Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Root‐niche separation between savanna trees and grasses is greater on sandier soils

In savannas, partitioning of below‐ground resources by depth could facilitate tree–grass coexistence and shape vegetation responses to changing rainfall patterns. However, most studies assessing tree versus grass root‐niche partitioning have focused on one or two sites, limiting generalization about how rainfall and soil conditions influence the degree of rooting overlap across environmental gradients. We used two complementary stable isotope techniques to quantify variation (a) in water uptake depths and (b) in fine‐root biomass distributions among dominant trees and grasses at eight semi‐arid savanna sites in Kruger National Park, South Africa. Sites were located on contrasting soil textures (clayey basaltic soils vs. sandy granitic soils) and paired along a gradient of mean annual rainfall. Soil texture predicted variation in mean water uptake depths and fine‐root allocation. While grasses maintained roots close to the surface and consistently used shallow water, trees on sandy soils distributed roots more evenly across soil depths and used deeper soil water, resulting in greater divergence between tree and grass rooting on sandy soils. Mean annual rainfall predicted some variation among sites in tree water uptake depth, but had a weaker influence on fine‐root allocation. Synthesis. Savanna trees overlapped more with shallow‐rooted grasses on clayey soils and were more distinct in their use of deeper soil layers on sandy soils, consistent with expected differences in infiltration and percolation. These differences, which could allow trees to escape grass competition more effectively on sandy soils, may explain observed differences in tree densities and rates of woody encroachment with soil texture. Differences in the degree of root‐niche separation could also drive heterogeneous responses of savanna vegetation to predicted shifts in the frequency and intensity of rainfall.
Development of Organ Culture Medium for Long Term Culture of Human Hair Follicle

− We successfully isolated human anagen hair follicles from human scalp skin by microdissection and tried to culture them under various conditions. First we confirmed negative effect of serum on human hair follicle organ culture. As a next step serum-free medium compositions, Philpott medium, IMDM, and DHGM (Dongguk hair growth medium) were tried. Philpott medium is a general medium for hair organ culture based on Williams’ E medium and DHGM is a special self-developed medium containing high amino acids and vitamins (B group) composition. As results, hair follicle in Philpott medium and IMDM showed anagen phase morphological structure, but rapid loss of hair elongation, low alkaline phosphatase expression, and very low expression of CK19. It is thought these hair follicles rapidly regressed from apoptosis. However, hair follicles in DHGM showed long term anagen phase morphological structure, continuous hair elongation, high alkaline phosphatase, and CK19 expression. These results demonstrate that high amino acids and vitamins (B group) composition are essential to in vitro long term human hair follicle organ culture and this culture medium will be useful in basic study of hair biology or application study to the development of alopecia treatment drugs.
Model of trigger mechanisms of SARS CoV-2 infections

Coronavirus disease-2019, is a pandemic that is causing great loss of life and economy. Knowledge of the pathogenesis of the disease is required for the control and treatment of clinical manifestations. The aim of this review is to analyses the information on the molecular mechanisms that trigger the alterations caused by SARS-CoV-2 from published articles related to COVID-19. The onset of the COVID-19 virus infection in humans occurs when the SARS-CoV-2 S protein reaches cells containing ACE2 receptors, being mainly the upper respiratory tract, followed by the oral cavity, and in lesser frequency through the conjunctiva. Inflammation and thrombus formation in symptomatic patients have been the major cause of SARS-CoV-2 aggravation, this occurs largely due to the imbalance of regulation by diminishing ACE2 receptors, which serves to activate the regulatory axis Ang-II→ACE2→Ang-(1-7)→MAS receptor, which counteracts the negative actions caused by Ang-II. The ACE2 is also the main receiver for the SARS-CoV-2 so that it can trigger the virulence processes in the host.
Predictors of Violence among Drug Abusers in Selected Drug Joints in Mushin, Lagos Metropolis

The prevailing incidence of illicit drug intake among youths in Nigeria is alarming and undermines developmental structure of the society locally and internationally. All over the world today, cases of Illicit drug consumptions by the Nigeria youths has gained its momentum toward negative directions and its impact has degenerated to series of anti-behavioural problems such as trauma, larceny, egocentric suicide, cybercrime, kidnapping, laziness, terrorism, murdered cases, poor manpower supply and retrogressive national and international images among other nations in the world. Extant publications were reviewed for the study in line with broken theory by Keilling and Wilsons were also adopted for the justification of the inquiry. Mixed method and cross section Survey design and Yemane Yaro formula was adopted to select the 400 respondent for the quantitative inquiry but 245 questionnaires were found useful for the study while 10 in-depth interviews were carried out among the participants. The Chi-square result deciphers that youth access to illicit drug (X2)= 56.750a; p< 0.005. ) Cost of purchasing of drug (X2)= 59.598a, p< 0.005. ) and nature of employment (X2)=46.611, p<0.005. ) of youths has significant relationship with violent behaviour. It is advisable youths to avoid joining drug related gangs; Nigeria Government should be willing to provide basic amenities for the youths so as to reduce violent activities in Nigeria
A Vision-Based Approach for Ensuring Proper Use of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) in Decommissioning of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station

Decommissioning of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station (NPS) is challenging due to industrial and chemical hazards as well as radiological ones. The decommissioning workers in these sites are instructed to wear proper Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for radiation protection. However, workers may not be able to accurately comply with safety regulations at decommissioning sites, even with prior education and training. In response to the difficulties of on-site PPE management, this paper presents a vision-based automated monitoring approach to help to facilitate the occupational safety monitoring task of decommissioning workers to ensure proper use of PPE by the combination of deep learning-based individual detection and object detection using geometric relationships analysis. The performance of the proposed approach was experimentally evaluated, and the experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach is capable of identifying decommissioning workers’ improper use of PPE with high precision and recall rate while ensuring real-time performance to meet the industrial requirements.
Human gender revelation based on facial features and shape and structure of finger nails

The research on face recognition has become an integral part in the field of many engineering areas. The variation in the appearance of an human image makes proper face recognition a difficult task. However, face identification is an extremely important aspect of human identification system especially in gender identification system. Thus, this paper has aimed to detect the gender of human beings based on different frontal facial features. In this case we have considered facial images with different emotions like neutral, happy, sad, angry and surprised, respectively. To perform gender identification, frontal facial features are detected and extracted based on Region of Interest principle. Then, Fast Fourier Transform and Discrete Cosine Transform algorithmic logics have been incorporated to transform the input data from spatial domain to frequency domain, and on the resultant data further operations are performed to accomplish the task of gender identification. This has made the proffered algorithm different and unique from the existing algorithms. In addition, an alternate approach has also been proposed for gender identification and revelation based on the shape and structure of human finger nails. The latter method has primarily emphasized on the structural organization of finger nails in both male and female. The propounded algorithm has also succeeded in determining the gender of human being based on the shape and structure of human finger nails.
Efficiency of shallow- and deep-water trawling in the Mediterranean and its implications for discard reduction

The Mazara del Vallo fleet is one of the main fleets of large trawlers in the Mediterranean. Traditionally, the two main fishing strategies adopted by the fleet can be summarized as follows: pesca a fresco (250 m), mainly targeting deep-water shrimp sold frozen. The second fishing strategy has become increasingly important over the last decade. This paper aims to investigate the extent to which the choice of targeting deep-water shrimp impacted the level of technical and scale efficiency for the fleet assessed through an input-oriented data envelopment analysis. The analysis was based on data collected under the Italian National Programme within the European Data Collection Framework, as well as through a focus group discussion with the trawler skippers. The results showed that the pesca a congelato trawlers had the highest average efficiency, with both technical and scale efficiency close to the maximum level. On the basis of information collected during the focus group discussion on the pesca a congelato strategy, technical efficiency was coupled with a lower discard rate and the widespread use of LED lights. The findings were discussed in light of the objective of discard reduction in European fisheries, one of the pillars of the reformed common fishery policy.
Theory Amid Policy and Practice: A Typology of Theory Use in Educational Leadership Scholarship

In the field of educational leadership, there is some work around the preferred theories of scholars, but little to no research on how the chosen theories are subsequently applied. Better understanding the purpose, role, and depth of how theory is used in educational leadership can help inform the teaching and mentorship of aspiring leaders and scholars. To examine the nature of theory use in educational leadership, we applied Dressman’s typology of theory use in literacy (2007), to 47 policy and practice-oriented articles in Educational Administration Quarterly. We found similar patterns to Dressman’s typology, but also important differences. Implications are discussed.
How Do Manufacturing Enterprises Construct E-Commerce Platforms for Sustainable Development? A Case Study of Resource Orchestration

The existing literatures mainly focus on the pricing, strategic significance and sustainable development characteristics of the e-commerce platform, and lack deep research on mechanisms in the process of construction like main structure of recourses and driving force. This paper takes Haier as a Chinese example and explores how manufacturing enterprises create and develop the sustainable e-commerce platform. The research findings show that: (1) An e-commerce platform respectively carries the functions of sales channels, service differences and innovation incubation in different stages of the manufacturing enterprises’ sustainable development; (2) For managing e-commerce platform of manufacturing enterprises’ sustainable development, resource orchestration can effectively realize the integration of value creation and resource; (3) Finally, it further reveals that the driving power which resource orchestration continuously promotes for the sustainable e-commerce platforms to construct is from the co-creation value of manufacturers and users. This paper discusses the structure of e-commerce platforms based on the main characteristics of each resource, and systematically explores the mechanism and evolutionary driving force of resource orchestration to promote the construction of e-commerce platforms for the sustainable development. It complements and enriches the innovation ecosystem and resource orchestration theory, providing significant practical guidance to the sustainable development of manufacturing enterprises.
Synthesis and Antibacterial, Antioxidant, and Molecular Docking Analysis of Some Novel Quinoline Derivatives

2-Chloroquinoline-3-carbaldehyde and 2-chloro-8-methylquinoline-3-carbaldehyde derivatives were synthesized through Vilsmeier formulation of acetanilide and N-(o-tolyl)acetamide. Aromatic nucleophilic substitution reaction was used to introduce various nucleophiles in place of chlorine under different reaction conditions. The carbaldehyde group was oxidized by permanganate method and reduced with metallic sodium in methanol and ethanol. The synthesized compounds were characterized by UV-Vis, IR, and NMR. The antibacterial activity of the synthesized compounds was screened against two Gram-positive bacteria (Bacillus subtilis ATCC6633 and Staphylococcus aureus ATCC25923) and two Gram-negative bacteria (Escherichia coli ATCC 25922 and Pseudomonas aeruginosa ATCC 27853). Most of the compounds displayed potent activity against two or more bacterial strains. Among them, compounds 6 and 15 showed maximum activity against Pseudomonas aeruginosa with mean inhibition zones of 9.67 ± 1.11 and 10.00 ± 0.44 mm, respectively, while ciprofloxacin showed mean inhibition zone of 8.33 ± 0.44 mm at similar concentration. On the other hand, compound 8 exhibited maximum activity against Escherichia coli with inhibition zones of about 9.00 ± 0.55 mm at 300 μg/mL and 11.33 ± 1.11 mm at 500 μg/mL. The radical scavenging activity of these compounds was evaluated using 1,1-diphenyl-2-picryl hydrazyl (DPPH), and all of them displayed moderate antioxidant activity, with compound 7 exhibiting the strongest activity. The molecular docking study of the synthesized compounds was conducted to investigate their binding pattern with DNA gyrase, all of them were found to have minimum binding energy ranging from –6.0 to –7.33 kcal/mol, and the best result was achieved with compound 11. The findings of the in vitro antibacterial and molecular docking analysis demonstrated that the synthesized compounds have potential of antibacterial activity and can be further optimized to serve as lead compounds.
Favorable effects of Globularia alypum on cardiometabolic markers in high fructose-fed rats

Purpose This study aims to examine whether Globularia alypum (Ga) lyophilized aqueous leaves extract treatment improves cardiometabolic syndromes such as hyperglycemia, lipid profiles and oxidative damage resulting from a high-fructose diet induced in hypertriglyceridemic rats. Design/methodology/approach A total of 24 male Wistar rats weighing 80 ± 5 g were first randomly divided into 2 groups. A total of 12 control rats (C) were fed a standard-diet (St-D) and 12 high fructose (HF) rats were fed a high-fructose diet (HF-D) containing St-D in which cornstarch was substituted by fructose (61.4%). After 15 weeks of feeding, body weight (BW) was about 320 ± 20 g and hypertriglyceridemia was noted in HF vs C group (2.69 ± 0.49 mmol/L) vs (1.25 ± 0.33 mmol/L). Each group of rats was then divided into two equal groups (n = 6) and fed during four weeks either a St-D or HF-D, treated or not with 1% of Ga extract (C-Ga) and (HF-Ga). After 28 days, fasting rats were anesthetized and blood and tissues were removed to measure biochemical parameters. Findings The results showed no significant differences in BW and insulinemia between all groups. Ga extract supplementation reduced glycemia (−36%), glycosylated hemoglobin (−37%), Homeostasis Model of Assessment-Insulin Resistance index (−34%) and triacylglycerol’s contents in plasma (−33%), very low density lipoproteins–low density lipoproteins (VLDL-LDL) (−48%), liver (−52%) and aorta (−39%); total cholesterol concentrations in aorta was 3.7-fold lower in HF-Ga vs HF group. Ga treatment reduced lipid peroxidation in plasma, VLDL-LDL, red blood cells (RBC), liver, muscle and kidney by improving superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity and glutathione peroxidase (GPx) in RBC and catalase (CAT) activity in kidney (p < 0.05). Moreover, Ga ameliorates glutathione (GSH) production in RBC (+41%) and kidney tissues (+35%). Originality/value Ga extract ameliorated cardiometabolic syndrome by its hypotriglyceridemic effect and prevented development of insulin resistance. It reduces lipid peroxidation by enhancing non-enzymatic (GSH) and enzymatic (SOD, GPx and CAT) antioxidant defense systems in high-fructose hypertriglyceridemic rats. Therefore, supplementation of Ga leaves extract as an adjuvant could be used for the treatment of hypertriglyceridemia and the prevention and/or the management of cardio-metabolic adverse effects.
A Global Perspective on Screening.

Breast cancer is emerging as a major global public health problem. Incidence and mortality continues to rise in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). A significant and growing disparity exists between high-income countries and LMICs in the availability of screening services and associated preventable mortality. However, population imaging-based screening programs are not appropriate for all settings. Planners should perform a thorough assessment of the target setting prior to implementing any breast cancer detection program, as appropriate guidelines vary according to the resources available. Financial, social, and cultural barriers to breast cancer care need to be addressed to sustainably improve the morbidity and mortality of the populations and make efficient use of available services. Creative approaches, such as mobile and portable imaging and bundling of services, can facilitate the installation of early breast cancer detection programs in LMICs. While image-based screening programs are not initially resource-appropriate in many LMICs, planners can work towards this goal as part of their comprehensive breast cancer detection strategy.
Variation in the diet of beluga whales in response to changes in prey availability: insights on changes in the Beaufort Sea ecosystem

The eastern Beaufort Sea (EBS) beluga whaleDelphinapterus leucaspopulation has experienced a 20 yr decline in inferred growth rates of individuals, which is hypothesized to have resulted from changes in prey availability. We used fatty acid signatures and stable isotope ratios to reconstruct the proportional contributions of 14 prey species to the diets of 178 beluga whales from 2011 to 2014. Prey estimates using quantitative fatty acid signature analysis suggest that EBS beluga whales primarily consume Arctic codBoreogadus saida, a species highly sensitive to climate change. Prey estimates varied with year and sex and size class of the whales, with large males consuming the highest proportions of Arctic cod, and females consuming the highest proportions of capelinMallotus villosus. Estimated proportional contributions of Arctic cod to beluga diet decreased from 2011 to 2014, coinciding with an increase in capelin. Belugas consumed the highest proportions of capelin and the lowest proportions of cod in 2014, the same year in which body condition indices were lowest in the whales. We hypothesize that changing conditions in the Beaufort Sea ecosystem may result in a decreased consumption of Arctic cod by belugas and increased consumption of capelin, which may result in a decline in condition. This may predominately affect females and juveniles since they consume the highest proportions of capelin; however, long-term monitoring is needed for confirmation. Understanding inter-annual variation in prey, and the longer-term nutritional implications of shifting from an Arctic cod- to a capelin-dominated diet should be a priority for monitoring EBS predators.
Slow-Release Urea Prills Developed Using Organic and Inorganic Blends in Fluidized Bed Coater and Their Effect on Spinach Productivity

The application of urea-based fertilizers in developing countries has gained significant momentum over time. urea usage is to meet demand and supply gap of food resources as world population is increasing at a fast pace. urea contains largest content of nitrogen (46%) among all the solid nitrogenous fertilizers. However, main drawback of urea is its higher dissolution rate. After soil application, most of urea nitrogen is lost through a leaching, runoff, nitrification-denitrification and ammonia volatilization. To tackle urea related environmental pollution, development of slow-release urea fertilizer is a need of the hour and this would also increase product use efficiency in terms of crop productivity and its N uptake. We studied the usage of polymeric materials in combination with inorganic substances like sulfur and plaster of Paris as effective and biodegradable coating substances for urea prills. For coating on urea prills, fluidized bed coater was used whereas paraffin wax and molasses were used as binding agents. The urea was coated with four different formulations, i.e., C-1: PVA 5% + plaster of Paris 10% + sulfur 5% + paraffin wax 2%, C-2: PVA 5% + starch 10% + sulfur 5% + paraffin wax 2%, C-3: gelatin 5% + plaster of Paris 10% + sulfur 5% + paraffin wax 2% and C-4: PVA 5% + starch 10% + sulfur 5% + paraffin wax 2.5% + molasses 2.5%. Each formulation along with uncoated urea prills (C-0) were evaluated for characterization and N release kinetics. All the formulations along with uncoated urea were applied to spinach crop in pot experiment. A control (No N: untreated) was also kept. Spinach biomass yield and N uptake were determined. The formulation C-1 yielded highest urea-N release efficiency and spinach N uptake of6.87% and 1.93 g N/pot, respectively. Themodified Schwarz and Sinclair formula gave the excellent representation of release of nutrient-N from coated urea prills. It is concluded that coating urea prills with organic and inorganic blends is better option to slow down N release kinetics and improve spinach productivity. Therefore, by using coated fertilizers, farmers can improve agro-environmental value of urea, worldwide.