Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Characterization of the complete chloroplast genome of Abies chensiensis (Pinaceae), an endemic to China

Abstract Abies chensiensis, an endemic evergreen trees distributed in Qinling Mountains, is listed in China Species Red List as an endangered species. In this study, the complete chloroplast genome (cpDNA) sequence of Abies chensiensis was determined from Illumina pair-end sequencing data. The cpDNA is 121,329 bp in length, contains a large single copy region (LSC) of 72,843 bp and a small single copy region (SSC) of 46,126 bp, which were separated by a pair of inverted repeat (IR) regions of 1180 bp. The genome contains 120 genes, including 81 protein-coding genes, 4 ribosomal RNA genes, and 35 transfer RNA genes. The overall GC content of the whole genome is 38.3%, and the corresponding values of the LSC, SSC, and IR regions are 38.8, 37.1, and 37.5%, respectively. Phylogenetic analysis based on 20 chloroplast genomes indicates that A. chensiensis is closely related to A. sibirica.
Dynamique spatio-temporelle et écologie des méningites bactériennes en dehors de la ceinture de la méningite en Afrique : cas de la République démocratique du Congo

Les meningites bacteriennes restent un probleme de sante publique internationale avec un fardeau principalement localise en Afrique. Elles sont principalement dues a trois bacteries : Neisseria meningitidis (Nm), Streptococcus pneunomiae (Sp) et Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), le rhino-pharynx de l’homme etant la niche ecologique des bacteries. La transmission est aerienne, directe, interhumaine ou par contact avec les secretions respiratoires du malade ou du porteur sain.Alors que la ceinture de la meningite qui s’etend du Senegal jusqu’a l’Ethiopie, est largement etudiee, l’ecologie des meningites en dehors de cette zone particuliere est encore peu connue. L’objectif de cette these est d’explorer l’ecologie des meningites bacteriennes en Republique democratique du Congo (RDC) a partir des donnees epidemiologiques, genetiques et socio-environnementales pour la periode de 2000-2018.En depit du faible taux de confirmation biologique des cas (14%), nous avons identifie des zones de sante a risque, regroupees en 8 clusters spatiaux. Ces clusters nous ont permis de mettre en evidence une saisonnalite des meningites bacteriennes peu marquee et variable d’une region a une autre en RDC, ce qui contraste avec les dynamiques decrites dans la ceinture de la meningite.Les zones urbanisees ou les populations montrent un indice economique de bien-etre mediocre a bas, de latitude et de longitude elevees, d’altitude moyenne a faible, de vegetation constituee de savanes ou de savanes arborees, a valeurs moyennes de temperature, constituent autant de facteurs de risque importants, seuls ou en synergie, pour expliquer les cas de meningites en RDC.La distribution d’aerosols et de poussieres sur le territoire congolais precede d’environ 2 a 3 semaines les demarrages epidemiques de meningites bacteriennes, et ce pour deux categories de regroupements mensuels (i.e. decembre a fevrier et mai a septembre). Ces resultats laissent prefigurer une possibilite de mise au point d’un systeme d’alerte precoce. Au final, nous proposons un modele conceptuel explicatif des meningites en RDC dont le rythme d’apparition des premiers cas est bien regule par les deplacements de poussieres et d’aerosols sur le pays.La reconnaissance de meningites bacteriennes comme priorites internationales notamment en dehors de la ceinture dont les caracteristiques restent encore a mieux comprendre, pourrait contribuer a l’atteinte des objectifs du developpement durable, et plus particulierement de ceux qui concernent l’ODD 3 « sante et bien-etre pour toutes et tous ».
Optimization of an Ultralight Autonomous Drone for Service Robotics

Drone industry is constantly growing and evolving in time. Federal Aviation Administration Aerospace Forecast predicts that drone market volume will be about three times the actual one in 2023. This because UAVs are becoming more and more fundamental in the most various application like agriculture, emergency response, urban planning and maintenance, entertainment, security and so many others. For all these tasks, in the near future a large number of drones will fly over our heads. From here the necessity to build safe, lightweight and autonomous UAV for the drones colonization of the very lower part of the Earth atmosphere. Furthermore EASA fixed to 250 grams the limit of the C0 open UAS, category with quite few restrictions to fly. PIC4SeR (PoliTO Interdepartmental Centre for Service Robotics) wants to keep up with this incoming demand and enter in this market, deciding to invest time and resources on the optimization of an ultralight autonomous drone, with the future intention of full customization with the needs of the end-user for different and specific cases such as service robotics, smart city search and rescue and precision agriculture that are the four fields of action of the interdepartmental centre where this thesis took place. With the base of the first flying prototype and a deep research on the State Of Art literature on drones, in particular lightweight and autonomous ones, the work done for this thesis was to optimize the drone with special attention to hardware and weight, changing the usual construction method from carbon fiber frame to a newborn design using Printed Circuit Board and 3D printed plastic, and finally to make it intelligent and usable by non-expert users with basic knowledge. The improvements made and overall stability of the new prototype are satisfactory, a solid point from which to develop many ultralight drone based technologies.
Hypothesis-Testing Improves the Predicted Reliability of Neuroscience Research

Critics often cite statistical problems as prime contributors to the “reproducibility crisis” of science, expressing great concern about research that bases major conclusions on single p-valued statistical tests. The critics also argue that the predicted reliability of neuroscience research in particular is low because much of the work depends heavily on small experimental sample sizes and, hence, its statistical tests lack adequate “power. ” It isn’t known how common the practice of basing major conclusions on single tests is in neuroscience or how the statistical criticisms affect the validity of conclusions drawn by laboratory research that evaluates hypotheses via multiple tests. I review a sample of neuroscience publications to estimate the prevalence and extensiveness of hypothesis-testing research. I then apply R.A. Fisher’s method for combining test results to show that the practice of testing multiple predictions of hypotheses increases the predicted reliability of neuroscience research.
Evaluating the use of garlic (
 Allium sativum)
 for the remedy of
 Cryptocaryon irritans
 in guppies (
 Poecilia reticulata
 )

Garlic (Allium sativum) has been shown to possess antimicrobial properties against a range of disease‐causing agents, including fish parasites. Our study aimed to investigate the potential use of garlic as a treatment against Cryptocaryon irritans infection, using guppies (Poecilia reticulata) as the fish model. Garlic was freeze‐dried, powdered, and used as it is or as an aqueous extract. The content of allicin, its main active ingredient, was 1.25 mg/g in garlic powder and 0.82 mg/ml in the aqueous extract, as determined by HPLC analysis. Aqueous garlic extract fully immobilized C. irritans theronts and protomonts within 20 and 40 min, respectively, following exposure to 5 µl/ml. Treatment trials were performed, in which infected fish were fed with garlic powder‐supplemented feeds (5%, 10%, or 20% supplementation), bathed in garlic aqueous extract (250 or 500 µl/L) and subjected to a combined treatment which included both feeding and bathing. Results revealed that the tested treatments failed to cure the infection, though reduction in infection intensity on the caudal fin, but not on the gills, was evident following dietary supplementation with 20% of powdered garlic in one of the trials.
Diversity and homologies of corystosperm seed-bearing structures from the Early Cretaceous of Mongolia

New discoveries of corystosperm seed-bearing structures from the Tevshiin Govi locality, Mongolia, which is of Early Cretaceous (Aptian–Albian) age, show that the individual seed-bearing units of Umkomasia mongolica were borne in a cone, as also documented for the very similar reproductive units of Doylea tetrahedrasperma. New material from the Tevshiin Govi locality also documents two additional species of Umkomasia – U. corniculata sp. nov. and U. trilobata sp. nov. – that most likely grew in a different environment to U. mongolica. The occurrence of three different Umkomasia species in the Early Cretaceous of Mongolia, together with other records from the Early Cretaceous of the Northern Hemisphere, indicate that previous concepts of corystosperms, based mainly on material from the Southern Hemisphere, need to be revised. The consistent reproductive architecture of the seed-bearing structures in all three corystosperm species, with a bract subtending a variously modified axis bearing ovules, is similar to the situation in Ginkgo and conifers. These underappreciated architectural commonalities among the reproductive structures of major groups of seed plants are likely significant for a deeper understanding of seed plant evolution and require further exploration.
Enhancing Cloud Gaming User Experience through Docker Containers in Fog Nodes

The attraction towards cloud gaming has reached to a high intensity in modern days. The proliferation of gassed-up networks and the development in the field ofcloud computing has attracted the researches to deep study and identify the gaps in Cloud Gaming to provide high-end quality of gamer experience. In time-horned cloud gaming model, the game scenes are rendered in a sophisticated game server and corresponding game video is generated. The generated game video will be encoded and sent over the network to the thin clients. The thin clients decode the encoded video and stream the video back to the players device. The fundamental requirement of gaming is to provide maximum quality of gamer experience. Cloud gaming suffers in terms of providing Quality of Experience (QoE), because the network transmission of game scenes from cloud game server to gamer device is distant. Since the traditional cloud gaming is deployed in virtual machine there is performance-overhead which also affects the QoE. We endeavour to minimize latency and increase performance in cloud gaming through this paper. The cloud game server will be offoaded to the fog nodes which is present at the edge network of the player based on Node selection algorithm. To increase the performance of cloud gaming, traditional virtual machine is replaced by light-weight containers. The proposed system achieves new methodology by deploying cloud game server through docker containers in fog nodes. Evaluation results has proved that fognode based gaming has minimized the latency and increased the performance of cloud gaming. Fog assisted gaming has shown about 1.3MB increase in terms of TCP transfer rate over cloud gaming.
Detecting convergent adaptive amino acid evolution

In evolutionary genomics, researchers have taken an interest in identifying in the genomes substitutions that subtend convergent phenotypic adaptations. This is a difficult question to address, because genomes contain billions of sites, many of which have substituted in the lineages where the adaptations took place, and yet are not linked to them. Those extra substitutions may be linked to other adaptations, may be neutral, or may be linked to mutational biases. Furthermore, one can think of various ways of defining substitutions of interest, and various methods that match those definitions have been used, resulting in different sets of candidate substitutions. In this manuscript we first clarify how adaptation to convergent phenotypic evolution can manifest itself in coding sequences. Second, we review methods that have been proposed to detect convergent adaptive evolution in coding sequences and expose the assumptions that underlie them. Finally, we examine their power on simulations of convergent changes, including in the presence of a confounding factor.
Analysis of Medicinal Value of Paulownia Flower

Paulownia flower contains flavonoids, triterpenoids, volatile oils, amino acids, proteins, tannins, phenols, trace elements and has the effect of detoxification, detumescence, anti-tumor, anti-oxidation, antibacterial and enhancing immunity. It has a good therapeutic effect on upper respiratory tract infection, bacillary dysentery, bronchial pneumonia, acute tonsillitis and conjunctivitis, otitis externa. The Paulownia flower is rich in resources, low price, but the market on Paulownia flower products rarely, lead to the Paulownia flower should not be fully applied, resulting in a waste of resources. For the comprehensive utilization of Paulownia flower, the flower of Paulownia chemical composition, pharmacological effects, clinical application, literature research into Line review.
Studies on the glucose family phosphotransferases of Clostridium beijerinckii

i Acknowledgment.iii Research thesis submission.iv Table of contents.v List of figures.x List of tables.xiv List of abbreviations.xv Posters.xvii 1.Introduction. 2 1.1. Carbohydrates . 2 1.1.1. Monosaccharides . 3 1.1.2. Disaccharides . 3 1.1.3. Oligosaccharides . 3 1.1.4. Polysaccharides . 4 1.2. Clostridia and the history of acetone – butanol – ethanol (ABE) fermentation . 5 1.3. Biofuels . 6 1.3. 1. Biodiesel . 7 1.3. 2. Bioethanol . 7 1.3. 3. Biobutanol . 8 1.4. Metabolic production of acetone and butanol . 8 1.5. Transport systems in bacteria . 11 1.6. The carbohydrate phosphotransferase system (PTS) in bacteria . 14 1.6. 1. Enzyme I (EI) and HPr . 14 1.6. 2. Enzyme II (EII) . 16 1.7. Carbon catabolite repression (CCR) . 18 1.7. 1. CCR in Gram negative bacteria . 18 1.7. 2. CCR in Gram positive bacteria . 19 1.8. Sugar uptake by the clostridia . 22 vi 1.9. Clostridium beijerinckii . 24 1.10. The ClosTron . 26 1.11. Aim of the study . 28 2. Materials and Methods . 30 2.1. Bacterial strains used in this study . 30 2.2. Buffers and solutions . 30 2.3. Growth media composition . 30 2.4. Growth of C. beijerinckii NCIMB 8052 . 32 2.5. Preparation of C. beijerinckii NCIMB 8052 spores . 32 2.6. Genomic deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) extraction . 33 2.6. 1. DNA extraction from C. beijerinckii NCIMB 8052 . 33 2.7. Cloning and screening for genes . 34 2.7. 1. Design of primers. 34 2.8. Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) for gene cloning . 34 2.9. DNA Gel Electrophoresis . 35 2.10. Cloning Reactions . 35 2.10. 1. Cloning of cbei 0751. 35 2.10. 2. Cloning of cbei 4983 and cbei 4982 . 36 2.10. 3. Cloning of cbei 4984/ cbei 4983/ cbei 4982 . 36 2.11. Screening and Analysis of Clones . 36 2.11.1. Screen for presence of cloned genes . 36 2.11.2. Determination of Orientation of DNA Inserts by PCR. 37 2.12. Preparation of plasmids by miniprep procedure . 37 2. 12.1. Large-scale plasmid purification . 38 2.13. Preparation and transformation of chemically competent cells of E.coli . 39 2.14. Characterization of recombinant E.coli cells containing gene cbei 0751 . 40 2.14. 1. Utilization of glucose, mannose and N-acetylglucosamine in growing cultures . 40 2.14. 2. Glucose uptake by whole cells. 41 2.15. Preparation of cell extracts . 41 2.15. 1. Assay of sugar phosphorylation in cellfree extracts . 42 2.16. Dialysis of cell extracts . 42
Empirical Predictions of the Trophic Consequences of NonNative Freshwater Fishes: A Synthesis of Approaches and Invasion Impacts

Predicting the ecological impacts of invasive fishes is crucial for understanding their risks in the environment. Experimental approaches that provide empirical data on invasion impacts provide both theoretical insights and data of high management utility for prioritising high-risk invaders. Here, a synthesis of some experimental approaches that predict invasion impacts of non-native fish is presented, where the focus is on impacts relating to the trophic impacts of the invader on either native trophically analogous fishes or prey populations. Experiments in tank aquaria are advantageous in providing homogenous and controlled conditions that also enable high replication. Competition-based studies can determine invasion impacts via exposure of fish to fixed food rations, although these experiments tend to produce results in intensely competitive conditions that might not occur in the wild. Comparative functional response experiments in tank aquaria have been successfully applied to determining the relative impacts of invaders compared with native species on prey populations, and have revealed high resource efficiency in globally invasive piscivorous fishes. Experiments completed in mesocosms and small ponds have the advantage of providing replicated systems in semi-natural conditions. They have been successful in revealing that rather than competing with native fishes, many invasive fishes show strong patterns of trophic niche partitioning. These patterns are also evident in these fishes when in natural invaded communities. Thus, whilst it is often suggested invasion impacts from non-native fishes result from inter-specific competition, this is being increasingly challenged by a combination of experimental and field-based predictions.
Modeli digitalne zrelosti poduzeća - objašnjenje, pregled literature i analiza

Over the last few years, researchers have been interested in research into digital business transformation and digital maturity. Digital transformation has been captured by a large number of companies from different industries, which is why the patterns of business maturity become more and more important. A significant number of maturity models have been identified in the literature (over 150 by available literature), however, only a small part refers to models which research the digital maturity of a company. The main aim of the paper is to provide a relevant overview of the literature and the analysis of the digital maturity models in order to gain insight into areas that can be improved based on the results of the analysis, which would be a step towards standardizing the company’s digital maturity model. Other objectives of the paper are to explain the role of the digital maturity models in the digital transformation process and to define digital maturity models. A review of the literature found 20 digital maturity models that were analyzed. The contribution of work is reflected in the analysis of identified digital maturity models, as it is expanded with additional information (for example, the existence of factors, subfactors (indicators) and maturity measurement processes and as such is a novelty in the literature. The authors, through a comprehensive way of analyzing enterprise digital maturity models, are pointing to individual weaknesses in relation to key design maturity model recommendations. Also, by analyzing the shortcomings with respect to design maturity model recommendations, the authors evaluate the scientific contribution and the possible scientific application of each enterprise digital maturity model. The analysis found that there are significant shortcomings in digital maturity research as the existing models are largely descriptive and linear, but that the models also lack a greater correlation with the theory. Based on the analysis, recommendations for the development of the digital maturity models in the future have been given.
PHYSIOLOGICAL SELECTIVITY OF INSECTICIDES TO EGGS AND LARVAE OF PREDATOR Chrysoperla externa (HAGEN) (NEUROPTERA: CHRYSOPIDAE)

Given the importance of green lacewings as agents of biological pest control, the present study aimed to evaluate the toxicity of insecticides used on coffee crops on the eggs and larvae of Chrysoperla externa . The insecticides tested were (g or mL a.i./L) chlorpyrifos (2.25), cartap hydrochloride (1.66), pyriproxyfen (0.33), profenofos/lufenuron (1.33/0.13), fenpropathrin (0.40), triazophos/deltamethrin (0.70/0.02) and zetacypermethrin (0.05). The insecticides, when applied directly on the eggs, caused no adverse effects on the duration of the embryonic period. After the application of triazophos/deltamethrin, pyriproxyfen, profenofos/lufenuron and zetacypermethrin, a reduction in egg viability was induced. The insecticides triazophos/ deltamethrin, chlorpyrifos, and profenofos/lufenuron reduced the survival of newly hatched first instar larvae from treated eggs. The first instar larvae that were treated directly were sensitive to the effects of the products used, with the effect of triazophos and chlorpyrifos/deltamethrin being high. The survival of the second instar larvae was reduced by zetacypermethrin, fenpropathrin, profenofos/lufenuron, and cartap hydrochloride. The products chlorpyrifos and triazophos/deltamethrin also did not allow second instar larvae survival. For treated third instar larvae, chlorpyrifos and triazophos/deltamethrin allowed survival of only 20.0 and 57.5%. Eggs and larvae of C. externa showed sensitiveness to insecticides chlorpyrifos and triazophos, being needed more studies in semi-field and field conditions for the confirmation or not of the toxicity aiming the conservation of this predator specie on the coffee agroecosystem.
Manufactured nanoparticles: assessing the mobility of a future class of containment in groundwaters

Estimating manufactured nanoparticle mobility using fast, simple methods could form a useful part of a risk assessment tool. The aim of this work was to investigate whether zeta potential could be used for this purpose. Using a new surface zeta potential measurement technique, the surface zeta potential of a 50m sandstone sequence was found to vary little with lithofacies when chemical conditions were kept constant. A surface area modified linear mixing model was able to describe the sandstone zeta potential, suggesting that clay minerals are the dominant control on bulk properties. The sandstone and silica nanoparticle zeta potentials were sensitive to the chemical composition and pH of the surrounding fluid, which was influenced by ion exchange and carbonate dissolution. The zeta potential of the sandstone and nanoparticles can be used to qualitatively describe the relative mobility under different chemical conditions. Calculations using DLVO and colloid filtration theory (CFT) can reproduce the equilibrium concentration (C’/C\(_0\)) values observed experimentally, however the significant tailing in the breakthrough curve is not described by this traditional particle transport model. Further work is required to determine whether DLVO and CFT can be used as part of a mobility screening tool, as this initial study suggests.