Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Micropropagation, molecular and biochemical analyses of Hypoxis species

Plants are an important source of food, nutrition and medicine. An estimated 80% of the global population relies on herbal medicinal products and supplements. In developing countries plant extracts are the major source of medicine, more especially in rural communities where modern health facilities are not easily accessible. Hypoxis species are associated with medicinal properties and have been used for many generations by the indigenous people and traditional healers of southern Africa to treat various ailments. Some contain hypoxoside, a phytochemical that has immune regulatory properties and is used in the composition of medicinal products in the pharmaceutical industry. Hypoxis species grow naturally in most warm temperate and tropical regions of the world except Europe, northern and central Asia, north Africa, extra-tropical South America and Canada, and are reported to be mostly common in the southern hemisphere. The objectives of this work were to develop strategies for the sustainable commercial production and maintenance of the medicinal Hypoxis species in the near future, to understand how the different species that grow in Swaziland are related, and to determine the phytochemical compounds of medicinal significance by i) developing in vitro protocols for their propagation and mass production; ii) studying the molecular phylogeny of some Hypoxis species that grow in Swaziland and iii) analyzing the geophytes for the presence of important biochemical compounds known for their medicinal value. The investigations were carried out at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Department of Plant Breeding in Alnarp, Sweden. All species used in this work originated from Swaziland and were identified at the National Herbarium in Swaziland. The major results include development of in vitro regeneration protocols for propagating Hypoxis on semi-solid media and in liquid medium using bioreactors for mass production, identification of two taxa with a similar evolutionary relationship, extracts from the corms of all the species analyzed were found to contain phenolic compounds and the norlignan diglucoside, hypoxoside. However, in this study, H. hemerocallidea the main species used in the pharmaceutical industry for extracting hypoxoside was found to contain less of it compared to most of the other species analyzed.
Evaluation of optical fibre sensors in the electrical domain

Abstract. Optical fibre sensors cover a wide range of applications. They offer versatile advantages including resilience to electromagnetic interference, biocompatibility and chemical resistivity. Even in environments with restricted accessibility, integration difficulties can be overcome by using radio-over-fibre (RoF) technology that allows a wireless read-out. Conventionally, optical fibre sensors are evaluated in the optical domain by analysing the amplitude or spectrum of either the transmitted or the reflected light. A novel approach is to feed a radio frequency-modulated laser into the optical sensor and carry out a full electrical analysis of the resulting radio frequency (RF) signal, which is changed by the sensor's characteristics. This method will be investigated in this paper for fibre Bragg grating-based and chirped fibre Bragg grating-based sensors in reflection and transmission configuration. Their applicability for this new evaluation scheme will be discussed. Subsequent studies may cover additional types of sensors and the testing of the novel evaluation method within an application-related scenario, including packaging.
Versatile Emulation of Spiking Neural Networks on an Accelerated Neuromorphic Substrate

We present first experimental results on the novel BrainScaleS-2 neuromorphic architecture based on an analog neuro-synaptic core and augmented by embedded microprocessors for complex plasticity and experiment control. The high acceleration factor of 1000 compared to biological dynamics enables the execution of computationally expensive tasks, by allowing the fast emulation of long-duration experiments or rapid iteration over many consecutive trials. The flexibility of our architecture is demonstrated in a suite of five distinct experiments, which emphasize different aspects of the BrainScaleS-2 system.
Effects of predation risk and temperature on foraging behaviour of Littorina littorea

Predator-prey interactions are a fundamental feature of ecological communities. The majority of studies have focussed on the consequences of predators reducing the abundance of their prey through direct consumption (density-mediated interaction, DMIs). However, predators can also interact with prey by inducing costly behavioural and/or physiological defence strategies such as reduced foraging, anti-predator behaviour and investment in defensive structures. Evidence suggests that the cost of these phenotypic responses, termed trait-mediated interactions (TMIs), may be greater than that of DMIs. The strength of TMIs may depend on the environmental context in which prey must decide between food and safety. Because temperature can alter metabolic and foraging rates, particularly in ectotherms, this additional physiological stress may determine how prey balance this trade-off. Observations were made of the effect of predator cues and temperature on the foraging behaviour of the intertidal snail, Littorina littorea Both temperature and predation cue had independent effects on the amount of Ulva lactuca consumed, although there was no interaction between these factors. The addition of predation cue water caused L. littorea to consume 77% less Ulva compared to control treatments whereas the increased temperature resulted in 2.5 times more Ulva being consumed. The results suggest that non-consumptive effects can play an important role in shaping intertidal communities and that the effects of warming may result in intertidal consumers trading energy gain for safety when under predation risk. Understanding the direct and indirect effects of temperature and predation risk on species interactions will provide greater insights into prey dynamics and cascading trophic interactions.
Survival is predicted by territorial status but not wing pigmentation in males of a polythorid damselfly, Euthore fasciata (Odonata: Zygoptera: Polythoridae)

Robust male condition must be favored and should be signaled to conspecifics via enhanced aggression and more highly expressed ornamental traits. One way that such robust condition, and thereby the expression of aggression and ornamental traits, can be assessed is via survival. In odonate adults, condition (in the form of lipid reserves, muscle mass and immune ability) has been correlated with the expression of: (a) territorial behavior (as opposed to nonterritorial, satellite behavior), and (b) larger wing pigmentation patterns. In the present work, we investigated these two patterns using adult males of Euthore fasciata in a field study. Males bear black and white pigmented wing patterns and express territorial and nonterritorial behaviors to secure matings. We predicted that, due to their better condition, territorial males should have higher survival and larger pigmented patterns than nonterritorial males, and that larger pigmented patterns would correlate positively with survival. We marked–recaptured males, measured their pigmented patterns and recorded their behavior. Our results indicated that territorial males (n = 12) had a higher survival, but not larger pigmented areas, than nonterritorial males (n = 39), and that there was no significant relationship between wing pigmentation and survival. This result confirms that territorial males are in better condition than nonterritorial males. However, wing pigmentation does not seem to signal such condition to conspecifics although the reduced number of animals may have affected our analysis. Tentatively, the assumed relationship pigmentation/condition cannot be generalized in odonates.
Immunological Response to Clostridium perfringens in Two Genetically Divergent Lines of Chickens as Influenced by Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) Genotype

Chickens genetically selected for low (LA) or high (HA) antibody response to sheep red blood cells (SRBC) displayed a correlated change in major histocompatibility complex (MHC), so that LA chickens were 96% B and HA chickens were 96% B. During a clinical outbreak of necrotic enteritis, BB genotypes experienced significantly less mortality (6% vs. 13 %) compared to BB genotypes. A study was carried out to assess immunological differences between LA and HA lines during exposure to Clostridium perfringens. In Experiment 1, chickens were orally gavaged with a low (10 CFU/mL) or high (10 CFU/mL) dose of C. perfringens. In Experiment 2, chickens were orally gavaged with live coccidia oocysts on experiment d 1, followed by 10 CFU/mL C. perfringens on d 5. Unfortunately, establishment of necrotic enteritis infection was unsuccessful in both experiments as evidenced by lack of significant intestinal lesions, as well as no negative effect on bird performance. In an ex vivo study, peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) were isolated from each genetic line, cultured, stimulated with LPS (4 h), and exposed to varying concentrations of C. perfringens αtoxin (1, 10, 100, 1000 U/L) for 2 and 4 h. Evaluation of cellular proliferation, percent cytotoxicity and immunological gene expression was carried out in a variety of experiments. Genetic lines were found to be highly divergent in all analyses.
The history of ragweed in the world

The aim of the study is to provide a survey on the history of ragweed worldwide. Its climate dependence, impacts in agriculture, health effects and social costs are also presented. In Europe common ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia) is predominant of all Ambrosia species that is supported by population genetic data. The most important habitat areas of ragweed and the highest pollen concentrations occur, in decreasing order of the pollen levels (1) in the south-western part of the European Russia, (2) in the southern and eastern parts of Ukraine, (3) in the Pannonian Plain in Central Europe, (4) in the RhôneAlpes region in France, furthermore (5) in the Po River valley in Italy. Besides Europe, ragweed occurs in China, India, Japan and in other Asian countries, furthermore in Australia and the Unites States of America. However, beyond the USA few information are available. Warming trends due to the climate change favours the expansion of ragweed, producing higher pollen levels worldwide. In association with the warming, increasing ambient CO2 levels generate greater biomass and increased pollen production. Hence, ragweed pollen production can be expected to increase significantly under predicted future climate conditions, bringing severe impacts to areas that have yet been suffering slightly.
Intelligibility of English Mosaic Speech: Comparison between Native and Non-Native Speakers of English

Mosaic speech is degraded speech that is segmented into time × frequency blocks. Earlier research with Japanese mosaic speech has shown that its intelligibility is almost perfect for mosaic block durations (MBD) up to 40 ms. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the intelligibility of English mosaic speech, and whether its intelligibility would vary if it was compressed in time, preserved, or stretched in time. Furthermore, we investigated whether intelligibility differed between native and non-native speakers of English. English (n = 19), Indonesian (n = 19), and Chinese (n = 20) listeners participated in an experiment, in which the mosaic speech stimuli were presented, and they had to type what they had heard. The results showed that compressing or stretching the English mosaic speech resulted in similar trends in intelligibility among the three language groups, with some exceptions. Generally, the intelligibility for MBDs of 20 and 40 ms after preserving/stretching was higher, and decreased beyond MBDs of 80 ms after stretching. Compression also lowered intelligibility. This suggests that humans can extract new information from individual speech segments of about 40 ms, but that there is a limit to the amount of linguistic information that can be conveyed within a block of about 40 ms or below.
The adaptive value of grass traits in response to grazing

Grazing is associated with several plant traits that may confer resistance to herbivores. However, cross-species analyses do not allow for the differentiation between adaptive evolution and common ancestry. In this study, we evaluated the effect of grazing on 5 morphological traits in 41 native grasses growing in natural grasslands of Uruguay and investigated whether such effects are independent of phylogeny. We used data of grass species from 17 paired, grazed and ungrazed plots located in different regions of natural grasslands of Uruguay. For each species, we calculated the Grazing Response Index (GRI) and estimated the culm length, blade length, blade width, blade length/width ratio and caryopsis length. Trait values were calculated as the mean of the maximum and minimum values reported in a public database. We assessed the relationship between the GRI and the morphological traits using cross-species correlations, and we re-examined the correlations using phylogenetically controlled comparative analysis. Culm length and blade length were significantly correlated with the GRI. Species with higher culms and longer blades diminished their cover under grazing. This association remained significant after statistical control of phylogenetic relatedness among species. By contrast, blade width, blade length/width ratio and caryopsis length did not show any significant relationship with the GRI. Many studies in temperate grasslands recognized that several plant traits respond to grazing but were rarely evaluated in a phylogenetic context. Our results are consistent with the idea that grazing is a selective force with a clear effect on the evolution of grass stature, selecting smaller plants with shorter blades.
Simultaneous population fluctuations of rodents in montane forests and alpine meadows suggest indirect effects of tree masting

Resource pulses can generate cross-habitat dispersal of consumers, and therefore affect organisms even in areas where the resource pulses do not occur. We investigated this phenomenon at the elevational treeline in the Carpathian Mountains, where beech (Fagus sylvatica) masting caused an increase in abundance of forest rodents and intensified their use of alpine meadows. We tested 3 hypotheses concerning the impact of forest rodent spillover on the abundance of meadow-dwelling pine voles (Microtus subterraneus): 1) the competition hypothesis: if the spillover affects pine voles mostly through intensified competitive interactions, then pine voles should decline when forest rodents reach their peak abundance, i.e., 1 year after masting; 2) the apparent competition hypothesis: if predators switch to alternative prey when populations of forest rodents collapse, then pine voles should decline 2 years after masting; and 3) the apparent mutualism hypothesis: if the increase of forest rodents temporarily releases pine voles from predatory pressure, pine voles should increase in synchrony with forest rodents—1 year after masting. Our results, while correlative in nature, supported the apparent mutualism hypothesis: 1 year after masting, both forest rodents and pine voles strongly increased their abundance. Two years after masting, when populations of forest rodents crashed, abundance of pine voles returned to pre-masting levels rather than collapse. These findings suggest that pulsed spillover, known mostly from negative effects on organisms in recipient habitats, can also create indirect positive interactions. Furthermore, they illustrate how density-dependent spillover of animals might increase the spatial scale of masting effects beyond the habitats where seeds are released.
Ribosome Processivity and Co-translational Protein Folding

Synthesis of polypeptide chains on the ribosome occurs at a non-uniform rate. mRNA sequences translated at a high rate are interspersed by segments that lead to translational pausing. The rate of translation elongation is rate-limiting for conformational sampling during co-translational folding of the nascent chain. The global and local rates of translation elongation are important modulators of the efficiency of co-translational folding. For the understanding of co-translational folding, a description of the dynamics of the nascent chain synthesis has to be established in the first place. To understand how tRNA pools affect local and global translation velocities, we have constructed a mathematical stochastic model based on the availability and competition of tRNA isoacceptors for the A site. We predicted the elemental rate constants for the decoding steps in vivo, which allowed us to calculate codon-specific translation elongation rates for any mRNA sequence. We then have analyzed the pausing during translation of natural mRNA in vitro. The accumulation of translation intermediates upon synthesis of the model protein HemK could not be explained by the propensity of mRNA to form local stable secondary structures or by the usage frequency of codons. We have established novel experimental approaches that might allow the identification of the site of translational pausing with single codon resolution. To investigate co-translational folding in real-time, we developed tools to incorporate FRET probes at internal positions of nascent chains mediated by tRNACys. We observed that peptide bond formation was limited by substrate positioning in the peptidyl-transferase center of aminoacyl-tRNA carrying larger fluorophores. Glycine residues upstream of the incorporation site tuned the incorporation of larger fluorescent probes by increasing the flexibility of the peptidyl-tRNA in the P site. The interplay between nascent chain elongation and co-translational folding was studied using the model protein γ-B-crystallin encoded by the original bovine sequence and a sequence harmonized for Escherichia coli codon usage. We observed differences in local and global translation elongation for both mRNA sequences. By applying a pulse proteolysis approach and the incorporation of FRET pairs in the nascent chain, we detected altered kinetics of co-translational folding for both domains of γ-B-crystallin depending on the mRNA sequence. In summary, we show how changes in local translation elongation can influence the acquisition of folded states in the nascent chain.
Impact of maternal DNA contamination of fetal DNA in chorionic villi on prenatal diagnosis of sickle cell anemia

Objective: The study aim was to determine the hemoglobin genotypic and allelic distributions in fetal population, and to quantitatively evaluate the effect of heterozygous maternal DNA contamination of homozygous fetal DNA in chorionic villi, on fetal hemoglobin genotypes. Materials and Methods: A descriptive, cross sectional study of amplification refractory mutation system-polymerase chain reaction (ARMS-PCR) analysis of fetal hemoglobin genotype using DNA from chorionic villi and maternal venous blood. The primary fetal hemoglobin genotypes were obtained in the first phase and the secondary hemoglobin genotypes after contaminating homozygous primary genotypes (HbAHbA and HbSHbS) with varying proportions of heterozygous maternal DNA (HbAHbS). Data analysis was done with Micosoft Excel 2010 statistical package and Chi-square (goodness-of-fit). Results: There was no statistically significant deviation in the hemoglobin genotypic and allelic counts between the observed and the expected counts in the fetal population based on Mendelian expectation. Contaminating homozygous fetal DNA with >11.1% (0.5 μl) of heterozygous maternal DNA produced significant change in fetal hemoglobin genotype results. Homozygous hemoglobin genotypes HbAHbA were affected more than HbSHbS. Conclusion: Study established Mendelian distribution in the fetal population and the levels of heterozygous maternal contamination of homozygous fetal DNA that resulted in significant risk of misdiagnosis.
Cooperate or Not Cooperate in Predictable but Periodically Varying Situations? Cooperation in Fast Oscillating Environment

In this work, the cooperation problem between two populations in a periodically varying environment is discussed. In particular, the two‐population prisoner's dilemma game with periodically oscillating payoffs is discussed, such that the time‐average of these oscillations over the period of environmental variations vanishes. The possible overlaps of these oscillations generate completely new dynamical effects that drastically change the phase space structure of the two‐population evolutionary dynamics. Due to these effects, the emergence of some level of cooperators in both populations is possible under certain conditions on the environmental variations. In the domain of stable coexistence the dynamics of cooperators in each population form stable cycles. Thus, the cooperators in each population promote the existence of cooperators in the other population. However, the survival of cooperators in both populations is not guaranteed by a large initial fraction of them.
Transcriptome-based identification of PDGFA as a candidate secreted biomarker for hepatocellular carcinoma

M. S. Chesnokov, O. M. Krivtsova, P. A. Skovorodnikova © 2016 M. S. Chesnokov et al.; Published by the Institute of Molecular Biology and Genetics, NAS of Ukraine on behalf of Biopolymers and Cell. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited UDC 57.032
Developing a Wine Experience Scale: A New Strategy to Measure Holistic Behaviour of Wine Tourists

This study develops a scale to measure wine tourism experiences and was tested in Portugal, in two of the main wine tourism centres: Porto and Madeira. The wine experience scale combines experience traits with the traditional approach to scales related to wine tourism. The development of the scale follows the most recognised validated procedures. Data were collected from a total of 647 international wine tourists in the wine cellars of the two main fortified wine tourism regions visiting areas: Porto and Madeira. Structural equation modelling (SEM-AMOS) was used as the main analysis and validation tool. The resulting 18-item wine experience scale comprises four major dimensions: (1) Wine storytelling, (2) wine tasting excitement, (3) wine involvement, and (4) winescape. All these showed reliable and validated indicators. This new scale presents a valid new tool to better measure and evaluate experiences in a wine tourism setting. This study offers a broad range of use for academics, managers, planners, and practitioners. It shows how a new measurement tool focused on the wine tourism experience in terms of several outcomes and applications, addressing important practical managerial implications, can have an impact on academic research. Most previous tourism scales still fail to measure the specifics of wine settings. This is the first scale that comprises the dimensions of experience with wine senses, applied in a relevant wine destination where research is still limited. The results are relevant in boosting the increasingly recognized awareness of Portugal as wine tourism, as well as bringing experience scales to the body of knowledge.