Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) culture in vermi-aquaponic systems: II. Strategies for sustainable and economic development: Fertilization practices in vermi-ponic unit

Abstract Under optimized biological and technical conditions, aquaponics provides more advantages than conventional (soil-based greenhouse) and hydroponic cultivations as the result of reusing the wastewater and thereby improving energy, water and nutrient use efficiency, productivity, financial gain, as well as plant and ecosystem health. Tomato is one of the most consumed nutritive vegetables and a good model plant for developing aquaponic techniques. So far, numerous attempts have been made to demonstrate the efficacy of safe use of materials and applying environmentally-safe materials in aquaponics. Optimizing the interacting species-specific responses, biological activities and operations management have the potential to maximize the performance of aquaponics. Thus, the advanced approaches from integrated inorganic-organic-bio fertilizers in different components of an aquaponic system and different aquaponic systems are evaluated in this work to make the most benefit of tomato production and aquaculture in vermi-aquaponics. Sustainable strategies are discussed to optimize fertilization and water quality in vermi-ponic unit, nutrient quality and biological balance in microalgae-bacteria consortia in different production units. The prospects of using integrated approaches by applying organic and aquatic recycled substrates for vermicompost preparation, vermicompost fortification, root-zone application and foliar sprays of biocompatible and bioagents and their interactions are discussed to enhance tomato yield and quality and suppress pests and diseases in vermi-aquaponic systems.
What is Effective Pedagogy for multilingual learners? Observations of teaching that challenges inequity—the OPETAN project in England

There is little empirical evidence regarding how best to prepare general education teachers for the challenge of supporting multilingual learners. This is both regarding helping learners develop the language of schooling, and achieving academic success (Faltis and Valdes, 2016). Similarly, little is known about what in-service teachers should know, and what pedagogical perspective they should adopt, to achieve these aims (Faltis and Valdes, 2016; Takanishi and Le Menestrel, 2017). However, there is a promising line of research that proposes an observation tool to evaluate classroom pedagogy: ‘The Standards for Effective Pedagogy’ (the ‘Standards’ 2014; Teemant, 2015). The OPETAN project (Observations of Pedagogical Excellence of Teachers Across Nations), based in Germany, Finland, the United States, and England, draws on these Standards, which derive from sociocultural perspectives, and presents a portrait of how they work in practice. This chapter reports on the project’s findings in England. Teachers in four primary schools were selected on the basis of their recognised competent pedagogical practice with multilingual learners in culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms. The pupils were aged between four and eleven. Drawing on qualitative methods, classroom observation data were gathered and thematically analysed in the light of the descriptors of the ‘Standards for Effective Pedagogy’. In this chapter, key themes from the data are presented and three teaching vignettes selected to illustrate the pedagogy observed. The findings identify pedagogies teachers can use to better support multilingual learners.
Rainfall Measurement And Flood Warning Systems: A Review

Flood is regarded as a chaotic natural disaster that threatens people's lives and properties. Flood warning and rainfall measuring systems dealing with different processes and multiple methodologies, providing data and information to maintain flood warning transportation and alternatives to crises for people around the world. To provide comparatively accurate and reliable flood prediction, prediction models are essential to be propelled by data input and further controlled by historical data and real-time observations are processed through the various algorithms. Flood prediction techniques traditionally include the use of rain gage for rainfall measurement and a simple flood warning system circuit. Emerging flood warning systems technologies and development have the potential to provide alternative solutions to allow timely and reliable flood calculations. It has shown a growing interest in investigating the use of more technological methods to anticipate floods through this. This paper reviews, therefore, from traditional flood forecasting to recent progress with the integration of emerging technologies for a more reliable and accurate flood warning system. This paper discussed patented flood warning systems, rainfall measuring systems, and published papers on flood warning systems. The result ended up with an idea that will be proposed for better accuracy and timely applications.
The effect of cigarette smoking on subjective well-being in South Africa and its implications for tobacco control

Orientation: The effect of cigarette smoking on health and economic well-being has been widely studied. Its effect on subjective well-being measures, such as life satisfaction, has received less scholarly attention.Research purpose: This study tested the effect of cigarette smoking on life satisfaction amongst smokers in South Africa as a precursor to assessing the effectiveness of traditional tobacco control methods.Motivation for the study: Taxation has long been the primary tool for tobacco control in South Africa; however, the psychological effects of cigarette smoking are not considered when selecting tobacco control tools.Research approach/design and method: The study applied an ordered probit regression to a panel of five waves of the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS) data to test the relationship between cigarette smoking and life satisfaction in South Africa.Main findings: Smoking was found to negatively affect an individual’s likelihood of reporting higher satisfaction with life relative to non-smokers, a finding that is in line with the limited literature on the subject and with the findings of similar studies that used objective measures of well-being. Furthermore, the current tobacco control framework is not as effective as expected as smoking prevalence is fairly constant, notably amongst the poor, despite large increases in excise duties on cigarettes over time.Practical/managerial implications: The study’s main finding promotes the case for reassessing the approach taken to formulating tobacco control policies and for implementing alternative tobacco control policies that consider the psychological effects of cigarette smoking. As smoking cessation is shown to increase the likelihood of reporting higher life satisfaction, measures aimed at cessation (such as broad-scale smoking bans) could prove more successful than taxation.Contribution/value-add: This study contributes to the limited literature regarding the relationship between subjective well-being and cigarette smoking in the developing world. The study provides insight to whether standard tobacco control policies should be applied generically without accounting for the relationship between cigarette smoking and subjective well-being.
Precise Orbit Determination for Climate Applications of GNSS Radio Occultation including Uncertainty Estimation

Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) Radio Occultation (RO) is a highly valuable remote sensing technique for probing the Earth’s atmosphere, due to its global coverage, high accuracy, long-term stability, and essentially all-weather capability. In order to ensure the highest quality of essential climate variables (ECVs), derived from GNSS signal tracking by RO satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO), the orbit positions and velocities of the GNSS transmitter and LEO receiver satellites need to be determined with high and proven accuracy and reliability. Wegener Center’s new Reference Occultation Processing System (rOPS) hence aims to integrate uncertainty estimation at all stages of the processing. Here we present a novel setup for precise orbit determination (POD) within the rOPS, which routinely and in parallel performs the LEO POD with the two independent software packages Bernese GNSS software (v5.2) and NAPEOS (v3.3.1), employing two different GNSS orbit data products. This POD setup enables mutual consistency checks of the calculated orbit solutions and is used for position and velocity uncertainty estimation, including estimated systematic and random uncertainties. For LEOs enabling laser tracking we involve position uncertainty estimates from satellite laser ranging. Furthermore, we intercompare the LEO orbit solutions with solutions from other leading orbit processing centers for cross-validation. We carefully analyze multi-month, multi-satellite POD result statistics and find a strong overall consistency of estimates within LEO orbit uncertainty target specifications of 5 cm in position and 0.05 mm/s in velocity for the CHAMP, GRACE-A, and Metop-A/B missions. In 92% of the days investigated over two representative 3-month periods (July to September in 2008 and 2013) these POD uncertainty targets, which enable highly accurate climate-quality RO processing, are satisfied. The moderately higher uncertainty estimates found for the remaining 8% of days (∼5–15 cm) result in increased uncertainties of RO-retrieved ECVs. This allows identification of RO profiles of somewhat reduced quality, a potential benefit for adequate further use in climate monitoring and research.
Analysing the Decoy Effect on Online Product Purchasing Preference: An Experimental Study

Why would one want to buy expensive popcorn at the cinema, while they could get the same with much lower price in supermarket? Economically speaking, it is a rip off. However, there is an effective psychological technique called the decoy effect that could affect our economical thinking in a way that the targeted good will be purchased even if it is overpriced. Earlier research showed that consumer’s preference could be shifted when there are three options: the target, competitor, and decoy. In this IR 4.0, sellers’ market their products through digital marketplaces to reach more consumers worldwide. This research analyses whether the decoy effect exists in Indonesia’s digital marketplace, and what effect does customers’ review has on it. Data are collected through online surveys by replicating an online shopping choice sets for a trash bin. We choose marketplace Shopee as it has some features enabling us to do the experiment. The control and treatment 1 choice-sets are used to test whether the decoy effect exists in digital market. Treatment 2 is used to measure the strength of a decoy with smaller/bigger amount of buyers, and Treatment 3 measures the strength of a decoy with positive/negative reviews. A total of 90 subjects are randomly given one choice-set. Results show that decoy effect exists in digital marketplace Shopee. Amount of buyers influences the strength of the decoy effect; smaller amount weakened it, bigger amount strengthen it. Data also suggests that decoy with negative review reduces the strength of its effect, vice versa.
Speech Breathing Estimation Using Deep Learning Methods

Breathing is the primary mechanism for maintaining the subglottal pressure for speech production. Speech can be seen as a systematic outflow of air during exhalation characterized by linguistic content and prosodic factors. Thus, sensing respiratory dynamics from the speech is plausible. In this paper, we explore techniques for sensing breathing from speech using deep learning architectures including multi-task learning approaches. Estimating the breathing pattern from the speech would give us information about the respiration rate, breathing capacity and thus enable us to understand the pathological condition of a person using one’s speech. Training and evaluation of our model on our database of breathing signal and speech for 40 subjects yielded a sensitivity of 0.88 for breath event detection and 5.6 % error for breathing rate estimation.
A colloidal gold immunochromatography test strip based on a monoclonal antibody for the rapid detection of triadimefon and triadimenol in foods

ABSTRACT In this study, we produced a specific monoclonal antibody (mAb) against triadimefon (TDF) and triadimenol (TDN). The half-maximal inhibitory concentration for TDF and TDN was 5.25 and 9.98 ng/mL, respectively, with a linear detection range (IC20–IC80) of 1.09–25.35 ng/mL and 2.29–43.61 ng/mL, respectively. Subsequently, we developed a colloidal gold immunochromatography test strip for the analysis of TDF and TDN in tomato. The results obtained from the colloidal gold immunochromatography test strip were in accordance with those obtained from the indirect competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. The colloidal gold immunochromatography test strip is efficient and suitable for on-site detection of TDF and TDN.
Factors affecting milk yield at peak and during current lactation of Holstein cows

With the objective of investigating the impact of events occurring pre and postpartum on milk yield at peak and during lactation, data were collected from 1.042 lactations of 665 Holstein cows. Body condition score (BCS), calving season (CS), dry period length (DPL), occurrence of diseases and milk yield were registered. Calving season (summer), DPL, BCS at drying off, fi rst somatic cells count (SCC) after calving, occurrence of retained placenta and of displaced abomasum negatively affected milk yield at peak. The same events, excluding CS, and including occurrence of clinical mastitis until 60 days post-partum, negatively affected milk yield during lactation.
Evolutionary dynamics of metabolic adaptation

In this thesis we study how organisms adapt their metabolism to a changing environment. Metabolic adaptation occurs at different timescales. Organisms adapt their metabolism via metabolic regulation, which happens in the order of minutes to hours and via evolution, which takes many generations. Here we study the interplay between these timescales by studying the evolution of metabolic adaptation. In chapter 2, we develop an individual-oriented, spatial model of cells that evolve their lac operon promoter function. In this way we study what kind of promoter function evolves. The promoter function that evolves in the simulations is surprisingly similar to the experimentally observed promoter function. Furthermore we show that, in contrast to the current belief, the lac operon is not a bistable switch when induced by the natural inducer lactose. Only when induced by artificial inducers, the lac operon behaves bistably. We modified this model to incorporate the effect of stochasticity in gene expression. In this way we study the effect of stochasticity by comparing the results between the deterministic and stochastic model. We find that in our model cells avoid stochastic gene expression by evolving to larger repressed transcription rates and therefore we conclude that stochasticity in the lac operon is detrimental for the cells. In chapter 4 we study the mutational dynamics of massive gene loss. We find that the pattern of gene loss in S. cerevisiae cannot be explained by random single gene loss. If we however assume that large base pair deletions cause simultaneous deletion of neighboring genes, we can explain the pattern of gene loss in S. cerevisiae satisfactorily. This model predicts that genes that have smaller intergenic regions in a yeast species that did not underwent WGD are more likely to be both deleted in S. cerevisiae and this is exactly what we find in the data. In chapter 5 we study the effect of a WGD on the metabolic network of S. cerevisiae using metabolic modeling. We find that we can satisfactorily predict which genes are retained in duplicate after WGD. Furthermore, we predict that both transporter genes and genes functioning in glycolysis are more likely to be retained in duplicate after WGD, which we also found to be true in S. cerevisiae. Finally we show that a WGD can lead to a fitness increase in environments to which the cells are not yet perfectly adapted. Concluding, we have shown that combining detailed, quantitative modeling with an evolutionary, individual based approach is a promising way to study the evolution of biological systems. This approach has not only given us insight how, from an evolutionary point of view, such systems came about, but also how such systems work. Ignoring the evolutionary aspects of biological systems has, in the case of the lac operon, led to a wrong understanding of the dynamics of the system. Furthermore we have shown that even for such a large scale system as the metabolic network of S. cerevisiae, this approach leads to accurate predictions of the evolutionary outcome.
Temperatura de almacenamiento y cantidad de ARN extraído de plasma materno

The discovery of nucleic acids in maternal plasma unlocked new possibilities for noninvasive prenatal diagnosis. However, the factors affecting the concentration of fetal RNA in maternal plasma samples are unspecified. Here we studied the effect of storage time (15 to 30 days) and temperature (4°C, -20°C and ambient) and of the presence of Trizol on the concentration of RNA in plasma samples taken from pregnant women before their 20th week. Thirty-three RNA samples were extracted from plasma and analyzed by spectrophotometry. The amount of RNA was statistically lower in samples stored at -20°C whereas storage time and the presence or absence of Trizol did not affect RNA level. Temperature affected the concentration of RNA, rather than time and the addition of Trizol. In conclusion, temperature is a key factor in the extraction of RNA, and the freeze-thaw process most likely affects RNA concentrations negatively.
Innate immune cell regulation of metabolic homeostasis

Obesity is an increasingly prevalent disease regulated by genetic and environmental factors. Emerging studies indicate that immune cells, including monocytes, granulocytes and lymphocytes, regulate metabolic homeostasis and are dysregulated in obesity. Group 2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2s) can regulate adaptive immunity and eosinophil and alternatively-activated macrophage responses, and were recently identified in murine white adipose tissue (WAT) where they may act to limit the development of obesity. However, ILC2s have not been identified in human adipose tissue, and the mechanisms by which ILC2s regulate metabolic homeostasis remain unknown. Here, we identify ILC2s in human WAT and demonstrate that decreased ILC2 responses in WAT are a conserved characteristic of obesity in humans and mice. Interleukin (IL)-33 was found to be critical for the maintenance of ILC2s in WAT and in limiting adiposity in mice by increasing caloric expenditure. This was associated with recruitment of uncoupling protein 1 (UCP1)+ beige adipocytes in WAT, a process known as beiging or browning that regulates caloric expenditure. IL-33-induced beiging was dependent on ILC2s, and IL-33 treatment or transfer of IL-33-elicited ILC2s was sufficient to drive beiging independently of the adaptive immune system, eosinophils or IL-4 receptor signaling. We found that ILC2s produce methionine-enkephalin peptides that can act directly on adipocytes to upregulate Ucp1 expression in vitro and that promote beiging in vivo. Collectively, these studies indicate that in addition to responding to infection or tissue damage, ILC2s can regulate adipose function and metabolic homeostasis in part via production of enkephalin peptides that elicit beiging. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Cell & Molecular Biology First Advisor David Artis
The Evolutionary Implications of an Asexual Lifestyle Manifested by Penicillium marneffei

This chapter highlights that a truly comprehensive understanding of the evolution of sexuality in fungi needs to also account for the occurrence of their antithesis, the mitosporic asexual species. Recent work on the spatial population genetics of one such mitosporic species, the biverticilliate mycosis agent Penicillium marneffei, is shedding much-needed light on the processes and consequences of asexuality in fungi. The accumulation of annotated fungal genome projects has shown that almost all species so far examined contain the genes that are necessary for mating processes, pathway signaling, and meiosis. The accumulation of annotated fungal genome projects has shown that almost all species so far examined contain the genes that are necessary for mating processes, pathway signaling, and meiosis. Evolution is a stochastic process and is most often conceptualized by the classic Wright-Fisher model. This model idealizes species as a group of individuals, of population size N, that draw equally, and synchronously, from an infinite pool of gametes, in this manner creating the next generation, N + 1. P. marneffei is a fungus of the family Trichocomaceae that has emerged since 1990 as a significant agent of human mycosis. The fungus causes a disease, P. marneffei, that occurs in immunosuppressed patients. In summary, the author has put forward an argument suggesting that in fungi where sexual reproduction is facultative loss-of-function mutations in mating-type loci will, generally speaking, be selectively neutral.
ACTUALIZACIÓN Y PERSPECTIVAS EN EL DIAGNÓSTICO DEL VIRUS DE LA INFLUENZA AVIAR

El virus de la influenza aviar provoca infeccion, enfermedad y muerte en diferentes especies de aves, ademas ha adquirido la capacidad de propagarse del hospedador aviar a humanos y otros mamiferos, provocando una enfermedad grave. Por ese motivo, existe una gran preocupacion a nivel internacional en la deteccion del virus de la influenza aviar y las estrategias de diagnostico. A pesar que los metodos de laboratorios convencionales son ampliamente usados para el aislamiento e identificacion de los virus y para la deteccion de anticuerpos especificos en todo el mundo, nuevas tecnologias han sido rapidamente desarrolladas. Con el empleo de las herramientas moleculares se puede realizar en un mismo dia de la deteccion, patotipificacion y caracterizacion filogenetica de los virus de influenza obtenidos a partir muestras clinicas.
The “Golden Rule” as a New Financial Management Tool for Local Governments

: The implementation of the so-called “golden rule” regarding the fiscal management of the sub-sector of the local-self-government (LSG) constituted a reaction to the growth of the debt within the sector of public finances and an attempt to curb the LSG deficit. In this manner the Legislator wanted to balance the budget regarding operating revenues and the operating expenditures and to allow for the use of public loans, thus permit-ting the generation of the debt only in regard to capital expenditures. The authors of the article evaluate the validity of introducing the new regulations, subjecting the “golden rule” to a positive critique and forming requirements for changes and improvements based on solutions to this problem utilized in other countries. An empiric data is presented that shows the consequences of overloading the LSG with the effects of the growing level of public debt in a situation when the responsibility for the majority of the debt (more than 90%) rests with the public governance at the government level. The authors also put forth the thesis that the implementation of the more restrictive rules on the central level is also necessary to optimize the entire system of public finances.