Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Predicting children’s energy expenditure during physical activity using deep learning and wearable sensor data

Abstract This study examined a series of machine learning models, evaluating their effectiveness in assessing children’s energy expenditure, in terms of the metabolic equivalents (MET) of physical activity (PA), from triaxial accelerometery. The study also determined the impact of the sensor placement (waist, ankle or wrist) on the machine learning model’s predictive performance. Twenty-eight healthy Caucasian children aged 8–11years (13 girls, 15 boys) undertook a series of activities reflective of different levels of PA (lying supine, seated and playing with Lego, slow walking, medium walking, and a medium paced run, instep passing a football, overarm throwing and catching and stationary cycling). Energy expenditure and physical activity were assessed during all activities using accelerometers (GENEActiv monitor) worn on four locations (i.e. non-dominant wrist, dominant wrist, dominant waist, dominant ankle) and breath-by-breath calorimetry data. MET values ranged from 1.2 ± 0.2 for seated playing with Lego to 4.1 ± 0.8 for running at 6.5 kmph−1. Machine learning models were used to determine the MET values from the accelerometer data and to determine which placement location performed more effectively in predicting the PA data. The study identified that novel machine learning models can be used to accurately predict METs, with 90% accuracy. The models showed a preference towards the dominant wrist or ankle as the movement in those positions were more consistent during PA. It was evident that machine learning models using these locations can be effectively used to accurately predict METs for PA in children.
The influence of supplemental feeding on survival, dispersal and competition in translocated Brown Teal, or Pateke (Anas chlorotis)

Abstract Supplemental feeding is widely used after the translocation of animals and is presumed to increase post-release survival or reproductive output. However, the results of empirical studies on supplemental feeding are equivocal and research is needed to determine the mechanisms by which supplemental feeding affects health and behaviour. Here, we studied the effect of supplemental feeding on the Brown Teal, or Pateke (Anas chlorotis), an endangered duck endemic to New Zealand, following four translocations of captive-bred individuals. Radio-telemetric monitoring showed no significant effect of supplemental feeding on post-release survival. Male birds dispersed further than females, and supplemental feeding decreased post-release dispersal. To reduce heterospecific competition at Brown Teal feeders, we also tested an exclusion device designed to prevent the main heterospecific competition, the Purple Swamphen (Pukeko in New Zealand, Porphyrio porphyrio melanotus), from accessing supplemental food. Although this device decreased the presence of Purple Swamphens at feeders, it also decreased use of feeders by Brown Teal. Ultimately, we concluded that supplemental feeding has value as a conservation tool for Brown Teal, particularly during releases in managed areas. Further studies on feeder design, as well as spatial and temporal patterns of use of feeders, are needed to maximise the positive effect of supplemental feeding on success of translocations.
Effects of Soybean Oil or Whole Cotton Seed Addition on Accumulation of Conjugated Linoleic Acid in Beef of Fattening Brahman×Thai-Native Cattle

Effects of soybean oil or whole cotton seed addition on conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) and performance of fattening BrahmanxThai-Native cattle were studied. Eighteen fattening cattle averaging 241±24 kg body weight and approximately 1 year old were stratified by live weight into three groups and randomly assigned by group to one of three dietary treatments. The treatments were control (concentrated 14% crude protein), control and supplemented with 170 g/d soybean oil, control plus 170 g/d of oil from whole cotton seed. All animals were weighed before and after the experimental period and 4 cattle per treatment were randomly slaughtered then carcass measurements were obtained. There were no statistically significantly differences in the final body weight, average daily gain and dry matter intake among treatments. However, the crude protein intake was significantly decreased (p<0.01) when whole cotton seed was fed compared with control and soybean oil treatments. The carcass composition and carcass characteristics were not significantly different in Longissimus and Semimembranosus muscle by feeding soybean oil and whole cotton seed compared with the control treatment. Supplementation of soybean oil increased (p<0.01) cis-9, trans-11 CLA by 116% in Longissimus muscle and by 240% in Semimembranosus muscle. However, whole cotton seed did not increase cis-9, trans-11 CLA in both muscles. The present study successfully increased cis-9, trans-11 CLA content of muscle lipids by soybean oil but not by whole cotton seed.
Structured sparsity regularization for analyzing high-dimensional omics data

The development of new molecular and cell technologies is having a significant impact on the quantity of data generated nowadays. The growth of omics databases is creating a considerable potential for knowledge discovery and, concomitantly, is bringing new challenges to statistical learning and computational biology for health applications. Indeed, the high dimensionality of these data may hamper the use of traditional regression methods and parameter estimation algorithms due to the intrinsic non-identifiability of the inherent optimization problem. Regularized optimization has been rising as a promising and useful strategy to solve these ill-posed problems by imposing additional constraints in the solution parameter space. In particular, the field of statistical learning with sparsity has been significantly contributing to building accurate models that also bring interpretability to biological observations and phenomena. Beyond the now-classic elastic net, one of the best-known methods that combine lasso with ridge penalizations, we briefly overview recent literature on structured regularizers and penalty functions that have been applied in biomedical data to build parsimonious models in a variety of underlying contexts, from survival to generalized linear models. These methods include functions of $\ell _k$-norms and network-based penalties that take into account the inherent relationships between the features. The successful application to omics data illustrates the potential of sparse structured regularization for identifying disease's molecular signatures and for creating high-performance clinical decision support systems towards more personalized healthcare. Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Briefings in Bioinformatics online.
Formulation and Analysis of Patterns in a Score Matrix for Global Sequence Alignment

Global sequence alignment is one of the most basic pairwise sequence alignment procedures used in molecular biology to understand the similarity that arises among the structure, function, or evolutionary relationship between two nucleotide sequences. The general algorithm associated with global sequence alignment is the dynamic programming algorithm of Needleman and Wunsch. In this paper, patterns are exploited in the score matrix of the Needleman–Wunsch algorithm. With the help of some examples, the general patterns realized are formulated as new a priori propositions and corollaries that are established for both equal and unequal length comparisons of any two arbitrary sequences.
Identification and Taxonomic Status of Cordylanthus tenuis SUBSP. Pallescens (Orobanchaceae)

Abstract Cordylanthus tenuis subsp. pallescens, Pallid Bird's-beak, is a rare plant of the Mount Shasta area of northern California. Recent reports of dozens of populations outside its limited expected range, observations of plants with morphology intermediate to other subspecies of C. tenuis, and populations that seemed to include individuals of more than one subspecies, raised questions about its rarity and taxonomic validity. Examining populations in the field suggested that many reported populations were misidentified because they were based on a single trait, often foliage color. The name C. t. subsp. pallescens should be restricted to populations in which all or most plants have the combination of traits expected of this taxon, including yellow-green foliage, four to eight flowers per cluster, and short, mostly non-glandular calyx hairs. In the context of other variation recognized at the subspecies level in C. tenuis, recognizing C. t. subsp. pallescens taxonomically is a reasonable choice, despite its very limited range.
Characterization of an Aspergillus flavus alkaline protease and its role in the infection of maize kernels

A 33 kDa protein present in Aspergillus flavus–infected maize embryo was identified as a fungal alkaline protease (ALP). This protein became one of the major extracellular proteins of A. flavus in potato dextrose broth medium culture filtrate after 3 days, but was expressed at low levels or undetectable in A+M medium containing gelatin or starch, respectively. The activity of purified ALP was significantly inhibited in the presence of 0.5 mM phenylmethylsulfonyl fluoride (PMSF), or 1.43 μμ (200 μg/ml) maize 14 kDa trypsin inhibitor. Further study demonstrated that reduction of this ALP by PMSF also significantly reduced the level of aflatoxin accumulation in A. flavus culture, suggesting an important role for ALP in the infection of maize kernels and subsequent aflatoxin accumulation.
SEDIMENTS TELL THE HISTORY OF EUTROPHICATION AND HYPOXIA IN THE NORTHERN GULF OF MEXICO

We examined a suite of paleoindicators in 210Pb-dated sediment cores to determine the historical course of primary production, eutrophication, and oxygen stress in the coastal ocean adjacent to the plumes of the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers. The assumption that hypoxia is a natural feature of the coastal ecosystem in the northern Gulf of Mexico influenced by the discharge of the Mississippi River system is not supported by paleoindicators in accumulated sediments. There is a propensity for the ecosystem to develop hypoxia because of the high discharge of the Mississippi River and physical dynamics on the continental shelf that support stratification. However, paleoindicators of eutrophication and oxygen conditions record recent anthropogenic influences. The evidence for increased carbon production and accumulation comes from diatoms and their remnants, marine-origin carbon in the sediments, and phytoplankton pigments. Surrogates for oxygen condition, including mineral, isotopic, microfossil, and phytoplankton pigment indicators, indicate worsening oxygen stress. The changes are more apparent in areas of present chronic hypoxia and are coincident with the increasing nitrogen loads from the Mississippi River system beginning in the 1950s. Longer-term shifts in offshore ecology parallel landscape changes within the watershed in the last two centuries. The temporal shifts in this coastal ecosystem parallel the time sequence of similarly eutrophied coastal waters globally and coincide nicely with sediment analyses from other locations.
Nutrient enrichment overwhelms diversity effects in leaf decomposition by stream fungi

Mass losses of oak leaves were studied in microcosms. where numbers of aquatic hyphomycete species (1 - 5) and nutrient concentrations (2 levels each of N, P, and Ca) were varied. Species numbers, species identities, N, P and N x P interactions all had significant effects on leaf mass loss, but the magnitude of the effect was greater for N and P than for species numbers. Mass loss in multicultures was greater than predicted from average contributions of the component species in single cultures. This may have been due to sampling effects or niche complementarity.
Municipal solid waste management at Salt City in Jordan: Community perspective

Current managerial practices of municipal solid waste at Salt City in Jordan are facing a variety of problems. This study aims to evaluate the existing Municipal Solid Waste Management (MSWM) through surveying the citizen’s perspectives pertaining to quality of services, awareness level of the present MSWM and their willingness to participate in MSWM. The current status of the MSWM evaluated through questionnaire distribution among all segments of the residents. The collected data has been analyzed based on Likert scale, community satisfaction, level of awareness and readiness to participate in waste recycling projects. The results showed that approximately 60% of the respondents expressed low level of satisfaction with the services related to the quality of solid waste management and the cleanliness services. The results also indicated that citizens’ satisfaction is obviously influenced by the demographic variables. The results have demonstrated clearly that the respondents are willing to participate in waste recycling projects. There were a significant evidences that participation in waste management policies not only depends on education level, but also on demographical determinants. This unique study at Salt City reveals that improvement measures on current MSWM are urgently needed and further studies and initiatives are required.
Expansin-controlled cell wall stiffness regulates root growth in Arabidopsis

Expansins facilitate cell expansion via mediating pH-dependent cell wall (CW) loosening. However, the role of expansins in the control of biomechanical CW properties in the tissue and organ context remains elusive. We determined hormonal responsiveness and specificity of expression and localization of expansins predicted to be direct targets of cytokinin signalling. We found EXPA1 homogenously distributed throughout the CW of columella/ lateral root cap, while EXPA10 and EXPA14 localized predominantly at the three-cell boundaries of epidermis/cortex in various root zones. Cell type-specific localization of EXPA15 overlaps with higher CW stiffness measured via Brillouin light scattering microscopy. As indicated by both Brillouin frequency shift and AFM-measured Young’s modulus, EXPA1 overexpression upregulated CW stiffness, associated with shortening of the root apical meristem and root growth arrest. We propose that root growth in Arabidopsis requires delicate orchestration of biomechanical CW properties via tight regulation of various expansins’ localization to specific cell types and extracellular domains.
AN UNSYMMETRICAL TRIMMED MEDIAN USING DISTANCE MEASURE AND MIDPOINT FILTER FOR THE REMOVAL OF SALT AND PEPPER NOISE

Image denoising was a preprocessing step in image processing used to remove the noise while retaining as much as possible the important features. The fluctuations in the pixel value caused by the unwanted disturbance were known as noise. Hence, noise reduction techniques have to be used to improve the quality of the image. This article reports on the results of a research algorithm that uses median, midpoint and mean for the reduction of salt and pepper noise from the grayscale images. The median value was calculated for the uncorrupted pixels which are having the minimum distance. The proposed algorithm was tested using Euclidean distance, D4 distance and D8 distance as the distance measures. In this approach, the 3x3 window was selected as initial window size and the window size was made adaptive based on the noise density. The proposed filter was experimented using standard Lena image, 200 iris images, sample Plant images, sample MRI images and sample CT images in JPG/JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) format. These grayscale images used as a test image were induced with salt and pepper noise density ranging from 10% to 90%. The simulated results proved that the proposed approach performs better than the MDBUTMF, AMMF, MNF, IUTMMF, and HYBRID filtering algorithms reported in the literature in terms of PSNR, IEF and MSE.
Diatom production in the marine environment: implications for larval fish growth and condition

To test the effects of diatom production on larval fish growth and condition, laboratory experiments were performed with larval North Sea cod reared on different algal food chains. These food chains were based on cultures of (a) the diatoms Skeletonema costatum and Thalassiosira weissflogii; (b) the dinoflagellate Heterocapsa triquetra; (c) the flagellate Rhodomonas baltica; (d) a diet composed of both Skeletonema and Heterocapsa food chains (1:1), and (e) a starvation group. These algae were fed to cultures of adult Acartia tonsa. Copepod eggs were collected, hatched, and the N1 nauplii (200l−1) were fed to post-yolk-sac larval cod. Results indicate that larval growth rates are significantly influenced by the content of essential fatty acids of the algal food source: growth rates were positively correlated with the content of DHA (C22:6ω3) and negatively with EPA (C20:5ω3). The ratio of ω3/ω6 fatty acids in the algal source had no significant effect. The highest and lowest growth rates were observed in food chains based on H. triquetra and T. weissflogii, respectively (means for days 14–16 of 4.0 and −4.7). The mixed diatom/dinoflagellate diet resulted in intermediate growth rates and condition. Regressions of growth rates against EPA and DHA content indicated no inhibitory effect of diatom production on growth in larval cod.
Testing for Phylogenetic Conflict Among Molecular Data Sets in the Tribe Triticeae (Gramineae)

Four molecular data sets are available for the diploid intersterile genera of the cereal grain tribe Triticeae, and there are numerous differences among the four published trees. All six pairwise combinations of data sets were examined using tree comparisons, the incongruence length difference test, the Wilcoxon signed ranks test, and a permutation test. We describe some advantages, disadvantages, and properties of the different comparison methods. Test results pro- vide no evidence for significant differences in the phylogenetic signal among the three nuclear data sets, with the exception of the placement of a single taxon. The chloroplast DNA restriction site data, however, support a significantly different tree, and the differences probably reflect a separate evolutionary history of the chloroplast genome. (Gramineae; incongruence length differ- ence test; permutation test; phylogenetic congruence; Poaceae; T-PTP test; Triticeae; Wilcoxon signed ranks test.) The options for handling multiple phy- logenetic data sets for the same taxa have been the focus of increasing discussion in recent years. The issue is not new, but it has become of practical concern with the greater availability of molecular data. Top- ics of discussion have included measures of dissimilarity among trees (e.g., Esta- brook et al., 1985; Penny and Hendy, 1985; Day, 1986; Lapointe and Legendre, 1992) and data sets (e.g., Mickevich and Farris, 1981; Templeton, 1983; Kluge, 1989), whether or under what circumstances multiple data sets should be combined into
Mechanisms of ecological succession: insights from plant functional strategies

Successions are a central issue of ecological theory. They are governed by changes in community assembly processes that can be tracked by species’ traits. While single-trait-based approaches have been mostly promoted to address community assembly, ecological strategies actually encompass tradeoffs between multiple traits that are relevant to succession theory. We analyzed plant ecological strategies along a 140-year-long succession primary succession of 52 vertical outcrop communities after roadwork. We performed a RLQ analysis to relate six functional traits, associated with resource acquisition, competition, colonization ability and phenology, to the age of the outcrops. We found the prominence of two main axes of specialization, one related to resource acquisition and the other to reproduction and regeneration. We further examined the community-level variation in ecological strategies to assess the abiotic and biotic drivers of community assembly. Using trait-based statistics of functional richness, regularity and divergence, we found that different processes drove the variation in ecological strategies along the axes of specialization. In late succession, functional convergence was detected for the traits related to resource acquisition as a signature of habitat filtering, while the coexistence of contrasted strategies was found for the traits related to reproduction and regeneration as a result of spatial micro-heterogeneity. We observed a lack of niche differentiation along the succession, revealing a weak importance of biotic interactions for the regulation of community assembly in the outcrops. Overall, we highlight a prominent role of habitat filtering and spatial micro-heterogeneity in driving the primary succession governed by water and nutrient limitation.
Development of alginate-pectin microcapsules by the extrusion for encapsulation and controlled release of polyphenols from papaya (Carica papaya L.).

The papaya fruit (Carica papaya L.) contains a wide variety of bioactive compounds with potential applications in the food and nutraceutical industries. The entrapment and release of such bioactive compounds remain a critical step for the development of functional, stable, and cost-effective storage and delivery systems, since the interaction of polymers on capsules and the payload molecules can influence the performance of the capsule system under operational conditions. The present study describes the encapsulation of rutin and trans-ferulic acid-rich extracts from papaya exocarp in a pectin-alginate composite, evaluating the performance of gallic acid encapsulation obtained through in situ and two-step entrapment methods. The best alginate:pectin ratio for gallic acid encapsulation was 55:45 and 61:39, achieving 6.1 mg and 28.1 mg GAE/g capsules when the papaya exocarp extract was encapsulated by in situ and two-step, respectively. We also evaluated the payload release performance of the obtained capsules under in vitro conditions simulating gastrointestinal conditions. Our results indicate an increased protective effect at gastric pH and targeted release of polyphenols when in situ encapsulation is used to encapsulate the extracts. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS: Currently, adding value to agroindustry processing waste is an important focus to achieve a more economically and environmentally sustainable food industry. The recovery of bioactive molecules such as polyphenols, for food supplements or formulation additives in the form of by-product extracts is gaining importance as novel sustainable processes in the agricultural industry. Thus, the encapsulation of such bioactive extracts for storage and consumption is an active research field, aiming to overcome the low storage stability and lability to gastric conditions, currently hindering their applications in food or pharmaceutical formulations. In this sense, capsule design and the development of efficient encapsulation methods are very important to obtain a suitable carrier and protector system for the capsulated bioactive extracts or molecules. This research aims to add value to papaya waste and potentially to other agroindustry wastes such as pectin and alginate, resulting in a polyphenol carrier with excellent encapsulation and targeted release properties under gastrointestinal conditions. In conclusion, this kind of works could allow to the application of the agroindustry byproducts to obtain high added-value products, in the form of polyphenol-loaded capsules.