Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of Heat Stress on Inter-relationship of Physiological and Biochemical Traits with Grain Yield in Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)

Heat stress, particularly the stress appears at the time of flowering to grain filling stages causing severe yield loss in wheat. Heat tolerance is complex phenomena that include adjustment in morphological, physiological and biochemical traits of the crop. Present investigation was carried out to understand the effect of terminal heat stress on different traits of wheat. The experiment was conducted in three dates of sowing as timely sown, late sown and very late sown to expose the crop to heat stress at later stages of the crop growth. Significant genetic variations for all the traits evaluated under three conditions indicated the presence of variability for the traits. Trait association analysis revealed that flag leaf chlorophyll content and MSI at seedling stage; MDA at reproductive stage had direct relationship with grain yield. While under very late sown condition MDA and RWC Original Research Article Kumari et al.; CJAST, 39(19): 19-29, 2020; Article no.CJAST. 57810 20 at seedling stages were found to be highly correlated with grain yield. It indicates that MDA, RWC at seedling stage and days to booting, days to milking plays important role in very late sown condition that can be used as selection criteria in breeding programme.
Entity Type Recognition - Dealing with the Diversity of Knowledge

Semantic Heterogeneity is the problem that arises when multiple resources present differences in how they represent the same real-world phenomenon. In KR, an early approach was the development of ontologies and, later on, when ontologies showed at the knowledge level the same semantic heterogeneity that they were meant to fix at the data level, to compute mappings among them. In this paper we acknowledge the impossibility of avoiding semantic heterogeneity, this being a consequence of the more general phenomenon of the diversity of the world and of the world descriptions. In this perspective, the heterogeneity of ontologies is a feature (and not a bug to be fixed by aligning them) which gives the possibility to use the most suitable ontology in any given application context. The main contributions of this paper are: (i) a novel articulation of the problem of semantic heterogeneity, as it appears at the knowledge level, as contextuality, (ii) its qualitative and quantitative formalization in terms of a set of diversity and unity metrics and (iii) an Entity Type Recognition algorithm which selects the contextually most appropriate ontology and exploits it to solve the current problem, e.g., the alignment and integration of a set of input schemas. The experimental results show the validity of the approach.
Nanoparticles in aqueous environments : a physicochemical and ecotoxicological study of cerium dioxide

The unique properties which make cerium dioxide (ceria) nanoparticles (NPs) so useful in e.g. catalytic applications, pose a real risk to environmental systems and species alike. Increasing our knowledge of ceria NP characteristics in a range of aquatic systems was a contributing theme of this thesis. Nano-ceria particle sizes (dH) were found to significantly change due to adjustments in media composition. The addition of Suwannee River fulvic acid to an aquatic media decreased dH up to 88%, significantly increased the negative charge measured from zeta potential (ζ) and increased Ce dissolution by 2%. The presence of test biota significantly increased dH up to 80%, further increased the ζ negative charge and increased Ce dissolution up to 63%, predicted as being due to the presence of exudates. Nanotoxicological investigations using P. subcapitata showed a convincing size-dependent toxicity to well-defined synthesized nanoceria particles. EC50 values of 5 nm to 35 nm ceria particles (0.013 mgL to 0.8 mgL respectively) showed between 600 and 10 fold increases in toxic response compared to commercial nano-ceria particles (EC50 8 mgL). EC50 of 5 nm and 35 nm ceria particles showed significant metabolic differences compared to controls indicating a cellular response of P. subcapitata as a function of nano-ceria size and dose. Although metabolomic extraction methods are sensitive to cell density and temperature changes, metabolomic analysis has huge potential in future environmental nanoecotoxicological applications using P. subcapitata. It was evident from this study that further work is still required to help develop methods of NP characterisations under environmental conditions with a necessity for a future NP modelling protocol.
Defining and Quantifying Intermittency in the Power Sector

The lack of a systematic definition of intermittency in the power sector blurs the use of this term in the public debate: the same power source can be described as stable or intermittent, depending on the standpoint of the authors. This work tackles a quantitative definition of intermittency adapted to the power sector, linked to the nature of the source, and not to the current state of the energy mix or the production predictive capacity. A quantitative indicator is devised, discussed and graphically depicted. A case study is illustrated by the analysis of the 2018 production data in France and then developed further to evaluate the impact of two methods often considered to reduce intermittency: aggregation and complementarity between wind and solar productions.
Effect of Modified Aspirin and Isoxsuprine Analogs on Ischemic Heart Disease

Ischemic heart disease (IHD) or coronary artery disease (CAD) is one of the largest death-causing reasons in developing countries. Approximately, every year 15 million deaths due to IHD are reported worldwide. PLG (Plasminogen), PCSK9 (Proprotein Convertase Subtilisin/Kexin type 9), CXCL12 (C-X-C Motif Chemokine Ligand 12), and EDNRA (Endothelin Receptor type A) genes were selected for the study due to their higher rate of mutations in IHD. Drugs that are being used to cure IHD were reformulated by structurally modifying them for repurposing. Reformulated drugs were further analyzed for side effects, toxicity, and ADMET (Absorption, Distribution, Metabolism, Excreation, Toxicity) properties. Molecular docking studies of reformulated drugs with selected genes were performed to determine their efficacy to cure IHD. Interacting amino acid residues in the docked complex of aspirin were identified as Aspartic acid, Arginine, Tyrosine, Proline, Valine, Alanine, Threonine, Iso Leusine, Lysine, Triptophan, Aspargine, Histadine, Cystine. Similarly, for isoxsuprine the residues were Valine, Aspargine, Leucine, Argining, Iso Leucine, Glutamic acid, Lysine, Glycine, Proline, Threonine, Aspartic acid, Histadine and Arginine. In reformulated compounds, the addition of sulfur in the aspirin compound reduced the toxicity from class 3 to class 5 and in isoxsuprine, the addition of nitrogen hydrogen bond in the second aromatic ring reduced its toxicity from class 3 to class 4. It is suggested that both aspirin and isoxsuprine analogs are more effective having least predicted side effects and toxicities than already existing aspirin and isoxsuprine. In the future, these drugs can be used as potential drugs for the treatment of IHD than original drugs because of their low toxicity and side effects. This study can be validated in vitro to confirm its efficacy.
Isolating changed panels and estimating common change point after sequential detection with FDR control

Abstract Quick detection of common changes is critical in sequential monitoring of multi-stream data where a common change is referred as a change that only occurs in a portion of panels. After a common change is detected by using a SR-SUM procedure, we compare the CUSUM and EWMA methods in terms of FDR and FNR after a common change is detected. The BH-type procedure is used for both CUSUM processes and EWMA processes at the detection time to isolate the changed panels with the control of FDR (False Discovery Rate). The numerical results show that the FNR for the CUSUM method is smaller than that for the EWMA method. Also the CUSUM method has the advantage that the common change point is conveniently estimated after isolation. To reduce the FNR, the tightened FDR control procedure is considered by using the estimated number of changed panels. Further, the estimated number of changed panels can also be used to identify whether the alarm is true or false.
Nutraceutical potential of three wild edible mushrooms Lycoperdon pyriforme, Arimillaria tabescens and Agaricus bisporus available in the foothills of Eastern Ghats near Ponnai, Vellore District

The present study was carried out to evaluate the nutritional and medicinal properties of wild grown mushrooms collected from foothills of Eastern Ghats hills near Ponnai Village at Vellore District, Tamilnadu, India. A vast screening study conducted to identify the edible and non-edible mushroom in these regions showed three mushroom species such as Lycoperdon pyriforme, Arimillaria tabescens, Agaricus bisporus were prominent distributed when compared to the other mushrooms. Hence, the nutritional and nutraceuticals value of these all three wild mushroom species were analysed and reported herein. The carbohydrate contents in these mushroom ranged from 20.34±1.8-31.46±2.6(g/100g). The protein content was ranged from 15.28±1.3 - 25.32±1.8 (g/100g), fat were ranged from 2.7±0.21- 3.4±0.21 (g/100g) and fibres were ranged from 14.39±1.1- 21.37±1.9 (g/100g). The moisture was ranged between 85.4±7.4%-90.68±8.3percent and ash content was ranged from 4.8±1.4 - 6.4±0.8 (g/100g). The essential amino acids content were ranged from 05.5-50.8mg/g in Lycoperdon pyriforme, 06.7-60.4mg/g in Arimillaria tabescens and 03.6-67.1mg/g in Agaricus bisporus respectively. The vitamins B1, B2, B3, B6, B7, B9, B12, C, D2 and D4 levels analysed and their ranges were from 0.0064±0.00050-5.1±0.53 mg/100g in all three mushrooms. The lowest concentrations were observed in vitamin D4 and highest levels in B9. The minerals level were ranged from 0.3-815mg/100g (Lycoperdon pyriforme), 0.7-690mg/100 (Arimillaria tabescens) and 0.6-734 (Arimillaria tabescens). In all three mushrooms the minimum levels were observed for Iron (Fe) content and maximum levels were for Phosphorous (P) content.
The Impact of Supplier Involvement in Product Development on Supply Chain Risks and Supply Chain Resilience

Nowadays, the aspects of managing risks and building resilience are crucial for maintaining the continuity of business processes. Therefore, it is highly valuable to recognize those aspects that support such activities. The main purpose of this article is to investigate whether supplier involvement in product development (SIPD) affects the degree of supply chain risk and thus, indirectly impacts supply chain resilience. The study is based on a survey conducted among 500 manufacturing companies, from which several hypotheses have been defined and tested. This allowed the verification of a theoretical model covering the following three research areas: supplier involvement in product development, supply chain risks and supply chain resilience. In particular, the study confirmed that implementation of partnership practices during SIPD positively influences supply risk reduction, while extensive communication during SIPD minimizes operational risk for a company, i.e. risk of human failures and inadequate or failed internal processes. Subsequently, the positive impact of reduced operational risk on SCRES has also been confirmed.
MAGMA: inference of sparse microbial association networks

Microorganisms often live in symbiotic relationship with their environment and they play a central role in many biological processes. They form a complex system of interacting species. Within the gut micro-biota these interaction patterns have been shown to be involved in obesity, diabetes and mental disease. Understanding the mechanisms that govern this ecosystem is therefore an important scientific challenge. Recently, the acquisition of large samples of microbiota data through metabarcoding or metagenomics has become easier. Until now correlation-based network analysis and graphical modelling have been used to identify the putative interaction networks formed by the species of microorganisms, but these methods do not take into account all features of microbiota data. Indeed, correlation-based network cannot distinguish between direct and indirect correlations and simple graphical models cannot include covariates as environmental factors that shape the microbiota abundance. Furthermore, the compositional nature of the microbiota data is often ignored or existing normalizations are often based on log-transformations, which is somewhat arbitrary and therefore affects the results in unknown ways. We have developed a novel method, called MAGMA, for detecting interactions between microbiota that takes into account the noisy structure of the microbiota data, involving an excess of zero counts, overdispersion, compositionality and possible covariate inclusion. The method is based on Copula Gaus-sian graphical models whereby we model the marginals with zero-inflated negative binomial generalized linear models. The inference is based on an efficient median imputation procedure combined with the graphical lasso. We show that our method beats all existing methods in recovering microbial association networks in an extensive simulation study. Moreover, the analysis of two 16S microbial data studies with our method reveals interesting new biology. MAGMA is implemented as an R-package and is freely available at https://gitlab.com/arcgl/rmagma, which also includes the scripts used to prepare the material in this paper.
Measuring the intensity of innovation in the Brazilian food sector: a DEA-Malmquist approach

Purpose This study aims to measure the intensity of innovation in the Brazilian food sector and compares it to other manufacturing sectors in the country. Design/methodology/approach The authors used economic and financial data provided by the annual survey of industry [Pesquisa Industrial Anual (PIAs), in Portuguese] and other supporting data provided by the survey of innovation [Pesquisa de Inovação (PINTEC), in Portuguese] and the classification of technology intensity (TI) proposed by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. The authors subsequently applied the Malmquist index in addition to the data envelopment analysis to measure innovation. Findings The results reveal that the Brazilian food sector is classified as a sector with low TI and investment in research and development (R&D), which represents one of the lowest rates when compared to other sectors. Thus, the Brazilian food sector is far from achieving its full potential. Nevertheless, the authors noticed that the sugar refinery industry showed an evolution in its technology frontier and presented a frequency of innovation similar to the average of high-tech industries. Originality/value This study contributes to the debate on innovation in the food sector, emphasizing the need to accomplish higher investments in R&D to increase the productivity of the sector.
Effect of Antimicrobial Peptides HNP-1 and hBD-1 on Staphylococcus aureus Clinical Strains in vitro and in vivo

The aims of this study were: (1) To investigate the activity of recombinant AMPs HNP-1 and hBD-1 in combination with cefotaxime against Staphylococcus aureus clinical strains (MSSA and MRSA) in vitro using checkerboard method; (2) To investigate the activity of HNP-1 and hBD-1 encapsulated in silicon nanoparticles (niosomes) in the treatment of MRSA-infected wound in rats. For this S. aureus clinical strains (MSSA and MRSA) were isolated from patients with diabetic foot infection. Cefotaxime, recombinant HNP-1 and hBD-1 (in all possible combinations with each other) were used for testing by the checkerboard method. Two niosomal topical gels with HNP-1/hBD-1 were prepared to treat MRSA-infected wounds in rats. Gels were administered once a day, the control group – without treatment. Wound healing rate was calculated on the 4th, 9th and 16th days of the experiment and compared using one-way ANOVA with Bonferroni correction. MIC of HNP-1 for MSSA and MRSA was the same – 1 mg/L. MIC of hBD-1 for MSSA and MRSA was also the same – 0.5 mg/L. Topical gels with niosomal HNP-1 (or hBD-1) showed a significantly faster wound healing in comparison with the control. The data obtained open up prospects for use of AMPs encapsulated in silica nanoparticles for the development of new antibiotics.
Full atomistic model of prion structure and conversion

Prions are unusual protein assemblies that propagate their conformationally-encoded information in absence of nucleic acids. The first prion identified, the scrapie isoform (PrPSc) of the cellular prion protein (PrPC), is the only one known to cause epidemic and epizootic episodes(1). Most aggregates of other misfolding-prone proteins are amyloids, often arranged in a Parallel-In-Register-β-Sheet (PIRIBS)(2) or β-solenoid conformations(3). Similar folding models have also been proposed for PrPSc, although none of these have been confirmed experimentally. Recent cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) and X-ray fiber-diffraction studies provided evidence that PrPSc is structured as a 4-rung β-solenoid (4RβS)(4, 5). Here, we combined different experimental data and computational techniques to build the first physically-plausible, atomic resolution model of mouse PrPSc, based on the 4RβS architecture. The stability of this new PrPSc model, as assessed by Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations, was found to be comparable to that of the prion forming domain of Het-s, a naturally-occurring β-solenoid. Importantly, the 4RβS arrangement allowed the first simulation of the sequence of events underlying PrPC conversion into PrPSc. Our results provide the most updated, experimentally-driven and physically-coherent model of PrPSc, together with an unprecedented reconstruction of the mechanism underlying the self-catalytic propagation of prions. Significance Since the original hypothesis by Stanley Prusiner, prions have represented enigmatic agents diverging from the classical concept of genetic inheritance. However, the structure of PrPSc, the infectious isoform of the cellular prion protein (PrPC), has so far remained elusive, mostly due to technical challenges posed by its aggregation propensity. Here, we present a new high resolution model of PrPSc derived from the integration of a wide array of recent experimental constraints. By coupling the information of such model with a newly developed computational method, we reconstructed for the first time the conformational transition of PrPC to PrPSc. This study offers a unique workbench for designing therapeutics against prion diseases, and a physically-plausible mechanism explaining how protein conformation could self-propagate.
Japanese Adjective Conjugation Patterns and Sources of Difficulty in Foreign Language Learning

This paper is a study of the complexity of Japanese adjective conjugations in relation to sources of foreign language learning difficulty. It focuses on two types of adjectives: i-adjectives and na-adjectives and their conjugation patterns, including their respective morphological requirements for particular grammatical functions. This study regards knowledge of Japanese adjective conjugations as one of the levels of abstract lexical structure: morphological realization patterns. To explore sources of learner errors in producing Japanese adjective conjugations, the speech performance data are from two groups of adult speakers of American English learning Japanese as a foreign language. This study makes two claims: Any successful acquisition of a foreign language must involve the complete acquisition of not only foreign language lexical items but also its morphological realization patterns, and any successful foreign language learner must be able to use language-specific morphological realization patterns as surface devices in speech production. This study offers some pedagogical suggestions for successful acquisition of Japanese adjective conjugation patterns.
Recruiting talent in a global sports market: appraisals of soccer players' transfer fees

PurposeThe main goal of this paper is to evaluate the players' contribution and economic value in the soccer industry. Media visibility records provide us with comparable metrics to identify talent and make hiring decisions – these records can jointly capture sport (on-field) skills and other attractive (off-field) abilities.Design/methodology/approachThis paper presents a valuation method that applies media visibility appraisals to estimate “theoretical values” of the transfer fees paid for hiring soccer players. The estimations are performed by analysing the evolution over time of the media exposure of about 5,000 individuals of more than 200 clubs.FindingsThe study’s empirical results reveal that, along with sport performance, the players' media status also affects their economic valuation, which explains why the clubs – in search of greater economic returns – fiercely compete for the most popular players. The paper also identifies the main factors determining the players' economic value. In predicting the players' transfer fees, some variables are statistically significant: individual media visibility, media visibility share of the player within his team, contract duration, status of the hiring team, years of experience, player's age at the end of the contract and the domestic league of the hiring team.Originality/valueProfessional sports provide reliable measures on individuals' performance that may help in the hiring process of workers. This paper identifies gifted soccer players while taking into account their skills as media leaders and the economic implications. Insofar as players' talents determine their teams' sport and economic achievements, the transfer fees paid for players must then be seen as a crucial factor. Measuring individual talent and being able to translate this talent into productivity levels entail serious methodological and empirical challenges.
Macroeconomic indicators and capital market performance: Are the links sustainable?

Abstract This paper examines the long-run impact of macroeconomic indicators such as interest rate, foreign capital flows, exchange rate, GDP growth, inflation and trade on stock market performance (market capitalization) in Nigeria. Using data drawn from the World Development Indicators (WDI, 2018) and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Statistical Bulletin 2018, the study employed the VECM analysis. The results found suggest that 1) macroeconomic variables and stock market performance are cointegrated and thus linked in the long run; 2) interest rate, inflation and trade bear a negative relationship with stock market performance; and 3) exchange rate, GDP growth rate and foreign capital flows are positively related to stock market performance. Our results show that when there is a deviation from the long-run relation between stock market performance and mafcroeconomic fundamentals, it is primarily the stock market, interest rate and foreign capital flows that adjust to ensure that the long-run link is restored, whereas exchange rate, GDP growth, inflation and trade are weakly exogenous. We estimate that any disequilibrium emanating from interest rate is more than fully corrected in one year, in the oscillating convergence sense, while 29% and 5% of the disequilibrium from stock market and foreign capital flows are corrected in one year. A policy recommendation that emerges from the study is the need to strengthen policies aimed at improving the country’s macroeconomic environment. Specifically, this will involve policies aimed at lowering interest rate, increasing foreign capital flows and improving the country’s terms of trade.