Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Quality and Chemical Changes Associated with Flavor of ‘Camarosa’ Strawberries in Response to a CO2-enriched Atmosphere

Quality and chemical changes associated with flavor were evaluated in Camarosa strawberries (Fragaria ·ananassa) that had been kept at 5 8C in air or in air + 20 kPa CO2 for 3 and 6 days to elucidate possible factors contributing to the loss of flavor during storage. The elevated CO2 treatment did not affect flesh firmness, total soluble solids, pH, or titratable acidity. In contrast, decreases in color (as indicated by a higher hue angle value) and in concentrations of sucrose, reducing sugars, and citric acid were detected in fruits exposed to elevated CO2. Fermentative metabolites were present in strawberries stored in air and in higher concentration in those kept in air + 20 kPa CO2. Also, strawberries kept in air + 20 kPa CO2 had higher levels of ethyl esters and a major reduction in the level of methyl esters. Thus, clear differences in the aroma profile of strawberries at harvest and after 3 and 6 days of storage at 5 8C in air or air + 20 kPa CO2 were observed. This change in the volatile aroma profile is probably the primary factor contributing to the loss of strawberry flavor during storage.
REVERSIBLE ACTION OF JUSSIAEA REPENS (L) INDUCED ALTERATIONS OF HISTOARCHITECHTURE VIS-À-VIS FUNCTIONS IN TESTICULAR TISSUES OF RAT

Jussiaea repens is a non-toxic antigonadal herb, which has been reported to cause alteration of testicular functions, morphology of spermatozoa and reduced fertility rate. The present study was designed to investigate whether the crude aqueous extract of Jussiaea repens can affect the normal histoarchitechture of testicular tissue and vis-a-vis functions when administered orally and also to study whether the effect was reversible or not after withdrawal of treatment. Results showed that when crude aqueous extract of J.repens (except root) was fed orally at a dose of 200 mg/kg b.wt/day for a period of 28 days, caused marked alterations in histology of testis, reduction in seminiferous tubular and Leydig cell nuclear diameter. Spermatogenic stage count showed the arrest of spermatogenesis at stage VII followed by significant reduction in number of sertoli cells and spermatogenic cells i.e., SpgA, pLSc, mPSc, 7Sd and elongated spermatids. The H&E staining and SEM studies of treated testis showed reduction in interstitial tissue with leydig cells, tubular lumen, mature spermatids, thickness of basal lamina with irregular outline and profuse intraepithelial vacuolation. Acridine orange staining of treated testis showed disintegrated DNA with partial damage of spermatozoa in seminiferous tubule. The testicular sialic acid, phospholipid and GSH showed significant reduction but MDA was increased insignificantly in treated group where it was unaltered in serum. Serum level of testosterone, LH, FSH and testicular testosterone were greatly reduced in treated group. All these effects were restored towards normal after withdrawal of treatment. So, from these studies it may be concluded that
Implications of Pea Aphid Host-Plant Specialization for the Potential Colonization of Vegetables Following Post-Harvest Emigration from Forage Crops

Abstract The pea aphid, Acyrthosiphon pisum (Harris), attacks a wide range of legumes including many important forage and vegetable crops. Although economic injury levels for pea aphids are seldom exceeded in forage crops, aphid densities can reach extremely high levels during a single harvest cycle. After harvest of forage crops, large numbers of pea aphids may disperse into proximate vegetable fields. The objective of this study was to determine the potential impact of immigrating pea aphids on vegetable crops adjoining forage crops in the agricultural landscape. Pea aphids collected from alfalfa and clover were evaluated for their ability to survive on and their propensity to feed on vegetable crops. The survival of pea aphids collected from clover and alfalfa was significantly higher on these forage crops than on peas, green beans and lima beans in laboratory transplant experiments. In additional laboratory experiments, alfalfa-adapted aphids produced significantly fewer aphid offspring on lima beans than on alfalfa, and the adults and offspring had significantly higher mortality on lima bean leaves than on alfalfa leaves. Analysis of aphid feeding with an electronic monitor confirmed that alfalfa-adapted pea aphids feed on phloem sap from alfalfa but never feed on lima beans. These results led us to predict that pea aphids immigrating from alfalfa and other forage crops during harvest would not establish persistent, damage-causing populations in nearby vegetable crops. Our field data on pea aphid populations in lima beans were consistent with this hypothesis. High densities of pea aphids were found in lima beans immediately after harvests of nearby alfalfa fields, but high aphid densities did not persist >3 d. Our study suggests that although aphids can emigrate from forage crops to vegetable crops at densities above published action thresholds, the amount of damage actually caused by these forage-crop adapted aphids in higher-value vegetable crops will be minimal. It may be unnecessary to treat aphids in lima beans and other vegetables when aphids have immigrated from harvested forage crops. These findings suggest that pest management decision-making in vegetables can be improved by considering the source of immigrating pests such as pea aphids.
Molecular Phylogeny and Generic Delimitation in the Elegia Group (Restionaceae, South Africa) Based on a Complete Taxon Sampling and Four Chloroplast DNA Regions

Abstract The Elegia group comprises 60 species of African Restionaceae, a large and ecologically dominant element of the Cape flora of South Africa. The recognition of the group was based upon the shared possession of unbranched fertile culms, the presence of a distinct abscission line at the base of the leaf sheaths, and inserted anthers at anthesis. The taxonomy of the group has been problematic, and every monographer of the group used different generic delimitations. Based upon a cladistic analysis of sequence data from multiple chloroplast regions (trnL-F region, atpB-rbcL spacer, trnK intron, matK, and rbcL) for all 60 species, we seek optimal generic groupings that are monophyletic, conservative nomenclaturally, and readily diagnosable using morphological characters. We found no support for the monophyly of the Elegia group, as the genus Askidiosperma, itself forming a clade of 12 species, was placed outside the group. Within the remaining elements we found no acceptable generic groupings, and consequently propose an expanded circumscription of Elegia that includes the genera Chondropetalum and Dovea, as these latter two genera are embedded within the former. New combinations are E. acockii, E. aggregata, E. decipiens, E. ebracteata, E. hookeriana, E. marlothii, E. microcarpa, E. recta, E. tectorum, and E. macrocarpa.
The limits of international adjudication: authority and resistance of regional economic courts in times of crisis

Abstract The paper compares the involvement of four regional economic courts in legal disputes mirroring constitutional, political and social crises at national or regional levels. These four judicial bodies of the EU, the Andean Community, the East African Community and the Central American Integration System have all faced varied forms of resistance to their involvement and their general authority. By comparing these four case-studies from across the globe, the paper identifies institutional and contextual factors that explain the uneven resistance. While the regional economic courts in Central America and East Africa were subject to backlash from the Member States, their counterparts in Europe and Latin America avoided backlash but at the price of achieving only a narrow authority.
Climate warming, dispersal inhibition and extinction risk

Global warming impels species to track their shifting habitats or adapt to new conditions. Both processes are critically influenced by individual dispersal. In many animals, dispersal behaviour is plastic, but how organisms with plastic dispersal respond to climate change is basically unknown. Here, we report the analysis of interannual dispersal change from 16 years of monitoring a wild population of the common lizard, and a 12‐year manipulation of lizards' diet intended to disentangle the direct effect of temperature rise on dispersal from its effects on resource availability. We show that juvenile dispersal has declined dramatically over the last 16 years, paralleling the rise of spring temperatures during embryogenesis. A mesoscale model of metapopulation dynamics predicts that in general dispersal inhibition will elevate the extinction risk of metapopulations exposed to contrasting effects of climate warming.
Sulfentrazone and Carfentrazone Accelerate Broadleaf Weed Control with Metsulfuron

Abstract Ground ivy and khakiweed are troublesome broadleaf weeds of warm-season turfgrass. Field studies were conducted in Tennessee (TN) and Texas (TX) from 2008 to 2010 to evaluate the efficacy of sulfentrazone plus metsulfuron and carfentrazone plus metsulfuron tank mixtures compared with metsulfuron alone for control of ground ivy and khakiweed. In TN, sulfentrazone plus metsulfuron and carfentrazone plus metsulfuron provided accelerated control of ground ivy compared with metsulfuron alone. Over a 2-yr period, ground ivy control with metsulfuron at 10, 21, and 42 g ai ha−1 ranged from 0 to 5% 7 d after treatment (DAT) and 12 to 60% 14 DAT. Ground ivy control with mixtures of sulfentrazone plus metsulfuron ranged from 40 to 72% 7 DAT and 87 to 100% 14 DAT. Similarly, carfentrazone plus metsulfuron controlled ground ivy 5 to 32% 7 DAT and 23 to 93% 14 DAT. In TX, carfentrazone plus metsulfuron and sulfentrazone plus metsulfuron controlled khakiweed greater than metsulfuron alone 7 and 14 DAT as well. Few differences in ground ivy and khakiweed control were detected 56 DAT because metsulfuron applied alone at 21 g ai ha−1 controlled both weeds > 77%, similar to each mixture. These data indicate that when applied in mixtures, sulfentrazone and carfentrazone accelerate ground ivy and khakiweed control with metsulfuron but do not affect long-term efficacy. Nomenclature: Carfentrazone; metsulfuron; sulfentrazone; ground ivy, Glechoma hederacea L. ; khakiweed; Alternanthera pungens Kunth.
Phylogeography of Italian barbels (Cyprinidae, Barbus) inferred by mitochondrial and nuclear markers.

Species of the genus Barbus, being primary freshwater fishes intolerant of salt water, are of great value for biogeographic studies since their dispersal strictly depends on geological evolution of the landmasses (i.e. catchments watershed, mountain chains and fluctuations of sea level). In Italian peninsula four specie are formally recognized: B. caninus, B. balcanicus, B. plebejus and B. tyberinus. Their genetic relationships were assessed using both mitochondrial and nuclear markers. The study was carried out as first developing new nuclear primers for the S7 ribosomal protein and the Growth hormone genes (Gh); then performing a SNPs characterization of these loci on 18 populations (264 specimens in total). Results from nuclear sequences were then compared with those from partial sequences of the Cytochrome b mitochondrial gene (733 bp). Recovered phylogenies were congruent with the current morphology-based systematic and taxonomy. Results highlighted the close relationships between species belonging to the fluvio-lacustrine ecological group: B. plebejus and B. tyberinus and the high genetic distance between species belonging to the riverine group: B. caninus and B. balcanicus. Moreover findings were congruent with hypotheses of partial permeability of principal biogeographic barriers (Alpine and the Apennine chains) to freshwater fish fauna. Successively the influence of different ecological preferences on gene flow was tested for B. caninus and B. tyberinus on 6 and 7 populations respectively. Results pointed out that the riverine B. caninus has higher structured populations than B. tyberinus, probably due to the different dispersion ability and the different habitat colonized. Moreover, for the first time, molecular evidences were shown about hybridization events occurring between B. caninus and B. plebejus, B. tyberinus and B. barbus.
The Effect of Pets on Happiness

From reducing stress and loneliness, to boosting productivity and overall well-being, pets are believed to play a significant role in people’s daily lives. Many traditional studies have identified that frequent interactions with pets could make individuals become healthier and more optimistic, and ultimately enjoy a happier life. However, most of those studies are not only restricted in scale, but also may carry biases by using subjective self-reports, interviews, and questionnaires as the major approaches. In this article, we leverage large-scale data collected from social media and the state-of-the-art deep learning technologies to study this phenomenon in depth and breadth. Our study includes five major steps: (1) collecting timeline posts from around 20,000 Instagram users; (2) using face detection and recognition on 2 million photos to infer users’ demographics, relationship status, and whether having children, (3) analyzing a user’s degree of happiness based on images and captions via smiling classification and textual sentiment analysis; (4) applying transfer learning techniques to retrain the final layer of the Inception v3 model for pet classification; and (5) analyzing the effects of pets on happiness in terms of multiple factors of user demographics. Our main results have demonstrated the efficacy of our proposed method with many new insights. We believe this method is also applicable to other domains as a scalable, efficient, and effective methodology for modeling and analyzing social behaviors and psychological well-being. In addition, to facilitate the research involving human faces, we also release our dataset of 700K analyzed faces.
Selective Control of Pest Damage

Abstract The reason control measures are applied is to reduce the harm caused by pests. “Pests” is a subjective word that is arbitrarily used to refer to some of the living organisms that harm man and his property. Pest control measures may be classified on any of several bases, bur any one classification that uses several bases is liable to cause misunderstandings. Biological controls are the use by man of living organisms to control pest damage. Approaches to biological control are illustrated by results of work on four pests found in Ontario. These results also illustrate how insects may be interrelated through natural enemies that they have in common. As far as possible control measures should be selective for pests, or pest and other non-beneficial, species only. Biological controls tend to be relatively more selective than other, comparable, control measures. They are also the most feasible existing way of keeping pest damage down without continuing human intervention. Increasing attempts to erase pest problems, rather than to alleviate pest attacks temporarily, may result in increased Government participation in and regulation of pest control programmes.
Production of phytate-hydrolyzing enzymes by thermophilic moulds

7spores per 50 ml medium prepared from 6 days old culture. Glucose and ammonium sulphate supported higher phytase production than other carbon and nitrogen sources. The phytase of S. thermophile was optimally active at pH 5.0 and 60°C. An overall 2-fold improvement in the phytase production was achieved due to optimization.
Analysis of Heterogeneous Cardiac Pacemaker Network Models and Traveling Wave Dynamics

The sinoatrial-node (SAN) is a complex heterogeneous network that generates a stable rhythm in healthy hearts, yet a general mechanistic explanation for when and how these networks remain stable is lacking. Although computational and theoretical analyses could elucidate this phenomena, such methods have rarely been used in realistic (large-dimensional) gap-junction coupled heterogeneous pacemaker cell models. In this study, we adapt a recent model of pacemaker cells (Severi et al., 2012), incorporating biophysical representations of ion channel and intracellular calcium dynamics, to capture physiological features of a heterogeneous population of pacemaker cells; in particular “center” and “peripheral” cells with distinct intrinsic frequencies and action potential morphology. Large-scale simulations of the SAN tissue, represented by heterogeneous networks of pacemaker cells, exhibit a rich repertoire of behaviors, including complete synchrony, traveling waves of activity originating from periphery to center, and transient traveling waves originating from the center. We use phase reduction methods that do not require fully simulating the large-scale model to capture these observations. Moreover, the phase reduced models accurately predicts key properties of the tissue electrical dynamics, including wave frequencies when synchronization occurs, and wave propagation direction in a variety of network models. Further, with the reduced phase models, we analyze the relationship between cell distributions and coupling strengths and the resulting transient dynamics. Thus, we demonstrate that phase reduced oscillator models applied to realistic pacemaker networks provide novel insights into the spatial-temporal dynamics of cardiac pacemaker activity.
Cropland Edge, Forest Succession, and Landscape Affect Shrubland Bird Nest Predation

ABSTRACT The effects of habitat edges on nest survival of shrubland birds, many of which have experienced significant declines in the eastern United States, have not been thoroughly studied. In 2007 and 2008, we collected data on nests of 5 shrubland passerine species in 12 early successional forest patches in North Carolina, USA. We used model selection methods to assess the effect of distance to cropland and mature forest edge on nest predation rates and additionally accounted for temporal trends, nest stage, vegetation structure, and landscape context. For nests of all species combined, nest predation decreased with increasing distance to cropland edge, by nearly 50% at 250 m from the cropland edge. Nest predation of all species combined also was higher in patches with taller saplings and less understory vegetation, especially in the second year of our study when trees were 4–6 m tall. Predation of field sparrow (Spizella pusilla) nests was lower in landscapes with higher agricultural landcover. Nest predation risk for shrubland birds appears to be greater near agricultural edges than mature forest edges, and natural forest succession may drive patterns of local extirpation of shrubland birds in early successional forest patches. Thus, we suggest that habitat patches managed for shrubland bird populations should be considerably large or wide (>250 m) when adjacent to crop fields and maintained in structurally diverse early seral stages.
Contribution of nitrogen fixation to first year Miscanthus × giganteus

Many characteristics make Miscanthus × giganteus an appealing bioenergy feedstock in temperate North America, but the degree to which this plant species interacts with nitrogen‐fixing bacteria remains understudied. Demonstration of associative nitrogen fixation in Miscanthus would support management with minimal fertilizer inputs that is demanded of long‐term biofuel sustainability. As a first step, we investigate the role of biological nitrogen fixation in nutrition of immature Miscanthus and temporal dynamics of plant‐associated nitrogen fixers. The contribution of biological nitrogen fixation to plant nitrogen acquisition in first year Miscanthus × giganteus was estimated using a yield‐dependent 15N isotope dilution model. Temporal changes in plant‐associated diazotroph relative abundance and community composition were analyzed with quantitative PCR and terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism of the nifH gene in rhizome and rhizosphere DNA extracts. We estimate 16% of new plant nitrogen was derived by nitrogen fixation during the growing season, despite non‐limiting soil nitrogen. Diazotroph communities from rhizome and rhizosphere changed with plant development and endophytic nitrogen fixers had significantly higher relative abundance and altered community composition at sampling dates in July and August. This study provides evidence for a small, but measurable, benefit of associative nitrogen fixation to first year Miscanthus × giganteus that underscores the potential and need for selection of breeding lines that maximize this trait.
Secure estimation for cyber‐physical systems with adversarial attacks and unknown inputs: An L2‐gain method

This paper investigates the attack‐resilient state estimation problem for linear systems with adversarial attacks and unknown inputs, where the upper bound of the unknown inputs is unknown. It is assumed that the attacker has limited resources and can only manipulate a certain number of sensors. In most of the existing observer design approaches for the systems with unknown inputs even in the absence of attacks, the observer matching condition should be satisfied. To overcome this restriction, a novel switched observer is proposed, where the matched unknown inputs will be completely compensated by means of the outputs and the mismatched part will be suppressed in terms of L2‐gain rejection property. Meanwhile, the observer can provide an attack‐resilient state estimation. Compared with the existing results, the proposed observer can guarantee that the resulting observer error system is stable with unknown input attenuation level γ that can be optimized. Finally, a simulation example of an unmanned ground vehicle is provided to show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Behaviour, survival and glycogen utilisation in the baltic isopod Saduria entomon exposed to long‐term oxygen depletion

The benthic isopod Saduria entomon was exposed to different oxygen saturations (92, 6, and < 1%, T = 8°C). The behaviour of S. entomon under hypoxia and anoxia differs from that observed under normoxia. During the first few hours under low oxygen conditions animals became more active. After that time they lay motionless on the sediment surface. A few of them were partially buried. When oxygenation decreased, the percentage of individuals that emerged from the sediment rapidly increased. It was four and seven times higher under hypoxia and anoxia, respectively. S. entomon is able to survive long periods (41 days) under severe hypoxia, whereas the LT50 under anoxia varied between 12 and 18 days according to animal size. The glycogen content, which is the essential substrate for anaerobic metabolism of this species, decreased after 41 days under anoxia down to 48% of the normoxic level.