Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Review of Blast Disease of Rice in Nepal

Blast disease is caused by Magnaporthe grisea (syn. Pyricularia oryzae) firstly reported in 1637 from China. In Nepal it was firstly reported from Thimi, Bhaktapur in 1964. Symptoms of this disease appear in all stages from seedling in nursery to heading in main field, however, the most devastating stages are seedling stage, tillering stage and panicle initiation stage. Typical symptoms of blast appear on leaves, node, neck, collar, panicles, rachis and even the glumes are also affected. Globally, blast of rice is responsible for 10-30% of yield losses every year. In susceptible varieties the disease causes 10-20% yield reduction but in severe condition it went upto 80% in Nepal. Cloudy weather, high relative humidity (93-99%), low night temperature between 15-20°C, longer duration of dew are the most favorable condition for the outbreak of blast fungus. The most usual approaches for the management of rice blast disease are management in fertilizers and irrigations, plantation of resistant varieties and application of fungicides. Higher dose of nitrogen increase susceptibility so, it should be applied in split doses. Use of resistant cultivars such as Khumal-1, Khumal-2, Khumal-3, Radha-12, Chandannath-1, Chandannath-3, Sabitri and Palung-2 for the management of rice blast is sustainable and ecofriendly approach. Seed treatment with Trichoderma viridae at 4 g/kg or Pseudomonas fluorescens at 10 g/kg help to inhibit growth of blast fungus. Use of chemical named Kasugamycin used to control blast fungus is most commonly used and popular among Nepalese farmers.
Effect of Oregostem® and imbalance diet on body performance and reproductive efficiency in male quails

Article history: Received October 28, 2020 Accepted January 23, 2021 Available online October 13, 2021 This study was aimed to determine the influence of Oregostem and imbalance diet on body performance, hematology and spermatogenesis of male quails. A total of 160 birds have been distributed into four groups (40 birds) each with 2 replicates starting at 12 weeks of age, the four treatments includes: G1 was fed on balanced diet only. G2 was received a balanced diet with Oregostem with drinking water. While G3 was fed on imbalance diet (ground yellow corn) and G4 received imbalance diet with Oregostem. The parameters including body performance, reproduction, blood and biochemical Figure and histology of testes were measured at 4 and 8 weeks from beginning of treatment. The results showed that the supplementation of Oregostem caused a significant increase in body and right testis weight, gonadosomatic index, sperm count as well as live sperm in G2 relative to other groups at 4 and 8 weeks post treatment. In G3, WBC and lymphocytes decrease significantly with increasing hetrophils percentage and stress index at 4 and 8 weeks post treatment. Also there was a significant decrease of cholesterol with an increase of total protein and creatine kinase in G3 at 8 week of treatment. While the groups treated with Oregostem did not differ from control group. This study concluded that liquid form of Oregostem had a positive effect on body weight, sperm count with improvement hematological and biochemical parameters of the male quails.
Are PM2.5 in the Atmosphere of a Small City a Threat for Health?

A number of time series from two local PM2.5 monitoring stations were analyzed, for a small city, in North East Greece. They coincided with SARS-CoV-2 pandemic lockdowns and lifting restrictions. The aim of this analysis was to establish concentration exceedances and roughly apportion sources of the PM2.5 concentration problem. This was established by analyzing 24-h filter samples of trace elements using WD-XRF. It was found that the restrictions and their lifting did not significantly affect these concentrations. The main problems were assigned to emissions from biomass burning central heating and Saharan dust episodes. The study results indicate that even in small cities the air quality as far as PM2.5 is concerned can still be deleterious to the local population according to the WHO restricting levels but not according to the EU levels. The fact that PM2.5 is not a single chemical pollutant makes matters more complicated and renders such concentration upper levels, of little significance.
Recovery or change? Differences between in seabird fauna in island ecosystems before alien mammal disturbance and after alien mammal eradication

Seabirds are important to island ecosystems because of their ecological functions; however, they are threatened by alien mammal invasions. Where alien mammals have been eradicated, seabird numbers, and ranges have often increased. Whether or not this constitutes recovery, however, is debatable because the post‐eradication seabird fauna might be different from the pre‐disturbance fauna that in most cases has not been recorded. Thus, identifying the pre‐disturbance seabird fauna is essential to determine a conservation goal. With this as our aim, we examined and radiocarbon‐dated avian bone remains found in a limestone cave on Minamijima, an islet on the Ogasawara Islands. The islet was invaded by goats Capra hircus and black rats Rattus rattus after 1830, and seabirds had declined. Since the 1970s, the alien mammals have been eradicated, and numbers of Wedge‐tailed Shearwaters Puffinus pacificus, Bulwer's Petrels Bulweria bulwerii, and Brown Boobies Sula leucogaster have increased. However, the dominant species in the avian remains were Bonin Petrels Pterodroma hypoleuca, Bryan's Shearwaters Pu. bryani, and Bannerman's Shearwaters Pu. bannermani. The radiocarbon ages of the bones were approximately 6,000–600 years BP. Therefore, seabird fauna was largely changed by the invasion and eradication of alien mammals. Our results indicate that the post‐eradication increase in seabirds is not a recovery, although the current inhabitants are native seabirds. The recent dominant species are likely to have thrived because they are cosmopolitan and competitive, and they prefer open habitats produced by goat grazing. We suggest that avian remains surveys should be exploited for ecosystem restoration.
The nano enterprise: A survey of health and safety concerns, considerations, and proposed improvement strategies to reduce potential adverse effects

Nanotechnology is evolving to become a leading industry. However, there is a great deal of uncertainty surrounding the potential health effects of nanomaterials and its components. This study focuses on the hazards and risks that nanomaterials pose to physical and environmental health together with the risks posed during their manufacture and research. In particular, the authors seek to promote awareness and the need for the adoption of various strategies to minimize the risk of human exposure to nanotechnologies both within and outside the manufacturing enterprise. Information from scientific journals, project studies, environmental and worker‐protection agency reports are used as the main source for this study. The six sigma's DMAIC framework, viz. “define, measure, analyze, improve, and control,” is used as a guideline for synthesizing information from published literature. Preliminary evidence from experimental research studies indicate the ability of nanomaterials to penetrate and cause damage to human tissues and cells. The susceptibility of the personnel associated during production (those who are more likely to be at risk) has been analyzed to examine considerations and targets, as well as for developing strategies for a continued research framework. Nanotechnology may pose health and environmental hazards unless adequate preventive measures are developed and implemented. Because of the likely unfavorable health effects on individuals conducting experiments and handling nanomaterials, studies that identify the adverse effects of nanotechnology must be conducted at a pace level with the commercialization of nanotechnology. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Hum Factors Man 16: 343–368, 2006.
Injection forging of solid asymmetric branched components

Injection forging allows producing near-net or net-shape asymmetric branched components with geometries that are difficult or impossible to fabricate by means of conventional impression die forging. On the contrary to previous research work in the field that was mainly focused on proposing methodologies for shape classification, systematization of forming defects, definition of workability ranges and evaluation of the overall performance of finite element predictions against experiments, the aims and scope of this article are centred in material flow and forging load requirements that result from double-acting tool concepts with closing spring elements. The presentation includes details on the active tool parts that were utilized for producing solid branched components with different numbers of radial straight legs, on the mechanical characterization of the material and on the numerical simulation and experiments that were performed with selected test cases. Results and observations confirm that double-acting tool concept with closing spring elements is a flexible and efficient manufacturing process for producing injection forged components because it can eliminate the formability problems and defects that are commonly found in single-acting tool concepts and can avoid the need for employing multi-acting presses with counteracting punches.
TermPicks: A century of Greenland glacier terminus data for use in machine learning applications

Abstract. Marine-terminating outlet glacier terminus traces, mapped from satellite and aerial imagery, have been used extensively in understanding how outlet glaciers adjust to climate change variability over a range of time scales. Numerous studies have digitized termini manually, but this process is labor-intensive, and no consistent approach exists. A lack of coordination leads to duplication of efforts, particularly for Greenland, which is a major scientific research focus. At the same time, machine learning techniques are rapidly making progress in their ability to automate accurate extraction of glacier termini, with promising developments across a number of optical and SAR satellite sensors. These techniques rely on high quality, manually digitized terminus traces to be used as training data for robust automatic traces. Here we present a database of manually digitized terminus traces for machine learning and scientific applications. These data have been collected, cleaned, assigned with appropriate metadata including image scenes, and compiled so they can be easily accessed by scientists. The TermPicks data set includes 39,060 individual terminus traces for 278 glaciers with a mean and median number of traces per glacier of 136 ± 190 and 93, respectively. Across all glaciers, 32,567 dates have been picked, of which 4,467 have traces from more than one author (duplication of 14 %). We find a median error of ∼100 m among manually-traced termini. Most traces are obtained after 1999, when Landsat 7 was launched. We also provide an overview of an updated version of The Google Earth Engine Digitization Tool (GEEDiT), which has been developed specifically for future manual picking of the Greenland Ice Sheet.
A report of 35 unrecorded bacterial species isolated from sediment in Korea

Aquatic sediment is one of the largest ecosystems on Earth. In general, sediments are overlaid by a permanent water body, such as an ocean, lake, river, or reservoir, and share the property of being continuously wet (Nealson, 1997). Sediment-dwelling microbes are key players in biogeochemical cycling and have potential for the bioremediation of undesirable compounds from sediments. Microbial communities can be responsible for 76-96% of the total sediment respiration, and the communities are generally known as a dominant driving force in the transformation of complex organic compounds (Craft et al., 2002; Zhang et al., 2015). Therefore, investigations into the microbial structure and function of sediment is indispensable to obtain a better understanding of aquatic ecosystems. Culture-independent molecular approaches based on 16S rRNA have been used for microbial ecology studies of sediments and the biomass and taxon richness of microbes in sediments are known to be much higher than those of the corresponding water bodies (Wang et al., 2012). Although previous studies have been conducted on the basis of traditional cultivation methods, it is now widely recognized that only 0.001-15% (0.25% in sediments) of the total cell counts in environmental samples can be cultured (Amann et al., 1995). However, cultivation-based study remains important because the ecological role of bacteria in natural environments and the industrial application of bacterial resources can be revealed only when they are successfully cultivated and characterized. Since 2015, we have isolated a great number of unreJournal of Species Research 9(4):362-374, 2020
The Role of Graphene Monolayers in Enhancing the Yield of Bacteriorhodopsin Photostates for Optical Memory Applications

Bacteriorhodopsin (bR) is a photoactive protein that has gained increasing importance as a tool for optical memory storage due to its remarkable photochemical and thermal stability. The two stable photostates (bR and Q) obtained during the bR photocycle are appropriate to designate the binary bit 0 and 1, respectively. Such devices, however, have limited success due to a low quantum yield of the Q state. Many studies have used genetic and chemical modification as optimization strategies to increase the yield of the Q state. Nonetheless, this compromises the overall photochemical stability of bR. This paper introduces a unique way of stabilizing the conformations of bacteriorhodopsin and, thereby, the bR and Q photostates through adsorption onto graphene. All-atom molecular dynamics (MD) simulations with NAMD and CHARMM force fields have been used here to understand the interactive events at the interface of the retinal chromophore within bR and a single-layer graphene sheet. Based on the stable RMSD (~4.5 Å), secondary structure, interactive van der Waals energies (~3000 kcal/mol) and electrostatic energies (~2000 kcal/mol), it is found that the adsorption of bR onto graphene can stabilize its photochemical behavior. Furthermore, the optimal adsorption distance for bR is found to be ~4.25 Å from the surface of graphene, which is regulated by a number of interfacial water molecules and their hydrogen bonds. The conformations of the key amino acids around the retinal chromophore that are responsible for the proton transport are also found to be dependent on the adsorption of bR onto graphene. The quantity and lifetime of the salt bridges also indicate that more salt bridges were formed in the absence of graphene, whereas more were broken in the presence of it due to conformational changes. Finally, the analysis on the retinal dihedrals (C11 = C12-C13 = C14, C12-C13 = C14-C15, C13 = C14-C15 = NZ and C14-C15 = NZ-CE) show that bacteriorhodopsin in the presence of graphene exhibits increased stability and larger dihedral energy values.
Solar Energy Conversion by Dye-Sensitized Photovoltaic Cells Using High Surface Area Mesoporous Carbon Counter Electrode

Development of new counter electrode materials is vital for commercialization of efficient dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs) process. Research on DSCs has been focused mainly on using platinum as counter electrode, which makes them expensive. In this paper, we report DSCs fabricated with high surface area mesoporous carbon thin film with uniform spherical particles as counter electrode. An overall light-to-electricity efficiency as high as 7.6% has been achieved under illumination of air mass (AM) 1.5 sunlight (100 mW/cm2). In comparison with activated carbon, high surface area mesoporous carbon shows superior performance. Our results show that mesoporous carbon with high specific surface area and uniform pore size distribution proved to be better efficient electrode material for DSCs.
Colpomenia species from south and south-eastern Australia (Ectocarpales, Phaeophyceae): a DNA barcoding approach

Abstract. Defining species in the brown algal genus Colpomenia is a challenging endeavour because of their morphological similarity, overlapping phenotypic variation, the absence of conspicuous diagnostic characters, and often lack of reproductive structures crucial for their identification. Thus, the use of molecular tools has become widely used to study Colpomenia taxonomy and evolution. The following four Colpomenia species are described along the Australian coast: C. claytoniae M.Boo, K.M. Lee, G.Y. Cho & W.Nelson, C. ecuticulata M.J.Parsons, C. peregrina Sauvageau, and C. sinuosa (Mertens ex Roth) Derbès & Solier. The objective of this study was to assess the diversity of Colpomenia species in southern and south-eastern Australia by using DNA barcoding techniques and single-marker species delimitation methods. We generated 44 new COI-5P DNA sequences from nine different populations across three Australian states (South Australia, Victoria and Tasmania), and applied 13 variations of four species delimitation methods (ABDG, SPN, PTP, GMYC). Our results recognised three Colpomenia species in the region, namely, C. sinuosa, C. claytoniae, and C. peregrina. Colpomenia sinuosa is the most widely distributed species in Australia. Colpomenia peregrina and C. claytoniae presented high levels of intraspecific genetic divergence. We did not find C. ecuticulata, although it has been previously reported from nearby our sampling area.
Comparison between ACI 440 and FIB 14 design guidelines in using CFRP for strengthening of a concrete bridge headstock

This paper compares and reviews the recommendations and contents of the guide for the design and construction of externally bonded FRP systems for strengthening concrete structures reported by ACI committee 440 and technical report of Externally bonded FRP reinforcement for RC structures (FIB 14) in application of carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) composites in strengthening of an aging reinforced concrete headstock. The paper also discusses the background, limitations, strengthening for flexure and shear, and other related issues in use of FRP for strengthening of a typical reinforced concrete headstock structure such as durability, de-bonding, strengthening limits, fire and environmental conditions. A case study of strengthening of a bridge headstock using FRP composites is presented as a worked example in order to illustrate and compare the differences between these two design guidelines when used in conjunction with the philosophy of the Austroads (1992) bridge design code.
A hybrid ITLHHO algorithm for numerical and engineering optimization problems

Harris hawks optimization (HHO) is one of the newest metaheuristic algorithms (MHAs) which mimic the interdependent behaviour and hunting style of Harris hawks in nature. It is an efficient swarm optimization technique that has been used to solve various kinds of optimization problems. However, for some optimization cases, it has a tendency to be trapped into local search space and it endures an improper balance between exploitation and exploration. To get rid of this situation and to explore the global searching ability of HHO, an effective hybrid method improved teaching–learning HHO (ITLHHO) has been developed using improved teaching–learning‐based optimization for solving different kinds of engineering design and numerical optimization problems. The performance of ITLHHO has been demonstrated by 33 well‐known benchmark functions, including IEEE Congress of Evolutionary Computation Benchmark Test Functions (CEC‐C06, 2019 Competition) and 10 multidisciplinary challenging engineering optimization problems. After illustration, the outcomes of the proposed ITLHHO are compared with several recently developed competitive MHAs. Additionally, the ITLHHO results are statistically investigated with the Wilcoxon rank‐sum test and multiple comparison test to show the significance of the results. The experimental results suggest that ITLHHO significantly outperforms other algorithms and becomes a remarkable and promising tool for solving various kinds of optimization problems.
Prediction of the epichlorohydrin derived cytotoxic substances from the eluent of poly(glycerol glycidyl ether) films

Glycerol-based epoxy networks have great potential for surface functionalization, providing anti-microbial and protein repellant function. However, the synthesis of glycerol glycidyl ether (GGE) monomer often requires excessive epichlorohydrin (ECH). ECH derived organochloride containing byproducts from monomer production maybe present in the eluent of the polymer networks prepared by cationic ring-opening polymerization. Here, the cytotoxicity analysis revealed cell damages in contact with the polyGGE eluent. The occurrence of organochlorides, which was predicted based on the data from high-performance liquid chromatography/electrospray ionization mass spectrometry, as confirmed by a constant chloride level in GGE and polyGGE, and by a specific peak of C–Cl in infrared spectra of GGE. The resulting polyGGE was densely crosslinked, which possibly contribute to the trapping of organochlorides. These results provide a valuable information for exploring the toxins leaching from polyGGE and propose a feasible strategy for minimizing the cytotoxicity via reducing their crosslink density. The eluent of poly(glycerol glycidyl ether) (polyGGE) films impaired the viability and metabolic activity of L-929 cells due to the organochloride byproducts or epichlorohydrin precursors originating from the GGE monomer, which was predicted based on the data from high-performance liquid chromatography/electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (HPLC–ESI–MS) and confirmed by chloride content analysis and attenuated total reflection fourier transform infrared (ATR-FT-IR) spectroscopy.
Lean: a continuous improvement philosophy in agile systems based on quality management principles

The lean philosophy is based on optimisation through continuous improvement and absolute waste minimisation by factual analysis, just-in-time (JIT) in material sourcing, production and delivery to customer, total preventive maintenance (TPM), total quality management (TQM) and strategic competitive human resource management (HRM). These are lean practices which have spanned decades and centuries in one form or another, under countless innovative concepts aimed at attaining superior performance and quality at a lower cost that guarantees strategic competitive advantage. This paper takes a comparative look at the lean philosophy and the quality management principles from the leadership, people, process and outcome perspective.
Behavior-Based Control Architecture for Legged-and-Climber Robots

In this paper, we present a fully original control architecture for legged-and-climber robots that is level-based, hierarchical, and centralized. The architecture gives the robots the ability to perform self-reconfiguration after unforeseen leg failures, because it can control this kind of robot with different numbers of legs. The results show the capability of performing movements in any direction and inclination planes. The components and functionalities of the developed control architecture for these robots are described, and, the architecture’s performance is tested on the ROMHEX robot.
Initiating conservation agriculture shows reduced soil CO2 emissions and improved soil aggregate stability in the first season in rainfed cropping in India

ABSTRACT The reported study was undertaken to determine which soil health indicators showed measurable signs of improvement, during the first year of the process of introducing a Conservation Agriculture (CA) cropping system in rainfed areas in Madhya Pradesh, India. Soil health indicators of soil aggregate stability, soil-atmosphere CO2 fluxes, water infiltration, soil moisture, potentially mineralisable nitrogen, soil organic content and bulk density were measured. Results demonstrate that generally, there were improvements in all measured soil health indicators in CA soils, with decrease in CO2 emissions and increase in soil aggregates being statistically significant.