Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
LIPID, CARBOHYDRATE, AND PROTEIN ACCUMULATION IN Mn-TREATED RICE

The accumulation of lipids, carbohydrates, and proteins was investigated in manganese (Mn)-treated rice (Oryza sativa L. cv. Safari). Rice plants were grown over a 15, 21, and 28-day "period in nutrient solutions containing Mn concentrations "varying between 0.125 and 32 mg l−1 . In all the experimental periods rice root and shoot concentrations of Mn increased continuously until the highest Mn treatment. The contents of acyl lipids did not vary significantly with increasing Mn concentrations. The levels of starch increased only after the 2 mg l−1 Mn treatment and from day 21 after germination onwards. In all the experimental periods the concentration of soluble carbohydrates decreased in the shoots after the 2 mg l−1 Mn treatment. In the roots, this tendency was also detected in 21 and 28-days-old plants. In these tissues, the protein content did not vary significantly until 28 days after germination, but in the shoots a decrease was found in 21 and 28-day-old plants, from 0.5 mg l−1 onwards. In both root and shoot tissues, protease activity remained unchanged in 15-day-old plants, but in the following experimental periods an increase was found in the highest Mn treatment. In the shoot, the acid RNAse activity increased in 21 and 28-day-old plants, from 0.5 mg l−1 onwards. The interaction between excess Mn and lipids, carbohydrates, and proteins before and after the end of the mobilization of seed reserves was evaluated.
Chemotaxonomic Study of an Alkalophilic Bacterium, Exiguobacterium aurantiacum gen. nov., sp. nov.

SUMMARY: Chemical studies were performed on a Gram-positive alkalophilic bacterium of uncertain taxonomic position. On the basis of the present and earlier studies it is suggested that the alkalophilic bacterium be classified in a new genus Exiguobacterium, as Exiguobacterium aurantiacum gen. nov., sp. nov.
Soil‐Behaviour of Phytophthora clandestina

Investigations were undertaken to study the nature and behaviour of P. clandestina in soil. The pathogen was recovered only from soil sievings 250–499 μm and 500 μm–0.99 mm, containing small root fragments. In soil the introduced inoculum of the fungus was incapable of saprophytically and competitively colonizing the dead cotyledons of subterranean clover used as bait material. Exposure of the inoculum to increasing numbers of microbes by adding greater proportions of nonsterile fields, oil to the growth medium of the plant had no significant effect on survival rate and fresh shoot weight of subterranean clover. However, microbes present in the field soil reduced the severity of root rot of subterranean clover. P. clandestina was, able to spread between 15–30 mm through pasteurized soil within a period of 20 days.
Minimum Broadcast Energy Conserving Protocol for Asymmetric WSN

-Wireless sensor network is dynamic in nature, which operates in infrastructure less environment. Routing packets from source to destination is challenging task in WSN. Discovering routes in asymmetric wireless sensor network needs great effort to choose path at runtime. In asymmetric WSN finding shortest path and energy conservation is challenging task. In this paper we propose energy conserving protocol for asymmetric network. Proposed protocol finds the shortest path with minimum energy needs. The basic idea behind this work is to improve upon RP & Layhet from the state of art and achieve performance enhancement. Proposed protocol achieve better delivery rate with minimum energy for data routing
The implications of different species concepts for describing biodiversity patterns and assessing conservation needs for African birds

It has been suggested that switching from the widely used Biological Species Concept to a Phylogenetic Species Concept, would result in the appearance of hitherto neglected patterns of endemism. The problem has mainly been analyzed with respect to endemic taxa and for rather limited geographical regions, but will here be analysed for the entire resident avifauna of sub-Saharan Africa. A database of African bird distributions was re-edited to create two new datasets representing 1572 biological species and 2098 phylogenetic species. Species richness patterns were virtually identical with the two taxonomies, and only subtle changes were found in the geographical variation in range-size rarity sum. However, there were some differences in the most range-restricted species, with increased complexity of long-recognized centres of endemism. Overall, then, the large-scale biogeographic patterns are robust to changes in species concepts. This reflects the aggregated nature of endemism, with certain areas acting as “species pumps” and large intervening areas being characterised by a predominance of widespread species which distribute themselves in accordance with contemporary environmental conditions. The percentages of phylogenetic and threatened species captured in a BSC near-minimum set of 64 grid-cells and a PSC near-maximum set, with the same number of grid-cells, are very similar.
Women and Social Policy in Spain: the Development of a Gendered Welfare Regime

This article is intended as a preliminary explo ration of the position of women within the Spanish welfare regime. It discusses the histori cal, structural and cultural factors which have shaped the way in which social policy has affected women in Spain. The article also intends to contribute to our knowledge about the distinctiveness of Spain's welfare regime as an example of a 'Latin-Rim' or 'rudimentary' welfare state.
Transcriptome profiling of infectious diseases and cancer in zebrafish

Analysis of the transcriptome, the total of all expressed RNA transcripts in a cell or an organism, contributes to our understanding of gene regulation during development and disease processes and is therefore of great importance in the field of genomic research. This thesis focuses on the analysis of transcriptome complexity during infectious disease and cancer. The zebrafish was applied as an immunological model organism, due to the remarkable similarities of its immune system to that of human. The studies took advantage of novel opportunities for transcriptome profiling provided by recent developments in microarray and next generation sequencing technology that have made an enormous impact on biology. In addition to studying expression of protein coding genes, the work addressed regulatory functions of microRNAs, small non-coding RNAs playing important roles in the function of the immune system and other processes. The transcriptome data provide a valuable reference set of infection-responsive genes and microRNAs in zebrafish models and have identified microRNAs conserved between human and zebrafish liver cancer. These genomic data sets provide a strong basis for future applications of zebrafish as an infection and cancer model and contribute to the understanding of pathogenesis and the development of novel strategies for disease treatment.
Progress in structure prediction of a -helical membrane proteins

Transmembrane (TM) proteins comprise 20–30% of the genome but, because of experimental difﬁculties, they represent less than 1% of the Protein Data Bank. The dearth of membrane protein structures makes computational prediction a potentially important means of obtaining novel structures. Recent advances in computational methods have been combined with experimental data to constrain the modeling of three-dimensional structures. Furthermore, threading and ab initio modeling approaches that were effective for soluble proteins have been applied to TM domains. Surprisingly, experimental structures, proteomic analyses and bioinformatics have revealed unexpected architectures that counter long-held views on TM protein structure and stability. Future computational and experimental studies aimed at understanding the thermodynamic and evolutionary bases of these architectural details will greatly enhance predictive capabilities.
Intersubunit Cross-talk in the Betaine Permease BetP fromCorynebacterium glutamicum

The secondary active glycine-betaine transporter BetP of the gram-positive soil bacterium Corynebacterium glutamicum has become a paradigm for osmo-regulated transport systems. BetP is the only transport protein regulated by osmolality for which the sensing domain is clearly established and for which structural information at the level of atomic resolution is available. Biochemical studies have shown that the transporter is activated by raising potassium concentrations both in vivo and in vitro which are sensed by the C-terminal, hydrophilic domain, located in the cytoplasm. The C-terminal sensor domain was shown to be involved in inter-protomer contacts in the homo-trimeric quarternary structure of the transporter. It was furthermore shown that mutations impairing the trimerisation of the transporter severely affect the regulatory function. Furthermore several structural studies reported conformational asymmetry of single protomers to occur in BetP. These findings suggested the occurrence of a regulatory relevant cross-talk between the protomers of the homo-trimeric BetP. The interaction of the C-terminal domain with the cytoplasmic loop2 of the adjacent protomer was speculated to be crucial for the osmosensing function. To test the relevance of conformational cross-talk between BetP protomers, artificial hetero-trimeric BetP was established in the current work. With this system it was possible to clearly exclude any functionally relevant cross-talk in the activation of BetP. The established hetero-trimers where shown to be a useful tool for the analysis of the molecular dynamics of the transporter via spectroscopic methods. Beside BetP only two different transport proteins have been prooven to be regulated by the external osmolality. Purification and reconstitution of the osmoregulated betaine transporter LcoP from C. glutamicum proved the osmosensing function of this carrier as well. For LcoP the osmosensing domains in this transporter could be identified in the C- and N-terminal hydrophilic domains. Furthermore it could be shown that this protein is a promising candidate for structural analysis. It may therefore be used as test system for conclusions that were drawn for the whole family of Betaine-Carnithine-Choline-Transporters based on data obtained from the the betaine permease BetP.
Computational social science using topic modeling: Analyzing patients' values using a large hospital survey

In this paper, we explore new approaches for combining manual and automatic content analysis. We compare three approaches to topic modelling: Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA), Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), and Hierarchical Dirichlet Process (HDP). We applied all three approaches to study a corpus of 21,085 free‐response answers to questions from the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey. We built topic models using the algorithms. Our preliminary results indicate that LSA and LDA yielded more useful results than HDP. We thematically analyzed the topic models and found similarities and differences in the factors that influenced patients' satisfaction with doctors and nurses.
Optimization of root proliferation medium for Hyoscyamus niger L.

0.94 g). Step-wise optimization of culture medium components was carried out by manipulating the MS macronutrients, myo-inositol, Fe-EDTA and sucrose. The optimum root biomass producing medium was established as modified MS medium containing altered concentrations of macronutrients (15.0 mM NH
Emotion Recognition from Speech Using the Bag-of-Visual Words on Audio Segment Spectrograms

It is noteworthy nowadays that monitoring and understanding a human’s emotional state plays a key role in the current and forthcoming computational technologies. On the other hand, this monitoring and analysis should be as unobtrusive as possible, since in our era the digital world has been smoothly adopted in everyday life activities. In this framework and within the domain of assessing humans’ affective state during their educational training, the most popular way to go is to use sensory equipment that would allow their observing without involving any kind of direct contact. Thus, in this work, we focus on human emotion recognition from audio stimuli (i.e., human speech) using a novel approach based on a computer vision inspired methodology, namely the bag-of-visual words method, applied on several audio segment spectrograms. The latter are considered to be the visual representation of the considered audio segment and may be analyzed by exploiting well-known traditional computer vision techniques, such as construction of a visual vocabulary, extraction of speeded-up robust features (SURF) features, quantization into a set of visual words, and image histogram construction. As a last step, support vector machines (SVM) classifiers are trained based on the aforementioned information. Finally, to further generalize the herein proposed approach, we utilize publicly available datasets from several human languages to perform cross-language experiments, both in terms of actor-created and real-life ones.
Allele and genotype frequencies of - lactoglobulin gene in Iranian Najdi cattle and buffalo populations using PCR-RFLP

In modern programmes of animal breeding, the polymorphism of the milk proteins can be used as marker systems.  -Lactoglobulin is the major milk whey protein in the ruminants. Studies have indicated that this protein is polymorphic in the many breeds of cattle. This is the result of a single base pair substitution in the  -lactoglobulin gene that also give rise to the Hae III restriction fragment length polymorphism. The aim of this work was to analyze the genotype distribution of  -lactoglobulin in Iranian Najdi cattle and buffalo. Blood samples were supplied from 80 Najdi cattle and 80 buffalo from different cities of Khouzestan province. Polymerase chain reaction was applied to amplification of a 247 bp fragment of exon and intron IV of bovine  -lactoglobulin gene. The Hae III enzyme was used for restriction of the PCR products. The digested products were separated by electrophoresis on 2.5% agarose gel. The allele B of  -Lactoglobulin occurred at a higher frequency than the allele A in both Najdi cattle and buffalo. The genotype frequencies of AA, AB, and BB in Najdi cattle and buffalo were 0, 0.175, 0.825 and 0.04, 0.3, 0.66 respectively. Frequencies of A and B alleles were 0.0875 and 0.9125, and 0.1875 and 0.8125 in Najdi cattle and buffalo, respectively. The deviation from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium was not detected in any of those animals. Detection of heterozygosity indicator evidence on low level of heterozygosity and genetic variability in both populations
Cloning and heterologous expression of two cold-active lipases from the Antarctic bacterium Psychrobacter sp. G

Antarctic bacteria producing extracellular lipolytic enzymes with activity at low temperature were isolated, and the most promising strain, named G, was identified as a Psychrobacter species based on 16S rDNA sequence alignment. The genomic DNA of this bacterium was used to construct its plasmid genomic library into pUC118 plasmid vectors, and to screen the cold-active lipolytic enzyme genes. Two genes encoding for cold-active lipolytic enzymes, Lip-1452 (with an open reading frame of 1452 bp in length) and Lip-948 (with an open reading frame of 948 bp in length), were screened. The primary structure of the two lipases deduced from the nucleotide sequence showed a consensus pentapeptide containing the active serine (Lip-1452, GDSAG, and Lip-948, GNSMG) and a conserved His-Gly dipeptide in the N-terminal part of the enzyme. Protein sequence alignment and conserved regions analysis indicated that the two lipases probably belonged to family IV and family V of the bacterial lipolytic enzymes, respectively. The upstream and downstream sequences of the two lipolytic lipases were also obtained. The two lipase genes were cloned into the expression vector pCold III and integrated into Escherichia coli BL21 (DE3). The functional expression of both lipase genes by E. coli BL21 (DE3) cells was observed as the formation of clear haloes around colonies on a 1% (vol/vol) tributyrin plate upon induction with isopropyl-b-Dthiogalactopyranoside at 5°C. A lipase activity assay showed that the specific activity of the pCold III+Lip-948 expression system was up to 3.7 U ml,-1, whereas that of pCold III+Lip-1452 was very low.
Comparison of Composition of Faecal Microbiota and Metabolism of Faecal Bacteria among 'Human-Flora-Associated' Mice Inoculated with Faeces from Six Different Human Donors

The composition of faecal microbiota, enzyme activities of faecal bacteria and concentrations of faecal putrefactive products and short chain fatty acids (SCFAs) were studied in 'human-flora-associated' (HFA) mice inoculated with six different human faeces. The composition of major faecal bacteria of HFA mice was similar to that of inoculated human faeces, although bifidobacteria were eliminated from some HFA mouse groups. β-Glucuronidase activity of intestinal bacteria in HFA mice was similar to that in humans. However nitroreductase activity was closer to that in conventional mice than in humans. Although the concentrations of faecal putrefactive products and SCFAs in HFA mice were much lower than those in humans, the composition of faecal SCFAs of HFA mice was similar to that of humans. Individual variations of putrefactive products and SCFAs observed among inoculated human faeces were not reflected in HFA mice, and variations among six HFA mice groups were not obvious. Bacterial composition and metabolism in HFA mice were maintained in their offspring by breeding. These findings indicate that HFA mice provide a stable and valuable tool for studying the ecosystem and metabolism of the human faecal microbiota, but they have some limitations as a model. Keywords: human-flora-associated mice, faecal microbiota, enzyme activities, putrefactive products, short chain. fatty acids
Big Data in economics

Big Data refers to data sets of much larger size, higher frequency, and often more personalized information. Examples include data collected by smart sensors in homes or aggregation of tweets on Twitter. In small data sets, traditional econometric methods tend to outperform more complex techniques. In large data sets, however, machine learning methods shine. New analytic approaches are needed to make the most of Big Data in economics. Researchers and policymakers should thus pay close attention to recent developments in machine learning techniques if they want to fully take advantage of these new sources of Big Data.
ADAPTIVE RADIATION IN ALCIDAE

Summary. Because of its homogeneity, both taxonomical and ecological, the sea-bird family Alcidae constitutes an appropriate group for the study of adaptive radiation. This radiation involves mainly the acquisition of specialized feeding habits and the consequent specialization of the various species of the family at different trophic levels. The plankton-feeders, exemplified by the Least Auklet Aethia pusilla, have a relatively wide beak with a fleshy tongue and a broad palate with numerous denticles. The fish-feeders, exemplified by the Razorbill Alca torda, have a narrow bill, a certain degree of tongue cornification and few, but sharp and regularly arranged palatal denticles. A few species, including the puffins and one auklet (Cyclorrhynchus), have characteristics intermediate between these extremes and feed partly on fish and partly on plankton. Body-size in the predator is related to the size of the prey and these relations are examined within the family. Within a group with similar adaptations, species which are alone in their niche in their area tend to be of intermediate body size for that group. Finally, though the family may exhibit a series of parallel trends in bill shape when the bill is considered as a social releaser, it exhibits a gradation in shape and structure (adaptive radiation) when considered as a food-getting tool.
The timing and nature of floristic and structural changes during secondary succession in wet forests

The timing and nature of floristic and structural changes to vegetation were documented during secondary succession in wet forests in the Victorian Central Highlands from 3 to > 100 years after severe disturbance by timber-harvesting or wildfire. A chronosequence of five forest age-classes was employed. Vegetation surveys were conducted in two 15 × 50 m sampling quadrats in each of 12 replicate sites in each forest age-class between April 2000 and June 2001. Frequencies of occurrence of 67 floristic variables (plant taxa, other vegetation elements and litter components) were used to distinguish among plant communities in the different forest age-classes. Structural comparisons were made among the age-classes using species richness, floristic variability (i.e. spatial heterogeneity), trunk diameter and stem density of Mountain Ash Eucalyptus regnans F.Muell. and heights of forest strata. Most patterns of change showed a clear unidirectional trend from the youngest to the oldest age-class. Much of the floristic change occurred within a few decades of disturbance, but some of the structural changes continued throughout succession. Vegetation changes were generally attributable to natural succession, but a few differences between young forests that regenerated after timber-harvesting and older forests that originated after wildfire were likely to be due to the different disturbance histories. The pattern of vegetation change during secondary succession in forests after severe disturbance can influence the pattern of forest use by birds. The findings of this study thus formed the foundation of an examination of the community and behavioural responses of diurnal birds to secondary succession.
Real-world use of rescue inhaler sensors, electronic symptom questionnaires and physical activity monitors in COPD

Background Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a heterogeneous disease characterised by airflow obstruction and other morbidities such as respiratory symptoms, reduced physical activity and frequent bronchodilator use. Recent advances in personal digital monitoring devices can permit continuous collection of these data in COPD patients, but the relationships among them are not well understood. Methods 184 individuals from a single centre of the COPDGene cohort agreed to participate in this 3-week observational study. Each participant used a smartphone to complete a daily symptom diary (EXAcerbations of Chronic pulmonary disease Tool, EXACT), wore a wrist-worn accelerometer to record continuously physical activity and completed the Clinical Visit PROactive Physical Activity in COPD questionnaire. 58 users of metered dose inhalers for rescue (albuterol) were provided with an inhaler sensor, which time stamped each inhaler actuation. Results Rescue inhaler use was strongly correlated with E-RS:COPD score, while step counts were correlated with neither rescue use nor E-RS:COPD score. Frequent, unpatterned inhaler use pattern was associated with worse respiratory symptoms and less physical activity compared with frequent inhaler use with a regular daily pattern. There was a strong week-by-week correlation among measurements, suggesting that 1 week of monitoring is sufficient to characterise stable patients with COPD. Discussion The study highlights the interaction and relevance of personal real-time monitoring of respiratory symptoms, physical activity and rescue medication in patients with COPD. Additionally, visual displays of longitudinal data may be helpful for disease management to help drive conversations between patients and caregivers and for risk-based monitoring in clinical trials.