Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Induced Acid-Tolerance Response Confers Limited Nisin Resistance on Listeria monocytogenes Scott A.

The presence of an inducible acid-tolerance response (ATR) in Listeria monocytogenes Scott A was established. Protection of cells with induced ATR against nisin-mediated inhibition and stress was also evaluated. ATR was induced in L. monocytogenes Scott A by culturing in brain heart infusion (BHI) broth buffered to pH 5.4. The unadapted cells were grown at pH 7.2. Both acid-adapted and unadapted cells were challenged at pH 3.3 and 4.3 at 35°C. The acid-adapted cells were 150- to 7,500-fold more resistant to acid stress at pH 3.3 than unadapted cells. Both cells were equally resistant to acid stress at pH 4.3. The acid-adapted and unadapted cells were exposed to 0, 0.3, 0.6, 1.2 and 1.5 μg of nisin per ml of buffered BHI broth at pH 6.0 for 90 min at 35°C. Cells with the induced acid-resistance trait were slightly more resistant to nisin than the unadapted cells. In the presence of 1.5 μg of nisin per ml, 47% of the acid-adapted cells survived compared to 41% of the unadapted cells. In the range of nisin concentration included in this study, there was no significant (P < 0.05) difference in the nisin resistance of adapted and unadapted cells. The data suggest that ATR induction confers very limited cross protection against nisin stress and kill.
Antioxidants as Functional Foods in Metabolic Syndrome

In the recent years, there has been a great deal of attention in investigating the disease preventive properties of functional foods. Particularly, impact of the antioxidant property of functional foods in reducing the risk or progression of chronic diseases has gained considerable interest amongst researchers and practitioners. Free radicals such as reactive oxygen species are generated in the body by exposure to a number of physiochemical or pathological mechanisms. It is imperative to preserve a balance between the levels of free radicals and antioxidants for routine physiological function, a disparity of which would accelerate oxidative stress. Increased oxidative stress and associated consequences in metabolic disorders such as obesity, cardiovascular diseases and diabetes has warranted the need for exogenous antioxidant concentrates derived from natural foods to alleviate the adverse effects. This chapter provides an overview on the efficacy of functional foods in reducing free radical-mediated damage in metabolic syndrome.
Metabolite exchange within the microbiome produces compounds that influence Drosophila behavior

Animals host multi-species microbial communities (microbiomes) whose properties may result from inter-species interactions; however current understanding of host-microbiome interactions is derived mostly from studies in which is it is difficult to elucidate microbe-microbe interactions. In exploring how Drosophila melanogaster acquires its microbiome, we found that a microbial community influences Drosophila olfactory and egg-laying behaviors differently than individual members. Drosophila prefers a Saccharomyces-Acetobacter co-culture to the same microorganisms grown individually and then mixed, a response mainly due to the conserved olfactory receptor, Or42b. Acetobacter metabolism of Saccharomyces-derived ethanol was necessary, and acetate and its metabolic derivatives were sufficient, for co-culture preference. Preference correlated with three emergent co-culture properties: ethanol catabolism, a distinct volatile emission profile, and yeast population decline. We describe a molecular mechanism by which a microbial community affects animal behavior. Our results support a model whereby emergent metabolites signal Drosophila to acquire its preferred multispecies microbiome.
Detecting Trending Terms in Cybersecurity Forum Discussions

We present a lightweight method for identifying currently trending terms in relation to a known prior of terms, using a weighted log-odds ratio with an informative prior. We apply this method to a dataset of posts from an English-language underground hacking forum, spanning over ten years of activity, with posts containing misspellings, orthographic variation, acronyms, and slang. Our statistical approach supports analysis of linguistic change and discussion topics over time, without a requirement to train a topic model for each time interval for analysis. We evaluate the approach by comparing the results to TF-IDF using the discounted cumulative gain metric with human annotations, finding our method outperforms TF-IDF on information retrieval.
Radiohistochemistry of receptors in the hippocampus: focus on the cholinergic receptors

Article de synthese sur les recepteurs cholinergiques muscariniques et nicotiniques de l'hippocampe etudies par autoradiographie, immunohistochimie et par hybridation in situ. Effet de differentes lesions sur la distribution de ces recepteurs
One Stage Detection Network with an Auxiliary Classifier for Real-Time Road Marks Detection

We construct a robust road mark detector that achieves high accuracy with real-time processing performance (32 fps) under nVidia Titan-X GPU. We combine one stage deep learning detector with auxiliary CNN classifiers as a robust road marks detector. We found out that one stage detector not only detects multiple objects via single inference efficiently, but also remains a good accuracy in performance perspective. However, to make it better, we add an extra CNN classifier as the back part of the proposed architecture to reduce false positive and get better accuracy. The proposed detector can achieve 86.8% mAP in our in-house six-class road mark database.
Diurnal variation of fish and macrobenthic invertebrate community structure in an isolated oceanic island of the South Atlantic

The trophic structure of Ascension Island's sub-tidal reef assemblages is poorly understood. Unlike other tropical reef systems, sub-tidal habitats have very low abundance of both coral and macrophyte species. Visually dominant is a diverse assemblage of fish species, with particularly high densities of Melichthys niger, a voracious omnivore. In contrast, the nocturnal species assemblage is notably different, visually dominated by benthic invertebrates. To quantify the difference between day and night visible assemblages, we conducted day/night pairs of transect surveys of fish and invertebrates across three depths, and spanning 9 months, assigning all species to one of 10 functional groups. Multivariate analysis of surveys revealed significant turnover in species between day and night surveys and between survey periods, with concomitant changes in species rank-abundance distributions. Juveniles of a number of fish species were determinate in observed differences. Conversely, diversity of functional groups between day/night surveys and between seasons were not different, however there was significant species turnover within functional groups between day and night assemblages. The lack of proportional change in functional groups but a turn-over of species between day and night assemblages suggest that there may be a degree of functional redundancy in Ascension Island's marine trophic profile. Further investigation into the spatio-temporal variation in trophic profile and functional diversity around the island will benefit conservation and fisheries management in this isolated and poorly understood marine system.
Insulin- and glucagon-like peptides in insects and molluscs

Article de synthese accumulant les preuves de la presence chez les invertebres actuels et particulierement les insectes et les mollusques, d'insuline, de glucagon ou de molecules biologiques apparentees (preuves cytologiques, extraction, purification et caracterisation, role physiologique)
A novel method for high-frequency transgenic shoot regeneration via Agrobacterium tumefaciens in flax ( Linum usitatissimum L.)

In this study, routinely used transformation method, which includes transferring explants onto co-cultivation medium after inoculating them with bacterial solution for a while, was compared with 3 different inoculation methods. In every 3 methods, hypocotyl explants excised from 7-day-old sterile flax seedlings having cotyledon leaves and no root system dried under air flow in sterile cabin for 35 min were inoculated with different volumes of bacterial solution at different inoculation periods. GV2260 line of Agrobacterium tumefaciens having `pBIN 19` plasmid containing npt II (neomycin phosphotransferase II) gene and GUS reporter gene was used in transformation studies. After inoculation, hypocotyl segments of seedlings (0.5 cm in length) - were excised and left to co-cultivation for 2 days. Then, explants were transferred to regeneration medium supplemented with different antibiotics. The presence of npt-II and GUS genes in transformants was confirmed by PCR and GUS analysis. The highest results in all characters examined in all cultivars were obtained from the 2 inoculation method in which hypocotyls excised from seedlings inoculated with of bacterial solution after drying in sterile cabin for 35 min were used.
Incubating female passerines do not let the egg temperature fall below the physiological zero temperature during their absences from the nest

Egg temperature was recorded at 1-5 min intervals during the incubation period in 42 nests of 14 different species. Only the females incubated. The egg temperature therefore declined whenever a female left the nest for a period-off. Regardless of the ambient temperature, however, the females usually returned to their nests and continued incubating before the eggs had cooled down to the suggested 'physiological zero temperature' (25-270C). For 14 nests (6 species) in which egg temperature was measured at 1 min intervals, the mean minimum egg temperature (MET) during periods-off was 30.4'C. The mean value for all 42 nests, with recording intervals varying from 1-5 min, was 31.20C. It is suggested that the incubation rhythm adopted is adaptive and evolutionary aspects of the high MET-values are tentatively discussed. During periods of especially low ambient temperature the female either holds the egg temperature at a normal level or temporarily stops incubating altogether. Any intermediate solution seems to be ruled out.
Development of a single phase nitrate feeding strategy for enhanced lipid productivity from green microalgae for biodiesel production

Biomass productivity and cellular lipid content are two major components that influence the ultimate lipid productivity from algal biomass. In this report, a nitrate feeding strategy was developed taking three green microalgae, Scenedesmus obliquus, Chlorella vulgaris, and C. minutissima, to achieve higher lipid productivity under single phase cultivation. Four different strategies, i.e. nitrate‐sufficient, nitrate‐deficient, biphasic nitrate‐deficient and low‐dose sequential nitrate feeding, were examined. The biphasic nitrate‐deficient approach depicted the maximum lipid productivity. To bring this biphasic approach to a single phase, sequential limited nitrate feeding strategy was examined. This showed nitrate supplementation with a 1/100th dose of standard N 11 medium at an interval of 3 days resulted in a significant rise in lipid productivity. The biodiesel samples also demonstrated the predominance of saturated and monounsaturated fatty acid methyl esters. This study, therefore, suggests that with appropriate standardization, the usual biphasic approach can be brought down to a single phase, thereby reducing the overall cost of microalgal biomass production for biodiesel purpose. Moreover, this strategy is user‐friendly, and would reduce the nitrate requirements for large‐scale cultivation, thus, would result in cost‐effective and eco‐friendly biodiesel production from microalgae. © 2016 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 36: 222–231, 2017
Correlations between the Growth Angles of Crown Roots and their Diameters in Rice Plants

The correlations were examined between the growrth angles of crown roots to the soil surface and their diameters in rice plants. 1. A significant correlation was observed between the growth angles and the root diameters, when the whole crown roots of a hill were treated collectively. Namely the thicker roots tended to grow vertically, while the thinner ones horizontally. Thecorrelation coefficient, however, was not always high. The same relationships were found when the crown roots were examined among the upper, the lower or the "P shootunit" roots, respectively. 2. Highly close correlations were found between the growth angles and the root diameters when the crown roots were grouped according to their time of emergence in the vegetative phase of the plants. Their relations, however, fell into different regression lines in accordance with the growing stages of the plants. As to the crown roots emerged after the plants entered into the reproductive phase, no such correlations were found. As a result, it is considered that a possible relation may exist between the geotropism of crown root and their diameters. Further, the geotropism may be affected by the varying quantity of assimilates translocated from the shoot during the growing stages of the plants.
EFICIÊNCIA DO NITROGENIO, PRODUÇAO DE FORRAGEM E MORFOGÊNESE DO CAPIM-MASSAI SOB ADUBAÇÃO

O efeito da adubacao nitrogenada (0, 40, 80, 120 e 160 mg de N/kg solo) sobre a producao e composicao quimica da forragem e caracteristicas morfogenicas e estruturais de Panicum maximum cv. Massai foi avaliado em condicoes de casa-de-vegetacao. O delineamento experimental foi em blocos casualizados com tres repeticoes. A adubacao nitrogenada afetou positiva e linearmente a producao de materia seca. As maiores taxas de aparecimento e de expansao foliar, o maior numero de folhas/perfilho, numero de perfilhos/planta e o tamanho medio de folhas foram obtidos, respectivamente, com a aplicacao de 155,6; 157,8; 147,0; 150,9 e 151,1 mg de N/kg solo. A eficiencia de utilizacao e a recuperacao aparente de N foram inversamente proporcionais as doses de N aplicadas.
Larval development of the cat lungworm Aelurostrongylus abstrusus in the tropical freshwater snail Biomphalaria glabrata.

Aelurostrongylus abstrusus is a worldwide occurring lungworm affecting felids. This metastrongyloid nematode has an indirect lifecycle relying on slugs and snails as intermediate hosts. In the present study the development of first-stage (L1) to third-stage larvae (L3) in the tropical freshwater pulmonate snail Biomphalaria glabrata was assessed. A total of 306 snails were individually exposed to 300 A. abstrusus L1, which were obtained from a naturally infected stray cat. The species was confirmed by biomolecular analysis. Second stage larvae (L2) and L3 were first isolated by artificial digestion of snails in the second and fourth week post exposure (wpe), respectively. From 8 wpe onwards, all larvae had developed into L3. Snails remained infected for up to 26 wpe. Only 0.4% of the L1 had pursued their development into L3, indicating low suitability of this artificial intermediate host for production of infective A. abstrusus L3.
Embryo signals for successful implantation

Human pre-implantation embryos display a high prevalence of aneuploidy and chromosomal mosaicism, unique from any other species. The decreasing incidence of aneuploidy observed between the cleavage and blastocyst stages of preimplantation embryo development infers a degree of 'self-correction' following activation of the embryonic genome. However, contrary to the previous assumption that only euploid embryos should be considered 'normal', new evidence has confirmed that mosaic embryos can result in the birth of healthy babies. Thus, aneuploidy should be viewed as an intrinsic feature of human pre-implantation embryo development, which presents a novel challenge at implantation. The endometrium must implement both positive and negative selection, in order to limit maternal investment to only viable embryos. The ability of the endometrium to act as a 'biosensor' of embryo quality has been well documented yet there is little direct evidence for the key regulators of this process. For the first time, we demonstrate a biological context for embryo biosensoring. Firstly, we discover novel embryo-secreted proteases that are enhanced at the blastocyst stage and relate to implantation outcome upon embryo transfer. Secondly, we identify corresponding protease-sensitive receptors in the endometrium, heightened during the window of implantation. By demonstrating the cleavage and de-activation of endometrial toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) by embryo conditioned medium, we link successful implantation to a diminished inflammatory response. Furthermore, we demonstrate that TLR4 levels in the endometrium constitute a selectivity checkpoint, which is supressed in women suffering from recurrent miscarriage (RM).
Effects of pollination intensity on offspring number and quality in a wind‐pollinated herb

Low pollination intensity may cause low seed set in plant populations and is thought to be responsible for evolutionary transitions from outcrossing to selfing, or from animal to wind pollination. Variation in pollination intensity may also affect seed quality both through its influence on the degree of pollen competition (with lower quality offspring produced under low pollen intensities) and through seed size–number trade‐offs (with plants under low pollination intensity producing fewer but larger seeds). Here, we use a field experiment to examine the effects of pollination intensity on both quantity and quality of progeny. We manipulated pollen receipt to stigmas of the wind‐pollinated dioecious plant Mercurialis annua by varying the distance of females from males. We then compared seed size and number, seedling growth and allocation to male and female function, for the progeny produced by females subjected to different pollination intensities. Our experiment revealed a reduction in pollen load with increasing distance to males, translating into large reductions in the number of seeds produced but only small effects on the performance of offspring. The main effect on offspring quality was through a seed size–number trade‐off, with pollen‐limited females producing fewer but larger seeds, which subsequently performed better. Sons and daughters were affected differently by this trade‐off, pointing to gender‐dependent effects of pollination intensity on progeny performance. Synthesis. Our results highlight the importance of pollination intensity on both the quantity and quality of progeny. Nevertheless, fitness calculations suggest that the enhanced quality of seed produced by pollen‐limited mothers was not sufficient to offset their losses in terms of quantity.
Importance of Bacillus subtilis lipopeptides in the biological control of diseases in crops of high economic value

Advances in the biological control of diseases in economically important crops, where Bacillus subtilis has a preponderant role were determined, since their lipopeptides demonstrate its effectiveness when controlling a wide range of diseases that attack crops of major importance in our country and the world. In the three crops tested details Basillus subtilis effectiveness for control of the most devastating diseases are given. In Magnaporthe ryzae it is determined that the severity can be stopped very effectively, so experimentation will be necessary to extend the protection of seed rice. For Rhizoctonia solani displayed results are very encouraging. This disease is very important not only in the cultivation of potatoes, but in every variety of Solanaceae and legumes grown mainly in the inter-Andean alley. While for Mycosphaerella fijiensis excellent results are detailed to an extremely aggressive pathogen and its control brings great impacts on the population and the environment. Given what was said Bacillus subtilis is emerging as a major biocontrol agents for proper phytosanitary management of crops of major importance in our environment.
Production of fatty acids by Mortierella and Umbelopsis species isolated from temperate climate soils

Soil fungi from the genera Mortierella and Umbelopsis are known as effective producers of polyunsaturated fatty acids, among which industrially the most important is arachidonic acid. Primary screening for the best arachidonic acid producers was conducted on malt extract with gelatin and potato dextrose agar with or without aspirin. Only five isolates were able to grow on potato dextrose agar with aspirin. They did not contain arachidonic acid but they produced relatively high amounts of other unsaturated fatty acids such as oleic and linoleic acids. All isolates producing arachidonic acid produced also lignoceric acid. From all tested liquid media the highest yield of arachidonic acid and total yield of fatty acids was obtained using medium containing soybean powder. Some of the isolates produced higher amounts of total fatty acids and arachidonic acid in media containing fewer amounts of carbon sources and at low incubation temperature.
Repeated call sequences and behavioural context in long-finned pilot whales off Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada

Abstract Repeated calls are part of the vocal repertoire of a diverse array of species, often presented in sequences that take time and effort on the part of the signal producer. Rhythmic repeated call sequences make up a significant portion of long-finned pilot whale (Globicephala melas) vocal production, yet the function of these sequences has not been investigated until now. In this study, we explored the relationship between behavioural context and the presence of these vocal sequences using recordings of a population of pilot whales found off Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada. We used a binomial logit-link generalized linear model to look for possible predictors of the presence of repeated call sequences. They were more common in recordings of socializing whales than in those of whales in other behavioural states, and least common in resting whales. These vocal repetitions were also more common with larger group size. These results suggest that sequences function in maintaining contact and cohesion within this social species, possibly also serving in individual or group identification. The context of repeated call sequences indicate that they are not primarily mother–calf interactions, as they are heard just as commonly from groups without young. Future studies of pilot whale repeated call sequences should include individual-level behaviour and detailed acoustic calling context.