Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Chemical composition and antimicrobial activity of crude, aqueous, ethanol extracts and essential oils of Dysphania ambrosioides (L.) Mosyakin & Clemants

Abstract Crude, aqueous, ethanol extracts and essential oils of aerial parts of Dysphania ambrosioides were investigated for their in vitro antimicrobial properties. The plant was collected from Agouray village near Meknès city of Morocco. D. ambrosioides is widely used as traditional folk medicine in Morocco. The main components in the oil were? -terpinene (61.04%), 4-carene (13.55%) and p- cymene (12.94%). The antimicrobial activity was evaluated against 12 microorganisms using the disc—diffusion assay, well in agar method, minimal inhibition concentration (MIC) and minimal bactericidal concentration (MBC) values. The different extracts tested had no antimicrobial effect against the test microorganisms whereas the essential oil had inhibitory effects on the growth of bacteria, yeasts and fungi.
MultiQT: Multimodal learning for real-time question tracking in speech

We address a challenging and practical task of labeling questions in speech in real time during telephone calls to emergency medical services in English, which embeds within a broader decision support system for emergency call-takers. We propose a novel multimodal approach to real-time sequence labeling in speech. Our model treats speech and its own textual representation as two separate modalities or views, as it jointly learns from streamed audio and its noisy transcription into text via automatic speech recognition. Our results show significant gains of jointly learning from the two modalities when compared to text or audio only, under adverse noise and limited volume of training data. The results generalize to medical symptoms detection where we observe a similar pattern of improvements with multimodal learning.
Multiple Scattering Theory for Strong Scattering Heterogeneous Elastic Continua with Triaxial Inhomogeneities: Theoretical Fundamentals and Applications

The geometry of mesoscopic inhomogeneities plays an important role in determining the macroscopic propagation behaviors of elastic waves in a heterogeneous medium. Non-equiaxed inhomogeneities can lead to anisotropic wave velocity and attenuation. Developing an accurate scattering theory to describe the quantitative relation between the microstructure features and wave propagation parameters is of fundamental importance for seismology and ultrasonic nondestructive characterization. This work presents a multiple scattering theory for strongly scattering elastic media with general tri-axial heterogeneities. A closed analytical expression of the shape-dependent singularity of the anisotropic Green’s tensor for the homogeneous reference medium is derived by introducing a proper non-orthogonal ellipsoidal coordinate. Renormalized Dyson’s equation for the coherent wave field is then derived with the help of Feynman’s diagram technique and the first-order-smoothing approximation. The exact dispersion curves and the inverse Q-factors of coherent waves in several representative medium models for the heterogeneous lithosphere are calculated numerically. Numerical results for small-scale heterogeneities with the aspect ratio varying from 1 to 7 show satisfactory agreement with those obtained from real earthquakes. The results for velocity dispersion give rise to a novel explanation to the formation mechanism of different seismic phases. The new model has potential applications in seismology and ultrasonic microstructure characterization.
A Joint Framework for Inductive Representation Learning and Explainable Reasoning in Knowledge Graphs

Despite their large-scale coverage, existing cross-domain knowledge graphs invariably suffer from inherent incompleteness and sparsity, necessitating link prediction that requires inferring a target entity, given a source entity and a query relation. Recent approaches can broadly be classified into two categories: embedding-based approaches and path-based approaches. In contrast to embedding-based approaches, which operate in an uninterpretable latent semantic vector space of entities and relations, path-based approaches operate in the symbolic space, making the inference process explainable. However, traditionally, these approaches are studied with static snapshots of the knowledge graphs, severely restricting their applicability for dynamic knowledge graphs with newly emerging entities. To overcome this issue, we propose an inductive representation learning framework that is able to learn representations of previously unseen entities. Our method finds reasoning paths between source and target entities, thereby making the link prediction for unseen entities interpretable and providing support evidence for the inferred link.
Biological Characterization of the Omp1-like Protein from Actinobacillus actinomycetemcomitans

Actinobacillus actinomycetemcomitans is a gram-negative, nonmotile coccobacillus bacterium that is associated with several human diseases, including endocarditis, meningitis, osteomyelitis, subcutaneous abscesses and periodontal diseases. A full-length Omp1-like protein gene from A. actinomycetemcomitans was cloned into a pQE30 vector and overexpressed in Escherichia coli BL21(DE3) cells. The protein revealed sequence homologies to Seventeen kilodalton proteins (Skp) from Pasteurella multocida and E. coli that have been characterized as periplasmic chaperones. This soluble Omp1-like protein was successfully purified to homogeneity for further folding and functional studies. The purity, identity, and conformation of the protein were determined using sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization mass spectrometry, circular dichroism, fluorescence spectroscopic, and differential scanning calorimetric studies. We showed that the protein formed an oligomer larger than a tetramer. We found, further, that it is comprised of mostly α-helices and boasts high thermal stability.
Variations in fecundity with age and environment in olive baboons (Papio anubis)

Ten years of reproductive data on a troop of savanna baboons (Papio anubis) demonstrated that females had an age‐specific fecundity pattern similar to that of other mammals. Average yearly fecundity has also varied over the period of study and can be explained by variations in food abundance with interspecific competition from ungulate competitors, rather than by female age structure or density‐dependent factors. The implications of age‐specific fecundity for primate ecology, behavior, reproduction, and life‐history strategies are discussed. The need to consider primate ecology within a broader community framework which includes human activity is also considered.
Flow-Partitionable Signed Graphs

The NP-hard problem of correlation clustering is to partition a signed graph such that the number of conflicts between the partition and the signature of the graph is minimized. This paper studies graph signatures that allow the optimal partition to be found efficiently. We define the class of flow-partitionable signed graphs, which have the property that the standard linear programming relaxation based on so-called cycle inequalities is tight. In other words, flow-partitionable signed graphs satisfy an exact max-multiflow-min-multicut relation in the associated instances of minimum multicut. In this work we propose to characterize flow-partitionable signed graphs in terms of forbidden minors. Our initial results include two infinite classes of forbidden minors, which are sufficient if the positive subgraph is a circuit or a tree. For the general case we present another forbidden minor and point out a connection to open problems in the theory of ideal clutters.
African Savannas: Global Narratives and Local Knowledge of Environmental Change

Thomas J. Bassett and Donald Crummey, eds. African Savannas: Global Narratives and Local Knowledge of Environmental Change. Oxford: James Currey/Portsmouth, N.H. : Heinemann, 2003. xvii + 270 pp. Photographs. Figures. Tables. Bibliography. Index. $27.95. Paper. African Savannas is the result of a five-year collaborative project between researchers at the Center for African Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and researchers in Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, and Mozambique. Drawing on the perspectives of both scientific and social scientific disciplines, the project investigated environmental change in the savanna, an ecological zone covering about half of the continent. Following in the steps of recent scholarly work on African environments, the resulting research challenges the pervasive image of environmental degradation and devastation. The authors, however, have no interest in painting a rosy picture of environmental change in the twentieth century; stress and the struggles surrounding modifications in land usage are central to each of the cases examined, as is the knowledge of African herders and farmers and their management of the environment. The essays cover such key issues as the use of fire (Bassett, Bi, and Ouattara on northern Cote d'Ivoire), investment in soil quality (Gray on southwestern Burkina Faso), and tree planting (Crummey and Winter-Nelson on Wallo, Ethiopia, and Saul, Ouadba and Bognounou on western Burkina Faso). Each combines a historical perspective with careful analysis of more recent changes and considers the multiple factors affecting land usage: commercialization, migration, and government policies regarding land titling, hunting, or conservation, to name but a few. Bassett and Crummey's excellent introduction offers an overview of current themes in studies of environmental change: the trend away from an equilibrium to a nonequilibrium model of environmental change; challenges to the master narratives of deforestation and desertification; and the increasing emphasis on nuanced studies of how farmers and herders understand, shape, and manage the landscape. A fuller understanding of environmental change, Bassett and Crummey argue, will only emerge if scholars adopt a wide variety of scientific and social-scientific methodologies that are able to assess landscape change from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives. Distorted master narratives and poor environmental policy have resulted in part from inadequate information. The frequent lack of solid empirical data makes interdisciplinary methodologies all the more important. But as Little argues in a chapter on pastoralism in East Africa, interdisciplinarity can be hard to achieve. …
Phylogeography and genetic characteristics of a putative secondary-contact zone of the loggerhead shrike in central and eastern North America

The loggerhead shrike (Lanius ludovicianus) is found throughout North America in grassland and open scrub habitats. We previously described four loggerhead shrike management units found in central and eastern North America within the geographic ranges of three subspecies, L. l. migrans, L. l. ludovicianus, and L. l. excubitorides. A contact zone has been suggested to occur between L. l. migrans and L. l. excubitorides. The present study uses mitochondrial DNA sequence data to explore historical, ecological, and geographical factors that may have played a role in the genetic differentiation of these four management units, and examines the evidence for and characteristics of the migransexcubitorides contact zone. Geographically discrete, monophyletic clades were not evident, but the distribution of haplotypes (especially those exceeding 10% overall frequency) indicated some phylogeographic structure that perhaps reflects an intermediate stage of differentiation between paraphyly and reciprocal monophyly. T.
Interpretation of Intraspecific Life History Patterns: Evidence from Columbian Ground Squirrels

In populations of Columbian ground squirrels in the Rocky Mountains of southwestern Alberta, life history patterns consistently differ at different elevations. At present, these differences are not appropriately explained by the traditional models of life history evolution, r- and K-selection and bet-hedging. Nor do more-recent models based on the interspecific scaling of body weight appear to be appropriate. To explain different life history patterns of the ground squirrels, we present a simple qualitative hypothesis that invokes phenotypically plastic responses to the limitation of demonstrably influential environmental resources (food, and its availability) and to other environmental factors that may influence the acquisition and expenditure of resources. The principal strength of this resource-limitation hypothesis (and other hypotheses based on environmental factors influencing patterns of life history within species) is that it does not invoke genic differences among populations, though it need not preclude the influence of such differences. Because evidence indicates substantial plasticity in the life history patterns of ground squirrels and other vertebrates, different life history patterns within species might result from different phenotypic expressions of similar genotypes, either with or without different genotypic adaptations to different environments.
Changes in long-term no-till corn growth and yield under different rates of stover mulch.

Received for publication January 4, 2006. Removal of corn (Zea mays L.) stover for biofuel production may affect crop yields by altering soil properties. A partial stover removal may be feasible, but information on appropriate rates of removal is unavailable. We assessed the short-term impacts of stover management on long-term no-till (NT) continuous corn grown on a Rayne silt loam (fine loamy, mixed, active, mesic Typic Hapludults) at Coshocton, Hoytville clay loam (fine, illitic, mesic Mollic Epiaqualfs) at Hoytville, and Celina silt loam (fine, mixed, active, mesic Aquic Hapludalfs) at South Charleston in Ohio, and predicted corn yield from soil properties using principal component analysis (PCA). The study was conducted in 2005 on the ongoing experiments started in May 2004 under 0 (T0), 25 (T25), 50 (T50), 75 (T75), 100 (T100), and 200 (T200)% of stover corresponding to 0, 1.25, 2.50, 3.75, 5.00, and 10.00 Mg ha-1 of stover, respectively. Stover removal promoted early emergence and rapid seedling growth (P < 0.01). Early-emerging plants grew taller than late-emerging plants up to about 50 d, and then the heights reversed at Coshocton and were comparable at other two sites. Stover management affected corn yield only at the Coshocton site where averagemore » grain and stover yields in the T200, T100, T75, and T50 (10.8 and 10.3 Mg ha-1) were higher than those in the T0 and T25 treatments (8.5 and 6.5 Mg ha-1) (P < 0.01), showing that stover removal at rates as low as 50% (2.5 Mg ha-1) decreased crop yields. Soil properties explained 71% of the variability in grain yield and 33% of the variability in stover yield for the Coshocton site. Seventeen months after the start of the experiment, effects of stover management on corn yield and soil properties were site-specific. « less
BLACKPOINT INCIDENCE ON DURUM WHEAT IN ARGENTINA: INFLUENCE OF CULTIVAR AND LOCATION

Blackpoint is characterised by a brown to black discoloration of wheat kernels and occurs in all the major wheat growing regions of the world. This disease is caused primarily by either Alternaria alternata or Bipolaris sorokiniana. Subproducts from diseased durum grains contain undesirable black specks that cause downgrading on the quality. From trials in 5 locations of southern Buenos Aires Province, samples of wheat grains were analysed to determine the effect of cultivar and location on the natural incidence of blackpoint and to identify the organisms associated with the disease. Incidence (% of discoloured grains) was recorded on samples of 200 kernels per treatment and seed health testing was carried out using the "blotter test" method. A. alternata was found in most of the samples analysed, followed by B. sorokiniana, the latter showing very low infection levels. Other organisms were also found. Disease incidence differed between years and locations and none of the cultivars was completely free of .
Taxonomic Studies on a Radio-resistant Pseudomonas

A radio-resistant Pseudomonas has been isolated from samples of normal unpolished and commercial rice grains. This species could be classified in chromogenic group of genus Pseudomonas. It’s taxonomic characteristics were found to be sufficiently different from all the described species in this genus to warrant it’s description as a new species and was named as Pseudomonas radiora nov. sp.The radio-resistance of this species was 10 to 40 times higher than that of ordinary species in the genus Pseudomonas such as Ps. fluorescens. The dose at D10 value of the strain No. O-l was ca. 0.14 Mrad, which is similar to that of the Micrococcus radiodurans, and that of the strain No. RP-C was ca. 0.06 Mrad in m/15 phosphate buffer.
Early detection of resistance to tebufenozide in field populations of Cydia pomonella L.: methods and mechanisms

Abstract: Four populations of codling moth Cydia pomonella L. were collected as overwintering larvae from apple orchards with different pesticide pressure (S. Michele, Roncafort, Revò and Vervò) in the Trento province (northern Italy). Mortality rate caused by a predetermined discriminating concentration of tebufenozide topically applied on overwintering larvae was evaluated. Neonate F1 progeny of the same populations were assayed for susceptibility to tebufenozide by feeding them on thinning apples treated with an appropriate discriminating dose of the insecticide. The activities of the main enzyme systems involved in the detoxification of insecticides were also evaluated in each population and related to their susceptibility to tebufenozide. The topical test detected a significant loss in susceptibility to tebufenozide in two populations, S. Michele and Roncafort, while all the overwintering larvae collected in the orchards of Revò and Vervò died when treated topically with the discriminating concentration. The apple‐dipping test performed on the neonate larvae showed a highly significant reduction in the susceptibility of the two populations of S. Michele and Roncafort. A less significant reduction in mortality rate was found in the Revò population; however, no statistical difference was found between the Vervò population and the susceptible reference. None of the four field populations significantly differed from the susceptible strain for Glutathione‐S‐transferase and esterase activity. A significantly higher frequency of individuals of the S. Michele and Roncafort populations exhibited a higher mixed function oxidase activity than the susceptible strain. The small resistance ratio values found for the two populations together with the low frequency of individuals exibiting enhanced enzymatic activity, reveals that the selection process was still at the early stage. Because of its efficiency in early detection of resistance to tebufenozide, topical application on diapausing larvae can thus be considered an appropriate, simple and robust tool for implementing resistance monitoring programmes for tebufenozide.
Protonmotive force‐driven synthesis of ATP during methane formation from molecular hydrogen and formaldehyde or carbon dioxide in Methanosarcina barkeri

Abstract Methane formation from formaldehyde and H2 or from carbon dioxide and H2, as performed by cell suspensions of Methanosarcina barkeri, was coupled to ATP synthesis. In correspondence with this, methane formation was inhibited by N,N′-dicyclohexylcarbodiimide (DCCD), which at the same time, caused a decrease of the intracellular ATP concentration but only a slow decrease of the membrane potential. Addition of the uncoupler tetrachlorosalicylanilide (TCS) led to a relief of the inhibition of methane formation from CH2O + H2, but not from CO2 + H2.
Experimental and Numerical Investigation of the Catalytic Gas Carburization of Steel

The carbon surface saturation process of the steel plates during the catalytic gas carburization was under consideration. The rate of the carburization was determined, as well as the hardness of the diffusion layer, after quenching. A mathematical model based on experimental and numerical modeling data had been obtained. The carbon concentration profile of the surface layer was estimated depending on the carburization process parameters. A simplified simulation technique of the steel carburization was proposed.
Physical and Mechanical Characterization of Polyvinyl Alcohol Nanocomposite Made from Cellulose Nanofibers

A method using a combination of acid hydrolysis and ultrasonic homogenize were developed to obtain the CNF (cellulose nanofibers) from agave cantala fibers. Acid hydrolysis method able to produce the CNF with a diameter around of 45-50 nm, which can investigated by transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The homogenize mixing method between CNF 5 wt% colloidal and 3 wt% PVA (polyvinyl alcohol) with magnetic stirrer 350 RPM, at temperature of 50 °C, for 30 minutes followed by ultrasonic homogenizer has been causing CNF well distributed in the PVA matrix. PVA/CNF nanocomposites film was prepared by solution casting technique. Physical properties test by x-ray diffraction (XRD) and fourier transform infrared (FTIR) shows highly crystalline of CNF which indicates improvements the mechanical properties of PVA/CNF nanocomposite film. The tensile stress and elongation at break of PVA/CNF nanocomposite film were increased by 55 % and 137 %.
Comparison of the effectiveness of two methods for releasing Harmonia axyridis (Pallas) (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae) against Aphis gossypii Glover (Homoptera: Aphididae) on cucumbers in a greenhouse

The control of Aphis gossypii on cucumbers was evaluated by releasing egg mass sheets or flightless adults of Harmonia axyridis. In experiment one, 1, 5 and 10 egg mass sheets per plant in each greenhouse were released only one time. The density of aphids in the greenhouses receiving egg mass sheets of H. axyridis was lower than that without the sheets. Within 5 days after release, the greenhouses receiving 5 egg mass sheets and 10 egg mass sheets per plant showed reduction of aphid densities to less than 1% of that without the sheets. In experiment 2, five egg mass sheets and 5 flightless adults per plant were released in each greenhouse three times at about one week intervals. The density of aphids in greenhouses receiving flightless adults showed fluctuations to a lower level than in the greenhouses receiving egg mass sheets.
Cavitation Erosion-Corrosion Behavior of Fe-Cr Steel Induced by Ultrasonic Vibration

A resistance of cavitation erosion-corrosion of the AISI 420 martensitic stainless steel was evaluated in this study. The cavitation resistance of this stainless steel has been examined using an ultrasonic vibratory method by applying water-voltage combination effect. The curves of cumulative material loss and erosion rate were attained and discussed. In addition, surface topography and scanning electron microscope (SEM) micrographs have been utilized to characterize the eroded surface after the cavitation test. The results have been compared with previously obtained results for the AISI 1040 steel. The cavitation results showed that the AISI 420 steel has exhibited the better resistance to cavitation comparing with the AISI 1040 steel under the similar test conditions. The total cumulative material loss of the AISI 420 was approximately three times less than that of the AISI 1040. Surface topography and SEM micrographs showed that the severity of damage of the AISI 1040 was found to be a higher compared to that of the AISI 420 steel.