Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Phage Acml-mediated transduction in the facultatively methanol-utilizing Acetobacter methanolicus MB 58/4

Methylotrophic bacteria are characterized by the ability to use organic substances with only one carbon atom (e.g. methane, methanol or formaldehyde) as the sole carbon and energy source, i.e. they are capable of forming numerous chemically complex compounds of high molecular mass (including biologically active sub- stances such as enzymes) by assimilation of very simple organic molecules. Therefore, the different groups of methylotrophic bacteria have been very intensively investigated with regard to their biology and possible applications in biotechnology. At the beginning, genetic investigation of methylotrophic bacteria was consider- ably hindered by the lack of suitable methods for the isolation of mutants and, especially, for gene transfer. Both conjugative gene transfer and transformation have since been demonstrated. Transduction, however, has not yet been shown in this bacterial group. The absence of transducing systems has been regarded as an important limiting factor in the genetic analysis of methylotrophs (Lidstrom-O'Connor, 1984; Holloway, 1984) and is largely due to the small number of phages of these bacteria which have been isolated and sufficiently characterized (Table 1). In our laboratory, five very closely related phages (Acml, 2, 5, 6 and 7) of the acidophilic, facultatively methanol-utilizing
The impact of lean methods and tools on the operational performance of manufacturing organisations

Evidence suggests that lean methods and tools have helped manufacturing organisations to improve their operations and processes. However, the real effect of these methods and tools on contemporary measures of operational performance, i.e. cost, speed, dependability, quality and flexibility, is still unclear. This paper investigates the impact of five essential lean methods, i.e. JIT, autonomation, kaizen, total productive maintenance (TPM) and value stream mapping (VSM), on these measures. A linear regression analysis modelled the correlation and impact of these lean practices on the operational performance of 140 manufacturing organisations around the world. In addition, structural equation modelling (SME) was used to cross verify the findings of the regression and correlation analyses. The results indicate that JIT and automation have the strongest significance on operational performance while kaizen, TPM and VSM seem to have a lesser, or even negative, effect on it. This paper provides further evidence regarding the effects that lean practices have on the performance of organisations and thus the research offers companies, and their managers, a better understanding of the relationship between the lean strategy and the performance of their operations.
Genomic Tools for the Enhancement of Vegetable crops: A Case in Eggplant

Dramatic advances in genomics during the last decades have led to a revolution in the field of vegetable crops breeding. Some vegetables, like tomato, have served as model crops in the application of genomic tools to plant breeding but other important crops, like eggplant ( Solanum melongena ), lagged behind. The advent of next generation sequencing (NGS) technologies and the continuous decrease of the sequencing costs have allowed to develop genomic tools with a greatly benefit for no-model plants such as eggplant. In this review we present the currently available genomic resources in eggplant and discuss their interest for breeding. The first draft of eggplant genome sequence and the new upcoming improved assembly, as well as, the transcriptomes and RNA-based studies represent important genomic tools. The transcriptomes of cultivated eggplant and several wild relatives of eggplant are also available and have provided relevant information for the development of markers and understanding biological processes in eggplant. In addition, a historical overview of the eggplant genetic mapping studies, performed with different types of markers and experimental populations, provides a picture of the increase over time of the precision and resolution in the identification of candidate genes and QTLs for a wide range of stresses, and morpho-agronomic and domestication traits. Finally, we discuss how the development of new genetic and genomic tools in eggplant can pave the way for increasing the efficiency of eggplant breeding for developing improved varieties able to cope with the old and new challenges in horticultural production.
Vulnerability of African mammals to anthropogenic climate change under conservative land transformation assumptions

Recent observations show that human‐induced climate change (CC) and land transformation (LT) are threatening wildlife globally. Thus, there is a need to assess the sensitivity of wildlife on large spatial scales and evaluate whether national parks (NPs), a key conservation tools used to protect species, will meet their mandate under future CC and LT conditions. Here, we assess the sensitivity of 277 mammals at African scale to CC at 10′ resolution, using static LT assumptions in a ‘first‐cut’ estimate, in the absence of credible future LT trends. We examine the relationship between species' current distribution and macroclimatic variables using generalized additive models, and include LT indirectly as a filter. Future projections are derived using two CC scenarios (for 2050 and 2080) to estimate the spatial patterns of loss and gain in species richness that might ultimately result. We then apply the IUCN Red List criteria A3(c) of potential range loss to evaluate species sensitivity. We finally estimate the sensitivity of 141 NPs in terms of both species richness and turnover. Assuming no spread of species, 10–15% of the species are projected to fall within the critically endangered or extinct categories by 2050 and between 25% and 40% by 2080. Assuming unlimited species spread, less extreme results show proportions dropping to approximately 10–20% by 2080. Spatial patterns of richness loss and gain show contrasting latitudinal patterns with a westward range shift of species around the species‐rich equatorial zone in central Africa, and an eastward shift in southern Africa, mainly because of latitudinal aridity gradients across these ecological transition zones. Xeric shrubland NPs may face significant richness losses not compensated by species influxes. Other NPs might expect substantial losses and influxes of species. On balance, the NPs might ultimately realize a substantial shift in the mammalian species composition of a magnitude unprecedented in recent geological time. To conclude, the effects of global CC and LT on wildlife communities may be most noticeable not as a loss of species from their current ranges, but instead as a fundamental change in community composition.
Distributions for which div v = F has a continuous solution

The equation div v = F has a continuous weak solution in an open set U ⊂ ℝm if and only if the distribution F satisfies the following condition: the F(φi) converge to 0 for every sequence {φi} of test functions such that the support of each φi is contained in a fixed compact subset of U, and in the L1 norm, {φi} converges to 0 and {∇φi} is bounded. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Performance evaluation of neural network, support vector machine and random forest for prediction of donor splice sites in rice

Prediction of splice sites plays an important rolein predicting the gene structure. Rice being one of the major cereal crops, continuous improvement is possible with the prediction of unknown genes associated with complex traits. Machine learning techniques i.e., Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) have been successfully used for the prediction of splice sites but comparison of their performance has not been made yet to our limited knowledge. Further, Random Forest (RF), another machine learning method, has been successfully used and reported to outperform ANN and SVM in areas other than splice site prediction. In this study we have developed an approach to encode the splice site sequence data of rice into numeric form that are subsequently used as input in ANN, SVM and RF for prediction of donor splice sites. The performances were then evaluated and compared using receiving operating characteristics (ROC) curve and estimate of area under ROC curve (AUC), averaged over 5-fold cross validation. The result reveals that AUC of RF is higher than ANN and SVM which implies that it can be preferred over SVM and ANN in the prediction splice sites.
The Role of Emotional Intelligence and Tolerance of Ambiguity in Academic Iranian EFL Learners' Willingness to Communicate

The present study was set up to detect any possible relationship among learners' emotional intelligence (EI), tolerance of ambiguity, and willingness to communicate inside the classroom. For this purpose, 64 undergraduate EFL university students were chosen. The instruments utilized in this study were a) Bar-On Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-I) to measure learners’ emotional intelligence, b) Second Language Tolerance of Ambiguity Scale (SLTAS) to identify participants’ tolerance of ambiguity, and c) willingness to communicate questionnaire to evaluate learners' willingness to initiate and take part in the interpersonal communication inside the classroom. The gathered data were analyzed using Pearson Correlation Product Moment test. The results showed that although the relationship between emotional intelligence and tolerance of ambiguity was not statistically meaningful, the two variables were positively correlated with learners' willingness to communicate .
Community Nurseries and the Nutritional Status of Poor Children: Evidence from Colombia

We use two different data sets and three different instruments to estimate the impact of a long‐established pre‐school nursery programme on children's nutritional status. We use variables related to cost (fee, distance to the nursery) and programme availability (capacity of the programme in the town) as instruments. One of our data sets is representative of very poor individuals living in rural areas of Colombia, while the other focuses in urban areas and includes individuals relatively less poor. We find that programme participation increases children's height, with the size of the effect being consistent across the three instruments and the two data sets.
Advancements of Methods for Fast and Accurate Estimation of Human Body Segment Parameter Values

In order to assess joint loads and to estimate joint reaction forces and net joint torques in human motion analysis, inverse dynamic approaches are commonly applied. These approaches rely on an accurate estimation of human body segment parameter values. The paper gives an overview of contemporary methods with a specific focus on approaches based on geometrical models, where image based or photogrammetric techniques are applied for estimating the parameter values fast and accurately.
Automated Capture and Animated Playback of TCP Behaviour During DASH-based Content Delivery

Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) has been for many decades the dominant transport layer protocol that carries the bulk of all traffic across the Internet. Although TCP was traditionally used for reliable bulk transfers, recently it is also becoming the protocol of choice for streaming applications – Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) has recently emerged as a standard for live and on-demand streaming. Netflix and YouTube employ DASH-like streaming strategies and account for more than 50% of North American traffic in 2015, representing a significant source of Internet traffic. Consumer video streams are most likely to be bottlenecked by last-mile ISP links and impacted by emerging Active Queue Management (AQM) schemes for counteracting bufferbloat. However, the interactions between different TCP algorithms, DASH traffic (within a mix of other typical traffic) and the underlying AQMs are not well understood. Experiments in a controlled testbed allow shedding more light on this issue. We propose demonstrating live DASH experiments and data visualisation with “TCP Experiment Automation Controlled Using Python” (TEACUP) – a software tool for running automated experiments and data analysis in a controlled testbed. TEACUP is used for running DASH-based experiments presented in our paper [1], hence this demonstration will also allow experiment repeatability.
The geometric mean of relative abundance indices : a biodiversity measure with a difference

The 2010 Biodiversity Target of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), set in 2002, which stated that there should be ‘a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss' by 2010, highlighted the need for informative and tractable metrics that can be used to evaluate change in biological diversity. While the subsequent Aichi 2020 targets are more wide-ranging, they also seek to reduce the rate of biodiversity loss. The geometric mean of relative abundance indices, G, is increasingly being used to examine trends in biological diversity and to assess whether biodiversity targets are being met. Here, we explore the mathematical and statistical properties of G that make it useful for judging temporal change in biological diversity, and we discuss its advantages and limitations relative to other measures. We demonstrate that the index reflects trends in both abundance and evenness, and that it is not prone to bias when detectability of individuals varies by species. We note that it allows data from different surveys to be combined to generate a composite index. However, the index exhibits high variance and unstable behaviour when rarely-recorded species are included in the analyses.
Linkages, Key Sectors and Structural Change: Some New Perspectives

Recent exchanges in the literature on the identification and role of key sectors in national and regional economies have highlighted the difficulties of consensus regarding terminology, appropriate measurement as well as economic interpretation. In this paper, some new perspectives are advanced which provide a more comprehensive view of an economy and offer the potential for uncovering alternative perspectives about the role of linkages and multipliers in input-output and expanded social accounting systems. The analysis draws on some pioneering work by Miyazawa in the identification of internal and external multiplier effects. The theoretical techniques are illustrated by reference to a set of input-output tables for the Brazilian economy. The paper thus provides a more comprehensive view than the ones proposed by Baer, Fonseca, and Guilhoto (1987), Hewings, Fonseca, Guilhoto, and Sonis (1989) and the recent contributions of Clements and Rossi (1991, 1992) that draw on some earlier work of Cella (1984).
Towards a Typology of Community Participation in the Tourism Development Process

ABSTRACT Although the notion of community participation in tourism originates from the general concept of community participation in development studies, the subject of the former seems to have evolved and popularized in isolation from the meaning and scope of its origin. This article reveals that such isolation has ushered in a rigid and simple paradigm of community participation in tourism. This is assumed to be of one form and has universal validity without considering the existence of the different circumstances at various tourist destinations. It is suggested that the concept of community participation should be re-considered in terms of an adaptive categorical paradigm, which incorporates a range of various forms of community participation. These forms of participation are outlined for a variety of abstract situations with the aim of illustrating the legitimacy of different forms of community participation in tourism.
Conditional functional dependencies validation for XML data: an approach based on attribute grammar

The representation and the exchange of information originating from different data sources is an increasingly common need for companies and industries to integrate their operations and also to publish and trade information with government and other enterprises. For this purpose, there are many standards based on XML language that were created to allow effective data communication and exchange in a particular domain. In order to ensure data quality for XML data, this paper presents an approach based on conditional functional dependencies verification. Conditional dependencies are an extension of traditional database dependencies with the ability to enforce bindings of semantically related data values. The basis of our verification method is a generic grammarware for validating XML integrity constraints in one tree traversal. We use an attribute grammar to describe XML documents and constraints. Keywords: conditional functional dependencies, data quality, XML integrity constraints.
Using the Nunavut Hansard Data for Experiments in Morphological Analysis and Machine Translation

Inuktitut is a polysynthetic language spoken in Northern Canada and is one of the official languages of the Canadian territory of Nunavut. As such, the Nunavut Legislature publishes all of its proceedings in parallel English and Inuktitut. Several parallel English-Inuktitut corpora from these proceedings have been created from these data and are publically available. The corpus used for current experiments is described. Morphological processing of one of these corpora was carried out and details about the processing are provided. Then, the processed corpus was used in morphological analysis and machine translation (MT) experiments. The morphological analysis experiments aimed to improve the coverage of morphological processing of the corpus, and compare an additional experimental condition to previously published results. The machine translation experiments made use of the additional morphologically analyzed word types in a statistical machine translation system designed to translate to and from Inuktitut morphemes. Results are reported and next steps are defined.
Self-Construal and Subjective Wellbeing in Two Ethnic Communities in Singapore

The study reported here addressed two questions concerning the applicability to other collectivist cultures of a model developed on the basis of socially defined self-construals and their consequences for subjective wellbeing (Kwan, Bond, & Singelis, 1997). In contrast to the social centrality of the Singaporean Chinese, Islam enjoys centrality in the Malay community. Is subjective well-being in these two cultures attributable to independent or interdependent self-construal? Do parallel paths to subjective wellbeing originate from these two forms of self-construal? Are the respective mediators, self-esteem and relationship harmony, functioning in the same way in these different communities? Two hundred and eighty-six participants (121 Malays, including 49 females and 72 males, and 165 Chinese, including 62 males and 103 females, average age, 18.52) were drawn from three tertiary technical training institutes in Singapore. Independent and interdependent self-construal, Rosenberg’s Self-esteem Scale (SE), the Relationship Harmony Scale (RH) (Kwan, et al. 1997) and the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SL) (Diener, Emmons. Larsen, & Griffins, 1985) were administered to test the model. For the Chinese, the best-fit model required a path between the two forms of self-construal, confirming their overlapping nature. For the Malays, a radically different model fits the data: relationship harmony no longer functions as a mediator but as an independent contributor in its own right. These results raise questions about the meaning and consequences of socially defined self-construal in different collectivist cultures, and the path between ¬the self and subjective wellbeing.
A Comparative Analysis of Genetic Diversity in Chrysanthemum (Dendranthema grandiflora Tzvelec) Cultivars based on RAPD and ISSR Markers

Chrysanthemum (Dendranthema grandiflora Tzvelec), a herbaceous perennial flowering plant has been much loved by the people world-wide as a cut flower. It is one of the oldest cultivated flower crop which plays a significant role in the culture and life of people. Today Chrysanthemums can be found with most of the colours of the spectrum and the pot-mum production has become the most profitable form of commercial Chrysanthemum growing. Economy of space, time, material, etc. has made this style of growing very promising and an excellent range of colour, form, long lasting quality of blooms and ease in handling make them most popular. Because of its multifarious traditional uses, the crop has its own commercial value and a good number of varieties have been released.
A Compiler for Parallel and Resource-Constrained Programmable in-Memory Computing

Solid-state resistive switches have recently enabled low-power, scalable, non-volatile memories. Their proven intrinsic logic operation, allowing design of in-memory computing systems, attracted the attention of the research community. A Programmable Logic-in-Memory (PLiM) computer has been proposed operating on an RRAM memory array and an instruction set to access the in-memory capabilities of the RRAM cells. Since the RRAM’s intrinsic logic operation is based on the majorityof-three function, Majority Inverter Graphs (MIGs) can be used to implement a compiler that translates Boolean functions into PLiM instructions. This work presents a fast MIG-based PLiM compiler aiming at parallelizing RRAM instructions under resource constraints. Considering valid the assumption that all RRAM cells in the PLiM computer can be enabled in parallel, helps evaluating the theoretical potential of the PLiM parallelization as part of a larger architecture exploration effort. More complex scenarios can easily be adapted by our approach. The code is optimized to reduce number of accesses to the memory and its structure enables a very low runtime compared to the state-of-the-art approach. Resource constraints allow to fit the PLiM instructions into a given maximum number of RRAM cells.
Path Planning Based on State-of-Health of the Power Source for a Class of Multirotor UAVs

The multirotor UAVs with Vertical Take-off and Landing (VTOL) capabilities are powered by Lithium Polymer (Li-Po) batteries which supply the energy to launch either indoor and outdoor missions. However, according to number of charges/discharges the battery tends to exhibit an aging behavior. An aging battery could restrict the flight capabilities and cause maneuverability problems increasing the risks of collision. In that sense, in this paper a path planning strategy that take into account the State of Health (SoH) of the Li-Po battery for a class of multirotor UAVs is introduced as an optimization problem. The SoH is computed by introduce a degradation model which affects the battery discharge performance, and an optimization problem is defined to find the feasible path between way-points while minimize the energy supplied by the battery according to the present SoH. The path planning strategy is applied to an hexarotor UAV, and the simulation results show the feasibility of the proposed methodology.