Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Investigation of the 7Li(p,n) neutron fields at high energies

The neutron activation method has been proven to be a well-suited tool for the investigation of neutron capture cross sections relevant for the main component of the s-process. Neutrons produced via the 7Li(p,n)7Be reaction at a proton energy of Ep = 1912 keV can be used to recreate a quasi-stellar neutron energy distribution mimicking the astrophysical s-process scenario at kBT = 25keV. For the weak s-process, which takes place in massive stars at temperatures between kBT = 25 keV and kBT = 90 keV, the activation method has not yet been successful in recreating quasi-stellar neutron spectra. However, simulations show that the activation method can be improved in order to recreate a quasi-stellar neutron spectrum at different energies by linear combination of different neutron spectra. In order to verify these simulations the neutron fields of the reaction have to be measured at different proton energies.
Quality of Pre-school Learning Environment in Palestine

The current study aimed at assessing the quality of pre-school learning environment in Palestine. Learning quality is considered as a significant indicator of human sustainability. Pre-school learning is part of a basic education strategy to enrich and support children’s development during the critical, formative years from birth to five years. The sample of this study was stratified random with (180) preschool teachers from the district of Nablus. The researchers adopted the quantitative methodology by using the ECERS-R questionnaire to assess the quality of pre-school learning environment. Statistical analysis detected that the quality of pre-schools learning environment according to the ECERS-R scale had high levels on the domains of language, activities, interaction, program structure and parents and staff. Furnishing and personal care routine had moderate levels of quality. It can be inferred relative weaknesses in the learning environment in Palestinian pre-schools with certain items yielding weakly level. Thus, it can be concluded that all the items can still be improved. The last result showing that there was a significant difference in the quality of preschool learning environment according to teachers’ educational qualification, generally, the current study recommended the significance of continuing to supply effective quality learning environments in pre-schools in Palestine.
Effects of Dietary Brown Rice on Carcass Composition and Nitric Oxide (NOx) Metabolite Levels in High-Fat High-Fructose Diet-induced Sprague Dawley Rats as Obesity Model

Obesity is characterized by excessive accumulation of fat in the body, which causes changes in body composition and endothelial dysfunction due to impaired production of nitric oxide (NO). The common means of managing obesity is through functional food, such as brown rice, which has high fiber and antioxidant content. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine the effect of adding brown rice to feed on carcass composition and NOx levels in obese rats. This was an experimental study involving male Sprague Dawley rats placed in 5 groups, in which 4 were allowed to turn to obese rats with the remaining one group as control. These 4 groups were allowed to later feed on high-fat high-fructose (HFHF) diet while the control fed on the normal AIN-93 diet, followed by 8 weeks of HFHF intervention and brown rice in feed with 3 different doses; 12.43%; 24.86%; and 37.29%. The serum NOx levels were analyzed by the Griess Reaction method, while the percentage of protein and fat was analyzed through Gravimetric Extraction. The results showed that the addition of brown rice resulted in changes in the Lee index (p = 0.000) and abdominal circumference (p = 0.000). Also, a correlation was observed between the Lee index and abdominal circumference (p = 0.001; r = 0.558) of rats. However, there was no significant difference between NOx and carcass protein levels, and there was an increase in carcass fat levels due to an increase in mitochondrial energy efficiency and resistance to protein synthesis in obese rats.
Beyond Effectiveness: Legitimising Predictive Policing in Germany

Die effektive Reduktion der Kriminalitat durch Predictive Policing ist bislang nicht eindeutig erwiesen. Auch in unseren qualitativen Interviews erheben die Vertreter der wissenschaftlich-analytischen Zweigstellender Landeskriminalamter Berlin, Nordrhein-Westfalen und Bayern nicht diesen Anspruch. In diesem Artikel untersuchen wir, wie vor dem Hintergrund des fehlenden Nachweises der Effektivitat die Konzeption und Umsetzung von Predictive Policing in Deutschland legitimiert wird. Als Ergebnis unserer Analyse der qualitativen teilstandardisierten Interviews lassen sich funf Legitimationsnarrative herauskristallieren.Diese Narrative konnen in positive Legitimationsnarrative (Effizienz und Transparenz innerhalb der Polizeiverwaltung) und negative Narrative (Autonomie/Unabhangigkeit, menschliche Kontrolle, Transparenz gegenuber der Offentlichkeit und Abmilderung) unterteilt werden. Wahrend Erstere die aktive Einfuhrung dieser neuen Technologie positiv motivieren, zielen Letztere darauf ab, auf Kritik zu reagieren. Dagegen kommen sicherheitsorientierte Narrative nicht zur Sprache.
QTLs Analysis for Morphologic Traits of Barley under Boron Stress Condition

In present study, 72 barley double haploid lines with two parents were studied. The experiment was arranged in a completely randomized block design with two replicates under normal and boron stress in hydroponic condition in 2013.The traits Fresh and dry weight of root and shoot, length of root and shoot, length of the largest leaf and the height of whole plant were measured. Statistical analysis was done for phenotypic surveys such as analysis of variance, mean comparison and correlation between traits. These results showed meaningful difference among the lines in most traits. Maximum correlation was seen between length of root and the height of whole plant (0/934,0/925). QTL analysis was carried out using genetic linkage map derived 327 AFLP molecular marker and using QTL cartographer software with composite interval mapping method. In general, 29 QTL were found for the studied traits (17 QTL for normal condition and 12 QTL for born stress condition, respectively), in which, explained that the phonotypical variance has been vitiated for 10 to 27.56 percent. The highest and the lowest phonotypic variances were belonging to root and shoot length ratio in born stress condition, The LOD ranged between 2/50-4/32. The highest and lowest LOD were attained for the QTLs of root and shoot length ratio and leaf length, respectively. In percent study, only one QTL was placed at similar place and was stable (leaf length, 3H). Therefore, it can be used for marker assisted selection.
Indirect, experimental constraints of (n,γ) reaction rates for the i- and r-process

Our Universe contains a large variety of chemical elements, for which only the lightest ones were produced during the Big Bang. To make elements heavier than iron, neutron-capture processes are called for, in particular the slow and the rapid neutron-capture processes. Recently, a so-called intermediate neutron-capture process has received a lot of attention as more and more evidence points towards its existence. Both the intermediate and rapid neutron-capture processes involve very neutron-rich nuclei, for which there exist little or no data on their neutron-capture cross sections. Here we present an experimental method to indirectly constrain neutron-capture reaction rates needed for calculating nucleosynthesis yields for the intermediate and rapid neutron-capture processes.
Estimation of Citrus Maturity with Florescence Spectroscopy Using Deep Learning

To produce high-quality citrus, the harvest time of citrus should be determined by considering its maturity. To evaluate citrus maturity, the Brix/acid ratio, which is the ratio of sugar content or soluble solids content to acid content, is one of the most commonly used indicators of fruit maturity. To estimate the Brix/acid ratio, fluorescence spectroscopy, which is a rapid, sensitive, and cheap technique, was adopted. Each citrus peel was extracted, and its fluorescence value was measured. Then, the fluorescent spectrum was analyzed using a convolutional neural network (CNN). In fluorescence spectroscopy, a matrix called excitation and emission matrix (EEM) can be obtained, in which each fluorescence intensity was recorded at each excitation and emission wavelength. Then, by regarding the EEM as an image, the Brix/acid ratio of juice from the flesh was estimated via performing a regression with a CNN (CNN regression). As a result, the Brix/acid ratio absolute error was estimated to be 2.48, which is considerably better than the values obtained by the other methods in previous studies. Hyperparameters, such as depth of layers, learning rate, and the number of filters used for this estimation, could be observed using Bayesian optimization, and the optimization contributed to the high accuracy.
Effect of Extracts of Vernonia Amygdalina in HelminthiasisA Tropical Neglected Disease

Soil transmitted helminths is one of the Neglected Tropical Diseases. They mainly affect the poor or the rural dwellers, but less affects the well off, because usually poor hygiene is a high risk factor. They are neglected in terms of the research and control funding allocated to them both by developing world governments and other donors. Vernonia amygdalina is being used in traditional medicine for different ailments, which helminthiasis is one. Albendazole as standard medication and methanolic crude extracts of the leaf, stem-bark and root of Vernonia amygdalina were subjected for anthelmintic activity on Adult Indian earthworm pherithima posthuma. These extracts showed potent anthelmintic activity on Adult Indian pherithima posthuma with 82.8±0.43, 46.22±0.5, 25.5±0.17 as paralysis time for the leaf extract, 81.3±0.25, 39.7±0.21, 15.4±0.60 and 39.7±0.35, 31.1±0.11, 13.2±0.30 as paralysis times for the stem-bark and root extracts respectively, and 161.8±1.71, 82.6±2.11, 38.2±1.12 as death time for the leaf extract, 147.5±0.81, 81.70±2.01, 26.4±1.13 and 86.8±2.61, 80.5±2.45, 23.0±0.02 (mean ± S.E.M) as the death times for the stem-bark and root extracts respectively at 30 mg/ml, 50mg/ml and 70mg/ml respectively with a predicted mechanism of action. The anthelminthic activities obtained from the extracts were concentration dependent.
Mga tanom na nakakabulong: Medicinal plant studies among the undergraduate researches of Bicol University – Department of Biology from 1991 to 2019

Background: Undergraduate researches in universities are potential sources of useful data in medicinal plant research. In higher education institutions, many of these manuscripts remain untapped and inaccessible to researchers and scientists. If widely utilized, these can contribute in the growth of knowledge on medicinal plants. Objectives: This article aimed to catalogue the medicinal plant researches of the Bicol University – Department of Biology from 1991 to 2019, highlight significant developments, trends, and responsiveness of the research, and recommend policies to improve medicinal plant research in the next decade. Methodology: A complete list of undergraduate research titles was obtained and analyzed using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) process. Categorization of researches included the medicinal plants studied, year of study, and the biological assays conducted. The final list included two things: researches that utilized medicinal plants and those researches which tested the biological and medicinal properties of plants. Results were presented in percentages. Results: To date, 18.72% of the 865 thesis titles archived in the department are medicinal plant researches and majority of which focused on antimicrobial and toxicity studies. There were 52 plant families, 99 genera, and 114 plant species investigated. Leguminosae and Asteraceae were the most studied plant families. The years 2011-2019 were the most fruitful in terms of research completed. Conclusion: Undergraduate researches can provide vital information on medicinal plants studies, especially on an institutional and regional level. It is recommended that medicinal plants research be included as a thematic area among higher education institutions, and that policies be implemented to support publication of researches.
People in Harm's Way: Flood Exposure and Poverty in 189 Countries

Flooding is among the most prevalent natural hazards affecting people around the world. This study provides a global estimate of the number of people who face the risk of intense fluvial, pluvial, or coastal flooding. The findings suggest that 1.47 billion people, or 19 percent of the world population, are directly exposed to substantial risks during 1-in-100 year flood events. The majority of flood exposed people, about 1.36 billion, are located in South and East Asia; China (329 million) and India (225 million) account for over a third of global exposure. Of the 1.47 billion people who are exposed to flood risk, 89 percent live in low- and middle-income countries. Of the 132 million people who are estimated to live in both extreme poverty (under $1.9 per day) and in high flood risk areas, 55 percent are in Sub-Saharan Africa. About 587 million people face high flood risk, while living on less than $5.5 per day. These findings are based on high-resolution flood hazard and population maps that enable global coverage, as well as poverty estimates from the World Bank's Global Monitoring Database of harmonized household surveys.
The influence of greening the suppliers on environmental and economic performance

The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of greening the supplier, green purchasing capabilities and green innovation on firm's environmental performance, competitive advantage and economic performance. Data was collected from the respondents who are engaged in procurement related activities in different manufacturing industries whereas the researchers used partial least squares-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) for analysing the hypothesised relationships between the variables. Results has shown that greening the suppliers has positive impact on green innovation and green purchasing capabilities whereas green innovation and green purchasing capabilities have a positive impact on environmental, competitive advantage and financial performance accordingly. Since there are limited number of studies on greening the supplier in Pakistan therefore the findings will equally be helpful for future researchers and managers. In addition of providing the valuable information to sourcing professionals regarding their directions towards green supply chain, the present study recommended manufacturers to provide complete assistance to the suppliers in their green initiatives whereas their early collaboration in product development stages is highly recommended.
Developing a New Model of Resistance-based Strength Train and Its Effects on Junior Athletes' Tennis Serve Performance

This study was aimed at developing a new model of resistance-based strength training for junior tennis athletes and examining its effectiveness on their serve performance compared to traditional model of training. It is a Research and Development study focusing on developing, validating, revising, and testing the model of training. In testing phase, effectiveness test was accomplished to examine the effectiveness of the new training model and compared to the effectiveness of the traditional model. There were 60 junior athletes contributing to this study. The data were gathered by distributing questionnaires to reveal the convenience and attractiveness of the model developed and using Collang Smart Tennis Racket Sensor Tracker Motion Analyzer to reveal the tennis athletes' serve performance. The data were analyzed by employing descriptive statistic and t-test. In terms of convenience and attractiveness, this study revealed that the use of resistance training for junior tennis athletes showed good results. T-test proved that this new model was more effective in improving players' serve speed compared to traditional model was. Thus, researchers concluded that the new model of resistance-based training can be implemented to increase tennis junior players' serve speed.
Assessing the density of honey bee colonies at ecosystem scales

1. Information about the density of wild honey bee (Apis spp.) colonies in an ecosystem is central to understanding the functional role of honey bees in that ecosystem, necessary for effective biosecurity response planning, and useful for determining whether pollination services are adequate. However, direct visual surveys of colony locations are not practical at ecosystem scales. Thus, indirect methods based on population genetic analysis of trapped males have been proposed and implemented.
Molecular Phylogeny of Triticum and Aegilops Genera Based on Its and Matk Sequence Data

Understanding the phylogenetic relationship between Triticum and Aegilops species, which form a vast gene pool of wheat, is very important for breeding new cultivated wheat varieties. In the present study, phylogenetic relationships between Triticum (12 samples from 4 species) and Aegilops (24 samples from 8 species) were investigated using sequences of the nuclear ITS rDNA gene and partial sequences of the matK gene of chloroplast genome. The phylogenetic relationships among species were reconstructed using Maximum Likelihood method. The constructed tree based on the sequences of the nuclear component (ITS) displayed a close relationship between polyploid wheats and Aegilops speltoides species which provided new evidence for the source of the enigmatic B genome donor as Ae. speltoides. Concurrent clustering of Ae. cylindrica and Ae. tauschii and their close positioning to polyploid wheats pointed the source of the D genome as one of these species. As reported before, diploid Triticum species (i.e. T. urartu) were identified as the A genome donors and the positioning of these diploid wheats on the constructed tree are meaningful. The constructed tree based on the chloroplastic matK sequences displayed same relationship between polyploid wheats and Ae. speltoides species providing evidence for the later species being the chloroplast donors for polyploid wheats. Therefore, our results supported the idea of coinheritance of nuclear and chloroplast genomes where Ae. speltoides was the maternal donor. For both trees the remaining Aegilops species produced a distinct cluster whereas with the exception of T. urartu, diploid Triticum species displayed a monophyletic structure.
Discovery of Drosophila melanogaster from Wild African Environments and Genomic Insights into Species History

A long-standing enigma concerns the geographic and ecological origins of the intensively studied vinegar fly, Drosophila melanogaster, a globally widespread species [1] which “has invariably appeared to be a strict human commensal” [2]. In spite of its sub-Saharan origins, this species has never been reported from undisturbed wilderness environments that might reflect its pre-commensal niche [3]. Here, we document the collection of 288 D. melanogaster individuals from African wilderness areas in Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Namibia. After sequencing the genomes of 17 flies collected from Kafue National Park, Zambia, we found reduced genetic diversity relative to town populations, elevated chromosomal inversion frequencies, and strong differences at specific genes including known insecticide targets. Combining these new genomes with prior data enabled us to gain novel insights into the history of this species’ geographic expansion. Our demographic estimates indicated that an expansion from southern Africa began approximately 10,000 years ago, with a Saharan crossing soon after, but expansion from the Middle East into Europe did not begin until roughly 1,400 years ago. This improved model of demographic history will provide a critical resource for future evolutionary and genomic studies of this key model organism. Our results add historical context to the species’ human association, and the opportunity to study wilderness populations opens the door for future studies on the biological basis of its adaptation to human environments.
Semantic Embeddings for Food Search Using Siamese Networks

Efficient and effective search is a key driver of business in e-commerce. Functionally, most search systems consist of retrieval and ranking phases. While the use of methods like Learning to Rank (LTR) for (re)ranking has been studied widely, most retrieval systems in the industry are still predominantly based on variants of text matching. Because text matching cannot capture the semantic intent of the query, most out-of-vocabulary (OOV) queries are either not handled at all or poorly handled by matching to similarly-spelled entities. For niche e-commerce like food delivery apps operating on phonetically spelled, non-Western dish names, this problem is even more acute. Pre-trained word embedding models are of limited help because the majority of dish names are words that occur rarely or not at all in most openly available vocabularies. In this work, we present experiments and efficient Siamese network based models to learn dish embeddings from scratch. Compared to current baselines, we demonstrate that these models lead to a 3--5% improvement in Mean Reciprocal Rank (MRR) and Recall@k. We also quantify, using a combination of in-house Food Taxonomy and the Davies-Bouldin (DB) index, that the new embeddings capture semantic information with an improvement of up to 20% over baseline.
Crystal structure of a lignin peroxidase isozyme H8 variant that is stable at very acidic pH

The lignin peroxidase isozyme H8 from the white-rot fungus Phanerochaete chrysosporium (LiPH8) demonstrates a high redox potential and can efficiently catalyze the oxidation of veratryl alcohol, as well as the degradation of recalcitrant lignin. However, native LiPH8 is unstable under acidic pH conditions. This characteristic is a barrier to lignin depolymerization, as repolymerization of phenolic products occurs simultaneously at neutral pH. Because repolymerization of phenolics is repressed at acidic pH, a highly acid-stable LiPH8 could accelerate the selective depolymerization of recalcitrant lignin. The engineered LiPH8 was in silico designed through the structural superimposition of surface-active site-harboring LiPH8 from Phanerochaete chrysosporium and acid-stable manganese peroxidase isozyme 6 (MnP6) from Ceriporiopsis subvermispora. Effective salt bridges were probed by molecular dynamics simulation and changes to Gibbs free energy following mutagenesis were predicted, suggesting promising variants with higher stability under extremely acidic conditions. The rationally designed variant, A55R/N156E-H239E, demonstrated a 12.5-fold increased half-life under extremely acidic conditions, 9.9-fold increased catalytic efficiency toward veratryl alcohol, and a 7.8-fold enhanced lignin model dimer conversion efficiency compared to those of native LiPH8. Furthermore, the two constructed salt bridges in the variant A55R/N156E-H239E were experimentally confirmed to be identical to the intentionally designed LiPH8 variant using X-ray crystallography (PDB ID: 6A6Q). Introduction of strong ionic salt bridges based on computational design resulted in a LiPH8 variant with markedly improved stability, as well as higher activity under acidic pH conditions. Thus, LiPH8, showing high acid stability, will be a crucial player in biomass valorization using selective depolymerization of lignin.