Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pre‐fermentative cold maceration in the presence of non‐Saccharomyces strains: effect on fermentation behaviour and volatile composition of a red wine

Background and Aims This study evaluated the impact of pre‐fermentative cold maceration (PCM), in the presence of two non‐Saccharomyces yeasts, Metschnikowia pulcherrima MP 346 and Metschnikowia fructicola MF 98‐3, and of a commercial pectic enzyme, on fermentation kinetics and on the volatile composition of a Sangiovese red wine. Methods and Results Sangiovese grape must was inoculated with MP 346 or MF 98‐3 or treated with a pectic enzyme preparation during PCM, at 5°C for 24 or 72 h. A Control wine was produced by a pure culture of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Both non‐Saccharomyces strains affected the initial yeast population dynamics and the persistence of S. cerevisiae at the end of malolactic fermentation. Irrespective of the duration of PCM, the inoculum of Metschnikowia strains did not influence the rate of sugar consumption or the kinetics of malolactic fermentation. The volatile composition of the final wines was evaluated with solid‐phase extraction, followed by GC/MS. The concentration of some terpenes and C13‐norisoprenoids, nerol, geraniol, 8‐hydroxy‐linalool (cis) and 3‐oxo‐α‐ionol, and of some esters, isoamyl lactate and ethyl isoamyl succinate, was higher in wines inoculated with Metschnikowia strains than in the Control and wine treated with pectic enzyme. Conclusions Metschnikowia yeast strains MP 346 and MF 98‐3 affect wine volatile composition. Significance of the Study This study shows for the first time that an inoculum of Metschnikowia strains MP 346 and MF 98‐3 during PCM is effective in modulating the volatile composition of a Sangiovese red wine.
Using Moringa oleifera Extracts to Control Blackrot (Xanthomonas campestris) in Field Grown Rape (Brassica napus)

The leaf, bark and seed extracts of Moringa oleifera were evaluated for their efficacy under field conditions in suppressing Xanthomonas campestris pv. campestris in rape (Brassica napus. L.). Xanthomonas campestris pv. campestris is an important bacterial pathogen of agricultural importance causing devastating black rot disease of Brassicas. Three extracts concentrations of 60, 100 and 140% were sprayed as foliar applications weekly and the antibacterial activity was evaluated by recording number of totally defoliated plants. The three extracts showed significant effect against the test pathogen (p > 0.05). The antibacterial activity of seed extract demonstrated higher activity against the Xanthomonas campestris pv. campestris as evidenced by lower mean leaf defoliation of 1.59 cm followed by bark (2.58 cm) and lastly leaf extracts (2.96 cm) (p < 0.05). There were no significant differences based on the concentration levels used. Observations revealed that 100% and 140% levels were not significantly different from each other on enhancing growth of the stem diameter. Moringa seed at 60% concentration level can be used to enhance growth of rape. The conclusion is that Moringa seed extracts can be effectively implemented to suppress Xanthomonas campestris pv. campestris pathogen in field grown rape in an integrated disease control program.
Western honey bee management for crop pollination

This literature review seeks to provide an outlook of the use of Western honeybee for crop pollination around the world. It was prepared by collecting information on the use of managed honey bees, Apis mellifera in crop pollination from different sources. To address pollination deficits, farmers around the world contract with beekeepers that provide colonies of Western honey, Apis mellifera , in order to perform crop pollination. Some farmers pay for the bee colonies they host in their farms; while others obtain them for free. Apis mellifera is widely used for pollination purposes for several reasons, including its polylectic nature, its wide distribution, its relatively ease and low cost management, and hive products from which the beekeeper get additional incomes. The Western honey bee is used to pollinate 66 commodities on all continents, except Antarctica. A controlled use of Western honey bee for pollination services is reported mainly in developed countries. Because of the low application of this technology in Africa, research must be conducted in order to access the need of pollination service and then the profitability of this technology in the current African entomological fauna context. Despite its benefits, the use of managed Western honey bees can affect native pollinators and contribute to the spread of diseases, parasites and weeds. Key words: Apis mellifera , bee colonies, pollination deficit, pollination services
Biodiversity of spider mites (Acari: Tetranychidae) in Serbia: a review, new records and key to all known species

Despite the economic importance of spider mites (Acari: Tetranychidae), data on their biodiversity are scarce in some regions of Europe, such as Balkan Peninsula and particularly in Serbia. In this country, according to the Spider Mites Web database, only 17 spider mite species belonging to seven genera have been reported. This study provides a review of the Serbian literature dealing with spider mites species recorded in Serbia and presents results of a four-year faunistic survey in which spider mites were collected on cultivated plants and native vegetation throughout the country. In the survey, a total of 23 species were recorded, including six species new to Serbian acarofauna: Bryobia praetiosa, Eotetranychus aceri, E. fraxini, E. pruni, Panonychus citri and Tetranychus evansi. Together with previously reported data, it raises the number of known spider mite species in Serbia to 36. A total of 90 host plant species from 21 families that are favorable to spider mites were recorded in this study; there were 62 new host records for 20 spider mite species with 11 records of new plant species as hosts of spider mites. There were 63 new records for Serbia among host plant species, raising the number of Serbian hosts for tetranychid mites to 137. The spider mite species new to Serbian acarofauna were found on 17 newly recorded host plants from 11 families. A key to all known spider mites species from Serbia is provided.
Cyber-Physical Inconsistency Vulnerability Identification for Safety Checks in Robotic Vehicles

We propose a new type of vulnerability for Robotic Vehicles (RVs), called Cyber-Physical Inconsistency. These vulnerabilities target safety checks in RVs (e.g., crash detection). They can be exploited by setting up malicious environment conditions such as placing an obstacle with a certain weight and a certain angle in the RV's trajectory. Once exploited, the safety checks may fail to report real physical accidents or report false alarms (while the RV is still operating normally). Both situations could lead to life-threatening consequences. The root cause of such vulnerabilities is that existing safety checks are mostly using simple range checks implemented in general-purpose programming languages, which are incapable of describing the complex and delicate physical world. We develop a novel technique that requires the interplay of program analysis, vehicle modeling, and search-based testing to identify such vulnerabilities. Our experiment on 4 real-world control software and 8 vehicles including quadrotors, rover, and fixed-wing airplane has discovered 10 real vulnerabilities. Our technique does not have false positives as it only reports when an exploit can be generated.
Transmission Rate Sampling and Selection for Reliable Wireless Multicast

The multicast communication concept offers a scalable and efficient method for many classes of applications; however, its potential remains largely unexploited when it comes to link-layer multicasting in wireless local area networks. The fundamental lacking feature for this is a transmission rate control mechanism that offers higher transmission performance and lower channel utilization, while ensuring the reliability of wireless multicast transmissions. This is much harder to achieve in a scalable manner for multicast when compared with unicast transmissions, which employs explicit acknowledgment mechanisms for rate control. This article introduces EWRiM, a reliable multicast transmission rate control protocol for IEEE 802.11 networks. It adapts the transmission rate sampling concept to multicast through an aggregated receiver feedback scheme and combines it with a sliding window forward error correction (FEC) mechanism for ensuring reliability at the link layer. An inherent novelty of EWRiM is the close interaction of its FEC and transmission rate selection components to address the performance-reliability tradeoff in multicast communications. The performance of EWRiM was tested in three scenarios with intrinsically different traffic patterns; namely, music streaming scenario, large data frame delivery scenario, and an IoT scenario with frequent distribution of small data packets. Evaluation results demonstrate that the proposed approach adapts well to all of these realistic multicast traffic scenarios and provides significant improvements over the legacy multicast- and unicast-based transmissions.
Seasonal coupling of autotrophic picoplankton and phytoplankton in three boreal lakes

In freshwater environments, autotrophic picoalgae (APP; cells ~2.0 11m) are often an important fraction of phytoplankton (STOCKNER 1988); they consist mainly of unicellular cyanobacteria, predominantly from the genera Synechococcus and Synechocyctis QüHNSON & SIEBURTH 1979, WATERBURY et al. 1979), Cyanobium group according to KoMÁREK (1998), and/or eukaryotic green algae QoHNSON & SIEBURTH 1982). In this paper the focus is on the seasonaliry of APP in three boreallakes in southern Finland, and the possible coupling of APP and nanoand microphytoplankton in these freshwater ecosystems. In a previous study QASSER & ARvoLA submitted) in these boreal lakes, APP abundance was strongly related to the water temperature and light availability especially in spring and in autumn. The aim of this study was to establish if any relationships exist between APP and phototrophic and mixotrophic phytoplankton, which would indicate that competition and/or grazing also may influence the seasonality of APP in boreallakes.
Interplay between the endoplasmic reticulum and cellular homeostasis

Quality control of protein folding inside the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) includes chaperone-mediated assistance in folding and the selective targeting of terminally misfolded species to a pathway called ER-associated protein degradation, or simply ERAD. Once selected for ERAD, substrates will be transported (back) into the cytosol, a step called retrotranslocation. Although still ill defined, retrotranslocation likely involves a protein conducting channel that is in part formed by specific membrane-embedded E3 ubiquitin ligases. Early during retrotranslocation, reversible self-ubiquitination of these ligases is thought to aid in initiation of substrate transfer across the membrane. Once being at least partially exposed to the cytosol, substrates will become ubiquitinated on the cytosolic side of the ER membrane by the same E3 ubiquitin ligases. Ubiquitin on substrates was originally thought to be a permanent modification that (1) promotes late steps of retrotranslocation by recruiting the energy-providing ATPase Cdc48p/p97 via binding to its associated adaptor proteins and that (2) serves to target substrates to the proteasome. Recently it became evident, however, that the poly-ubiquitin chains (PUCs) on ERAD substrates are often subject to extensive remodeling, or processing, at several stages during ERAD. This review recapitulates the current knowledge and recent findings about PUC processing on ERAD substrates and ubiquitination of ERAD machinery components and discusses their functional consequences.
The complete chloroplast genome sequence of the biofuel plant Sacha Inchi, Plukenetia volubilis

Abstract Sacha Inchi (Plukenetia volubilis) is a potential woody oil seed plant for producing healthy vegetable oil due to high content of α-linolenic acid in its seeds. In this study, we report the structure of the complete chloroplast genome of P. volubilis using high-throughput next-generation sequencing technology. The circular chloroplast genome is 161,733 bp in size, containing a pair of inverted repeat regions (IR) of 27,382 bp each, which were separated by a large single copy region (LSC) of 88,843 bp and a small single copy region (SSC) of 18,126 bp. The chloroplast genome harbors 135 genes, including 92 protein-coding genes, 35 tRNA genes and 8 rRNA genes. Based on the phylogenetic relationships between the chloroplast genome of P. volubilis and those of the other species, P. volubilis is most closely related to castor bean (Ricinus communis).
Antioxidant Efficacy of Ananas Comosus Extract Against Renal Injury Induced by Sodium Oxalate in Rats

Free radicals are extremely reactive species that initiate a series of harmful reactions in the cell. The balance between the production of reactive oxygen species (ROSs) and antioxidants (AOX) is vital in a biological system to eliminate the adverse effects of oxidative stress [1]. Increased production of ROSs and/ or reduced antioxidant systems rather than decreased efficiency in repairing the balance between both linked to several diseases. Reactive oxygen species play an important role in the genesis of calcium oxalate stone through free radical generation that eventually lead to lipid peroxidation causing renal injury [2,3].
Efficient adventitious shoot organogenesis on root explants of Ocimum basilicum L.

Adventitious shoot regeneration efficiency of three cultivars of basil ( Ocimum basilicum L.): ‘Grand Vert’, ‘Fin Vert’ and ‘Grand Vert Sweet’ was investigated in order to develop a mutagenesis and transformation system. Isolated roots from in vitro seedlings were cut into explants of 10-15 mm and cultured in petri dishes containing 25 mL Murashige and Skoog medium (MS) supplemented with sucrose (30 g) and agar-agar (7 g) at pH 5,8. Two different cytokinins were tested individually: N6-Benzyladenine (BA: 0, 1, 5 or 10 μ M) and thidiazuron (TDZ: 0, 1, 5 or 10 μ M). The maximum percentage of explants showing regeneration (100%) was observed with the cultivar ‘Grand Vert’ on the medium containing 5 or 10 µM TDZ, in contrast to 10 µM BA that only induced 30% regeneration. Each root explant produced one or more clusters of green nodule-like shoot meristems. When the explants were transferred to MS medium without plant growth regulators, the shoots started to elongate. This is the first report on shoot regeneration on root explants of basil.
RNA interference mediated knockdown of an inhibitor of apoptosis protein induces apoptosis in Mythimna separata (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae)

Coordinated regulation of apoptosis is critical for development, homeostasis, and immunity in larvae of Metazoa. We determined the full nucleotide sequence of an inhibitor of an apoptosis protein in a lepidopteran insect Mythimna separata (Walker) (MsIAP) and carried out functional analyses of the MsIAP. The full-length cDNA of MsIAP was 1642 bp, which encoded 379 amino acid residues with a calculated molecular mass of 41,834 Da, and two BIR domains and one RING domain revealed using amino acid sequence analysis. In addition, the sequences of these domains were similar to Drosophila IAP1 and those of some other lepidopteran insects. We carried out a functional analyses of MsIAP related to apoptosis regulation using RNA interference. The effects of MsIAP knockdown on adhering hemocytes and non-adhering hemocytes as controls were examined using Hoechst33342/propidium iodide staining, effector caspase activity and terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated dUTP nick-end labelling (TUNEL) staining. A significantly higher number of propidium iodide and TUNEL-positive cells was recorded in adhering hemocytes from MsIAP knockdown larvae than from control larvae, but these differences were not recorded for non-adhering hemocytes. However, higher effector caspase activity was detected in both adhering and non-adhering hemocytes from MsIAP knockdown larvae compared to that in control larvae. These results indicate that the knockdown of MsIAP induces apoptosis in larval adhering hemocytes, which MsIAP negatively and non-redundantly regulate apoptosis, and that IAP function is conserved in M. separata and other insect species including Drosophila and several lepidopteran insects.
Investigating local particle aggregation effect on tensile strength of composites

This research aims to investigate the local aggregation effect on tensile strength of particulate composites with an embedded crack. A micromechanical finite element model (FEM) accounting for the configuration of particle distribution was proposed to study the particle aggregation effect on the fracture behavior of composites. Results reveal that increasing particle size can deteriorate the tensile strength of the composites. The declining behavior would become worse as particle aggregation taking place. Moreover, the decreasing tendency in tensile strength was also observed in the composites with high particle volume fraction in conjunction with high extent of particle aggregation. Therefore, the phenomenon that the particle local aggregation in composites results in the reduction of tensile strength is in a good agreement with experimental observations.
Genetic Diversity of Five Native Populations (Dusun, Rungus, Sonsogon, Murut and Sungai-Lingkabau Paitan) of North Borneo, East Malaysia based on 17 Y-chromosomal Short-Tandem Repeats Polymorphism

In this study, we typed 51 male individuals from North Borneo using 17 Y-chromosome STRs contained in the AmpFLSTR® Yfiler® kit (Applied Biosystems). These individuals constitute five indigenous ethnic populations representing the three major linguistic groups (Dusunic, Murutic and Paitanic): the Dusun ( n =7), Rungus ( n =12), Sonsogon ( n =12), Murut Paluan ( n =12), and Sungai Lingkabau Paitan ( n =8). A total of 37 haplotypes were identified, of which 30 individuals were represented by a single haplotype. The mean ± S.D. haplotype diversity was 0.600±0.181 and the discrimination capacity was 0.725. The results also showed that the haplotype H33 was the most frequent haplotype observed in the sampled male populations occurring exclusively in the Murut population. Comparative analysis between Y-haplotype populations of North Borneo and the ethnic populations (Bidayuh, Iban, and Melanau) of neighbouring Sarawak (East Malaysia) i.e. indicated that the Sungai Lingkabau Paitan was more closely associated with the Melanau with respect to Y-haplotype descent (RST=- 0.0023). In addition, the Multidimensional Scaling (MSD) analysis managed to clearly differentiate the eight groups from Borneo. We concluded that the 17 Y-chromosome STRs data of North Bornean populations are valuable resources in the applications of forensic and population genetics of the ethnic groups.
The contraction in inverted repeat regions in the complete plastome sequence of Cressa cretica L

Plastome studies have been the focus of research in plant molecular evolution and systematics. C. cretica L. (Convolvulaceae) is a halophyte, habitat in the ecologically challenged area with high salinity and drought. The complete physical map of plastome revealed that it is 141,419bp long, circular molecule. It contains typical quadripartite structure of large single copy region (LSC 94,808bp), small single copy region (SSC 32,527bp) separated by a pair of inverted repeat regions (IRs 7042bp). This plastome is compared with the complete plastomes of other members of Convolvulaceae showed notable distinctions. An exceptional shift in IRs to SC regions is experienced in C. cretica led to many genes shift in both SC regions and contraction in IRs. The size of IRs reduced to 2 to 4 times as compared to those of the Convolvulaceae members studied. The shifted IRs regions showed remarkable variation in nucleotides patterns. Further, the shift was from the IR boundaries and in between the IR regions led to segment IRs. It is concluded that the shift in IRs may be the strategic move for adaptation in the harsh environment.
Metabolic engineering strategies for producing oleochemicals in bacteria

Finding a sustainable alternative for today’s petrochemical industry is a major challenge facing chemical engineers and society at large. To be sustainable, routes for converting carbon dioxide and light into organic compounds for use as both fuels and chemical building blocks must be identified, understood, and engineered. Advances in metabolic engineering, synthetic biology, and other bioengineering disciplines have expanded the scope of what can be produced in a living organism. As in other engineering disciplines, synthetic biologists want to apply a general understanding of science (e.g. microbiology and biochemistry) to construct complex systems from well-characterized parts (e.g. DNA and protein). Once novel synthetic biological systems (e.g. enzymes for biofuel synthesis) are constructed, they must be engineered to function inside evolving cells without negatively impacting the host’s physiology.
Summer response distances of Svalbard reindeer Rangifer tarandus platyrhynchus to provocation by humans on foot

The objective of our study was to examine response distances of Svalbard reindeer Rangifer tarandus platyrhynchus to direct provocation by humans on foot during summer in areas subject to combinations of high or low human activity, and hunting or no hunting. We hypothesised that Svalbard reindeer can become habituated to human activity even when hunted. Reindeer sight, fright, flight and running response distances were measured in response to direct provocation by humans on foot in five areas chosen for their degree of human activity and hunting. No differences in sight distance were found among the five areas. Reindeer in the area with the most human activity in summer and no hunting (Adventdalen) had shorter fright, flight and running distances than reindeer in the area with little human activity and no hunting (Reinsdyrflya). Reindeer response distances in the three areas with hunting and moderate human activity were similar and intermediate to areas with high and low human activity and no hunting There were significant negative correlations between the fright, flight and running distances and the amount of human activity in an area, and with the exception of running distance having a borderline significant value, there were no correlations with intensity of hunting. Our findings suggest that Svalbard reindeer become habituated to human activity and that hunting probably has only a weak or even no influence on it. Furthermore, these findings do not lend support to the hypothesis that reindeer that are hunted by humans are less likely to habituate to human activity than those that are not hunted.