Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Enhancement of waste engine oil biodegradation by optimization of media using factorial design study

Biodegradation of spilled or dumped waste engine oil is a challenging task due to their toxicity and persistency in the environment. Waste engine oil biodegradation can be improved by optimizing media constituents that may stimulate the microbial degradation phenomenon and contribute to the progress of oil spill bioremediation process. In the present study, the effect of different nutrients, such as, carbon, nitrogen and inorganic ion source, added externally to Bushnell-Haas (BH) medium were investigated for waste engine oil biodegradation using a novel hydrocarbon degrading bacterium, Ochrobactrum pseudintermedium C1. The bacterial strain was isolated in our laboratory from oil contaminated soil and identified by 16S rRNA gene sequencing. The results showed that the most significant variables influencing waste engine oil biodegradation were glucose, yeast extract and FeCl3. A full factorial central composite design was applied for experimental work and analysis of the data. Moreover, these three factors interacted with each other and combined to produce positive effects on waste engine oil degradation. The experimental data also allowed the development of an empirical model (P < 0.00672) describing the inter-relationship between independent and dependent variables. By solving the regression equation, the optimal values of the variables were determined as (g/L): glucose 22.028, yeast extract 1.949 and FeCl3 0.225. The BH medium with the above constituents resulted in significant enhancement of waste engine oil percent degradation from 51.24 to 71.52% within 7 d.
A Role for Proteomics in Identifying Targets for RadiosensitizingStrategies in Melanoma: The FKBP51 Paradigm

The treatment of metastatic melanoma is challenging and in the vast majority of cases unsuccessful. Melanoma cells are resistant to most standard therapeutics. We have recently demonstrated that FKBP51 regulates melanoma response to ionizing radiation (IR). To find out molecular targets for radiosensitizing strategies to apply in this neoplasm, we investigated the changes of protein profiles in irradiated melanoma depleted or not of FKBP51, by protein microarray approach. Among the multiple molecules that were found modulated in our cell model, the decrease of several pPKC isoforms in the FKBP51-depleted (IR-sensitive) melanoma appeared to us particularly interesting, because PKC is involved in radiation response. Therefore, PKC was chosen for further investigation. After validating by western blot proteomics results, we found that targeting PKC, with the pan PKC inhibitor LY317615 or enzastaurin, significantly enhanced IR-induced cell death. Most interestingly, enzastaurin combined with IR appeared to be effective in eliminating a subset of melanoma cells expressing a stemness marker. Our study highlighted a role for proteomics in finding useful targets to overcome melanoma resistance, and suggested a combination treatment, which deserves to be investigated in a clinical setting.
Spatial patterns of invertebrate communities in spring and runoff-fed streams : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Ecology at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

Invertebrate spatial patterns were investigated in 36 and 12 spring and runoff-fed streams in New Zealand and in Northern Spain, respectively. Moss biomass and resource levels were more abundant in springbrooks than in runoff-fed streams. Invertebrate densities were greater in spring habitats, but invertebrate richness was higher and lower at more stable sites in New Zealand and Spain, respectively. These differences in invertebrate diversity may be related to the larger diversity of invertebrate predators in New Zealand springbrooks, and the lack of temperature mediated life history cues in the New Zealand invertebrate fauna. I carried out two experiments to look at the effect of local factors on the spatial distribution of invertebrate communities. The first experiment investigated the effect that algal biomass and habitat structure had on stream invertebrate communities. To do this I used artificial canopies to reduce algal growth and artificial substrates with different habitat complexities. Numbers of invertebrate taxa and individuals were both lower on bricks under the artificial canopies and on the simplest substrates. Algal productivity may enhance invertebrate richness by increasing the number of individuals in a given area, whereas habitat complexity may increase invertebrate richness by providing greater food and/or space resources. The second experiment examined the effects of primary productivity and physical disturbance on stream invertebrates by using artificial canopies and by kicking and raking patches of the stream bed (10 m2). We compared the effects of natural versus experimental disturbance on the benthic invertebrate fauna. Invertebrate fauna in high productivity patches recovered quicker than in low productivity patches after both experimental and natural disturbance. The experimental disturbance reduced number of invertebrate taxa and individuals to a greater extent than the spate. Primary productivity limited the recovery of the invertebrate fauna after the disturbances. I also investigated temperature patterns in five runoff and seven spring-fed streams in the North and South Islands of New Zealand. The invertebrate fauna was sampled at 4 distances (0, 100, 500 and 1 km) from seven spring sources. Temperature variability was much larger for runoff-fed streams than for springs, and it increased with distance from the source. Flow, altitude, and the number and type (i.e., spring or runoff-
Cueing for Schema Construction: Designing Problem-Solving Multimedia Practicals

In competency-based learning environments, schemata play an important role in solving complex and authentic problems. Adequate task-valid cueing is considered to facilitate both recall and interpretation of available schemata (task performance) and the construction of new schemata (learning). This article provides guidelines for cueing which aim at the improvement of (1) task performance in complex learning environments, (2) schema construction, and (3) monitoring. A model presents the relationships between cueing on the one hand and schema interpretation, schema construction, and monitoring on the other hand. The guidelines are used to evaluate worked-out examples and process worksheets, two formats of task-valid cueing that appear useful in competency-based learning environments. Worked-out examples support the inductive processing of concrete descriptions to construct schemata, while process worksheets support the deduction of concrete problem solving steps from general prescriptions. Illustrations are provided from the domain of law.
Distribution and abundance of species of the genus Orius in horticultural ecosystems of northwestern Italy

The genus Orius Wolff includes generalist predators revealed to be very effective in thrips control worldwide. During the years 2005-2007, Orius species were sampled on some horticultural crops (strawberry, sweet leek, and sweet pepper), and on wild flora surrounding crops to identify alternative host plants in Piedmont, northwestern Italy. In the three-year survey, Orius horvathi (Reuter), Orius laevigatus (Fieber), Orius majusculus (Reuter), Orius minutus (L.), Orius niger Wolff, and Orius vicinus (Ribaut) were collected on crop and non-crop plants in the surveyed area. On pepper, the major number of species was recorded, depending on environmental and cultivation conditions. O. niger was the predominant species on strawberries and wild flora, while O. majusculus was the primary species on sweet leek. By contrast, O. laevigatus was never found on the crops, and rarely collected on wild flora in the areas where it has been usually released. On the wild flora larger amounts of Orius were sampled on Galeopsis tetrahit L. , Medicago sativa L. , Malva sylvestris L. , Matricaria chamomilla L. , Urtica dioica L. , Carduus sp. , Lythrum salicaria L. , Erigeron annuus L. , and Trifolium pratense L. , which proved to be important sites for population development and overwintering. The conservation of plant biodiversity as a whole in and near agro-ecosystems is the most reliable way to achieve beneficial insect populations for an effective crop control.
Downscaling and Projection of Winter Extreme Daily Precipitation over North America

Abstract Large-scale atmospheric variables have been statistically downscaled to derive winter (December–March) maximum daily precipitation at stations over North America using the generalized extreme value distribution (GEV). Here, the leading principal components of the sea level pressure field and local specific humidity are covariates of the distribution parameters. The GEV parameters are estimated using data from 1949 to 1999 and the r-largest method. This statistical downscaling procedure is found to yield skill over the southern and northern West Coast, central United States, and areas of western and eastern Canada when tested with independent data. The projected changes in covariates or predictors are obtained from transient climate change simulations conducted with the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis (CCCma) Coupled General Circulation Model, version 3.1 (CGCM3.1) forced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) A2 forcing scenario. They are then used to derive th.
Simulations of time‐coincident, co‐located measurements from ENVISAT‐1 instruments for the characterization of tropospheric aerosols: a sensitivity study including cloud contamination effects

A sensitivity test of the aerosol properties retrieval is conducted using nadir viewing instruments on board the ENVISAT‐1 platform trying to reproduce the natural variability of the aerosol field. The analysis highlights problems arising in the retrieval when aerosol loading, relative humidity, and cloud coverage are simultaneously varied. Copyright © 2001 Royal Meteorological Society.
NEURAL CONTROL OF A 4 rd ORDER LEVEL PROCESS

This paper presents the applications of a neural network controller for a multivariable system of coupled tanks to evaluate the use of intelligent control techniques. We used a 4 order process, where the first three tanks have constant cross section of 60 cm and the fourth tank has a variable section, variyng between 60cm and 121.2cm . The maximum alowed level is 49.5cm. Tanks 1 and 3 have water input and output driven by electric pumps, tanks 2 and 4 have 2mm water outlets into a reservoir. Coupling valves between adjacent tanks (a 2mm groove with configurable height) determine the flow parameters of the process. Each tank has is equipped with a pressure level sensor. The contribution of this work consists mainly in the design procedure for intelligent controllers coping with very different configurations of the multivariable system. The controlled variable is the level of tank 4. A dynamic neural network was trained to learn the non linear system characteristics guaranteeing small steady error between the plant output and the reference and almost similar transitory behaviour. The development and implementation of the proposed controller was done using Matlab and Simulik. As some level processes are critical, in the sense that they should operate for months without flaws, it is mandatory to use industrial equipment, in our case a PLC (Programmable Logic Controller). The neural controller was implemented using the Simulik NARMA-L2 block. The control and measurement signals were transfered through the PLC and a PC data server by an OPC interface (via serial interfaces. Neural network control results are presented and compared with a standard PID. Advantages and restrictions of the implemented NARMA-L2 are discussed.
Image-based surface reconstruction in geomorphometry - merits, limits and developments

Abstract. Photogrammetry and geosciences have been closely linked since the late 19th century due to the acquisition of high-quality 3-D data sets of the environment, but it has so far been restricted to a limited range of remote sensing specialists because of the considerable cost of metric systems for the acquisition and treatment of airborne imagery. Today, a wide range of commercial and open-source software tools enable the generation of 3-D and 4-D models of complex geomorphological features by geoscientists and other non-experts users. In addition, very recent rapid developments in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology allow for the flexible generation of high-quality aerial surveying and ortho-photography at a relatively low cost. The increasing computing capabilities during the last decade, together with the development of high-performance digital sensors and the important software innovations developed by computer-based vision and visual perception research fields, have extended the rigorous processing of stereoscopic image data to a 3-D point cloud generation from a series of non-calibrated images. Structure-from-motion (SfM) workflows are based upon algorithms for efficient and automatic orientation of large image sets without further data acquisition information, examples including robust feature detectors like the scale-invariant feature transform for 2-D imagery. Nevertheless, the importance of carrying out well-established fieldwork strategies, using proper camera settings, ground control points and ground truth for understanding the different sources of errors, still needs to be adapted in the common scientific practice. This review intends not only to summarise the current state of the art on using SfM workflows in geomorphometry but also to give an overview of terms and fields of application. Furthermore, this article aims to quantify already achieved accuracies and used scales, using different strategies in order to evaluate possible stagnations of current developments and to identify key future challenges. It is our belief that some lessons learned from former articles, scientific reports and book chapters concerning the identification of common errors or "bad practices" and some other valuable information may help in guiding the future use of SfM photogrammetry in geosciences.
Effect of Salicylic Acid on Antioxidant Activity in Milk Thistle Hairy Root Cultures

Background: Elicitors can trigger defense responses and activate specific genes involved in secondary metabolite biosynthesis. Objective: For understanding SA-treatment signaling pathway we determined defense-related compounds and enzymes in S. marianum hairy root cultures. Methods: 28 day old hairy roots were treated by salicylic acid (6 mg/50 ml culture) for different times (24, 48, 72, 96 and 120 h). The antioxidant activity was assayed by the 1-diphenyl-2picrylhydrazyl stable free radical method and results were calculated based on the IC50 . H2O2, peroxidase and ascorbate peroxidase activity and total tocopherol content was measured in treated and non-treated hairy root cultures. Results: The highest accumulation of H2O2 was 86.60 µmol g -1 DW that was obtained 120 h after elicitation (2-times of non-treated hairy roots). IC50 increased upon treatment and was 1.15- times higher than the control 24h after elicitation. The content of total tocopherol content under SA treatment was lower than the control experiments. Maximum activity of peroxidase and ascorbate peroxidase were 0.17 and 1.50 µmol min -1 mg -1 protein, 96 and 72 h after elicitation, respectively. Conclusion: Oxidative stress defends system can be activated by salicylic acid in Silybum marianum hairy root cultures. This study suggested that exogenous SA can increase H2O2 content of hairy roots, and induce the expression of antioxidant enzymes and increase secondary metabolite accumulation.
Title Distortion Model Based on Word Sequence Labeling forStatistical Machine Translation

Right Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author. 2014 Copyright is held by the author/owner(s). Type Journal Article
From sample to pixel: multi-scale remote sensing data for upscaling aboveground carbon data in heterogeneous landscapes

In times of rapid global change, ecosystem monitoring is of utmost importance. Combined field and remote sensing data enable large-scale ecosystem assessments, while maintaining local relevance and accuracy. In heterogeneous landscapes, however, the integration of field-collected data with remote sensing image pixels is not a trivial matter. Indeed, much of the uncertainty in models that use remote sensing to map larger areas lies on the field data integration. In this study, we propose to use fine spatial resolution (5 x 5 m2) remote sensing data as auxiliary data for upscaling field-sampled aboveground carbon data to target (meso-scale, i.e., 30 x 30 m2) image pixels. In this process, we assess the effects of field data disaggregation and extrapolation, with and without the auxiliary data. We test this on three study sites in heterogeneous landscapes of the Brazilian savanna. We thus compare two methods that use auxiliary data—surface method, which uses a weighting layer, and regression method, which applies a regression model—with one method without auxiliary data—cartographic method. To evaluate our results, we compared observed vs. estimated aboveground carbon values (for known samples) at the pixel level. Additionally, we fitted a random forest regression model with the assigned carbon estimates and the target satellite imagery and assessed the influence of the fraction of extrapolated vs. sampled carbon values on model performance. We observed that, in heterogeneous landscapes, the use of fine spatial resolution remote sensing data improves the upscaling of field-based aboveground carbon data to coarser image pixels. We also show that a surface method is more suitable for spatial disaggregation, while a regression approach is preferable for extrapolating non-sampled pixel fractions. In our study, larger datasets, which included a higher proportion of estimated values, generally delivered better models of aboveground carbon than smaller datasets that are assumed to more reliably reflect reality. Our approach enables to link field and remote sensing data, which in turn enables the detailed mapping of aboveground carbon in heterogeneous landscapes over large areas through the optimized integration of field data and multi-scale remote sensing data.
The Recent Development And Performance Of Ethical Investments

In this chapter, we assess the recent development and performance of ethical investments around the world. Ethical investments include both socially responsible investments (following Environmental, Social and Governance criteria) and faith-based investments (following religious principles). After presenting the development of each type of funds in a historical context, we analyse their ethical screening process, highlighting similarities and differences across funds and regions. This leads us to investigate their characteristics in terms of return and risk, and finally evaluate their historical performance using various risk-adjusted performance measures on a small sample of US funds. Hence we are able to not only compare the performance of each fund with each other and with traditional investments, but also assess their relative resilience to the 2007-08 financial crisis.
Contextual Realities of Youth Livelihoods in Botswana: A Gender Perspective

Despite the complexity surrounding the concept of youth, the twenty first century is witnessing publication of reports by major international organizations such as the World Bank and the United Nations agencies calling for the recognition of and more attention to youth and their livelihoods. As a response to such reports, development interventions geared towards improving youth livelihoods are being formulated in developing countries. This paper presents findings of a qualitative case study which sought to understand youth livelihoods from the perspective of young women engaged in street vending in Botswana. It focused on how the participants define and respond to contextual factors shaping their livelihood trajectories. The findings reveal that livelihoods of ‘the’ youth in Botswana are shaped by diverse and complex socio-cultural contexts that are inextricably interconnected. The family emerged to be the main context within which ‘youth’ enact their livelihoods. This paper contends that it is close to impossible to understand youth livelihoods in Botswana without situating them within the gendered contexts and the multidimensionality of poverty within their families.
Ion drift simulation of sudden appearance of sub-keV structured ions in the inner magnetosphere

Abstract. Energy–latitude dispersed structured sub-keV ions in the inner magnetosphere often show significant development or intensification (by more than factor of 3) within 1–2 h near noon or afternoon where the azimuthal ion drift velocity at the sub-keV range is expected to be near zero. To examine whether such sudden appearances in the dayside can be explained by the drift motion of ions that are formed during substorm-related injections, we numerically simulated two such examples, one at noon and the other in the afternoon, based on the ion drift model. For both cases, the ion drift model with finite duration of proton source in the nightside can explain the observed large inbound–outbound differences in the sub-keV proton population without any new sources. Ion drift motion can thus cause rapid changes of complicated ion populations, at remote places from the source a long time after the substorm activities.
Safety and Gastro protective Activity of Graviola Seeds Extract against Acidified Aspirin Induced Gastric Ulceration

Peptic ulcer disease attacks millions of people yearly around the globe, affecting both quality and quantity of life. There are many different causes responsible for the etiology of this disease; one of the most common causes is non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) through different mechanisms. Annona muricata have been found to have antioxidant effects, along with a good protective effect against inflammation in rats, making it a good candidate as a potential gastro protective agent. So, this study is designed to evaluate this possible pharmacological activity. Annona muricata seeds were extracted; chemical analysis of the extract has been done, acute toxicity study has been performed using different doses of ethanolic seed extract of Annona muricata (ESAM) 500, 2000, and 5000 mg/kg, the extract demonstrated relative safety at doses up to 2000mg/kg. The gastro protective effect of ethanol seeds extract of Annona muricata (ESAM) has been investigated using two doses of ESAM 250 and 500mg/kg of ESAM, using ranitidine 50mg/kg, as a reference, ulcer was induced by acidified aspirin solution after 7 days. The extract caused reduction in the gastric content volume, ulcer index and TNF-α, and a significant elevation in the gastric PGE2 and SOD levels in dose dependent manner showing a good preventive index in compare to the acidified aspirin group. Gastro protective effect of ESAM was prevented by pretreatment with sulfhydryl alkylating group (NEM) and NOS inhibitor group (L-NNA) approving the involvement for sulfhydryl (SH) group and endogenous nitric oxide (NO) in the gastro protective effect of Annona Muricata seeds. Immunohistochemical staining showed pretreatment with ESAM caused upregulation of HSP70. So, this study suggests that the seeds extract of Annona muricata is relatively safe. Its gastroprotective activity attributed to its antisecretory; cytoprotective; antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects. Keywords: Acute toxicity, Annona muricata seed extract, Gastro protective, Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.