Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Characterization and Therapeutic Potential of Bacteriophage-Encoded Polysaccharide Depolymerases with β Galactosidase Activity against Klebsiella pneumoniae K57 Capsular Type

Bacteriophages and phage enzymes are considered as possible alternatives to antibiotics in the treatment of infections caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Due to the ability to cleave the capsular polysaccharides (CPS), one of the main virulence factors of Klebsiella pneumoniae, phage depolymerases, has potential in the treatment of K. pneumoniae infections. Here, we characterized in vivo two novel phage-encoded polysaccharide depolymerases as therapeutics against clinical isolates of K. pneumoniae. The depolymerases Dep_kpv79 and Dep_kpv767 encoded by Klebsiella phages KpV79 (Myoviridae; Jedunavirus) and KpV767 (Autographiviridae, Studiervirinae, Przondovirus), respectively, were identified as specific β-galactosidases that cleave the K. pneumoniae K57 type CPS by the hydrolytic mechanism. They were found to be highly effective at combating sepsis and hip infection caused by K. pneumoniae in lethal mouse models. Here, 80–100% of animals were protected against death by a single dose (e.g., 50 μg/mouse) of the enzyme injected 0.5 h after infection by K. pneumoniae strains of the K57 capsular type. The therapeutic effect of the depolymerases is because they strip the capsule and expose the underlying bacterium to the immune attack such as complement-mediated killing. These data provide one more confirmation that phage polysaccharide depolymerases represent a promising tool for antimicrobial therapy.
Small Ruminant Community Breeding Program in Indonesia

This paper outlines the principles of community breeding programs, reviews similar programs that have been conducted in Indonesia, as well as proposing improvements. Community breeding programs (CBP) are a method for genetic improvement of livestock, with voluntary participation of farmers, using animals belonging to the farmers, by defining breeding objectives and selection criteria or traits, selecting the best males of the group, performance testing and distributing males to the farmers. Farmers have the ownership of the program and contribute to the sustainability of the program, marketability of the products according the needs of the farmers, as well as strengthening farmers institutions. There are breeding scehemes of one tier, two tier and three tier that can be implemented to achieve the goals of genetic improvement. Several CBP has been carried out scatteredly, however improvements have to be made such as by long term financial support, strong commitment from breeders, mentoring by academias, data management and analysis as well as economic assessment. Therefore, a more masive and sustainable CBP should be conducted to improve the genetic quality of sheep and goat in Indonesia.
Formin-2 drives intracellular polymerisation of actin filaments enabling correct segregation of apicoplasts in Plasmodium falciparum and Toxoplasma gondii

Pathogenic obligate-intracellular apicomplexan parasites possess an essential chloroplast-like organelle called the apicoplast that undergoes division and segregation during replication. Parasite actin is essential during intracellular development, implicated in vesicular transport, parasite replication and apicoplast inheritance. However, the inability to visualise live actin dynamics in apicomplexan parasites limited functional characterisation of both filamentous-actin (F-actin) and actin regulatory factors. Apicomplexans possess at least two distinct formins, Formin-1 and Formin-2, predicted to serve as actin-nucleating factors, and previously implicated in regulating gliding motility and host cell invasion. Here, we expressed chromobodies and validated them as F-actin-binding sensors in Plasmodium falciparum and characterised the in vivo dynamics of the F-actin network. The F-actin network could be modulated chemically and disrupted by conditionally deleting the actin-1 gene. In a comparative approach, we demonstrate that Formin-2 is closely associated with apicoplasts and with the F-actin network in P. falciparum and Toxoplasma gondii. Consequently, disruption of Formin-2 resulted not only in an apicoplast segregation defect, but also in complete abrogation of F-actin dynamics in intracellular parasites. Together, our results strongly indicate that Formin-2-mediated filament formation is the common primary mechanism for F-actin nucleation during apicomplexan intracellular growth effecting apicoplast segregation.
Mass production-ready characteristics of AlGaN/AlN/GaN high-electron-mobility transistor structures grown on 200 mm diameter silicon substrates using metal-organic chemical vapor deposition

Mass production-ready technologies of AlGaN/AlN/GaN high-electron-mobility transistor (HEMT) structures on 200 mm diameter silicon substrates are developed using a large-scale metal-organic chemical vapor deposition system. High-yield epitaxial substrates on large-diameter wafers are required for reducing the cost of industrializing power device applications. Through multi-point vertical leakage current measurements, it was confirmed that the AlGaN/AlN/GaN HEMT, under optimum growth conditions, showed high yield characteristics such as a highly uniform leakage current and a low number of breaking points over the entire 200 mm diameter wafer. On introducing an AlN spacer layer between the AlGaN Schottky barrier and the GaN channel, a lower on-state resistance for power devices can be expected. Cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy images revealed that the thin AlN spacer layer was grown between the AlGaN and GaN layers with atomically abrupt and flat interfaces. HEMT structures with an AlN spacer layer exhibited a considerably high two-dimensional-electron-gas mobility of 2000 cm2 V−1 s−1 at room temperature and 10 700 cm2 V−1 s−1 at 77 K. The AlN spacer layer between the AlGaN and GaN layers was successfully fabricated and suppressed the alloy disorder scattering effect.
Synthesis of Enaminones-Based Benzo[d]imidazole Scaffold: Characterization and Molecular Insight Structure

(E)-1-(1H-Benzo[d]imidazol-2-yl)-3-(dimethylamino)prop-2-en-1-one 2 was synthesized by one-pot synthesis protocol of 2-acetyl benzo[d]imidazole with dimethylformamide dimethylacetal (DMF-DMA) in xylene at 140 °C for 8 h. Reaction of enaminone derivative 1 with acetylacetone in the presence of AcOH/NH4OAc under reflux afforded the cyclized pyridino-benzo[d]imidazole derivative 3. The latter compound was converted into the corresponding β-enaminone 4 with DMF-DMA. The single crystal X-ray diffraction technique eventually confirmed the assigned chemical structure of the N-alkyl-β-enaminone 2 and pyridino-benzo[d]imidazole derivative 3. N-alkyl-β-enaminone 2 crystallized in the monoclinic space group P21/n with unit cell parameters of a = 9.8953(3) A, b = 5.7545(2) A, c = 21.7891(7) A, and β =100.627(2)°, and with one molecule per asymmetric unit. On the other hand, compound 3 crystallized in the orthorhombic crystal system and space group P212121 with unit cell parameters of a = 6.82950(10) A, b = 8.00540(10) A, c = 22.4779(2) A, and also with one molecule per asymmetric unit. Based on Hirshfeld analysis, the H.H (51.3%), O.H (10.0%), N.H (10.3%), and C.H (27.6%) contacts in 2 and the H.H (46.8%), O.H (9.9%), N.H (13.0%), and C.H (21.6%) in addition to the C…C (6.7%) interactions in 3 are the most important towards crystal stability via molecular packing. The main difference is the presence of π–π interaction among the molecular units of 3 but not in 2. The calculated 1H and 13C NMR chemical shifts showed good agreements with experimental data. Electronic properties and reactivity parameters of both compounds are also calculated and compared.
Effects of Preferential Incorporation of Carboxylic Acids on the Crystal Growth and Physicochemical Properties of Aragonite

The preferential incorporation of carboxylic acids into aragonite and its effects on the crystal growth and physicochemical properties of aragonite were systematically investigated using a seeded co-precipitation system with different carboxylic acids (citric, malic, acetic, glutamic, and phthalic). Aragonite synthesized in the presence of citric and malic acids showed a remarkable decrease in the crystallinity and size of crystallite, and the retardation of crystal growth distinctively changed the crystal morphology. The contents of citric acid and malic acid in the aragonite samples were 0.65 wt % and 0.19 wt %, respectively, revealing that the changes in the physicochemical properties of aragonite were due to the preferential incorporation of such carboxylic acids. Speciation modeling further confirmed that citric acid with three carboxyl groups dominantly existed as a metal–ligand, (Ca–citrate)−, which could have a strong affinity toward the partially positively charged surface of aragonite. This indicates why citric acid was most favorably incorporated among other carboxylic acids. Our results demonstrate that the number of carboxyl functional groups strongly affects the preferential incorporation of carboxylic acids into aragonite; however, it could be suppressed by the presence of other functional groups or the structural complexity of organic molecules.
A Local Feature Engineering Strategy to Improve Network Anomaly Detection

The dramatic increase in devices and services that has characterized modern societies in recent decades, boosted by the exponential growth of ever faster network connections and the predominant use of wireless connection technologies, has materialized a very crucial challenge in terms of security. The anomaly-based intrusion detection systems, which for a long time have represented some of the most efficient solutions to detect intrusion attempts on a network, have to face this new and more complicated scenario. Well-known problems, such as the difficulty of distinguishing legitimate activities from illegitimate ones due to their similar characteristics and their high degree of heterogeneity, today have become even more complex, considering the increase in the network activity. After providing an extensive overview of the scenario under consideration, this work proposes a Local Feature Engineering (LFE) strategy aimed to face such problems through the adoption of a data preprocessing strategy that reduces the number of possible network event patterns, increasing at the same time their characterization. Unlike the canonical feature engineering approaches, which take into account the entire dataset, it operates locally in the feature space of each single event. The experiments conducted on real-world data showed that this strategy, which is based on the introduction of new features and the discretization of their values, improves the performance of the canonical state-of-the-art solutions.
The Approach of Hierarchical Linear Model to Exploring Individual and Team Creativity: A Perspective of Cultural Intelligence and Team Trust

How to promote the creativity of interorganizational teams has always been the focus among scholars and management practitioners. From the perspective of leadership, this study explores the influence of shared leadership on creativity in interorganizational teams. Specifically, this study integrates leadership perspective with trust perspective and explores the mediating role of team trust between shared leadership and creativity at both team and individual level. In addition, this study examines the moderating effect of the leader’s cultural intelligence between shared leadership and team trust based on the perspective of leadership situation. The data comes from 275 employees within 54 interorganizational teams. The results show that shared leadership will promote team trust and team trust plays a key mediating role between shared leadership and creativity. Moreover, the relationship between shared leadership and team trust is moderated by the cultural intelligence of leader, such that the positive relationship will be stronger with high cultural intelligence and weaker with low cultural intelligence.
Thermal Environment of Urban Schoolyards: Current and Future Design with Respect to Children’s Thermal Comfort

Urban outdoor thermal conditions, and its impacts on the health and well-being for the city inhabitants have reached increased attention among biometeorological studies during the last two decades. Children are considered more sensitive and vulnerable to hot ambient conditions compared to adults, and are affected strongly by their thermal environment. One of the urban outdoor environments that children spend almost one third of their school time is the schoolyard. The aims of the present manuscript were to review studies conducted worldwide, in order to present the biophysical characteristics of the typical design of the urban schoolyard. This was done to assess, in terms of bioclimatology, the interactions between the thermal environment and the children’s body, to discuss the adverse effects of thermal environment on children, especially the case of heat stress, and to propose measures that could be applied to improve the thermal environment of schoolyards, focusing on vegetation. Human thermal comfort monitoring tools are mainly developed for adults, thus, further research is needed to adapt them to children. The schemes that are usually followed to design urban schoolyards create conditions that favour the exposure of children to excessive heat, inducing high health risks to them. The literature survey showed that typical urban schoolyard design (i.e., dense surface materials, absence of trees) triggered high surface temperatures (that may exceed 58 °C) and increased absorption of radiative heat load (that may exceed 64 °C in terms of Mean Radiant Temperature) during a clear day with intense solar radiation. Furthermore, vegetation cover has a positive impact on schoolyard’s microclimate, by improving thermal comfort and reducing heat stress perception of children. Design options for urban schoolyards and strategies that can mitigate the adverse effects of heat stress are proposed with focus on vegetation cover that affect positively their thermal environment and improve their aesthetic and functionality.
Factors Affecting Profitability of Agribusiness Activities: A Case Study of Smallholder Pig Farming in Tharaka-Nithi County, Kenya

Aims: There have been concerted efforts to commercialize the pig sub-sector so as to make it more profitable to farmers, especially smallholder farmers. Despite the development, the profitability in the sector has not been consistent among the smallholder farmers. Smallholder farmers have been earning varying and dismal profits. The causes of the varying profits have not been empirically established with the influence of institutional arrangements from a transaction cost perspective and management factors contributing to this inconsistency not fully established. The study examined the influence of institutional arrangements and management factors on profit efficiency of smallholder pig farming in Tharaka-Nithi County, Kenya. Research Methods: A two-stage sampling technique was employed in selection of 80 smallholder pig farmers. Semi-structured interview guides were administered and data was analyzed using descriptive statistics and stochastic frontier production function. Findings: The study revealed that male (75%) respondents dominated were within the active age, had 6 years pig farming experience with basic education. The results of Stochastic frontier Original Research Article Micheni et al.; AJAEES, 38(10): 33-42, 2020; Article no.AJAEES. 62229 34 production revealed that feed costs (p<0.01) and breed type (p<0.05) negatively reduced profit efficiency of the respondents while herd size (p<0.05) and veterinary and drug costs (p<0.01) positively influenced profit efficiency. Inefficiency was increased by Gender (p<0.1) and Debt Asset Ratio (p<0.01) while information trust (p<0.05) and experience reduced. Conclusion: The mean profit efficiency was 0.40 exhibiting low profit efficiency in the study area, efficiency level could be increased by 60% through better use of available resources, adoption of modern technology and transaction costs reduction. This would be acquired if good management practices and marketing channels are adopted. The gamma parameter (γ) was 0.63 meaning 63% net revenue variation is due to profit inefficiencies. The study contributes to Agribusiness field and would improve policies associated with agribusiness development in Kenya.
Colorectal liver metastases: Current management and future perspectives

The liver is the commonest site of metastatic disease for patients with colorectal cancer, with at least 25% developing colorectal liver metastases (CRLM) during the course of their illness. The management of CRLM has evolved into a complex field requiring input from experienced members of a multi-disciplinary team involving radiology (cross sectional, nuclear medicine and interventional), Oncology, Liver surgery, Colorectal surgery, and Histopathology. Patient management is based on assessment of sophisticated clinical, radiological and biomarker information. Despite incomplete evidence in this very heterogeneous patient group, maximising resection of CRLM using all available techniques remains a key objective and provides the best chance of long-term survival and cure. To this end, liver resection is maximised by the use of downsizing chemotherapy, optimisation of liver remnant by portal vein embolization, associating liver partition and portal vein ligation for staged hepatectomy, and combining resection with ablation, in the context of improvements in the functional assessment of the future remnant liver. Liver resection may safely be carried out laparoscopically or open, and synchronously with, or before, colorectal surgery in selected patients. For unresectable patients, treatment options including systemic chemotherapy, targeted biological agents, intra-arterial infusion or bead delivered chemotherapy, tumour ablation, stereotactic radiotherapy, and selective internal radiotherapy contribute to improve survival and may convert initially unresectable patients to operability. Currently evolving areas include biomarker characterisation of tumours, the development of novel systemic agents targeting specific oncogenic pathways, and the potential re-emergence of radical surgical options such as liver transplantation.
Middle East Climate Response to the Saharan Vegetation Collapse during the Mid-Holocene

Understanding climate change in the Middle East (ME) is crucial because people’s living environment depends on rain-fed crop systems. It remains unclear whether the ME climate would be affected by the Saharan vegetation collapse at the end of the mid-Holocene (MH). Proxy data suggest a transition from humid to more arid ME conditions during the period of 6.5–5 kyr BP. Using a set of idealized sensitivity experiments with an Earth system model (EC-Earth), we infer that the shift of Saharan vegetation plays a role in this wet-to-dry transition over the ME. The experimental results show that the Saharan greening can significantly increase the late winter and early spring precipitation over the ME. The reason is that the vegetation decreases the surface albedo, which induces a warming in North Africa and generation of an anomalous low-level cyclonic flow, which transports moisture from tropical North Africa and the Red Sea to the ME. The moisture also flows from the Mediterranean Sea region to the ME through the enhanced mid- to upper-level westerlies. The enhanced moisture carried by westerly and southwesterly flows is lifted upon reaching Mesopotamia and the Zagros Mountains, substantially increasing the precipitation there. When the Sahara greening is removed, a drier condition happens in the ME. The crop model simulation further shows a substantial decrease in wheat yield in Mesopotamia with the reduction of Saharan vegetation, which is consistent with paleoclimatic reconstructions. These results imply that future changes in Saharan land cover may have climatic and agricultural impacts in the Middle East.
Minor fruit trees in agroforestry for addressing nutritional, medicinal, fodder and timber needs

The paper highlights multiple uses of minor fruit trees and advocates their incorporation in agroforestry system for conservation of biodiversity, self-sufficiency in fruit, timber and top feed. Minor fruits are major source of nutrition to rural poor as they have poor access to major fruits. Timber wood import of country is looming large year after year and poor people have to bear burnt of increased prices. Minor fruits on their field bunds will meet their timber requirement without demanding additional land and care, and will constitute long term investment by poor farmers for their future generations. Animal husbandry is integral part of farming in India. Due to conversion of grazing lands to other land-uses, fodder shortage is hampering milk/meat production. Provision of top feed on farm-land will add to farmers ’income by supplying green fodder as top feed in lean period. Many minor fruit trees have more than one utility; hence, they should be preferred under agroforestry. This will not only assist in conservation of these species but also in meeting the various requirements of the farmers e.g. nutrition, top feed, fuelwood and raw material for pharmaceutical.
Dynamic infrared gas analysis from longleaf pine fuel beds burned in a wind tunnel: observation of phenol in pyrolysis and combustion phases

Abstract. Pyrolysis is the first step in a series of chemical and physical processes that produce flammable organic gases from wildland fuels that can result in a wildland fire. We report results using a new time-resolved Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) method that correlates the measured FTIR spectrum with an infrared thermal image sequence, enabling the identification and quantification of gases within different phases of the fire process. The flame from burning fuel beds composed of pine needles (Pinus palustris) and mixtures of sparkleberry, fetterbush, and inkberry plants was the natural heat source for pyrolysis. Extractive gas samples were analyzed and identified in both static and dynamic modes synchronized to thermal infrared imaging: a total of 29 gases were identified including small alkanes, alkenes, aldehydes, nitrogen compounds, and aromatics, most previously measured by FTIR in wildland fires. This study presents one of the first identifications of phenol associated with both pre-combustion and combustion phases using ca. 1 Hz temporal resolution. Preliminary results indicate ∼2.5× greater phenol emissions from sparkleberry and inkberry compared to fetterbush, with differing temporal profiles.
An evaluation of antifungal and antitoxigenicity effects of Ag/Zn and Ag nanoparticles on Aspergillus parasiticus growth and aflatoxin production

Background: Aspergillus parasiticus is one of the primary sources of aflatoxin contamination in agricultural crops,especially nuts. Aflatoxin contamination is one of the most challenging problems in the production and exportation ofpistachios.Materials and Methods: In this study, the antifungal effects of the silver-zinc mixture and silver nanoparticles on themycelia growth, spore germination and aflatoxin production of Aspergillus parasiticus have been evaluated.Results: The findings of the current study showed that the concentrations of 1250 ppm of Ag/Zn and 100-200 ppm of Agnanoparticles inhibit mycelia growth and the spore germination of Aspergillus parasiticus in liquid and solid mediasignificantly, but the concentration of 25 ppm of both nanoparticles has no inhibitory effects on the A. pararsiticus growthparameter. The results showed that the rate of inhibitory effects depends on the type of the medium and nanoparticles, but thefungal isolate had no significant effects on nanoparticles’ inhibitory features.Conclusions: Ag/Zn nanoparticles had no regular effect on the reduction of aflatoxin production, yet Ag nanoparticlesreduced the production of aflatoxins, especially aflatoxins B2 and G2.