Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Aerodynamic and solid flow properties for flaxseeds for pneumatic separation by using air stream

This study aimed to develop simple empirical equations to predict flaxseeds properties. The first part of the present study deals with the physical, aerodynamic and solid flow properties of flaxseeds which are evaluated as a function of change in moisture content from 8.60% to 23.90% dry basis (d.b.), the dimensions of the length, width and thickness varied from 4.14 to 4.32 mm, 2.03 to 2.13 mm and 0.88 to 0.93 mm, respectively. As the moisture content increased from 8.60% to 23.90% d.b. , the bulk density, true density and porosity were found to decrease from 46.65 to 44.89 kg / m 3 ; 1244 to 1176 kg / m 3 and 46.65 % to 44.89%, whereas angle of repose and terminal velocity were found to increase from 27.60 to 35.80 and 2.46 to 3.56 m / s, respectively. The static coefficient of friction on various surfaces, namely, plywood, stainless steel, galvanized iron, iron and internal also increased linearly with the increase in moisture content. The results of the experimental investigation may help to optimize some engineering parameters of separation equipment. The second part was carried out on a series of experiments to specify the optimum conditions of separating operation which insure the highest grade of separation efficiency with minimum losses. Pneumatic separation equipment was manufactured and tested under different combinations of the following factors: air stream velocity, feed rate and sample moisture content. The performance of the equipment was evaluated by using the indices separation efficiency and percentage of seed losses. The results of the equipment performances showed that the combinations of air stream velocity, feed rate and sample moisture content affected significantly the separation efficiency and grain losses. Air stream velocity of 2–6 m/s combined with 8.5 kg/h. feed rate and 8.6% moisture content can be considered the most favorable combination values of these variables. They gave the highest grades of separation efficiency and the minimum grain losses. Keywords: f laxseed , p hysical property, a erodynamic s, s olid flow properties, p neumatic separation DOI: 10.3965/j.issn. 1934-6344.2009. 0 4 . 0 31 -0 45 Citation: Ayman Hafiz Amer Eissa. a erodynamic and solid flow properties for flaxseeds for pneumatic separation by using air stream . Int J Agric & Biol Eng, 2009; 2( 4 ): 31
Chromatin structure changes in Daphnia populations upon exposure to environmental cues – or – The discovery of Wolterecks “Matrix”

Phenotypic plasticity is an important feature of biological systems that is likely to play a major role in the future adaptation of organisms to the ongoing global changes. It may allow an organism to produce alternative phenotypes in responses to environmental cues. Modifications in the phenotype can be reversible but are sometimes enduring and can even span over generations. The notion of phenotypic plasticity was conceptualized in the early 20th century by Richard Woltereck. He introduced the idea that the combined relations of a phenotypic character and all environmental gradients that influence on it can be defined as “norm of reaction”. Norms of reaction are specific to species and to lineages within species, and they are heritable. He postulated that reaction norms can progressively be shifted over generations depending on the environmental conditions. One of his biological models was the water-flee daphnia. Woltereck proposed that enduring phenotypic modifications and gene mutations could have similar adaptive effects, and he postulated that their molecular bases would be different. Mutations occurred in genes, while enduring modifications were based on something he called the Matrix. He suggested that this matrix (i) was associated with the chromosomes, (ii) that it was heritable, (iii) it changed during development of the organisms, and (iv) that changes of the matrix could be simple chemical substitutions of an unknown, but probably polymeric molecule. We reasoned that the chromatin has all postulated features of this matrix and revisited Woltereck’s classical experiments with daphnia. We developed a robust and rapid ATAC-seq technique that allows for analyzing chromatin of individual daphnia and show here (i) that this technique can be used with minimal expertise in molecular biology, and (ii) we used it to identify open chromatin structure in daphnia exposed to different environmental cues. Our result indicates that chromatin structure changes consistently in daphnia upon this exposure confirming Woltereck’s classical postulate.
A Review of Iris Recognition Based on Biometric Technologies

A Lot of biometrics encounter the difficulties in security in the current complicated situation. Between these kinds of iris pattern, recognition technique can be the most promising to its stableness. Successful results, both theoretically and practically, have been created and broadly used on numerous area and industries. On the other hand, iris identification is influenced by noises for example eyelids, eyelashes, flares and so on. We examine the method based on the extraction and matching. It obtains the human eye image, segments this iris region through other image, normalizes the segmented image and then matching process using the Hamming distance between new enter iris and patterns that is saved in the database selected the minimal distance between these individuals. Therefore, rating level can figure out the actual imposter man or woman. The efficiency of most following phases in the iris recognition system will be extremely depending on proper recognition of pupil-iris and also iris-sclera border inside the eye images. The purpose of this paper is to focus on iris recognition's steps and methods that have been employed in several studies for each recognition phase. By using the method, we can extract more iris data, examines all of them, and improve region utilized to iris identification, decrease recurring caused by the no unified region. The CRR of our proposed approach was 95.4%. The results show that the algorithm has benefits of both speed and accuracy. The results using the IIT Delhi iris databases demonstrate that schema displayed accomplishes promising results for iris recognition.
Genetic structure of the INRA Capsicum spp. collection using SSR loci: refining the wild origin of cultivated C. annuum and impact of human selection on the structuration of genetic diversity in cultivar types

Germplasm collections of cultivated plants constitute the source for further genetic progress and gained interest with approaches for tracking allelic variants associated to phenotypic variations within core collections. ln order to explore the structure of genetic variation in pepper (Capsicum spp.) and to select core-collections maximizing the genetic and the phenotypic diversity, a pepper collection including 1352 non redundant accessions from Il Capsicum species from 89 different countries was genotyped using 28 microsatellite (SSR) markers spanning the whole genome. Model-based analysis structured the collection into 6 clusters, with 3 clusters separating the main species complexes, including cultivated species and wild relatives, according to botanic classification (C frutescens/C. chinense, C baccatum, C pubescens), and 3 additional cJusters for C. annuum. The relationships between the cultivated C annuum species and the wild relative (C annnuum var glabriusculum) was refined. The 3 C annuum clusters were significantly distinct for plant and fruit descriptors corresponding to cultivar types, showing that the genetic structuration of this cultivated species was strongly impacted by the long term hurnan selection of landraces in prirnary as weil as secondary diversification centres. We settled nested core-collections of 8, 16,32, 64 and 128 C annuum accessions capturing from 37% to 90% of the genetic diversity for further sequencing efforts and establishment of high through put genotyping assays. By compiling phenotypic and genotypic data, a larger core-collection of332 accessions was established, capturing 97% of the C annuum genetic and phenotypic diversity for further genetic association studies.
Genome-wide transcriptomic analysis of the response of Botrytis cinerea to wuyiencin

Grey mould is caused by the ascomycetes Botrytis cinerea in a range of crop hosts. As a biological control agent, the nucleoside antibiotic wuyiencin has been industrially produced and widely used as an effective fungicide. To elucidate the effects of wuyiencin on the transcriptional regulation in B. cinerea, we, for the first time, report a genome-wide transcriptomic analysis of B. cinerea treated with wuyiencin. We could identify 2067 differentially expressed genes (DEGs); of them, 886 and 1181 genes were significantly upregulated and downregulated, respectively. Functional categorization indicated that genes involved in amino acid metabolism and those encoding putative secreted proteins were remarkably influenced in response to wuyiencin treatment. Moreover, the expression of genes involved in protein synthesis and energy metabolism (oxidative phosphorylation) and of those encoding ATP-binding cassette transporters was markedly upregulated, whereas that of genes participating in DNA replication, cell cycle, and stress response was downregulated. Furthermore, wuyiencin resulted in mycelial malformation and negatively influenced cell growth rate and conidial yield in B. cinerea. Our results suggest that this nucleoside antibiotic regulates all aspects of cell growth and differentiation in B. cinerea. To summarize, we identified candidate pathways and target genes that may offer insights into the protective and antagonistic mechanisms underlying the action of biological control agents.
Poor Concordance of Floxed Sequence Recombination in Single Neural Stem Cells: Implications for Cell Autonomous Studies

Visual Abstract To manipulate target gene function in specific adult cell populations, tamoxifen (TAM)-dependent CreERT2 is widely used to drive inducible, site-specific recombination of loxP flanked sequences. In studies of cell autonomous target gene function, it is common practice to combine these CreERT2-lox systems with a ubiquitously expressed stop-floxed fluorescent reporter gene to identify single cells supposedly undergoing target gene recombination. Here, we studied the reliability of using Cre-induced recombination of one gene to predict recombination in another gene at the single-cell level in adult hippocampal neural stem and progenitor cells (NSPCs). Using both probabilistic predictions in a generic experimental paradigm, as well as a mouse model with two separate stop-floxed reporters plus a Nestin promoter-driven CreERT2, we found that, in individual cells, recombination of one gene was a poor predictor of recombination in another. This poor concordance in floxed sequence recombination across genes suggests that use of stop-floxed reporters to investigate cell autonomous gene function may not be universally reliable and could lead to false conclusions.
The complete chloroplast genome of Osmanthus serrulatus rehd., a natural sweet olive endemic to China

Abstract Osmanthus serrulatus is an endemic tree in southwest China. Here, the complete chloroplast genome of this species was assembled and characterised from high-throughput data. The entire circular genome of O. serrulatus was 155,465 bp in size, which composed of large single-copy (LSC) and small single-copy (SSC) regions of 86,545 bp and 17,494 bp, respectively, and separated by a pair of inverted repeat (IR) regions of 25,713 bp each. The genome contained 133 genes, including 88 protein-coding genes, 37 tRNA genes, and eight rRNA genes. The overall GC content of the genome is 37.8%. A phylogenetic tree reconstructed by 35 chloroplast genomes reveals that O. serrulatus is most related with O. yunnanensis.
Une septième espèce appartenant au sous-groupe Drosophila melanogaster Meigen: Drosophila orena spec. nov. du Cameroun. (Diptera: Drosophilidae).

Mit der Beschreibung von Drosophila orena spec. nov. erhoht sich die Zahl der Spezies in der Artgruppe melanogaster auf sieben. Vier dieser Arten wurden seit 1971 deskribiert. Diese Entdeckung bestatigt die Hypothese der afrikanischen Herkunft von D. melanogaster. Interessant ist die Feststellung, das die Untergruppe melanogaster im Laufe ihrer Entwicklung sowohl ubiquitare, kosmopolitische und kolonisierende Arten als auch spezialisierte Arten mit einer schmalen okologischen Nische bilden konnte.Nomenklatorische Handlungenorena Tsacas & David, 1978 (Drosophila (Sophophora)), spec. n.
Regression models in survival analysis and reliability

In present work we study methods for modeling the dependence of data from survival and reliability setting on available explanatory variables. The first part of the work compares the properties of the Cox proportional hazards model, Aalen additive model and the Accelerated failure model for survival data. We present methods for testing goodness-of-fit based on counting processes and martingale theory, allowing to identify which model fits the data best. The second part focuses on modeling the lifetime of repairable systems. We study the means of incorporating the history of studied devices into the models, including the influence of corrective repairs and preventive maintenance actions. We demonstrate the introduced methods on real applications and study their properties in various situations on simulated data.
Current practice in plankton metabarcoding: optimization and error management

High-throughput sequencing of a targeted genetic marker is being widely used to analyze biodiversity across taxa and environments. Amid a multitude of exciting findings, scientists have also identified and addressed technical and biological limitations. Improved study designs and alternative sampling, lab and bioinformatic procedures have progressively enhanced data quality, but some problems persist. This article provides a framework to recognize and bypass the main types of errors that can affect metabarcoding data: false negatives, false positives, artifactual variants, disproportions and incomplete or incorrect taxonomic identifications. It is crucial to discern potential error impacts on different ecological parameters (e.g. taxon distribution, community structure, alpha and beta-diversity), as error management implies compromises and is thus directed by the research question. Synthesis of multiple plankton metabarcoding evaluations (mock sample sequencing or microscope comparisons) shows that high-quality data for qualitative and some semiquantitative goals can be achieved by implementing three checkpoints: first, rigorous protocol optimization; second, error minimization; and third, downstream analysis that considers potentially remaining biases. Conclusions inform us about the reliability of metabarcoding for plankton studies and, because plankton provides unique chances to compare genotypes and phenotypes, the robustness of this method in general.
The Use of DNA Barcoding to Assess Phylogenetic β-Diversity in Mid-Subtropical Evergreen Broad-Leaved Forests of China

The application of quantifying phylogenetic information into measures of forest β-diversity is increasing for investigating the underlying drivers of community assembly along environmental gradients. In terms of assessing evolutionary inferences of community processes, a variety of plant DNA barcodes has been widely used in phylogenetic diversity measurements. However, relatively few studies have evaluated the effectiveness of DNA barcodes with using nuclear region in estimating phylogenetic β-diversity, particularly for communities in tropical or subtropical forests. In this study, we employed DNA barcodes combing with the nuclear region to construct the community phylogeny and examined the patterns of phylogenetic β-diversity of three mid-subtropical evergreen broad-leaved forests (EBLFs) in South China. Three phylogenetic construction methods were performed, including a Phylomatic-generated tree and two ML trees based on the combination of rbcL +matK +ITS with or without a constrained tree. Our results showed that the DNA barcodes including nuclear ITS constructed a highly resolved phylogenetic tree, but the application of a constrained tree had little influence on estimation of phylogenetic diversity metrics (mean pairwise distances and mean nearest taxon distances) based on branch lengths. Using both metrics and their standardized effect size metrics, we found that the patterns of phylogenetic β-diversity in mid-subtropical forests were non-random. There was a slight decline of phylogenetic β-diversity with increasing latitudes, but no trend was found along the altitude gradient. According to the analysis of variation partition, both environmental filtering and dispersion limitation could explain the variation of phylogenetic dissimilarity between communities in mid-subtropical EBLFs of China. Our results highlight the importance of neutrality and the niche conservatism in structuring the patterns of species diversity in subtropical woody communities.
A fibronectin mechanotransduction pathway translates segmentation clock oscillations into periodic somite formation

Somitogenesis starts with cyclic waves of expression of segmentation clock genes in the presomitic mesoderm (PSM) and culminates with periodic budding of somites in its anterior-most region. How cyclic clock gene expression is translated into timely morphological somite formation remains unclear. A posterior to anterior gradient of increasing fibronectin matrix complexity surrounds the PSM, suggesting that the mechanical properties of the matrix may play a role in regulating this transition. Here we interfered with the chick PSM fibronectin mechanotransduction pathway by perturbing (1) actomyosin-mediated contractility, (2) Rho-associated protein kinase function, (3) integrin-fibronectin binding and (4) fibronectin matrix assembly. Each treatment perturbed segmentation clock expression dynamics, meso1 expression and resulted in defective somitic clefts. A model is presented where the fibronectin matrix gradient participates in the PSM wavefront of maturation by activating a mechanotransduction signaling cascade ensuring the correct spatio-temporal conversion of cyclic segmentation clock gene expression into periodic somite formation.
Poly[di- 2 -methanolato-di- 2 -tetramethoxyborato-disodium(I)]

In the polymeric title compound, [Na2(C4H12BO4)2(CH4O)2]n, the two independent sodium cations are bound by five O atoms. All the O atoms of one tetra­methoxy­borate anion bind cations, forming a tetra­meric cluster around a tetra­gonal inversion centre [Na—O = 2.2777 (18)–2.3907 (16) A]. Two methanol O atoms bridge the two Na atoms [Na—O = 2.3590 (15)–2.4088 (18) A] and provide the hydrogen-bonding H atoms. The second tetra­methoxy­borate anion provides two O atoms to one Na atom [mean Na—O = 2.31 (2) A] and two O atoms as donors for crosslinking hydrogen bonds to adjacent tetra­mers, which complete the three-dimensional packing. The crystal was a treated as a racemic twin.
The Most Recent Common Ancestor of a Randomly Chosen Sample in a Galton-Watson Process

One of the interesting topics to be examined in the field of theoretical population genetics is to find the most recent common ancestor of the current population. In this thesis, firstly we proceed by finding the common ancestor of two randomly chosen individuals at the current time s, thus we will build a mathematical model to illustrate this situation using a Galton-Watson process which allows the population to grow stochastically over time, and only genetic drift affects the model. We then generalise the model into modelling the common ancestor for n randomly chosen individuals at the current time step. Later, we derive the joint estimate of having a common ancestor from n chosen individuals and the current population at time s does not exceed the observed population. Hence, this will be used to determine the estimate of the initial population size and the time of the most recent common ancestor for the case of n = 2. Lastly, we will compare the coalescent time with result found by Slatkin and Hudson (1991) using the Wright-Fisher model.
Redox balance and metabolic responses in pregnant ewes at different periods of the dry season in the tropics.

The study investigated the influence of ambient temperature and gestation on the redox homeostasis and metabolic profile of Yankasa ewes during the dry season in a tropical savannah. Ten ewes were synchronised and bred at early-dry season and lambed during the late-dry season, so that each sampling period corresponded to different periods of the dry season. Thermal environmental parameters were recorded during the morning and afternoon hours. Blood samples were collected from the ewes at pre-, early (cold-dry) -, mid(early hot-dry) and late-gestation (late hot-dry), week 3 (late hot-dry) and week 2 prepartum (late hot-dry); and postpartum (late hot-dry). Serum samples were analysed for malondialdehyde (MDA), superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase and glutathione peroxidase (GPx), thyroid hormones, cholesterol, triglycerides, non-esterified fatty acids (NEFA), alanine aminotransferase (AST), aspartate aminotransferase (ALT), creatinine and urea. The highest average ambient temperature was obtained at mid-gestation. Mid-gestation was characterised by significantly (P<0.05) higher MDA and NEFA levels, but lower SOD, GPx and T3 level. The AST and ALT activities were lower (P<0.05) at preand early-gestation than at prepartum and postpartum. Urea concentration was higher (P<0.05) at postpartum than early-gestation. Discriminant analysis revealed a higher level of misclassification of parameters between pre-gestation, late-gestation, prepartum and postpartum, but no classification error occurred during earlyand mid-gestation. In conclusion, the ewes were more stressed at mid-gestation than any other stage of the gestation. Therefore, measures to mitigate the adverse impact of high ambient temperature on the dam should be adopted to prevent the occurrence of pregnancy-related disorders during the season.
Effect of Codeine Phosphate on Developmental Stages of Forensically Important Calliphoride Fly : Chrysomya Albiceps

Insects can be used as alternative specimens for toxicological analysis when conventional postmortem samples are not available as drugs that can be detected in severely decomposed tissues of a corpse may still be found in the insects that did feed on the corpse. Several studies illustrate the great potential importance of entomotoxicology for providing additional information on cause of death. This study was aimed to study the effect of intoxication with codeine phosphate in decomposed bodies on the development of carrion flies and on the evaluation of postmortem interval (PMI). The experiment was performed during summer season from last of June to the mid of July. Four rabbits, two control and two injected with lethal dose of codeine phosphate were used. Each one was placed in a cardboard box, floored with muddy soil and protected with a metal cage. Different developmental stages of Chrysomya albiceps were collected and studied for both biological and morphological changes using dissecting light microscopy. There were morphological changes in the form of disfiguring of segments, loss of colouration and abnormalities in the shape of both anterior and posterior spiracles in the larvae, while the adult flies show rudimentary wings, abnormal bands on the undersurface of the abdomen,fading of normal colour to complete loss of it. Also there were biological changes in the form of acceleration in the development during life cycle and incomplete emerge of some adult flies from their pupae in the ingected group. These acceleration of development lead to bias in estimation of postmortem interval up to 24h when estimation based on larval development and 48h when estimation based on pupal development. This work should provide data for the use of morphological and biological changes that occur in Chysomya albiceps as indicator for death from lethal dose of codeine phosphate and to estimate the post mortem in-