Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Antibacterial activity of different types of snake venom from the Viperidae family against Staphylococcus aureus

Toxins and venoms produced by living organisms have exhibited a variety of biological activities against microorganisms. In this study, we tested seven snake venoms from the family Viperidae for antibacterial activity and the activities of reversal of antibiotic resistance and inhibition of biofilm formation against 22 clinical isolates of Staphylococcus aureus. Bothrops moojeni venom exhibited anti staphylococcal activity with the lowest mean value of minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC). Moreover, reversal of antibiotic resistance was observed for combinations of B. moojeni venom (1⁄2 x MIC) and norfloxacin or ampicillin (both 1⁄2 x MIC) for 86.4% and 50% of the isolates, respectively. B. moojeni venom alone at 1⁄2 MIC inhibited 90% of biofilm formation, whereas in combination with ciprofloxacin, both at 1⁄2 MIC, a reduction on the NorA efflux pump activity was observed. The detection of in vitro mutants colonies of S. aureus resistant to B. moojeni venom was low and they did not survive. A phospholipase A2 was purified from the venom of B. moojeni and displayed anti-staphylococcal activity when tested alone or in combination with ciprofloxacin. The results presented here will contribute to the search for new antimicrobial agents against resistant S. aureus.
IPARD funds in the function of the development of the rural areas of the Republic of Serbia

By acquiring the conditions for the usage of the pre-accession funds of the European Union, concretely the instrument for rural development (Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance in Rural Development - IPARD), The Republic of Serbia (RS) will have a chance to improve the position of its agricultural farms and the conditions of its rural areas. Agriculture is specifically important for the economy in RS, and the rural population makes up almost one-half of the population, which additionally enlarges an interest in these funds. In addition, the objective of the research is to identify the effects of the usage of the IPARD funds on the development of the rural areas, respectively the socio-economic progress of the rural population. A qualitative descriptive analysis on the basis of the empirical data was used. The basic conclusions are that, thus, structured funds will have a limited impact on the reduction in the development inequalities and the achievement of the parity living conditions between the rural and the urban areas. Namely, the dominant focus of the IPARD funds on the investments in agricultural farms and enterprises, and not in rural households, limits the level of their impact on the rural development in RS.
Performance Anxiety Disorder: Developing a Proposal for an Inventory, According to the Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy Rationale

This editorial aims at the presentation of a proposal regarding an inventory about performance anxiety disorder in a cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) framework. It provides some initial understanding as to that condition and how CBT could assist in the consideration of it counter to social anxiety disorder. At first, there is an introduction to performance anxiety in line to social anxiety/phobia and some questionnaires that have been developed which include performance anxiety as an element of social anxiety/phobia. Then, I am presenting the proposal, both in view to the rationale for that and the construction of an inventory with items drawn from elements that performance anxiety is related with, such as uneasiness about worry, self-focus issues of perfectionism and internal/external shame ideas. The statements in the inventory refer to hypothetical examples in life so inventory to be easily responded to, when administered to participants. This proposal closes with the conclusion that the questionnaire will be pilot-studied in the future by the author so the feasibility of it and/or possible changes to be considered when empirically studied.
Notes on interpolation of Hardy spaces

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RUNNING HEAD: Being blamed Guilt in Response to Blame from Others

In three studies, participants rated appraisals and emotions associated with situations in which someone else blamed them for something that was not their fault. Although the instructions made no reference to guilt, several participants spontaneously reported experiencing this emotional reaction in all three studies. Using event-contingent diaries, study 1 found that rated self-blame appraisals were only weakly correlated with reported guilt when blame was directed at participants without good reason. Using directed retrospective recall, study 2 found that guilt was higher in a blamed than an unblamed condition and that the desire to apologise reliably predicted guilt even after controlling for all appraisals relating to self-blame in the blamed condition. Study 3 again used retrospective recall but included an orthogonal manipulations of self-blame and blame from others. Guilt was significantly higher in blamed conditions when self-blame was low, but not when it was high. These findings show that self-blame is often but not always a strong predictor of guilt and other relational variables sometimes contribute independently to this emotion. Under certain circumstances, guilt can arise in response to someone else’s blame even when there is little or no self-blame. Thus, the relationship between self-blame and guilt may be variable rather than determinate.
Protein composition and techno-functional properties of transgenic wheat with reduced α-gliadin content obtained by RNA interference

An RNA interference approach was applied to silence α-gliadin genes in hexaploid wheat. A 313 bp fragment from the 5’ coding region of an α-gliadin sequence was cloned into the “hairpin” (hpRNAi) constructs pGliaRNAiSpacer and transformed into winter wheat cv. Florida by biolistic transformation. The resulting transgenic lines were then analysed for their α-gliadin content by an extraction/RPHPLC method. Distinct differences of the α-gliadin content ranging from unaltered to strongly reduced were found. Kernels of two lines with strongly reduced α-gliadin content were mixed, milled to white fl our, analysed for quantitative protein composition and used for functional testing in comparison with the wild type fl our. Protein analysis revealed that the lack of α-gliadins was compensated by an increase of albumins/globulins, ω-gliadins, γ-gliadins and HMW glutenin subunits. Dough resistance and extensibility of wild type and transgenic lines were similar, whereas gluten resistance of the transgenic increased drastically and extensibility decreased slightly. 2D gel electrophoresis showed that the transgenic wheat #6/6 lacked at least 20 storage proteins, but other distinct proteins were more abundant compared with the wild type. Major reductions in the α-gliadins do not make discernable differences in micro-scale measurements of flour functionality and have only a slightly detrimental effect in micro-baking tests.
Research of Innovation Diffusion on Industrial Networks

The real value of innovation consists in its diffusion on industrial network. The factors which affect the diffusion of innovation on industrial network are the topology of industrial network and rules of diffusion. Industrial network is a complex network which has scale-free and small-world characters; its structure has some affection on threshold, length of path, enterprise’s status, and information share of innovation diffusion. Based on the cost and attitude to risk of technical innovation, we present the “avalanche” diffusing model of technical innovation on industrial network.
Response of sheep fed on concentrate containing feather meal and supplemented with mineral Chromium

A study was conducted to evaluate the effect of substitution of protein concentrate with feather meal supplemented with organic chromium mineral on performance of lambs. Twenty five male lambs were fed basal feed of fresh chopped king grass ad libitum and were allotted to either one of five different supplements (five dietary treatments): Control (C); 10% of protein in concentrate was substituted by feather meal (FM); 10% of protein in concentrate was substituted by feather meal supplemented with Cr yeast at 1.5 mg (FMCrOrg); 10% of protein in concentrate was substituted by feather meal supplemented with Cr inorganic which equal to the amount of Cr bound in yeast (FMCr); Concentrate control supplemented with 1.5 mg Cr yeast (CCrOrg). Cr-organic was synthesized by incorporating CrCl3 in fermented rice flour by Rhizopus sp. The mineral is mixed with feather meal as a mineral carrier. Sheep in all treatments received iso protein concentrate. Parameters observed were body weight change, feed consumption and nutrient digestibility. Results shows that there was no significant effect of diet treatments on average daily gain (ADG), dry matter consumption and feed conversion, with the average value of 75.4 gr/day; 74.9 g/BW 0.75 and 9.9 respectively, However diet treatment of organic chromium and protein substitution with feather meal (FMCrOrg) showed tendency of having higher ADG (83.57 g/h/d). Average nutrient digestibility of dry matter, organic matter and NDF were 68.7; 69.6 and 60.9%, respectively. However NDF digestibility of FMCrOrg tended to be higher than other treatment (67.0%). It is concluded that partial substitution of protein concentrate by feather meal and 1.5 mg Cr-organic supplementation did not affect sheep performance. Key Words : Chromium, Sheep, Feather Meal, Supplementation
Impacts of fire and grazing management on South Africa's moist highland grasslands: A case study of the Steenkampsberg Plateau, Mpumalanga, South Africa

Background: Grasslands are heavily utilised for livestock agriculture and the resultant degradation through mismanagement contributes to an estimated 60% of this biome being permanently transformed. This study focused on the impact of fire and grazing in moist highland grasslands. Objectives: To determine the contribution of burning frequency and grazing intensity combined (for domestic livestock and indigenous ungulates) on vegetation structure heterogeneity and species diversity. Methods: Eight study sites under different management regimes were sampled over two summers. Vegetation structure characteristics and diversity data were collected monthly within multiple replicates in each study site. A disc pasture meter was used to assess standing biomass. Differences in vegetation structure characteristics, plant community composition and plant species assemblage structure across sites were statistically analysed using analyses of variance, indicator species analyses, multidimensional scaling ordinations and two-way cluster analyses. Results: The combination of heavy grazing and annual burning leads to a distinct plant community dominated by disturbance specialist species. Selective grazing by indigenous herbivores promotes a community of unpalatable species. This study illustrates that fenced indigenous herbivores, even at moderate stocking densities, have a greater detrimental impact on plant diversity and structure than do domestic livestock. Conclusion: Intensive grazing and burning have a detrimental impact on plant species diversity and structure. This also affects resultant palatability for grazing livestock and fenced game. To promote both grazing quality and ecological integrity we recommend a minimum sustainable ‘fodder capacity’ or standing phytomass of 5000 kg per large-animal unit per hectare for domestic livestock in moist highland grasslands.
Automated Construction Resource Location Tracking to Support the Analysis of Lean Principles

This paper presents a research framework and preliminary experimental results to automated construction resource (workforce, equipment, materials) location tracking for the purpose of advanced lean planning and rapid decision making. Based on the statement “what can be measured, can also be changed”, the research hypothesis was formulated that advanced automated remote sensing technology can measure and improve work site performance and assist decision making. The initial research scope focused on testing emerging real-time location tracking and data analysis technology (Ultra Wideband and Video) applied in capital intensive construction site settings. A literature review is presented on existing observation techniques that have been used in the analysis of lean construction operations. The research framework and technology in context to lean construction is explained next. To better understand construction operations – and in particular construction site activities related to safety and productivity – location and movements of workers, equipment, and materials were recorded in real-time. Preliminary results to field experiments demonstrate the feasibility of tracking construction resources accurately and in real-time. An outlook and applications are presented of how the collected resource trajectory information can be used in project decision making. It is envisioned, that once site resource data is collected, processed, and linked to existing schedule and work task planning, the information can play a vital role for rapid implementation of lean principles in the operational environment of construction sites.
Document image analysis techniques for handwritten text segmentation, document image rectification and digital collation

Document image analysis comprises all the algorithms and techniques that are utilized to convert an image of a document to a computer readable description. In this work we focus on three such techniques, namely (1) Handwritten text segmentation (2) Document image rectification and (3) Digital Collation. Offline handwritten text recognition is a very challenging problem. Aside from the large variation of different handwriting styles, neighboring characters within a word are usually connected, and we may need to segment a word into individual characters for accurate character recognition. Many existing methods achieve text segmentation by evaluating the local stroke geometry and imposing constraints on the size of each resulting character, such as the character width, height and aspect ratio. These constraints are well suited for printed texts, but may not hold for handwritten texts. Other methods apply holistic approach by using a set of lexicons to guide and correct the segmentation and recognition. This approach may fail when the domain lexicon is insufficient. In the first part of this work, we present a new global non-holistic method for handwritten text segmentation, which does not make any limiting assumptions on the character size and the number of characters in a word. We conduct experiments on real images of handwritten texts taken from the IAM handwriting database and compare the performance of the presented method against an existing text segmentation algorithm that uses dynamic programming and achieve significant performance improvement. Digitization of document images using OCR based systems is adversely affected if the image of the document contains distortion (warping). Often, costly and precisely
Test Anxiety and Moving Examination in Science Laboratory Classes

This study determined if test anxiety and moving examination was associated with achievement, attitude, and skills in science laboratory classes. Using correlational research design, this study helped in assessing the process through which test anxiety and moving examination (the predictor variables) affected students’ achievement, integrated process skills, and attitude towards science (the criterion variables). A total of 109 students participated in the study. Measures of Test Anxiety Questionnaire (Suinn, 1969), Science Moving Examination, Integrated Science Process Skills Test (Mungandi, 2005), and Attitude towards Science Inventory (Gogolin and Swartz, 1992) were used. Panel of experts’ content validated the questionnaires used. Analysis of results indicated that increase of achievement in science, acquisition of integrated science process skills and development of positive attitude towards science were all nonsignificantly associated to test anxiety. Students’ preparedness for the moving examination allowed them to combat their test anxiety; and thus, their achievement in science remained unaffected. Integrated science process skills, on the other hand, were already acquired by students prior to taking the moving examination, so test anxiety did not interfere in the acquisition of said skills. Attitude towards science was also not affected by test anxiety because the preference towards science was unpredicted by a definitive stimulus.
Modeling the Worker

This paper deals with worker performance variation in unpaced systems, in which human factors constitute a significant set of productivity constraints. Examples include highly technical industries (e.g. semiconductor manufacturing) and service industries (e.g. banking) that rely increasingly on fewer but more highly skilled workers. In these systems, productivity is dependent on the availability and organization of vital human resources, and it is reasonable to expect that performance models of these systems will need to contain better representations of worker behavior than are available using conventional modeling methods. This paper examines one issue of relevance to modeling human workers: the problem of replacing random variables (estimates of parameters from empirical data) with constants for the purposes of simulation experiments. We offer here one possible approach by which one can account for the inherent randomness in parameter estimators rather than ignoring it. We use the specific example of worker task time parameters to illustrate the more general problem of addressing the variability of input parameter estimators. We also explore the tradeoffs in including information about the demographics and personalities of workers in system performance simulation models. This paper reports the results of a series of actual and simulated experiments in which personality and demographic data are used in different ways to model the performance of a work group. Significant differences are found in predicted system performance and model validity depending on the methodology used for modeling workers. These results have practical implication for the managerial processes of recruiting and selecting individual workers, as well as organizing teams of workers and assigning them to productive tasks.
Spawning site selection of brown trout in habitat restored streams

During the timber floating era, most of Sweden’s watercourses were altered. This decreased the amount of available spawning habitats for salmonids, and hence had a negative effect on the riverine brown trout (Salmo trutta) populations. Reconstruction of spawning grounds is today a common measure in restoration of altered streams in Sweden. However, very little evaluation of the effectiveness of these reconstructed spawning grounds exists. Hence, today we lack knowledge on how to further improve the construction of spawning habitats. In this study, conducted in boreal streams in northern Sweden, I have investigated the influence of several variables believed to have importance in spawning habitat selection for brown trout. I have investigated variables at two different scales, the patch scale (the microhabitat where the fish are spawning) and the bed scale (the macrohabitat that surrounds the spawning bed). My results suggest that the percentage of fines within the spawning substrate is an important predictor on probability of spawning at the patch scale. I also report moderate influence of water velocity, area and depth on probability of spawning at the patch scale. Distance to shore were found to have some influence on the selection of spawning bed by trout, while distance to cover for adult spawners, as well as distance to, and size of, nursery habitat were found to have low importance. To apply these findings for fish and wildlife managers I point out that raking and cleaning of gravel, and the placement of spawning beds further away from shore may be important measures to enhance the probability of spawning in reconstructed spawning habitats.
Phase based measures of coupling for event describing signals

by ELIOT Y. ZHU The purpose of my efforts was to develop efficient yet comprehensive data analysis tools for the study of biological rhythms in the mammalian neural networks. I focused on two contexts in great detail; namely, the respiratory system and small neural networks. In Chapter 2, I present a computational approach that can be used to study the relations between heartbeat and respiration using non-invasive recordings from these systems. We found that coupling was asymmetric with respiration affecting the heart beat more strongly than vice versa. In Chapter 3, I present a measure that can be used to study functional connectivity from ensemble recordings. We show that our method, the Spike Triggered Average of the Postsynaptic Phase, reliably resolves pairwise interactions between neurons. Performance in terms of accuracy and running time were evaluated for multiple methods. We found that our measure matched or outperformed alternative approaches in various categories.
Urban-Rural Consumption Inequality in China from 1988 to 2002: Evidence from Quantile Regression Decomposition

One of the most notable social phenomena in China is the large urban-rural disparity. There are many studies of it, but most of them focus on income or earnings inequality. In this paper, we investigate the consumption disparity between urban and rural households in China from 1988 to 2002. Our results suggest that low quantiles are associated with large consumption disparity. The price effect is the dominant factor for the urban-rural consumption disparity. This disparity increased significantly, both at mean and at every quantile, from 1988 to 2002. However, most of the increase happened from 1988 to 1995, and this increase was mainly from the higher growth rate of urban household consumption. Our results also suggest that rural-urban migration and improvement of the rural educational level are very helpful in reducing urban-rural disparity.
Possibilities of using ozone for the treatment of wastewater from the yeast industry

The purpose of the study was to establish if ozonation can be used to enhance the process of purifying wastewater from the yeast industry. The results of the experiments indicate that ozonation can be used in the tertiary treatment of yeast wastewater for the reduction of colour, odour, and the overall concentration of contaminants. During ozonation, the biodegradability of the wastewater increased; therefore it is possible to include ozonation into the combined purification process simultaneously with anaerobic and aerobic bio-oxidation. In addition, the application of ozonation as a pre-treatment method for anaerobic digestion of excess sludge from wastewater treatment plants was studied. Ozonation of the excess sludge resulted in a reduction of the sludge amount and increased the solubility of sludge organic matter. Although the solubility of sludge increased, the process of anaerobic mesophilic digestion was not improved.