Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Contrasting response mechanisms to root-zone salinity in three co-occurring Mediterranean woody evergreens: a physiological and biochemical study.

The present study investigated the extent to which physiological and biochemical traits varied because of root-zone salinity in three Mediterranean evergreens differing greatly in their strategies of salt allocation at an organismal level: the 'salt-excluders', Olea europaea L. and Phillyrea latifolia L. (both Oleaceae), and Pistacia lentiscus L. , which, instead, largely uses Na+ and Cl- for osmotic adjustment. Both Oleaceae spp. underwent severe leaf dehydration and reduced net photosynthesis and whole-plant growth to a significantly greater degree than did P. lentiscus. Osmotic adjustment in Oleaceae mostly resulted from soluble carbohydrates, which, in turn, likely feedback regulated net photosynthesis. Salt stress reduced the actual efficiency of PSII photochemistry (ΦPSII) and enhanced the concentration of de-epoxided violaxanthin-cycle pigments in O. europaea and P. latifolia. Phenylpropanoid metabolism was upregulated by salt stress to a markedly greater degree in O. europaea and P. latifolia than in P. lentiscus. In contrast, species-specific variations in leaf lipid peroxidation were not observed in response to salinity stress. The results suggest that the species-specific ability to manage the allocation of potentially toxic ions out of sensitive leaf organs, other than affecting physiological responses, largely determined the extent to which leaf biochemistry, mostly aimed to counter salt-induced oxidative damage, varied in response to salinity stress.
Structure Topology Prediction of Discriminative Sequence Motifs in Membrane Proteins with Domains of Unknown Functions

Motivation. Membrane proteins play essential roles in cellular processes of organisms. Photosynthesis, transport of ions and small molecules, signal transduction, and light harvesting are examples of processes which are realised by membrane proteins and contribute to a cell's specificity and functionality. The analysis of membrane proteins has shown to be an important part in the understanding of complex biological processes. Genome-wide investigations of membrane proteins have revealed a large number of short, distinct sequence motifs. Results. The in silico analysis of 32 membrane protein families with domains of unknown functions discussed in this study led to a novel approach which describes the separation of motifs by residue-specific distributions. Based on these distributions, the topology structure of the majority of motifs in hypothesised membrane proteins with unknown topology can be predicted. Conclusion. We hypothesise that short sequence motifs can be separated into structure-forming motifs on the one hand, as such motifs show high prediction accuracy in all investigated protein families. This points to their general importance in α-helical membrane protein structure formation and interaction mediation. On the other hand, motifs which show high prediction accuracies only in certain families can be classified as functionally important and relevant for family-specific functional characteristics.
Biodiversity of foliar fungal endophytes in white spruce (Picea glauca) from southern Québec

The objective of this study was to investigate the foliar endophyte biodiversity of white spruce (Picea glauca (Moench) Voss to establish a baseline for future comparative studies examining the impact of forestry practices. It identifies for the first time endophytic fungi living inside the needles of white spruce from 280 needles collected in seven natural stands in southern Quebec. The endophyte colonization rate on surface sterilized needles was 53.2%. We performed a PCR-RFLP and sequence analysis on the ITS region of the nuclear ribosomal DNA to achieve molecular identification. Isolate ITS sequences were compared with data from GenBank presenting the best similarity and were analyzed by a maximum of parsimony and Bayesian inference. Relationships between morphological groups, digestion groups, and sequence groups were investigated. In all, 23 morphotypes were found to belong to 14 sequence groups and we demonstrated that morphological groups are poor indicators for estimating species diversity. This .
METHODS OF BREEDING FOR OIL QUALITY IN RAPE

Reciprocal crosses were made between plants of Brassica napus with seed oil containing 40 and 0 per cent erucic acid. Gas liquid chromatographic analysis snowed an erucic acid content of 22 to 24 per cent in the crossed seeds. These results indicate that dominant gene action is absent and that fatty acid composition of the oil is controlled by the developing embryo. Thus the seed on an F1 plant constitutes an F2 population.Methods were developed to determine the fatty acid composition of oil from single seeds and from one cotyledon of an embryo. The analysis of a single cotyledon allows the genotype to be determined one generation earlier than if bulk samples are used, and the remainder of the seed may be grown into a normal plant. It is suggested that this half-seed technique may be used to determine the inheritance of other fatty acids in Brassica, and may also be applied to breeding other oil crops where the embryo, rather than the maternal sporophyte, controls the synthesis of fatty acids.
Election Forecasts with Twitter - How 140 Characters Reflect the Political Landscape

This study investigates whether microblogging messages on Twitter validly mirror the political landscape offline and can be used to predict election results. In the context of the 2009 German federal election, we conducted a sentiment analysis of over 100,000 messages containing a reference to either a political party or a politician. Our results show that Twitter is used extensively for political deliberation and that the mere number of party mentions accurately reflects the election result. The tweets' sentiment (e.g., positive and negative emotions associated with a politician) corresponds closely to voters' political preferences. In addition, party sentiment profiles reflect the similarity of political positions between parties. We derive suggestions for further research and discuss the use of microblogging services to aggregate dispersed information.
Valuation in the Us Commercial Real Estate

We consider a log-linearized version of a discounted rents model to price commercial real estate as an alternative to traditional hedonic models. First, we verify a key implication of the model, namely, that cap rates forecast commercial real estate returns. We do this using two different methodologies: time series regressions of 21 US metropolitan areas and mixed data sampling (MIDAS) regressions with aggregate REITs returns. Both approaches confirm that the cap rate is related to fluctuations in future returns. We also investigate the provenance of the predictability. Based on the model, we decompose fluctuations in the cap rate into three parts: (i) local state variables (demographic and local economic variables); (ii) growth in rents; and (iii) an orthogonal part. About 30% of the fluctuation in the cap rate is explained by the local state variables and the growth in rents. We use the cap rate decomposition into our predictive regression and find a positive relation between fluctuations in economic conditions and future returns. However, a larger and significant part of the cap rate predictability is due the orthogonal part, which is unrelated to fundamentals. This implies that economic conditions, which are also used in hedonic pricing of real estate, cannot fully account for future movements in returns. We conclude that commercial real estate prices, at least at an aggregate level, are better modeled as financial assets and that the discounted rent model might be more suitable than traditional hedonic models, at least at an aggregate level.
CONSERVAÇÃO DA VIABILIDADE E VIGOR DE SEMENTES DE Araucaria angustifolia (Bert.) O. Kuntze DURANTE O ARMAZENAMENTO

The conservation of Araucaria seeds is widely compromised in function of their recalcitrant feature, which hampers the planning of recovery actions of the degraded populations. Therefore, the objective of this study was to monitor the physiological changes in Araucaria seeds under controlled storage conditions, in order to get insights as to the viability and vigor conservation. The physiological quality of freshly harvested seeds was evaluated and every 60 days throughout the 180 days-storage period in laboratory ambient without thermal control, refrigerator (5 ° C), and freezer (-18 ° C) until the final period of 180 days. After each sampling period, the seed viability (germination and tetrazolium tests) and vigor (artificial aging, germination speed index - IVG and electrical conductivity) were assessed. A reduction in the normal seedlings percentage was noticed over the period of storage of Araucaria seeds. The conservation in freezer and the lack of thermal control caused a complete loss of the seed viability at 60 and 180 days of storage, respectively. However, the refrigerator storage promoted the conservation of seed viability, with 64% germination after 180 days of storage, an event associated with the reduction of the metabolic activity of seeds. Based on the viability and vigor tests, it was concluded that storage in refrigerator provided longer storage periods to Araucaria seeds in comparison to the other storage conditions herein studied.
Old Sins: Exchange Rate Clauses and European Foreign Lending in the 19th Century

This Paper challenges a popular explanation for 'original sin' - the default prone borrowing of long term debt in foreign exchange by emerging markets - that emphasizes the lack of credibility and commitment of governments that prevents them from borrowing in their own currency. Basing our account on the history of emerging market borrowing in the nineteenth century, we offer an explanation based on historical path dependence. We document that almost all IPOs of governments in foreign markets were in foreign exchange, or with foreign exchange clauses, independent of those countries' institutional features. We show that a small number of countries could circulate debt denominated in their own currency in secondary markets, again irrespective of their constitutional set-up. We argue that market liquidity can explain both phenomena. Having an internationally circulating currency allows countries to circulate their debt in secondary markets. Going for an IPO in a large financial centre is an attempt to tap the greater liquidity of that centre's money market and currency. It makes perfect sense to borrow then, in that centre's currency. The evolution of vehicle currencies and liquid money markets has more to do with historical evolution of trade, going back to medieval times, rather than with institutional reform. Escaping from original sin requires that the country emerge as a leading economic power - a rare historical event, reserved for the US of the nineteenth century and Japan of the twentieth century.
Estudo comparativo sobre a composição e a diversidade de lepidópteros noturnos em cinco áreas da Região dos Cerrados

The understanding of the distribution and richness patterns of species is very important in ecology. Also, for the Cerrado region, this is very important and urgent, because of the strong pressure for new areas designated for agriculture. In five areas of the Cerrado, an exploratory study was carried out on the diversity, evenness and similarity of moth species. Moths were captured in a white sheet hung vertically and illuminated by a 250 Watt mercury vapor lamp. The alpha diversity was calculated using the Shannon-Wiener index (H') and the Simpson index (γ). The beta diversity was examined for all sampled localities and estimated by Wittaker's measure. The Sorensen and Jaccard indexes were used to calculate similarity. A total of 11130 individuals, 1064 species and 33 families were collected during the study. Great differences were found in the diversity (H'), and according to this index, the minimum value found was 1.60 and highest value was 4.59. From the Simpson index (γ), the minimum value was 0.42 and highest 0.96. With both methods, in all the localities, these values were significantly different by the T test (p<0.001). The mean beta diversity found was 0.6929, and the minimum and highest values found were respectively 0.4328 and 0.8615. A positive correlation was found between beta diversity and distances among the localities (r2=0.5844, p<0.05). Faunal similarities among sites were low, and the highest value found was 0.4146 by Sorensen index and 0.2615 by Jaccard index.
Relationships of mycorrhizal symbiosis, rooting strategy, and phenology among tallgrass prairie forbs

The response of 23 tallgrass prairie forbs to mycorrhizal symbiosis and P fertilization was assessed in steamed and non-sterile prairie soil. For each plant species, root diameters, root fibrousness, root to shoot ratio, plant dry weight, mycorrhizal root colonization, mycorrhizal dependence, P dependence, and phenology were measured. Using these data, cluster analysis, stepwise discriminant analysis, and canonical discriminant analysis of the data revealed that the forbs could be divided into three distinct groups based on mycorrhizal dependence, root morphology, and phenology in descending order of importance. Cluster groups 1 and 2 contained obligately and facultatively mycotrophic forbs, respectively, while the third group did not benefit from the symbiosis. Models for prediction of mycorrhizal dependence, constructed using stepwise regression analysis, were based largely on root fibrousness. A regression analysis comparing mycorrhizal dependence and root fibrousness was conducted, and group means and.
Altering the Speed of Reality?: Exploring Visual Slow-Motion to Amplify Human Perception using Augmented Reality

Many events happen so fast that we cannot observe them well with our naked eye. The temporal and spatial limitations of visual perception are well known and determine what we can actually see. Over the last years, sensors and camera systems became available that have surpassed the limitations of human perception. In this paper, we investigate how we can use augmented reality to create a system that allows altering the speed in which we perceive the world around us. We contribute an experimental exploration of how we can implement visual slow-motion to amplify human perception. We outline the research challenges and describe a conceptual architecture for manipulating the temporal perception. Using augmented reality glasses, we created a proof-of-concept implementation and conducted a study of which we report qualitative and quantitative results. We show how providing visual information from the environment at different speeds has benefits for the user. We also highlight the required new approaches to design interfaces that deal with decoupling the perception of the real would.
Adoption of Big Data, Cloud Computing & IoT in Morocco Perception of Public Administrations Collaborators

The integration of new technologies such as big data, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things (IoT), constitute a new challenge for existing information systems of local administrations. In this work, we present the results of interviews conducted with the public administrations in the South-eastern region of Morocco, and as conclusion we expose two proposed models induced by this study.
Improving program locality in the GC using hotness

The hierarchical memory system with increasingly small and increasingly fast memory closer to the CPU has for long been at the heart of hiding, or mitigating the performance gap between memories and processors. To utilise this hardware, programs must be written to exhibit good object locality. In languages like C/C++, programmers can carefully plan how objects should be laid out (albeit time consuming and error-prone); for managed languages, especially ones with moving garbage collectors, a manually created optimal layout may be destroyed in the process of object relocation. For managed languages that present an abstract view of memory, the solution lies in making the garbage collector aware of object locality, and strive to achieve and maintain good locality, even in the face of multi-phased programs that exhibit different behaviour across different phases. This paper presents a GC design that dynamically reorganises objects in the order mutators access them, and additionally strives to separate frequently and infrequently used objects in memory. This improves locality and the efficiency of hardware prefetching. Identifying frequently used objects is done at run-time, with small overhead. HCSGC also offers tunability, for shifting relocation work towards mutators, or for more or less aggressive object relocation. The ideas are evaluated in the context of the ZGC collector on OpenJDK and yields performance improvements of 5% (tradebeans), 9% (h2) and an impressive 25–45% (JGraphT), all with 95% confidence. For SPECjbb, results are inconclusive due to a fluctuating baseline.
Developing Anti-tamper Functionalities through Continuous Integration

Anti-tamper is the security engineering activity that frustrates or prevents the reverse-engineering or modification of the computing devices. As the number of advanced computing devices such as autonomous vehicles and robots increases, the necessity of anti-tamper functionality is also increasing so that sensitive information or intellectual property stored in the devices are not leaked by reverse engineering. In this paper, we study a continuous integration development environment that can effectively apply anti-tamper functionality during the development of computing device. Proposed anti-tamper automation in continuous integration development environment can reduce development cost and time burden by eliminating manual anti-tamper implementation activity.
Silq: a high-level quantum language with safe uncomputation and intuitive semantics

Existing quantum languages force the programmer to work at a low level of abstraction leading to unintuitive and cluttered code. A fundamental reason is that dropping temporary values from the program state requires explicitly applying quantum operations that safely uncompute these values. We present Silq, the first quantum language that addresses this challenge by supporting safe, automatic uncomputation. This enables an intuitive semantics that implicitly drops temporary values, as in classical computation. To ensure physicality of Silq's semantics, its type system leverages novel annotations to reject unphysical programs. Our experimental evaluation demonstrates that Silq programs are not only easier to read and write, but also significantly shorter than equivalent programs in other quantum languages (on average -46% for Q#, -38% for Quipper), while using only half the number of quantum primitives.
LD-Parser: Leaf Detection Based Dependency Parsing Using BiLSTM and Attention Mechanism

Dependency parsing is one of the basic research of natural language processing. In recent years, transition-based and graph-based methods have been used widely, but there are still some problems such as feature limitation and high time complexity. In this paper, we proposed a new method named Leaf Detection based Dependency Parsing (LD-Parser), which is a bottom-up framework to detect leaf nodes of the dependency parsing tree. We use LSTM to construct a classifier to generate labels for each word and then remove the leaf nodes that are adjacent to their corresponding parents. Besides, an attention mechanism is introduced to sum the children of nodes as an extra feature according to the attention weight. We make experiments on Universal Dependencies in several languages. Experiments show that the LD-Parser with Attention performs better than transition-based and graph-based methods in dependency parsing tasks for short sentences.
The occurrence of aflatoxin in rice worldwide: a review

Abstract Rice is the second largest quantity staple international traded cereal and is produced in climatic areas favorable to aflatoxin production, which affects such trading. This review article is to show and explain the levels of aflatoxin contamination of rice worldwide; in general, the contamination is low and varies from country to country. However, the high daily intake of rice makes even these lower levels of concern, as aflatoxin B1 is carcinogenic and has been correlated with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) incidence in some countries. In addition, the analytical procedures, the permissible limits used worldwide have been reviewed and discussed.
Study on Medical Imaging Reports Tagging Extraction Based on Bi-LSTM + CRF

As an important information carrier for hospital to record medical activities for patients, medical imaging report contains a large amount of technical terms and medical knowledge. In order to automatically generate computer-aided diagnosis reports, it is necessary to extract effective information from medical image reports, so as to reduce the pressure of professional physicians and better serve clinical decision-making. This paper mainly focuses on mammography medical imaging reports, analyzes the structure and contents of the reports, and deals with the imaging reports using the machine learning model, called Bi-LSTM + CRF (Bidirectional Long Short Term Memory with a Conditional Random Fields layer), in order to extract tags of the lesion, such as the position, size and shape in the imaging reports. The experimental results achieved satisfactory effort.
ExemPoser: Predicting Poses of Experts as Examples for Beginners in Climbing Using a Neural Network

It is important for beginners to imitate poses of experts in various sports; especially in sport climbing, performance depends greatly on the pose that should be taken for given holds. However, it is difficult for beginners to learn the proper poses for all patterns from experts since climbing holds are completely different for each course. Therefore, we propose a system that predict a pose of experts from the positions of the hands and feet of the climber--the positions of holds used by the climber--using a neural network. In other words, our system simulates what pose experts take for the holds the climber is now using. The positions of hands and feet are calculated from a image of the climber captured from behind. To allow users to check what pose is ideal in real time during practice, we have adopted a simple and lightweight network structure with little computational delay. We asked experts to compare the poses predicted by our system with the poses of beginners, and we confirmed that the poses predicted by our system were in most cases better than or as good as those of beginners.
Adaptive Neural Sliding Mode Control for 3-DOF Planar Parallel Manipulators

This paper proposes a combination between a neural network and an adaptive sliding mode control for trajectory tracking control of a 3-DOF planar parallel manipulator. It has a complicated dynamic model, including modelling uncertainties, frictional uncertainties and external disturbances. The proposed control algorithm is to use a PID sliding mode surface, an adaptive sliding mode controller with a neural network to overcome the drawback of the traditional sliding mode controllers, such as slow response rate with variation of uncertainties and external disturbances, chattering, and upper bound values of undefined dynamics which affects system performance, high wear of moving mechanical parts and high heat losses in power circuits. The radial basis function neural network is designed to compensate for uncertainties and external disturbances, which allows small switching gain. Hence, the chattering can be significantly reduced. In addition, an adaptive control law is used to adaptively converge small switching gains of the sliding mode controller as the neural network reduces model uncertainties. The effectiveness of the proposed control strategy is demonstrated by simulations which are conducted by using the combination of Sim-Mechanics and SolidWorks.