Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Autosomal Short Tandem Repeats and an Alu Insertion Polymorphism Are Detectable in Cimex lectularius L. (Hemiptera: Cimicidae) for 48 Hours after Human Blood Ingestion1

ABSTRACT Human DNA has been identified successfully from several hematophagous and necrophagous insects. Because bed bugs, Cimex lectularius L. (Hemiptera: Cimicidae), imbibe human blood and achieve high population densities in human habitations, we assessed the stability of human DNA in bed bugs over time and matched blood isolated from bed bugs to an individual human host. Using polymorphic autosomal short tandem repeat (STR) markers commonly employed in forensic investigations and an Alu insertion polymorphism, we unambiguously identified human DNA in bed bugs up to 48 h after blood ingestion and visualized faint bands from bed bugs fed 72 h prior. Using STR markers, we could not identify human DNA in bed bug excreta at any time point after blood ingestion. All blood samples matched identical STRs amplified from the host that the bed bugs had fed on, indicating the feasibility of this approach to identify a human host within 48–72 h of blood ingestion.
Isolation and identification of lactic acid bacteria from stored Apis mellifera honey

This is the first assay that describes the isolation and identification of Lactic Acid Bacteria (LAB) from stored honey of the honey bee Apis mellifera meda. Honey samples were collected from stored honey of A. m. meda at the apiary of the Animal Science Research Institute of Iran, and were stored one year at room temperature, before LAB were isolated from stored honey using selective media. The isolates were Gram-stained and tested for catalase reaction. The 16S rRNA genes from extracted DNA of bacterial colonies were amplified with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) using LAB primers (27F and 1492R). All bacterial 16S rRNA genes were sequenced and deposited in GenBank. The 40 isolated strains yielded 8 distinct rRNA sequences of 8 different genera. Enterococcus in the stored honey of A. m. meda was dominantly comprised of Enterococcus hirae related-sequences (40%), Enterococcus sp. (20%), and Enterococcus faecium (10%) with other abundant sequences being related to Lactobacillus plantarum (25%) and Lactobacillus pentosus (5%).
The Reception of Education Reforms through the Blogosphere

Teachers and other Edu-professionals in the United Kingdom are a professional body charged with educating each generation of children from birth to age 18, and beyond to Higher Education (HE). Over the last 10 years or so, they have formed a significant community in the blogosphere. This paper presents an exploration of the Edu-blogosphere in order to gain a better understanding of the topics discussed, and how reforms instigated by the government are received. This is particularly important as the Secretary of State for Education appointed in 2010, Michael Gove, introduced a number of reforms which were wide-ranging and not always well received by the Edu-community. The blogs of some of them contributed to an eventual change in policy. The challenges of harvesting and analysing the data on such a large scale requires semi-automated approaches; however, it is not sufficient to use such tools and techniques ‘out of the box’. Here, we present a methodology that draws on the specialist domain knowledge of the researchers, as well as a robust approach to evaluating the parameters of the selected algorithms. Attention has also been paid to the cleaning and pre-processing of the data, in particular the generation of a bespoke list of stopwords. A review of the existing literature provided a list of seven categories to classify the blogs, using semi-supervised learning. This was followed by topic modelling using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA). Both methods present challenges, discussed in this paper. This approach represents the first part of the original contribution of this work: the combination of the analysis of a community – research rooted in the Social Sciences - using tools from Computer Science. Following the application of the methodology on blog posts written by the Edu-community, a discourse focused on professional practice, sharing resources, and discussing a wide range of topics was revealed. There was also a noticeable spike in the number of blogs focusing on the impact of the Education reforms mentioned above. The richness of the discourse in the Edu-community is presented as the second original contribution of this research. This methodology is promising for the analysis of other blog communities. Challenges and proposals for further work include adding blog post titles, comments and author tags to the data; and combining the data with tweets made by those members of the community that are identifiable on Twitter.
Big times for dwarfs: Social organization, sexual selection, and cooperation in the Cheirogaleidae

The latest phylogenetic reconstructions place the cheirogaleid family very close to the root of the lemur tree.3 Today most authors agree that Madagascar was colonized in a single event, that lemurs are monophyletic, and that the aye-aye, Daubentonia madagascariensis, diverged first from their ancestral stock.4–7 Cheirogaleidae probably were the second family that branched off,3,8 which would support the notion that they retained many characters that are ancestral to all lemurs and primates in general. In addition to the smallest living primates, those of the genus Microcebus (8 species), the family Cheirogaleidae comprises four genera: Phaner (4 species), Cheirogaleus (7 species), Mirza (1 species), and Allocebus (1 species) (Fig. 1). Morphological and genetic traits, but not behavioral traits, suggest that Phaner may be classified as a subfamily or even a separate family.9,10 (Taxonomy within genera has changed rapidly. The first systematic studies covering large areas of the distribution demonstrated high species diversity in Microcebus11,12 and Cheirogaleus,13 and elevated subspecies to the species level in Phaner.14) As a family, the cheirogaleids have colonized the entire Island of Madagascar (Fig. 2), inhabiting the spiny forest and dry forests in the south and west, and wet evergreen forests and marsh habitats in the east and north.15
The effect of monoculture and rotation planting on soil bacterial community structure at different elevation in Hubei

Highland vegetables play an important role in meeting the demand for fresh vegetables in summer and also increasing the income of farmers in upland areas of China. With the large‐scale and intensive development of vegetable planting in upland areas, many of the farmers have used vegetable–maize rotation instead of the traditional maize monoculture pattern. The bacterial community and diversity under different planting patterns and elevations were investigated using next‐generation sequencing and Biolog Ecoplate. The average well colour development (AWCD) was greater at low elevation and under the vegetable–maize rotation. There were 15 classified bacterial genera related to the elevation and planting patterns. The relative abundance of Aquicella was significantly affected by elevation and WPS‐1_genera_incertae_sedis by elevation and planting patterns (p < .01). At the same time, the only genus that was significantly affected by planting patterns was Aquicella (p < .05). Redundancy analysis (RDA) showed that soil pH and available N content were the main factors influencing the change in soil bacterial community structure in the different planting models and elevation, and the dominant species of soil bacteria were Streptophyta and Aridibacter.
Learning synthetic aperture radar image despeckling without clean data

Abstract. Speckle noise can reduce the image quality of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and make interpretation more difficult. Existing SAR image despeckling convolutional neural networks require quantities of noisy–clean image pairs. However, obtaining clean SAR images is very difficult. Because continuous convolution and pooling operations result in losing many informational details while extracting the deep features of the SAR image, the quality of recovered clean images becomes worse. Therefore, we propose a despeckling network called multiscale dilated residual U-Net (MDRU-Net). The MDRU-Net can be trained directly using noisy–noisy image pairs without clean data. To protect more SAR image details, we design five multiscale dilated convolution modules that extract and fuse multiscale features. Considering that the deep and shallow features are very distinct in fusion, we design different dilation residual skip connections, which make features at the same level have the same convolution operations. Afterward, we present an effective L_hybrid loss function that can effectively improve the network stability and suppress artifacts in the predicted clean SAR image. Compared with the state-of-the-art despeckling algorithms, the proposed MDRU-Net achieves a significant improvement in several key metrics.
The Indicator Value of a Set of Lichen Species Assessed with the Help of Log-Linear Models

Abstract The value of 19 epiphytic lichen species as air pollution indicators was tested in the Khamar-Daban mountain range in east Siberia. Frequency of occurrence of a species was used as the indicator characteristic. Altitude and distance from the pollution source were considered as environmental factors. The methodology of fitting log-linear models to contingency tables with presence/absence (frequency) scale as an additional dimension is presented. The significance of changes in species frequency is studied by examining the significance of the model parameters, which account for interactions of the environmental factors with the ‘frequency factor’. Only two species, Parmelia caperata and P. olivacea, were found to be good pollution indicators in that they showed a uniform monotonic (unidirectional) response to the factor of distance at all altitudes. The frequency of 12 species changed significantly and monotonically with distance in one or two altitudinal zones.
A Reexamination of Age-Related Variation in Body Weight and Morphometry of Maryland Nutria

Abstract Age-related variation in morphometry has been documented for many species. Knowledge of growth patterns can be useful for modeling energetics, detecting physiological influences on populations, and predicting age. These benefits have shown value in understanding population dynamics of invasive species, particularly in developing efficient control and eradication programs. However, development and evaluation of descriptive and predictive models is a critical initial step in this process. Accordingly, we used data from necropsies of 1,544 nutria (Myocastor coypus) collected in Maryland, USA, to evaluate the accuracy of previously published models for prediction of nutria age from body weight. Published models underestimated body weights of our animals, especially for ages <3. We used cross-validation procedures to develop and evaluate models for describing nutria growth patterns and for predicting nutria age. We derived models from a randomly selected model-building data set (n = 192–193 M, 217–222 F) and evaluated them with the remaining animals (n = 487–488 M, 642–647 F). We used nonlinear regression to develop Gompertz growth-curve models relating morphometric variables to age. Predicted values of morphometric variables fell within the 95% confidence limits of their true values for most age classes. We also developed predictive models for estimating nutria age from morphometry, using linear regression of log-transformed age on morphometric variables. The evaluation data set corresponded with 95% prediction intervals from the new models. Predictive models for body weight and length provided greater accuracy and less bias than models for foot length and axillary girth. Our growth models accurately described age-related variation in nutria morphometry, and our predictive models provided accurate estimates of ages from morphometry that will be useful for live-captured individuals. Our models offer better accuracy and precision than previously published models, providing a capacity for modeling energetics and growth patterns of Maryland nutria as well as an empirical basis for determining population age structure from live-captured animals.
Integration of mobile sequencers in an academic classroom

The rapid development of DNA sequencing technologies creates new educational opportunities for hands-on training. We report our experience in integrating handheld DNA sequencers (Oxford Nanopore Technologies’ MinION) as part of an academic class. This manuscript describes lessons learned to facilitate successful integration and provides educational resources for the benefit of the community.
System-based transcriptomic and metabolomic network analyses in Papaver somniferum

PAPAVER SOMNIFERUM by JOHN WILLIAM KERRY (Under the Direction of Jim Leebens-Mack) ABSTRACT Papaver somniferum is an annual plant which produces economically important medicinal alkaloids, oils, and seeds. The morphine biosynthesis pathway in P. somniferum has been characterized but a system-wide analysis of transcriptional modules that regulate the concentration of alkaloids within the plant has not yet been performed. In this study we use weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) of a de novo assembly of 5 tissues of P. somniferum. We use differentially expressed transcripts to build a weighted gene co-expression network using the WGCNA bioconductor package. Finally we analyze those modules which correlate well with LC-MS/MS generated metabolite concentration values.
Performance of supertree methods for estimating species trees

Phylogenetics is the research of ancestor-descendant relationships among different groups of organisms, for example, species or populations of interest. The datasets involved are usually sequence alignments of various subsets of taxa for various genes. A major task of phylogenetics is often to combine estimated gene trees from many loci sampled from the genes into an overall estimate species tree topology. Eventually, one can construct the tree of life that depicts the ancestor-descendant relationships for all known species around the world. If there is missing data or incomplete sampling in the datasets, then supertree methods can be used to assemble gene trees with different subsets of taxa into an estimated overall species tree topology. In this study, we assume that gene tree discordance is solely due to incomplete lineage sorting under the multispecies coalescent model (Degnan and Rosenberg, 2009). If there is missing data or incomplete sampling in the datasets, then supertree methods can be used to assemble gene trees with different subsets of taxa into an estimated species tree topology. In addition, we examine the performance of the most commonly used supertree method (Wilkinson et al., 2009), namely matrix representation with parsimony (MRP), to explore its statistical properties in this setting. In particular, we show that MRP is not statistically consistent. That is, an estimated species tree topology other than the true species tree topology is more likely to be returned by MRP as the number of gene trees increases. For some situations, using longer branch
Phylogeny of the genera of the parasitic wasps subfamily Doryctinae (Hymenoptera: Braconidae) based on morphological evidence

The evolutionary relationships among most (143 genera) of the currently recognized genera of the braconid wasp subfamily Doryctinae were investigated using maximum parsimony analysis, employing 100 characters from external morphology and four additional, less well-studied character systems (male genitalia, ovipositor structure, venom apparatus and larval cephalic structure). We investigated the ‘performance’ of characters from external morphology and the other character systems and the effects of abundant missing entries by comparing the data decisiveness, retention and consistency indices of four different character partitions. The results indicate that the performances of the different partitions are not related to the proportions of missing entries, but instead are negatively correlated to their proportion of informative characters, suggesting that the morphological information in this group is subject to high levels of homoplasy. The external morphological partition is significantly incongruent with respect to a data set comprising the other character systems based on the ILD test. Analyses supported neither the monophyly of the large tribes Doryctini and Hecabolini, nor the monophyly of the Spathiini and Heterospilini. Relationships obtained from successive approximation weighting analysis for the complete data differ considerably from the currently accepted tribal and subtribal classifications. The only exceptions were the Ypsistocerini and the Ecphylini, whose recognized members were recovered in single clades. A close relationship between the Binaerini and Holcobraconini, and also Monarea, is consistently supported by venom apparatus and ovipositor structure characters but is not indicated by external morphological data. Low bootstrap values obtained for most of the recovered clades in all analyses do not allow us to propose a meaningful reclassification for the group at this time. A complete list of the recognized genera and their synonymies is given. © 2004 The Linnean Society of London, Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2004, 142, 369–404.
Improved Resistance to Root-knot Nematode Species in an Advanced Inbred Line of Specialty Pepper (Capsicum annuum)

Bell and chili peppers are important vegetable and spice commodities worldwide. Significant yield reductions have been attributed to damage caused by root-knot nematodes (RKNs; Meloidogyne spp.). This study addresses the need for developing pepper varieties that have high resistance to RKN, which is now of increasing importance due to restrictions on the use of fumigant nematicides. Our goal is to provide a nonchemical alternative to sustain commercial pepper production in Florida, which is a major producer of peppers in the United States. We evaluated ‘UFRJ107(6)A3’, an advanced inbred line developed from a cross between Capsicum annuum L. ‘Jalapeno’ and ‘Round of Hungary’, for resistance against the nematode in comparison with the parental and three other Capsicum cultivars, namely, C. annuum ‘Charleston Belle’, ‘California Wonder’, and C. chinense Jacq. ‘Datil’ in two separate growth chamber experiments. Based on egg mass indices and reproduction factors, ‘UFRJ107(6)A3’ was significantly more resistant to M. incognita compared with the other five cultivars. When tested with five RKN species, ‘UFRJ107(6)A3’ showed comparably high levels of resistance to M. arenaria and M. floridensis as ‘California Wonder’ based on the nematode reproduction factor. In ‘UFRJ107(6)A3’, however, there were no detectable M. arenaria egg masses, and M. incognita reproduction was minimal compared with that of ‘California Wonder’; both cultivars supported the reproduction of M. enterolobii and M. javanica, although the reproduction factors of M. enterolobii were ≈10-fold higher than M. javanica. To characterize the mechanism of high resistance to M. incognita in ‘UFRJ107(6)A3’, we examined the extent to which infective second-stage juveniles (J2s) were able to penetrate its roots in comparison with the susceptible ‘California Wonder’ and ‘Datil’ in two independent experiments; we conducted RKN root penetration assays with a single plant in a pot and two plants in a single-pot choice test using ‘Datil’ and ‘California Wonder’, respectively, as susceptible standards. In both assays, M. incognita J2s were absent in the roots of ‘UFRJ107(6)A3’ 7 days after inoculation but were present in the susceptible cultivars, indicating that resistance has an effect at the root invasion stage. In growth chamber experiments, at constant temperatures of 28 and 30 °C, ‘UFRJ107(6)A3’ exhibited M. incognita resistance superior to its parents and to the standard resistant bell pepper ‘Charleston Belle’, thus offering the potential to enhance specialty pepper production and for use as a nematode-resistant rootstock for commercial bell peppers.
How does servant leadership influence employees' service innovative behavior? The roles of intrinsic motivation and identification with the leader

PurposeWith the rapid development of the service industry, service innovation has gradually become a hot topic in business today. How to further improve employees' service innovative behaviors has become critical to organizations' survival and success. Servant leadership, as a leadership style characterized by serving others, is closely related to employees' service innovative behaviors. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to develop a theoretical framework to examine the influence of servant leadership on employees' service innovative behavior, the mediating role of intrinsic motivation and the moderating role of identification with the leader.Design/methodology/approachTo test the theoretical model, a multi-time survey method was used to collect data from 381employees from a large high-tech company in Mainland China.FindingsThe results confirm that servant leadership can promote employees' service innovative behavior and intrinsic motivation. Meanwhile, employees' intrinsic motivation partly mediates the influence of servant leadership on their service innovative behavior. Moreover, this mediating relationship is conditional on the moderating role of individual identification with the leader in the path from servant leadership to individual intrinsic motivation.Research limitations/implicationsThe key limitation of this study lies in the representativeness of sample data, which is the convenience of non-probability sampling and self-reported data only from a large high-tech company in China.Practical implicationsThis study not only further verified a promotion factor of individual service innovative behavior from the perspective of leader influence, but also enriched the understanding of the positive influence of servant leadership on employees.Originality/valueThis study is the first to examine the relationships among servant leadership, employees' intrinsic motivation, identification with the leader and service innovative behavior. The results may help to open the “black box” of the relationship between servant leadership and employees' service innovative behavior by introducing their intrinsic motivation. The conclusions also indicate employees' identification with the leader is an important boundary condition among their relationships. Particularly, it not only moderates the relationship between servant leadership and intrinsic motivation, but also moderates the mediating role of intrinsic motivation.
How to Do Things with Secrets: Secrecy and Historical Imagination among the Baga of Guinea

ABSTRACT By revisiting my ethnographic engagement with the Baga of coastal Guinea, West Africa, in this article I analyse, in the first place, the ways in which secrecy and its associated verbal arts (silence, metaphor, gesture) has worked as an ‘imagination trigger’ in a post-iconoclastic religious landscape in the 1990s and early 2000s, inviting people to create in their minds possible scenarios of pre-iconoclastic pastness and notions of ‘double-ream’, or dabal, in Baga language; in the second place, and in sharp contrast, I discuss how Baga of today, belonging to a generation historically removed from the traumatic colonial iconoclasm but facing new and dramatic environmental challenges, are relating to historical knowledge in ways that make the arts of secrecy, so prevalent in the field twenty years ago, less relevant, but that nonetheless highlight the plastic, transformative nature of African systems of secrecy. A particular attention is given to the changing relationship between the ethics of secrecy and the presence or absence of slavery memories in the villages.