Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Influence of Value Addition to Agricultural Produce and Result Based Monitoring and Evaluation to Households Food Security in Murang’a County, Kenya

Climate change is real and has created weather patterns that are not only complicated for metrological interpretation but also pose harm to agriculture and food production activities across the globe. The Results-Based Monitoring and Evaluation Systems helps in promoting good governance in research projects, strengthening accountability of household food resources utilization; facilitating transparency throughout project measurement; promoting understanding of Monitoring and Evaluation process amongst all stakeholders and enable effective utilization of value addition to food management throughout the food pipeline from produce to consumption activities and processes. Since agriculture is the backbone of food production in Kenya, food security is seriously threatened and as indicated in the recent cases of famine in Baringo and Turkana and parts of Central Kenya, it is clear that if not intercepted the situation may develop to a level that is unmanageable and thwart the existence of human beings. The stakeholders need several interventions’ to successfully intervene in elevating the food situation, such as : a) Identify and map areas affected by famine in the region, b) Identify and adapt short term and drought resistant food crops, c) Introduce water fed modern irrigation farming methods to supplement on the rain reliance rain farming which is coupled unpredictable rainfall shortage in the region, d) To adopt greenhouse farming methods for weather sensitive crops e) Carry out intensive value addition to food produce in order to reduce post-harvest food loses throughout the food process. The result shows significant a positive significant effect moderating influence in model three (R= 0.836a, R2=0.699, F=577.639, P-value<0.05) which is strong and significant, suggesting a moderating effect in value addition on model three after an interaction term is introduced. The target group for the project are small scale farmers in the semi-arid areas of Murang’a County and the main activities will be the application of modern farming methods.
Cloning, expression, and localization analysis of the sucrose transporter gene JcSUT4 in the biofuel plant Jatropha curcas

ABSTRACT Sucrose transporters (SUTs) play an important role in regulating fruit growth and development in planta. The fruit of Jatropha curcas, an important tropical tree used as biofuel material, ripens rapidly after flowering. Here, a SUT gene JcSUT4 from J. curcas was cloned and analyzed. JcSUT4, encoding a protein of 500 amino acid residues, was a Type III SUT homolog by a phylogenetic analysis. A transient expression assay in protoplasts showed that JcSUT4 was mainly localized to the plasma membrane. Complementation of yeast sucrose uptake-deficient mutant strains revealed that JcSUT4 was capable of transporting sucrose. JcSUT4 was highly expressed in mature source leaves, as well as in fruits at 30 days after full bloom (DAFB), which was in accordance with the stages of fruit swelling and ripening. This work shows that JcSUT4 may participate in the fruit growth and development of J. curcas, particularly be involved in sucrose storage in fruit. Taken together, our results provide new insights into the molecular mechanisms underpinning of SUTs in Jatropha.
Gingival and bone healing patterns with ridge preservation in beagle dogs

The alveolar ridge begins to absorb on healing process after tooth extraction. After extraction, about 40%–60% of the alveolar bone is reduced in 6-month. Especially the buccal alveolar ridge exhibits more absorption compared to the lingual side [1,2]. Even if the use of ridge preservation, it could not completely stop the alveolar ridge absorption. Giorgio et al. [3] also concluded that it couldn’ t completely prevent the buccal alveolar ridge absorption. Furthermore, although the bone grafting materials in the extraction socket can effectively save the volume, it didn’t promote the formation of new bone, but delayed the bone healing reaction [4,5]. As the alveolar bone was absorbed, the amount and width of the gingiva, especially keratinized gingiva, decreases. Therefore, when a certain period of Gingival and bone healing patterns with ridge preservation in beagle dogs
Genetic variation and cryptic lineage diversity of the Nigerian red-headed rock agama Agama agama associate with eco-geographic zones

Abstract Nigeria is an Afrotropical region with considerable ecological heterogeneity and levels of biotic endemism. Among its vertebrate fauna, reptiles have broad distributions, thus, they constitute a compelling system for assessing the impact of ecological variation and geographic isolation on species diversification. The red-headed rock agama, Agama agama, lives in a wide range of habitats and, thus, it may show genetic structuring and diversification. Herein, we tested the hypothesis that ecology affects its genetic structure and population divergence. Bayesian inference phylogenetic analysis of a mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) gene recovered four well-supported matrilines with strong evidence of genetic structuring consistent with eco-geographic regions. Genetic differences among populations based on the mtDNA also correlated with geographic distance. The ecological niche model for the matrilines had a good fit and robust performance. Population divergence along the environmental axes was associated with climatic conditions, and temperature ranked highest among all environmental variables for forest specialists, while precipitation ranked highest for the forest/derived savanna, and savanna specialists. Our results cannot reject the hypothesis that niche conservatism promotes geographic isolation of the western populations of Nigerian A. agama. Thus, ecological gradients and geographic isolation impact the genetic structure and population divergence of the lizards. This species might be facing threats due to recent habitat fragmentation, especially in western Nigeria. Conservation actions appear necessary.
On the design of an optimal flexible bus dispatching system with modular bus units: Using the three-dimensional macroscopic fundamental diagram

Abstract This study proposes a novel flexible bus dispatching system in which a fleet of fully automated modular bus units, together with conventional buses, serves the passenger demand. These modular bus units can either operate individually or combined (forming larger modular buses with a higher passenger capacity). This provides enormous flexibility to manage the service frequencies and vehicle allocation, reducing thereby the operating cost and improving passenger mobility. We develop an optimization model used to determine the optimal composition of modular bus units and the optimal service frequency at which the buses (both conventional and modular) should be dispatched across each bus line. We explicitly account for the dynamics of traffic congestion and complex interactions between the modes at the network level based on the recently proposed three-dimensional macroscopic fundamental diagram (3D-MFD). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first application of the 3D-MFD and modular bus units for the frequency setting problem in the domain of bus operations. Numerical results show the improvements in the total system cost made by adjusting the number of combined modular bus units and their dispatching frequencies to the evolution of both, the car and the bus passenger demand. A comparison with the commonly used approach that considers only the bus system (neglecting the complex multimodal interactions and congestion propagation) reveals the value of the proposed modeling framework. Finally, a sensitivity analysis of the effect of the operating unit cost of modular bus units, the size of the bus network, and the size of the bus fleet sheds light on the robustness of the proposed optimization framework.
Encoder-Decoder Couplet Generation Model Based on 'Trapezoidal Context' Character Vector

This paper studies the couplet generation model which automatically generates the second line of a couplet by giving the first line. Unlike other sequence generation problems, couplet generation not only considers the sequential context within a sentence line but also emphasizes the relationships between the corresponding words of first and second lines. Therefore, a trapezoidal context character embedding the vector model has been developed firstly, which considers the ‘sequence context’ and the ‘corresponding word context’ simultaneously. Afterwards, we chose the typical encoder–decoder framework to solve the sequence–sequence problems, of which the encoder and decoder are used by bi-directional GRU and GRU, respectively. In order to further increase the semantic consistency of the first and second lines of couplets, the pre-trained sentence vector of the first line is added to the attention mechanism in the model. To verify the effectiveness of the method, it is applied to the real data set. Experimental results show that our proposed model can compete with the up-to-date methods, and both adding sentence vectors to attention and using trapezoidal context character vectors can improve the effectiveness of the algorithm.
Contribution of Root Anatomical Characteristics in Fruit Profile of Pomegranate Genotypes to Expand Production Area in Pakistan

Pomegranate adaptation to abiotic stress conditions has led to its wide dispersion in Pakistan and to the appearance of new, local genotypes. These genotypes are important to characterize for breeding programs aimed towards the production of new cultivars suitable to arid, semi-arid, and moderate weather regions. In this study, eleven pomegranate accessions were investigated for fruit morphological and biochemical traits, and root anatomic adaptation under diverse climates. The commercial accession (Sava) had the maximum fruit weight (373.97 g) compared to accessions KK-I (60.94 g) and KK-II (71.63 g), which were old plantations established since United India. Most of the accessions were juicy with a wood portion index (WPI) ranging from 0.93 to 1.06%; however, the non-commercial accession of Khushab Kanhatti (KK-I) showed the highest WPI (4.38%). A high variation occurred among all accessions for total soluble solids, total sugars, and total ascorbic acid contents with a maximum in accession Sava (16.46 °Brix), TK-II (53.16%), and QW-I (0.68%), respectively. Root anatomical studies in accessions depicted significantly high variation, and accession Sava of semi-arid climate produced maximum root epidermis (97.43 µm2), phloem (2730.78 µm2), and metaxylem (717.77 µm2) area. In contrast, high cortex thickness (104.74 µm), cortex area (462.74 µm2), and vascular area (114,382.10 µm2) was measured in accessions KK-II and KK-III of Khushab district with an arid climate. The germplasm of diverse regions showed a strong association and clustered into two main classes based on fruit morpho-chemical and root anatomical characteristics. These traits are likely to provide clues towards plants adaptation to various growing conditions and can be exploited successfully in crop improvement programs.
Scans of the MYC mRNA reveal multiple stable secondary structures—including a 3′ UTR motif, conserved across vertebrates, that can affect gene expression

The MYC gene encodes a human transcription factor and proto-oncogene that is dysregulated in over half of all known cancers. To better understand potential post-transcriptional regulatory features affecting MYC expression, we analyzed secondary structure in the MYC mRNA using a program that is optimized for finding small locally-folded motifs with a high propensity for function. This was accomplished by calculating folding metrics across the MYC sequence using a sliding analysis window and generating unique consensus base pairing models weighted by their lower-than-random predicted folding energy. A series of 30 motifs were identified, primarily in the 5’ and 3’ untranslated regions, which show evidence of structural conservation and compensating mutations across vertebrate MYC homologs. This analysis was able to recapitulate known elements found within an internal ribosomal entry site, as well as discover a novel element in the 3’ UTR that is unusually stable and conserved. This novel motif was shown to affect MYC expression: likely via modulation of miRNA target accessibility. In addition to providing basic insights into mechanisms that regulate MYC expression, this study provides numerous, potentially druggable RNA targets for the MYC gene, which is considered “undruggable” at the protein level.
Limited Liability Companies in Poland

This study discusses the construction of a limited liability company (LLC) under Polish law. Due to the short length of the article and the large scale of the issue, this study is limited to the presentation of basic concepts. The construction of an LLC under Polish law is flexible and has been modernised, as a result of a number of amendments, including a fast registration path.
Knowledge, Attitude, Practice, and the Perceived Barriers with Respect to the Use of Herbal Medicines

Community pharmacists are in an ideal position to counsel patients about herbal medicines. This study was designed to determine the knowledge, attitude, practice, and barriers about the herbal medicines among community pharmacists in Najran, Saudi Arabia. A cross-sectional study was conducted on a representative sample of 62 community pharmacists in Najran, Saudi Arabia, from June to September 2019. Majority of the participants were aged between 20 and 29 years, had a bachelor's degree, and work experience ranged between 1 and 5 years. Ginseng (54.8%) was the most regularly dispensed herb. The pharmacists held a significant degree of knowledge about the therapeutic uses with an average of 78.61% correct answers (P = 0.000), and the majority (63.54%) recognized correctly the possible adverse effects, drug-herb interactions, and contraindications related to herbal medicines (P = 0.000). The majority of the community pharmacists owned a positive attitude and showed good practices toward herbal medicine. The community pharmacists in the Najran region showed good knowledge, a positive attitude, and efficient practice toward herbal medicines. However, there is a demand for further training, continuing medical education, enhanced access to authentic sources of information, and stringent regulation and control of traditional drug stores to realize the achievement of patient-centered public health activities.
Robotic Untangling of Herbs and Salads with Parallel Grippers

Robotic packaging of fresh leafy produce such as herbs and salads generally involves picking out a target mass from a pile or crate of plant material. Typically, for low-complexity parallel grippers, the weight picked can be controlled by varying the opening aperture. However, often individual strands of plant material get entangled with each other, causing more to be picked out than desired. This paper presents a simple spread-and-pick approach that significantly reduces the degree of entanglement in a herb pile when picking. Compared to the traditional approach of picking from an entanglement-free point in the pile, the proposed approach results in a decrease of up to 29.06% of the variance in for separate homogeneous piles of fresh herbs. Moreover, it shows good generalisation with up to 55.53% decrease in picked weight variance for herbs previously unseen by the system.
Gene modification with triplex-forming oligonucleotides

Gene Modification with Triplex-Forming Oligonucleotides Jennifer M. Kalish 2006 Triplex-forming oligonucleotides (TFOs) bind DNA in a sequence-specific manner and mediate targeted genome modification. Triplexes bind parallel to the purine strand of the duplex in the pyrimidine m otif and anti-parallel in the purine motif. TFOs in both motifs have been shown to direct psoralen adduct formation in cells, leading to mutagenesis or recombination. Only purine motif TFOs have been shown to mediate genome modification without using a DNA-adduct. In this work, we report the ability of a series o f chemically modified pyrimidine m otif TFOs to induce repair and recombination in the absence of any DNA-reactive conjugate. We find that a number of modified TFOs show increased formation of non-covalent triplexes under physiological conditions. However, only the N3'->P5' phosphoramidate and 5-(l-propynyl)-2'deoxyuridine-modified TFOs mediate induced recombination in cells and stimulate repair in cell-free extracts. Additionally, we establish the ability o f TFOs to induce gene correction at a single-copy chromosomal locus in mammalian cells at frequencies up to 0.1%. We demonstrate sequence, target site, and dose-dependent effects. Finally, we develop an assay to detect incisions made in repair o f a triplex. This work expands the number o f targets available for triplex-mediated gene targeting, shows effective targeting at a chromosomal locus, and takes first steps towards understanding the mechanism of triplex-induced gene correction.
Noise Pollution – Introduction to the State of the Research and the Implementation in the Horizon 2020 Project Pixel

Noise pollution is a significant factor in the modern world. There are many researches dealing with the noise modelling, differing in their purpose, studied influence and the scope of the research, either in geographical terms or in the terms of studied noise sources. The objective of this paper is to give insight in the current state on the field of negative influence that noise has on the environment and/ or human health. Special attention was given to the influence that ports’ noise pollution has on the surroundings, both on the population and on the environment. Within the influence on the environment, underwater noise, which is often excluded when the main priority is the influence on general population, was also included. As it is one of the main tools for analysing the influence of noise, several examples of assessing the influence of the noise using noise maps are presented. Several objectives of the EU Horizon 2020 project (PIXEL), dealing with the reduction of ports’ pollution, were covered. The segment of the project dealing with the noise is linked with the previous achievements, which forms the basis to give some guidelines for the further research of the noise influence on the environment.
Autocuidado de indivíduos com insuficiência cardíaca

Objective: to describe the self-care level of individuals with heart failure. Method: a descriptive study, performed in a cardiology outpatient clinic in Salvador, Bahia, during the period of September and October, 2017 and January, 2018. Recorded interviews were performed using appropriate instruments and applying the European Heart Failure Self-Care Behavior Scale (EHFScBs). Result: the sample comprised 43 individuals of the male gender (53.5%), between the ages of 51 and 60 years (34,9%), self-declared race/skin color black (46.5%), living with a partner (51.2%), low schooling (incomplete primary education 41.9%) and low income (39.5%). In relation to self-care, the average EHFScBs score was of 30.1 (±7.4). It was evidenced that 46.5% of the interviewed parties presented inadequate self-care capacity (total score between 31 and 50 points). Conclusion: self-care behavior was between moderate and unsatisfactory, suggesting the implementation of effective educational practices to enable individuals to handle the disease.
Arctic Amplification of Global Warming Strengthened by Sunlight Oxidation of Permafrost Carbon to CO2

Once thawed, up to 15% of the ∼1,000 Pg of organic carbon (C) in arctic permafrost soils may be oxidized to carbon dioxide (CO2) by 2,100, amplifying climate change. However, predictions of this amplification strength ignore the oxidation of permafrost C to CO2 in surface waters (photomineralization). We characterized the wavelength dependence of permafrost dissolved organic carbon (DOC) photomineralization and demonstrate that iron catalyzes photomineralization of old DOC (4,000–6,300 a BP) derived from soil lignin and tannin. Rates of CO2 production from photomineralization of permafrost DOC are twofold higher than for modern DOC. Given that model predictions of future net loss of ecosystem C from thawing permafrost do not include the loss of CO2 to the atmosphere from DOC photomineralization, current predictions of an average of 208 Pg C loss by 2,299 may be too low by ~14%.
Coupling hydrophilic interaction chromatography materials with immobilized Fe3+ for phosphopeptide and glycopeptide enrichment and separation

Simultaneous profiling of protein phosphorylation and glycosylation is very important to elucidate the bio-functions of these proteins. However, simultaneous enrichment of glyco- and phosphopeptides is the bottleneck in proteomics because of the low abundance of these species and ion suppression from non-modified peptides in mass spectrometry (MS). In this study, Fe3+ immobilized hydrophilic interaction chromatography (HILIC) materials (termed polySD-SiO2, recently reported in our lab) and polySD-SiO2 in the HILIC mode were employed for the simultaneous enrichment and subsequent separation of glyco- and phosphopeptides. The Fe3+ immobilized polySD-SiO2 could selectively enrich glycopeptides and phosphopeptides and the co-enriched peptides were further fractionated with polySD-SiO2 in the HILIC mode. With the established method, glyco- and phosphopeptides were well enriched and divided into two fractions even from tryptic digests of a-casein, fetuin and BSA at a molar ratio of 1 : 2 : 400. Application of the established method to HeLa cell lysate resulted in a total of 1903 phosphopeptides and 141 glycosylation sites. These results demonstrate that the established method could selectively and simultaneously enrich and fractionate glyco- and phosphopeptides from complex peptide mixtures.
Evaluating and managing interactive barriers for sustainable e-waste management in China

Abstract E-waste, also known as waste electrical and electronic equipment, has become one of the fastest growing waste streams worldwide. As the world’s largest e-waste processing country, China’s e-waste management practice is facing multiple barriers to meet the requirement of sustainability from the economic, environmental and social perspectives. With an empirical study on the e-waste management practice of a major province in Western China, this paper develops an integrated planning approach for evaluating and managing the barriers which have mutual influence on their impact on the e-waste management practice. In consideration of interactive relationships of the barriers, a barrier assessment process is developed to assess the direct and indirect impacts of the barriers on the sustainable e-waste management practice in terms of economic, environmental and social sustainability criteria. A strategic planning process is proposed to categorise the barriers into four planning zones based on their overall impact and mitigation level. This paper contributes to e-waste management research by providing a structured approach for managing interactive barriers to achieve sustainable e-waste management. The proposed approach represents a methodological contribution to multicriteria evaluation research involving sustainability criteria and interactive alternatives.
A Near-linear Time ε-Approximation Algorithm for Geometric Bipartite Matching

For point sets A, B ⊂ Rd, ∣A∣ = ∣B∣ = n, and for a parameter ε > 0, we present a Monte Carlo algorithm that computes, in O(npoly(log n, 1/ε)) time, an ε-approximate perfect matching of A and B under any Lp-norm with high probability; the previously best-known algorithm takes Ω(n3/2) time. We approximate the Lp-norm using a distance function, d(⋅, ⋅) based on a randomly shifted quad-tree. The algorithm iteratively generates an approximate minimum-cost augmenting path under d(⋅, ⋅) in time proportional, within a polylogarithmic factor, to the length of the path. We show that the total length of the augmenting paths generated by the algorithm is O(n/ε)log n), implying that the running time of our algorithm is O(npoly(log n, 1/ε)).