Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Enzyme purification and kinetic characterization of AHL lactonase from Bacillus sp.RM1 a novel and potent quorum quencher isolated from Fenugreek root nodule rhizosphere

Soil ecosystems are full of complex bacterial interaction. Both Quorum sensing and Quorum quenching are a constant feature in these mixed bacterial communities and they play an important ecological role in the soil environment. Gram negative bacteria present in soil, also communicate via AHL based QS systems as well and concentration of these signal molecules in soil have been shown to lie within the range of nano-molar to milli-molar (Dessaux et al., 2011). It is suggested that a possible diffusion zone of 4 80 mm exists for these AHL signals which allows nearby members of the same population to sense the signals and modulate gene expression accordingly (Dessaux et al., 2011). Numerous bacterial phenotypes are regulated via AHL mediated QS, like, biofilm formation and virulence genes expression (Fuqua et al., 2001). In soil environments where competition is inevitable any organism capable of quenching quorum sensing mediated gene expression of a nearby bacterial population will definitely be in a profitable situation as far as colonization of a particular niche is ISSN: 2319-7706 Volume 4 Number 1 (2015) pp. 909-924 http://www.ijcmas. com
Nr . 3 ( 61 ) Thermal properties of β-lactoglobulin – vitamin D 3 complexes obtained by different technological processes

The properties of β-lactoglobulin make it a potential ingredient to deliver vitamin D3 in a form of dried complexes with β-lactoglobulin to fat-free food systems. Two different drying methods were employed to obtain β-lactoglobulin – vitamin D3 complexes in a form of powder. Powdered complexes were tested by differential scanning calorimetry. The addition of lactose or trehalose to complexes influenced the course of DSC curves. The thermal properties of study complexes were not dependent on the technological drying processes (freezeor spray-drying).
THRESHOLD UNDER CORRELATED INTERCONTACT TIMES

This paper focuses on the study of a stochastic model for predicting seroconvesion time of HIV transmission with change of threshold under correlated intercontact times. The antigenic diversity threshold is an important aspect of consideration in the studies relating to HIV infection. Successive sexual contacts are the mode of transmission of HIV would result in acquiring more of HIV which contribute to the antigenic diversity of the antigen. As and when the cumulative antigenic diversity contributed due to successive contacts crosses the antigenic diversity threshold, seroconversion takes place. In developing this model the result of Gurland (1955) has been used. The mean time to seroconversion and its variance are derived and the numerical illustrations are provided.
A variation on local linear regression

There has been much justifiable recent interest in local polynomial regression, and in particular in its local linear special case. Local linear regression has advantages in terms of desirable theoretical properties both in the interior and near the boundaries of the region of interest. For implementation, binning is useful. In this paper, we describe a variation on local linear regression which can be considered an alternative binning thereof. We show that existing and novel methods are almost indistinguishable. The point of the paper is not to extol the virtues of the new version over the old, but rather (i) to show that the good properties of local linear regression can be achieved in more than one way, and (ii) to elucidate close links between local linear regression and other kernel smoothing methods. The latter include, most closely, a boundary corrected ‘naive’ kernel estimator and a recent proposal of Wu and Chu (1992), as well as binned Nadaraya–Watson estimators and methods for binomial regression.
Providing Authentication by Merging Minutiae Template.

 Abstract— Now a day's use of biometric technologies gains popularity as concern about the privacy and misuse of biometric data increases. Because of this, protecting biometric data becomes an important issue. The oldest and widely used form of biometric identification is the fingerprints. It has been widely used in both forensic and civilian applications. In existing system it is easily possible to revoke the original image from the minutia points. To overcome this drawback we propose a system in which we take two different fingerprints at the enrollment phase and same fingerprints at authentication phase. We extract the minutiae positions and reference Point of first fingerprint and the orientation and reference Point of second fingerprint. Then we merge these two fingerprints to produce a new mixed minutiae template. Incase if hacker hacks this mixed Template image then also He will not able access the data because he will not able to identify that it is combination of two fingerprints, and from which fingerprint we have extracted minutiae points and from which we have extracted orientation. This approach will provide more security to application or data.
Physical Activity and High-Intensity Running during Sided Games vs.Competitive Match-Play in Elite Soccer Players: A Comparative Study

Aim: The aim of this study was to compare the physical activity of players within different sided games (SSG and LSG) and with those found among elite soccer match-play. Methods: Fourteen elite soccer players (age: 23.1 years; height: 178.4 cm; weight: 73.7 kg and body fat mass 8.8%) participated in 3 competitive matches and their data were compared to the following sided games: 5 vs. 5 and 6 vs. 6, 7 vs. 7, and 9 vs. 9. Total distances covered/min (TDC), TDC/min at high intensity running (between 16 and 23 km/h-1) and TDC/min at very high intensity running (>23 km/h-1) were analyzed during all SSGs and official match-play with GPS technology (15 Hz). Results: Post-hoc analysis indicated that the TDC/min was significantly higher during official match-play, 9 vs. 9, and 7 vs. 7 when compared to 6 vs. 6 and 5 vs. 5 (P<0.001). Moreover, the TDC/min, and the TDC/min at high and very high running intensity were significantly higher during the official match-play and large-sided games (9 vs. 9 and 7 vs. 7) than during the 6 vs. 6 and 5 vs. 5 SSG (P<0.001). Conclusion: The present study showed that physical activity, and especially at very high intensity running, was similar in official match-play and in LSG (9 vs. 9 and 7 vs. 7) whereas SSG (5 vs. 5 and 6 vs. 6) induced lower solicitations at the speed thresholds analyzed. In this context, SSG seems not allow to fully recreate the physical match-play demands with a specific difference for the high intensity running activities.
CLONING AND CHARACTERIZATION OF npr1 GENE FROM CHILLI (Capsicum annuum) AND VALIDATION OF MUSTARD npr1 (Brassica napus) IN TOMATO (Lycopersicon esculentum)

The nonexpresser of PR genes (npr1) also known as NIM1 and SAI1 is a key regulator of SA-mediated systemic acquired resistance (SAR) in plants. Over expression of npr1 is known to provide enhanced resistance to diverse pathogens in several crops such as Arabidopsis, rice, tomato and papaya. In this study, an attempt was made to clone full-length gene encoding npr1 from Capsicum annuum using specific primers. PCR product of 2800 bp was amplifed and cloned in to pTZ57R/T and transferred into E. coli DH5α. Sequencing of recombinant clone pSCB indicated the presence of 2800bp insert and blast result showed that out of 2800bp, a partial sequence of 591 bp has similarity with npr1 of Capsicum annuum and the remaining part did not show homology with any of the sequences in the data base. In order to validate the expression of npr1 gene from mustard (previously cloned in the laboratory), the gene was transferred to tomato using Agrobacterium mediated transformation. Transformants were selected on kanamycin (200mg/l) and were confirmed further by PCR with nptII and npr1 specific primers. Out of the 38 nptII positive plants screened, 7 plants were positive for npr1 specific primers. Bio-assay was carried out using Alternaria spp in positive plants along with control. Only two plants showed enhanced resistance compared to control tomato plants.
Physico-Chemical and Microbiological Properties of a Traditional Turkey Cheese Tomas/Serto (Dorak)

Turkey is a country producing various kinds of cheese. Tomas cheese is a kind of cheese that is still traditionally produced, and it is not widely-known. In this study, the characteristic properties of Tomas cheese, a local product that is extensively consumed in the city of Tunceli and its environs, have been examined. For this purpose, samples from cheese varieties currently on sale in the cities of Tunceli and Elazığ have been taken, and some of their physico-chemical and microbiological properties have been determined. The results of physico-chemical analysis showed that the average moisture rate of the samples was 53.24%, average ash rate 4.24%, average dry matter 46.76%, average acidity rate in terms of lactic acid 1.08%, average salt rate 2.93%, average fat rate 17.66%, average fat-free dry matter rate 25.56% and average pH value 4.67. The microbiological analysis data showed that the average values for the total aerobic mesophyll bacteria (TAMB) was 7 log10 kob/g, 2.3 log10 kob/g for coliform, 4.6 log10 kob/g for yeast, 5.5 log10 kob/g for mold, 6.8 log10 kob/g for Lactococcus spp. , and 6.1 log10 kob/g for Lactobacillus spp. The results show the high variation among samples, proving that there has not been a standard production procedure. It has been established that the hygienic condition of the product changes according to the production process, and the probability for cross contamination is high. A large number of studies need to be carried out for this kind of traditional food items, due to lack of enough literature data in this paper.
The chain impact of customers' value on organizational performance: A customer-based perspective in a command economy

This study assesses how customer value has chain effects on an insurance company’s market orientation, competitive advantage and organizational performance in a command economy. In this study we want to analyze Iran’s Insurance policy in strategy selection to identify its deficiencies compared to the ideal situation that Zhou explained in his essay, “Market orientation, competitive advantage and organizational performance: A demand- based perspective”, done in hotel industry. He showed if a firm knows its customers well, the firm will be able to adopt an adaptable strategy “customer orientation or competitor orientation” in the market. The findings showed if Iran’s insurance company perceives its customers as service sensitive, it tend will to develop customer orientation in order to satisfy its customers . But if it thinks its customers are price sensitive, it tends to develop no purposeful orientation. Moreover, the greater this firm's customer orientation, the more the firm is able to develop a competitive advantage based on innovation and market differentiation. In contrast, a competitor orientation has no special effect on the firm’s differentiation advantages. Finally, innovation and market differentiation advantages in this company are not in the line with market performance (e.g., perceived quality, customer satisfaction) but increase in market performance will lead to higher financial performance (e.g., profit, market share). Key words: Customer value, market orientation, competitive advantage, organizational performance.
Control of a Pneumatic Gantry Robot With Adaptive Neural Network Compensation

In a previous paper, the application of a pneumatic gantry robot to contour tracking was examined. A hybrid controller was structured to control the contact force and the tangential velocity, simultaneously. Performance was found to be limited by system lag and Coulomb friction. A neural network (NN) compensator was subsequently developed to counter both effects. Simulation results for straight and curved edge workpieces demonstrated the effectiveness of the NN compensator. This paper validates the results experimentally, highlights the tuning issues associated with an adaptive NN compensator, and confirms the capabilities of a pneumatic gantry robot.Copyright © 2010 by ASME
Environmental challenge and animal agency.

Challenges are there to be overcome – seen usually as problems to avoid rather than as opportunities to enjoy. However, for humans a life without challenge would be likely to be dull and boring, lacking the enthusiasm and satisfaction that come with individual development. Could this also be true for animals? This chapter looks at the positive value of engaging with environmental challenges for animal welfare, proposing that this value lies in an animal’s expression of agency and the enhanced functional competence that it gains through this. It explores the different facets of agency, and provides more detailed discussion of key elements such as problem solving, exploration and play, as well as discussing responses to challenge and how an animal’s welfare affected if it is prevented from performing behaviours of this kind. The final sections of the chapter consider how monotonous, predictable, captive environments may lead to apathy and boredom, and prevent animals from experiencing a positive quality of life. Agency should be regarded as an integrative capacity that works across specific modules of organization and, as such, forms an important condition for an animal’s overall well-being and health.
Is Information-Seeking Behavior of Doctoral Students Changing?: A Review of the Literature (2010–2015)

ABSTRACT The advent of the Internet and networked communications in the last 15 years has arguably considerably changed the information behaviors of doctoral students, including the discovery process. Information seeking includes initiating a search, constructing search strategies, and locating and evaluating the identified sources. Current research on information-seeking behaviors is focusing on understanding how the Internet, social media, and other technological and communication-based changes, including mobile technologies, have changed the way students seek information in order to understand the information behaviors of the students of tomorrow. This article offers a review of the literature on information-seeking behaviors, with a particular focus on recent years (2010–2015). It aims to determine whether notable changes in the information-seeking behavior of doctoral students have emerged in recent years. The study shows that the information-seeking behaviors of doctoral students follow a steady trend, with some subtle changes, particularly in the (patchy) use of social media and networking sites. There appears to be more similarities than differences across disciplines in the information-seeking behaviors of doctoral students. Considerations to their information literacy skills are given to understand better the role supervisors and library staff can play to support the doctoral students population in the early stages of the research process.
New chemical evolution analytical solutions including environment effects

In the last years, more and more interest has been devoted to analytical solutions, including inflow and outflow, to study the metallicity enrichment in galaxies. In this framework, we assume a star formation rate which follows a linear Schmidt law, and we present new analytical solutions for the evolution of the metallicity (Z) in galaxies. In particular, we take into account environmental effects including primordial and enriched gas infall, outflow, different star formation efficiencies andgalactic fountains. The enriched infall is included to take into account galaxy-galaxy interactions. Our main results can be summarized as: i) when a linear Schmidt law of star formation is assumed, the resulting time evolution of the metallicity Z is the same either for a closed-box model or for an outflow model. ii) The mass-metallicity relation for galaxies which suffer a chemically enriched infall, originating from another evolved galaxy with no pre-enriched gas, is shifted down in parallel at lower Z values, if compared the closed box model. iii) When a galaxy suffers at the same time a primordial infall and a chemically enriched one, the primordial infall always dominates the chemical evolution. iv) We present new solutions for the metallicity evolution in a galaxy which suffers galactic fountains and an enriched infall from another galaxy at the same time. The analytical solutions presented here can be very important to study the metallicity (oxygen), which is measured in high-redshift objects. These solutions can be very useful: a) in the context of cosmological semi-analytical models for galaxy formation and evolution, and b) for the study of compact groups of galaxies.
Is India Ready for Inflation Targeting?

Abstract In this paper we analyze the extent to which the current macroeconomic environment in India is suitable for implementation of inflation targeting as a monetary policy strategy, in light of the recommendation of the Urjit Patel Committee Report. Our results indicate that historically the Reserve Bank of India has given more importance to inflation compared to output growth and exchange rate changes in its monetary policy conduct and that in recent times there has been an increased emphasis on monetary independence thereby comfortably placing the RBI on a path to move towards inflation targeting. However we also find factors, that are traditionally outside the control of monetary policy, do exert a strong impact on aggregate prices in India thereby making the choice of nominal anchor a tricky one. Furthermore, the success of monetary policy in containing inflation is found to be crucially contingent on an appropriate fiscal policy as well.
Institutional structures and financial market development in Africa

Abstract Our paper examines the relationship between institutional structures and the level of financial markets development in Africa. Our paper contributes to the extant literature by using other financial market development variables—ease of access to loans and venture capital availability—that have not before been used to analyzed how institutional structures influence the level of financial markets development in the context of Africa. We employ a two-step generalized method of moment estimator with corrected standard errors to examine this. We demonstrate that a high-quality institutional environment is relevant in explaining ease of access to loans and venture capital availability in Africa. Based on these results, our paper argues that good institutional structures could help stimulate the level of financial markets development in Africa. However, to attain this feat, African governments need to strengthen institutions through effective enforcement of laws to foster compliance in a specifically definite manner-by fashioning out costs for non-compliance
Comparison and application of different echo reduction techniques in antenna measurement

During the last years, different methods for improving the quality of the antenna measurements results have been developed, in particular for echo reduction. This paper is a common research work between Universidad Politecnica de Madrid and Microwave Vision Group whose objective is the comparison of different echo reduction techniques in order to be able to explote the advantages of each one in antenna measurements applications. In particular, these techniques are specially important for outdoor antenna measurement systems, for systems as the StarLab (where the measurement equipement is placed without full coverage of absorbing material) or for measurements at lower frequencies where the performance of the absorbing material is not good enough. These techniques are based on spatial filtering, modal filtering and time gating techniques. The paper analyzes different approaches: in particular for spatial filtering, holographic techniques [1] and source reconstruction based on integral equations [2] are analyzed. In the first case, the field is back propagated to a large planar surface containing the antenna under test, and the fields out of the antenna area are filtered out. The main advantage is the very small time required for the transformation, while the disadvantages are focused on the specific applications for planar antennas and the need of geometrical information to improve the results. The second algorithm, based on source reconstruction using integral equation (in particular the authors analyzed MVG INSIGHT© algorithm). The main disadvantage is the time consumption, although the results are better accurate than the previous one. In the case of modal filtering, there are different approaches, with similar theoretical basis. This paper uses the approach included in MV-Echo© [3] for the cancellation of the echos based on the spherical modes decomposition of the radiated field. The last group of algorithms are based on time filtering. In particular FFT [4], Matrix Pencil method [5] and non uniform DFT are used. In all the cases, the results are similar. The first algortihm requires uniformly frequency spaced samples (not always available) but it is faster. In these three cases, the main disadvantage is the number of frequencies (and step) required for having a good echo reduction. The different algorithms have been applied to the measurement of a dipole antenna (SD1900) in the MVI StarLab System. Results show that depending on the angular range of the pattern the improvements are better or worst using any of the methods. Results will be shown in the final paper or presentation.
Imprints of local lightcone projection effects on the galaxy bispectrum. Part III. Relativistic corrections from nonlinear dynamical evolution on large-scales

The galaxy bispectrum is affected on equality scales and above by relativistic observational effects, at linear and nonlinear order. These lightcone effects include local contributions from Doppler and gravitational potential terms, as well as integrated contributions like lensing, together with all the couplings at nonlinear order. We recently presented the correction to the galaxy bispectrum from all local lightcone effects up to second order in perturbations, using a plane-parallel approximation. Here we update our previous result by including the effects from relativistic nonlinear dynamical evolution. We show that these dynamical effects make a significant contribution to the projection effects.
MSAP Working Paper Series No . 07 / 2014 Estimating Returns to Scale in Imprecise Data Envelopment Analysis

The economic concept of Returns-to-Scale (RTS) has been intensively studied in the context of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The conventional DEA models that are used for RTS classification require well-defined and accurate data whereas in reality data are often imprecise, vague, uncertain or incomplete. The purpose of this paper is to estimate RTS of Decision Making Units (DMUs) in Imprecise DEA (IDEA) where the input and output data lie within bounded intervals. In the presence of interval data, we introduce six types of RTS involving increasing, decreasing, constant, non-increasing, non-decreasing and variable RTS. The situation for nonincreasing (non-decreasing) RTS is then divided into two partitions; constant or decreasing (constant or increasing) RTS using sensitivity analysis. Additionally, the situation for variable RTS is split into three partitions consisting of constant, decreasing and increasing RTS using sensitivity analysis. Finally, we present the stability region of an observation while preserving its current RTS classification using the optimal values of a set of proposed DEA-based models.