Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Development of an empirical relationship for chemical mutagen induced lethality in zygotic embryos and microspore embryogenesis from mutant donor plants of Indian mustard ( B . juncea )

The haploid mutagenesis has not been exploited for crop improvement in Indian mustard (Brassica juncea) as yet and information for LD50 of chemical mutagens is not available. The present study was thus undertaken to understand the relationship between mutagen concentration, exposure duration and survival of zygotic embryos along with evaluation of microspore totipotency of the mutant donor plants. Three Indian B. juncea genotypes, Pusa Bold, Varuna and BIO-902, were tested for varying mutagen concentrations (5-50 mM) and exposure durations (10-50 h) of three chemical mutagens, Ethyl methanesulfonate (EMS), Ethyl nitrosourea (ENU) and Ethidium bromide (EtBr), to study the effect of mutagen exposure on zygotic embryos. The seeds, after mutagen treatment, were rinsed with sterile water, cultured on Murashige and Skoog basal medium, incubated at 25 ± 2 °C / 16 hours photoperiod, and scored for percent survival after 15 to 20 days. Exposure to EtBr resulted in 100% mortality. The survival data from ENU and EMS treatments was subjected to orthogonal contrast partitioning ANOVA for determining the relationship between the dependent (survival) and the independent variables (concentration, linear to quartic and duration, linear to cubic orthogonal polynomial). Both genotypes showed a similar response for percent survival after EMS/ENU treatment, however, significant variation was caused individually and by interaction of the concentration and exposure duration for both the mutagens. The mutagen concentration for both mutagens had a linear relationship with percent survival while the exposure duration had a non-linear relationship with the latter. Multiple regression analysis was carried out to develop prediction functions for EMS/ ENU treatment survival and this revealed that log transformation of the percent survival data resulted in linearizable non-linear regression equations that adequately explained the relationship between the dependent and the independent variables. Using these equations the LD50 for zygotic embryo mutagenesis for 20h exposure duration ranged from 3.5mM for ENU to 6.8mM for EMS. This information was used to generate mutant donor plants for microspore culture. The microspores from ENU treated donor plants, irrespective of the genotype, were recalcitrant to embryogenesis, while 48.8% EMS mutant donor plants produced 2.9 ± 0.36 embryos per Petri dish (total 943 embryos). Genotype comparison revealed that mutant donor plants of the three genotypes had similar microspore embryogenic response.
Abundance of soybean Roundup Ready modification in food and feed samples from Serbian retail markets

Progress in biotechnology and genetic engineering enabled production of genetically modified (GM) plants, with novel characteristics due to bacterial or unrelated plants genes introduced into their genomes, like tolerance to herbicides and resistance to various diseases. Yields from GM crops yearly rise around the world, but the public concerns on using them, and subsequently derived food and feed products, forced European Commission to regulate the usage of GM organisms (GMOs) by the EU Directive 2001/18/EC. The EU regulations 1829/2003 and 1830/2003 require food industry to label all products containing more than 0.9% GM DNA. To meet the regulative demands it is necessary to detect the presence of GM event in food/feed by PCR techniques or ELISA immunological testing. In Serbia, not an EU member, the GMO law exists at the state level. Controls include a border network of phytosanitary and veterinary inspections authorized to sample imported food/feed, institutions authorized to check the food/feed quality on Serbian markets and prior to its exporting, and laboratories for testing GM DNA presence in samples. At the time analyses presented in this paper were performed, only Monsanto's Roundup Ready soybean meal was approved for putting on the market. During the 2006, 2007, and 2008 different samples of food/feed were collected among Serbian retail markets and tested to the soybean Roundup Ready presence. Analyses done using qualitative and quantitative PCR methods showed high percent of Roundup Ready samples among food/feed with similar values on yearly level, while quantitative amount ranged from 0 to 50%.
DROUGHT STRESS TESTING ON THREE GRASSES SPECIES IN CONTROLED CONDITIONS

Climate change effects on agriculture are estimated to be dramatically affected for the next 20 years [15]and up to 2050 and therefore it is a great need for increasing diversity in crops species for improving their ability to deal with drought, floods and harsh conditions generally. The scope of this article was to evaluate three grasses perennial species for their development under experimental drought conditions. Thus, Dactylis glomerata, Festuca pratensis and Lolium perenne were selected for this experiment as they are very important for Romanian grasslands. There have been used two types of seeds for each species: control, certified seeds and regenerated after in vitro cultivation on polyethylene glycol of these three species and obtained in a previous study [2]. Our results revealed that the plants regenerated upon in vitro cultivation on PEG are better adapted to drought conditions.
ProtectIOn: Root-of-Trust for IO in Compromised Platforms

Security and safety-critical remote applications such as e-voting, online banking, industrial control systems and medical devices rely upon user interaction that is typically performed through web applications. Trusted path to such remote systems is critical in the presence of an attacker that controls the user’s computer. Such an attacker can observe and modify any IO data without being detected by the user or the server. We investigate the security of previous research proposals and observe several drawbacks that make them vulnerable. Based on these observations we identify novel requirements for secure IO operation in the presence of a compromised host. As a solution, we propose PROTECTION, a system that ensures IO integrity using a trusted low-TCB device that sits between the attacker-controlled host and the IO devices. PROTECTION intercepts the display signal and user inputs from the keyboard and mouse, and overlays secure UI on top of the HDMI frames generated by the untrusted host. The guiding design principles of PROTECTION are: (i) integrity of user input and output cannot be considered separately, (ii) all user input modalities need to be protected simultaneously, and (iii) integrity protection should not rely on error prone user tasks like checking the presence of security indicators. By following these guidelines, PROTECTION achieves strong protection for IO integrity. We also propose an extension of PROTECTION for IO confidentiality, implement a plug-and-play prototype, and evaluate its performance.
Grammatical-Error-Aware Incorrect Example Retrieval System for Learners of Japanese as a Second Language

Existing example retrieval systems do not include grammatically incorrect examples or present only a few examples, if any. Even if a retrieval system has a wide coverage of incorrect examples along with the correct counterpart, learners need to know whether their query includes errors or not. Considering the usability of retrieving incorrect examples, our proposed method uses a large-scale corpus and presents correct expressions along with incorrect expressions using a grammatical error detection system so that the learner do not need to be aware of how to search for the examples. Intrinsic and extrinsic evaluations indicate that our method improves accuracy of example sentence retrieval and quality of learner’s writing.
Analysis of Learning Cooperative Visual Dialog Agents : Project Milestone

We implement the goal-driven cooperative multi-agent for the task of Visual Dialog. Here, agents play a game of “Guess What? ", where one agent has the role of answerer (A-Bot) and the other has the task of questioner (Q-Bot). In this environment Q-Bot is trying to guess the image that A-Bot is looking at by asking A-Bot a series of questions about the image. Q-Bot is responsible asking good questions and guessing which image A-Bot is looking at. Finally, the model is fine-tuned using reiforcement learning where A-Bot and Q-Bot each learn a policy guided by a reward that measures whether the current guess of Q-Bot is closer to the correct image at every round. We evaluated the supervised pre-reinforcement-learning agents, trained on a subset of 20k examples from the VisDial dataset which were randomly selected. We achieve an MMR of 38.11, Recall @ 5 42.34 and Recall @ 10 50.52. We found that Q-Bot is significantly harder to train because it struggles to differentiate facts from each other. We also found that adding a scaling factor to the Q-Bot decoder loss helps with the repetitive nature of the questions but makes the model overfit more easily.
End-to-End Neural Context Reconstruction in Chinese Dialogue

We tackle the problem of context reconstruction in Chinese dialogue, where the task is to replace pronouns, zero pronouns, and other referring expressions with their referent nouns so that sentences can be processed in isolation without context. Following a standard decomposition of the context reconstruction task into referring expression detection and coreference resolution, we propose a novel end-to-end architecture for separately and jointly accomplishing this task. Key features of this model include POS and position encoding using CNNs and a novel pronoun masking mechanism. One perennial problem in building such models is the paucity of training data, which we address by augmenting previously-proposed methods to generate a large amount of realistic training data. The combination of more data and better models yields accuracy higher than the state-of-the-art method in coreference resolution and end-to-end context reconstruction.
Ilfhocail: A Lexicon of Irish MWEs

This paper describes the categorisation of Irish MWEs, and the construction of the first version of a lexicon of Irish MWEs for NLP purposes (Ilfhocail, meaning ‘Multiwords’), collected from a number of resources. For the purposes of quality assurance, 530 entries of this lexicon were examined and manually annotated for POS information and MWE category.
Development and evaluation of Mustard green pickled liquid as starter for Morinda citrifolia Linn

The selection of starter culture for preparing fermented plant beverages influences the entire production and quality of the product. The traditional way of naturally fermented mustard green pickled liquid (MGPL) has been used in northern Thailand for several decades, and the fermented Morinda citrifolia Linn. fruit juice is one of the primary fermented plant beverages. The current study explored the use of MGPL as a starter for the fermentation of M. citrifolia fruit. The MGPL was preparing as per the traditional procedure and used at a different concentration in the various formula of M. citrifolia fruit fermentation (MFR). Moreover, the influence of raw onion extract (ROE) in MFR has also been evaluated. The pH of the MGPL (6.5 ± 0.2 to 3.8 ± 0.1) and MFR was progressively reduced during fermentation. The physiochemical and microbiological analysis of MGPL and MFR suggested that the content of organic acids were increased upon fermentation, especially the recipes with heavy inoculation (15%) of MGPL starter. The total bacterial load, coliforms, Lactobacillus, yeast and mold levels were in acceptable range in naturally fermented MGPL. All the MFR recipes are microbiologically safe and enriched with Lactic acid bacteria. The ethanol content in MGPL (0.6348 ± 0.02% V/V) and MFR recipes (ranging from 0.5524 ± 0.02 to 0.9677 ± 0.04% V/V) were slightly higher than the permissible level of Thai commercial product standards (≥ 0.5%), whereas the methanol content was in acceptable level (≤ 240 ppm). The reducing sugar level in MFR recipes were gradually decreased due to the fermentation. In conclusion, the MGPL is considered as a safe starter for MFR with ROE supplementation. Hence, additional studies are recommended on traditional formulations and its applications in modern food technology, especially in the production of fermented plant beverages.
Tumour lysis syndrome ; new approaches in diagnosis , follow-up and treatment

Tumor lysis syndrome is a clinical picture which occurs with the lysis of malignant cells and causes metabolic abnormalities that threatens life. These metabolic abnormalities are caused by the release of intracellular ions, nucleic acids, proteins and their metabolites from the instantly degraded tumor cells. These rapidly released metabolites can impair the body’s normal homeostatic mechanism and cause uremia, hyperuricemia, hyperkalemia and hyperphosphatemia. Hypocalcemia which is commonly seen in tumor lysis syndrome is secondary to hyperphosphatemia. Generally, tumor lysis syndrome occurs after the initiation of chemotherapy, but it is rarely observed in fast growing tumours before the treatment due to spontaneous lysis of malignant cells. The possibility of tumor lysis syndrome is higher in tumours with high proliferative rates and high tumour burden including Burkitt’s lymphoma and acute lymphoblastic leukemia. The principle of prophylaxis/treatment of tumour lysis syndrome includes virgous hydration, adequate diuresis, control of hyperuricemia with rasburicase or allopurinol, regulation of serum electrolytes and dialysis, if necessary. If the necessary measures are not taken or the clinal situation is not treated properly, metabolic abnormalities can cause renal insufficiency, cardiac arrhythmia, neurologic complications and propably sudden death in patients with cancer. Alkalization of urine used to be applied to all patients previously, but it is not recommended any longer and this issue is still open to debate. In this paper, new approaches and innovations in the treatment of tumor lysis syndrome are discussed. (Turk Arch Ped 2013; 48: 188-194)
A Study on Perception of Organisational Commitment among Banking Employees

Organisational Commitment has become important for the commercial organisations due to progressions in technology increase in the level of competition globally and rapid growth of services sector in about all parts of the world. In every service sector organisation, the employee plays an important role to accomplish the tasks, objectives, and targets to achieve persistence in the globally competitive world. Thus, it becomes essential for the organisations that their employees become committed and stay in the organisation. Organisational commitment is defined as a warm desire to remain an employee of a particular organisation and trust in, and accept the measures and objectives of his/her organisation. Organisational commitment constitutes employees’ positive attitude towards their organisation and committed employees has a substantial impact on improvement in the performance of their organisation. The present study has been done to compare the organisational commitment of male & female employees and married & single employees working in commercial banks. A sample of employees working in public sector banks and private sector banks in Haryana has been chosen for the present study. Stratified Random Sampling was used for this study. The findings of the study suggested that the banking organisations should adopt the strategies to improve the Organisational Commitment for the single employees so that they get more motivated and attached to their organisation.
Higher-Order Clustering for Heterogeneous Networks via Typed Motifs

Higher-order connectivity patterns such as small induced subgraphs called graphlets (network motifs) are vital to understand the important components (modules/functional units) governing the configuration and behavior of complex networks. Existing work in higher-order clustering has focused on simple homogeneous graphs with a single node/edge type. However, heterogeneous graphs consisting of nodes and edges of different types are seemingly ubiquitous in the real-world. In this work, we introduce the notion of typed-graphlet that explicitly captures the rich (typed) connectivity patterns in heterogeneous networks. Using typed-graphlets as a basis, we develop a general principled framework for higher-order clustering in heterogeneous networks. The framework provides mathematical guarantees on the optimality of the higher-order clustering obtained. The experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the framework quantitatively for three important applications including (i) clustering, (ii) link prediction, and (iii) graph compression. In particular, the approach achieves a mean improvement of 43x over all methods and graphs for clustering while achieving a 18.7% and 20.8% improvement for link prediction and graph compression, respectively.
Strategic Foresight for the Post-2015 Development Agenda

Summary The United Nations (UN) Commission on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD), during its 17 session held in 12-16 May 2014, selected the following as one of its two priority themes for the 2014-2015 inter-sessional period: ‘Strategic Foresight for the Post2015 Development Agenda’. As basis for the upcoming discussions on this priority theme, the present background paper is based on a global horizon scanning exercise on Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) issues for the post-2015 development agenda. In addition to analysing the future STI issues and their implications for overall development, the paper concludes with policy recommendations to be considered by national governments and other relevant stakeholders during the CSTD inter-sessional period and 18 session.
MeV range particle physics studies in tokamak plasmas using gamma-ray spectroscopy

Gamma-ray spectroscopy (GRS) has become an established technique to determine properties of the distribution function of the energetic particles in the MeV range, which are fast ions from heating and fusion reactions or runaway electrons born in disruptions. In this paper we present a selection of recent results where GRS is key to investigate the physics of MeV range particles. These range from radio-frequency heating experiments, where theoretical models can be tested with an unprecedented degree of accuracy, to disruption mitigation studies, where GRS sheds light on the effect of the actuators on the runaway electron velocity space. We further discuss the unique observational capabilities offered by the technique in deuterium–tritium plasmas, particularly with regard to the inference of the energy- and pitch-resolved distribution function of the α particles born from fusion reactions in the plasma core.
The Semliki Forest virus vector induces p 53-independent apoptosis

IP: 54.70. 40.11 On: Wed, 31 Jul 2019 00:07:04 Journal of General Virology (1998), 79, 2405–2410. Printed in Great Britain . SHORT COMMUNICATION
A Hybrid Model for Globally Coherent Story Generation

Automatically generating globally coherent stories is a challenging problem. Neural text generation models have been shown to perform well at generating fluent sentences from data, but they usually fail to keep track of the overall coherence of the story after a couple of sentences. Existing work that incorporates a text planning module succeeded in generating recipes and dialogues, but appears quite data-demanding. We propose a novel story generation approach that generates globally coherent stories from a fairly small corpus. The model exploits a symbolic text planning module to produce text plans, thus reducing the demand of data; a neural surface realization module then generates fluent text conditioned on the text plan. Human evaluation showed that our model outperforms various baselines by a wide margin and generates stories which are fluent as well as globally coherent.
Phenotypic Dispersion of Landrace Lima Bean Varieties Using Multidimensional Scaling

Studies about phenotypic diversity are common in germplasm banks. The inference about this variability must be realized through several methods. The multidimensional scaling is a multivariate technique that has not yet been well explored in plant breeding programs. The objective of this study was to evaluate the phenotypic dispersion of landrace lima bean varieties using the non-metric multidimensional scaling technique (nMDS) based on seed morphology. Seeds of 25 lima bean accessions were characterized based on the morphological descriptors proposed by the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute. Distance matrices between the accessions were estimated based on the qualitative and quantitative variables, in addition to simultaneous analysis of the qualitative and quantitative data, using the Mahalanobis and Gower distances. The distances were represented by non-metric multidimensional scaling. The adjustment level of the nMDS mapping was calculated using Kruskal’s Stress. The scaling based on the quantitative and mixed data was efficient to represent the distances of the lima bean accessions in the bidimensional plane presenting Stress less than 20%. Divergent accessions, such as 11, 13, 17 and 25 were identified. The inclusion of qualitative characters provided the best discrimination of the accessions, confirming the importance of the simultaneous character analysis. The nMDS must be used as a complementary technique to those commonly employed in studies of phenotypic diversity in lima beans.
1 Probability study on the thermal stress distribution 2 in the thick HK 40 stainless steel pipe using finite 3 element method 4

The present work deals with the development of finite element methodology for 12 obtaining the stress distributions in thick cylindrical HK40 stainless steel pipe that carry high 13 temperature fluids. The material properties and loading are assumed to be random variables. 14 Thermal stresses that are generated along radial, axial and tangential directions are computed 15 generally using analytical expressions which are very complex. To circumvent such an issue, the 16 probability theory and mathematical statistics have been applied to many engineering problems 17 which allows to determine the safety both quantitatively and objectively based on the concepts of 18 reliability. Monte Carlo simulation methodology is used to study the probabilistic characteristics of 19 thermal stresses which is used for estimating the probabilistic distributions of stresses against the 20 variations arising due to material properties and load. A 2-D Probabilistic finite element code is 21 developed in MATLAB and the deterministic solution is compared with ABAQUS solutions. The 22 values of stresses that are obtained from the variation of elastic modulus are found to be low as 23 compared to the case where the load alone is varying. The probability of failure of the pipe structure 24 is predicted against the variations in internal pressure and thermal gradient. These finite element 25 framework developments are useful for the life estimation of piping structures in high temperature 26 applications and subsequently quantifying the uncertainties in loading and material properties. 27