Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Genetic diversity of domestic sheep examples from Swedish and French populations. (Diversité génétique du mouton domestique : exemple de populations suédoises et françaises)

Domestic sheep are raised for meat, milk and fibre production and are found all around the world in many types of environments. Sheep have been shown to be genetically diverse but this genetic diversity has not been fully described: there are still many sheep populations which have not yet been studied. The purpose of this thesis was to study genetic diversity in Swedish and French sheep breeds using high density marker arrays. Additional methods, including genotyping of microsatellite markers, and endogenous retroviruses and pedigree information were used to study Swedish sheep populations. Inbreeding and heterozygosity estimated in Gute sheep using the pedigree of the entire registered Swedish population and additionally microsatellite genotypes and pedigree from a sample of the population (N=94) indicated a breeding program with the purpose of reducing inbreeding. Studying genetic relationships among breeds by genotyping endogenous retroviruses indicated Klovsjo, Varmland, Finewool, Gute and Roslag sheep breeds had characteristics of primitive breeds (absence of retroviruses or presence of the specific retrovirus event enJSRV-7) although Finewool, Gute and Roslag sheep breeds had moderate frequencies of enJSRV-18 which is indicative of more modern sheep breeds. Studying variants in two coat colour genes, ASIP and MC1R, and their association with black coat colour revealed different selection histories in five Swedish sheep breeds studied. Studying the population structure of Dalapals, Fjallnas, Gotland, Gute and Klovsjo sheep, using high density SNP genotyping revealed that these breeds are genetically distinct breeds. When comparing with other European breeds and south west Asian breeds, they grouped with other north European short-tailed sheep breeds and they had generally accumulated more drift than breeds from other geographical areas. Studying 27 French breeds with high density genotypes revealed that French sheep populations harbour much of European sheep diversity in a small geographic area. Selective sweeps identified: selection hotspots, selection targets in many species; introgression of an adaptive allele; and allelic heterogeneity, which was confirmed with targeted resequencing of a coat colour gene, MC1R, in breeds under selection.
Necessary and Sucient Conditions for the Ecient Risk-Sharing Rules and the Representative Consumer's Utility Function

We show that for every collection of increasing risk-sharing rules and for every increasing and concave expected utility function, there exists a collection of increasing and concave expected utility functions for which the given risk-sharing rules are ecient and the given utility function coincides with the corresponding representative consumer’s utility function. We then determine the smallest class of utility functions that contains not only all functions exhibiting constant relative risk aversion but also all functions derivable as the representative consumer’s utility function from such utility functions; and also fully characterize the ecient risk-sharing rules in this class. Furthermore, we show that in a two-consumer economy, assuming that the two have the same utility function imposes no additional restriction on the ecient risk-sharing rules.
The Relationship between Self-efficacy and Marital Satisfaction among Married Students

Background The present study was designed and conducted to determine the relationship between self-efficacy and marital satisfaction among married and single students. Materials and Methods The sample of this study consisted of 50 married students of Payame Noor University in IZEH city, South West of Iran; then simple random sampling method was used to select samples. To measure self-efficacy questionnaire Scherer and Enrich marital satisfaction questionnaire was used. Data were analyses using SPSS-20. Results The mean age of students were 23 + 0.739 years. In terms of demographic characteristics, 50% of the study population were women and 50% were men. Results showed thatthere was a significant negative correlation between self-efficacy and marital satisfaction of male students (r= - 0.55 and P=0.001), respectively. Also, there was a significant negative correlation between self-efficacy and marital satisfaction in married women students (r= -0.47 and P=0.001), respectively. Conclusion The root of many marital problems, including divorce, the factors they are directly or indirectly marital satisfaction. Therefore, considering these variables can be important to prevent disputes in married life and many negative consequences for physical and mental health will bring the couple and their children that can affect the beneficial aspects of married life.
Abnormal Lipid Accumulation and Cluster Formation of Naive Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells: A Useful Tool for Early Detection of Central Nervous System Damage in Elderly

Background: There is a great need for new research models, which are simple and accessible diagnostic procedures, in order to monitor the progression of suspected age-related neurological disorders. Objective: To determine whether changes in neutral lipids (NLs), and in the ability to form clusters, represent early events occurring in freshly isolated (naive) peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from aged subjects affected by different neurological disorders. Methods: We examined 192 subjects, ≥ 65 years old, attending the outpatient services of the geriatric care unit for geriatric check-up, analysing NLs by Oil Red O (ORO) staining method, and the cluster formation (CF) rate of PBMCs. Results: ORO score was higher in PBMCs from subjects with any type of dementia than in PBMCs from healthy controls (HC). ORO score did not differ significantly between Alzheimer's disease (AD), mixed dementia (MD) and vascular dementia (VD), but in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) it was significantly higher than in HC, and significantly lower than in AD, MD and VD. There was also significant inverse correlation between ORO staining and Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE). The percentage of ORO staining intensity, calculated as a percentage of positively stained total cell area, was significantly lower in PBMCs from HC than in those from MCI and dementia. Furthermore, PBMCs from demented patients and MCI groups tend to aggregate in vitro to form cellular clusters: CF rate showed a similar pattern to that of ORO staining. Subjects with dementia but not vision problems had lower ORO staining and CF scores than subjects with both eye disorders and dementia. Conclusion: We suggest that the presence of NLs in the cytoplasm of unstimulated PBMCs, combined with their potential tendency to form clusters, may represent a novel, non-invasive approach to detecting and monitoring neuronal injury in the early stages of disease.
Design of an efficient, low voltage, third harmonic, large-orbit gyrotron amplifier with a vane-resonator output cavity

We present the design of a 100 kW, J-band, third harmonic large-orbit gyrotron amplifier which utilizes the interaction between a 45 kV, 4 A beam and a vane resonator output cavity operating in the "/spl pi/"-mode. An efficiency of 55% is predicted with a large signal gain near 20 dB by a single particle code which takes into account nonideal effects associated with finite beam thickness and finite magnetic field transition widths. High efficiency is achieved by velocity modulation of an axially-streaming annular beam via a short TM/sub 310/ drive cavity. Ballistically created axial bunches are converted into azimuthal bunches when the beam encounters a nonadiabatic, balanced magnetic field reversal at the end of a 30 cm drift region. The design of this tube is presented and its performance is completely characterized before the prospects for the operation of this low voltage configuration at other harmonics are explored.
Amperometric Determination of Hydrogen Peroxide at a Silver Electrode Fabricated from a Recycled Compact Disc

This present study investigates the utilisation of Ag electrodes fabricated from recycled recordable compact discs (CD-R) for the amperometric determination of hydrogen peroxide. The analytical curve was linear up to at least 30 mM hydrogen peroxide with a sensitivity of 21.89 µA/mM over this range. A corresponding detection limit of 17.7 µM, based on a signal-to-noise ratio of three was recorded. The developed electrode represents a simple, inexpensive, reliable method for the determination of hydrogen peroxide, avoiding extended and complex multi-step fabrication as it is readily fabricated from recycled materials. It has a number of potential applications, including environmental, industrial, physiological and home security, especially where single use and disposability could be beneficial.
Volatility Model Specification: Evidence from the Pricing of VIX Derivatives

This study examines whether a jump component or an additional factor better supports volatility modeling by investigating the pricing of VIX derivatives. To reduce the computational burdens for the empirical estimation significantly, we propose an efficient and easily implemented numerical approximation for the pricing of VIX derivatives. In terms of the term structure of VIX futures, we show that the additional volatility factor can replicate the common empirical patterns and explain the changes in the term structure, but the jump component cannot. In terms of the pricing of VIX options, we find that the two-factor volatility models significantly outperform the jump volatility models and that adding jumps in volatility only provides a minor improvement. Therefore, our general findings support the merit of the two-factor volatility specification.
A microbial community analysis of the octocoral Eunicea fusca

While there is a significant and growing body of knowledge describing the microbial communities of marine invertebrates such as sponges, there are very few such studies focused on octocorals. The octocoral Eunicea fusca is common on reefs in various regions of the Caribbean and has been the subject of natural product investigations. As part of an effort to describe the microbial community associated with octocorals, a culture-independent analysis of the bacterial community of E. fusca was conducted. Specifically, a 16S rDNA clone library analysis was performed to provide baseline data. A total of 40 bacteria members from 11 groups were found. In general, Proteobacteria were the dominant group with a total of 24 species and α-Proteobacteria represented the highest percentage of bacteria associated with E. fusca (27.5%). Other prominent groups observed were Acidobacteria, Actinobacteria, Cyanobacteria, Planctomycetes, δ-Proteobacteria, Lentisphaerae and Nitrospirae. This is the first analysis of bacterial populations associated with the gorgonian E. fusca .
Remote oil spill detection and monitoring on ice-covered waters

The spillage of oil in Polar Regions is particularly serious due to the threat to the environment and the difficulties in detecting and tracking the full extent of the oil seepage beneath the sea ice. Development of fast and reliable sensing techniques is highly desirable. In this paper hyperspectral imaging is proposed as a potential tool to detect the presence of oil beneath the sea ice. A feasibility study project was initiated to explore the detectability of the oil under ice layer. Some preliminary results obtained during this project are discussed.
Proper scoring rules for interval probabilistic forecasts

Interval probabilistic forecasts for a binary event are forecasts issued as a range of probabilities for the occurrence of the event: for example, ‘chance of rain: 10–20%’. To verify interval probabilistic forecasts, use can be made of a scoring rule that assigns a score to each forecast–outcome pair. An important requirement for scoring rules, if they are to provide a faithful assessment of a forecaster, is that they be proper, by which is meant that they direct forecasters to issue their true beliefs as their forecasts. Proper scoring rules for probabilistic forecasts issued as precise numbers have been studied extensively. However, applying such a proper scoring rule to, for example, the midpoint of an interval probabilistic forecast does not typically produce a proper scoring rule for interval probabilistic forecasts. Complementing parallel work by other authors, we derive a general characterization of scoring rules that are proper for interval probabilistic forecasts and from this characterization we determine particular scoring rules for interval probabilistic forecasts that correspond to the familiar scoring rules used for probabilistic forecasts given as precise probabilities. All the scoring rules we derive apply immediately to rounded probabilistic forecasts, being a special case of interval probabilistic forecasts.
Genetic Correlation between Alcohol Preference and Motor Impulsivity with Genetically Selected High-Alcohol and Low-Alcohol Preferring Lines of Mice

Novotney, Devon Michael. M.S., Purdue University, December 2011. Genetic Correlation between Alcohol Preference and Motor Impulsivity with Genetically Selected High-Alcohol and Low-Alcohol Preferring Lines of Mice. Major Professor: Nicholas Grahame. Alcohol related problems and abuse continue to be serious problems in the U.S. today affecting nearly 17.6 million Americans. Understanding of the specific genes and related behaviors associated with alcohol use may provide substantial preventative measures for those who are at an increased risk. Genetically selected lines such as the high-alcohol preferring (HAP) and low-alcohol preferring (LAP) mice have been created to examine which endophenotypes co-segregate with alcohol preference. One behavioral trait that has been commonly associated with alcohol related problems is impulsivity. Impulsivity is the inability to withhold a response (motor impulsivity) or to act without forethought (cognitive impulsivity). The latter comprises much of the research and literature today using delay discounting models to tease out differences in subject’s wiliness to discount larger reinforcers for smaller immediate reinforcers. This study utilized relatively two newer paradigms associated with motor impulsivity in attempt to test differences in response disinhibition between two independent replicate HAP and LAP lines. It is hypothesized that the genes responsible for alcohol preference would be genetically correlated with motor impulsivity as HAP mice would display a greater degree of response disinhibition.
BEAM DYNAMICS OF AN INTEGRATED RFQ-DRIFTTUBE-COMBINATION *

In a collaboration with the GSI in Darmstadt an RFQDrifttube-Combination for the Heidelberg cancer therapy center HICAT has been designed, built and successfully tested with beam at the IAP Frankfurt. The integration and combination of both an RFQ and a rebunching drifttube unit inside a common cavity forming one single resonant RF-structure has been realized for the first time with this machine. The results of the beam measurements and questions about the beam dynamics simulations of such a combination have been investigated in detail with the code RFQsim.
Chapter 4 Photosynthetic Pigments of Subtropical Plants

This chapter concerns the assessment of environmental and varietal affects on photosynthetic pigment groups. It is revealed that the dynamics of pigment accumulation in subtropical plants within the conditions of Russia’s damp subtropics is a complex process and depends on species plants. With this in mind, hazelnut maximum green pigments were achieved in May, and then in August, there was a decline associated with the onset of short periods of drought and increased temperatures. In Actinidia and tea plants, the highest content of green pigments is achieved in August, which is associated with the biology of these crops. However, regardless of species, with the onset of the dry period (July–August), plants increase their accumulation of carotenoids. The high content of carotenoids that accounts for stress during a period of water availability is evidence of their participation in the formation mechanism of subtropical plants’ resistance to adverse conditions.
Liveness-Based RRT Algorithm for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles Motion Planning

Motion planning is a crucial, basic issue in robotics, which aims at driving vehicles or robots towards to a given destination with various constraints, such as obstacles and limited resource. This paper presents a new version of rapidly exploring random trees (RRT), that is, liveness-based RRT (Li-RRT), to address autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) motion problem. Different from typical RRT, we define an index of each node in the random searching tree, called “liveness” in this paper, to describe the potential effectiveness during the expanding process. We show that Li-RRT is provably probabilistic completeness as original RRT. In addition, the expected time of returning a valid path with Li-RRT is obviously reduced. To verify the efficiency of our algorithm, numerical experiments are carried out in this paper.
Root-Polynomial Color Homography Color Correction

Homographies are at the heart of computer vision and they are used in geometric camera calibration, image registration, and stereo vision and other tasks. In geometric computer vision, two images of the same 3D plane captured in two different viewing locations are related by a planar (2D) homography. Recent work showed that the concept of a planar homography mapping can be applied to shading-invariant color correction. In this paper, we extend the color homography color correction idea by incorporating higher order root-polynomial terms into the color correction problem formulation. Our experiments show that our new shading-invariant color correction method can obtain yet more accurate and stable performance compared with the previous 2D color homography method.
Diversity of ectomycorrhizal fungi associated with Quercus alba in northwest Arkansas

Species of oak (Quercus spp.) have considerable ecological and economic importance in the forests of northwest Arkansas, and their growth and survival ultimately depend upon the mutualistic associations they establish with a variety of ectomycorrhizal fungi in the soil. The species diversity of these fungi is known to be quite high in oak forests, but no previous study has examined the assemblages of fungi associated with white oak in the forests of northwest Arkansas. The study reported herein included a below-ground approach to assess fungal communities, making use of molecular identification of ectomycorrhizal root-tips through sequencing of the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) ribosomal DNA region. DNA extracted from root-tips collected from five different white oak trees yielded sequences of at least 32 taxa. Ectomycorrhizal taxa associated with white oak in the general study area appear to be dominated by members of the Basidiomycota. The most common ectomycorrhizal fungi associated with white oak roots belong to the genus Russula, including seven taxa identified to the species level and three to the genus level.
Arabic Meaning Extraction through Lexical Resources: A General-Purpose Data Mining Model for Arabic Texts

A general-purpose data mining model for Arabic texts (Arabic Meaning Extraction through Lexical Resources, ArMExLeR) is proposed which employs a chained pipeline of existing public domain and published lexical resources (Stanford Parser, WordNet, Arabic WordNet, SUMO, AraMorph, A Frequency Dictionary of Arabic) in order to extract a weakly hierarchised, single-predicate level, representation of meaning. This kind of model would be of high impact on the study of the computational analysis of Arabic for there is no such comparable tool for this language, and will be a challenge for the nature of its specificities. One should, in fact, cope with the unique writing system that is mostly consonant-based and doesn’t always mark vowels explicitly. This is crucial when you want to analyze an Arabic corpus for the same consonantal ductus may be read in several ways. Keywords-Arabic data mining; content extraction; automatic parsing techniques; ontologies.
Bone morphogenetic protein 2 and activin A synergistically stimulate follicle-stimulating hormone b subunit transcription

Transforming growth factor b superfamily ligands regulate pituitary FSH production and secretion. The best-described examples are the activins and inhibins, which respectively stimulate and hinder Fshb subunit transcription in gonadotrope cells. More recently, members of the bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) sub-family were shown to regulate FSH production in a manner analogous to the activins. Here, we used the murine gonadotrope cell line, L b T2, to investigate mechanisms through which BMP2 regulates the Fshb gene. Although expressed at low levels in L b T2 cells, Bmp2 mRNA was readily detected in adult murine pituitary gland. Recombinant BMP2 stimulated Fshb promoter-reporter activity, although its effects were weaker than those of equimolar activin A or B. BMP4 stimulated transcription comparably with BMP2, but BMPs 6 and 7 were about tenfold less potent. Remarkably, BMP2 and activin A synergistically upregulated Fshb transcription and endogenous Fshb mRNA levels in L b T2 cells. Although functionally cooperative, the two ligands appeared to use distinct intracellular mechanisms to mediate their responses because neither ligand altered the timing or magnitude of the other’s effects. Receptor overexpression analyses suggested that BMP2 may preferentially signal through complexes of the type II receptor, BMPR2, and the type I receptor, activin receptor like kinase (ALK2; Acvr1), to stimulate Fshb transcription. BMP2 rapidly activated the Smad1/5/8 intracellular signaling cascade and Smad8 overexpression potentiated BMP2’s effects. In summary, BMPs regulate Fshb transcription in L b T2 cells and can amplify the already robust effects of the activins through a distinct signaling mechanism. Because BMP2 is expressed in the adult mouse pituitary, it may act as critical paracrine co-regulator of FSH synthesis by gonadotropes.
Molecular characterization of three hypersensitive-induced reaction genes that respond to Phytophthora sojae infection in Glycine max L. Merr.

Hypersensitive-induced reaction (HIR) proteins, which are members of the proliferation, ion and death (PID) superfamily, have been shown to be involved in the defense responses of several plant species. In this study, three HIR-like genes from soybean, designated as GmHIR1, GmHIR3 and GmHIR4, were cloned and characterized. They each contained four introns and five exons and shared conservative structure of genomic organization. The deduced polypeptide sequences of GmHIRs share high degrees of similarity with HIR proteins of other species. However, QRT-PCR analysis indicated that the expression levels in different tissues were not the identical. The expression of GmHIRs were rapidly induced by Phytophthora sojae infection in the resistant genotype, while induction was very weak in the susceptible genotype. In addition, the expression of these genes were also repressed by hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) treatment. Promoter analysis indicates that several defenseresponsive elements are present in the GmHIR promoter. To our knowledge, this is the first report on molecular cloning and initial characterization of HIR-like genes in soybean. This study may help elucidate soybean disease resistance, which would enhance efforts to control soybean Phytophthora root and stem rot disease.