Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Relationships between Demographic Features of a Pill Clam (Pisidium casertanum) and Environmental Variables

Seventeen populations of Pisidium casertanum (Poli 1795) from six rivers and eleven lakes were studied to determine how population demographics were related to environmental conditions. Univariate and multivariate analyses of the data suggest that natural variation in environmental conditions accounts for a significant amount of variation in the demography of this clam. Correlations among principal components of environmental variables and of population demographics were used to assess the relationships between environmental variables and population features. Abundance, production, and biomass were higher in habitats with warmer ice-free temperatures, but the length at which adults first developed shelled larvae, and maximum adult length and weight, were less in such habitats. Productivity, biomass, and the proportion of adults brooding shelled larvae were higher in habitats that had higher calcium hardness, conductivity, pH, alkalinity, and sulphate levels. These factors should be considered in studies that attempt to relate variation in population statistics of sphaeriid clams to environmental degradation.
Operational Efficiency Improvement of PEM Fuel Cell—A Sliding Mode Based Modern Control Approach

The efficiency and durability of a Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) can be improved with proper controller design to regulate the flow of reactants, cell stack temperature and humidity of the membrane. In this paper, sliding mode controllers (SMC) are proposed for a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell PEMFC. In particular, first order SMC and second order SMC based on super twisting algorithm are designed and investigated. The actual process has been formulated in simulation by Pukurushpan’s ninth order model. Performance of both control laws has been compared in simulation in MATLAB/Simulink environment in terms of oxygen excess ratio, net power generated, stack voltage/power produced and compressor motor voltage. Simulation results dictate that second order SMC demonstrates superior performance in terms of set-point tracking and disturbance rejection. The designed controller makes the interaction of various subsystems in a smooth manner and consequently improves the overall efficiency of the system and prolongs the stack life of the fuel cells.
Geometric morphometrics for the differentiation of females of the Pipiens Assemblage in Argentina

1Universidad de Buenos Aires, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Departamento de Ecología, Genética y Evolución, Buenos Aires, Argentina, maxigarzon@yahoo.com. ar 2Universidad de Buenos Aires, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Instituto de Ecología, Genética y Evolución de Buenos Aires (IEGEBA), Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Buenos Aires, Argentina 3Centro de Investigación Esquel de Montaña y Estepa Patagónica (CIEMEP). CONICET and Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia San Juan Bosco, Facultad de Ciencias Naturales, Sede Esquel, Esquel, Chubut, Argentina 4Administración Nacional de Laboratorios e Institutos de la Salud “Dr. Carlos G. Malbrán”, Centro Nacional de Diagnóstico e Investigación en Endemoepidemias
Legal Harvesting, Sustainable Sourcing and Cascaded Use of Wood for Bioenergy: Their Coverage through Existing Certification Frameworks for Sustainable Forest Management

The first objective of this paper was to provide an inventory of developments of certification schemes for sustainable biomass production, following recent EU legislation (both formalized and under development). One main pillar is the EU Timber Regulation for legal harvesting; a second one is the EU's 2010 recommendations for sustainable woody biomass sourcing for energy; the third one is the EU Waste Directive. The second objective was to benchmark the coverage of this (draft) legislation, when wood product certificates for sustainable forest management (SFM) are used as proof of the related legislative requirements. We studied North America, as it is a major biomass supplier to the EU-28. Together with existing forest legislation in the US and Canada, SFM certificates are actively used to cover the EU's (draft) legislation. However, North American forests are only partially certified with fibers coming from certified forests; these are referred to as forest
Comparison of drug inhibitory effects (IC50) in monolayer and spheroid cultures

Traditionally, the monolayer (two-dimensional) cell cultures are used for initial evaluation of the ef-fectiveness of anticancer drugs. In particular, these experiments provide the IC50 curves that determine drug concentration that can inhibit growth of a tumor colony by half when compared to the cells grown with no exposure to the drug. Low IC50 value means that the drug is effective at low concentrations, and thus will show lower systemic toxicity when administered to the patient. However, in these experiments cells are grown in a monolayer, all well exposed to the drug, while in vivo tumors expand as three-dimensional multicellular masses, where inner cells have a limited access to the drug. Therefore, we performed computational studies to compare the IC50 curves for cells grown as a two-dimensional monolayer and a cross section through a three-dimensional spheroid. Our results identified conditions (drug diffusivity, drug action mechanisms and cell proliferation capabilities) under which these IC50 curves differ significantly. This will help experimentalists to better determine drug dosage for future in vivo experiments and clinical trials.
Novel 2D and 3D Assays to Determine the Activity of Anti-Leishmanial Drugs

The discovery of novel anti-leishmanial compounds remains essential as current treatments have known limitations and there are insufficient novel compounds in development. We have investigated three complex and physiologically relevant in vitro assays, including: (i) a media perfusion based cell culture model, (ii) two 3D cell culture models, and (iii) iPSC derived macrophages in place of primary macrophages or cell lines, to determine whether they offer improved approaches to anti-leishmanial drug discovery and development. Using a Leishmania major amastigote-macrophage assay the activities of standard drugs were investigated to show the effect of changing parameters in these assays. We determined that drug activity was reduced by media perfusion (EC50 values for amphotericin B shifted from 54 (51–57) nM in the static system to 70 (61–75) nM under media perfusion; EC50 values for miltefosine shifted from 12 (11–15) µM in the static system to 30 (26–34) µM under media perfusion) (mean and 95% confidence intervals), with corresponding reduced drug accumulation by macrophages. In the 3D cell culture model there was a significant difference in the EC50 values of amphotericin B but not miltefosine (EC50 values for amphotericin B were 34.9 (31.4–38.6) nM in the 2D and 52.3 (46.6–58.7) nM in 3D; EC50 values for miltefosine were 5.0 (4.9–5.2) µM in 2D and 5.9 (5.5–6.2) µM in 3D (mean and 95% confidence intervals). Finally, in experiments using iPSC derived macrophages infected with Leishmania, reported here for the first time, we observed a higher level of intracellular infection in iPSC derived macrophages compared to the other macrophage types for four different species of Leishmania studied. For L. major with an initial infection ratio of 0.5 parasites per host cell the percentage infection level of the macrophages after 72 h was 11.3% ± 1.5%, 46.0% ± 1.4%, 66.4% ± 3.5% and 75.1% ± 2.4% (average ± SD) for the four cells types, THP1 a human monocytic cell line, mouse bone marrow macrophages (MBMMs), human bone marrow macrophages (HBMMs) and iPSC derived macrophages respectively. Despite the higher infection levels, drug activity in iPSC derived macrophages was similar to that in other macrophage types, for example, amphotericin B EC50 values were 35.9 (33.4–38.5), 33.5 (31.5–36.5), 33.6 (30.5—not calculated (NC)) and 46.4 (45.8–47.2) nM in iPSC, MBMMs, HBMMs and THP1 cells respectively (mean and 95% confidence intervals). We conclude that increasing the complexity of cellular assays does impact upon anti-leishmanial drug activities but not sufficiently to replace the current model used in HTS/HCS assays in drug discovery programmes. The impact of media perfusion on drug activities and the use of iPSC macrophages do, however, deserve further investigation.
Interaction of soil microbes with mycorrhizal fungi in tomato

In this study, the interaction of soil microbes with mycorrhizal fungi (MF) was performed to understand the effect on tomato. A pot and a field experiment were employed to investigate the impact of soil microbes i.e. Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. lycopersici, Trichoderma harzianum, Aspergillus niger and Rhizobium leguminosarum, on AM fungi in pots and field studies. The soils without microbes which treated controls with or without mycorrhizal inoculation were also included. Plant growth and root colonisation were measured 36, 75 and 120 days post inoculation (dpi) in the both pot experiment and field study. Soil microbes’ effects on the growth behaviour of the tomato plant were determined via the shoot and root weight. R. leguminosarum and A. niger did not affect the colonisation ability much, but F. oxysporum f. sp. lycopersici and T. harzianum resulted in the inhibition of AM fungal colonisation in both pot and field studies. Our study provides evidence for the effects of soil microbes on the diversity of AM fungi and their effect on the tomato plants. The higher concentrations of phosphorus and of proteins in the root tissues, previously colonised with AM fungi, point out their effect as biofertilizers, according to the concept of sustainable agriculture.
Online Multi-Resource Social Welfare Maximization for Non-Preemptive Jobs

Multi-resource allocation is ubiquitous in datacenters. Usually, the datacenter scheduler associates each user with a utility function and then allocates multiple resources so as to maximize the social welfare, which is the sum of the utilities of the users. We refer to this problem as the Social Welfare Maximization (SWM) problem. Meanwhile, given the dynamic nature of datacenters, the scheduler is supposed to support non-preemptive scheduling, where jobs of users that are being processed would not be interrupted by the reconfiguration of resources. Non-preemptive solutions to SWM incorporating pricing considerations include dynamic pricing and bidding/auctions. However, both strategies are quite complex. Meanwhile, traditional Lagrange solutions to SWM does not support non-preemptive job scheduling. In this paper, we propose Adaptive Dominant Resource Fairness (ADRF), that provides near-optimal social welfare where each user is assigned an <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\alpha $ </tex-math></inline-formula>-fair utility function and when <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$1 < \alpha \leq 2$ </tex-math></inline-formula>. Based on ADRF, we propose Cumulative ADRF (C-ADRF), an online algorithm that greedily assigns the idle resources to the current poorest user, making it quite simple to schedule jobs from users non-preemptively. Compared with the polynomial or exponential form of time complexities in other SWM solutions, C-ADRF requires only <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$O(\log N)$ </tex-math></inline-formula> work, where <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$N$ </tex-math></inline-formula> is the number of users. Extensive simulations using Google and Facebook cluster-data traces show an impressive behavior of C-ADRF in providing social welfare, only 3% and 2% away from the optimal social welfare, respectively.
Improved Non-Fragile State Feedback Control for Stochastic Jump Systems With Uncertain Parameters and Mode-Dependent Time-Varying Delays

This paper reports the investigation on non-fragile state feedback control for stochastic Markovian jump systems with uncertain parameters and mode-dependent time-varying delays. The resulted closed-loop system is stochastic stabilization by virtue of an improved L-K functional. By free-weight-matrix technique, the non-fragile state feedback controller is designed and novel conditions for robust stochastic stabilization are acquired in the form of linear matrix inequalities. Two examples including a take-off and landing guidance system are employed to show the effectiveness and validity of the proposed approach.
Hexagonal Slotted Wearable Microstrip Patch Antenna for Body Area Network

This paper presents design of slot cut hexagonal microstrip patch antenna for body area network application. The antenna is resonating at 2.45 GHz with impedance bandwidth of 70 MHz with gain of 9.14 dBi. The hexagonal microstrip patch antenna is diagonally fed and a slot is etched inside radiating patch to realize circular polarization (CP). The antenna exhibits 20 MHz of axial ratio bandwidth. The overall size of antenna is 80 × 80 mm2. The parametric analysis of slot length has been carried out to determine length of slot. The proposed antenna is fabricated using inexpensive flexible foam substrate and measured results are found to be in close agreement with simulated results.
Color of Dehydrated Tomato: Effects of Gum Arabic

The efficacy of gum arabic, as a color preservative and inhibitor of non-enzymatic browning of dehydrated tomato during storage, was studied and compared with sodium metabisulfite. Tomato homogenates were treated with 1, 2.5, 5, 7.5, and 10.0% gum arabic and 1.0% sodium metabisulfite, respectively, dehydrated, and color changes were monitored during four months of storage. Water activity decreased significantly (P ≤ 0.05) and Brix values increased significantly (P ≤ 0.05) in gum arabic-treated samples. pH of metabisulfite treated samples is significantly (P ≤ 0.05) higher than that of control and gum arabic treated samples. Lightness (L*) value increased significantly (P ≤ 0.05) with the addition of 5–10% gum arabic compared to the dehydrated control. Browning index of dehydrated tomato decreased significantly (P ≤ 0.05) with the treatments, 1 and 2.5% Gum Arabic, 1% metabisulfite, 5, 10, and 7.5% gum arabic, respectively. Gum arabic at 5–10% (w/w) was more suppressed to browning than sodium metabisulfite. Gum arabic preserved color of dehydrated tomatoes up to 4 months of storage.
Effects of alarm pheromone on landing and take‐off by adult western flower thrips

Kenneth M. MacDonald1, James G.C. Hamilton1, Robert Jacobson2 & William D.J. Kirk1,∗ 1School of Life Sciences, Keele University, Staffordshire ST5 5BG, UK; 2Horticulture Research International, Wellesbourne, Warwick CV35 9EF, UK (Current address: Stockbridge Technology Centre, Stockbridge House, Cawood, Selby, North Yorkshire YO8 0TZ, UK); ∗Author for correspondence (E-mail: w.d.j.kirk@keele.ac.uk)
Biomedical Literature Triage using Supervised Learning

We present the mycoSORT system, a supervised machine learning based system to support the automatic triage of biomedical literature. This work reports on a total of 108 experiments combining 4 feature settings, 3 machine learning algorithms, and 9 under-sampling factors in a highly imbalanced corpus. The results show that the best approach relies on a classiﬁcation model composed by domain annotations, a balanced dataset, and the use of a Logistic Model Trees classiﬁer
Morphometric variation in North American Pogonomyrmex and Solenopsis ants: caste evolution through ecological release or dietary change?

Polymorphism in the ant Pogonomyrmex badius was studied using morphometric analysis. Head shape in P. badius was compared to 14 closely related monomorphic Pogonomyrmex believed to differ in worker morphology due to character displacement. Head shape in P. badius and two polymorphic Solenopsis species, one known to have a seed-milling caste (S. geminata) and the other continuously polymorphic (S. invicta), was also compared. Monomorphic species of Pogonomyrmex differed from P. badius in the rules of transformation that accompany changes in worker head size. Although workers of the Pogonomyrmex species studied changed in size primarily by increases in the area of the occipital region and the width of the head, polymorphic P. badius workers showed a significantly greater allometric increase in the occipital region. The comparative morphometrics of P. badius, monomorphic Pogonomyrmex and two polymorphic Solenopsis species did not support the hypothesis that size-related changes in head shape are due to competitive displacement, because head shapes in P. badius were not similar to head shapes in the monomorphic Pogonomyrmex. In contrast, results suggest that a dietary change may have led to the evolution of polymorphism in P. badius through selection for a seed-milling caste. This conclusion is supported by additional analyses that indicate the existence of two distinct modal head shapes in the caste distribution of P. badius and S. geminata, suggesting that bimodal shape variation might be a common evolutionary response to seed processing.
Isolation and Characterization of Mammalian Orthoreoviruses Using a Cell Line Resistant to Sapelovirus Infection.

Porcine sapelovirus (PSV) is a causative agent of acute diarrhea, pneumonia and reproductive disorders in swine. Since PSV infection interrupts the growth of other viruses due to its high replication capability in cell culture, the prevention of PSV replication is a keystone to the isolation of non-PSV agents from PSV-contaminated samples. In the present study, we established the PSV infection-resistant cell line N1380 and isolated three mammalian orthoreoviruses (MRV) strains, sR1521, sR1677, and sR1590, from swine in Taiwan. These Taiwanese isolates induced an extensive cytopathic effect in N1380 cells upon infection. The complete and empty virus particles were purified from the cell culture supernatants. Next-generation sequencing analyses revealed that the complete virus particles contained 10 segments, including 3 large (L1, L2 and L3), 3 medium (M1, M2 and M3), and 4 small (S1, S2, S3 and S4) segments. In contrast, the empty virus particles without genome were noninfectious. Phylogenetic analyses revealed that the Taiwanese strains belong to serotype 2 MRV (MRV2). We established an ELISA for the detection of IgG antibody against MRV2 by using the empty virus particles as the antigen. A total of 540 swine and 95 wild boar serum samples were collected in Japan, and the positive rates were 100% and 52.6%, respectively. These results demonstrated that MRV infection occurred frequently in both swine and wild boar in Japan. We established a cell line that is efficient for the isolation of MRV, and the ELISA based on the naturally occurring empty particles would be of great value for the surveillance of MRV-related diseases.
Phytoconstituents and antioxidant potency of Rhodiola rosea : A versatile adaptogen

Rhodiola rosea, a popular medicinal plant in Russia and Scandinavia, has been exploited as an adaptogen at high altitudes in these countries. Root extract from this plant is known to affect favorably various physiological functions, including cognition, work performance, high-altitude sickness and cardioprotective effects. However, R. rosea found in the Indian Himalayas needs to be investigated for its beneficial health effects. In the present study, the proximate composition, total phenols, flavonoids, tannins and antioxidant potency of this plant were determined. The results indicated that the roots contained a significant amount of total phenols (153 ± 2 mg/g of extractable compounds). Antioxidant activity of the root extract measured by radical scavenging, β-carotene bleaching and thiocyanate methods revealed that the roots had excellent antioxidant potency. Thus, the roots of this unique phyto-adaptogen may have an important role in alleviating oxidative stress in biological systems as well as peroxidative changes in food systems. Therefore it can be exploited for the development of nutraceuticals and health foods.
MRI in Neuromuscular Diseases: An Emerging Diagnostic Tool and Biomarker for Prognosis and Efficacy

There is an unmet need to identify biomarkers sensitive to change in rare, slowly progressive neuromuscular diseases. Quantitative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of muscle may offer this opportunity, as it is noninvasive and can be carried out almost independent of patient cooperation and disease severity. Muscle fat content correlates with muscle function in neuromuscular diseases, and changes in fat content precede changes in function, which suggests that muscle MRI is a strong biomarker candidate to predict prognosis and treatment efficacy. In this paper, we review the evidence suggesting that muscle MRI may be an important biomarker for diagnosis and to monitor change in disease severity. ANN NEUROL 2020;88:669–681
Figure Descriptive Text Extraction Using Ontological Representation

Experimental research publications provide figure form resources including graphs, charts, and any type of images to effectively support and convey methods and results. To describe figures, authors add captions, which are often incomplete, and more descriptions reside in body text. This work presents a method to extract figure descriptive text from the body of scientific articles. We adopted ontological semantics to aid concept recognition of figure-related information, which generates human- and machine-readable knowledge representations from sentences. Our results show that conceptual models bring an improvement in figure descriptive sentence classification over word-based approaches.
Anti-Migratory Effects of 4′-Geranyloxyferulic Acid on LPS-Stimulated U937 and HCT116 Cells via MMP-9 Down-Regulation: Involvement of ROS/ERK Signaling Pathway

Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) play a crucial role in tumor angiogenesis, and metastasis. 4′-geranyloxyferulic acid (GOFA) has anti-tumor and anti-inflammatory proprieties. Herein, we aimed to determine whether this compound affects cell survival, invasion, and migration through reactive oxygen species (ROS)-mediated MMPs activation of extracellular signal-regulated kinases (ERKs) and p38 signaling in lymphocytic histiocytoma (U937) and colorectal cancer (HCT116) cells. We observed that lipopolysaccharide (LPS) stimulated U937 and HCT116 cells presented abnormal cell proliferation and increased metalloproteinase (MMP-9) activity and expression. Non-cytotoxic doses of GOFA blunted matrix invasive potential by reducing LPS-induced MMP-9 expression and cell migration via inhibiting ROS/ ERK pathway. GOFA also attenuated apoptosis and cell senescence. Our findings indicate that GOFA, inhibiting cancer cell proliferation and migration, could be therapeutically beneficial to prevent tumor metastasis.
Analysis of large-scale structures in turbulent plane Couette flow at low friction Reynolds number

The presence of large-scale roll-like structures in turbulent plane Couette (C-) flow has been proven experimentally and numerically in the last decades. This kind of flow is purely shear-driven. Curiously enough, these structures are not present in pressure-driven flows such as turbulent plane Poiseuille (P-) flow. In this paper the large-scale structures (LSS) in turbulent plane Couette flow are studied at the low friction Reynolds number Reτ = 125 through DNS in a channel domain. A stepped transition from turbulent plane Couette flow to turbulent plane Poiseuille flow is covered in order to analyse the properties of the flow during this transition. The length and width of these large-scale coherent motions are estimated 50h and 2.3h respectively, being h the semi-height of the channel domain. It is proven that the streamwise LSS structures develop very-long counter-rotating rolls in the mean flow. The presence of the rolls is linked to the distribution of Reynolds stress along the wall-normal direction.