Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Microbial and Physicochemical Characterization of the Horse Meat in Fermented Sausage

In this study, 150 lactic acid bacterial strains, originating from horse meat, were subjected to a step-by-step screening and characterization to search for potential protective cultures to be used in the meat industry. Strains were first tested for their homofermentation and salt tolerance. Second, the antibacterial capacities towards Listeria monocytogenes were determined in an agar spot test. In total, 50% of the tested strains were inhibitory towards Listeria monocytogenes. However, only 12 strains produced a bacteriocin. Finally, three strains with strong bacteriocin activity were competitively evaluated by comparing their growth rate, acidifying character and lactic acid production at 15°C under anaerobic conditions in a liquid broth. All three strains had a fast growth rate with rapid acidification caused by the production of high levels of lactic acid. Based on this Lactobacillus sakei was used as starter culture for producing sausage horse meat. In this study, fermentations were followed analyzing the microbiological and physicochemical aspects of this product. The sausages were characterized based on microbial activity of lactic acid bacteria that resulted in a product with a final pH of about 4.56. No Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella spp. nor Sulfite reducing clostridia were ever isolated from the raw materials or the fermented sausages during the maturation, reflecting the safety of this product. The final water activity of the product was 0.85. Lactobacillus sakei was efficient in reducing amine production since this strain caused a quick pH drop during sausage fermentation.
Genetic Structure of the Mesic Forest-Adapted Herbs Trillium cuneatum and Trillium stamineum (Melanthiaceae) in the South-Central United States

ABSTRACT Trillium (Melanthiaceae) is a highly diverse genus in the Southeast and includes many local endemics. Previous studies on Trillium in eastern North America identified significant genetic structure associated with limited seed dispersal and historical landscape barriers. In this study, genetic structure was examined in Trillium cuneatum and T. stamineum across Mississippi and western Alabama to look for further evidence that landscape features influence genetic structure at local scales. DNA sequence variation in the trnL intron and trnL-trnF intergenic region was examined across 12 populations of T. cuneatum and six populations of T. stamineum. Samples of Trillium ludovicianum and Trillium foetidissimum were included for comparison. Five and four haplotypes were discovered in T. cuneatum and T. stamineum, respectively, but most populations were fixed for a single haplotype. Haplotypes from T. cuneatum in southwestern Mississippi were also present in congeneric species. Significant geographic structure was found in both species, and divergent haplotypes found on either side of the Tombigbee and Black Warrior Rivers suggest barriers to gene flow in the study area. Strong population differentiation suggests that seed dispersal is limited in both species. Given the strong degree of genetic structure detected in both species and their preference of mesic forests, it is expected that both species will continue to diverge at local scales.
Genetic Relationships between MUN, and Predicted DCPun in Hokkaido Holstein Cows

This study aimed to use field data collected by the Hokkaido Dairy Cattle Milk Recording and Testing programs to estimate genetic parameters for concentration of milk urea nitrogen (MUN) and predicted Digestive Crude Protein Percentage of requirement (DCPun). Edited data consisted of 5,797,500 test-day records of MUN and yields of milk, fat, and protein obtained from 783,271cows in Holstein herds in Hokkaido, Japan. Data were divided into four datasets; for the first, second, third and fourth lactations. Two analyses were performed on data from each lactation. First, ANOVA was used to estimate the significance of the effects of several environmental factors on MUN and DCPun, after absorbing the Herd-Test-Day (HTD) effects. The effects of DIM and ages-season effects had significant impact on MUN and DCPun. The second used a multi-traits repeatability model (MTRM) to estimate heritabilities and genetic correlations of milk with MUN and DCPun. Heritability estimates for MUN and DCPun in the first, second, and third lactations were 0.21:0.16, 0.20:0.16, and 0.20:0.18, respectively. Genetic correlations for milk with MUN and DCPun in the first, second, and third lactations were 0.02 ∼ 0.17, and -0.25 ∼ -0.39, respectively. The results indicate that MUN and DCPun are possibly effective tools for improving the energy balance, but that the relationships between MUN and other economically important traits such as feed efficiency, metabolic disease and fertility are still necessary.
Riled up about running for office: examining the impact of emotions on political ambition

ABSTRACT After the 2016 presidential election, there has been a wave of increased interest in running for office that has been anecdotally associated with anger and fear about the election outcome. Although there is a growing literature that seeks to understand how emotion matters for political action, particularly as it pertains to voting behavior, we do not know how emotions factor into one’s interest in running for office. In this study, we use data from the Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey to examine the relationship between political ambition and feelings surrounding the 2016 election season. In accordance with previous literature, we expect that resources still matter for political participation, but that emotions like anger and fear will also have an impact on political behavior.
Periodically Slotted Coupled Mode Leaky Coaxial Cable With Enhanced Radiation Performance

A novel technique to periodically modulate the aperture of a coupled mode leaky coaxial cable (LCX) is presented in this communication. The surface wave (monofilar mode) over the cable is modulated by periodically slotted aperture, converting it to a leaky wave. This leaky wave due to periodic modulation complements the leaked bifilar mode, thus enhancing the radiation efficiency of the LCX. The numerical results obtained through CST simulation are presented to prove the coexistence of a complex surface wave and a leaky wave over the surface of periodically modulated cable. As a proof of concept, a periodically slotted LCX operating at 4.5 GHz is designed and fabricated. Parametric studies are performed to observe the influence of the key parameters on the radiation performance. The measured results reasonably agree with the simulations.
Optimization of Solvent Systems for the Extraction of Vitexin as the Major Bioactive Flavonoid in Prosopis farcta

Prosopis farcta, a plant belongs to the mimosoideae, is characterized by a very wide spectrum of various bioactive and medical constituents. Vitexin, the marker flavonoid found in Prosopis, has potent and broad antitumour efficacy in preclinical models. Many studies had been done for the isolation of flavonoids (vitexin) by completely different chromatographically methodology. During this study, vitexin was isolated from Prosopis farcta by 6 different extraction methods in which parameters as the type, concentration and pH of the extracting solvents considered. Among different solvent systems used, methanol-water (40%, containing acetic acid 0.5%) was found to be the best solvent generating the highest yield (0.554 mg·g-1 DW) from Prosopis leaves. The present work suggests an efficient method for estimation the greatest content of vitexin analyzed by HPLC technique and introduces Prosopis farcta as a suitable source of this flavonoid with several pharmacological properties.
Do colonies of Lytocarpia myriophyllum, L. 1758 (Cnidaria, Hydrozoa) affect the biochemical composition and the meiofaunal diversity of surrounding sediments?

Lytocarpia myriophyllum, the biggest hydroid of the Mediterranean, lives at soft bottoms. It is severely threatened by bottom trawling activities. To assess its possible influence on trophodynamics and biodiversity of surrounding sediments, we compared the organic matter content and biochemical composition, and meiofaunal biodiversity in sediments below L. myriophyllum colonies and in surrounding bare sediments. Below L. myriophyllum sediments, the protein to carbohydrate ratio, the lipid contents and meiofaunal abundance showed values higher than in bare sediments, suggesting that L. myriophyllum may influence the availability of resources for benthic consumers. The richness of meiofaunal taxa and nematode species generally decreased from below the colonies to bare sediments suggesting that the presence of L. myriophyllum colonies can have a certain influence also on benthic biodiversity. The possible influence of L. myriophyllum on trophodynamics and biodiversity of neighbouring soft bottoms claims for efforts to increase our knowledge about the trophodynamics of mesophotic coral forests and to develop adequate measures of conservation of these important and threatened habitats.
Perceptual Simulation of Vertical Object Movement during Comprehension of Auditory and Audiovisual Text in Children and Adults

ABSTRACT It has been argued that people construct situation models during text reception and that these are analogous, multimodal representations of text grounded in perception and action. On the one hand, abundant evidence has been generated that recipients perceptually simulate features of the situation described in the text. On the other hand, findings indicating that pictures facilitate situation model construction have been explained by assuming a causal link between picture processing, perceptual simulation, and situation model construction. Using a picture verification task, we tested whether 5- to 11 year-old children and adults perceptually simulate vertical object movements during reception of narrative text and whether the presence or absence of pictures during text presentation makes a difference. Our results suggest that both children and adults perceptually simulate vertical object movements. In our work, perceptual simulation was not influenced by pictures, so there is no evidence that it mediates the facilitating effect of pictures on situation model construction.
CrackGAN: Pavement Crack Detection Using Partially Accurate Ground Truths Based on Generative Adversarial Learning

Fully convolutional network is a powerful tool for per-pixel semantic segmentation/detection. However, it is problematic when coping with crack detection using partially accurate ground truths (GTs): the network may easily converge to the status that treats all the pixels as background (BG) and still achieves a very good loss, named “All Black” phenomenon, due to the unavailability of accurate GTs and the data imbalance. To tackle this problem, we propose crack-patch-only (CPO) supervised generative adversarial learning for end-to-end training, which forces the network to always produce crack-GT images while reserves both crack and BG-image translation abilities by feeding a larger-size crack image into an asymmetric U-shape generator to overcome the “All Black” issue. The proposed approach is validated using four crack datasets; and achieves state-of-the-art performance comparing with that of the recently published works in efficiency and accuracy.
Biotransformation of Digitoxin in Cell Cultures of Capsicum frutescens in the Presence of β-cyclodextrin

Cell suspension cultures of Capsicum frutescens accumulated digoxin, purpureaglycoside A and other unknown derivatives when digitoxin, a cardiac glycoside, was used as a precursor. The feeding of digitoxin complexed with g -cyclodextrin increased the accumulation of digoxin, purpureaglycoside A and other unknown derivatives. Control cultures (without digitoxin) did not produce any of these metabolites. The growth of cells was affected by both digitoxin as well as digitoxin- g -cyclodextrin. The accumulation of purpureaglycoside A and digoxin reached a maximum of 1241 and 374 w g 100 ml m 1 culture on the 6th and 2nd day, respectively, which was 3.9 and 4.5 fold higher than cultures treated with digitoxin alone (sampled on the 13th day). The other unknown derivatives formed in digitoxin- g -cyclodextrin fed cultures were 15 times higher than digitoxin alone fed C. frutescens cultures. The addition of glucose to digitoxin- g -cyclodextrin treated cultures increased the accumulation of purpureaglycoside A which reached a maximum of 3589 w g 100 ml m 1 culture after 12 h incubation, which was a 2.9 fold increase over cultures treated with digitoxin- g -cyclodextrin alone.
Distribution of native and exotic branchiobdellidans (Annelida: Clitellata) on their respective crayfish hosts in northern Italy, with the first record of native Branchiobdella species on an exotic North American crayfish.

Branchiobdellidans were found on crayfish at the 18 sites examined in northern Italy. At 15 of the sites the native crayfish, Austropotamobius pallipes, was collected and all supported specimens of Branchiobdella italica. A few specimens of B. parasita were found at only two of these sites and no specimens of B. hexodonta were observed during the survey. The North American Louisiana red swamp crayfish, Procambarus (Scapulicambarus) clarkii has been found in three additional sites around Carmagnola, south of Torino. The exotic Cambarincola mesochoreus was recovered from red crayfish at two sites. However, no specimens of C. mesochoreus were found at the third site, but specimens B. italica and B. parasita were identified. This is the first record of native Branchiobdella spp. on an exotic and wild crayfish in northern Italy.
The scaling of gross dimensions of the spinal cord in primates and other species

Abstract Previous work on quantitative aspects of the evolution of the spinal cord suggests either that the cord has undergone considerable evolutionary changes, or that it is invariable and somatic. Variation in gross dimensions of the spinal cord is investigated here, mostly in mammals, including new data on 12 primate species, plus some bird and amphibian species. Allometric analyses demonstrate that spinal cord size varies little relative to body size in mammals, including primates. Some gross locomotor differences, but not others, are associated with small differences in relative cord dimensions. Birds, on average, have slightly smaller spinal cords than mammals relative to body size; amphibians may have much smaller spinal cords. On the basis of present evidence, spinal cord weight in mammals scales to body weight with an exponent of 0·69. This is significantly different from the scaling exponent of 0·75 for brain weight to body weight. Therefore, metabolic explanations developed to explain the scaling of brain size are not applicable to the spinal cord. However, the scaling exponent calculated for spinal cord weight is compatible with its scaling to body weight as a surface area to a volume, which may be important for functional interpretation of the scaling of somatic innervation. Simple brain:cord ratios should not be used as measures of relative brain size or intelligence, as the two parts of the central nervous system scale to body size with different exponents, and, at least between classes, because relative spinal cord size also varies. Analysing brain weight relative to spinal cord weight allometrically gives a functionally meaningful assessment of brain size relative to the level of neural communication between the brain and body. Mammals have both large relative brains and cords compared with other classes, which may be required for the sophisticated control of their mode of locomotion. Some species, including the haplorhine primates, have expanded their brain sizes beyond this common level for increased cognitive capacity.
treeclim: an R package for the numerical calibration of proxy‐climate relationships

The R package treeclim helps perform numerical calibration of proxy-climate relationships, with an emphasis on tree-ring chronologies. The package provides a unified, fast, and public-domain compilation of established methods while adding novel functionality not implemented in other software. treeclim includes static and moving bootstrapped response and correlation functions, seasonal correlation analysis, a test for spurious temporal changes in proxy-climate relations, and the evaluation of reconstruction skills. The stationary bootstrap method has been incorporated into the program as a ‘blocks of blocks’ resampling scheme. Applications of treeclim include the calibration of proxy timeseries used in paleoclimatology, forest ecology, and environmental monitoring.
Exploring a Novel Electrical-Modeling-Based Route Planning for Vehicle Guidance

This work describes a novel Electrical-Modeling-Based Route Planner (EMBRP) for vehicle guidance within city street networks (maps), which uses an equivalent linear electrical circuit considering traffic flow direction, length, and other physical attributes of the streets as parameters for the mathematical model of the circuit branch resistances. Thus, modeling a city as an electrical circuit results in a system of linear equations, which are solved using a multifrontal method implemented in the Unsymmetric Multifrontal Pack (UMFPACK) library. In addition, a Modified Local Current Comparison Algorithm (MLCCA) is proposed with the aim to find a suitable route meeting the correct traffic flow direction. The EMBRP has the functionality to accept user-defined symbolic models in terms of street parameters extracted from a public database allowing different route planning applications. For instance, low-risk route planning schemes can be explored also routes with multiple origins and a single destination can be plotted using only a single simulation, among other possibilities. The EMBRP is illustrated through the description of nine real case studies. According to the obtained results, suitable planning routes and small computing times are achieved by this proposal. A performance comparison, in terms of memory consumption and computing time, among EMBRP, the heuristic A∗ algorithm and Hspice numeric engine is presented. The smallest computing time was achieved by the EMBRP. The EMBRP can be useful for engineers and researchers studying route planning techniques and new street models for specific applications.
Comparative range use by three Atlantic Forest understorey bird species in relation to forest fragmentation

Abstract: In this paper, we report on range use patterns of birds in relation to tropical forest fragmentation. Between 2003 and 2005, three understorey passerine species were radio-tracked in five locations of a fragmented and in two locations of a contiguous forest landscape on the Atlantic Plateau of São Paulo in south-eastern Brazil. Standardized ten-day home ranges of 55 individuals were used to determine influences of landscape pattern, season, species, sex and age. In addition, total observed home ranges of 76 individuals were reported as minimum measures of spatial requirements of the species. Further, seasonal home ranges of recaptured individuals were compared to examine site fidelity. Chiroxiphia caudata, but not Pyriglena leucoptera or Sclerurus scansor, used home ranges more than twice as large in the fragmented versus contiguous forest. Home range sizes of C. caudata differed in relation to sex, age, breeding status and season. Seasonal home ranges greatly overlapped in both C. caudata and in S. scansor. Our results suggest that one response by some forest bird species to habitat fragmentation entails enlarging their home ranges to include several habitat fragments, whereas more habitat-sensitive species remain restricted to larger forest patches.
Syntheses of 14C-labelled (+)-trans-chrysanthemum mono- and di-carboxylic acids, and of related compounds

Simple, stereospecific syntheses of 14C-labelled (+)-trans-chrysanthemum mono- and di-carboxylic acids, required for biosynthetic and toxicological work, are described. The methyl esters of the acids are obtained by Wittig condensation between the (+)-trans-cyclopropane aldehyde (2) and the appropriate 14C-labelled phosphoranes. Aldehyde (2) is obtained in high yield by osmium tetroxide–sodium periodate oxidation of methyl trans-chrysanthemate. The conversion of methyl chrysanthemate into chrysanthemum dicarboxylic acid via aldehyde (2) proceeds in an overall yield of 39%. Methyl nor-(9) and bisnor-(8)(±)-trans-chrysanthemates are synthesised from (2) by condensation with appropriate alkylidenephosphoranes.
A Case Study of LightStay (2010–2017)—Hilton’s Corporate Responsibility Management System

This paper focuses on Hilton’s proprietary sustainability performance measurement system (SPMS) called LightStay (2010–2017). It draws on the case-study method and relies on three principal sources of information: in-house documents, a questionnaire completed by users of LightStay and interviews conducted with external experts. Specifically, the paper traces the system’s evolution and highlights its distinctive features, exploring the challenges and trade-offs related to the design and workings of an SPMS in a hotel multinational. The study shows, among other things, how LightStay, using an internationally approved methodology of data collection, calculation, metrics and benchmarking, compares a hotel’s predicted and actual environmental performance. It concludes by arguing that LightStay is a holistic platform that not only integrates precise measurement of the firm’s environmental effects with its business operations and strategic goals but also acts as a repository of sustainability knowledge and a facilitator of organisational learning. Its value and originality lie in providing unique insights into the workings of a proprietary SPMS at a nonanonymised hotel company.
A Novel Class of Super-Elliptical Vivaldi Antennas for Ultra-Wideband Applications

A novel class of complex-shaped antipodal Vivaldi antennas with enhanced impedance matching characteristics and an equivalent fractional bandwidth (FBW) of 166.8% is proposed. The reported antenna geometry is designed using the super-ellipse equation and implemented using an inexpensive FR4 laminate having a size of 170.7 mm (cid:1) 134 mm (cid:1) 0.2 mm. The presented low-cost, easy-to-fabricate radiating structure yields typical total efficiency, realized gain, and front-to-back ratio of 68%, 8.2 dBi, and 21.1 dB, respectively, across the operational frequency range. A parameter study of key geometrical features of the antenna is detailed in order to provide useful design guidelines while getting a better insight into the relevant physical behavior. Finally, a prototype is realized and characterized. The numerical results collected by full-wave simulation of the antenna structure are found to be in good agreement with the experimental measurements taken on the physical demonstrator.