Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Locomotor Performance in Juvenile and Adult Box Turtles (Terrapene carolina): A Reanalysis for Effects of Body Size and Extrinsic Load Using a Terrestrial Species

vestigated the relationship between body size and locomotor performance. Sprint or burst speed in some iguanid and helodermatid species is mass independent (e.g., Garland, 1984; Beck et al., 1995), whereas sprint speed in some agamid and lacertid species increases with body mass (e.g., Garland, 1985; Avery et al., 1987). Within families of lizards, sprint speed is generally independent of body mass (Garland, 1982). Lizards and snakes with an increased natural load re-
D-Aminoacylases and Dipeptidases within the Amidohydrolase Superfamily: Relationship Between Enzyme Structure and Substrate Specificity

D-Aminoacylases and Dipeptidases within the Amidohydrolase Superfamily: Relationship Between Enzyme Structure and Substrate Specificity. (December 2010) Jennifer Ann Cummings, B.S., Southern Oregon University; M.S., Texas A&M University Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. Frank Raushel Approximately one third of the genes for the completely sequenced bacterial genomes have an unknown, uncertain, or incorrect functional annotation. Approximately 11,000 putative proteins identified from the fully-sequenced microbial genomes are members of the catalytically diverse Amidohydrolase Superfamily. Members of the Amidohydrolase Superfamily separate into 24 Clusters of Orthologous Groups (cogs). Cog3653 includes proteins annotated as N-acyl-D-amino acid deacetylases (DAAs), and proteins within cog2355 are homologues to the human renal dipeptidase. The substrate profiles of three DAAs (Bb3285, Gox1177 and Sco4986) and six microbial dipeptidase (Sco3058, Gox2272, Cc2746, LmoDP, Rsp0802 and Bh2271) were examined with N-acyl-L-, N-acyl-D-, L-Xaa-L-Xaa, L-Xaa-D-Xaa and D-Xaa-L-Xaa substrate libraries. The rates of hydrolysis of the library components were determined by separating the amino acids by HPLC and quantitating the products. Gox1177 and Sco4986 hydrolyzed several N-acyl-D-amino acids, especially those where the amino acid was a hydrophobic residue. Gox1177 hydrolyzed L-Xaa-D-
DNA Content and Chromosome Complement of Chromis Chromis (Pommacentridae, Perciformes)

SUMMARYSomatic and germinal chromosomes of Chromis chromis were analysed and the diploid number was determined to be 48, the same as its F. N. The haploid amount of DNA was estimated by Feulgen cytophotometry at 1, 2 pg. The karyotype and DNA content are discussed as a contribution to the understanding the evolution of this species inside the family. The study helps to establish the location of this family on the evolutionary scale within the teleosts.
Representation of Reinforcement Learning Policies in Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Spaces.

We propose a general framework for policy representation for reinforcement learning tasks. This framework involves finding a low-dimensional embedding of the policy on a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS). The usage of RKHS based methods allows us to derive strong theoretical guarantees on the expected return of the reconstructed policy. Such guarantees are typically lacking in black-box models, but are very desirable in tasks requiring stability. We conduct several experiments on classic RL domains. The results confirm that the policies can be robustly embedded in a low-dimensional space while the embedded policy incurs almost no decrease in return.
Purification of Immunogenically Active Ribonucleic Acid Preparations of Salmonella typhimurium: Molecular-Sieve and Anion-Exchange Chromatography

Immunogenic Salmonella typhimurium ribonucleic acid (RNA) preparations, prepared by differential centrifugation, phenol extraction at 65 C, and ethanol precipitation from 0.5% sodium dodecyl sulfate solution, maintained their immunogenicity through lyophilization. As measured by survival, differential pathogen counts 5 days postchallenge, or clearance of the infecting organism from the tissues, immunization with 50 μg (dry weight) of the lyophilized preparation proved as effective as immunization with 0.1 LD50 of attenuated S. typhimurium cells. Chromatography of the immunogenic fraction through Biogel P-6 (exclusion limit > 4,600) or through Biogel P-300 (exclusion limit > 300,000) resulted in only one immunogenically active protein of the eluate found in the void volume of the columns. Diethylaminoethyl (DEAE) cellulose anion-exchange chromatography of the RNA preparations showed that the immunogenic activity was eluted from the column at 0.8 to 1.0 m NaCl in a linear 0.1 to 2.0 m NaCl gradient. Nonimmunogenic, protein-containing minor peaks were eluted at 0.1 to 0.5 m NaCl. Serial fractionation of the crude RNA preparations over Biogel P-6 to DEAE cellulose to Biogel P-300 molecular-sieve or anion-exchange columns did not alter the immunogenicity of the RNA preparation. Incorporation of the column fractions into Freund's incomplete adjuvant did not increase their relative effectiveness in eliciting anti-salmonella resistance. Chemical analysis of the immunogenic preparations indicated that they were lacking in detectable protein, lipid, and deoxyribonucleic acid. These results suggest that the immunogenic moiety of the crude nucleic acid fraction is either RNA or an as yet undefined polysaccharide of greater than 300,000 molecular weight.
Spin reorientation transition in an ultrathin Fe film on W(110) induced by Dzyaloshinsky-Moriya interactions

Controlling the preferred direction of the magnetic moments is essential for the design of spintronic devices based on ultrathin films and heterostructures. As the film thickness or the temperature is increased, the easy anisotropy axis is typically reoriented from an out-of-plane direction preferred by surface and interface energy contributions to an in-plane alignment favored by the volume anisotropy terms. We study the temperature-driven spin reorientation transition in two atomic layers of Fe on W(110) using well-tempered metadynamics simulations based on a spin model parametrized by ab initio calculations and find that the transition only takes place in the presence of the Dzyaloshinsky--Moriya interaction (DMI). This demonstrates that the chiral DMI does not only differentiate between noncollinear spin structures of different rotational senses, but it also influences the magnetic orientation of collinear magnetic configurations.
Comparison of four methods for identification of bifidobacteria to the genus level

The identification of bifidobacteria to the genus level is important for the differentiation of these bacteria from other bacteria occurring in the animal and human intestine. The detection of fructose-6-phosphate phosphoketolase (F6PPK-test) is used traditionally for the identification of Bifidobacterium sp. The original procedure is time consuming and therefore it was modified several times recently. The aim of the present work was to compare the following methods for the genus identification of bifidobacteria: F6PPK-test, F6PPK-test modified by the addition of triton X-100, F6PPK-test modified by the addition of cetridium bromide (F6PPK-CTAB-test), and PCR using genus specific primers. Bifidobacteria isolated from fermented milk products (3 strains), human faeces (6 strains), and animal intestinal tract (2 strains) were tested. All the methods tested proved to be reliable tests for the genus identification of bifidobacteria. The F6PPK-CTAB-test gave the best results. This procedure is quick and does not require any special laboratory equipment.
A Simple Non-i.i.d. Sampling Approach for Efficient Training and Better Generalization

While training on samples drawn from independent and identical distribution has been a de facto paradigm for optimizing image classification networks, humans learn new concepts in an easy-to-hard manner and on the selected examples progressively. Driven by this fact, we investigate the training paradigms where the samples are not drawn from independent and identical distribution. We propose a data sampling strategy, named Drop-and-Refresh (DaR), motivated by the learning behaviors of humans that selectively drop easy samples and refresh them only periodically. We show in our experiments that the proposed DaR strategy can maintain (and in many cases improve) the predictive accuracy even when the training cost is reduced by 15% on various datasets (CIFAR 10, CIFAR 100 and ImageNet) and with different backbone architectures (ResNets, DenseNets and MobileNets). Furthermore and perhaps more importantly, we find the ImageNet pre-trained models using our DaR sampling strategy achieves better transferability for the downstream tasks including object detection (+0.3 AP), instance segmentation (+0.3 AP), scene parsing (+0.5 mIoU) and human pose estimation (+0.6 AP). Our investigation encourages people to rethink the connections between the sampling strategy for training and the transferability of its learned features for pre-training ImageNet models.
Determination of parameters appearing in the "dry" and the "wet" photochemical theories for ozone in the stratosphere

Existing photochemical theories of the ozone in the stratosphere have been investigated. It is indicated in this work that the ozone concentrations above 30 km between 0° and 45° latitude during the summer months are mainly determined by photochemical processes. Parameters appearing in the schemes proposed by Chapman and Hampson are determined by fitting them to the mean ozone observations obtained from the Umkehr method. The results obtained simply that it is unlikely that any of the above mentioned theories alone can explain the ozone distributions. Numerical conditions on critical parameters are given. An alternative theory involving water vapour dissociation by excited molecular oxygen O 2 ( 3 ? + u ) is also discussed. DOI: 10.1111/j.2153-3490.1969. tb00450.x
A+ Indexes: Tunable and Space-Efficient Adjacency Lists in Graph Database Management Systems

Graph database management systems (GDBMSs) are highly optimized to perform fast traversals, i.e., joins of vertices with their neighbours, by indexing the neighbourhoods of vertices in adjacency lists. However, existing GDBMSs have system-specific and fixed adjacency list structures, which makes each system efficient on only a fixed set of workloads. We describe a new tunable indexing subsystem for GDBMSs, we call A+ indexes, with materialized view support. The subsystem consists of two types of indexes: (i) vertex-partitioned indexes that partition 1-hop materialized views into adjacency lists on either the source or destination vertex IDs; and (ii) edge-partitioned indexes that partition 2-hop views into adjacency lists on one of the edge IDs. As in existing GDBMSs, a system by default requires one forward and one backward vertex-partitioned index, which we call the primary A+ index. Users can tune the primary index or secondary indexes by adding nested partitioning and sorting criteria. Our secondary indexes are space-efficient and use a technique we call offset lists. Our indexing subsystem allows a wider range of applications to benefit from GDBMSs’ fast join capabilities. We demonstrate the tunability and space efficiency of A+ indexes through extensive experiments on three workloads.
Effects of a Dipteran Ectoparasite on Immune Response and Growth Trade-Offs in Barn Swallow, Hirundo rustica, Nestlings

Parasites can have a profound effect on biology and evolution of the hosts, which are expected to have evolved physiological and developmental mechanisms that allow them to minimise the costs imposed by parasites. In this study we analyse the effects of a dipteran ectoparasite on barn swallow (Hirundo rustica) nestling biology including rate of somatic growth, plasma protein concentration, blood cell sedimentation rate, hematocrit, concentration of leukocytes in peripheral blood, and T-lymphocyte cell-mediated immunocompetence. In a natural population, intensity of parasite infestation was positively correlated with growth of feathers. Nestlings in heavily infested nests may decide to allocate more resources to feather growth thus fledging early. To test this hypothesis, the detrimental effects of parasites on nestlings, and the existence of trade-offs between competing growth processes, we inoculated some nests with additional flies. Nestlings exposed to increased infestation had larger rate of feather growth but were in poorer condition than unmanipulated controls. Parasite inoculation resulted in larger concentrations of eosinophils and lymphocytes. Among siblings of broods inoculated with parasites, those that had the largest rate of feather growth had the lowest rate of increase in tarsus length and body mass. We conclude that louse flies depress barn swallow nestling condition and influence their immune profile. However, they also enhance growth of a morphological character that may allow nestlings to reduce the impact of parasites. Nestlings apparently experience a trade-off between the competing demands for growing feathers and other somatic characters.
First record of the genus Pseudopilolabus Legalov, 2003 (Coleoptera: Attelabidae) in Dominican amber

Abstract. A new weevil species (urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:2D5E9E4A-A250-4D0A-AF69-CF4753436686), Pseudopilolabus othnius Poinar, Brown and Legalov, sp. nov. (Coleoptera: Attelabidae), is described from Dominican amber. The new species is close to the extant P. viridanus (Gyllenhal, 1839) and P. splendens (Gyllenhal, 1839) but differs by having a bronzed body, narrower and more convex elytral intervals, long antennae reaching the middle of the pronotum, and weakly convex eyes; from P. rugiceps (Voss, 1925) it differs by having a smoother pronotum without transverse rugosity; from P. chiriquensis (Hamilton, 1994) it differs by having indistinctly protuberant humeri and the elytra nearly parallel from the humeri to the midpoint. The fossil weevil is the first record of the tribe Pilolabini (Attelabidae) from the West Indies and the first record of the Attelabidae from any amber source.
Length–weight relationships and length–length relationships of 13 fish species in Rongcheng Bay, China

Summary The present study provides the length–weight relationships (LWRs) of 13 fish species belonging to eight families that were collected in Rongcheng Bay, March 2009 to December 2014. The r2 values ranged from 0.953 to 0.994 and values of b varied from 2.542 to 3.454. The study also describes the total length – standard length relationships (LLRs) for these fish species. This is the first record of length–weight and length–length relationships for the fish species in this area.
Acoustic Radiation from a Finite Line Source with N‐Wave Excitation

A shock wave with an N‐shaped pressure profile is propagated in the equatorial plane of a weak spark in air. In the present work, the directional dependence of the acoustic waveform is examined for 0.5‐ and 1.0‐cm sparks having discharge energies between 0.01 and 0.1 J. The transient signals are detected with a wide‐band capacitor microphone that has a rise time of less than 1 μsec. As the spark axis is approached, an interval with no acoustic disturbance appears near the center of the waveform. The angular dependence of both the shock amplitude and the length of this central interval is found to be in qualitative agreement with the results of a linear analysis in which it is assumed that each point along the spark acts as a source of N waves.
Amino Acids Contents of Common Wild Edible Mushrooms in Yunnan Province

Edible mushrooms are well known for their value of nutrition. We analysed the contents of 17 amino acids in 41 species of common wild edible mushrooms in Yunnan Province. The results indicate that the types of amino acids are rich and the contents of amino acids are high. The total amino acids contents of Lyophyllum shimeji, Boletus griseus, Termitomyces bulborhizeus, and T.striatus are rather higher than others.
Le neuropeptide bombésine module la prolifération et l'invasion tumorale.

La bombesine est un peptide neuroendocrine de 14 acides amines decouvert a l'origine chez les amphibiens. Chez les mammiferes, la proteine equivalente, le GRP (gastrin-releasing peptide), est exprimee dans de nombreux tissus, parmi lesquels le systeme nerveux central et le tube digestif. Plusieurs travaux recents ont mis en evidence des effets biologiques originaux de ce peptide sur differentes lignees cellulaires tumorales et non tumorales : stimulation de la proliferation, de la migration et de l'invasion a travers une matrice cellulaire synthetique, modifications de la morphologie cellulaire et du cytosquelette d'actine. Ces effets biologiques sont parmi les principaux mecanismes capables de promouvoir la formation de metastases par des cellules cancereuses. Or le GRP et/ou son recepteur sont exprimes avec une frequence remarquable par differentes tumeurs primaires humaines, ce qui laisse supposer un role specifique de ce peptide dans le processus de cancerogenese humaine. L'etude des mecanismes intracellulaires responsables de l'effet pro-invasif du GRP in vitro est une voie de recherche stimulante qui pourrait permettre d'analyser la coordination des differentes voies metaboliques impliquees dans l'acquisition d'un phenotype invasif par les cellules tumorales.
Antimicrobial and cytotoxicity activity of selected Pare folk medicinal plants

Aim: The study aimed to evaluate antimicrobial and cytotoxicity of Grewia villosa , Cassia abbreviata and Hoslundia opposita . Methods: Microdilution method and brine shrimp lethality test were employed to evaluate antimicrobial and cytotoxicity of plant extracts. Results: The extracts of G. villosa , C. abbreviata and H. opposita showed different levels of antimicrobial activities on Gram negative bacterial and fungal species tested. The minimum inhibition concentration (MIC) ranges of G. villosa , C. abbreviata and H. opposita extracts were 0.391-25, 0.195-25 and 0.391-25 mg/mL respectively. Cassia abbreviata stem methanolic extracts and roots ethyl acetate extracts exhibited the highest activity with minimum inhibition concentration (MIC) of 0.195 mg/mL against S. typhi and K. oxytoca respectively. At least one of the extract from each plant exhibited a cytotoxicity nature when tested on brine shrimps where the G. villosa stem chloroform extract was the most cytotoxic with fifty percent lethal concentration (LC50) of 48.432 µg/mL. Conclusion: The findings in this study validate the traditional use of G. villosa , C. abbreviata and H. opposita in management of bacterial and fungal infections. Further phytochemical investigations on G. villosa , C. abbreviata and H. opposita growing in Pare Mountains are recommended to contribute to drug development.
Seasonal Effects on Ground-Wave propagation in Cold Regions

Abstract The ground-wave is the most important mode of propagation of radio waves in Connection with glaciology. In cold regions, special conditions are often prevalent, involving propagation over non-homogeneous earth, presence of stratified media, and low values of conductivity and dielectric constant in the upper strata. A radio wave which propagates along the Earth's surface is, however, also influenced by atmospheric refraction. As the frequency is increased, the roughness of the Earth's surface must also be taken into account. Thus seasonal variations are to be expected due to changes in the electrical and topographical properties of the ground as well as the propagation conditions in the atmosphere. It is, however, difficult to separate these various effects, a fact which reduces the possibility of using ground-wave propagation as a loot for obtaining information on the properties of the ground. Though the propagation of the ground-wave has been dealt with both theoretically and experimentally for almost a century, some of the most valuable information of major importance in cold regions has been obtained during the last ten years. New theoretical papers on propagation over stratified media offer an explanation of the amplitude and phase variations of the ground-wave field, which have been measured, as well as suggesting new methods to be tested as possible aids in solving glaciological problems. In many practical eases of ground-wave propagation in arctic regions, the formula for the ground-wave field strength can be written in a very simple way. Such a propagation model for frequencies above 30 MHz is presented in which account is taken of the Earth's curvature, the terrain irregularities, and the effect of the tropospheric refraction. This model also includes the recovery effect which occurs in propagation over mixed paths. At the higher frequencies the effect of depolarization becomes very important and sometimes overshadows field-strength variations due to the influence of the electrical properties. Finally some problems will be discussed which remain to be solved or have been given very little attention up to now.
ESTABELECIMENTO DO TESTE DO COMETA EM HEMÓCITOS DE Biomphalaria glabrata (Say, 1818) EXPOSTOS À RADIAÇÃO GAMA ( 60 Co).

ESTABLISHMENT OF COMET ASSAY IN HAEMOCYTES OF BIOMPHALARIA GLABRATA (SAY, 1818) EXPOSED TO GAMMA RADIATION (Co). The single cell gel eletrophoresis or the comet assay was established in the freshwater snail Biomphalaria glabrata. For detecting DNA damage in circulating hemocytes, adult snails were irradiated with single doses of 2.5, 5, 10 and 20 Gy of (Co) gamma radiation. Genotoxic effect of ionizing radiation was detected at all doses as a dose-related increase in DNA migration. Comet assay in B. glabrata demonstrated to be a simple, fast and reliable tool in the evaluation of genotoxic effects of environmental mutagens.