Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Conservative allocation strategy of multiple nutrients among major plant organs: From species to community

Nutrient allocation is an important aspect of plant resource uptake and use, which is related to life‐history strategies. Although to date considerable attention has focused on plant allocation of nitrogen and phosphorus, comparatively little information is available on the allocation of various other nutrients and their up‐scaling from the species to community level. We measured 10 nutrient elements in the leaves, branches and fine roots of 551 plant species growing in eight forest ecosystems in China, ranging from cold temperate to subtropical forests. We estimated the scaling relationship of multiple nutrients among plant organs at the species level and scaled‐up the relationship to the community level by combining this information with that of community structure. Nutrient allocation among plant organs was conserved in different functional groups and biomes across broad environmental gradients. Nutrient partitioning between organs with similar function tended to be isometric, whereas partitioning between organs with distinct functions tended to be allometric. The scaling relationship between above‐ and below‐ground organs remained consistent, whereas the scaling relationship within above‐ground organs changed after scaling up from the species to the community level, with the relative change in nutrients being consistently smaller in the more active organs. Synthesis. The pattern of multiple nutrient allocation among organs showed a degree of conservatism across plant functional groups and biomes, with disproportional changes in nutrient content between functionally distinct organs and a lower relative change in more active organs. This conservative strategy implies the existence of general rules that constrain plant nutrient allocation.
Too much, too young? Altered corticolimbic axonal innervation and resting state functional connectivity suggests sex-dependent outcomes in a rat model of early life adversity

Adverse early experiences significantly alter behavioral and neural trajectories via aberrant brain maturation. Children with a history of early life stress (ELS) exhibit maladaptive behaviors and increased risk of mental illness later in life. Evidence in ELS-exposed humans identifies a role of atypical corticolimbic development; specifically, within amygdala-prefrontal cortex (PFC) circuits, and show precocially mature task-based corticolimbic functional connectivity (FC). However, the neurobiological substrates of such ELS-driven developmental changes remain unknown. Here, we identify putative neurobiological changes to determine the timeline of developmental perturbations following ELS in rats. Anterograde axonal tracing from basolateral amygdala (BLA) to pre- and infralimbic (PL, IL) PFC was quantified at postnatal days (PD)28, 38, and 48, along with anxiety-like behavior, in maternally separated (ELS) or control reared (CON) male and female rats. Resting state (rs)FC was assessed at PD28 and PD48 in a separate cohort. We report that ELS-exposed female rats show early maturation of BLA-PFC innervation at PD28, with ELS-related changes in males not appearing until PD38. ELS disrupted the maturation of rsFC from PD28 to PD48 in females, with enduring relationships between early rsFC and later anxiety-like behavior. Only transient ELS-related changes in rsFC were seen in male PL. Together, these data provide evidence that female rats may be more vulnerable to the effects of ELS via precocial BLA-PFC innervation, which may drive altered corticolimbic rsFC. These data also provide evidence that increased BLA-IL rsFC is associated with behavioral resiliency following ELS in female rats, providing mechanistic insight into the underlying etiology of adversity-induced vulnerability and resiliency.
Taming Big Data

There's a rush of information terraforming the IT world. It flows from the data generated by 4.3 billion cell phones and 2 billion Internet users worldwide, and joins the roiling torrent of 30 billion RFID tags and hundreds of satellites incessantly sending more signals with each passing second. Now, nobody ever has to deal with all the world's data all at once. But when the whole pie grows, everyone's slices get larger. When you start measuring the pie in zettabytes, even a small piece starts to get pretty filling. Here's a sobering statistic: Twitter alone adds 12 terabytes of data every day—all text, and all added at a maximum of 140 characters at a time.
POTENTIAL OF Trichoderma viride AND Rhizobium leguminosarum IN COMBINATION WITH TOPSIN M70 FUNGICIDE FOR MANAGEMENT DAMPING-OFF DISEASE OF PEA PLANTS CAUSED BY Rhizoctonia solani

Efficacies of Trichoderma viride, Rhizobium leguminosarum and the fungicide Topsin M70% individually and/or their mixtures were tested in vitro and greenhouse conditions to control damping-off and root rot diseases of pea plants (Pisum sativum L., cv. Master P) caused by Rhizoctonia solani. The ability of tested Rhizobium leguminosarum and Trichodermia viride to exhibit plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR)-properties including ability to solubilize-P and production of IAA, as well as production of siderophores, hydrocyanic acid (HCN) and secretion of cell-wall degrading enzymes (chitinase and protease) were investigated. Also, under in vitro conditions the effect of Topsin M70% on growth of R. solani and T. viride, R. leguminosarum and their mixtures was determined. The fungicide effective concentration was found to range from 10 to 50 ppm for R. solani and T. viride mycelial growth being 83.30, 100, 76.08 and 100% at 40 and 50 ppm of Topsin M70%. The same trend was obtained with R. leguminosarum that showed maximum tolerance at 40 and 50 ppm of Topsin M70% with the average of 52.19 and 59.85% inhibition over control, respectively. Additionally, greenhouse conditions were conducted on sandy clay soil at Etay El Baroud Agricultural Research Station, Beheria Government, Egypt to study the singly effect of seed soaking in T. viride, R. leguminosarum or their mixtures with the soil drench fungicide in pots after sowing of pea cv. Master P in concern. Significant decrease of damping-off and root rot of pea was obtained. Numbers of survived plants, shoot length as well as, fresh and dry weight were recorded. The combined treatments R. leguminosarum + Topsin M70%, T. viride + Topsin M70% and R. leguminosarum + T. viride + Topsin M70% were the most effective ones resulting the least percentage of total dampingoff and the highest percentage of healthy plants being 96.67 and100.00%, respectively. Seed treatment with T. viride, R. leguminosarum and drenched fungicide individually or in mixture improved plant growth as indicated by the increased growth parameters and the physiological activities (phytosynthetic pigments, peroxidase and polyphenol oxidase), especially in combined treatments. Peroxidase and polyphenol oxidase activities were increased in the different treatmentseven, the fungicide drench treatment. Reduction in total damping-off was positively correlated with both peroxidase (R = 96.70, P ˂ 0.005) and polyphenol oxidase (R = 89.60, P ˂ 0.005) activities.
Flavonoid Components of Different Color Magnolia Flowers and Their Relationship to Cultivar Selections

Magnolia (Magnoliaceae) is widely cultivated for its beauty; however, despite this, the components of the different flower colors in Magnolia have not been elucidated. In this study, the color parameters of 10 Magnolia petals with different colors were measured by the Royal Horticultural Society Color Chart (RHSCC) and a color reader CR-10. The composition and content of the flavonoids in the petals were analyzed by high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with diode array detection (HPLC-DAD) as well as HPLC with electrospray ionization and mass spectrometry (HPLC-ESI-MS2). All results showed that the 10 petals were divided into four color groups. Regarding the flavonoid composition, four types of anthocyanins, including Cyanidin-glucosyl-rhamnoside (Cy-GR), Cyanidin-glucosyl-rhamnosyl-glucoside (Cy-GRG), Peonidin-glucosyl-rhamnoside (Pn-GR), and Peonidin-glucosyl-rhamnosyl-glucoside (Pn-GRG), were identified, as well as 10 types of flavonols. The flavonols included isorhamnetin, quercetin, kaempferol, and their glycosides, which included rutinoside, rhamnose, and glucoside. Cyanidin and peonidin make Magnolia petals appear red-purple and purple, respectively, and the flavonols perform as evident auxiliary pigments, particularly quercetin. The Magnolia cultivar flower phenotypes sampled in this study differed by changes in their existing flavonoid content rather than by the appearance of new flavonoids. Consequently, this study provides a reference for further revealing the basis of Magnolia flower color and provides clues for color breeding.
Development of Palm Print Recognition System Using Ordinal Measures

Personal identification is one of the most important requirements in all e-commerce and criminal detection applications. In this framework, a novel palm print representation method, namely orthogonal line ordinal features, is proposed. The palm print registration, feature extraction, palm print verification and palm print recognition modules are designed to manage the palm prints and the palm print database module is designed to store their palm prints and the person details in the database. The feature extraction module is proposed to extract the ordinal measurements for the palm prints. The verification module is designed to verify the palm print with the personal identification record. The recognition module is proposed to find out the relevant person associated with the palm print image. The proposed palm print recognition scheme uses the intensity and brightness to measure the ordinal measurement. The ordinal measures are estimated for the 4 x 4 regions of the palm print images. Keywords: Biometrics, Palm Print, Recognition, Ordinal Measures, Feature Extraction.
ASSESING TARGETED GENOMIC EXPRESSION FOLLOWING IN VITRO EXPOSURES OF HUMAN LUNG CELLS TO AMBIENT GASES IN HOUSTON, TEXAS

Ambient exposures consist of many gaseous air pollutants that continue to transform chemically. Current in vitro studies, however, do not typically assess cellular impacts in relation to real-world gaseous mixtures. In vitro exposures of lung cells to ambient mixtures were completed and produced gene expression data from a field campaign in the industrialized Houston Ship Channel. An integral part of this field campaign was the real-time monitoring of both emitted and secondary gas phase pollutants. This real-time chemical characterization data was used to quantify correlations with expressions of 979 genes selected for their roles in inflammation and cancer in human lung cells. We found statistically significant correlations between expressions of 11 genes and 8 pollutants. As expected, large fold increases in gene expressions were measured from exposures to known hazardous air pollutants. The genomic response correlation with alkanes, however, was not expected and could be serving as a surrogate for other unmeasured pollutants. For these alkanes, the transforming growth factor beta 3 (TGFB3) had a positive correlation and is associated with a cell proliferation pathway. Of the seven genes correlated with benzene, NLR family pyrin domain containing 3 (NLRP3) had the highest correlation and is associated with the inflammasome activation.
Responses of polypore fungi following disturbance-emulating harvesting treatments and deadwood creation in boreal Norway spruce dominated forests

ABSTRACT The emulation of natural disturbances in harvesting has become a widely accepted approach to reach ecologically sustainable forest management. The purpose of this study was to examine the responses of polypore fungi (species richness and composition) on four different cutting methods (selection, gap, patch, and clear-cutting) plus uncut controls, and the creation of high stumps and cut logs in combination with harvesting. Polypores were inventoried one year before, and two and seven years after cutting. A total of 71 polypore species were found, but no red-listed species were recorded seven years after cutting. Irrespective of the treatment, the variation in polypore richness was best explained by the number of deadwood objects in the stands. Species richness per deadwood object was the highest on natural logs. Species richness per volume of spruce deadwood was the highest on small-diameter deadwood and stumps, intermediate on natural logs and lower on cut logs and high stumps. These results indicate that cut logs created in harvesting cannot compensate the loss of deadwood in cutting and energy wood harvesting. Our results demonstrate the difficulty in rapidly creating habitats for red-listed polypores in commercially managed forests.
HISTOCHEMICAL CHANGES IN THE GILLS OF THE FRESHWATER CRAB, BARYTELPHUSA CUNICULARIS (WESTWOOD): EXPOSED TO MALATHION

The terrestrial crab plays relevance modal in the study of population and also benecial for human activities. As the crabs are abundantly available locally and used as diet for some people with great nutritive value, there is a potential to project it as poor man's protein. The present study deals with the histopathological changes in the freshwater crab Barytelphusa cunicularis. Live specimens of Barytelphusa cunicularis were collected from local wet areas of Maroda sector-Bhilai, (C.G). Average weight of crabs varies from (45-50gms), the carapace length and carapace width varies from 3.20-4.50mm and 4.25-5.80mm respectively. The crabs were acclimatized in the laboratory condition, and kept in two groups the control group set free from Malathion and the experimental group was exposed to malathion for LC at different concentration 0.45ppm, 0.30ppm, 50 0.26ppm and 0.25ppm for 24hrs, 48hrs, 72hrs and 96hrs respectively. The gills were dissected from both the control and experimental crabs and the sections of 5μm thick were cut, processed and stained with heamatoxylin and eosin. They were examined and studied under Olympus light microscopy by a built in camera. The histopathological changes suggest that there is thickening of gill lamella, rupture of capillaries, hyperplasia of epithelial cells were also seen, which leads to the fusion of gill lamella. This indicates that the Crabs play a signicant modal in the aquatic environment and also good indicator for polluted condition.
Mechanics of Phenotypic Aging Trajectories in C. elegans and Humans

OF THE DISSERTATION Mechanics of Phenotypic Aging Trajectories in C. elegans and Humans by William B. Zhang Doctor of Philosophy in Biology and Biomedical Sciences Computational and Systems Biology Washington University in St. Louis, 2019 Assistant Professor Zachary Pincus, Chair Overall, my dissertation integrates longitudinal measurements of physiology to investigate the aging process. In the first half, I examine the surprising and largely unexplained degree of variation in lifespan within even homogeneous populations. I sought to understand how physiological aging differs between longand short-lived individuals within a population of genetically identical C. elegans reared in a homogeneous environment. Using a novel culture apparatus, I longitudinally monitored aspects of aging physiology across a large population of isolated individuals. Aggregating several measures into an overall estimate of senescence, I find that longand short-lived individuals start adulthood on an equal physiological footing. However, longer-lived individuals then experience slower declines in function, but spend a disproportionately large portion of life in poor physiological health. Indeed, the period of early-life good health is much less variable than the period of late-life advanced senescence, which I conclude to be a more plastic phase of life. In the second half, I show that simple physiological measurements have broader lifespan-predictive value than previously believed and that incorporating information from multiple time points can significantly increase that predictive capacity. Using longitudinal data from a cohort of 1349 human participants in the Framingham Heart Study, I show that as early as 28–38 years of age, almost 10% of variation in future lifespan can be predicted from simple clinical parameters. Further, different clinical measurements are predictive of lifespan in different age regimes. Moreover, I find that several blood glucose and blood pressure are best considered as measures of a rate of “damage accrual”, such that total historical exposure, rather than current measurement values, is the most relevant risk factor (as with pack-years of cigarette smoking). Together, this work has established the physiological basis of variation in longevity within an isogenic population of C. elegans and extended our ability to predict mortality from basic clinical measurements in humans.
Anatomy-guided Inverse-phase-encoding Registration Method for Correcting Susceptibility Artifacts in Sub-millimeter fMRI

Echo planar imaging (EPI) is a fast and non-invasive magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique that supports data acquisition at spatial and temporal resolutions suitable for brain function studies. However, susceptibility artifacts are unavoidable distortions in EPI. These distortions are especially strong in high spatial resolution images and can lead to misrepresentation of brain function in fMRI experiments. A common method for correcting susceptibility artifacts is based on a registration scheme which uses two EPI images acquired using identical sequences but with inverse phase-encoding (PE) directions. In this paper, we present a new method for correcting susceptibility artifacts by integrating a T1-weighted (T1w) image into the inverse-PE based registration, since the T1w structural image is considered as a ground-truth measurement of the brain. Furthermore, the T1w image is used as a criterion to select automatically the regularization parameters of the proposed image registration. Evaluations on two high-resolution EPI-fMRI datasets, acquired at 3T and 7T scanners, confirm that the proposed method provides more robust and sharper corrections and runs faster compared with two other state-of-the-art inverse-PE based susceptibility artifact correction methods, i.e. HySCO and TOPUP.
X-Ray Repair Cross Complementing 4 (XRCC4) Genetic Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms and the Liver Toxicity of AFB1 in Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Our previous reports have shown that the genetic single-nucleotide polymorphisms (GSNPs) in the DNA repair gene X-ray repair cross complementing 4 (XRCC4) are involved in the carcinogenesis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) induced by aflatoxin B1 (AFB1). However, the effects of GSNPs in the coding regions of XRCC4 on hepatic toxicity of AFB1 have been less investigated. We conducted a hospital-based clinic tissue samples with pathologically diagnosed HCC (n = 380) in a high AFB1 exposure area to explore the possible roles of GSNPs in the coding regions of XRCC4 in AFB1-induced HCC using liver toxicity assays. A total of 143 GSNPs were included in the present study and genotyped using the SNaPshot method, whereas the liver toxicity of AFB1 was evaluated using AFB1-DNA adducts in the tissues with HCC. In the clinicopathological samples with HCC, the average adduct amount is 2.27 (cid:1) 1.09 μ mol/mol DNA. Among 143 GSNPs of XRCC4, only rs1237462915, rs28383151, rs762419679, rs766287987, and rs3734091 significantly increased the levels of AFB1-DNA adducts. Furthermore, XRCC4 GSNPs (including rs28383151, rs766287987, and rs3734091) also increased cumulative hazard for patients with HCC. These results suggest that the liver toxicity of AFB1 may be modified by XRCC4 GSNPs.
Influence of plant genotype and soil on the wheat rhizosphere microbiome: identification of a core microbiome across eight African and European soils

An avenue to improve cereal yields is to harness and manipulate the plant microbiome to increase crop nutrition and resistance to pathogens and abiotic stressors. To develop microbiome engineering solutions, more research is needed to characterize plant microbiomes across contrasted geographical locations, agricultural practices and plant genotypes. Previous work on the wheat microbiome focused on bacterial diversity and more marginally on archaeal and fungal diversity. Hence, no integrative assessment of the wheat rhizospheric microbiome including protist diversity (i.e. amoeba, ciliates, stramenopiles) is currently available. Here, we characterized the rhizosphere microbiome of wheat by considering both prokaryotic (archaea and bacteria) and eukaryotic (fungi and protists) communities in soils from four different countries (Cameroon, France, Italy, Senegal). The goals of this study were to determine the influence of wheat genotype, agricultural practices (conventional vs organic) and soil type on the rhizosphere microbiome. An additional goal was to determine if a rhizosphere core microbiome existed across these different countries. We found a limited effect of the wheat genotype on the rhizosphere microbiome (explain 2% of variance) and observed that the majority of the microbial taxa were consistently associated to multiple wheat genotypes grown in the same soil. Large differences in taxa richness and in microbiome structure were observed between the eight soils studied (57% of variance) and the two agricultural practices (10% of variance). However, despite these differences in microbiome composition across soils, we observed that 179 taxa (2 archaea, 104 bacteria, 41 fungi, 32 protists) were consistently associated to wheat roots, constituting a core microbiome. In addition to being prevalent, these few core taxa were highly abundant and collectively represented 50% of the relative abundance of our entire wheat microbiome dataset. We provide evidence of a wheat core microbiome and propose a “most wanted” taxa list, including 9 hubs (potential keystone taxa), that should be targets for future culturomics, metagenomics and for the creation of wheat synthetic microbiomes. Additionally, we confirm that protists are an integral part of the plant holobiont and we encourage more research to study their roles for plant nutrition and in controlling plant diseases.