Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Anthropogenic suffering of farmed animals: the other side of zoonoses

: Wie bers & Feigin’s (W&F’s) target article warns of the zoonotic threat to human health from factory farming and urges phasing out meat production and consumption, for the benefit of both human and nonhuman animals. This commentary focuses on the physical and emotional suffering of farmed animals. This varies by species, production system and geographic location, but suffering is there throughout all stages of production — breeding, housing, transport, usage and slaughter. Ubiquitous monitoring of all facilities where farmed animals are kept, with surveillance cameras recording all phases of production would help reduce some forms of suffering. Other forms are caused by accidents, disease outbreaks and all the “collateral damage” from factory farming. Nor can efforts to improve the welfare of farmed animals be confined to “merely” minimizing their suffering. Their lives need to be made not just bearabl e but worth living too. It is unrealistic to imagine, however, that all the suffering inflicted on farmed animals by industrial practices and human callousness can be eliminated by efforts to improve their welfare: Welfare measures urgently need to be undertaken and promoted, but they must not be regarded complacently, as if they were a panacea. A panacea would be to phase out animal production, as W&F have proposed, under the imminent zoonotic threat of COVID-19 and its successors.
On Molecular Gelation Mechanism of L-Cysteine Based Hydrogel

A method for preparing a supramolecular hydrogel composed of a mixture of L-cysteine, and silver nitrate is reported. The main features of the hydrogel are gelation at low content of the dispersed phase (~ 0.01%) induced by addition of various salts (sulfates, sulfites, chlorides, bromides, and others) and thixotropic behavior. On the basis of experimental data, the mechanism of gelation is suggested. It is assumed that filament-like aggregates in the system are formed from silver mercaptide zwitterions due to noncovalent bonding as a result of self-assembly processes, addition of a salt leads to physical cross-linking, and gel network formation. An atomistic computer model is developed to confirm the supposed mechanism of gelation. It is established that resulting molecular configurations are stabilized by the interactions of -NH3 + and -C(O)O - groups of silver mercaptide zwitterions comprising neighboring clusters. These assumptions are taken as a basis of a mesoscopic model to study the processes of nucleation and growth of filament-like aggregates on a large spatial scale.
Phenotypic variation and estimation of genetic parameters for plant growth, fruit quality traits and bacterial blight disease resistance in gamma () irradiated seed derived progenies and germplasms of pomegranate (Punica granatum L.)

In order to improve fruit quality traits in a breeding programme, both genetic and environmental effects need to be evaluated. The partitioning of variance and genetic parameters for fruit quality traits and disease resistance were estimated in 475 accessions of pomegranate by considering the effects of genotype, environment and their interactions. The results showed that genotype contributed most to the variance except to leaf thickness, flower length, flower breadth, number of arils per fruit and seed length, Genotype and environment interactions were significant for all traits except for plant spread, leaf thickness, fruit length and rind thickness indicating the influence of environment on the attributes of pomegranate fruit. High heritability, along with genetic advances in days to maturity of fruit, Anthocyanin content, phenolic content, rind thickness, volume of juice, plant spread, plant height and acidity suggested that there were significant additive gene effects for such traits. In general, the genotypic co-efficient variances were lower in magnitude than the corresponding phenotypic co-efficient variances for all traits. The estimates of PCV and GCV were high for fruit weight, total aril weight, number of arils per fruit, volume of juice, hundred aril weight, single aril weight, acidity, anthocyanin, phenolic content and bacterial blight on fruits, indicating greater scope for improvement of these characters by simple selection. High heritability and high genetic advance as percent of mean was observed for days to maturity, plant spread, volume of juice, rind thickness, acidity, phenolic content, anthocyanin content bacterial blight on fruit, stem and disease severity.
Sport commitment profiles of adolescent athletes: relation between health and psychological behaviour.

Introduction Physical activity is one of the key for healthy lifestyle. Many motivational theories tried to understand reasons behind adolescent sport participation; therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate, among adolescent athletes, sport commitment cluster profiles and to examine profile differences in health and psychological variables. Methods Participants were 526 adolescent athletes (M=16.41; SD=1.16) who completed questionnaires of sport commitment, well-being, future orientation, health attitude, and aspirations. Sport Commitment profiles were created by cluster analysis using commitment determinants and MANOVA and ANOVA were used for further analysis. Results The first cluster, labelled as obligatory athletes, showed a profile of obligation dominating sport participation, whereas commitment was not prominent. The second cluster, noncommitted athletes, was characterized by the perception of sport as a negative experience. The third cluster of athletes was labelled enthusiastic athletes who expressed sport as a positive experience. ANOVA analysis examining the group differences on health and psychological variables showed that enthusiastic athletes scored higher on well-being, future goals, and intrinsic aspirations. Obligatory athletes scored significantly higher on extrinsic aspirations and health. Conclusion The cluster analysis showed diverse sport commitment profiles. As it was expected results revealed that Enthusiastic athletes had significantly higher scores on most of the psychological scales. Positive experience of physical activity and sport may have a significant role in life satisfaction and affect the shortand long-term future goals. Our results suggest that athletes who participate in sport only for obligatory reasons are more likely to have extrinsic aspirations. As the age increases, the motivation to sport decreases. More investigations are needed to understand the psychological background of sport motivation, but we believe that our study provides useful information for better understanding of young athletes’ sports participation.
Modeling of Photovoltaic MPPT Lead Acid Battery Charge Controller for Standalone System Applications

This paper presents the circuitry modeling of the solar photovoltaic MPPT lead-acid battery charge controller for the standalone system in MATLAB/Simulink environment. A buck topology is utilized as a DC-DC converter for the charge controller implementation. The maximum power of the photovoltaic panel is tracked by the Perturb and Observe MPPT algorithm. The battery charge controller charges the lead-acid battery using a three-stage charging strategy. The three charging stages include the MPPT bulk charge, constant voltage absorption charge, and float charge stage. The performance analysis of the model is carried out in the following aspects, there are MPPT tracking performance, battery charging performance and overall charge controller efficiency performance are benchmarked with commercial MPPT charge controller for validation. The performance result shows that the MPPT is capable to track to the PV panel maximum point at any solar irradiance variation within 0.5 seconds with maximum power tracking efficiency up to 99.9 %. The three-stage charging strategy also successfully demonstrated. The overall charge controller average efficiency achieved up to 98.3 % which matches many high end commercial solar PV MPPT charge controller product specifications. This validated model contributes to a better sizing of PV panel and battery energy storage for the small and medium standalone PV system.
Patient Tracking in a Multi-Building, Tunnel-Connected Hospital Complex

Patients admitted to Intensive Care Units (ICU) are transported from and to other units. Knowing their location is strategic for a sound planning of intra-hospital transports as well as resources management. This is even more crucial in big hospital complexes, comprised of several buildings often connected through tunnels. In this work, a patient tracking application in a multi-building, tunnel-connected hospital complex (the Hospital Complex of Navarre) is presented. The system leverages Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) communication technologies, such as Long Range Wide-Area Network (LoRaWAN) and Near Field Communication (NFC). The locations of the LoRaWAN nodes were selected based on several factors, including the situation of the tunnels, buildings services and medical equipment and a literature review on intra-hospital ICU patients’ trips. The possible locations of the LoRaWAN gateways were selected based on 3D Ray Launching Simulations, in order to obtain accurate characterization. Once the locations were set, a LoRaWAN radio coverage studio was performed. The main conclusion drawn is that just one LoRaWAN gateway would be enough to cover all overground LoRaWAN nodes deployed. A second one would be required for underground coverage. In addition, a remote, private cloud infrastructure together with a mobile application was created to manage the information generated. On-field tests were performed to assess the technical feasibility of the system. The application provides with on-demand ICU patients’ movement flow around the complex. Although designed for the ICU-admitted patients’ context, the system could be easily extrapolated to other use cases.
Sweet orange genetic transformation with the attacin A gene under the control of phloem-specific promoters and inoculation with Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus

ABSTRACT An alternative approach to control Huanglongbing disease in Citrus is the development of transgenic plants expressing genes that may influence pathogen development. We report herein the production of sweet orange transgenic plants bearing gene constructs containing the antimicrobial gene attacin A (attA) under the control of phloem-specific promoters. Transcripts of the attA gene were accumulated in the transgenic lines bearing the three gene constructs. However, phloem protein 2 promoters drive higher levels of attA mRNA than sucrose transporter 2 promoter. Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus (CLas) were transmitted to transgenic plants via infected Asian citrus psyllid or by grafting infected budwood. The efficiency of CLas transmission via infected psyllids was very low and therefore did not allow evaluating the influence of attA expression on bacteria multiplication. On the other hand, CLas transmission via grafting infected budwood was very efficient. Huanglongbing (HLB) symptoms were detected five months after inoculation in both transgenic and non-transgenic inoculated plants. CLas titers, determined 12 months after inoculation, were similar in both transgenic and non-transgenic inoculated plants. However, non-transgenic inoculated plants showed a significant reduction in shoot development comparing to transgenic inoculated plants indicating that the expression of attA gene may influence the plant tolerance to HLB disease.
Analysis of the Physico-chemical Characteristics of Brewers Spent Grain (BSG)

Brewer’s spent grains are byproducts produced in large quantities from the brewing industry. Characterizing agro-industrial wastes is an important step to add value and increase its viability for various applications. In this experiment, the physico-chemical characteristics of Brewers Spent Grain (Total solids, volatile solids, organic carbon, total nitrogen) were analyzed. (APHA, 1999) standard was used to analyze the characteristics. The results revealed that, BSG has a total and volatile solid content of 94.95 and 90.04 %, respectively. The carbon to nitrogen ratio of brewer’s spent grain was 13.91. After pre-treatment the moisture content and ash content were found to be 5.05% and 10.96% respectively. It was shown that BSG exhibits higher variations according to barley variety, planting time and mashing process in the factories. Keyword : BSG, total solid, volatile solid, Carbon to nitrogen ratio DOI: 10.7176/JNSR/11-18-02 Publication date: September 30 th 2020
Physiology of Paluma guava plants fertilized with potassium and calcium

espanolRESUMEN La guayaba es una planta perenne, de alta preferencia por los consumidores brasilenos y generando esto un crecimiento operacional en su comercio en casi todo el territorio nacional. Nutricionalmente, los nutrientes mas necesarios son nitrogeno, potasio y calcio, con gran participacion en el crecimiento y fisiologia de la guayaba. Teniendo en cuenta lo anterior, el objetivo fue evaluar los efectos de dosis de potasio en el suelo con y sin calcio en la fisiologia de la guayaba con la variedad Paluma. El experimento se realizo en un bloque completamente aleatorizado con arreglo factorial 5 × 2, relativo al suelo con dosis de K2O de 0, 45, 90, 135 y 180 g planta-1 ano-1 y sin y con 120 g planta-1 ano-1 de calcio derivado del nitrato de calcio. Las variables analizadas fueron las tasas de clorofila (a, b, y total) fluorescencia de la clorofila y el intercambio gaseoso. Los resultados fueron sometidos a la prueba por analisis de varianza “F” y las doses de potasio fueron sometidos a analisis de regresion, utilizando el software SAS version 9.3 ©. Las plantas de guayaba fertilizados solamente con el potasio en el suelo, mostraron una mayor tasa de fotosintesis, el uso eficiente del agua y la eficiencia instantanea de carboxilacion. La adicion de calcio y potasio en el suelo aumento los indices de clorofila a, b, total, fluorescencia variable, el maximo rendimiento cuantico de fluorescencia, conductancia estomatica, tasa de transpiracion e concentracion interna de carbono en la planta de guayaba. EnglishABSTRACT Guava is a perennial fruit, highly preferred by the Brazilian consumer and in increasing commercial exploitation in almost all the national territory. The most required nutrients are nitrogen, followed by potassium and calcium with great participation in the growth and physiology of guava. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of potassium doses in the soil without and with calcium in the physiology of Paluma guava plants. The experiment was carried out in a randomized complete block design in a 5 × 2 factorial arrangement, with K2O of 0, 45, 90, 135 and 180 g plant-1 year-1, without and with 120 g plant-1 year-1 calcium from calcium nitrate. The variables analyzed were chlorophyll indices (a, b and total), chlorophyll fluorescence and gas exchange. The results were submitted to analysis of variance by the “F” test and the potassium doses were submitted to regression analysis, using SAS© software version 9.3. Guava plants fertilized with only potassium in the soil had higher photosynthetic rate, water use efficiency and instantaneous carboxylation efficiency. The addition of calcium and potassium to the soil increased chlorophyll a, b, total, variable fluorescence, maximum fluorescence, quantum efficiency, stomatal conductance, transpiration rate and internal carbon concentration in guava.
Distributed MPC for Large Freeway Networks Using Alternating Optimization

The Model Predictive Control (MPC) framework has shown great potential for the control of Variable Speed Limits (VSLs) and Ramp Metering (RM) installations. However, the implementation to large freeway networks remains challenging. One major reason is that, by considering the VSLs to be discrete decision variables, an extremely difficult Mixed Integer Nonlinear Programming (MINLP) optimization problem has to be solved within every controller sampling interval. Consequently, many related papers relax the MINLP problems by considering the VSLs to be continuous variables. This paper proposes two novel MPC algorithms for coordinated control of discrete VSLs and continuous RM rates that do not make this relaxation. The proposed algorithms use a distributed control architecture and an alternating optimization scheme to relax the MINLP optimization problems but still consider the VSLs as discrete variables and, hence, offer a trade-off between computational complexity and system performance. The performance of the proposed algorithms is evaluated in a case study. The case study shows that relaxing the VSLs to be continuous variables with a distributed architecture results in a significant performance loss. Furthermore, both proposed algorithms have a lower computational complexity than the more conventional centralized approach and, as a result, they do manage to solve all optimization problems within the sampling intervals. Moreover, one of the proposed algorithms has a system performance that is remarkably similar to the optimal performance of the centralized approach.
Influencing Parameters on Discharge Bearing Currents in Inverter-Fed Induction Motors

This article investigates discharge bearing currents in inverter-fed electric motors. Industrial reports indicate that among prevalent bearing failures, bearing currents are one of the influent drivers leading to a variety of tribological issues and premature wear in bearings. While the root-causes of bearing currents have been extensively reported over the years, the response of bearing under voltage stress and the factors that influence bearing endangerment through electric discharges have been far less studied. An online measurement of the bearing voltage is proposed on a motor test-bench to estimate both the discharge activity and the energy of the discharges. The designed test bed allows reproduction of representative bearing currents leading to electrical micropitting. This paper presents extensive measurements results that highlight the critical operating conditions and parameters that worsen the discharge phenomenon inside bearings. Testing protocols are performed to quantify the influence of each parameter separately. While the bearing voltage magnitude play a significant role in the discharge phenomenon, other parameters such as successive startups, bearing temperature, and type of grease deserve appropriate investigations to avoid or mitigate the well-known shortened bearing life under inverter operation.
Tag Propagation and Cost-Sensitive Learning for Music Auto-Tagging

The performance of music auto-tagging depends on the quality of training data. In practice, the links between songs and tags in the manually labeled training data can be incorrect (false positive) or missing (false negative). In this paper, we propose a cost-sensitive tag propagation learning method to improve auto-tagging. Specifically, we exploit music context to determine similar songs and propagate tags between them. Both propagated tags and original tags are used to optimize the auto-tagging models, and cost-sensitivity is incorporated into the loss function to enhance the robustness by adjusting the weight of relevant (positive) links with respect to irrelevant (negative) links. The proposed method is tested on three auto-tagging models: 2D-CNN, CRNN, and SampleCNN. The Million Song Dataset is used for training, and four music contexts, artist, playlist, tag, and listener, are used for song similarity measurement. The experimental results show 1) The proposed method can successfully improve the performance of the three auto-tagging models, 2) The cost-sensitive loss function helps reduce the impact of missing tags, and 3) The artist music context is more powerful for tag propagation than the other three music contexts.
Development of Plant Research

The first article is by Saleh B et al [1]. Correlation between 2 plant hormone Abscisic acid (ABA) and hydroxy acid (SA) accumulation and transcript pattern of VvNHX1, VvABF1, VvAREB2, VvCBF4 and VvOSM1 genes concerned in grapevine (Vitis vinifera grape L.) adaptation against a pair of dS/m brine treatment for one,3 and five days exposure has been assessed in Baladi and Halawani cultivars and B41 rootstock grapevine. information discovered that VvNHX1, VvABF1, VvAREB2 and VvCBF4 transcript patterns were closely connected with activation of ABA level in Halawani cv. Whereas, VvABF1 and VvAREB2 transcript patterns were closely connected with activation of ABA level in Baladi cv. While, VvNHX1, VvABF1 and VvCBF4 transcript patterns were closely connected with activation of ABA level in B41 rootstock.
Risk Factors of Mortality of Hospitalised Adult Burn Patients a Malawian Tertiary Hospital Burns Unit

Introduction Malawi has the highest rates of mortality directly or indirectly associated with burn injuries in Southern Africa. There is however no published literature on risk factors of mortality among adult patients. Methods We conducted a retrospective cross sectional audit records of patients admitted at the burns unit of Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (QECH) between the years 2007 and 2017. Death due to burns was our outcome of interest. We collected patient data including demographic information, details of the burn injury and its management and determined how these factors were associated with the risk of death using Person Chi square tests in a univariate analysis and likelihood ratio tests in a multivariate logistic regression model. We also determined the odds ratios of death within the categories of the risk factors after adjusting for important variables using a logistic regression model. Results An analysis of 500 burns patient records showed that 132(26.4%) died during the 10-year period. The lethal area for 50% of burns (LA50) was 28.75% and mortality reached 100% at 40% total burn surface area. The following variables were found to be significantly associated with mortality after controlling for confounders: scalds (OR 0.13; 95% CI 0.05-0.33; <0.0001), increasing total burn surface area (p<0.0001), time lapse to hospital presentation between 48 hours and one week(OR 0.27; 95%CI 0.11-0.68; <0.0001), inhalation burns (OR 5.2; 95% CI 2.0-13.3 p 0.0004) and length of hospital stay greater than two months (OR 0.04 95, CI 0.01-0.15; P<0.0001). Conclusions Risk factors for mortality are connected by their association with post-burn hypermetabolism. Further studies to are needed to identify the best and cost-effective ways of preventing death in burn patients.