Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Population cytogenetics of the "Northern Mod 1" chromosomal race of Liolaemus monticola Müller & Helmich (Iguanidae) from Central Chile

Reportamos la citogenetica poblacional de la raza "Norte 2n=38-40, modificada 1" para tres localidades del complejo de Liolaemus monticola en Chile, que resulta ser cromosomica y geograficamente intermedia entre dos razas previamente descritas la "Norte, 2n=38-40" y la "Multiple Fisiones, 2n=40-44 (MF)". Esta raza, retiene las mismas caracteristicas cromosomicas de la raza "Norte", pero difiere de esta dada la condicion polimorfica para un cromosoma alargado del par 6 y una inversion pericentrica del par cromosomico 7, rearreglos que estan presentes en la raza "MF". A nivel citogenetico poblacional, la proporcion promedio de los cromosomas polimorficos en la raza "Northern, mod 1" is relativamente alta e intermedia entre las razas "Norte" y "MF", en tanto los "alelos" cromosomicos de la raza "Norte, mod 1" se desvian grandemente de los valores Hardy-Weinberg comparados a las razas antes mencionadas. Las distancias de Roger entre las muestra concuerdan con las razas cromosomicas y con las barreras propuestas (El Rio Colorado y El Rio Juncal). Los valores mas bajos de flujo ("alelos") cromosomico (Nm) se encuentran entre las razas cromosomicas, sugerentes de una baja introgresion. Estos patrones de citogenetica poblacional, mas el origen de los rearreglos cromosomicos y de los patrones de recombinacion resultantes de la heterocigosidad cromosomica son comparados con la situacion que presentan otras poblaciones de las razas "Norte" y "MF", previamente descritas. Discutimos el posible status hibrido de la raza "Norte, mod 1" en la evolucion de este complejo en Chile central.
Habitat Niche-Fitness and Radix Yield Prediction Models for Angelica sinensis Cultivated in the Alpine Area of the Southeastern Region of Gansu Province, China

Abstract Dried root of Angelica sinensis has been used for thousands of years in traditional Chinese medicinal prescriptions. Researches on better knowledge of appropriate habitats for cultivation of this species are required to encourage the potential ecological sustainable industry. From 2001 to 2004, transplanting trials on the regulation of fertilizers and planting density were conducted for collection of habitat factor data at four sites of four counties in the southeastern region of Gansu Province, China. Introducing the niche theory into the research, habitat niche-fitness (HNF) is defined as the degree of similarity of an actual habitat state to the optimum habitat. A new model of HNF is constructed to evaluate the adaptive extent of A. sinensis. The results showed that the model of HNF notably outperforms the proportional similarity index and the geometric parallelism formula both in mathematical justification and biological principle testing. With HNF as a surrogate for composite environmental factors, a radix yield model was constructed. Evaluation of the present model by the sampled subplots specified for data validation proved that the model could be well used for predicted of radix yield across a wide-spread area. The radix yield prediction model and its uses are recommended within the limitations of the data used in the study area. Beyond this range, validation of the radix yield prediction model will be necessary.
Highly Crystalline Ordered Cu-dopedTiO2Nanostructure by Paper Templated Method: Hydrogen Production and Dye Degradation under Natural Sunlight

A highly crystalline ordered Cu-TiO2 nanostructure was synthesized using a simple paper template method using cupric nitrate and titanium isopropoxide as precursors. The structural study by XRD confirmed the formation of highly crystalline anatase phase of Cu-TiO2. The broad diffraction peaks of Cu-TiO2 exhibit the nanocrystalline nature of the product. The optical study by UV-DRS indicated the red shift in absorption wavelength with an increase in Cu doping, i.e., towards the visible region. The FE-SEM and FE-TEM study validated the formation of spherical shaped nanoparticles of Cu-TiO2 having sizes in the range of 20–30 nm. Considering the absorption in the visible region, the photocatalytic study was performed for water splitting and rhodamine-B (RhB) dye degradation under natural sunlight. The 2% Cu-doped TiO2 showed the highest photocatalytic hydrogen evolution, i.e., 1400 µmol·g−1·h−1 from water, among the prepared compositions. The photocatalytic performance of Cu-TiO2 conferred complete degradation of RhB dye within 40 min. The higher activity in both cases was attributed to the formation of highly crystalline ordered nanostructure of Cu-doped TiO2. This synthesis approach has potential to prepare other highly crystalline ordered nanostructured semiconductors for different applications.
Changes in Soil Protease Activity and Numbers of Culturable Bacteria in Upland Fields by the Application of Liquid Livestock Feces

Within 1 to 3 weeks after the application of liquid livestock feces, the soil benzyloxycarbonyl-l-phenylalanyl-l-leucinase (z-FLase) and caseinase activities in upland fields (120 t feces ha−1 year−1, 600 t feces ha−1 year−1) increased to the maximum levels (z-FLase 562 pKat and 840 pKat g−1 dry soil, respectively; caseinase 1,018 pKat and 2,141 pKat g−1 dry soil, respectively), and decreased to the original level after 5 weeks. Numbers of culturable bacteria counted on albumin medium (AA), bacteria counted on peptone-polymixin medium (PP), and vegetative cells of Bacillus spp. counted on BTV medium (BTV) also increased to the maximum levels after application of the feces. Although there was a significantly high correlation between bacterial number on AA and both the soil protease activities (z-FLase, r=0.895; caseinase, r=0.935), more significant correlations were observed between bacterial number on AA and inorganic nitrogen contents (NH4 + content, r=0.902; NO3 − content, r=0.981). Similarly, although a significant correlation was observed between the soil caseinase activity and bacterial number on PP (r=0.835) and BTV (r=0.780), and the number of fluorescent Pseudomonas spp. (P1) (r=0.867), more significant correlations were observed between the numbers of these culturable bacteria and the soil NH4 + content (PP, r=0.944; BTV, r=0.959; P1, r=0.933) and soil NO3 − content (PP, r=0.982; BTV, r=0.961; P1, r=0.990). Therefore it was difficult to identify the bacterial group responsible for the soil protease production based on these correlation analyses. Rapid increase in the total bacterial number (AA) by the 600 t application was mainly due to the increased number of bacteria on PP medium, which were assumed to have been introduced from liquid livestock feces.
TOP‐DOWN AND BOTTOM‐UP REGULATION OF NEW ZEALAND ROCKY INTERTIDAL COMMUNITIES

Studies on the west coast of North America suggest that nearshore oceanographic conditions can have important effects on rocky intertidal community structure and dynamics. Specifically, upwelling-dependent processes in coastal waters can affect both top-down and bottom-up processes on adjacent rocky shores. As a first step in testing the prediction that similar linkages occur elsewhere, we investigated the effects and rates of predation, grazing, and recruitment on rocky intertidal community dynamics at upwelling and non-upwelling sites on the South Island of New Zealand. Comparative-experimental studies were done at each of two sites on both the east and west coasts of the South Island. We quantified benthic community structure, maximal wave force, nearshore sea-surface temperature, air temperature at low tide, nutrient concentrations, survival of mussels, rates and effects of predation, rates and effects of limpet grazing, recruitment of mussels and barnacles, and RNA:DNA ratios (a growth index) of muss.
Nutrient constraints to tropical agroecosystem productivity in long‐term degrading soils

Soil degradation is one of the most serious threats to sustainable crop production in many tropical agroecosystems where extensification rather than intensification of agriculture has occurred. In the highlands of western Kenya, we investigated soil nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) constraints to maize productivity across a cultivation chronosequence in which land‐use history ranged from recent conversion from primary forest to 100 years in continuous cropping. Nutrient treatments included a range of N and P fertilizer rates applied separately and in combination. Maize productivity without fertilizer was used as a proxy measure for indigenous soil fertility (ISF). Soil pools of mineral nitrogen, strongly bound P and plant‐available P decreased by 82%, 31% and 36%, and P adsorption capacity increased by 51% after 100 years of continuous cultivation. For the long rainy season (LR), grain yield without fertilizer declined rapidly as cultivation age increased from 0 to 25 years and then gradually declined to a yield of 1.6 Mg ha−1, which was maintained as time under cultivation increased from 60 to 100 years. LR grain yield in the old conversions was only 24% of the average young conversion grain yield (6.4 Mg ha−1). Application of either N or P alone significantly increased grain yield in both the LR and short rainy (SR) seasons, but only application of 120 kg N ha−1 on the old conversion increased yield by >1 Mg ha−1. In both SR and LR, there was a greater average yield increment response to N and P when applied together (ranging from 1 to 3.8 Mg ha−1 for the LR), with the greatest responses on the old conversions. The benefit–cost ratio (BCR) for applying 120 kg N ha−1 alone was <1 except on the old conversions, while BCRs were>1 for applying 25 kg P ha−1 alone at all levels of conversion for both seasons. Application of both N (120 kg N ha−1) and P (25 kg P ha−1) on the old conversions resulted in the greatest BCRs. This study clearly indicates that maize productivity responses to N and P fertilizer are significantly affected by the age of cultivation and its influence on ISF, but that loss of productivity can be restored rapidly when these limiting nutrients are applied. Management strategies should consider ISF and economic factors to determine optimal N and P input requirements for achieving and sustaining profitable crop production on degraded soils.
Interdependence between banking earnings, banking security and growth achievement: case study in the ASEAN community

The main purpose of this paper is to examine the existence of interdependence amongst banking earnings, banking security and growth performance across the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) region. ,This paper utilizes a panel autoregressive distributed lag method with the annual data of nine ASEAN members over 1996–2017. ,Only the short-run Granger causal impact of banking profitability on economic expansion is supported, while the long-run Granger causality between all the variables is strongly recognized. Increased banking well-being supports economic development, while higher banking security might have inverse impacts. However, increasing the banking profit without the corresponding better soundness can be detrimental to the economic growth in the short run and much more in the long run. Thus, improving banking profitability and stability simultaneously has positive net effects on the economic development. ,This research is restricted to unavailable data and limited measurements of both banking profitability and stability. Further inclusion of other macro-economic variables, other banking development aspects or even non-banking indicators should also be considered. ,National governments should emphasize a convenient financial environment, which can strongly enhance the positive relationship between banking earnings, banking safeness and output growth. Also, the relevant policies on higher banking well-being and stricter security obligations have to be simultaneously maintained. ,Few papers have inspected the interrelationship between banking stability, banking profitability and economic growth, particularly in the ASEAN region. This causes the banking literature shortage, as well as insufficient insights for the financial policymakers into their endogenous dynamics. Thus, the study is the first attempt to fulfil the research gap.
DeepComfort: Energy-Efficient Thermal Comfort Control in Buildings Via Reinforcement Learning

Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) are extremely energy consuming, accounting for 40% of total building energy consumption. It is crucial to design some energy-efficient building thermal comfort control strategy which can reduce the energy consumption of the HVAC while maintaining the comfort of the occupants. However, implementing such a strategy is challenging, because the changes of the thermal states in a building environment are influenced by various factors. The relationships among these influencing factors are hard to model and are always different in different building environments. To address this challenge, we propose a deep-reinforcement-learning-based framework, DeepComfort, for thermal comfort control in buildings. We formulate the thermal comfort control as a cost-minimization problem by jointly considering the energy consumption of the HVAC and the occupants’ thermal comfort. We first design a deep feedforward neural network (FNN)-based approach for predicting the occupants’ thermal comfort and then propose a deep deterministic policy gradients (DDPGs)-based approach for learning the optimal thermal comfort control policy. We implement a building thermal comfort control simulation environment and evaluate the performance under various settings. The experimental results show that our approaches can improve the performance of thermal comfort prediction by 14.5% and reduce the energy consumption of HVAC by 4.31% while improving the occupants’ thermal comfort by 13.6%.
Somas de quadrados e hipóteses associadas ao modelo dialélico de Gardner e Eberhart

The diallel analysis model proposed by Gardner and Eberhart (1966) has been used to evaluate and select superior genotypes in plant breeding programs and to study several characters of genetic inheritance. However, the diallel model is non orthogonal as pointed out by the authors. Dependencies can also be generated by losses of genotypes' means, and that can lead to erroneous interpretation of the tested hypotheses because when the model is non orthogonal or unbalanced there are different approaches to the proposed hypotheses that generate different values for the sums of squares. This work intends to determine how the sums of squares of the diallel model effect and their associated hypotheses are affected, including the situations of losses of genotype means. Examples of complete and partial diallels were used and the type I sums of squares were determined by means of successive reductions of the unrestricted model according to the procedure used by the SAS and they were compared with the type III sums of squares, obtained through the inverse-of-part-of-inverse algorithm. The associated hypotheses were also compared. The type I was obtained through the estimable functions reported in the GLM of the SAS system and the type III was obtained by means of the procedure described by Searle (1987), that are correspondent to obtain the solution of Wrβ = Wβ. The analysis of the complete and partial diallel models, with or without losses of means, was affected in a way similar to the sums of squares and associated hypotheses. It was verified that the losses of crossing means affected in a different way the type I and III sums of squares and the associated hypotheses of most of the effects and that heterosis was not affected by losses of parents' means. The complete and partial diallel, without losses of means, only presented differences between the sums of squares and associated type I and III hypotheses for parents confirming the natural non-orthogonality of the adopted model.
Diversity in tropical ecosystems: the species richness and turnover of moths in Malaysian rainforests

As a contribution to accurate estimation of arthropod alpha and beta diversities in tropical forests, we present results of some of the largest moth samples ever collected in the Malaysian region. To estimate alpha diversity, light traps were run at three geographically distinct locations. We generated individual‐based and coverage‐based rarefaction curves to estimate sampling sufficiency and alpha diversity of the locations. Despite a large number of moths collected (67 282 individuals, from three locations), none of the rarefaction curves reached asymptote. The species accumulation curves based on the Chao1 richness estimator at each location suggested that, even when sampling yielded over 30 000 individuals, Chao1 could not reliably estimate the observed number of species. In one of the three locations, moths were collected systematically by light traps in 1979–1980 and 2000–2001. Despite over 160 trapping nights and 16 500 individuals collected in total, the estimated total number of species (2262) was well below the general collection conducted at the same location over a 35‐year period [3921 species (1975–2013)]. Beta diversity was investigated using the samples collected at one location on two occasions over a 20‐year period. The faunal composition has changed over the 20‐year period, possibly as a result of extensive land‐use change around the study location. We estimated the minimum sampling effort required to detect such changes by calculating type II errors. Unlike alpha diversity estimation, we found that only four replicate samples, each with only two trapping nights, would be sufficient to reliably detect changes in assemblage composition.
A short-term comparison of the performance of four grassland-based systems of milk production for autumn-calving dairy cows

Eighty winter-calving dairy cows of mixed parity were managed in four grassland-based systems of milk production (F-F, F-C, C-F and C-C) over a full lactation (year 1) and during the winter period of the subsequent lactation (year 2). During the winter periods cows on systems F-F and F-C were offered silages of high feeding value, supplemented with 6AE 0k g d )1 of concentrate [crude protein (CP), 307 g kg )1 dry matter (DM)]
Examining common assumptions about recruitment: a meta‐analysis of recruitment dynamics for worldwide marine fisheries

Assumptions about the future productivity of a stock are necessary to calculate sustainable catches in fisheries management. Fisheries scientists often assume the number of young fish entering a population (recruitment) is related to the biomass of spawning adults and that recruitment dynamics do not change over time. Thus, managers often use a target biomass based on spawning biomass as the basis for calculating sustainable catches. However, we show recruitment and spawning biomass are not positively related over the observed range of stock sizes for 61% of 224 stocks in the RAM Legacy Stock Assessment Database. Furthermore, 85% of stocks for which spawning biomass may not drive recruitment dynamics over the observed ranges exhibit shifts in average recruitment, which is often used in proxies for target biomasses. Our results suggest that the environment more strongly influences recruitment than spawning biomass over the observed stock sizes for many stocks. Management often endeavours to maintain stock sizes within the observed ranges, so methods for setting management targets that include changes within an ecosystem may better define the status of some stocks, particularly as climate changes.
A secreted type of β1,6 N‐acetylglucosaminyltransferase V (GnT‐V), a novel angiogenesis inducer, is regulated by γ‐secretase

Glycosyltransferases are present in the Golgi apparatus in a membrane‐bound form and are released from cells after cleavage by certain proteases. β1,6‐N‐Acetylglucosaminyltransferase V (GnT‐V), which is cleaved and secreted from the cells, is involved in the biosynthesis of β1–6GlcNAc branching on N‐ glycans and has been implicated in tumor progression and metastasis. We recently reported that a secreted type of GnT‐V (soluble GnT‐V) itself could promote angiogenesis, which is completely different from its original function as a glycosyltransferase, and this might play a role in tumor invasion. In this study, to explore the molecular basis for this functional glycosyl‐transferase secretion, its cleavage site was examined and the protease(s) involved in that cleavage were identified. The NH2‐terminal protein sequence of purified soluble GnT‐V (~100 kDa) from GnT‐V‐overex‐pressed cells revealed that its terminus started at His31, located at the boundary position between the transmembrane and stem regions. This secretion was not inhibited by a single amino acid mutation at the cleavage site (Leu29, Leu30 to Asp, His31 to Ala), but specifically inhibited by addition of DFK‐167, a γ‐secretase inhibitor, suggesting that γ‐secretase is a plausible protease for secretion processing. In addition, transfection of the gene of familial Alzheimer's disease (FAD)‐ linked presenilin‐1, a component of γ‐secretase, in‐ creased the secretion rate of endogenous GnT‐V; the secretion of soluble GnT‐V (~100 kDa) was completely inhibited in presenilin‐1/2 double‐deficient cells, which have no γ‐secretase activity. Collectively, these results demonstrate that Golgi‐resident GnT‐V is cleaved at the transmembrane region by γ‐secretase, and this might control tumor angiogenesis through a novel pathway. —Nakahara, S. , Saito, T. , Kondo, N. , Moriwaki, K. , Noda, K. , Ihara, S. , Takahashi, M. , Ide, Y. , Gu, J., Inohara, H. , Katayama, T. , Tohyama, M. , Kubo, T. , Taniguchi, N. , Miyoshi, E. A secreted type of H1,6 N‐acetylglucosaminyltransferase V (GnT‐V), a novel angiogenesis inducer, is regulated by γ‐secretase. FASEB J. 20, 2451–2459 (2006)
Abundance of Callicebus barbarabrownae (Hershkovitz 1990),(Primates: Pitheciidae) and other nonvolant mammals in a fragment of arboreal Caatinga in northeastern Brazil

Abstract The semi-arid Caatinga of the Brazilian northeast is a fragile, poorly known scrubland biome, which suffers increasing anthropogenic impacts. While 143 mammal species are known from the biome, few data are available on community composition or population parameters. In the present study, a 115-ha fragment of arboreal caatinga was surveyed in northern Sergipe in 2009 using standard line transect procedures. Total transect length was 133 km, and density estimates were calculated using sighting functions. Additional information on the occurrence of mammalian species was collected non-systematically. Nine species, including three carnivores, were confirmed in the study area, but only three were recorded in the surveys, two of which [the critically endangered blond titi, Callicebus barbarabrownae (Hershkovitz 1990), and the rock cavy, Kerodon rupestris (Wied-Neuwied 1820)] are endemic to the Caatinga. The third species was the common marmoset, Callithrix jacchus (Linnaeus 1758). C. jacchus and K. rupestris were relatively abundant, with estimated densities of 169.7 and 116.7 individuals per km2, respectively, but C. barbarabrownae was rare, and the local population was estimated to contain only five individuals, i.e., approximately four individuals per km2. If typical, densities this low would probably threaten the viability of C. barbarabrownae populations at most, if not all sites in which the species still occurs.