Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Overexpression, purification and characterization of Aspergillus niger beta-glucosidase in Pichia pastoris.

This study describes the expression of s-glucosidase (BglA) from Aspergillus niger in Pichia pastoris, a methylotrophic yeast strain, under the regulation of an alcohol oxidase promoter. The heterologous expression of BglA was optimized in a shake flask. Optimal conditions were achieved using an initial cell density (OD 600) of 4-5 and an inducer concentration of 2.5% methanol for 72 hours. A recombinant protein with a molecular weight of ~116 kDa was produced. This recombinant BglA has optimal activity at 60°C in sodium acetate buffer at pH 4. This enzyme is stable between pH 3.0-6.0 and retained more than 50% of its maximum activity at pH 6.0 after incubation at 60°C for 30 min. However, it lost almost 80% of its maximal activity at pH 7.0 under the same conditions. A thermostability assay of this enzyme revealed that BglA is relatively stable up to 60°C. This enzyme retained 50% of its original activity at 60°C but was completely inactive after incubation at 70°C for 30 min. BglA showed highest activity and specificity towards the synthetic substrate p-nitrophenol-s-Dglucopyranoside with a specific activity of 347.62 U mg -1 and a specificity constant of 466.19 mL mg -1s-1 . BglA had a specific activity of 6.2 U mg -1 and a specificity constant of 6.01 mL mg -1s-1 for cellobiose.
Expansion of magnetic flux concentrations: a comparison of Hinode SOT data and models

Context. The expansion of network magnetic fields with height is a fundamental property of flux tube models. A rapid expansion is required to form a magnetic canopy. Aims. We characterize the observed expansion properties of magnetic network elements and compare them with the thin flux tube and sheet approximations, as well as with magnetoconvection simulations. Methods. We used data from the Hinode SOT NFI NaD1 channel and spectropolarimeter to study the appearance of magnetic flux concentrations seen in circular polarization as a function of position on the solar disk. We compared the observations with synthetic observables from models based on the thin flux tube approximation and magnetoconvection simulations with two different upper boundary conditions for the magnetic field (potential and vertical). Results. The observed circular polarization signal of magnetic flux concentrations changes from unipolar at disk center to bipolar near the limb, which implies an expanding magnetic field. The observed expansion agrees with expansion properties derived from the thin flux sheet and tube approximations. Magnetoconvection simulations with a potential field as the upper boundary condition for the magnetic field also produce bipolar features near the limb while a simulation with a vertical field boundary condition does not. Conclusions. The near-limb apparent bipolar magnetic features seen in high-resolution Hinode observations can be interpreted using a simple flux sheet or tube model. This lends further support to the idea that magnetic features with vastly varying sizes have similar relative expansion rates. The numerical simulations presented here are less useful in interpreting the expansion since the diagnostics we are interested in are strongly influenced by the choice of the upper boundary condition for the magnetic field in the purely photospheric simulations.
Empowering older women in AIDS prevention: the case of Botswana

This article describes the preliminary results of a peer education programme for AIDS prevention and care among older women in Botswana. A culturally-sensitive programme was developed based on the findings of a qualitative study that revealed older womens knowledge and beliefs about HIV'IAIDS. These findings indicated that older women have been marginalized by public-health messages on AIDS prevention, thus making them vulnerable to HIV infection. Through peer education, older women were empowered to prevent HIV infection to themselves, and within their families and communities. They also learnt about the care of people who have AIDS. The result of the peer education programme indicates that older women, as respected members of the community, are an important resource in HIVIAIDS prevention and control.
What determines growth potential and juvenile quality of farmed fish species

Enhanced production of high quality and healthy fry is a key target for a successful and competitive expansion of the aquaculture industry. Although large quantities of fish larvae are produced, survival rates are often low or highly variable and growth potential is in most cases not fully exploited, indicating significant gaps in our knowledge concerning optimal nutritional and culture conditions. Understanding the mechanisms that control early development and muscle growth are critical for the identification of time windows in development that introduce growth variation, and improve the viability and quality of juveniles. This literature review of the current state of knowledge aims to provide a framework for a better understanding of fish skeletal muscle ontogeny, and its impact on larval and juvenile quality as broadly defined. It focuses on fundamental biological knowledge relevant to larval phenotype and quality and, in particular, on the factors affecting the development of skeletal muscle. It also discusses the available methodologies to assess growth and larvae/juvenile quality, identifies gaps in knowledge and suggests future research directions. The focus is primarily on the major farmed non-salmonid fish species in Europe that include gilthead sea bream, European sea bass, turbot, Atlantic cod, Senegalese sole and Atlantic halibut.
STRONGER REFLECTION FROM BLACK HOLE ACCRETION DISKS IN SOFT X-RAY STATES

We analyze 15,000 spectra of 29 stellar-mass black hole (BH) candidates collected over the 16 year mission lifetime of Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer using a simple phenomenological model. As these BHs vary widely in luminosity and progress through a sequence of spectral states, which we broadly refer to as hard and soft, we focus on two spectral components: the Compton power law and the reflection spectrum it generates by illuminating the accretion disk. Our proxy for the strength of reflection is the equivalent width of the Fe–K line as measured with respect to the power law. A key distinction of our work is that for all states we estimate the continuum under the line by excluding the thermal disk component and using only the component that is responsible for fluorescing the Fe–K line, namely, the Compton power law. We find that reflection is several times more pronounced (∼3) in soft compared to hard spectral states. This is most readily caused by the dilution of the Fe line amplitude from Compton scattering in the corona, which has a higher optical depth in hard states. Alternatively, this could be explained by a more compact corona in soft (compared to hard) states, which would result in a higher reflection fraction.
Impact of Observed and Controlled Water Intake on Reticulorumen Temperature in Lactating Dairy Cattle

Simple Summary Precision technologies are often integrated on dairy farms to monitor individual animal health. One precision technology used is a bolus that is inserted into a cows’ reticulorumen to monitor reticulorumen temperature. Although it is known that both water temperature and water quantity ingested are associated with changes in reticulorumen temperature, limited quantifiable research exists on the impact and magnitude of controlled water intake on reticulorumen temperature. We conducted an observational study to determine the effect of natural water ingestion on reticulorumen temperature, and performed a modified Latin square where cows were drenched with specific water quantities at specific temperatures to determine the effect of controlled water intake on reticuloruminal temperature. Our results demonstrated that water quantity and water temperature affect not only the magnitude of change in degrees in Celsius, but also how much time is required for reticulorumen temperature to return to baseline. This study provides insights in how to adjust the temperatures measures affected by water intake when using cattle reticulorumen temperature monitoring systems and how to estimate water consumption using decreases in reticulorumen temperature. Abstract Dairy precision technologies helps producers monitor individual animals. Reticulorumen temperature boluses are a way to monitor core body temperature; however, factors such as water intake affects reticulorumen temperature. This research determined the effect of natural water intake and a controlled water drench on reticulorumen temperature (RT) in dairy cattle. In observational study part 1, tie- stall cows (n = 4) with RT transponders were observed for natural water intake (recorded by in line water meters) for 48 h. In experiment part 2, a randomized Latin square design with cows (n = 12) restricted on feed for 4 h, were drenched daily with a water quantity of 6.7 L, 11.4 L or 22.7 L, and at controlled water temperature of 1.7 °C, 7.2 °C, 15.5 °C, or 29.4 °C. Descriptively, observational study 1 had (Mean ± SD 0.27 ± 0.31 L ingested per drinking event (n = 84) and RT decline from baseline was 2.29 ± 1.82 °C. For the experiment, a 48-h specific rolling baseline temperature range (BTR) was calculated for each cow prior to the experiment to determine time required for RT to reach BTR, and time to return to BTR. In part 2 of the experiment, as water quantity increased, RT had a greater maximum degree drop from baseline. Water temperature and water quantity interaction influenced time required for BTR to reestablish. The coldest water temperature at the highest drench quantity affected time for BTR to reestablish the longest (103 min). Results from this study suggest that an algorithm could be designed to predict water intake events for producers using reticulorumen temperature.
Stability trophic cascades in food chains

While previous studies have evaluated the change in stability for the addition or removal of individual species from trophic food chains and food webs, we know of no study that presents a general theory for how stability changes with the addition or removal of trophic levels. In this study, we present a simple model of a linear food chain and systematically evaluate how stability—measured as invariability—changes with the addition or removal of trophic levels. We identify the presence of trophic cascades in the stability of species. Owing to top-down control by predation and bottom-up regulation by prey, we find that stability of a species is highest when it is at the top of the food chain and lowest when it is just under the top of the food chain. Thus, stability shows patterns identical to those of mean biomass with the addition or removal of trophic levels in food chains. Our results provide a baseline towards a general theory of the effect of adding or removing trophic levels on stability, which can be used to inform empirical studies.
Fake Review Detection using Classification

In today’s world, where Internet has become a household convenience, online reviews have become a critical tool for businesses to control their online reputation. Reviewing has changed the face of marketing in this new era. Nowadays, most companies invest money in mining the reviews to gain insights into customer preferences as well as to gain competitive intelligence and are hiring individuals to write fake reviews. The fraudsters’ activities mislead potential customers and organizations reshaping their businesses and prevent opinion-mining techniques from reaching accurate conclusions. Thus, it has become essential to detect fake reviews to bring to surface the true product opinion. This paper focuses on product reviews and detecting spam fake reviews among them using supervised learning techniques using synthetic fake reviews (to cover all types) as a training set. Term frequency and user review frequency are two features whose impact on classification model is studied in this paper. It classifies the reviews to test the accuracy of the model. The results have been encouraging with an accuracy of over 98%.
A Review on Resemblance of User Profiles in Social Networks using Similarity Measures

Online Social Networking is increasing at a fast rate. There are lots of profiles of the users and there is too much resemblance between the user profiles which can help recruiter’s to select the best candidates for the Job Profile. Now, each similarity measure has its own applicability and best suited to a particular type of attribute values and if these measures are collectively combined then it can help us to find the best resemblance among the user profile ,the result of which matches to the actual result. In this paper, the discussion of the past studies is done and how our research is proposing a framework for finding the resemblance is being discussed.
Nonmetric Earth Mover ’ s Distance for Efficient Similarity Search

The Earth Mover’s Distance is a well-known distance-based similarity measure employed in various domains of data management, especially in computer vision and contentbased multimedia retrieval. However, as the computation of the Earth Mover’s Distance is a considerably expensive task, efficient processing of content-based similarity queries in large multimedia databases remains a challenging issue. In this paper, we propose to use nonmetric ground distances within the computation of the Earth Mover’s Distance in order to speedup its computation, thus improving the efficiency of the entire retrieval process. Moreover, by investigating the inner workings of the Earth Mover’s Distance, we show how to balance the trade-off between effectiveness and efficiency in order to adapt the retrieval process to individual user requirements. By making use of metric access methods in combination with the Rubner filter, we empirically show an improvement in efficiency by two orders of magnitude according to the sequential scan, while keeping the retrieval error below 5%.
Advances in breeding for sweetpotato virus resitance in Uganda

Six sweetpotato [Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam. ( cultivars, 'Bwanjule,' 'New Kawogo,' ' Tanzania,' 'Tororo 3', ' Wagabolige' and 'Sowola ' were officially released by the Variety Release Committee. These were the first sweetpotato cultivars to be officially released in Uganda, where sweetpotato is an important food crop. The newly released cultiva rs, five of them selections from the land race gcrroplasm, and one, 'Sowola' a newly-bred "·a riety, were seleded on the basis of consistently superior yield performance and disease resistance in multiiOCllti c> nal yield trials in Uga nda, and their excellent consumer acceptance in taste tests. S uccess in the release ofthcse s uperior. Running Title: Advances in breeding for sweetpotato virus resitance in Uganda cultivars has depended a lot on effectively screening and breeding for sweetpotato virus disease(SPVD) resistance. SPVD causes up to 98% storage root yield loss in Uganda. The procedures used to make advances in breeding for SPVO resistance in Uganda have included germ plasm screening, polycross, modified recurrent selection, using very Ia rgc base populations coupled with high selection rates, 0.2-11 "/v, and serologies I tests to confirm the presence ofthe causal agents ofSPVD. Effor ts have been initiated to investigate the potential for using molecular markers for detecting SPVD resistance.
PAH mutational spectrum: still expanding

Phenylketonuria (PKU, MIM 261600) is the most common inborn error of amino acid metabolism. To date, a total of more than 500 mutations have been associated with the disease. In this report, the novel p.Glu182Lys mutation, found in a Portuguese family in combination with the previously reported p.Leu 348Val, is presented and its putative deleterious impact discussed.
Twin Peaks or Three Components? - Analyzing the World\'s Cross-Country Distribution of Income

In this paper we analyze the world´s cross-national distribution of income and its evolution from 1970 to 2003. We argue that modeling this distribution by a finite mixture and investigating its number of components has advantages over nonparametric inference concerning the number of modes. In particular, the number of components of the distribution does not depend on the scale chosen (original or logarithmic), whereas the number of modes does. Instead of so-called twin-peaks, we find that the distribution appears to have only two components in 1970-1975, but consists of three components from 1976 onwards, a low, average and high mean-income group, with group means diverging over time. Here we apply recently developed modified likelihood ratio tests for the number of components in a finite mixture. The intra distributional dynamics are investigated in detail using posterior probability estimates.
In silico design and modeling of new biosynthetic pathways: curcumin production in Escherichia coli

Curcuminoids are produced by plants of the order Zingiberales, and often used in food additives and also in traditional Asian medicines due to their anti-tumour properties. Therefore, they constitute very attractive targets to metabolic engineering [1]. The aim of this work is to engineer a biosynthesis pathway for the production of curcumin in Escherichia coli by combining a systems biology approach with synthetic biology. Synthetic biology provides an answer to the challenge of expanding the biological production capabilities of microorganisms through the incorporation in the host of engineered biosynthetic pathways for compounds of interest. The design of biosynthetic pathways for both natural and unnatural compounds can be performed by assembling partial pathways recruited from different species [2,3], by engineering existing pathways and by the use of engineered enzymes exploring the natural diversity of enzyme-catalyzed reactions across several species. Key to this is the specification of gene sequences encoding enzymes that catalyze each reaction in the pathway and whose DNA sequences can be incorporated into devices that lead to functional expression of the molecules of interest [4,5]. To identify all the possible metabolic routes that allow the production of curcumin from metabolites that exist in native E. coli we used relevant databases like Kegg and MetaCyc. Then to each one of the identified reactions it was identified the species with the corresponding enzymes/genes. Afterwards, all the possible routes were incorporated in genome-scale stoichiometric models [6] coupled with the dynamic model to understand the likely limitations regarding the availability of the possible precursors. The inclusion of these possible set of pathways in a in silico model help to predict the cell behavior after their incorporation, such as product yield and cell growth, stoichiometric constraints and also to assess the potential of the successful implementation of a designed pathway by using other bioinformatics tools. Further, the optimization of these synthetic biology modified strains using in silico metabolic models leads to the high-level production of specific metabolites in an industrial scale, while saving time and resources in laboratorial experimentation.
Dual Principal Component Pursuit: Improved Analysis and Efficient Algorithms

Recent methods for learning a linear subspace from data corrupted by outliers are based on convex L1 and nuclear norm optimization and require the dimension of the subspace and the number of outliers to be sufficiently small [27]. In sharp contrast, the recently proposed Dual Principal Component Pursuit (DPCP) method [22] can provably handle subspaces of high dimension by solving a non-convex L1 optimization problem on the sphere. However, its geometric analysis is based on quantities that are difficult to interpret and are not amenable to statistical analysis. In this paper we provide a refined geometric analysis and a new statistical analysis that show that DPCP can tolerate as many outliers as the square of the number of inliers, thus improving upon other provably correct robust PCA methods. We also propose a scalable Projected Sub-Gradient Descent method (DPCP-PSGD) for solving the DPCP problem and show it admits linear convergence even though the underlying optimization problem is non-convex and non-smooth. Experiments on road plane detection from 3D point cloud data demonstrate that DPCP-PSGD can be more efficient than the traditional RANSAC algorithm, which is one of the most popular methods for such computer vision applications.
Radioresistance and Cancer Stem Cells: Survival of the Fittest

Cancer arises from the accumulation of genetic mutations and aberrant epigenetic modifications in normal cells. Cancer stem cells (CSCs) have been described as a unique tumorigenic population of cells within the tumor mass that have the ability to self-renew and differentiate. In the past few years, the existence and nature of CSCs has served as one of the most controversial topics in the field of cancer biology; however, more recently, there is an abundant amount of evidence that demonstrates their existence. CSCs are believed to be responsible for resistance against conventional therapies, such as radiotherapy that contributes to uncontrolled tumor growth, metastasis and subsequently, patient demise. In this review, we summarize the mechanism(s) by which CSCs are radioresistant, including their enhanced DNA damage response, cell cycle status and the role of the CSC niche. Moreover, by using the Oncomine database, we display data from our laboratory and other groups demonstrating that CSCs have an increased expression of radioresistance genes, which are also involved in carcinogenesis, metastasis and patient relapse. In addition, we provide data from prostatospheres derived from primary patient cells demonstrating that the RAN signaling pathway is one of the top upregulated pathways within the CSC population. Therefore, we hypothesize that the RAN signaling pathway is related to the radioresistance property of CSCs. We briefly review this burgeoning field of study on the biological behavior of CSCs and provide new suggestions for the development of future therapies to target radioresistant CSCs in both pharmaceutical investigations and clinical trials.
Application of a SPH Coupled FEM Method for Simulation of Trimming of Aluminum Autobody Sheet

Abstract In this paper, the applications of mesh-free SPH (Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics) continuum method to the simulation and analysis of trimming process is presented. In dealing with shearing simulations for example of blanking, piercing or slitting, existing literatures apply finite element method (FEM) to analysis of this processes. Presented in this work approach and its application to trimming of aluminum autobody sheet allows for a complex analysis of physical phenomena occurring during the process without significant deterioration in the quality of the finite element mesh during large deformation. This allows for accurate representation of the loss of cohesion of the material under the influence of cutting tools. An analysis of state of stress, strain and fracture mechanisms of the material is presented. In experimental studies, an advanced vision-based technology based on digital image correlation (DIC) for monitoring the cutting process is used.