Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Influência de subprodutos de oleaginosas sobre parâmetros ruminais e a degradação da matéria seca e da proteína bruta

The aim of this work was to evaluate the introduction of oleaginous byproducts in sheep feeding as a replacement for soybean meal. Four sheep weighing 40kg, with cannulated rumen were selected in a Latin Square (4x4) design, with for diets and four periods analyzed by regression for ruminal degradability evaluate, pH values and ammonia nitrogen concentration in vivo. Byproducts were the following cakes: peanut, sunflower and soybean, in isonitrogenous diets with 70% concentrate and 30% roughage (tifton hay). There was no effect of diet x time interaction for pH and ruminal concentrations of ammonia nitrogen (P>0.05). The average pH value was 6.2. Ruminal concentrations of ammonia nitrogen were not affected, and had an average value of 29.9mg/dL. There were no differences (P>0.05) in DM degradation and degradability rates. The use of high degradability protein sources, such as soybean cake and peanut cake, proved to be an interesting alternative to replace soybean meal.
Isolation and Characterization of mas1⁺ of Schizosaccharomyces pombe, a Homologue of Human CIP29/Hcc-1 Involved in the Regulation of Cell Division

The regulation of gene expression plays an important role in cell cycle controls. In this study, a novel gene, the mas1? (mitosis associated protein) gene, a homolog of human CIP29/Hcc1, was isolated and characterized from fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe (S. pombe) using a gene-specific polymerase chain reaction. The isolated gene contained a complete open reading frame capable of encoding 245 amino acid residues with a typical promoter, as judged by nucleotide sequence analysis. It was also found that a PCB (pombe cell cycle box) is located in the promoter region, which controls M-G1 specific transcription in S. pombe. The quantitative analysis of the mas1? transcript against adh1? showed that the pattern of expression is similar to that of the septation index. Cytokinesis of mas1 null mutant was greatly delayed at 25℃ and 36℃, and a large number of multi-septate cells were produced. The mas1 null mutant had 2C, 4C and 6C DNA contents, as determined by FACS analysis. In addition, the number of multi-septate cells significantly increased. When cells were cultured in nitrogen starvation medium to increase proliferation, the abnormal phenotypes of mas1 null mutant dramatically increased. These phenotypes could be rescued by an overexpression of the mas1+ gene. The mas1 protein localized in the nuclei of S. pombe and human HeLa cells, as evidenced by Mas1-EGFP signals. The abnormal growth pattern and the morphology of mas1 null mutant were complemented by a plasmid carrying human CIP29/Hcc-1cDNA. In addition, CIP29 /Hcc-1 transcript level increased in active cell proliferation stages in the developing mouse embryos. These results indicate that the mas1? ishomologous to the human CIP29/Hcc1 gene and is involved in cytokinesis and cell shape control.
Temporal hierarchies of variation and the maintenance of diversity

A general model shows how the long-term growth rate of a population can be partitioned into components representing various mechanisms of maintenance of species diversity. One component summarises the effects of fluctuation-independent mechanisms, which include classical resource partitioning and frequency-dependent herbivory. Two other components represent fluctuation-dependent mechanisms, the storage effect and relative nonlinearity of competition. The general model shows how a community will track an equilibrium set by fluctuation-independent mechanisms and the environmental state when community dynamics are faster than the rate of environmental change. Fluctuation-dependent mechanisms can be important for diversity maintenance with or without such tracking, but on long timescales their effects are indistinguishable from those of fluctuation-independent mechanisms. These considerations lead to a hierarchical view of mechanisms of diversity maintenance where the effects of different timescales are partitioned or merged depending on the timescale of observation. These issues are illustrated with model examples involving various combinations of resource partitioning, fluctuations in recruitment rates, variation in the timing of germination, and seasonality. The very long timescales associated with climate change contain many complexities but nevertheless many ideas applicable to shorter timescales may be useful in a modified form.
25th Anniversary Article: A Soft Future: From Robots and Sensor Skin to Energy Harvesters

Scientists are exploring elastic and soft forms of robots, electronic skin and energy harvesters, dreaming to mimic nature and to enable novel applications in wide fields, from consumer and mobile appliances to biomedical systems, sports and healthcare. All conceivable classes of materials with a wide range of mechanical, physical and chemical properties are employed, from liquids and gels to organic and inorganic solids. Functionalities never seen before are achieved. In this review we discuss soft robots which allow actuation with several degrees of freedom. We show that different actuation mechanisms lead to similar actuators, capable of complex and smooth movements in 3d space. We introduce latest research examples in sensor skin development and discuss ultraflexible electronic circuits, light emitting diodes and solar cells as examples. Additional functionalities of sensor skin, such as visual sensors inspired by animal eyes, camouflage, self‐cleaning and healing and on‐skin energy storage and generation are briefly reviewed. Finally, we discuss a paradigm change in energy harvesting, away from hard energy generators to soft ones based on dielectric elastomers. Such systems are shown to work with high energy of conversion, making them potentially interesting for harvesting mechanical energy from human gait, winds and ocean waves.
On the phylogenetic position of the Danish strain of the black honeybee (the Læsø bee), Apis mellifera mellifera L. (Hymenoptera: Apidae) inferred from mitochondrial DNA sequences

A comparison of DNA sequences from one Danish (Laeso) and four Swedish strains of Apis mellifera mellifera (the black honeybee), A. m. ligustica (the Italian honeybee), A. m. carnica, and A. m. anatoliaca was performed. The sequences were produced using PCR amplification and direct sequencing of two mtDNA sequences common to all species. The two segments tested were: 1) a 897 bp region of the mt CO-I gene, and 2) a 434-881 bp region of the last part of the mt CO-I gene, the tRNAleu gene, an intergenic region and a small section in the beginning of the CO-II gene. The comparisons of the 897 bp region of the mt CO-I gene showed that two haplotypes with a difference of 15 bp were observed - one haplotype comprising the black honeybee and one all the other subspecies. The alignments of the CO-I / CO-II regions indicate that the strains of the black honeybee could be divided into two types in the studied region: one with 685 bp comprised the Danish strain (Laeso) and the strain from Stockholm's SkaergArd, and the other with 881 bp included Swedish strains from UmeA, Vasterbotten and Jamtland. All the other subspecies, which in the studied region differed from each other only in a few base substitutions, have 434 bp. The length differences are mainly due to duplications in the investigated region. The study shows that the different subspecies can be identified on the basis of mtDNA. The phylogenetic analyses showed that the black honeybee, which can be further divided into different strains on basis of the number of duplications, seems to stand in an isolated position - originating presumably from a long termed isolation during and after the last glaciation.
Food and health-contribute of agri-food economics

The analysis of the relationship between food and health in a context of innovation, safety and welfare is carried out considering the view of agri-food economists. Relationships and meanings are addressed defining by the scope of observation and choices. We adopt a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the scientific contributions of Italian economists (publications, conferences, etc.) in this field. In particular we have examined the contributions published in some of the main Italian journals and the conferences organized in Italy and in Europe from the major scientific societies. We propose a classification that is consistent with the analysis and is in the span of time 2000/2007. The classification adopted for the analysis of the contributions of research exploits similar research carried out at the international level. By reading these studies we were able to process and define a model to interpret findings of the previous literature. An analysis of database information is useful to study: the type of investigation (case study, bibliographic, sectorial, generic, etc.) the branches of more diffused research (field production, retail, consumption, etc.), the types of adopted methodologies (quantitative, qualitative, etc.), the involvement among research groups (universities, public and private institutions, involvement of foreign researchers, etc.), the beneficiaries of research (pure research, policy makers, businesses, etc.). The results will be expressed on the basis of different approaches, tools and considering the possible exogenous variables affecting reality. The analysis will allow to identify the areas of research which involve the relationship between food and health and in which agri-food economists are more involved. In addition, we can describe the most promising areas of research which should be undertaken or strengthened. Attention will be placed also in highlighting the link between research and production in the broadest sense, to gather information about the level of its appropriateness.
Estimativa da radiação global incidente em superfícies inclinadas por modelos isotrópicos e índice de claridade

O objetivo deste trabalho foi avaliar o desempenho de modelos isotropicos de estimativa do total de radiacao incidente em superficies inclinadas e propor estimativas com base nas correlacoes entre os indices de claridade horizontais e inclinados, em diferentes condicoes de cobertura de ceu, em Botucatu, SP. Foram avaliadas superficies com inclinacao de 12,85o, 22,85o e 32,85o, pelos modelos isotropicos propostos por Liu & Jordan, Revfeim, Jimenez & Castro, Koronakis, a teoria Circunsolar, e a correlacao entre os indices de claridade horizontais e inclinados, para diferentes condicoes de cobertura de ceu. O banco de dados de radiacao global utilizado corresponde ao periodo de 1998 a 2007, com intervalos de 4/1998 a 8/2001 para a inclinacao de 22,85o, de 9/2001 a 2/2003 para 12,85o e de 1/2004 a 12/2007 para 32,85o. O desempenho dos modelos foi avaliado pelos indicadores estatisticos erro absoluto medio, raiz quadrada do quadrado medio do erro e indice "d" de Wilmott. Os modelos de Liu & Jordan, Koronakis e de Revfeim apresentaram os melhores desempenhos em dias nublados, em todas as inclinacoes. As coberturas de ceu parcialmente difuso e parcialmente aberto, nos maiores ângulos de inclinacao, apresentaram as maiores dispersoes entre valores estimados e medidos, independentemente do modelo. As equacoes estatisticas apresentaram bons resultados em aplicacoes com agrupamentos de dados mensais.
Understanding How Components Of An Intervention Can Influence Outcomes

Teen pregnancy prevention (TPP) interventions often have many program components, the individual parts or distinct features of the broader intervention. Program components can be the parts of an intervention’s structure (for example, classroom lessons, weekly text messaging, and/or service learning), its content (for example, content that focuses on positive youth development, sexual risk avoidance, or condom/contraceptive use), or a combination of the two (for example, some classroom lessons could be categorized as “sexual risk avoidance lessons,” others as “positive youth development lessons”). Program components are the individual ingredients that make up the whole intervention being implemented.
‘Race’ and other group discrimination in the genomic era

Genetic science has provided new knowledge that has the potential to reduce ‘race’ discrimination. This includes findings that around 95% of human genetic variability is present within any population; and that most human traits are influenced by a complex combination of many genetic and environmental factors. Despite this knowledge, racially discriminatory practices persist internationally, including segregation; unfair sentencing; state surveillance of children; and involuntary sterilisation. Moreover, there is an emerging risk that DNA may be used to propel harmful discriminatory practices. For example, new ‘DNA-based’ groups may emerge in the context of polygenic prediction – aggregating multiple genetic risks into individuals’ combined risk indexes. Such DNA-based groups could be viewed as ‘new races’ - adding yet another category to the already heterogenous definition of ‘race’. This paper reviews the genetic advances directly relevant to, and their impact on, ‘race’ and other group discrimination; and assesses current UK and international discrimination practices and effectiveness of the laws in place prior to and in the genomic era. The paper concludes that current laws provide insufficient protection from ‘race’ and other group discrimination and still reflect people’s beliefs in entrenched differences between ‘races’. The paper asserts that the very use of the term ‘race’ in equality legislation is problematic due to inconsistencies in definition across key legislations; and history of its association with domination. Justice systems must update laws to reflect current genetic knowledge and to address existing and emerging risks of discrimination.
Comparison of Hematological Toxicity Between Cisplatin-5-Fluorouracil and Gemcitabine-cisplatin used in Treatment of Gallbladder Cancer

The occurrence of gallbladder cancer rare in United States and other western countries is increases. In fact, more than half of those patients die. Many patients do not receive palliative chemotherapy or adequate therapy. The question of whether a combined chemotherapy is better than a single drug-like gemcitabine. The objective of this prospective study was to compare the haematological toxicity between cisplatin-5-fluorouracil and gemcitabine-cisplatin used in treatment of gallbladder cancer at Mahavir Cancer Institute and Research Centre Phulwari Sharif Patna, Bihar. Toxicities were graded as per the National Cancer Institute Common Toxicity Criteria (NCI-CTC), grade I, II, III and IV. Anaemia of grade III-IV was observed 11% and 7% respectively of cycles of chemotherapy in cisplatin-5-fluorouracil, while in cisplatingemcitabine observe 13% and 4% respectively. Grade III-IV thrombocytopenia was more frequently in the cisplatin-5-fluorouracil chemotherapy cycle (2% & 1.3% respectively) compared with the cisplatin-gemcitabine (2.6% and 0% respectively). Grade III-IV neutropenia also occurred more frequently in cisplatin-5-fluorouracil (5.3% and 5.3% respectively) than in the cisplatin-gemcitabine respectively. However, the lack of statistical significance results in the present study may be due to inadequate sample size (8 in each Arm). As far as safety is concerned, cisplatin-5-fluorouracil seems to be safer than cisplatin-gemcitabine.
Greenpeace Report: Genetically Engineered Rice: Not Sustainable Agriculture

Two GE varieties that are tolerant to herbicides, however, could be commercialised in the near future. Monsanto is developing GE glyphosate (Roundup) tolerant rice and the pharmaceutical and agro-chemical giant, Bayer, has developed GE ammonium glufosinate (Liberty or Basta) tolerant rice, or LibertyLink rice. LibertyLink rice can be grown and sold in the US but is not commercially grown, presumably because of concerns regarding exports. Bayer has initiated an application for marketing GE LibertyLink rice as food and feed in the EU (EC Joint Research Centre 2003/4).
Cloning of the Human α-Catenin cDNA and Its Aberrant mRNA in a Human Cancer Cell Line

Abstract Cadherin and catenin compose cell adhesion complex and are indispensable for tight cell-cell adhesion. Dysfunction of this adhesion complex causes dissociation of cancer cells from primary tumor nodules, thus possibly contributing to cancer invasion and metastasis. In this report, we present the human α-caienin sequence. Human α-catenin showed extensive homology with that of mouse, i.e. , 91.8 % and 99.3 % at the nucleic acid and amino acid levels, respectively, indicating that this molecule has been evolutionarily conserved in mammals. Characterization of the mRNA sequence of α-catenin in PC9 was also carried out, and two distinct abnormal sequences, i.e. ,one of 957 bp deletion resulting in a 319-amino-acid deletion and another of 761 bp deletion resulting in a frameshift, were identified. These deletions were probably produced by an error of RNA splicing, presenting one possible mechanism for the loss of intact α-catenin expression.
Aggregating Welfare Indicators into an Operational Welfare Assessment System: A Bottom-up Approach

A welfare assessment system should reflect basic considerations concerning the definition of the term 'welfare' and the goal of the welfare assessment. The aggregation of welfare indicators into an operational welfare system is described as a process in which indicators are evaluated and re-evaluated step by step for their independent welfare relevance, marginal information value and suitability for use in on-farm studies. Relevant indicators are aggregated into a protocol, and finally this protocol is evaluated in terms of relevance as a welfare assessment system. The theory is illustrated by an example: 'Human-animal relationship among loose housed pregnant sows'.
Spatial Aggregation and Neutral Models in Fractal Landscapes

Fragmented landscapes alter ecological interactions by modifying the flux of organisms, material, and energy. Fragmented distributions of hypothetical resources and species were represented by several fractal models of landscape patterns at scales ranging from 90 to 2,400 m. Maps of resource aggregations at three scales resulted in multiple-scale notions of "patch," "gap," "edge," "corridor," "source," and "sink. " A neutral model of species co-occurrence was developed for analyses conducted at several scales. The neutral model has implications for sampling mutualistic species and for detecting species' responses to changes in environmental conditions. An ecologically meaningful view of landscape pattern depends on the home range size, dispersal ability, or speed with which organisms use resources rather than on the cartographic depiction of the landscape used by humans.
VR Viewﬁnder: The Effects of Enabling Third-person Perspectives for Bystanders on VR-based Interactive Media

Virtual reality (VR) is an emerging technology of artistic expression that enables live, immersive aesthetics for interactive media. However, VR-based interactive media are often consumed in a solitary set-up and cannot be shared in social settings. Having a VR-headset for every bystander and synchronizing headsets can be costly and cumbersome. In practice, a secondary screen is provided to bystanders and shows what the VR user is seeing. However, the by-standers cannot have a holistic view this way. To engage the bystanders in the VR-based interactive media, we pro-pose a technique with which the bystanders can see the VR headset user and their experience from a third person perspective. We have developed a physical apparatus for the bystanders to see the VR environment through a tablet screen. We use the motion tracking system to create a virtual camera in VR and map the apparatus’ physical location to the location of the virtual camera. The bystanders can use the apparatus like a camera viewﬁnder
Authoritarian Difussion and the Failure of the "Colour Revolutions" to Spread

When the so-called “colour revolutions” swept across Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan from 2003 onwards, the fall of corrupt and authoritarian governments was hailed as the beginning of the “third wave” of democratisation. However, these uprisings eventually led to an increase in the collaboration between authoritarian regimes in the post-Soviet space in order to avoid the further spread of democracy within their borders, a process which has been labelled “authoritarian diffusion”. This essay situates itself within the scholarly debate around the causes of the substantial failure of the colour revolution to propagate in other FSU countries. It will argue that a process of authoritarian diffusion has in fact occurred in the post-Soviet space, and has managed to prevent the advance of democracy. However, this can only explain partially the outcome, and more factors, such as domestic variables, are to be considered.
Towards a Value-driven Explainable Agent for Collective Privacy

Online social networks lack support for the collaborative management of access control. This is crucial for content that may involve multiple users such as photos, as this lack of support causes conflicts that lead to privacy violations. Previous research proposed collaborative mechanisms to support users in these cases, but most of these attempts fail to satisfy some desirable requirements, such as explainability, role-agnosticism, adaptability
Deep Reinforcement Learning for Market Making

Market Making is high frequency trading strategy in which an agent provides liquidity simultaneously quoting a bid price and an ask price on an asset. Market Makers reaps profits in the form of the spread between the quoted price placed on the buy and sell prices. Due to complexity in inventory risk, counterparties to trades and information asymmetry, understanding of market making algorithms is relatively unexplored by academicians across disciplines. In this paper, we develop realistic simulations of limit order markets and use it to design a market making agent using Deep Recurrent Q-Networks. Our approach outperforms a prominent benchmark strategy from literature, which uses temporal-difference reinforcement learning to design market maker agents. The agents successfully reproduce stylized facts in historical trade data from each simulation.
Effect of CO2 enrichment and elevated temperature on methane emissions from rice, Oryza sativa

Methane emissions from rice grown within Temperature Gradient Greenhouse Tunnels under doubled CO2 concentrations were 10–45 times less than emissions from control plants grown under ambient CO2. For two cultivars of rice (cvs. Lemont and IR‐72), methane emissions increased with a temperature increase of 2°, from outdoor ambient temperatures to the first cell of the ambient CO2 tunnel (ambient temperature + 2 °C). Within both tunnels and for both cultivars methane emissions decreased with further temperature increases (from 2° to 5 °C above ambient). Carbon dioxide enrichment stimulated both above‐ and below‐ground production. Our original hypothesis was that increased CO2 would stimulate plant productivity and therefore stimulate methane emission, since direct linkages between these parameters have been observed. We hypothesize that CO2 enrichment led to the attenuation of methane production due to increased delivery of oxygen to the rhizosphere because of increased root biomass and porosity. The increased root biomass due to elevated CO2 may have more effectively aerated the soil, suppressing methane production. However, this study may be unique because the low organic content (< 1%) of the sandy soils in which the rice was grown created very little oxygen demand.