Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Using quantum dots as pollen labels to track the fates of individual pollen grains

Despite a long history of significant advances in understanding natural selection and evolution, the field of plant reproductive biology has largely studied plant mating without directly tracking pollen movement due to a lack of suitable pollen‐tracking methods. Here, we develop and test a novel pollen‐tracking technique using quantum dots as pollen‐grain labels. Quantum dots are semiconductor nanocrystals that are so small, they behave like atoms. When exposed to UV light, they emit extremely bright light in both visible and infrared wavelengths. We tested the suitability of non‐toxic CuInSexS2 − x/ZnS (core/shell) quantum dots with oleic‐acid ligands as pollen‐grain labels. Using a micropipette, we dispensed quantum dots dissolved in hexane in minute volumes (0.15–0.5 μl) directly onto dehisced anthers of four different plant species from four different families (Wachendorfia paniculata [Haemodoraceae], Sparaxis villosa [Iridaceae], Arctotheca calendula [Asteraceae], Oxalis purpurea [Oxalidaceae]). After application, the hexane solvent evaporated immediately, leaving behind quantum dots that remained attached to pollen grains of the four different plant species even after agitation in a polar solvent. This suggests a lipophilic interaction between oleic‐acid ligands on quantum dots, and pollenkitt surrounding pollen grains. We also showed that most pollen grains within anthers of the same four plant species were labelled with quantum dots after applying a volume of quantum‐dot solution sufficient to cover an individual anther. To test whether quantum‐dot pollen labels influenced pollen transport, we conducted pollen transfer trials (one donor, 10 sequential recipients) on S. villosa using captively reared honey bees to ensure bees were free of external pollen prior to experiments. We found no difference in pollen transport to recipients from donor flowers with labelled or unlabelled pollen grains. We demonstrate that quantum dots can be used as pollen labels allowing subsequent tracking of pollen fates. This method is relatively inexpensive (<$500 for equipment and ca. $0.02 per labelled anther thereafter) and can be simply and directly applied to anthers of most flowers in the lab and field. The ability to track pollen grain movement in situ, may help to address a historically neglected aspect of plant reproductive ecology and evolution.
Effects of silage and haylage on feed intake, growth and health in two meat type chicken genotypes

In this project the effect of grass silage and haylage on feed intake (FI), growth and health of two meat type chicken hybrids, Ross 308 and Rowan Ranger were studied. The study was carried out at the Swedish Livestock Research Center, located in Funbo-Lovsta, Uppsala for a period of 42 days. A total of 30 pens were used, 15 pens for each hybrid with eight birds randomly allocated to each pen. Commercial organic feed for the starter period was given at d1-20 in crumble form whereas a pelleted feed was given for the grower period at d20-42. To study the effect of silage and haylage, 15 percent dry matter (DM) of the commercial feed was replaced with either silage or haylage and compared to birds fed only the commercial feed resulting in three treatment groups namely, the control, haylage and silage. Each treatment was assigned randomly to five pens of each hybrids. The overall FI, silage, haylage and pellet intake, bodyweight (BW), feed conversion ratio (FCR) as well as organ weights were measured, gizzard score, sticky droppings, foot pad and litter quality were assessed. The result showed that the overall FI and pellet intake were lower for the chickens fed haylage compared to chickens fed silage and control feed. The roughage intake was higher for chickens fed silage than those fed haylage. The BW for the chickens in the control group were greater than the chickens in the silage group, but lowest with the haylage group. The FCR was poorer for chickens fed silage or haylage compared to chickens fed the control feed. In regards to genoype, Ross 308 chickens had a higher FI, pellet intake, silage or haylage intake and BW compared to the Rowan Ranger chickens whereas for FCR, Ross 308 started off poorly but later on was improved and Rowan Ranger chickens showed the opposite. The result on organ weights showed treatment effect only on the gizzard. The chickens fed silage and haylage had a heavier gizzard compared to chickens fed the control feed. In addition, breed effect was present where Rowan Ranger chickens had a heavier gizzard as well as crop, spleen, liver, small and large intestine than the Ross 308 chickens. However, no genotype effect was seen for the heart, bursa and proventiculus weights. Foot pad and litter quality were not influenced by treatment nor genotype. Sticky dropping was not affected by treatment but at d42 a genotype effect showed Rowan Ranger chickens with inferior condition compared to Ross 308 chickens. Feed treatment had no effect on gizzard score, but a tendency (P= 0.08) of superior condition in Rowan Ranger chickens over Ross 308 chickens was found. In conclusion, feeding diets with 15 percent inclusion of grass silage or haylage decreased growth performance for both Ross 308 and Rowan Ranger hybrids, with a stronger growth reduction with haylage group. However, both these forages did not have any detrimental effect on health parameters.
Amino acid racemisation and uranium-series dating of a last interglacial raised beach, Kingscote, Kangaroo Island, southern Australia

ABSTRACT The extent to which scleractinian coral inhabited southern Australia during the warm intervals of the Quaternary is poorly understood because identifiable corals from interglacial sedimentary records are scarce. Here we document the presence of a sub-tropical coral, Goniopora lobata, recovered together with warm water mollusc species from a raised cobble and boulder beach conglomerate at Kingscote, Kangaroo Island, dated by uranium-series and amino acid racemisation methods respectively to the last interglacial (MIS 5e). The presence of this assemblage preserved within the Glanville Formation at Kingscote suggests a 2–3° C higher than present last interglacial coastal water temperature for northern Kangaroo Island. The height of the last interglacial shoreline deposit was measured by theodolite, and points to a mean last interglacial sea level 3.1 ± 0.4 m higher than present.
Root branching in salt requires auxin-independent modulation of LBD16 function

Salinity stress constrains lateral root (LR) growth and severely impacts plant growth. Auxin signaling is indispensable for the regulation of LR formation. Nevertheless, the molecular mechanism of how salinity affects root auxin signaling and whether salt would steer alternative pathway(s) to regulate LR development is unknown. Here we show that the auxin-regulated transcription factor LATERAL ORGAN BOUNDARY DOMAIN (LBD)16, known as an essential player for LR development under control conditions, is regulated by an alternative non-canonical pathway under salinity. Salt represses auxin signaling but in parallel activates an upstream transcriptional activator of LBD16, ZINC FINGER OF ARABIDOPSIS THALIANA 6 (ZAT6). ZAT6 modulates the activity of LBD16 to contribute to downstream cell wall remodeling, and promotes LR development under salinity stress. Our study thus shows that root developmental plasticity in response to salt stress is achieved by integration of auxin-dependent repressive and salt-activated auxin-independent pathways converging on LBD16 to modulate root branching modulation under salinity.
Rainfall seasonality predicts the germination behavior of a tropical dry‐forest vine

Abstract Seed dormancy is considered to be an adaptive strategy in seasonal and/or unpredictable environments because it prevents germination during climatically favorable periods that are too short for seedling establishment. Tropical dry forests are seasonal environments where seed dormancy may play an important role in plant resilience and resistance to changing precipitation patterns. We studied the germination behavior of seeds from six populations of the Neotropical vine Dalechampia scandens (Euphorbiaceae) originating from environments of contrasting rainfall seasonality. Seeds produced by second greenhouse‐generation plants were measured and exposed to a favorable wet environment at different time intervals after capsule dehiscence and seed dispersal. We recorded the success and the timing of germination. All populations produced at least some dormant seeds, but seeds of populations originating from more seasonal environments required longer periods of after‐ripening before germinating. Within populations, larger seeds tended to require longer after‐ripening periods than did smaller seeds. These results indicate among‐population genetic differences in germination behavior and suggest that these populations are adapted to local environmental conditions. They also suggest that seed size may influence germination timing within populations. Ongoing changes in seasonality patterns in tropical dry forests may impose strong selection on these traits.
Agrobiodiversity in a changing world: the compatibility of agriculture and conservation of segetal plants / author: Rosa Witty

Climate change and population growth are the big challenges in the future. Agriculture has to face several problems: reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, increase of needed aliments and face biodiversity loss (FAO, 2017; TUOMISTO et al., 2012). Therefore, new ideas have to be developed and a change of agricultural management is needed. Previous studies showed that ecological management has a positive influence on biodiversity (HOLE et al., 2005; SEIFERT et al., 2015; TUOMISTO et al., 2012). This is compatible with the results of this study. It was shown that alpha diversity (Shannon-Wiener index) is positively influenced by ecological management. Dissimilarities have been demonstrated with analyses of the beta diversity (Bray Curtis dissimilarity) between different cropping systems. Conventional farming with fields of Triticum aestivum and fallow land containing FAKT flowering mixtures (EU funding program to support biodiversity; BLE, 2017a) had lower alpha diversity values and only five times species of the category “near threatened” occurred (Red List Baden-Württemberg; BREUNIG & DEMUTH (1999)). More often and covering all stages of endangerment have been found on ecological farmed fields (Triticum spelta and mixed cultivation). Mixed cultivation is a special agricultural system: Lens culinaris is sown and grown together with a supporting plant (GRUBER et al., 2011). Three different species of supporting plants have been studied (Avena sativa, Camelina sativa, Hordeum vulgare). These various types of mixed cultivation showed significant differences between their alpha diversities. Mixed cultivation seems to promote the growth of segetal plants and they even differ significantly from Triticum spelta. But final statements of how species conservation can be implemented into agricultural practices could not be made. A debate based on various ideas, old and new techniques and knowledge has to be pursued to face future demands in
A Self-Tuning Actor-Critic Algorithm

Reinforcement learning algorithms are highly sensitive to the choice of hyperparameters, typically requiring significant manual effort to identify hyperparameters that perform well on a new domain. In this paper, we take a step towards addressing this issue by using metagradients to automatically adapt hyperparameters online by meta-gradient descent (Xu et al., 2018). We apply our algorithm, Self-Tuning Actor-Critic (STAC), to self-tune all the differentiable hyperparameters of an actor-critic loss function, to discover auxiliary tasks, and to improve off-policy learning using a novel leaky V-trace operator. STAC is simple to use, sample efficient and does not require a significant increase in compute. Ablative studies show that the overall performance of STAC improved as we adapt more hyperparameters. When applied to the Arcade Learning Environment (Bellemare et al. 2012), STAC improved the median human normalized score in $200$M steps from $243\%$ to $364\%$. When applied to the DM Control suite (Tassa et al., 2018), STAC improved the mean score in $30$M steps from $217$ to $389$ when learning with features, from $108$ to $202$ when learning from pixels, and from $195$ to $295$ in the Real-World Reinforcement Learning Challenge (Dulac-Arnold et al., 2020).
Application of BIM Technology in the Phase of Project Tendering and Bidding

: Our country's engineering bidding system, as a way for construction units to choose partners, usually adopts paper-based bidding method. With the development of modern information technology, this method shows great limitations. BIM technology has many advantages for project management. This paper mainly studies the value of applying BIM technology in bidding stage.
Customers Segmentation for Proﬁtability Enhancement Using Data Mining Technique: The Case of ethio telecom

Customer segmentation is dividing of customers into groups of individuals that have common characteristics or traits. By segmenting customers based on their usage behavior, telecom companies can better target and classify their customers, provide the services that meet their expectations and increase profitability. On the contrary, companies with improper segmentation or luck of segmentation facing the problem of providing the exact product or service to meet the actual customer needs. Incorrect profit prediction and wastage of resource utilization are the main problems of ethio telecom which results from poor customer segmentation. To mitigate the segmentation problem this study focuses on segmenting telecom customers based on their usage behavior using unsupervised clustering techniques. K-means algorithm was used to cluster the Call Detail Record (CDR) data. Before clustering CDR data were collected, relevant attributes selected and preprocessing techniques such as data cleaning, data aggregation, data integration, and data formatting were performed. In addition, four datasets were formed by summarizing the data on a monthly base. The experimentation results in eight different clusters. These clusters were analyzed using quantile score techniques. The clusters were ranked and mapped with customer segmentation type. Among the clusters, the cluster with 236 subscribers was scored the highest in terms of duration, frequency and money. As a result, this cluster was chosen as a platinum customer type. They are highly profitable customers, vital to affect its revenue and need to serve well by the company.
Computational Multispectral Endoscopy

Minimal Access Surgery (MAS) is increasingly regarded as the de-facto approach in interventional medicine for conducting many procedures this is due to the reduced patient trauma and consequently reduced recovery times, complications and costs. However, there are many challenges in MAS that come as a result of viewing the surgical site through an endoscope and interacting with tissue remotely via tools, such as lack of haptic feedback; limited field of view; and variation in imaging hardware. As such, it is important best utilise the imaging data available to provide a clinician with rich data corresponding to the surgical site. Measuring tissue haemoglobin concentrations can give vital information, such as perfusion assessment after transplantation; visualisation of the health of blood supply to organ; and to detect ischaemia. In the area of transplant and bypass procedures measurements of the tissue tissue perfusion/total haemoglobin (THb) and oxygen saturation (SO2) are used as indicators of organ viability, these measurements are often acquired at multiple discrete points across the tissue using with a specialist probe. To acquire measurements across the whole surface of an organ one can use a specialist camera to perform multispectral imaging (MSI), which optically acquires sequential spectrally band limited images of the same scene. This data can be processed to provide maps of the THb and SO2 variation across the tissue surface which could be useful for intra operative evaluation. When capturing MSI data, a trade off often has to be made between spectral sensitivity and capture speed. The work in thesis first explores post processing blurry MSI data from long exposure imaging devices. It is of interest to be able to use these MSI data because the large number of spectral bands that can be captured, the long capture times, however, limit the potential real time uses for clinicians. Recognising the importance to clinicians of real-time data, the main body of this thesis develops methods around estimating oxy- and deoxy-haemoglobin concentrations in tissue using only monocular and stereo RGB imaging data.
Effects of offering lupins/triticale and vetch/barley silages alone or in combination with grass silage on animal performance, meat quality and the fatty acid composition of lean meat from beef cattle

Abstract An experiment was carried out to examine the effects of offering beef steers grass silage (GS) as the sole forage, lupins/triticale silage (LTS) as the sole forage, a mixture of LTS and GS at a ratio of 70:30 on a dry matter (DM) basis, vetch/barley silage (VBS) as the sole forage, a mixture of VBS and GS at a ratio of 70:30 on a DM basis, giving a total of five silage diets. Each of the five silage diets was supplemented with 2 and 5 kg of concentrates/head/day in a 5 × 2 factorial design to evaluate the five silages at two levels of concentrate intake and to examine possible interactions between silage type and concentrate intake. A total of 80 beef steers were used in the 122-day experiment. The GS was well preserved while the whole crop cereal/legume silages had high ammonia-nitrogen (N) concentrations, low lactic acid concentrations and low butyric acid concentrations For GS, LTS, LTS/GS, VBS and VBS/GS, respectively, silage DM intakes were 6.5, 7.0, 7.2, 6.1 and 6.6 (s.e.d. 0.55) kg/day and live weight gains were 0.94, 0.72, 0.63, 0.65 and 0.73 (s.e.d. 0.076) kg/day. Silage type did not affect carcass fatness, the colour or tenderness of meat or the fatty acid composition of the intramuscular fat in the longissimus dorsi muscle.
A staphylococcal cyclophilin carries a single domain and unfolds via the formation of an intermediate that preserves cyclosporin A binding activity

Cyclophilin (Cyp), a peptidyl-prolyl cis-trans isomerase (PPIase), acts as a virulence factor in many bacteria including Staphylococcus aureus. The enzymatic activity of Cyp is inhibited by cyclosporin A (CsA), an immunosuppressive drug. To precisely determine the unfolding mechanism and the domain structure of Cyp, we have investigated a chimeric S. aureus Cyp (rCyp) using various probes. Our limited proteolysis and the consequent analysis of the proteolytic fragments indicate that rCyp is composed of one domain with a short flexible tail at the C-terminal end. We also show that the urea-induced unfolding of both rCyp and rCyp-CsA is completely reversible and proceeds via the synthesis of at least one stable intermediate. The secondary structure, tertiary structure, and the hydrophobic surface area of no intermediate are fully identical to those of other intermediate or the related native protein. Further analyses reveal no loss of CsA binding activity in rCyp intermediate. The thermodynamic stability of rCyp was also significantly increased in the presence of CsA, recommending that this protein could be employed to screen new CsA derivatives in future.
A Review On Proniosomes: Formulation, Characterization and Applications

Nanotechnology is the advancing technology which is based on the study of manipulating the matter on a Nano scale range, and it refers to the constructing and engineering of the functional systems at atomic level. Nanotechnology lead to the development of various types of novel drug delivery systems like liposomes, microparticles, niosomes and proniosomes. Liposomes and niosomes has some demerits like leaking, fusion, aggregation, distribution, transportation and storage. To overcome the demerits of both liposomes and niosomes, proniosomes are developed with enhanced physical stability during storage and transport as they are dry formulation of water soluble carrier encoated with the surfactant and drug encapsulated in the proniosomal vesicles, which helps in prolongation of duration of retention of drug in systemic circulation and by reaching the target tissue shows its action which results in reduced toxicity. This review mainly focusses on demerits of liposomes and niosomes, methods of preparation, characterization and applications of Proniosomes.
Essential Oil Content and Composition of Almescla Resin (Protium spruceanum (Benth.) Engl., Burseraceae

In recent decades, there has been a significant increase in interest in natural therapies. In this way, plants with therapeutic properties constitute an important source of biologically active compounds. The species Protium spruceanum (Benth.) Engl. , popularly known as Almescla is widely used in folk medicine, with a wide geographical distribution, often found in gallery forests and palm swamps (veredas), thus easily accessible. The objective of this work was to evaluate the oil yield of the leaves and stem, as well as the chemical composition of Almescla resin collected in a palm swamp in the north-central region of Minas Gerais. After drying, the botanical samples were triturated until a fine powder was obtained and the particle size of the leaf sample standardized through sieves. The test was carried out in triplicate, the oil being obtained from the hot extraction method in Soxhlet with solvent Hexane P.A. The resin was subjected to chromatographic analysis and infrared spectroscopy, by the preparation of KBr pellets (1% m/m). For the leaf sample, an average yield of 3.33% was obtained and for the stem, an average yield of 1.40%. The resin had the major chemical compound α-phellandrene (58.18-71.25%). It is concluded that, Almescla has a great oil yield, and the chemical analysis showed that the species has a great medicinal potential to be exploited.
COMPARATIVE POLLEN MORPHOLOGY STUDIES OF TWO ENDEMIC NOCCAEA MOENCH (BRASSICACEAE) TAXA FROM TURKEY

This study is supporting the biological characteristics of the plants to put forward more efficient systematic and evolutionary relationships by pollen morphology study. It is aimed to determine the comparative palynological features of the two endemic taxa from Brassicaceae family which are naturally growing in Turkey. Detailed morphological investigation of the pollen of the Turkish Noccaea elegans (Boiss.) Al-Shehbaz and N. cilicica (Schott & Kotschy ex Boiss.) Al-Shehbaz were carried out under Light Microscope and Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). The results are described here for the first time. It was revealed that the pollen grains of two endemic taxa were the tricolpate type and spheroid/suboblate shaped. Exine was seen to be semitectate- reticulate ornamentation. Comparisons which will be made with the collected species and other taxa within the family will make contribution to taxonomy for family