Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of GDF-9 and FSH on mRNA Expression for FSH-R, GDF-9 and BMPs in in vitro Cultured Goat Preantral Follicles

The aim of the present study was to determine the role of GDF-9 and/or FSH on the growth and mRNA expression for FSH-R, GDF-9, and BMPs in goat secondary follicles after culture in vitro. Goat secondary follicles (~200µm) were isolated and cultured for six days in minimum essential medium (MEM) supplemented with GDF-9 (200 ng/mL), FSH (50 ng/mL) or both. At the beginning and end of culture, the follicular diameter was evaluated and compared. The levels of mRNA for GDF-9, FSH-R and BMPs -2, -4, -6, -7 and -15 in cultured follicles were quantified by real time PCR. The results showed that a significant increase of follicle diameter after six days when compared to day 0, but the presence of GDF-9 and FSH did not influence the follicular growth in comparison with those cultured in MEM. Real time PCR showed that GDF-9 down-regulated the levels of mRNA for BMPs -2 and -15, while FSH either alone or in combination with GDF-9 did not affect the expression of GDF-9, FSH-R and BMPs. In conclusion, GDF-9 reduced the expression of BMP-2 and -15 in caprine preantral follicles after their culture, but FSH either alone or in association with GDF-9 did not control the expression of GDF-9, FSH-R and BMPs.
Exigência de arginina digestível para frangos de corte machos em diferentes fases

Three experiments were conducted to determine the arginine requirement and the digestible arginine:lysine ratio of broiler males, from 1 to 20, 24 to 38 and 44 to 56 days of age. A completely randomized design with five levels of arginine, six replicates and 20 birds per pens from 1 to 20 and 24 to 38, and 16 birds per pens from 44 to 56 were used in each experiment. The concentrations of digestible arginine were 1.10-1.34 (increase of 0,061), 1.083-1.296 (increase of 0,053) and 0,96-1,148% (increase of 0,047) for 1-20, 24-38 and 44-56 days of age respectively. At the end of each experiment performance and carcass yield were evaluated. Body weight gain and feed conversion responded quadratically to increasing levels of digestible arginine in the first phase. Using the broken line model, the requirement of digestible arginine and the ratio of digestible arginine:lysine for the first phase were 1,22% (1,31% total) and 105%, respectively, according to the results of body weight gain. No statistical difference in the second and third phases (24-38 days old and 44-56 days old, respectively) showed that the lowest level of digestible arginine of 1,083% (1,155% total) and 0,960% (1,026) met the birds requirement. These levels corresponded to a ratio of 102% in both phases.
Efficiencies of benthic and pelagic trophic pathways in a subalpine lake

Although the study of lakes has traditionally focused on pelagic production pathways, recent stable isotope and diet evidence indicates that benthic algal production is an important contributor to fish production. This has led to the suggestion that energy may be more efficiently passed along benthic food chains relative to their pelagic counter- parts. To test this idea, we combined stable isotope based assessments of energy flow pathways with estimates of pe- lagic- and benthic-based primary and secondary production in Castle Lake, California. Approximately 50% of whole- lake primary production and 30% of whole-lake secondary production occurred in benthic habitats. Stable carbon iso- topes and dietary data indicated that fish were predominantly supported by benthic (63%) and terrestrial (24%) second- ary production. Ecological efficiencies (algal production / invertebrate production) were low in Castle Lake (<3%), though zoobenthic production was more efficiently passed to fish than was zooplankton production. The larger size of benthic prey relative to pelagic prey may affect fish prey selection and foraging efficiency, resulting in differences in ecological efficiency between pelagic and benthic trophic pathways. Resume : Alors que l'etude des lacs s'est traditionnellement concentree sur les voies de production pelagiques, des donnees recentes provenant d'etudes des isotopes stables et des regimes alimentaires indiquent que la production des algues benthiques contribue de facon substantielle a la production de poissons. En consequence, on a suggere que l'energie peut etre transmise plus efficacement par les chaines trophiques benthiques que par les chaines pelagiques correspondantes. Afin de verifier cette proposition, nous combinons des evaluations des voies du flux energetique faites a l'aide d'isotopes stables avec des estimations des productions primaire et secondaire, tant pelagique que benthique, au lac Castle, Californie. Environ 50 % de la production primaire du lac entier et 30 % de la production secondaire du lac entier se realisent dans les habitats benthiques. Les donnees d'isotopes stables de carbone et les analyses des regimes alimentaires indiquent que les poissons sont surtout alimentes par la production secondaire du benthos (63 %) et du milieu terrestre (24 %). Les efficacites ecologiques (production des algues / production des invertebres) sont faibles au lac Castle (<3 %), bien que la production du zoobenthos soit transmise plus efficacement aux poissons que celle du zooplancton. La taille plus grande des proies benthiques par rapport aux proies pelagiques peut affecter la selection des proies et l'efficacite de l'alimentation chez les poissons, ce qui entraine des differences d'efficacite ecologique entre les voies trophiques pelagique et benthique.
Antimicrobial activity of Syagrus coronata (Martius) Beccari

ABSTRACT This work aimed to evaluate the antimicrobial activity of aqueous and methanol extracts of leaves, inflorescences, nut-shell, liquid and solid endosperm nuts of Syagrus coronata against pathogenic bacteria and yeast. Screening was initially performed using the agar dilution method. The extracts regarded as bioactive underwent liquid-liquid partition for determination of their minimum inhibitory concentration and minimum bactericide concentration (MIC and MBC) and those of their respective fractions against the microorganisms inhibited in preliminary tests. Antimicrobial activity was observed only in inflorescences. The corresponding aqueous extract was effective against B. cereus and the three strains of S. aureus , and the corresponding MIC and MCB values were lower than those of dichloromethane, ethyl acetate and butanol fractions of the same extract. The methanol extract was effective against B. cereus , and the corresponding MIC and MBC values were higher than those of ethyl acetate and butanol fractions of the same extract. Key words: Syagrus coronata , Arecaceae, antimicrobial activity
Fluxes of carbon, water and energy over Brazilian cerrado: an analysis using eddy covariance and stable isotopes

We present the energy and mass balance of cerrado sensu stricto (a Brazilian form of savanna), in which a mixture of shrubs, trees and grasses forms a vegetation with a leaf area index of 1·0 in the wet season and 0·4 in the dry season. In the wet season the available energy was equally dissipated between sensible heat and evaporation, but in the dry season at high irradiance the sensible heat greatly exceeded evaporation. Ecosystem surface conductance gs in the wet season rose abruptly to 0·3 mol m−2 s−1 and fell gradually as the day progressed. Much of the total variation in gs was associated with variation in the leaf-to-air vapour pressure deficit of water and the solar irradiance. In the dry season the maximal gs values were only 0·1 mol m−2 s−1. Maximal net ecosystem fluxes of CO2 in the wet and dry season were –10 and –15 μmol CO2 m−2 s−1, respectively (sign convention: negative denotes fluxes from atmosphere to vegetation). The canopy was well coupled to the atmosphere, and there was rarely a significant build-up of respiratory CO2 during the night. For observations in the wet season, the vegetation was a carbon dioxide sink, of maximal strength 0·15 mol m−2 d−1. However, it was a source of carbon dioxide for a brief period at the height of the dry season. Leaf carbon isotopic composition showed all the grasses except for one species to be C4, and all the palms and woody plants to be C3. The CO2 coming from the soil had an isotopic composition that suggested 40% of it was of C4 origin.
SYNTHESIS OF AROMA COMPONENTS DURING THE SPONTANEOUS FERMENTATION OF LAMBIC AND GUEUZE

Lambic is a type of Belgian beer obtained by spontaneous fermentation of wort. The fermentation in casks takes almost two years, and after that period the beer may be re-fermented in bottles and is then called gueuze. To gain insight into the many microbiological transformations occurring during this process, a qualitative and quantitative study of several components formed over a two-year period was undertaken. It was found that lambic and gueuze are characterized by high contents of ethyl acetate, ethyl lactate, lactic acid and acetic acid. Two phases of fermentation may be distinguished: a primary phase lasting for about three months during which almost all the ethanol and higher alcohols are formed and a very long secondary phase during which lactic acid is formed first, followed by ethyl lactate. Some lower fatty acids, including all the acetic acid, are made at the very beginning of the first phase. An important part of the ethyl acetate is made during the first phase but the amounts increase slowly to high levels during the second phase. Unusually low amounts of isoamyl acetate are detected. Several components are above the reported threshold levels of taste and are thus probably involved in the genesis of the typical aroma of lambic and gueuze. These results will allow a further study of the relations between the components found and the microbial populations involved in the spontaneous fermentation inherent in the brewing of lambic and gueuze.
Heat shock proteins mediate trade‐offs between early‐life reproduction and late survival in Drosophila melanogaster

Ageing and the resulting increased likelihood mortality are the inescapable fate of organisms because selection pressures on genes that exert their function late in life is weak, promoting the evolution of genes that enhance early‐life reproductive performance at the same time as sacrificing late survival. Heat shock proteins (HSP) are known to buffer various environmental stresses and are also involved in protein homeostasis and longevity. The characteristics of genes for HSPs (hsp) imply that they affect various life‐history traits, which in turn affect longevity; however, little is known about the effects of hsp genes on life‐history traits and their interaction with longevity. In the present study, the effects of hsp genes on multiple fitness traits, such as locomotor activity, total fecundity, early fecundity and survival time, are investigated in Drosophila melanogaster Meigen using RNA interference (RNAi). In egg‐laying females, RNAi knockdown of six hsp genes (hsp22, hsp23, hsp67Ba, hsp67Bb, hsp67Bc and hsp27‐like) does not shorten survival but rather increases it. Knockdown of five of those genes on an individual basis reduces early‐life reproduction, suggesting that several hsp genes mediate the trade‐off between early reproduction and late survival. The data indicate a positive effect of hsp genes on early reproduction and also negative effects on survival time, supporting the antagonistic pleiotropic effects predicted by the optimality theory of ageing.
The Impact of Predation Stress by Largemouth Bass (Micropterus salmoides) on the Growth and Development of Leopard Frog Tadpoles (Rana sphenocephala)

ABSTRACT We examined the impact of visual stimuli and chemical cues released by largemouth bass (Micropterus salrnoides) and the prey they consumed on the growth and development of southern leopard frog tadpoles (Rana sphenocephala). Tadpoles were exposed to potential alarm cues from either conspecific or unrelated (mosquitofish) prey with and without the visual stimulation of largemouth bass. Tadpoles exposed to conspecific alarm cues exhibited the slo-est growth and were statistically shorter and lighter than animals from all other treatments. Tadpoles exposed to mosquitofish alarm cues grew at an intermediate rate, while tadpoles from control tanks (absence of predators) experienced the fastest growth. When visual cues were limited, tadpoles exposed to mosquitofish alarm cues grew much faster than those that could see the predator. However, the growth of tadpoles exposed to the conspecific alarm cues was not influenced by visual cues. These results provide additional evidence that amphibian larvae detect and are impacted by both chemical and visual predatory cues.
Spectral Clustering for Electrical Phase Identification Using Advanced Metering Infrastructure Voltage Time Series

This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of PDXScholar. For more information, please contact pdxscholar@pdx.edu. Recommended Citation Blakely, Logan, "Spectral Clustering for Electrical Phase Identification Using Advanced Metering Infrastructure Voltage Time Series" (2019). Dissertations and Theses. Paper 4683.
Neck muscle fatigue impacts plasticity and sensorimotor integration in cerebellum and motor cortex in response to novel motor skill acquisition.

The cerebellum undergoes neuroplastic changes in response to motor learning. Healthy human individuals demonstrate reduced cerebellar inhibition (CBI) following motor learning. Alterations in neck sensory input due to muscular fatigue are known to impact upper limb sensorimotor processing, suggesting that neck fatigue may also impact cerebellum to motor cortex (M1) pathways in response to motor learning. Therefore, this study aimed to determine whether cervical extensor muscle (CEM) fatigue alters CBI in response to motor learning. We examined sixteen participants (8 CEM fatigue and 8 CEM control). A double cone TMS coil stimulated the ipsilateral cerebellar cortex 5 ms prior to application of contralateral test stimuli of the M1 to the right first dorsal interosseous muscle. Cerebellar-MI activity curves were established pre- and post- motor skill acquisition (consisting of tracing sinusoidal-pattern waves with the index finger), and following either the CEM fatigue or control intervention. The control group showed greater cerebellar disinhibition than the fatigue group following motor skill acquisition (p<0.006), while the fatigue group showed similar levels of CBI pre- and post-motor skill acquisition. Both groups improved in accuracy following acquisition (p= 0.012), and retention (p= 0.007), but the control group improved significantly more (17% at acquisition and 22% at retention) vs lower (6% and 9%) improvements for the fatigue group. Lessened cerebellar disinhibition in the CEM fatigue vs. control group, coupled with diminished motor learning, suggests that CEM fatigue affects the cerebellar-MI interaction, influencing the cerebellum's ability to adjust motor output to acquire and learn a novel motor task.
Dynamicity of Immune Regulation during Visceral Leishmaniasis

Visceral leishmaniasis is a vector-borne tropical disease associated with a spectrum of clinical manifestations and immunosuppression leading to parasite survival. Chemokines which act as chemo-attractants for generating innate immune responses are significant in bringing innate and adaptive responses side by side for combating against infection. The independency and interdependency of regulatory T cells and Th17 cells on Th1/Th2 signalling pathways and an imbalance in immune responses could lead to disease progression. Although Interleukin- (IL-)12 is crucial in generating protective Th1 response against the disease, various members of the IL-12 family perform diverse immune functions due to their chain pairing promiscuity. This review focuses on the immunopathogenesis of VL by chronologically summarising the developments in the studies of the immune regulation as well as the mechanisms involved. A better understanding of the innate and adaptive immune functioning of the host could aid in rational control and better therapeutic intervention of the disease.
Longevity of inoculum production by Diplodia pinea on red pine cones.

Summary In summer of 2004, pycnidia of Diplodia pinea were observed on cones of Pinus resinosa that hadmatured and opened during previous years, but had been retained in canopies of trees at a mature redpine plantation in southern Wisconsin. Surveys during the winter and early summer of threeconsecutive years (2005–2007) to determine incidence and abundance of D. pinea conidia on cones ofdifferent ages in this stand. Cones from each age class consistently bore pycnidia with conidia ofD. pinea. Although cones collected in June of the year after their maturation tended to yield moreD. pinea conidia than older cones, large numbers of conidia were obtained from cones even 3 yearsafter maturation. Perennial availability of inoculum due to persistence of D. pinea on cones of severalages in the overstory or in adjacent stands should be considered when regenerating red pine in areaswhere this pathogen is known to be present. 1 Introduction Diplodia pinea (Desmaz.) J. Kickx ﬁl. (syn. Sphaeropsis sapinea) is an asexual fungalpathogen of many conifer species with a worldwide distribution (Punithalingham andWaterson 1970). It affects trees in all stages of development causing damage to varioustree parts includes shoot blight, stem cankers, crown wilt, bluestain of sapwood andseedling collar rot (Chou 1976; Palmer 1991; Stanosz and Carlson 1996). D. pinea isfrequently found sporulating on dead shoots and mature seed cones (Palmer et al. 1988;Flowers et al. 2001). Conidia are rain-splash dispersed throughout the growing season(Palmer et al. 1988), and can germinate within a few hours. The pathogen penetrates thehost directly (Brookhouser and Peterson 1971; Chou 1978) and through wounds.Disease development may proceed rapidly, or D. pinea may persist on or in asymptomatichosts (Flowers et al. 2001; Smith et al. 2002; Stanosz et al. 2005). For red pine (Pinusresinosa Ait.), subsequent proliferation of D. pinea to cause disease under conditions thatinduce host stress has been demonstrated (Stanosz et al. 2001). Diplodia pinea has been associated with seed cones of many pine species (Vujanovicet al. 2000). In the Great Lakes region of North America, D. pinea is found sporulating incone scales of P. resinosa, which can be severely damaged in windbreaks, nurseries,plantations and forests (Nicholls and Ostry 1990; Palmer 1991). However, obvioussymptoms of the disease in nearby trees are not a requisite to ﬁnding D. pinea on cones.For example, Munck and Stanosz (2009) found pycnidia of the fungus in mature, opencones collected from overstory trees in plantations in central Wisconsin with no obvioussymptoms of Diplodia shoot blight.Despite knowledge of association of D. pinea with red pine cones, the longevity of thisrelationship has not been studied. Crowns of mature red pines may bear hundreds of cones(Rudolf 1990), some remaining attached to branches even after seed release. If colonizedFor. Path. 40 (2010) 58–63 doi: 10.1111/j.1439-0329.2009. 00607.x 2009 Blackwell Verlag GmbH
Book Reviews

Benedetto Cotrugli was a 15th century businessman who penned a ‘‘how-to’’ manual for business management that discussed double-entry bookkeeping 36 years before Pacioli’s Summa, and was published in English by Palgrave Macmillan in 2017. We recommend that readers of The Accounting Review acquire and read this historically important text for three reasons. One is that the book helps us understand the economic environment in which double-entry bookkeeping first surfaced and, thus, ultimately the origins of modern accounting. A second reason is that the book reminds us that basic bookkeeping is a component of effective business management and its usefulness must be anchored in judgment regarding the legitimacy of a business’s profit. Finally, the book is a fun read in a nerdy kind of way, and let’s admit it, most academic accountants (present authors included) are nerds who are endlessly curious about things that hold no fascination for the rest of society. Cotrugli’s Book of the Art of Trade has ethics as its main focus. He extolled the virtues of double-entry bookkeeping because it provided a balanced approach that took into account both what one was owed as well as what one owed to others. Cotrugli held single-entry bookkeeping in contempt because it made it too easy to understate what one owed to others. Hence, Cotrugli sees an ethic that favors building goodwill with customers, creditors, and the broader community as a precondition to obtaining a just profit. He sought to educate the reader on the principles to be followed in obtaining an honorable profit:
An Integration of Threat Modeling with Attack Pattern and Misuse Case for Effective Security Requirement Elicitation

Today’s security is becoming a brainstorming issue due to inventive attacks. To elicit effective security requirement to the system, software developers need to think like an attacker. This paper considers three effective security requirement elicitation techniques, Threat modelling, Misuse case and Attack pattern. Threat Modeling is a technique to prevent the system from any undesired event by modeling all the information which has the potential to harm the system. It is a process for eliciting security requirement by identifying harmful threats to the system. Misuse case represents negative use cases to model threats and mis-actors to represent attackers. Misuse cases are capable of modeling threat and risk analysis process. Attack Pattern works as a method to identify the attacker’s perspective. Specifically, Threat modelling, Attack pattern and Misuse case are compared on the basis of some parameters. The comparative analysis provides some merits and demerits of these techniques. This paper investigates how misuse cases enhance the performance of threat modeling. This paper also describes an effective way for security requirement elicitation by integrating threat modeling with attack pattern and misuse cases. Keywords: Threat Modeling; Misuse Case; Attack Patterns; Secure software development; Security Requirement Elicitation
Learning to Learn Adaptive Classifier–Predictor for Few-Shot Learning

Few-shot learning aims to learn a well-performing model from a few labeled examples. Recently, quite a few works propose to learn a predictor to directly generate model parameter weights with episodic training strategy of meta-learning and achieve fairly promising performance. However, the predictor in these works is task-agnostic, which means that the predictor cannot adjust to novel tasks in the testing phase. In this article, we propose a novel meta-learning method to learn how to learn task-adaptive classifier–predictor to generate classifier weights for few-shot classification. Specifically, a meta classifier-predictor module, (MPM) is introduced to learn how to adaptively update a task-agnostic classifier–predictor to a task-specialized one on a novel task with a newly proposed center-uniqueness loss function. Compared with previous works, our task-adaptive classifier–predictor can better capture characteristics of each category in a novel task and thus generate a more accurate and effective classifier. Our method is evaluated on two commonly used benchmarks for few-shot classification, i.e., miniImageNet and tieredImageNet. Ablation study verifies the necessity of learning task-adaptive classifier–predictor and the effectiveness of our newly proposed center-uniqueness loss. Moreover, our method achieves the state-of-the-art performance on both benchmarks, thus demonstrating its superiority.