Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Genetic Variability in Common Wheat Based on Morphological Traits, Coefficients of Parentage and RAPDs

ABSTRACT Genetic base of hexaploid wheat has been decreasing since its domestication. Estimation of genetic variability in gene pools is important for breeding programs. This study was conducted to determine the level of variation in common wheat genotypes based on different methods. Genetic similarity was estimated in 50 wheat genotypes through heading date and plant height (morphological traits), coefficient of parentage (COP) and molecular markers (RAPD). Comparing genetic similarity estimators, COP was on average lower than the other estimates. Probably this resulted from the assumptions required in COP estimations. Correlation of indexes based on different methods was non-significant, suggesting that the combination of the different measures would be useful in predicting progeny performance, variability or both.
Causes of the decline of the Gouldian Finch Erythrura gouldiae

Summary Populations of Gouldian Finch Erythrura gouldiae, an estrildid endemic to northern Australia, declined markedly during the last two or three decades. A survey revealed the species in two areas of Northern Territory, with an estimated 2,000 individuals, including juveniles. Recaptures were low either because of mortality or dispersal. Gouldian Finches eat predominantly Sorghum spp. seeds, but consume other seeds before Sorghum ripens. Other finches declined as cattle increased. Gouldian Finches breed in tree hollows of predominantly two species of eucalypts that grow on rocky slopes. They require water within about 4 km of the nest site. There was no shortage of nesting hollows at the known breeding sites. Fires in the early to mid-dry season allow birds access to seed without damaging trees, but later fires can destroy trees with nest hollows and remove shade. Average clutch-size is 5.2. About 72% of eggs laid, and 63% of nests, fledged young. Pairs lay up to three clutches in a season (February-August), the length of which may depend on rainfall during the preceding wet season. Air-sac mite (Sternostoma tracheacolum), found in 62% of Gouldian Finches sampled, may be preventing the species recovering to former numbers. New colonies of Gouldian Finches should be identified, populations monitored, and habitat managed by effecting patchy burns by low-intensity fires early in the dry season.
World whale stocks

The history of whaling is very largely one of repeated over-exploitation of the various whale stocks which became available through discovery or technological advance. Modern whaling has similarly caused considerable reductions in the numbers of some species in the major whaling grounds. Stock assessment methods are based on catch and effort statistics, biological information including age and reproductive status, marking and sightings records. Catch effort data have to be used with caution, because of changes in species preference, shifts in the whaling grounds and national fleet variations. With allowance made for these factors, cumulative catches adjusted for recruitment can be used to estimate the initial stock number. Changes in stock density after known catches also lead to abundance estimates. Logarithmic regression of age composition data are used to find the total mortality rates. The natural mortality can be estimated from early season catches in a fishery or pre-fishery year classes caught more recently; fishing mortality is found by subtraction, which again leads to abundance estimates. Mathematical approaches incorporating recruitment estimates from actual age composition data and theoretical population models have been employed. Additional estimates come from mark release-recapture experiments and direct sightings counts from whaling vessels and research ships. The latter are the only means of estimating the protected species. The yields which the various stocks can sustain are calculated from direct observations and theoretical considerations of the changes in recruitment, largely due to increased pregnancy rates and the lower ages at sexual maturity which occur in exploited stocks. The results of all the available analyses have been compared and combined to produce the population estimates and yields tabulated. The object of whale management is to bring all stocks to the levels providing the maximum or optimum sustainable yields. These are defined in terms of numbers at the moment, but may be expressed as biomass in the future.
P4xos: Consensus as a Network Service

In this paper, we explore how a programmable forwarding plane offered by a new breed of network switches might naturally accelerate consensus protocols, specifically focusing on Paxos. The performance of consensus protocols has long been a concern. By implementing Paxos in the forwarding plane, we are able to significantly increase throughput and reduce latency. Our P4-based implementation running on an ASIC in isolation can process over 2.5 billion consensus messages per second, a four orders of magnitude improvement in throughput over a widely-used software implementation. This effectively removes consensus as a bottleneck for distributed applications in data centers. Beyond sheer performance, our approach offers several other important benefits: it readily lends itself to formal verification; it does not rely on any additional network hardware; and as a full Paxos implementation, it makes only very weak assumptions about the network.
Studies with Clinoptilolite in Poultry I. Effect of Feeding Varying Levels of Clinoptilolite (Zeolite) to Dwarf Single Comb White Leghorn Pullets and Ammonia Production

Abstract An experiment involving 240 10-month-old dwarf Single Comb White Leghorn layers was carried out to study the effect of feeding clinoptilolite on layer performance and to exploit the ion exchange ability of clinoptilolite for ammonium ion. The layers were housed in individual cages in a naturally-ventilated cage house and fed rations containing 0, 2.5, 5, and 10% clinoptilolite for six 28-day periods. No significant differences in mortality, egg weight, body weight gains, shell quality, or interior egg quality were noticed between the treatments. Significant treatment effects were found in percent egg production, daily feed consumed per layer, feed conversion, and fecal moisture level. Layers fed the 10% clinoptilolite ration produced more daily wet manure per layer than layers fed no clinoptilolite. There were also more tota l dried feces and nonvolatile solids from layers fed rations containing 10% clinoptilolite than layers fed rations without clinoptilolite. However, volatile solids in the dried feces from 10% clinoptilolite-fed layers were less than in dried feces from feeding no clinoptilolite. Fecal pH unit changes after 7 days storage of fecal samples were slightly more in feces from the 10% clinoptilolite-fed layers than in feces from layers fed no clinoptilolite. No consistent lowering trend of fecal ammonia evolution rate was noticed between the fecal samples from layers fed 0 and 10% clinoptilolite. A fishy odor from fecal samples from the 10% clinoptilolite-fed layers was detected.
A systematic study of Phytalmia (Diptera, Tephritidae) with description of a new genus

The tribe Phytalmiini is defined to include the genera Phytalmia Gerstaecker, Diplochorda Osten Sacken (=Nesadrama Perkins syn.n.) and Sessilina gen.n. (type‐species Dacus nigrilinea Walker), with Ortaloptera Edwards as an outlying member; a key is provided to these genera. The tribe is nearly restricted to the Papuan Subregion; the record of Nesadrama petiolata Hardy from the Philippine Islands is questioned, and this species is synonymized with Diplochorda myrmex Osten Sacken syn.n. Nesadrama longistigma Perkins is a synonym of D.turgida (Walker) syn.n. Keys are provided to the six species of Phytalmia: alcicornis (Saunders), antilocapra sp.n. , biarmata Malloch, cervicornis Gerstaecker (=prisca Enderlein syn.n.), megalotis Gerstaecker (= wallacei Saunders syn.n.), mouldsi sp.n. ; also the three species of Sessilina, horrida sp.n. , literata sp.n. , nigrilinea (Walker). The enlarged cheek‐processes may be greatly reduced in P.biarmata and cervicornis. The morphology of the internal reproduction system of mouldsi females is described.
Eocene plant fossils from the Lefroy and Cowan paleodrainages, Western Australia

Forty-two dispersed cuticle taxa are described from late Middle Eocene drill core samples in the Lefroy and Cowan paleodrainages (Kambalda–Norseman region), Western Australia. They are preserved in fluvial-marginal marine sediments of the Pidinga and Werillup Formations. Thirty-four distinct cuticle taxa occur in the richest sample including Cupressaceae, Araucariaceae (Agathis), Podocarpaceae (Dacrycarpus, Acmopyle, Dacrydium), Cunoniaceae, Lauraceae, Myrtaceae, Casuarinaceae (Gymnostoma), Nothofagus subgenus Lophozonia and tribes Embothrieae, Macadamieae and Banksieae of the Proteaceae. The presence of at least 12 taxa of Proteaceae provides further support for palynological evidence of a rich proteaceous component in Eocene Western Australian assemblages.
One Hospital's Call to Action: Preparing Faculty for a New Medical School.

INTRODUCTION This is a single-site feasibility project where a new, 3-year medical school was created. To respond to emergent teaching preparedness and leadership readiness in new administrative roles, an educational series taught by clinical faculty and staff was offered at noontime. METHODS The series focused on administrative skills, teaching techniques, and student success. The curricular strategies employed were the menu approach for educational offerings and spiral sequencing of curricula. Faculty teaching preparedness and leadership readiness were measured by an electronic questionnaire devised by the author and contributors of this article. Descriptive statistics were conducted for outcomes. RESULTS Findings indicate noontime education using a menu approach of listed offerings and curricular themes spiraled was a feasible faculty development method for teaching preparedness and leadership readiness for new administrative roles. Specifically, faculty reported increased use of active learning strategies after attending the noontime educational series. CONCLUSIONS Next steps include longitudinal follow-up with our faculty participants to measure retention and sustainability of our findings, as well as additional instructional strategies that we could incorporate into future educational sessions.
Overview of turbogenerator monitoring and diagnostic systems

The article considers general approaches and modern monitoring systems for rotary machines of electric generating equipment. The main characteristics of monitoring and diagnostics systems of Russian and foreign manufacturers are presented. Modern trends in the construction of intelligent systems for analyzing the performance of turbo generators and predicting possible failures in order to minimize the cost of repairs and forced shutdown of equipment are outlined. The concept of adaptive-predictive use of rotary machines, the difference from existing systems is the presence of adaptive module that allows to react to unwanted changes in real time and increase the predicted residual resource or eliminate the predicted probability of initially refusal.
Temperature behavior of radiochromic poly(vinyl-alcohol)-glutaraldehyde Fricke gel dosimeters in practice

The use of synthetic gel matrices prepared with poly(vinyl-alcohol) (PVA) cross-linked by glutaraldehyde (GTA) contributed to enhance the interest toward radiochromic Fricke gel (FG) dosimeters. As it occurs in several chemical dosimeters, the response of PVA-GTA Fricke gels could be affected by temperature. Aim of this work is to study the dependence of the dosimetric properties of PVA-GTA Fricke gel dosimeters both on the irradiation temperature and on temperature changes possibly occurring between the irradiation and readout phases. Such effects were investigated by means of magnetic resonance imaging and optical absorbance measurements. The results did not reveal any significant dependence of the sensitivity of the dosimeters on the irradiation temperature in the investigated interval 20–35 °C. By contrast, auto-oxidation phenomena confirmed to be a critical aspect for FG dosimeters, also in case of use of PVA matrix. The extent such phenomena, that might impair the accuracy of dose estimations, proved to critically depend on the temperature at which FG dosimeters are subjected before and after irradiation, as well as on the duration of possible thermal-stress.
Analyzing Microblogging Activity and Stock Market Behavior through Artificial Neural Networks

This paper attempts to analyze the relationship between social network activity (message sentiment) and stock market (trading volume and risk premium). We used Artificial Neural Networks to analyze 87,511 stock-related microblogging messages related to S&P500 Index posted between October 2009 and October 2014. The results obtained suggest that there is a direct relationship between trading volume and negative sentiment, and between risk premium and negative sentiment. The paper concludes with several directions for future research.
A vegetação de restinga no Município de Maricá - RJ

This survey of the "restinga" vegetation in the Maricâ Municipal District, performed from 1985 to 1988, perceive 379 species in continuation to early studies in Barra de Maricâ, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This paper wish to compare the localities of Barra de Maricâ and Itaipuacu, showing the distribution of species in relation to topography and others environment factors. Ten comunities are described in the ecosystem.
Sustainability of Vehicle Fuel Biomethane Produced from Grass Silage in Finland

Increasing demand of fossil-free fuels in the transport sector drives towards using new biomass sources in fuel production. Municipal waste as a substrate is used in many countries in biomethane production, but the amount of waste can cover only a small portion of the fuel used. In Europe, the new renewable energy directive (RED II) was established December 2018 to ensure the sustainability of renewable fuels. The directive includes typical and default greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for several potential substrates, such as biogas from manure or maize silage, which the biogas plants can use to verify their emissions directly or to calculate their emissions using the methods provided. However, such default value for grass silage as biogas substrate is lacking. We defined the conditions needed to fulfil the sustainability criteria of the directive when producing biomethane for vehicle fuel using grass silage as the feedstock in Finland. The emission reduction targets are not easy to achieve in Finland when using grass cultivated exclusively for energy production. The reduction targets can be achieved, however, if the grass is cultivated due to an improved crop rotation, where the grass is co-digested with manure and/or energy sources with zero emissions for the process can be applied.
Graded concentrations of digestible lysine on performance of White Leghorn laying hens fed sub-optimal levels of protein

Objective An experiment was conducted to study the effect of graded concentration of digestible lysine (dLys) on performance of layers fed diets containing sub-optimal level of protein. Methods Five diets were formulated to contain graded concentrations of dLys (0.700%, 0.665%, 0.630%, 0.593%, and 0.563%), but similar levels of crude protein (15% CP), energy (10.25 MJ ME/kg) and other nutrients. A total of 3,520 hens (26 wk of age) with mean body weight of 1,215+12.65 g were randomly divided into 40 replicate groups of 88 birds in each and housed in an open sided colony cage house. Each diet was offered ad libitum to eight replicates from 27 to 74 wk of age. The performance was compiled at every 28 d and the data for each parameter were grouped into three phases, that is early laying phase (27 to 38 wk), mid laying phase (39 to 58 wk), and late laying phase (59 to 74 wk of age) for statistical analysis. Results Egg production, egg mass and feed efficiency (feed required to produce an egg) were significantly improved by the dLys level during the early and mid laying phases but not during the late phase. Whereas feed intake was significantly reduced by dLys concentration during mid and late laying phases but not during early laying phase. The egg weight was not affected by dLys concentration in any of the three phases. Conclusion Based on best fitted statistical models, dietary requirements of dLys worked out to be 0.685%, 0.640%, and 0.586% during early phase, mid phase, and late egg laying phase, respectively. The calculated requirement of dLys for the respective production phases are 727 mg/b/d during the early and mid laying phases and 684 mg/b/d during the late laying phase in diets containing 15% CP.
Cystatin C and its Twin Position in Estimating Renaland Cardiovascular Fame; An Overview

In this Review of the location of cystatin C in clinical remedy emphasizes, and discuss the proof, that cystatin C-based totally GFRestimating equations do not require the usage of vague terms like race and sex, that cystatin C-based totally GFR-estimating equations are useful for each youngsters and adults, together with the aged, that the high-quality GFR-estimation calls for simultaneous use of both cystatin Cand creatinine-based equations, that cystatin C-primarily based GFR-estimating equations are advanced to creatinine-based totally equations in predicting end-stage renal sickness, cardiovascular manifestations, hospitalisation and dying eventually that cystatin C is needed to diagnose the brand new syndrome “Shrunken Pore Syndrome” with its excessive mortality and morbidity, even within the absence of decreased GFR. when automatic laboratory gadget is to be had, the value of cystatin C is comparable to that of enzymatically decided creatinine. The realization is that cystatin C have to be used at least as regularly as creatinine in scientific medication.
Migratory Variation in Mackenzie River System Broad Whitefish: Insights from Otolith Strontium Distributions

Abstract There is growing recognition of the global importance of preserving biodiversity. While many organisms show immense variation in intraspecific biodiversity, for example in life history variation and migratory strategies among conspecific populations, accurate descriptions of such variation are lacking for the majority of contemporary species. One such example is the broad whitefish Coregonus nasus of the lower Mackenzie River system in Canada's Northwest Territories, where anadromous, lacustrine, and putative riverine populations are thought to exist. In this study we resolve migratory variation exhibited by lower Mackenzie River broad whitefish by employing otolith microchemistry and find that (1) anadromous, lacustrine, and riverine populations exist in this system, (2) a high degree of variability exists within anadromous broad whitefish (e.g., varying degrees of marine and estuarine use), and (3) lacustrine populations are not composed solely of resident fish as anadromous broad whitefish occ.
Effect of short-term cooling on core body temperature, plasma cortisol and conception rate in Murrah buffalo heifers during hot-humid season

The present investigation studied the effect of short-term cooling around the time of artificial insemination (AI) on body temperature, plasma cortisol and conception rate (CR) in Murrah buffalo heifers. Buffalo heifers (n = 25) were divided into two groups i.e. control group (n = 9) and short-term cooling group (n = 16). In both the groups, estrus synchronization using ovsynch protocol and fixed time AI was carried out. Heifers in short-term cooling group were kept in a specially designed air condition room from 3 h before to 3 h after AI. Blood samples were collected for estimation of cortisol and progesterone and rectal and vaginal temperatures were measured before 3 h of AI, at the time of AI and after 3 h of AI. At the time of AI and after 3 h of AI, both rectal and vaginal temperatures were significantly (P < 0.05) lower in heifers subjected to short-term cooling compared to control group. After 3 h of AI, cortisol levels were significantly (P < 0.05) higher in control group (5.023 ± 0.74 ng/ml) compared to short-term cooling group (1.061 ± 0.99 ng/ml). A trend of higher CR was observed in short-term cooling group compared to control group (68.75 vs. 33.33%, P = 0.087). It may be inferred that short-term cooling reduced the stress at the time of AI and improved the CR in Murrah buffalo heifers during hot-humid season.
High Prevalence of Novel Beak and Feather Disease Virus in Sympatric Invasive Parakeets Introduced to Spain From Asia and South America

The psittacine beak and feather disease (PBFD) is a globally widespread infectious bird disease that mainly affects species within the Order Psittaciformes (parrots and allies). The disease is caused by an avian circovirus (the beak and feather disease virus, BFDV), which is highly infectious and can lead to severe consequences in wild and captive populations during an outbreak. Both legal and illegal trading have spread the BFDV around the world, although little is known about its prevalence in invasive parrot populations. Here, we analyze the BFDV prevalence in sympatric invasive populations of rose-ringed (Psittacula krameri) and monk parakeets (Myiopsitta monachus) in Southern Spain. We PCR-screened 110 blood samples (55 individuals from each species) for BFDV and characterized the genotypes of five positives from each species. About 33% of rose-ringed parakeets and 37% of monk parakeets sampled were positive for BFDV, while neither species showed disease symptoms. The circovirus identified is a novel BFDV genotype common to both species, similar to the BFDV genotypes detected in several parrot species kept in captivity in Saudi Arabia, South Africa and China. Our data evidences the importance of an accurate evaluation of avian diseases in wild populations, since invasive parrots may be bringing BFDV without showing any visually detectable clinical sign. Further research on the BFDV prevalence and transmission (individual–individual, captive–wild and wild–captive) in different bird orders and countries is crucial to understand the dynamics of the viral infection and minimize its impact in captive and wild populations.
Immigration of southern fish species to south-west England linked to warming of the North Atlantic (1960–2001)

Evidence is provided that warming of the North Atlantic is responsible for the northward extensions of the ranges of warm water fish species, causing increasing numbers of southern immigrant species to appear off the Cornish coast of the UK. The increasing number of immigrant species is significantly correlated with temperature increases in the North Atlantic over the last 40 years.
Individual music psychotherapy and psychosis: Understanding and measuring relative effectiveness through rates of readmission

This article explores the use of individual music psychotherapy for patients with psychosis who are frequently readmitted into hospital. It explores the extent to which music psychotherapy can support patients to stay out of hospital, thus reducing the costs of treatment. The high cost of inpatient stays is a major factor in shaping clinical services across both inpatient and outpatient zones of secondary care in the United Kingdom. Whether music therapy is seen as value for money may influence how it is provided and for how long. This article presents an empirical illustration of the frequency and duration of psychotic patients’ readmissions in England, and in London. An analysis of these data is provided in an attempt to ascribe meaning to these figures, through relevant literature and hypotheses. Finally, readmission rates are considered as a potential objective outcome measure of clinical effectiveness, by providing a comparison between patients treated with individual music psychotherapy and those receiving treatment as usual.