language. This is a challenging problem in the field of artificial intelligence that has recently received significant attention in the computer vision and natural language processing. Among the existing approaches, visual retrieval based methods have been proven to be highly effective. These approaches search for similar images, then build a caption for the query image based on the captions of the retrieved images. In this study, we present a method for visual retrieval based image captioning, in which we use a multi criteria decision making algorithm to effectively combine several criteria with proportional impact weights to retrieve the most relevant caption for the query image. The main idea of the proposed approach is to design a mechanism to retrieve more semantically relevant captions with the query image and then selecting the most appropriate caption by imitation of the human act based on a weighted multi-criteria decision making algorithm. Experiments conducted on MS COCO benchmark dataset have shown that proposed method provides much more effective results in compare to the state-of-the-art models by using criteria with proportional impact weights .
Intestinal microbiota in growing pigs: effects of stocking density

ABSTRACT This study aimed to assess oxidative stress and microbiota in pigs at different stocking densities. Markers for oxidative stress were investigated and gut bacteria identified. The pigs were randomly assigned to high-, medium- or low-density groups. The results showed that the superoxide dismutase (SOD) levels in the high- and low-density groups were lower than in the medium-density group. Glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) activity was significantly lower in the low-density group and highest in the medium-density group. We found no discrepancies between estimators of bacterial richness across the three groups. The jejunum and ileum were mainly occupied by Firmicutes and Proteobacteria of the classes Bacilli, Clostridia, Erysipelotrichia and Gammaproteobacteria. The ceacum was mainly occupied by Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes of the classes Bacteroidetes, Clostridia and Negativicutes. The results revealed that gut flora was not affected by stocking density. However, stocking density may influence oxidative stress.
First record of Epophthalmia vittata Burmeister, 1839 (Insecta, Odonata, Anisoptera) from Dhaka, Bangladesh

We report Epophthalmia vittata Burmeister, 1839 (Odonata, Anisoptera, Macromiidae) from Bangladesh for the first time, based on a specimen collected on 27 May 2016 in the National Botanical Garden, Dhaka. This is first record of any species of the family Macromiidae from Bangladesh. This new record exemplifies gaps in sampling for dragonflies in Bangladesh and suggests that additional research on odonates in the country is needed.
Otter Lutra lutra predation on farmed and free-living salmonids in boreal freshwater habitats

In this paper we aim to define whether fish farms or stocked trout streams substantially contribute to the diet of otters Lutra lutra living in freshwater habitats of Mid-Finland. Diet was assessed using spraint analysis. We especially focused on areas with fish farms and stocked trout Salmo trutta streams (salmonid-rich habitat) and used ‘normal’ (salmonid-poor) habitats as control. Frequency of salmonid remains in spraints was significantly higher in salmonid-rich habitats than elsewhere in all seasons, the difference increasing from summer to winter. In salmonid-rich habitats, however, salmonid consumption was not strongly seasonal. Data from spraint collection indicated a shift in activity towards salmonid-rich habitats in winter. Otters therefore seem to switch prey seasonally, due to seasonal variation in the availability of other prey categories, by choosing to forage in particular, predictable habitats. Furthermore, our results suggest that, in salmonid-rich habitats, the increase in salmonid frequency is to a larger extent due to the presence of fish farms than that of trout streams. Fish farms, and to a lesser extent stocked streams, may therefore constitute seasonally important feeding grounds for otters.
Neural Topic Model via Optimal Transport

Recently, Neural Topic Models (NTMs) inspired by variational autoencoders have obtained increasingly research interest due to their promising results on text analysis. However, it is usually hard for existing NTMs to achieve good document representation and coherent/diverse topics at the same time. Moreover, they often degrade their performance severely on short documents. The requirement of reparameterisation could also comprise their training quality and model flexibility. To address these shortcomings, we present a new neural topic model via the theory of optimal transport (OT). Specifically, we propose to learn the topic distribution of a document by directly minimising its OT distance to the document's word distributions. Importantly, the cost matrix of the OT distance models the weights between topics and words, which is constructed by the distances between topics and words in an embedding space. Our proposed model can be trained efficiently with a differentiable loss. Extensive experiments show that our framework significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art NTMs on discovering more coherent and diverse topics and deriving better document representations for both regular and short texts.
A versatile anomaly detection method for medical images with a flow-based generative model in semi-supervision setting.

Oversight in medical images is a crucial problem, and timely reporting of medical images is desired. Therefore, an all-purpose anomaly detection method that can detect virtually all types of lesions/diseases in a given image is strongly desired. However, few commercially available and versatile anomaly detection methods for medical images have been provided so far. Recently, anomaly detection methods built upon deep learning methods have been rapidly growing in popularity, and these methods seem to provide reasonable solutions to the problem. However, the workload to label the images necessary for training in deep learning remains heavy. In this study, we present an anomaly detection method based on two trained flow-based generative models. With this method, the posterior probability can be computed as a normality metric for any given image. The training of the generative models requires two sets of images: a set containing only normal images and another set containing both normal and abnormal images without any labels. In the latter set, each sample does not have to be labeled as normal or abnormal; therefore, any mixture of images (e.g., all cases in a hospital) can be used as the dataset without cumbersome manual labeling. The method was validated with two types of medical images: chest X-ray radiographs (CXRs) and brain computed tomographies (BCTs). The areas under the receiver operating characteristic curves for logarithm posterior probabilities of CXRs (0.868 for pneumonia-like opacities) and BCTs (0.904 for infarction) were comparable to those in previous studies with other anomaly detection methods. This result showed the versatility of our method.
The development of AI and its impact on business models, organization and work

This project explores the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its impact on business models, market structure, organization and work. By adopting a history-friendly perspective, the present contribution traces a stylized history of the AI technological domain in order to highlight moments in time, places and sectoral domains that fostered its diffusion and transformative potential. Some descriptive analyses are also provided to investigate the diffusion of AI technologies and, at the same time, the underlying industrial and market dynamics.
2-Thiophenecarboxylic acid hydrazide Derivatives: Synthesis and Anti-Tuberculosis Studies

One of the most frequent and widespread infectious diseases especially in developing countries is tuberculosis (TB). The number of TB drug resistant tend to increase, and there has been no new TB drug introduce since the 1960s. Six 2-Thiophenecarboxylic acid hydrazide derivatives were synthesized in 90-97% yields, and 2-thiophenecarbonylhydrazone-5, 7-dibromoisatin showed the highest activity in inhibiting M. tuberculosis H37Rv.
Adjustment of Weed Hoeing to Narrowly Spaced Cereals

Weed hoeing can be successfully performed in wide row crops, such as sugar beet, maize, soybean and wide spaced cereals. However, little experience is available for hoeing in narrow cereal row spaces below 200 mm. Yet, mechanical weed control can pose an alternative to herbicide applications by reducing the herbicide resistant populations present in the field. In this experiment, it was investigated whether hoeing is feasible in cereals with 150 and 125 mm row spacings. The trial was set up at two locations (Ihinger Hof and Kleinhohenheim) in southwest Germany. Three different conventional hoeing sweeps, a goosefoot sweep, a no-till sweep and a down-cut side knife were adjusted to the small row widths, and hoeing was performed once with a tractor and a standard hoeing frame which was guided by a second human operator. The average grain yield, crop and weed biomass, and weed control efficacy of each treatment were recorded. The goosefoot and no-till sweep were tested at driving speeds of 4 and 6 km·h−1. The down-cut side knife was applied at 4 km·h−1. The results indicate that hoeing caused no yield decrease in comparison to a conventional herbicide application or manual weeding. The highest yield with a mechanical treatment was recorded for the no-till sweeps at both trial locations. Hoeing was performed successfully in narrowly spaced cereals of 150 and 125 mm, and the weed control efficacy of the mechanical treatments ranged from 50.9% at Kleinhohenheim to 89.1% at Ihinger Hof. Future experiments are going to focus on more distinct driving speeds ranging from 2 to 10 km·h−1 and performing more than one pass with the hoe. Additionally, combining the mechanical weeding tools with a camera-steered hoeing frame could increase accuracy, allow for higher working speeds and substitute the second human operator guiding the hoe.
Soil microbes promote complementarity effects among co‐existing trees through soil nitrogen partitioning

Plant resource partitioning is a mechanism promoting species coexistence and ecosystem functioning. Yet, we still have limited understanding of how soil microbes, especially plant symbiotic microbes, influence resource partitioning. We hypothesized that soil-borne microbes, in particular mycorrhizal fungi, facilitate differential performance of tree species depending on different nitrogen sources and that this leads to a positive plant diversity-community productivity relationship. We conducted two complementing glasshouse experiments. In a "monoculture experiment," we supplied nitrogen as ammonium, nitrate or glycine and tested the growth response of three tree species associated with different root symbionts: one associated with ectomycorrhizal fungi, one associated with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, and the third associated with both arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and N-fixing bacteria. In an "intermixed experiment," we grew the tree species at three richness levels (one, two or three species) in soil supplied with a mix of the three nitrogen forms or no added nitrogen, and with or without soil microbes. The monoculture experiment showed that in the presence of soil microbes, the ectomycorrhizal plant species grew best when supplied with glycine and the two arbuscular mycorrhizal plant species grew best with either nitrate or ammonium addition. When the different forms of nitrogen were mixed in the intermixed experiment, plant mixtures produced more biomass than plant monocultures in the presence of soil microbes, with positive complementarity effects indicating microbe-mediated plant resource partitioning. Our results suggest that co-existing tree species can partition soil nitrogen when grown with their particular mycorrhizal symbionts or other soil microbes, resulting in positive biodiversity effects in complex resource environments. A plain language summary is available for this article.
Checkpoint signaling abrogation after cell cycle reentry reveals that differentiated neurons are mitotic cells

Mitotic activity associated to neuron cell-death instead of cell-division is reported in neurodegenerative diseases. However, why mitotic activity can take place in supposedly postmitotic neurons and how it is associated to cell-death remains largely unexplained. To address these questions, we have studied the response of primary neurons to oncogenic deregulation using a fusion protein based on truncated Cyclin E and Cdk2. Oncogenic Cyclin E/Cdk2 elicits mitotic checkpoint signaling, resulting in cell-cycle arrest and cell-death. However, as in mitotic cells, checkpoint suppression enables oncogenic cell-cycle progression and neuronal division. Further, neurons actively adapt to the cell-cycle by losing and reforming the axon initial segment, which integrates synaptic inputs to sustain action potentials. We conclude that neurons are mitotic cells in a reversible quiescent-like state, which is falsely portrayed as irreversible by mitotic checkpoints. In extension, neuronal death in lieu of cell-division reflects oncosuppressive checkpoint signaling.
Adaptive wear-based changes in dental topography associated with atelid (Mammalia: Primates) diets

1Department of Exercise Science, High Point University, High Point, NC 27260, USA 2Department of Physician Assistant Studies, High Point University, High Point, NC, USA 3Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA 4Department of Biology and Marine Biology, University of North Carolina at Wilmington, Wilmington, NC, USA 5Department of Anthropology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA 6Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA 7Shared Materials Instrumentation Facility (SMIF), Pratt School of Engineering, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA 8Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville, Greenville, SC, USA 9Division of Earth and Ocean Sciences, Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University, Durham, NC 27710, USA
The influence of genetic relatedness on sociality and demography of female African elephants

i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . iii CONTENTS. v CHAPTER ONE . 1 GENERAL INTRODUCTION . 1 The effects of poaching on African elephants . 1 The African elephant . 1 Sociality and demographics . 3 Overview of altruism, Hamilton‟s rule and other forms of social behaviour . 4 Study site . 7 Study population . 7 Thesis objectives and approach . 11 CHAPTER TWO . 14 DIFFERENCES IN THE EXPRESSION OF GROUP FORMATION, SIZE AND RELATEDNESS IN AFRICAN ELEPHANT POPULATIONS . 14 INTRODUCTION . 14 MATERIALS AND METHODS . 19 Tarangire study site and population . 19 Addo study site and population . 20 Genetic sampling and DNA analysis . 21 Data processing and statistical analyses . 23 RESULTS . 25 DISCUSSION . 28 CHAPTER THREE . 33 GENETIC RELATEDNESS REFLECTS COMPETITIVE BEHAVIOUR IN FEMALE AFRICAN ELEPHANTS . 33 INTRODUCTION . 33
Insight from morphology and phylogeny in species delimitation of Diaporthe

Members of Diaporthe are known as plant pathogens, endophytes or saprobes on a wide range of host plants. Diaporthe species are wellknown as the causal agents of many important plant diseases; including root and fruit rots, dieback, stem cankers, leaf spots, leaf and pod blights, and seed decay (Udayanga et al., 2011). Diaporthe helianthi is the causal agent of one of the most important diseases of sunflower (Helianthus annuus) worldwide, and is also listed in the Chinese quarantine directory (Thompson et al., 2011). For plant pathologists, studying of phytopathogenic Diaporthe spp. is therefore particularly important to work on wide range of plant diseases (e.g. grapes, sunflowers, soybean, and various diseases associated with ornamentals and forest trees). The taxonomy of Diaporthe spp. has recently been reviewed in several impactful studies (Udayanga et al., 2011; Gomes et al., 2013).
Policy Optimization Reinforcement Learning with Entropy Regularization

Entropy regularization is an important idea in reinforcement learning, with great success in recent algorithms like Soft Q Network (SQN) and Soft Actor-Critic (SAC1). In this work, we extend this idea into the on-policy realm. We propose the soft policy gradient theorem (SPGT) for on-policy maximum entropy reinforcement learning. With SPGT, a series of new policy optimization algorithms are derived, such as SPG, SA2C, SA3C, SDDPG, STRPO, SPPO, SIMPALA and so on. We find that SDDPG is equivalent to SAC1. For policy gradient, the policy network is often represented as a Gaussian distribution with a global action variance, which damages the representation capacity. We introduce a local action variance for policy network and find it can work collaboratively with the idea of entropy regularization. Our method outperforms prior works on a range of benchmark tasks. Furthermore, our method can be easily extended to large scale experiment with great stability and parallelism.
Comparative Termite (Isoptera) Diversity in Three Different Habitats of Shivamogga District, Karnataka, India1

Abstract A comparative study of termite (Isoptera: Termitidae) species diversity and richness in three ecologically different habitats was conducted in the Shivamogga District of Karnataka, India, from September 2014 to August 2015. A standard belt transect method was used to sample the termites in each habitat for the duration of the study. The three habitats studied were rainforest, semimalnad represented by degraded forest area that was previously rainforest, and maidan represented by open field and plantation crops with no tree cover. Twenty-two species were collected, all representing the family Termitidae. Nine species were recorded from the maidan habitat, 14 species from the semimalnad habitat, and 18 species from a rainforest habitat. Of the 18 species recorded from the rainforest, 6 were exclusively recorded there and not in the maidan or the semimalnad habitats. Species richness, as indicated by Shannon's diversity index (H), was highest in the rainforest (1.62), followed by the semimalnad (1.43) and maidan (1.13) habitats. The variation in diversity across these three habitats is attributed to anthropogenic disturbance, cropping patterns, topography, and bioclimatic factors. Implications of habitat disturbance on termite diversity are discussed.
Isolation of Thermotolerant Pathogenic Naegleria australiensis from Diverse Water Resources Including Household Drinking Water in Pakistan

Naegleria is well recognized for primary amoebic meningoencephalitis which always results into death. To date there is not a single report demonstrating molecular identification of Naegleria from water resources of Pakistan thus the aim of the proposed study. Here, in total 135 various water samples (like domestic tap water, municipal water, sea water, well water, tube well water, canal water, boring water, sewage water, lake water and stream water) were collected across Pakistan and evaluated for Naegleria species. Naegleria australiensis (pathogenic) and Naegleria lovaniensis (non pathogenic) were isolated on non nutrient agar plates and were further identified by PCR and sequencing. To best of our knowledge we have described for the first time the isolation and molecular identification of thermotolerant pathogenic and non pathogenic Naegleria species from diverse water samples including drinking water across Pakistan. The presence of pathogenic Naegleria species in diverse water samples may add the health threat to the community.