Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Activation of PPAR γ and δ by conjugated linoleic acid mediates protection from experimental inflammatory bowel disease

Background & Aims: The molecular targets for the protective actions of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) on experimental inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) are unknown. We used a loss-of-function approach to investigate whether CLA ameliorated colitis through a peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ (PPAR γ)-dependent mechanism. Methods: The expression of PPAR γ, δ, and their target genes in the colon of mice fed control or CLA-supplemented diets was assayed after a 7-day dextran sodium sulfate (DSS) challenge by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Additionally, nuclear factor-κ B (NF-κB) p65 activation was quantified in the colon. To determine the involvement of PPAR γ in the mechanism of action of CLA directly, specific deletions of PPAR γ in the colon were performed in mice by using the Cre-lox recombination system. Colonic PPAR γ null mice and wild-type littermates were fed either a CLA-supplemented or a control diet for 42 days and challenged with 2.5% DSS. The therapeutic efficacy of CLA also was examined by using the CD4+CD45RBhi transfer colitis model. Results: CLA induced PPAR γ and δ, transcriptionally modulated PPAR γ and δ-responsive gene clusters involved in lipid metabolism (uncoupling protein [UCP]1, UCP3, PPAR γ coactivator 1α [PGC-1α], and CD36) and epithelial cell maturation (Gob-4 and Keratin 20). Additionally, CLA repressed tumor necrosis factor α (TNF-α) expression and NF-κB activation while inducing the immunoregulatory cytokine transforming growth factor β 1 (TGF-β1). Clinically, CLA ameliorated DSS- and CD4+-induced colitis. Loss of the PPAR γ gene in the colon abrogated the beneficial effects of CLA in DSS colitis. Conclusions: Our studies provide molecular evidence in vivo, suggesting that CLA ameliorates colitis through a PPAR γ-dependent mechanism.
Simulating the effects of a climate-change scenario on the geographical range and activity of forest-pathogenic fungi

The aim of the present study was to explore possible effects of climate change on the geographic range or local impact of several forest-pathogenic fungi. To this aim, (i) the parameters of species' responses to climatic variables were determined, in two types of models (specific statistical models and the generic model CLIMEX); (ii) these models were used to make simulations under a future climatic scenario based on a general circulation model of climate, which was regionalized over France. A range of pathogens commonly reported in Europe were studied: Melampsora larici-populina, Melampsora allii-populina, and Melampsora medusae, causal agents of poplar rust; Mycosphaerella pini, an agent of red-band disease of pines; Melampsora pinitorqua, an agent of pine-twisting rust; Cryphonectria parasitica, an agent of chestnut blight; Phytophthora cinnamomi, causal agent of ink disease on European chestnut (Castanea sativa) and oaks; and Sphaeropsis sapinea and Biscogniauxia mediterranea, which are opportunistic pathogens (cortical endophytes) on pines and oaks, respectively. The predicted warming would be favourable to most of the studied species, especially those for which winter survival is a limiting factor linked to low temperatures (P. cinnamomi and Melampsora medusae). For species such as Mycosphaerella pini, the favourable effect of warming would be counterbalanced by the negative effect of a decrease in summer rainfall, leading to a stable or decreased impact of these pathogens by the end of the century. Conversely, B. mediterranea and S. sapinea, which are favoured by water stress, should have an increased impact. Interest and limitations of the different models were discussed. Some implications of the projected changes in "forest phytosanitary landscape" were presented in terms of research and management issues.
Temporal variations in heat dissipation and oxygen uptake of the soft shell clam Mya arenaria L. (Bibalvia)

Abstract Heat dissipation and oxygen uptake of the soft shell clam Mya arenaria were measured during long term experiments. Clams from both intertidal and subtidal habitats all exhibited a conspicuous alternating pattern of either high or very low metabolic activity, with an up to 23-fold difference between the two rates. The heat dissipation of intertidal clams from Loves Cove, Maine was 1–3 µW during low activity, and 11–41 µW at high activity. These clams spent 9-61%of the measured interval at a high heat dissipation. The alternating pattern in heat dissipation of intertidal clams did not demonstrate a distinct relation to the tidal pattern. The oxygen uptake of intertidal clams from Lagten Beach, Denmark during low and high activity was 1–8 µmol O2 g-1 h-1 and 23–28 µmol O2 g-1 h1, respectively, with the active periods lasting 60–81% of the total measured interval. Subtidal clams from Sebbersund, Denmark showed an oxygen uptake during low activity of 8–34 µmol O2 g-1 h-1 , while the oxygen uptake duri.
Elastic wave localization and harvesting using double defect modes of a phononic crystal

Phononic crystals (PnCs) have been utilized to amplify the amount of input energy transferred to a piezoelectric energy harvesting (PEH) device by manipulating elastic wave propagation. When introducing a defect that has material properties and/or geometry different from a unit cell, mechanical resonance of the defect leads to localizing elastic waves inside the defect. This is called a defect mode. Several prior studies have explored a defect mode for PEH purpose; however, they have focused only on a single defect. When introducing an additional defect into a PnC, the coupling between two defects leads to splitting the defect band. Incorporating such split defect band phenomena into PEH can potentially widen frequency bandwidth and realize broadband energy harvesting. Thus, this study newly proposes a PnC-based PEH system that uses double defect modes under elastic waves. In particular, this study examines how an electrical circuit connection (i.e., Independent, Series, or Parallel) between two PEH devices attached on each defect affects PEH performances. Key findings from this study include (1) the shift in split defect bands as well as harvesting performance varies with the type of electrical circuit connection; (2) split defect band phenomena amplify the output electric power at double resonance peaks in an Independent connection; and (3) despite displacement amplification at certain resonance frequencies, no peak output voltage occurs due to the current source direction (for Series connections) and voltage cancellation (for Parallel connections). These key findings can provide design and selection guidelines for electrical circuit configurations between double defects for enhanced PEH.
Factors affecting conference participation decision-making

Business travel, as the sector with the fastest growth in the tourism industry globally, has received increased attention from both countries and cities, particularly from emerging destinations. In developing economies, business travel, including attending meetings, conferences, incentives and other business events, often plays a leading role in the growth of the wider travel and tourism sector. Therefore, tourism authorities and convention bureaus at the national and city levels have been struggling to attract international conferences and a larger number of participants to conferences. Understanding factors, which appear to be important in the conference participation decision-making process, can help conference organizers and destinations to attract more participants and thus gain more benefit from this growing sector of the tourism industry. Therefore, this study aims to examine factors affecting the conference participation decision-making from the academics' perspective. Furthermore, it investigates how different socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents influence the extracted factors of the conference participation decision-making process. The data was collected from the academics employed at the University of Novi Sad in Serbia. The findings reveal six dimensions of conference participation decision-making: destination stimuli, costs and destination accessibility, educational and professional opportunities, intervening opportunities, location factors, and conference factors. The results also show that there are statistically significant differences in some extracted factors between respondents of different gender, age, education level, and academic position, while the frequency of participation in international conferences does not influence the factors. The results could be of interest to all stakeholders in the business travel and tourism industry.
Ethylene and 1 -Aminocyclopropane-1-Carboxylic Acid Production in flacca, a Wilty Mutant of Tomato, Subjected to Water Deficiency and Pre-treatment with Abscisic Acid

Neill, S. J., McGaw, B. A. and Horgan, R. 1986. Ethylene and 1-aminocyclopropane-l-carboxylic acid production in flacca, a wilty mutant of tomato, subjected to water deficiency and pretreatment with abscisic acid. —J. exp. Bot. 37: 535-541. Plants of Lycopersicon esculentum Mill. cv. Ailsa Craig wild type and flacca (flc) were sprayed daily with H20 or 2x 10"2 mol m"3 abscisic acid (ABA). ABA treatment effected a partial phenotypic reversion offlc shoots; leaf areas were increased and transpiration rates decreased. Leaf expansion of wild type shoots was inhibited by ABA. Indoleacetic acid (IAA), ABA and 1-aminocyclopropane-l-carboxylic acid (ACC) concentrations were determined by combined gas chromatography-mass spectrometry using deuterium-labelled internal standards. ABA treatment for 30 d resulted in greatly elevated internal ABA levels, increasing from 10 to 4-3 and from 0-45 to 4-9 nmol g"1 fr. wt. in wild type and flc leaves respectively. Endogenous IAA and ACC concentrations were much lower than those of ABA. IAA content ranged from 0 05 to 01 nmol g~1 and ACC content from 0 07 to 0-24 nmol g~ '. Ethylene emanation rates were similar for wild type and flc shoots. Wilting of detached leaves induced a substantial increase in ethylene and ACC accumulation in all plants, regardless of treatment or type. Ethylene and ACC levels were no greater in flc leaves compared to the wild type. ABA pretreatment did not prevent the wilting-induced increase in ACC and ethylene synthesis.
Phylogeography of palo santo trees (Bursera graveolens and Bursera malacophylla; Burseraceae) in the Galápagos archipelago

Two species of palo santo trees are distributed in the Galapagos archipelago, the native Bursera graveolens and the endemic Bursera malacophylla (Burseraceae). However, a zone of individuals morphologically intermediate between the two exists on northern Santa Cruz Island and south-eastern Santiago Island, suggesting that they may not be reproductively isolated. Here we review the species' distributional and morphological differences and test for evidence of hybridization between the two species using DNA sequence and AFLP data. We find that the species lack distinguishing synapomorphies across the five nuclear and plastid regions examined. Population assignment tests and population genetic analyses of AFLP data indicate that genetically similar palo santo individuals (N = 87), including putative hybrids, partition into two genealogical groups that do not uniformly correspond to island- or taxon-based membership. Furthermore, genotypic admixture levels among morphologically intermediate individuals do not indicate widespread hybridization. Thus, we recommend recognizing the endemic palo santo taxon as B. graveolens subspecies malacophylla (B.L.Rob.) A. Weeks & Tye comb. & stat. nov. in light of its close genetic relationship to B. graveolens subsp. graveolens and its distinctive morphology and distribution. Future research should quantify phenotypic variation in palo santo populations as another means for understanding the basis of morphological differences between the subspecies. © 2009 The Linnean Society of London, Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, 2009, 161, 396–410.
Evaluation of tree-base data mining algorithms in land used/land cover mapping in a semi-arid environment through Landsat 8 OLI image; Shiraz, Iran

Abstract Land Use Land Cover (LULC) mapping has been used in different environmental applications including disaster management, risk analysis, heat island mapping, and the effects of urbanization on environmental changes such as floods and droughts in the recent decade. The earth’s natural surface coverage including urban infrastructure, surface vegetation, bare soil can be identified with LULC maps. Besides, LULC is one of the most important tasks in natural hazards, planning activities, resource management, and global monitoring studies. The present study aimed to improve the level of land used and land cover change mapping in a semi-arid environment using Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) image. In this research, several tree-based algorithms for LULC mapping are used and compared. These algorithms are used in a combination model implementation of WEKA 3.8 and R programming language to provide a method of a fit-for-purpose algorithms for LULC mapping. It is found that Reduced Error Pruning Tree (REP Tree) is the best approach according to the training and test datasets which are four classes including the build-up, soil, roads, and vegetation region pixels in a semi-arid environment. For the training dataset, the best values of Overall Accuracy (OA), Mean Absolute Error (MAE), and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) is determined, 99.7313, 0.002 and 0.0354 as well as for the test dataset are 99.7313, 0.002 and 0.0354, respectively. Finally, trained models of the implemented data mining algorithms are used for the classification of a different dataset without using any training data where the Logical Analysis of Data Tree (LAD Tree) algorithm shows the best performance in terms of OA, MAE, and RMSE with values of 99.2815, 0.0057, and 0.0557 respectively.
A Comparison of Techniques Using Dorsal Spines to Estimate Sauger Age

Abstract Fish age is useful to fishery managers when evaluating growth rates, mortality rates, and reproduction. Our objective was to determine whether two methods for estimating the age of saugers Sander canadensis using dorsal spines—side illumination and spine sectioning—resulted in similar age estimates at the same efficiency and cost. To do this, we determined whether the coefficients of variation (CV = 100 · SD/mean) differed between age estimates of fish using the two techniques in the Missouri River and a portion of the Kansas River. We found that the CVs did not differ significantly between techniques. While reader agreement did not differ significantly, side illumination took one-half as much time as sectioning. In addition, side illumination displayed outer annuli on older fish better than sectioning and did not require an expensive low-speed saw, microscope slides, or a mounting medium for processing. We conclude that side illumination is the most time- and cost-efficient method for estimating.
Olfactory Snake-Predator Discrimination in the Cape Ground Squirrel

Small mammals have a number of means to detect and avoid predators, including visual, auditory and olfactory cues. Olfactory cues are particularly important for nocturnal or fossorial species where visual cues would not be as reliable. The Cape ground squirrel (Xerus inauris) is a semi-fossorial, diurnal mammal from southern Africa. Cape ground squirrels encounter multiple species of predatory snake that pursue individuals underground where visual and social cues are limited. We assessed whether Cape ground squirrels use odours to discriminate between snakes by presenting a non-venomous snake, a venomous snake and a control odour collected on polyethylene cubes to 11 adult female squirrels from 11 different social groups. Cape ground squirrels responded by inspecting the cube, displaying snake harassment–associated behaviours and decreasing time spent in close proximity to snake odours when compared with a control. They also displayed discrimination between two snake species by increasing the frequency of cube inspection and increasing harassment behaviours with venomous snake odours when compared with non-venomous snake odours. We conclude that Cape ground squirrels respond with snake-specific antipredator behaviours when presented olfactory cues alone. Olfactory discrimination may be maintained by the decreased utility of other methods of predator detection: sight and group detection, in below-ground encounters.
SPONGIOUS FILLERS BASED ON COLLAGEN – HYDROXYAPATITE – EUGENOL ACETATE WITH THERAPEUTIC POTENTIAL IN BONE CANCER

The aim of this study was to develop and characterize composite materials based on collagen, hydroxyapatite and eugenol acetate as new filler biomaterial for the reconstruction of the tissue damage arising after the resection in case of bone cancer. Composite gels consisting of collagen and hydroxyapatite in different proportions (Coll:HAp 100:0; 70:30; 40:60 w/w) and 0.5% eugenol acetate were lyophilized and spongious fillers were obtained. The fillers were characterized by water absorption, enzymatic degradation and examined by optical and scanning electron microscopy, EDS, FT-IR spectroscopy while eugenol acetate release from the compositions was also studied. The results showed that the filler with optimal composition (Coll-HAp 40:60 w/w) completely degrade over about 48 hours, the release capacity being longer during the 144 hours. The complex results obtained from physicalchemical, morphological and eugenol acetate release profile evaluation for the designed composite materials based on collagen and hydroxyapatite testify these formulations as drug delivery systems with potential applications as fillers in orthopaedic field in bone cancer.
Sugars in crop plants

We review current knowledge of the most abundant sugars, sucrose, maltose, glucose and fructose, in the world's major crop plants. The sucrose-accumulating crops, sugar beet and sugar cane, are included, but the main focus of the review is potato and the major cereal crops. The production of sucrose in photosynthesis and the inter-relationships of sucrose, glucose, fructose and other metabolites in primary carbon metabolism are described, as well as the synthesis of starch, fructan and cell wall polysaccharides and the breakdown of starch to produce maltose. The importance of sugars as hormone-like signalling molecules is discussed, including the role of another sugar, trehalose, and the trehalose biosynthetic pathway. The Maillard reaction, which occurs between reducing sugars and amino acids during thermal processing, is described because of its importance for colour and flavour in cooked foods. This reaction also leads to the formation of potentially harmful compounds, such as acrylamide, and is attracting increasing attention as food producers and regulators seek to reduce the levels of acrylamide in cooked food. Genetic and environmental factors affecting sugar concentrations are described.
CALCIUM‐INDUCED RELEASE OF γ‐AMINOBUTYRIC ACID FROM SYNAPTOSOMES: EFFECTS OF TRANQUILIZER DRUGS

Efflux of preloaded radioactive gamma‐aminobutyric acid (GABA) from mouse brain fractions enriched in synaptosomes could be significantly and reproducibly increased by switching from Ca2+‐free wash solution to one containing 2 mM‐Ca2+. With a filtration apparatus equipped for simultaneous buffer changes of eight samples, effects of various drugs on Ca2+‐dependent and Ca2+‐independent efflux of GABA were studied. Several membrane‐perturbing agents, including imipramine and neuroleptics like haloperidol and chlorpromazine, at 1 μM, potently inhibited Ca2+‐dependent GABA release. Benzodiazepine drugs similarly inhibited Ca2+‐dependent efflux, but also under appropriate conditions, enhanced Ca2+‐independent efflux. Stimulation of Ca2+‐independent efflux was observed with nonradioactive GABA and with GABA analogues which inhibit GABA transport, reflecting exchange of GABA via the high‐affinity transport system. Diazepam was found to inhibit GABA transport (non‐competitively; I50, 50 μM); effects on the transport system might be related to observations of potentiated GABA action and anti‐convulsant effects of this drug.
AN ENZYMATIC ASSAY FOR THE DETERMINATION OF ACETALDEHYDE IN BEERS

A method is described for the selective determination of acetaldehyde by use of the enzyme aldehyde dehydrogenase (E.C. 1.2.1.5) and NAD+. The results showed that the acetaldehyde content for 18 different European beers varied between 2·6 and 13·5 ppm with a mean of 6·2 ppm. Both free and sulphite-bound acetaldehyde are determined with this assay. Comparison with a gas chromatographic procedure shows that both methods yield quite comparable results.
Antimicrobial Activity of Streptomyces sp. Isolated from Acidic Peatlands against Extended Spectrum Beta Lactamase (ESBL) producing Escherichia coli

The incidence of infection by extended spectrum of s lactamase (ESBL)-producing bacteria is increasing throughout the world. Surveillance results in Indonesia (2012) showed that extended spectrum of s lactamase (ESBL) producing Escherichia coli was increased (52%). Streptomyces has become an important source of important bioactive compounds with high commercial value and continues to be routinely screened to look for new bioactive substances. The aims of this research is to screen in vitro antibacterial activity of the free cell fermentation Streptomyces sp. of Kalimantan acidic peatland (isolate 2.1). Streptomyces sp. have been isolated from Kalimantan Tengah peat soil (Palangka Raya). The isolatation and fermentation process to obtain antibaterial substances were performed in the International Streptomyces Projects (ISP)-4 media on rotary shaker at 150 rpm, 28C for 5 days. In vitro antibacterial testing of one to 5 days free cell fermentation broth (FCFB) of the Strepromyces sp. isolate 2.1 have been carried out by diffusion agar method. Antibacterial testing using the extended spectrum of s lactamase (ESBL) Escherichia coli isolated from Dr. Soetomo Hospital patients in Surabaya as test microorganisms. The results of this research is the FCFB of Streptomyces sp. isolate 2.1 showed its activities againts ESBL producing Escherichia coli 6024 and 6110 with inhibition zone average 12, 42 mm and 13, 17 mm. Conclusion of this research is Streptomyces sp. isolated Kalimantan acidic peatland (isolate 2.1) potent to againts ESBL producing Escherichia coli.