Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Manipulating the fatty acid composition of poultry meat and eggs for the health conscious consumer

Consumer demand for food products of superior health quality has renewed interest in modifying the lipid composition of poultry meat and eggs. While work involving the reduction of the cholesterol content of poultry products has met with little success, dietary fatty acid modification has proved to be a viable method of adding value to poultry products for the health conscious consumer. Because of the association with a decreased risk of coronary heart disease, recent dietary fat studies have centred on the manipulation of specific fatty acids, i.e. 20-carbon omega-3 fatty acids (eicosapentaenoic acid 20:5n3, decosahexaenoic acid 22:6n3) found in marine sources. Seasonal availability, affordability and consumer preference often limit fish consumption, thereby excluding the primary source of 20-carbon omega-3 fatty acids. Enrichment of poultry meat and eggs with these fatty acids might provide an excellent alternative source. The omega-3 fatty acid content of both poultry meat and eggs can be readily increased by the inclusion of marine oils/meals in the diet. However, off-flavours associated with carcass and egg samples enriched in this way have prompted investigations into the use of terrestrial sources of omega-3 fatty acids. While effective in enriching meat and egg products with linoleic acid (18:3n3), plant sources result in only minor changes in the content of 20-carbon omega-3 fatty acids. Various methods of oil refinement and extraction, as well as alterations in production practices and the use of dietary antioxidants have been examined as ways to improve flavour quality and storage stability of omega-3 fatty acid enriched products. Continued investigation in the areas of sensory evaluation and product stability are needed if significant improvements in the health quality of foods available to the consumer are to be made.
The Relation of Structure to Antioxidant Activity of Quercetin and Some of Its Derivatives II. Secondary (Metal-Complexing) Activity

SUMMARY The secondary (metal-complexing) activity of quercetin and some of its derivatives was studied with the conventional Warburg technique in an ascorbic acid system catalyzed with cupric ions. The 3-hydroxy-4-keto group was the most powerful metalcomplexing group in the quercetin molecule; the 5-hydroxy-4-keto group had some activity, but was considerably weaker. The 3′,4′-o-diphenolic group, important for the primary antioxidant activity, possessed virtually no metal-deactivating properties. Methylation of the 4′- or 7-hydroxyl (or, to a lesser degree, of the 3′-hydroxyl) increased the complexing capacity of the 0-methylated derivative of quercetin, while hydrogenation of the 2,3 double bond yielded an almost completely inactive compound (dihydroquercetin).
Phosphorus kinetics in lambs fed different levels of dicalcium phosphate

SUMMARY The purpose of the current work was to study phosphorus (P) metabolism in growing sheep supplemented with different levels of dicalcium phosphate using an extant mathematical model. Twelve male non-castrated Santa Inês sheep, weighing 23 (±2·2) kg, received a basal diet unsupplemented or supplemented with dicalcium phosphate to provide 1·5, 3·0, 4·5 g of P/animal per day (treatments T1 to T4, respectively). After 3 weeks adaptation, 7·4 MBq of 32P was injected into the jugular vein of each animal. Samples of blood, faeces and urine were collected every day during a 7-day period and thereafter the animals were sacrificed and samples from liver, kidney, heart, muscle and bone were collected for specific activity and inorganic P determinations. The flows between gut and plasma were similar for each treatment except for T1, which showed the lowest values for both flows (P<0·05). The amount of P accreted to soft tissue (F42) was different among treatments, however net tissue retention was similar for all treatments. Total P retained was highest for T4 and lowest as well as negative for T1 and T2. Phosphorus accreted to bone (F32) was different among treatments and contributed to the different net bone retentions. The highest value of F32 was reached by animals on T4, whilst the lowest values were found for animals on T1. Despite having the highest value of F32, it should be noted that animals on T4 excreted the most P in faeces. Considering concerns about environmental P pollution, it is important to be aware that the treatment which provided the highest value for net bone P retention and for F42 also led to the highest value of P excreted in faeces. Therefore, the current study suggests that T3 provided the best P level for this category of animal since P accreted to bone and tissue indicated that P absorption was adequate to attend to P requirements.
Production of trophic eggs by virgin workers in the ponerine ant
 Gnamptogenys menadensis

Abstract.Most colonies (thirty‐five out of thirty‐seven) of the ant Gnamptogenys menadensis (Mayr) (Hymenoptera: Formicidae: Ponerinae) lack queens. Mated workers produce reproductive eggs, whereas virgin workers can lay only smaller trophic eggs (350 ovipositions observed). These two egg types are morphologically distinct (e.g. in the pattern of oogenesis and ultrastructure of membranes and micropyle) and relate to different ovarian characteristics (ovariole length, number of yolky oocytes and yellow bodies). When reproductives are removed, a small number of virgin workers switch to producing reproductive eggs, although only 3% of these develop into larvae. Once workers are mated, up to 50% of their eggs develop further. Trophic eggs are generally absent in social insects lacking physical castes, and we review adaptive explanations of its occurrence in G. menadensis.
Integrin α4β7 Co-Stimulation of Human Peripheral Blood T Cell Proliferation

The Integrin α4β7 mediates lymphocyte adhesion to VCAM-1 on activated endothelium, fibronectin in the extracellular matrix, and the mucosal vascular addressin MAdCAM-1. It is unclear whether α4β7 performs any function beyond directing specific adhesion reactions. We addressed the possibility that triggering of α4β7 with a specific monoclonal antibody was capable of delivering an accessory stimulus that would coactivate T cells and lead to proliferation. At submitogenic levels of anti-CD3 stimulation, triggering of α4β7 by immobilized mAb ACT-1 resulted in T cell blastogenesis, IL-2 production, expression of the IL-2 receptor α chain CD25, and ultimately DNA synthesis. These results indicate that the integrin α4β7 is involved in more than lymphocyte adhesion and homing but also plays a role in cell signaling.
Taxonomic Ranking of Major Trombiculid Subtaxa with Remarks on the Evolution of Host-Parasite Relationships (Acariformes: Parasitengona: Trombiculidae)

Abstract. The modern classification of trombiculid mites from the family Trombiculidae (Acariformes: Parasitengona) is briefly reviewed on the subfamily and tribe level based on the larval characters. Some taxonomical and evolutionary aspects are briefly discussed. The family Trombiculidae is divided into four subfamilies: Leeuwenhoekiinae — Apoloniinae — Trombiculinae — Gahrliepiinae, from which Leeuwenhoekiinae should be placed at the base and Gahrliepiinae at the top of phylogenetic tree. Host-parasite relationships of trombiculid larvae are examined from the point of view that host-parasite specificity is low in trombiculids. Some physiological questions with respect to the realization of the life strategy of trombiculids are considered.
Effect of lairage time on levels of stress and meat quality in pigs

A total of 1580 pigs killed in three slaughter -plants were held in lairage for ≥ 1 h, 3 h or overnight before slaughter. Blood samples were collected at exsanguination and subsequent carcass and meat quality monitored. Longer lairage reduced stress levels based on the concentration of cortisol, lactate and creatine phosphokinase in the blood. It also reduced the prevalence of pale, soft, exudative (PSE) but increased the prevalence of dark, firm, dry (DFD) meat. Additionally, it produced progressively greater amounts of skin damage caused by fighting between unfamiliar pigs and an overnight lairage reduced carcass yield and backfat thickness. The overall conclusion ivas that a period of between 1 and 3 h rest in lairage was optimal. There was no evidence that leaner, potentially more stress-susceptible pigs reacted differently from fatter, potentially more stress-resistant animals with regard to the effects of lairage time.
CYTOKININ‐ AND GIBBERELLIC ACID‐INDUCED EFFECTS ON THE STRUCTURE AND METABOLISM OF SHOOT APICAL MERISTEMS IN OPUNTIA POLYACANTHA (CACTACEAE)

The dormant axillary buds of Opluntia polyacanithla can be activated by either cytokinins or gibberellic acid. Under the influence of benzylaminopurine (BAP), the axillary bud meristem increases greatly in size and becomes mitotically active. The primordia produced by the meristem develop as normal photosynthetic leaves. Gibberellic acid (GA) also causes the meristem to become mitotically active, but the meristem does not increase in size. The primordia produced under the influence of GA develop as normal cactus spines. Leaf-producing meristems and spine-producing meristems have the same zonation, despite the differences in size. The meristems are composed of a uniseriate tunica, a central mother cell zone, peripheral zone, and a pith rib meristem. The mitotic activity of each of the zones in the leaf-producing meristem differs significantly from the mitotic activity of the corresponding zones in the spineproducing meristeni.
Pathogenicity Tests of Some Discomycetes Occurring on Conifers

Pathogenicity of Cenangiumferruginosum Fr. ex Fr. , Dermeabalsamea (Pk.) Scaver, D. piceina Groves, Potebniamycesconiferarum (Hahn) Smerlis, and Pragmoporapithya ((Fr.) Fr. ) Groves was confirmed and.
A eficácia do mentol como anestésico para tambaqui (Colossoma macropomum, Characiformes: Characidae)

Anesthetics are important in fish culture to reduce handling stress and mortality. The objective of this work is to investigate menthol as an anesthetic for tambaqui. In the first series of tests, fish were exposed to various concentrations of menthol to evaluate induction time and stress responses. The second series examined the effect of exposure period to menthol at 150 mg/L on recovery time. The third assessed the best dosage for juveniles in larger tambaqui. The best concentration for surgical anesthesia is 150 mg/L. At this concentration the induction time is short, but their recovery time is significantly longer than that for lower concentrations. For biometry procedures, the best concentration is 100 mg/L. At this concentration the induction time is prolonged, but the recovery time is within the desired period. Recovery time for fish exposed to 150 mg/L is equal for 10, 20 or 30 minutes of exposure. The results confirmed that menthol is an adequate anesthetic for tambaqui.
Androgens in Systemic Plasma of Male Guinea Pigs During Development and After Castration in Adulthood1

Testosterone (T) and androstenedione (A) were measured in pools of plasma and testes from developing guinea pigs. T was measured at various times after castration in the same species. At approximately 30 days of age, the quantities of T in systemic plasma increased and remained elevated until postnatal day 250, the last period studied. Undetectable or very low levels of this hormone were found in measurements taken earlier than 30 days. A significant correlation was found between the quantity of T in systemic plasma and the age of the animal at sacrifice; Δ remained fairly constant throughout the developmental process. At approximately 30 days of age the ratio of Δ/T changed, with larger quantities of T present in the plasma. In the testes more T than Δ was always found, but the ratio of Δ/T changed at about 30 days. Within 10 min after castration, a significant decrease in the amount of T in plasma was found. In 6 hr it was no longer measurable by gas chromatography. These data are consistent with previo.
Sparse and Spurious: Dictionary Learning With Noise and Outliers

A popular approach within the signal processing and machine learning communities consists in modeling signals as sparse linear combinations of atoms selected from a learned dictionary. While this paradigm has led to numerous empirical successes in various fields ranging from image to audio processing, there have only been a few theoretical arguments supporting these evidences. In particular, sparse coding, or sparse dictionary learning, relies on a non-convex procedure whose local minima have not been fully analyzed yet. In this paper, we consider a probabilistic model of sparse signals, and show that, with high probability, sparse coding admits a local minimum around the reference dictionary generating the signals. This paper considers the case of over-complete dictionaries, noisy signals, and possible outliers, thus extending the previous work limited to noiseless settings and/or undercomplete dictionaries. The analysis we conduct is non-asymptotic and makes it possible to understand how the key quantities of the problem, such as the coherence or the level of noise, can scale with respect to the dimension of the signals, the number of atoms, the sparsity, and the number of observations.
Delayed flowering as a potential benefit- decreasing cost of compensatory regrowth

Some monocarpic plants show surprising variation in response to natural and simulated grazing. In favourable conditions, injured plants may grow larger and produce more fruits and viable seeds compared with their uninjured coun- terparts. Such overcompensation, however, is associated with potential costs, particularly delays in flowering and fruit ma- turation. These delays may further increase a risk of frost injury before seed maturation in the early autumn. We tested the effects of artificially advanced night frosts on the compensatory capacity (i.e., the capacity to compensate the lost biomass by regrowth) of the monocarpic herb Erysimum strictum P. Gaertn. , B. Mey. , and Scherb. in a common garden experiment. Two simulated herbivory treatments were applied: 25% apical clipping in early vs. late June. Frost treatment was applied in a climate chamber in late August - early September, about 3 weeks before the first natural frost period. Apically dam- aged plants not exposed to frost treatment produced 1.9-2.6 times more total biomass and 2.5 times more fruit than intact plants. Frost treatment reduced plant performance by 35%-48%, but in contrast to our expectation, there was no significant difference between intact and apically damaged plants in response to early frost. In spite of the delay in phenology, com- pensatory regrowth did not increase the risk of frost injury. We conclude that while early night frosts imply a potential risk to monocarpic herbs recovering from herbivory, possibly other suboptimal conditions, such as drought in late summer, may provide a greater threat for early-flowering meadow and grassland plants recovering from grazing. Possibly multiple selective forces and environmental risk factors operate together in the evolution of grazing tolerance associated with flow- ering phenology, plant growth strategy, and architecture.
Ecological and evolutionary dynamics in natural populations of co-existing sexual and asexual lineages

Natural animal populations are rarely screened for ploidy-level variation at a scale that allows detection of potentially important aberrations of common ploidy patterns. This type of screening can be especially important for the many mixed sexual/asexual systems where sexuals are presumed to be dioecious diploids and asexuals are assumed to be triploid and allfemale. For example, elevation of ploidy level above triploidy can be a source of genetic variation and raises the possibility of gene flow among ploidy levels and to asexual lineages. We used flow cytometry and mtDNA sequencing to characterize ploidy level and genome size in Potamopyrgus antipodarum, a New Zealand freshwater snail where obligate sexual (presumed diploid and dioecious) and obligate apomictic asexual (presumed triploid and nearly all female) individuals frequently coexist. We documented the widespread occurrence and multiple origins of polyploid males and individuals with >3x ploidy, and find that both are likely to be descended from asexual females. Our survey also suggested the existence of extensive variation in genome size. The discovery of widespread variation in ploidy level and genome size in such a well-studied system highlights the importance of broad, extensive, and ecologically representative sampling in uncovering ploidy level and genome size variation in natural populations.
Spool-and-line tracking of giant rats in New Guinea

We present movement data for a species of New Guinea “giant rat”, Mallomys rothschildi, as a test of the efficacy of a recently developed method of spool-and-line tracking in short-term ecological/behavioural studies. We demonstrate that M. rothschildi is scansorial, feeds on shoots of Pandanus spp. , and ranges freely over large areas without apparently being constrained by a fixed “home” nest. Another species, Hyomys golialh, occurs sympatrically and is superficially virtually indistinguishable from M. rolhschildi. Data from the single individual tracked suggest that the two species are ecologically segregated on the basis of clear behavioural differences. We note the considerable advantages of spool-and-line tracking over radio tracking in this type of study.
Temperature dependence of growth kinetics of food bacteria

Abstract A predictive model is presented that describes the non-Arrhenius behaviour of growth and survival kinetics of food bacteria, in both the growth phase and lag phase of growth as influenced by temperature, in a wide range of foods and media. For independent data spanning 88 years and seven independent researchers, the model gave a very high degree of goodness of fit explaining between 96.1 and 99.9% of thevariance accounted for (%V) in the growth phase, and between 95.6 and 99.5% of the %Vin the lag time, with an overall mean of 98.4%V. The model is amodifiedArrhenius form, formulated from consideration of temperature-dependent chemical rate theory (CRR). This model form has not previously been evaluated for predicting temperature-dependent growth kinetics of bacteria. The model has two terms, namely, 1/Tand lnT, together with three coefficients. The model has fitted all available data without exception. This very good fit of the predictions of the model to primary data compared very well with the established and widely applied, empirical model form of Davey. Both models imply temperature-dependent Arrhenius parameters for the rate of microbial growth and survival. Both appear very useful to describe practically the non-linear dependence of the rate coefficient for growth, and the lag time, which normally prevents the use of the Arrhenius equation.
Dietary effects of eicosapentaenoic acid and docosahexaenoic acid on lipid metabolism in black sea bream

Eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) were fortified at a level of 1.5% in a composed diet. The effects were confirmed in 0-year black sea bream Acanthopagrus schlegeli in terms of lipid metabolism and physiological activity. The EPA group was high in EPA in muscle, liver, intraperitoneal fat body (IPF), eye and brain. The levels of DHA in liver, eye, brain and heart were also high in the EPA group, suggesting that conversion of EPA to DHA occurred in those organs. Fortification of DHA increased the levels of DHA in organs except the eye, but did not affect EPA levels. Both the EPA and DHA groups showed smaller adipocytes or lower levels of lipid content than the control group. The starvation followed by feeding experiment caused marked body weight loss in the control group by consumption of muscle protein and lipids in IPF. Fortifications of EPA and DHA induced less mobilization of muscle protein and IPF lipids as energy. Liver function and resistance to air-dipping were improved by both EPA and DHA fortifications. The present results implied conversion of EPA to DHA in the fish with regard to parameters, such as lipid metabolism and physiological vitality.
Role of Water in the Specific Binding of Mannose and Mannooligosaccharides to Concanavalin A

We report here, the first solution state evidence for the role of water molecules in the specific interaction of carbohydrates with a legume lectin, concanavalin A. Concanavalin A from Canavalia ensiformis is a protein containing 237 amino acid residues with each monomer possessing one sugar binding site as well as sites for transition-metal ions, Mn2+ and Ca2+. The lectin binds specifically to α-anomers of monosaccharides, d-glucopyranoside and d-mannopyranoside, and recognizes the trimannosidic core of N-linked glycoproteins, 3,6-di-O-(α-d-mannopyranosyl)-α-d-mannopyranoside with high specificity, which constitutes the minimum carbohydrate epitope that completely fills the sugar binding site. Sensitive isothermal titration microcalorimetry coupled with osmotic stress strategy on concanavalin A was used to dissect out the differential involvement of water molecules in the recognition of the branched trimannoside (3,6-di-O-(α-d-mannopyranosyl)-α-d-mannopyranoside), the individual dimannosidic arms (3-O-(α.
From shoots to roots: transport and metabolic changes in tomato after simulated feeding by a specialist lepidopteran

Upon herbivory, plants can swiftly reallocate newly acquired resources to different tissues within a plant. Although the herbivore‐induced movement of resources is apparent, the movement direction and the role of the remobilized resources are not well understood. Here, we used a two‐pronged approach combining radioisotope and metabolomic techniques to shed light on whole‐plant resource reallocation and changes in primary metabolism within the tomato, Solanum lycopersicum (L.) (Solanaceae), model in response to simulated herbivory by the specialist Manduca sexta (L.) (Lepidoptera: Sphingidae). Manduca sexta regurgitant applied to damaged leaves, but not mechanical damage alone, increased 11C‐photosynthate allocation to roots but did not affect 11CO2 fixation and leaf export. Changes in primary metabolite concentrations occurred mostly in sink tissues (apex and roots) as well as in damaged leaves. Both damage treatments (with and without M. sexta regurgitant application) resulted in increased concentrations of primary metabolites relative to undamaged plants in the apex and decreased concentrations in the roots, but there were also extensive changes specific to each damage treatment. Mechanical damage alone led to changes consistent with water stress caused by tissue damage. Manduca sexta led to metabolite increases in the apex consistent with an increase in glucose breakdown, metabolite increases in damaged leaves consistent with starch degradation, and metabolite decreases in roots suggesting a high use of metabolites. A possible explanation for the observed patterns in the aboveground tissues might be an increase in carbohydrate degradation to support defense production in attacked leaves and vulnerable developing leaves, and/or subsequent remobilization to belowground tissues to support high carbohydrate demand for respiration, enhanced nutrient uptake, and storage.