Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Selenium biofortification and antioxidant activity in lettuce plants fed with selenate and selenite

Selenium is an important element associated with enhancement of antioxidant activity in plants, microorganisms, animals, and humans. In Brazil, the information on Se in agricultural crops is lacking, though there are indications that low levels of Se are consumed by the population. The experiment was conducted under greenhouse conditions with pots containing 3 l of nutritive solution in a completely randomized factorial design, with seven Se concentrations (0, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, and 64 µmol/l) and two forms of Se (sodium selenate – Na 2 SeO 4 and sodium selenite – Na 2 SeO 3 ), with six replicates. The application of Se as selenate at low concentrations is more appropriate for let tuce biofortification because it favors shoot biomass growth and Se levels in the shoot biomass. Selenium in both forms had two effects on lettuce plant metabolism: at low doses it acted as an antioxidant and enhanced plant growth, whereas at higher levels it reduced yield.
40 Years of NGI’s Full-Scale Avalanche Test-Site Ryggfonn

The Norwegian Geotechnical Institute (NGI) has been running full-scale avalanche experiments at the Ryggfonn test-site in western Norway for close to 40 years. In 1981, an avalanche catching dam was build in the runout zone to test the efficiency of this kind of mitigation measure. This feature makes Ryggfonn in a sense unique. During the years various kinds of instrumentation and structures have been placed along the avalanche track to gain an in-depth understanding of avalanche dynamics and the interaction of avalanches with constructions. This kind of avalanche measurements is the backbone for the development and calibration of numerical avalanche models. Full-scale avalanche tests are also required as reference for small-scale granular as well as for snow chute experiments. In this paper, we will give a brief summary of some of the hitherto obtained measurements from Ryggfonn.
Macroscopic and Histological Structures of Testes in Three Different Tentyria Species

The male reproductive organs in insects are typically composed of a pair of seminal vesicles and a pair of test tubes joined to the excretion channel on the median line. The samples used in the study were collected from İzmir Bozdağ region and from Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. All testis samples were fixed in Bouin’s solution and Mayer’s Haematoxylin-Eosin (H&E) was used to stain for tissue section. As a result of the macroscopic examinations, it was determined that the testis appearance of Tentyria cypria is different from other species used in the study. At the end of the histological examinations, the general appearance of the T. cypria’s testis was similar to a four-leafed clover. In all three species, spermatogonia, primary spermatocytes, secondary spermatocytes, spermatids, and spermatozoa, which are the stages of spermatogenesis in all follicles, are clearly visible. In this study, morphological and histological differences in male reproductive organs were demonstrated for the first time in three different Tentyria species belonging to Tenebrionidae family. DOI:10.18016/ ksudobil. 358556 Article History Received : 28.11. 2017 Accepted : 20.12. 2017
Trail Map - a New Way to Organize Web Contents Based on Ant Colony Model

A new concept called trail map (T-map) is proposed. It helps an Internet user reusing the knowledge of others in the Internet world. T-map is built based upon the concept of the ant colony model. An Internet user plays the same role as an ant in an ant colony such that it is able to follow and spread pheromones on the routes to the food sources. As many ants collaborating with each other through pheromone spreading in the area for a while, some routes will finally become useful trails to the food sources and others may just disappear. The existing trails with strong pheromone can be treated as an associated network of the related web contents under some special subject. In fact, the set of these trails can be treated as the knowledge of the corresponding subject. Unlike searching technology, T-map tries to record how the Internet users find and think of the
Plant Breeding in Sub-Saharan Africa in an Era of Donor Dependence

Since the Asian Green Revolution, plant breeding has been seen as a core capacity in most agricultural research institutes around the world, including those in Africa. Outside some private sector breeding for hybrid maize in East and Southern Africa, plant breeding is essentially a public sector activity and over the last four decades has relied significantly on international development assistance, and so has been susceptible to shifts in donor funding for agricultural research. The performance of programmes has been affected by these trends, with the balance between the scale economies in plant breeding and the local adaptation needed to satisfy farmer demand influenced by a complex and sometimes problematic division of labour between the international agricultural research centres (IARCs) of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and the breeding programmes of National Agricultural Research Institutes (NARIs).
The clustering of galaxies in the completed SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: observational systematics and baryon acoustic oscillations in the correlation function

We present baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) scale measurements determined from the clustering of 1.2 million massive galaxies with redshifts 0.2 < z < 0.75 distributed over 9300 deg(2), as quantified by their redshift-space correlation function. In order to facilitate these measurements, we define, describe, and motivate the selection function for galaxies in the final data release (DR12) of the SDSS III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS). This includes the observational footprint, masks for image quality and Galactic extinction, and weights to account for density relationships intrinsic to the imaging and spectroscopic portions of the survey. We simulate the observed systematic trends in mock galaxy samples and demonstrate that they impart no bias on BAO scale measurements and have a minor impact on the recovered statistical uncertainty. We measure transverse and radial BAO distance measurements in 0.2 < z < 0.5, 0.5 < z < 0.75, and (overlapping) 0.4 < z < 0.6 redshift bins. In each redshift bin, we obtain a precision that is 2.7 per cent or better on the radial distance and 1.6 per cent or better on the transverse distance. The combination of the redshift bins represents 1.8 per cent precision on the radial distance and 1.1 per cent precision on the transverse distance. This paper is part of a set that analyses the final galaxy clustering data set from BOSS. The measurements and likelihoods presented here are combined with others in Alam et al. to produce the final cosmological constraints from BOSS.
Title Acculturation Strategies Among South Asian Immigrants : The Mediators of Atherosclerosis in South Asians Living in America ( MASALA ) Study Permalink

In the past, epidemiologic research on acculturation and health has been criticized for its conceptual ambiguity and simplistic measurement approaches. This study applied a widely-used theoretical framework from cross-cultural psychology to identify acculturation strategies among South Asian immigrants in the US and to examine sociodemographic correlates of acculturation strategies. Data were from the Mediators of Atherosclerosis in South Asians Living in America study. We used latent class analysis to identify groups of individuals that were similar based on cultural attitudes and behaviors. We used latent class regression analysis to examine sociodemographic correlates of acculturation strategies. We found that South Asian immigrants employed three acculturation strategies, including separation (characterized by a relatively high degree of preference for South Asian culture over US culture), assimilation (characterized by a relatively high degree of preference for US culture over South Asian culture), and integration (characterized by a similar level of preference for South Asian and US cultures). Respondents with no religious affiliation, those with higher levels of income, those who lived a greater percentage of their lives in the US, and those who spoke English well or very well were less likely to use the separation strategy than the assimilation or integration strategies. Using epidemiologic cohort data, this study illustrated a conceptual and methodological approach that addresses limitations of previous research on acculturation and health. More work is needed to understand how the acculturation strategies identified in this study affect the health of South Asian immigrants in the US.
Filtering by Boosting Linear Perceptrons

In information retrieval, lack of positive examples is a main cause of poor performance. In this case most learning algorithms may not capture proper characteristics in the data leading to low recall. To solve the problem of unbalanced data, we propose a boosting method that uses linear perceptrons as weak learners. The perceptrons are trained on local data sets. The proposed algorithm is applied to a text filtering problem for which only a small portion of positive examples is available. In the experiment on category “crude” of the Reuters-21578 document set, the boosting method achieved the recall of 80.8%, which is 37.2% improvement over multilayer perceptrons’ with comparable precision.
Advanced laser fluorometry of natural aquatic environments

The Advanced Laser Fluorometer (ALF) provides spectral deconvolution (SDC) analysis of the laser‐stimulated emission (LSE) excited at 405 or 532 nm for assessment of chlorophyll a, phycoerythrin, and chromophoric dissolved organic matter. Three spectral types of phycoerythrin are discriminated for characterization of cyanobacteria and cryptophytes in mixed phototrophic populations. The SDC analysis is integrated with measurements of variable fluorescence, Fv/Fm, corrected for the SDC‐retrieved background fluorescence, BNC, for improved photophysiological assessments of phytoplankton. The ALF deployments in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and Chesapeake, Delaware, and Monterey Bays revealed significant spectral complexity of LSE. Considerable variability in chlorophyll a fluorescence peak, 673‐685 nm, was detected. High correlation (R2 = 0.93) was observed in diverse water types between chlorophyll a concentration and fluorescence normalized to water Raman scattering. Three unidentified red bands, peaking at 625, 644, and 662 nm, were detected in the LSE excited at 405 nm. Significant variability in the BNC/chlorophyll a ratio was observed in diverse waters. Examples of the ALF spectral correction of Fv/Fm, underway shipboard measurements of horizontal variability, and vertical distributions compiled from the discrete samples analyses are presented. The field deployments have demonstrated the utility of the ALF technique as an integrated tool for research and observations.
AUTOMATIC CLASSIFICATION OF COARSE DENSITY LIDAR DATA IN URBAN AREA

The classification of different objects in the urban area using airborne LIDAR point clouds is a challenging problem especially with low density data. This problem is even more complicated if RGB information is not available with the point clouds. The aim of this paper is to present a framework for the classification of the low density LIDAR data in urban area with the objective to identify buildings, vehicles, trees and roads, without the use of RGB information. The approach is based on several steps, from the extraction of above the ground objects, classification using PCA, computing the NDSM and intensity analysis, for which a correction strategy was developed. The airborne LIDAR data used to test the research framework are of low density (1.41 pts/m 2 ) and were taken over an urban area in San Diego, California, USA. The results showed that the proposed framework is efficient and robust for the classification of objects.
Status of grey seals ( Halichoerus grypus ) in Norway

During the period September-December in 2001-2003, ship based surveys of grey seal ( Halichoerus grypus ) pups, including tagging, counting and staging of pups, were conducted along the Norwegian coast. All known and other potential breeding areas were surveyed from Rogaland county in the south to Finnmark county in the north. Most of the breeding sites were surveyed only once, but some sites were surveyed 2-4 times. The investigations resulted in a total minimum estimate of 1,159 grey seal pups born in Norwegian waters. Nordland county was the most important breeding area where about 50% of the pups were born. Total population estimates were derived from the recorded number of pups born using a range of multipliers (4.0-4.7), based on observed annual growth rates of approximately 7-12% in other grey seal populations. This gave a total estimate of about 5,800-6,600 grey seals including pups in Norwegian waters. However, the total pup production was probably underestimated due to only one pup count in most of the breeding sites. Observed mean pup mortality was 1.1% during the breeding season along the Norwegian coast.
Large-signal compact diode noise modelling strategies for non-autonomous RF nonlinear applications

W ediscuss system-oriented approaches to identify large-signal, cyclostationary compact noise models of RF pn diodes based on the modulation of small-signal, stationary noise expressions. Two modulation schemes are proposed and compared against a reference solution provided by physics-based large-signal noise simulations. The results point out that the most common modulation scheme exploited in the literature does not compare well with the reference solution, at least when the device is operated near the cutoff frequency.
Understanding the Interaction of an Intense Laser Pulse with Nanoparticles: Application to the Quantification of Single Particle Mass Spectrometry

Understanding the characteristic behavior of ions produced from the interaction of a high energy laser pulse with nanoparticles is essential for quantitative determination of composition and size of nanoparticles from single particle mass spectrometry (SPMS). We employed a one-dimensional hydrodynamic model, where the laser field is coupled to the non-equilibrium time-dependent plasma hydrodynamics of the heated particles. We focus on regimes of laser width from 0.01 ns to 10 ns (532 nm wavelength, 100 mJ/pulse) and particle size (20–400 nm in diameter) most relevant to commonly used SPMS, and determine the properties of ions generated during the interaction with a strong laser pulse. We compare the simulation results with experiments conducted on aluminum nanoparticles. The laser-particle interaction is separated into a “soft heating” regime followed by a hydrodynamic expansion. Simulation results showed that the ablation/ionization is effectively complete well before the laser ever reaches its peak intensity. As the pulse width decreased for a given pulse energy, the kinetic energy of ions increased, suggesting that too short a pulse laser (i.e., high laser intensity) would be undesirable because higher energetic ions lead to lower detection efficiency in the SPMS. Results also show that for particle sizes in the range of 100 nm ∼ 400 nm, as particle size increased, the kinetic energy of ions produced from the particle increased with a power law relationship, consistent with experiment. Lastly our simulations indicated that ions from the surface of the particle are of higher energy, and therefore have lower detection efficiency.
Localizing Uterus Region from Low - Resolution Ultrasonography Device Using Template Matching Method

 Abstract—Template matching method is widely used in pattern recognition such as face recognition, a part of cases in image processing field. However, although this method is widely used in image processing field, it is usually applied to digital images that have enough resolution. This paper will discuss about using template matching to noisy digital images produced by low-resolution ultrasonography device, especially for localizing uterus region. Template matching is conceptually a simple process. We need to match a template to an image, where the template is a sub image that contains the shape we are trying to find. Accordingly, we centre the template on an image point and count up how many points in the template matched in the image. The procedure is repeated for the entire image, and the point that lead to the best match, the maximum count, is deemed to be the point where the shape (given by the template) lies within the image. The template is first positioned at the origin and then matches with the image to give account which reflects show well the template matched that part of the image at that position. The count of matching pixels is increased by one for each point where the brightness of the template matches the brightness of the image. This is similar to the process of template convolution. The template and the sum are of the number of matching points as opposed to the weighted sum of image data. The best match is when the template is placed at the position where the rectangle is matched to itself. This process can be generalized to find, for example, templates of different size or orientation. In these cases, we have to try all the templates (at expected rotation and size) to determine the best match (1). Based on above explanation, it seems that this method is quite simple to apply in an image-processing field. Unfortunately, almost all researches applying this method to the digital image with good resolution. Xiaoyan Mu (2)
Peopleâ€™s Movement in Narrow Paths with Different Width

One of the most critical issues to manage in case of accidents in industrial facilities is people evacuation. The outcome of the evacuation process depends on many factors, including the adversity of the accidental event, the behavioural features of people involved, the functional vulnerability of the system, such as the geometrical layout of the egress system. In order to reach a safety place in industrial facilities, people can be driven to go through narrow corridors or passages due to the peculiarity of the work place. Such passages force people to move in a single line and can reduce the movement speed, thus increasing the time required to evacuate. In this work we analyse people’s movement in paths with two different widths (0.8 and 0.9 m) and with the presence of different types of curves (90° and 180°). The data were collected in the LabCUBEegress experimental laboratory, a portable structure with a flexible layout designed by researchers of University of Udine. In this paper we present the results obtained from the experiments and simple relationships between people’s speed and the path width. These equations can be a useful tool to help in designing the egress paths as well as in assessing the vulnerability of existing egress systems where narrow paths are present.
A Novel Immunomodulator , FTY 720 , Prevents Development of Experimental Autoimmune Myasthenia Gravis in C 57 BL / 6 Mice

caused by autoimmune responses against nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (AChR) on postsynaptic membrane in neuromuscular junctions. Experimental autoimmune myasthenia gravis (EAMG) has been used as an animal model for human MG. This model is prepared by immunizing mice or rats with AChR from Torpedo californica; the animals develop MG-like symptoms, including muscle weakness, with production of autoantibody against AChR. The novel immunomodulator (immunosuppressant) FTY720, which was discovered by Fujita et al. of our group, is a synthetic structural analogue of myriocin (ISP-I), a metabolite of Isaria cinclairii. The efficacy of FTY720 has been well established in preclinical transplantation models, and also recently in renal transplantation in humans. Although the mechanisms of pharmacological action of FTY720 remain to be fully clarified, it has been proposed that FTY720 is phosphorylated by sphingosine kinase, and the product, FTY720 monophosphate, suppresses immune response by sequestering lymphocytes from blood and peripheral tissues to the secondary lymphoid tissues. FTY720 has no inhibitory effect on cytokine production in vitro, in contrast to established immunosuppressants (cyclosporin and tacrolimus hydrate). Its mechanism of action is unique and differs from that of the established immunosuppressants. The development of FTY720 was described in our previous report. In this study, we examined the efficacy of FTY720 for preventing the development of EAMG, an animal model of human MG.
What is strategic in CEOs' communication?

Dit artikel gaat in op het strategische aspect in de communicatie van bestuurders met als onderzoeksvraag: Wat is strategisch in de communicatie van bestuurders? Strategisch management is een verantwoordelijkheid van de bestuurder en zijn top management waarbij de bestuurder de eindverantwoordelijkheid heeft. Strategisch management gaat met name over de afstemming tussen intern en extern waarbij het resultaat een strategie is die het bereiken van de organisatie doelen ondersteunt. Communicatie van bestuurders binnen het strategisch management is een activiteit die het mogelijk maakt om deze afstemming te bereiken
Quantifying aphid predation rates of generalist predators in the field

The community of predators within agroecosystems has the potential to restrict aphid populations, especially early in the season before exponential increases in density and prior to the arrival of specialist natural enemies. Although direct observations of predation, laboratory feeding trials and manipulative field studies have been used to estimate levels of biological control exerted by different species (or potentially negative interactions between them), it is often difficult to extrapolate results to naturally occurring interactions in the field. Over 100 investigations have utilized gut-content analysis to estimate aphid predation rates by predators. Throughout the last cen- tury, gut dissection, which enables the visual identification of aphid body parts, has been used in over 50% of studies although accu- rate identification and quantification of predation is difficult. Other techniques have included radio-labelling of prey, dissection of faecal samples, electrophoresis, stable isotope analysis and use of polyclonal antisera. In recent studies of invertebrate predation, monoclonal antibodies have been the most frequently applied technique but advances in molecular biology have enabled the detec- tion of species-specific DNA sequences. The use of these applications to quantify predation by aphidophagous predators will be reviewed, with emphasis on potential sources of error and difficulties of quantitative interpretation. Despite the considerable focus currently directed towards molecular approaches, antibody-based techniques are likely to remain an important tool for studying pre- dation rates of pests in the field, especially when antibodies have already been developed. However, the study of multiple predation events within complex generalist predator food webs is only likely through the detection of species-specific DNA sequences using molecular techniques.
Study on Mycoplasmal pneumonia at the Ziaran abattoir.

I n a survey of pneumonia due to Mycoplasma 282 out of 12168 ovine and caprine lung condemnation were collected (2.32%). Mycoplasma spp. has been isolated from pneumonic cases in 4 sheep and 2 goats. PCR studies were confirmed the genus of Mycoplasma although attempting for identification of strains M. mycoides, M. capricolum/caprine pleuropneumonia and M. arginin were in failure. The lesions initially showed raised consolidation at the right cranio-ventral lobes . Histopathological observations revealed purulent interstitial pneumonia & bronchitis (33.33%) purulent bronchopneumonia (33.33%) purulent fibrinous pneumonia (16.6%) and progressive pneumonia (16.6%). This approach has the potential to allow the recognition of genus of Mycoplasma as a primary factor for inducing pneumonia.