Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Biological control of rice blast disease with Trichoderma spp. under upland rice System

Rice blast caused by Magnaporthe oryzae is one of the most devastating diseases of rice and account for yield loss up to 65% in susceptible cultivars of rice. Trichoderma spp. has emerged as a potential biological control agent against many plant pathogenic fungi and also improved plant growth parameters. An experiment was carried out to evaluate the efficacy of seed treatment with different Trichoderma spp. isolate against leaf blast in four rice varieties; Swarna, IR-64, Samba Mahsuri, and Sahbhagi Dhan under upland rice conditions at Almora and Hazaribag. Trichoderma spp. (isolate Th-3) treated seed of Samba Mahsuri (57%) showed maximum plant height percentage followed by Tv-12 isolate with Samba Mahsuri (44%) as compared to control. It also increases root length (51–93%), total number of leaves (6.-60.%), tillers (3.-41%), panicles (4–39%), flag leaf length (2.-30%) and panicle length (5–32%) as compared to untreated control. The Trichoderma treated seed showed low disease intensity at Almora and Hazaribag as compared to untreated seed. The present study showed that it reduces the disease intensity by 10–25%, suggested that Trichoderma spp. may be used as bio-inoculants for biological control of rice blast disease.
Previously titled: Prevalence and diversity of Salmonella isolated from layer farms in central Ecuador

Background: Given the considerable role played by Salmonella in the incidence of food contamination, around the world, surveillance of this infection is prioritized by both food producers and health care authorities. Data remains insufficient concerning the prevalence of Salmonella in poultry systems in Ecuador and in Latin America in general. Methods: In this study, we evaluated the presence and diversity of Salmonella serovars in samples taken from 21 layer farms and backyard layers in central Ecuador during August-November 2017. Salmonella was isolated following standardized methods (ISO 6579) and the serovar determination was carried out by PCR. Results: A significant presence of Salmonella was detected in the 21 farms evaluated, with a frequency of 76% (95% confidence interval (CI): 53-92) in environmental surfaces, 33% (95%CI: 15-57) in pooled cloacal swabs from layer hens, 33% (95% CI: 13–59) on feed samples, and 10% (95%CI: 1-30) in backyard layer feces from traditional local markets. The dominant serovars detected were S. Infantis and S. Typhimurium. Conclusions: This study forms a basis for further surveillance of Salmonella serovars in layer farms in central Ecuador.
Aflatoxins: Properties, Toxicity and Detoxification

Aflatoxins are the metabolites (mycotoxins) produced mainly by the fungi Aspergillus flavus and A.parasitica. Aflatoxins are first identified in United Kingdom in 1960’s, where more than 1,00,000 Turkey poultry birds are killed due the ground nut meal contaminated with A.flavus. Aflatoxins are detected in groundnuts, treenuts, maize, rice, figs and other dried foods, spices and crude vegetable oils and cocoa beans, but the commodities with major risk of aflatoxin contamination are maize, groundnut and cotton seed. Various physical, chemical and biological methods are employed to decontaminate the aflatoxins. This manuscript reviews types of aflatoxins, physical and chemical properties, toxicity, and mode of action and detoxification of aflatoxins in foods.
Solute Model or Cellular Energy Model: Practical and Theoretical Aspects of Thirst During Exercise

Abstract : Most physiologists would agree that repaying the water debt incurred through evaporative cooling is part of the physiological cost of work in the heat. Pitts and coworkers (44) emphasized that, during work in the heat, men never voluntarily drink as much water as they lose and usually replace only two-thirds of the net water loss. Rothstein et al. (52) observed that this occurred even when water was available, and called this phenomenon voluntary dehydration . Some physiologists feel that voluntary dehydration occurs because thirst is an inadequate stimulus to drinking (29). On the other hand, Vokes (58) contends one of the best examples of a perfectly functioning homeostatic system is water balance . One of our goals is to reconcile the fact that under certain conditions, both of these statements are correct. We will also try to switch the readers interest from water to salt for, although man may drink, water cannot be held until the missing osmoles are made good (29). This may be seen as at least one explanation of why thirst is inadequate and there are others. Keywords: Sodium; Dehydration; Heat stress physiology; Rehydration.
Diversity of Ant Community in Ore Sedimentation Basin under Different Regimes of Reclamation

ABSTRACT Post-industrial sites form a unique phenomenon in the landscape. They enable us to study the human-altered succession of communities. Regarding this, we studied an ant community in three types of habitats – reclamation and spontaneous succession in an ore basin together with unaltered surroundings in the Czech Republic. More than 30 years after being abandoned, the site with spontaneous succession was more species rich than the reclaimed one. Moreover, spontaneous succession created a habitat that was more similar regarding ant diversity to the unaltered surrounding environment than that after traditional reclamation. Ants dependent on tree vegetation were rather rare in both the reclaimed and spontaneous succession parts of the ore basin compared to the surrounding landscape. The relative abundance of socially parasitic ants increases in a gradient from the reclaimed basin, through the basin with spontaneous succession to the unaltered surroundings. Our study highlighted the fact that the formation of ant communities at post-industrial sites is clearly more complicated than for other arthropods, including related aculeate hymenopterans. The potential of both reclaimed and spontaneous succession basins for harbouring endangered species appeared to be lower for ants than for other taxa indicated by recent studies.
In silico Cytotoxicity of Taxol-like Weighted Compounds Contained in Sea Cucumber Using PLANTS against Protein of Human Kinesin-8

East Indonesia has abundant natural resources, one of which is sea cucumber. This organism has anticancer activity but it has not been explored further. Based on the database of Traditional Chinese Pharmacology System, it has 586 compounds. Thirty-seven of these compounds have molecular weight similar to taxol, an anticancer agent. This study confirms the anticancer activity of the compounds in silico. Target proteins, its natives, and the 37 compounds were prepared to be suitable to PLANTS software. Molecular docking for these chemicals was performed by PLANTS. The results were analyzed and visualized through PyMOL-PLIP adopting mass center and best radius sphere of native ligands from previous studies. The percentage of the ligand tests that have best PLANTS score compared to the natives of 5ocu, 5oam, and 5ogc were 73.0; 56.8; and 8.1%, respectively. Compound named HPC-3-B has the lowest score, -127 to -106 kcal/mol in all treatment conditions. Other compounds which have low score are CEG-3, kalsigerosida-D1, kukumariosidaA3_3, pseudostikoposida-B, holothurin-B2, and psolusosida-B with PLANTS score of -128.5-(-104,5), -111.9, -111.3, -102.3, 101.1, and -99.8 kcal/mol, respectively. The results of this study confirm that the several compounds in sea cucumber have potential as anticancer agents. Keywords— Human Kinesin-8 Protein, PLANTS, Sea cucumber, TAXOL.
The role of competition in driving species global distributions: Soricid shrews as a case study

We aim to determine the relative influence of climate and species interactions on the global distribution of Soricinae and Crocidurinae shrews through the analysis of their distribution, climate niche and evolutionary history. Both subfamilies are partially allopatric in Eurasia, but in North America only Soricinae is present, thus providing a scenario to address the role of potential competition versus competitive release in determining species’ realized distributions at a global scale.
Glutamatergic and cholinergic metabotropic modulation induces plateau potentials in hippocampal OLM interneurons

Oriens-lacunosum moleculare (OLM) cells are hippocampal inhibitory interneurons that have been implicated in regulation of information flow and synaptic plasticity in the CA1 circuit. Since anatomical evidence indicates that OLM cells express metabotopic cholinergic (mAChR) and glutamatergic (mGluR) receptors, such modulation of these cells may contribute to switching between functional modes of the hippocampus. Using a transgenic mouse line to identify the Chrna2-positive OLM cells, we investigated metabotropic neuromodulation of intrinsic properties of OLM cells. We found that both mAChR and mGluR activation increased the spontaneous action potential rate and caused the cells to exhibit long-lasting depolarizing plateau potentials following evoked spike trains. Both the mAChR-and mGluR-induced increased spontaneous firing rate and plateau potentials were dependent on intracellular calcium, and were eliminated by blocking Ca2+-dependent transient receptor potential (TRP) cation channels. At the receptor level, Group I mGluRs were found to be responsible for the glutamatergic modulation of the plateau potentials. There was also a pronounced synergy between the cholinergic and glutamatergic modulation of the plateau potentials. Our findings provide insights into how OLM cells are modulated by different neurotransmitters, and are likely to have functional implications on how OLM cells regulate hippocampal information processing during different brain states.
Review on the Design of the Isolation Techniques for UWB-MIMO Antennas

Ultra wide band - Multiple Input Multiple Output antenna technology provides higher data rates and the combination of the ultra wide band (UWB) and the multiple input multiple output (MIMO) technologies provides a solution for the demand of still higher data rates i.e. in excess of 3 Gb/sec in the future. As the antenna technologies are improving, the size of the MIMO antenna is growing smaller and smaller. Placing the antenna elements in such close proximity increases the coupling between them. Various isolation techniques have to be introduced between the antenna elements to decrease the coupling and to improve the isolation. A study of the various isolation enhancement techniques have been made in this review. It analyses the various isolation enhancement methods such as using orthogonal polarization, parasitic elements, varied decoupling structures, defected ground structures (DGS), neutralization line (NL) and finally by using metamaterials. Metamaterials is a technology to perk up the isolation between the antenna elements. Split ring resonator (SRR) behaves as a metamaterial and it is used as an isolation mechanism in this study. The antennas are simulated and the results are compared. The method using parasitic elements gives the highest isolation of 35 dB and it is 5 dB better than the methods using orthogonal polarization and using the decoupling structure. The performance of all the antennas satisfies the conditions for minimum isolation. The envelope correlation coefficient is nearly zero in all the antennas and it implies good diversity performance. The diversity gain is also calculated for the various antennas and it satisfies good diversity performance. The bandwidth of the antennas is in the UWB frequency range and they have a fractional bandwidth above the required value of 1.09. The capacity loss for all the antennas is very low and the antennas using defected ground structure and the decoupling structure gives very low capacity loss.
Effects of feeding Aspergillus oryzae fermentation product to transition Holstein cows on performance and health

Two experiments examined the effects of Aspergillus oryzae fermentation product (AO; Amaferm®; BioZyme Inc., St. Joseph, MO, USA) on productive variables in transition dairy cows. In experiment 1, 33 Holstein cows (22 multiparous and 11 primiparous) were enrolled from −21 to 60 days in milk (DIM). Cows were individually fed either a control total mixed ration (TMR) diet consisting of primarily alfalfa hay and steam-flaked corn [62:38 and 59:41, forage:concentrate (F:C) for prepartum and postpartum phases, respectively] or the control diet along with 15 g d−1 of AO. In experiment 2, 455 multiparous Holstein cows were enrolled from −21 to 121 DIM. Cows were group-fed either a control TMR diet (n = 228) consisting primarily of corn silage and rolled corn (44:56, F:C) or the control diet (n = 227) with 15 g d−1 of AO. In experiment 1, cows fed AO had increased (P < 0.05) milk production compared with controls (37.7 vs. 34.6 kg d−1). Milk composition, dry matter intake, body weight (BW), and BW loss both prepartum and postpartum did not differ (P > 0.10) between treatments. Cows fed AO tended to have decreased plasma nonesterified fatty acids levels (14%, P < 0.10), but plasma glucose concentration did not differ (P = 0.89). In experiment 2, cows fed AO had decreased milk yield (43.0 vs. 43.8; P < 0.05), and increased milk fat content (3.50% vs. 3.38%; P < 0.01) but similar quantities of 3.5% fat-corrected milk (42.5 vs. 42.7 kg d−1; P > 0.10). Results suggest that AO has the potential to improve aspects of milk production efficiency, but the percentage and types of forage utilized may influence the response.
Spreadsheets for Legal Reasoning: The Continued Promise of Declarative Logic Programming in Law

The legal services market is one in which there is too much demand, and too little supply. One method of increasing supply in a market is to increase efficiency by automating. Automated legal services require the automation of legal reasoning. Declarative logic programming (DLP) has long been recognized as well-suited to the automation of legal reasoning. This dissertation reviews the legal academic literature surrounding the automation of legal services using DLP, which has been discussed primarily with regard to how it can be used to build “expert systems”. This dissertation argues that most of the criticisms of the use of expert systems for automating legal services can be addressed by using modern DLP technologies, conceiving of the encoding as being representative of an interpretation of the law rather than the law’s correct meaning, and increasing ease-of-use for non-programmers. The dissertation then proposes a set of 7 criteria of suitability for DLP tools developed from a legal services automation perspective. A survey of available tools is performed, comparing the available tools to these criteria. The dissertation advocates for the development of open source DLP tools that have both accessibility features (ease of use and price), and at least one of the five technical features. The dissertation concludes with the description of an opensource tool developed by the author as an ABA Innovation Fellowship project, which is open-source, free, aims to be easy to use, and implements case-based reasoning to allow users to automate reasoning around open-textured legal concepts.
CONCEPTUALIZING MOBILE DIGITAL LITERACY SKILLS FOR EDUCATORS

Presented in: 16th International Conference on Mobile Learning (ML 2020), Bulgaria, Sofia, 1-4 April 2020. Due to copyright restrictions, the attached PDF file contains the abstract of the full-text item. For access to the full-text item, please consult the publisher's website.
Microbial community diversity of Jinghong laying hens at peak production based on 16S rRNA sequencing

ABSTRACT In this study, the diversity within the duodenum (S), jejunum (K) and caecum (M) contents of the three different intestinal gut sections microbiota of 30-week-old (peak production stage) Jinghong laying hens were evaluated. The bacterial DNA was sequentially isolated and the V3 to V4 regions of 16S rRNA genes were amplified. Results showed that the average bacterial sequences from the duodenum, jejunum and caecum content were identified to be 175.33 ± 26.63, 64.00 ± 20.95 and 305.33 ± 4.16 OTUs, respectively. The inherent OTUs were found among duodenum (75), jejunum (2) and caecum (172). The caecum had the highest diversity (Shannon = 5.57 ± 0.06) among the three communities. Firmicutes (65.54%) and Proteobacteria (32.68%) were the predominant bacterial phyla in the duodenum content. Firmicutes (97.27%) was the most commonly detected phyla in the jejunum content. As to the caecum, the relatively prominent phyla were Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes and Fusobacteria, accounting for 48.70%, 28.91% and 15.93%, respectively. At the genus level, Lactobacillus, Helicobacter, Bacillus, Peptoclostridium and Campylobacter were the relatively abundant genera in the duodenum content, accounting for 51.76%, 28.07%, 5.89%, 5.04% and 1.70%, respectively. Within the jejunum content, Lactobacillus was the most commonly detected genera, which represent 96.26% of the total genera.
A modelling approach to evaluate the impact of fish spatial behavioural types on fisheries stock assessment

&NA; Spatial behavioural types (SBTs) arise from between‐individual differences in behavioural traits that foster spatial behavioural patterns that are consistent over time and ecological contexts. Fish stocks are regularly assessed using catch per unit effort (CPUE) as input data that may non‐linearly co‐vary with the underlying abundance (N) of the exploited stock when SBT affect catchability. We hypothesized that SBT promote characteristic changes in catchability within harvesting seasons that affect catch rates and in turn catch‐based fish stock assessments. To test this hypothesis, we developed a spatially explicit agent‐based simulation where we measured encounters between fish and fishers and estimated the shape of the CPUE‐N relationship. We ran the simulation in a prototypical fish‐fisher encounter‐leads‐to‐catch‐type fishery and systematically studied outcomes in the presence or absence of SBTs. It was revealed that the existence of SBTs leads to CPUE inevitably declining faster than N (a process known as hyperdepletion) when compared with a simulation lacking SBTs. This finding was consistent in a wide range of fishing effort scenarios. The emergent hyperdepletion of catch rates was caused by fast and behavioural‐selective exploitation of vulnerable SBT that encompassed the mobile component of the fish stock. The theoretical predictions received support from field data from a coastal recreational fishery. Our work suggests that the consideration of SBT when interpreting trends in CPUE data may notably improve stock assessments by providing a more reliable CPUE‐N relationship.
Development of Twenty-Two Novel Cross-Species Microsatellite Markers for Amur sturgeon ( Acipenser schrenckii ) from Chinese Sturgeon ( Acipenser sinensis ) via next-Generation Sequencing

In the present study, twenty-two microsatellites was developed for Amur sturgeon (Acipenser schrenckii). All of them were polymorphic with 2 to 7 alleles per locus and the total number of alleles is 106. The expected heterozygosity (HE), observed heterozygosity (HO), polymorphic information content (PIC), Hardy-Weinberg departure value (d) and Shannon-Weiner Diversity Indices (H') ranged from 0.35 to 0.84, from 0.46 to 1, from 0.29 to 0.82, from 0.14 to 0.49, and from 0.53 to 1.89 respectively. The microsatellites described here should be useful for the research in population genetics, conservation genetics and evolution of Amur sturgeon.
Learning main drivers of crop dynamics and production in Europe

An expanding world population combined with challenges brought by climate change pose totally new scenarios for managing agricultural fields and crop production. In the last decades, a variety of ground-based, modeled, and Earth observation (EO) data have been used to characterize crop dynamics and, ultimately, estimate yield. Typically, optical vegetation indices and, in particular, metrics like their maximum peak or integral during the growing season are exploited to estimated crop yield. Also, most studies are focused on large areas with homogeneous agricultural landscapes in which cultivation/production is centred in a unique main crop (e.g. the U.S. Corn Belt or the Indian Wheat Belt).
Characterisation and mefenoxam sensitivity of Phytophthora spp. from ornamental plants in Italian nurseries

Genetic variability and mefenoxam sensitivity are described for Phytophthora spp. isolates recovered from nine ornamental plant species at four locations in Sicily, Southern Italy. Fifty-four isolates of Phytophthora spp. were obtained from symptomatic plant tissues. Mating type analyses revealed that all isolates are heterothallic, consisting of mating type A1. Fungicide sensitivity assays determined that all isolates are sensitive to mefenoxam. Characterisation of 48 isolates was performed using molecular and phylogenetic analyses of the internal transcribed spacer of ribosomal DNA (rDNA-ITS), beta-tubulin (β-tub) and elongation factor 1 alpha (EF-1α) regions. The isolates belonged to Phytophthora nicotianae (34 isolates), P. arecae (syn. palmivora ) (five) and P. niederhauserii (nine). The pathogenicity of three representative isolates was tested on seedlings or cuttings of each host, grown in a growth chamber. All isolates were pathogenic and reproduced symptoms identical to those observed in the nursery. This is the first report of disease caused by P . nicotianae , P. arecae or P. niederhauserii on several ornamental plants in Italy, and of the sensitivity of these Phytophthora species to mefenoxam.
Investigation on anthropogenic and opportunistic factors relevant to the incidence of stranded loggerhead sea turtle Caretta caretta along South Tyrrhenian coasts

Caretta Caretta are endangered sea turtles leaving in the Mediterranean Sea. We carried out a study on 195 sea turtles stranded along the coast of Southern Italy, evaluating anthropogenic and opportunistic factors affecting animal health status and probably threatening the species. More than 60% of the animals showed body injuries, mainly caused by marine traffic and fishing. Ingestion of marine litter of various origins was observed in the digestive tract of 38.5% of the turtles investigated. Chelonid herpesvirus 5 was detected (for the first time in this basin) in 10.8% of the turtles, which were however free from fibropapillomatosis. Analyses on trace elements showed a time-dependent reduction in the mean concentrations of Cd and Hg, a decrease in the levels of Pb, and a time-dependent increase of As. Particularly, a site-dependent accumulation of As was detected in turtles from the coasts of Calabria. There is a significant correlation between the levels of As in the kidney of Campania turtles and their straight-line carapace length, indicating a size-dependent accumulation of this metal. Overall, besides dangerous debris items, high levels of trace elements may weaken the immune system of Caretta caretta, the most common turtle of the Mediterranean Sea, making it more likely vulnerable to viruses.