Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Integrated Analysis of Lactation-Related miRNA and mRNA Expression Profiles in Donkey Mammary Glands

Donkey milk is consumed by humans for its nutritional and therapeutic properties. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) and messenger RNAs (mRNAs) have been implicated in the regulation of milk component synthesis and mammary gland development. However, the regulatory profile of the miRNAs and mRNAs involved in lactation in donkeys is unclear. We performed mRNA-seq and miRNA-seq and constructed coexpression regulatory networks for the mammary glands during the lactating and nonlactating period of jennies. We identified 3144 differentially expressed (DE) mRNAs (987 upregulated mRNAs and 2157 downregulated mRNAs) and 293 DE miRNAs (231 upregulated miRNAs and 62 downregulated miRNAs) in the lactating group compared to the nonlactating group. The DE miRNA target mRNA were significantly associated with pathways related to RNA polymerase, glycosphingolipid biosynthesis, mRNA surveillance, ribosome biogenesis in eukaryotes, glycerophospholipid metabolism, Ras signaling, and the fly hippo signaling pathway. The mRNA–miRNA coregulation analysis showed that novel-m0032-3p, miR-195, miR-26-5p, miR-23-3p, miR-674-3p, and miR-874-3p are key miRNAs that target mRNAs involved in immunity and milk lipid, protein, and vitamin metabolism in the jenny mammary gland. Our results improve the current knowledge of the molecular mechanisms regulating bioactive milk component metabolism in the mammary glands and could be used to improve milk production in donkeys.
COVID-19 bailout nationalism: a predicament in saving small immigrant-owned businesses in South Africa

The small business sector has been identified as an essential component of the global economy, especially in developing economies, where it plays a significant role in addressing job creation and poverty. However, the COVID-19 pandemic and its attendant lockdown restrictions have brought untold devastation to the sector forcing many out of operation, crippling business operations and financial viability. We seek to identify the role and impact of government relief measures in helping immigrant-owned businesses in South Africa to deal with the impact of the pandemic on their businesses. Primary data was collected using an electronic questionnaire administered to 260 foreign business owners in South Africa. The data was cleaned and statistically analysed using IBM SPSS version 27. We interpreted and discussed the results using the realistic conflict theory. Though a vast majority of the businesses (89%) reported that the pandemic had a very severe impact on their financial sustainability and liquidity, none of them reported that they benefitted from any of the South African government business support packages during the pandemic.
Variation between plant species in pollen digestion rates in the green lacewing Chrysoperla carnea

Pollen are an important food source for numerous insects and may be used as natural markers in ecological studies. However, to make inferences about the movement rates of insects based on their gut contents, information on pollen digestion rates is needed. Here, we assessed how the consumption and digestion rates of pollen ingested by Chrysoperla carnea Stephens (Neuroptera: Chrysopidae) adults are influenced by plant species, temperature, and sex. We offered pollen of two insect‐pollinated plants – Acer pseudoplatanus L. (Sapindaceae) and Helianthus annuus L. (Asteraceae) – and two wind‐pollinated plants – Fraxinus excelsior L. (Oleaceae) and Quercus rubra L. (Fagaceae) – differing in size and protein content, to adult lacewings at two temperatures, 20 and 25 °C. After feeding, lacewings were allowed to digest pollen for up to 14 days, sampled at 10 time intervals. At each of these intervals, lacewings were frozen and the internal pollen were obtained through acetolysis and quantified under a light microscope. The number of pollen grains decreased exponentially over time and declined faster for Acer than for the other three plant species. The half‐life and the time at which 95% of the pollen grains were digested were lower for Acer than for the other plant species. Lacewings consumed more pollen grains from Acer and Quercus than from Fraxinus and Helianthus. Male lacewings consumed 30% fewer pollen grains than females, but without differences in their digestion rates. Our results show that lacewings consumed higher amounts of high‐protein pollen (Acer and Quercus) and that digestion rates differed among plant species, which could be linked to their structural characteristics. The variable digestion rates of pollen grains may influence the study of lacewing diet composition. Studies that make inferences about the pollen diet or movement ecology of lacewings by analysing their gut contents should account for species‐specific pollen digestion rates.
Significance of higher moments for complete characterization of the travel time probability density function in heterogeneous porous media using the maximum entropy principle

The travel time formulation of advective transport in heterogeneous porous media is of interest both conceptually, e.g., for incorporating retention processes, and in applications where typically the travel time peak, early, and late arrivals of contaminants are of major concern in a regulatory or remediation context. Furthermore, the travel time moments are of interest for quantifying uncertainty in advective transport of tracers released from point sources in heterogeneous aquifers. In view of this interest, the travel time distribution has been studied in the literature; however, the link to the hydraulic conductivity statistics has been typically restricted to the first two moments. Here we investigate the influence of higher travel time moments on the travel time probability density function (pdf) in heterogeneous porous media combining Monte Carlo simulations with the maximum entropy principle. The Monte Carlo experimental pdf is obtained by the adaptive Fup Monte Carlo method (AFMCM) for advective transport characterized by a multi‐Gaussian structure with exponential covariance considering two injection modes (in‐flux and resident) and lnK variance up to 8. A maximum entropy (MaxEnt) algorithm based on Fup basis functions is used for the complete characterization of the travel time pdf. All travel time moments become linear with distance. Initial nonlinearity is found mainly for the resident injection mode, which exhibits a strong nonlinearity within first 5IY for high heterogeneity. For the resident injection mode, the form of variance and all higher moments changes from the familiar concave form predicted by the first‐order theory to a convex form; for the in‐flux mode, linearity is preserved even for high heterogeneity. The number of moments sufficient for a complete characterization of the travel time pdf mainly depends on the heterogeneity level. Mean and variance completely describe travel time pdf for low and mild heterogeneity, skewness is dominant for lnK variance around 4, while kurtosis and fifth moment are required for lnK variance higher than 4. Including skewness seems sufficient for describing the peak and late arrivals. Linearity of travel time moments enables the prediction of asymptotic behavior of the travel time pdf which in the limit converges to a symmetric distribution and Fickian transport. However, higher‐order travel time moments may be important for most practical purposes and in particular for advective transport in highly heterogeneous porous media for a long distance from the source.
Reactions to Pictorial and Text Cigarette Pack Warning Labels among Chinese Smokers

Objectives. This study aims at examining the impact of graphic pictorial warning labels on inten-tion to quit smoking and perceived harms among Chinese working-age adults (n = 661). Methods. A randomized controlled trial is utilized as the research design by comparing three scenarios: Group 1 as baseline (n = 193) and presented with real market tobacco products with text-only la-bels, Group 2 as price group and with hypothetical scenarios of manipulated prices, and Group 3 as the imaging group and with hypothetical scenarios of graphic pictorial cigarette warning la-bels. Both bivariate and multivariate analyses are utilized to determine the effectiveness of warn-ing labels. Results. Graphic pictorial cigarette warning labels are associated with stronger inten-tion to quit smoking and greater perceived harms. Smokers have a greater number of attempts if they are less nicotine dependent and express greater smoking risk perceptions. Conclusions. This study adds to the evidence that graphic pictorial warning labels are more effective than text-only labels in increasing intention to quit smoking. As China strives to achieve a reduction in smoking to meet the goal of the Healthy China 2030 initiative, this work strengthens the evidence base for policy makers, practitioners, and researchers to design low-cost warning labels on cigarette packs to promote tobacco control.
Scale‐dependent effects of marine subsidies on the island biogeographic patterns of plants

Abstract Although species richness can be determined by different mechanisms at different spatial scales, the role of scale in the effects of marine inputs on island biogeography has not been studied explicitly. Here, we evaluated the potential influence of island characteristics and marine inputs (seaweed wrack biomass and marine‐derived nitrogen in the soil) on plant species richness at both a local (plot) and regional (island) scale on 92 islands in British Columbia, Canada. We found that the effects of subsidies on species richness depend strongly on spatial scale. Despite detecting no effects of marine subsidies at the island scale, we found that as plot level subsidies increased, species richness decreased; plots with more marine‐derived nitrogen in the soil hosted fewer plant species. We found no effect of seaweed wrack at either scale. To identify potential mechanisms underlying the decrease in diversity, we fit a spatially explicit joint species distribution model to evaluate species level responses to marine subsidies and effects of biotic interactions among species. We found mixed evidence for competition for both light and nutrients, and cannot rule out an alternative mechanism; the observed decrease in species richness may be due to disturbances associated with animal‐mediated nutrient deposits, particularly those from North American river otters (Lontra canadensis). By evaluating the scale‐dependent effects of marine subsidies on island biogeographic patterns of plants and revealing likely mechanisms that act on community composition, we provide novel insights on the scale dependence of a fundamental ecological theory, and on the rarely examined links between marine and terrestrial ecosystems often bridged by animal vectors.
I hates Mondays: ERP effects of emotion on person agreement

ABSTRACT Recent evidence indicates that emotion influences the computation of agreement dependencies based on number or gender. In this event-related potential study, we examined the role of emotion in the processing of person information. Participants made grammatical judgements to sentences with positive, negative and neutral verbs that either matched or mismatched person features of a preceding pronominal subject. Emotion did not modulate P600 amplitude enhancements to agreement violations. Importantly, whereas enhanced LAN effects to all ungrammatical sentences were observed in a cluster of left fronto-central electrodes, only neutral verbs that violated person agreement elicited enhanced LAN amplitudes in a sub-cluster of left frontal electrodes. The narrow distribution of LAN effects to emotion verbs suggests that feature-checking operations dealing with the early detection of person agreement errors are less efficient when words signal affective biologically salient content. Our results favour lexicalist views arguing that lexical and conceptual information influences agreement.
Effect of herbal and immunomodulatory supplements on growth performance and meat quality in broilers

This study aimed to evaluate the effect of herbal and immunomodulatory die-tary supplements and their combinations on growth performance, slaughter traits and meat quality in male broiler chickens. A total of 210 one-day-old Ross 308 male chickens were randomly distributed after weighing in 7 groups (3 replicates in each, n=10 chickens). Broilers were reared on deep litter until 42 days of age and divided as follows: Group I – control (basal diet without supplements); Group II – supple-mented with 0.2% Immunoßeta; Group III – supplemented with 0.2% garlic powder; Group IV – supplemented with 0.2% herbal mix (0.05% ginger, 0.05% rosemary, 0.05% thyme and 0.05% yarrow); Group V – supplemented with 0.2% Immunoßeta + 0.2% garlic powder; Group VI – supplemented with 0.2% Immunoßeta + 0.2% herbal mix; Group VII – supplemented with 0.2% Immunoßeta + 0.2% garlic powder + 0.2% herbal mix. At the end of the experiment, chickens weighed from 2552±54 g (Group I) to 2689±55 g (Group IV) without statistically significant differences (Р>0.05). Feed conversion varied from 1.64 (Group IV) tо 1.74 (Group I). Meat pH, water holding ca-pacity, water absorption capacity, and tenderness were not influenced by the dietary supplement type. All supplements used did not show an adverse effect on health, and no mortality was found in the experimental groups. The obtained results show a clear trend towards a positive effect of the used feed additives and their combination mainly on the fattening characteristics of the broiler chickens, evident from the higher values of the two efficiency indices.
Multiperiodic RR Lyrae stars in the center of the Galaxy

This paper presents results of a fully automated search for multiperiodic RR Lyrae stars in the center of the Galaxy. The search was carried out on OGLE-II database created by means of image subtraction method. I found more than 2700 RR Lyrae stars with about 600 showing various kinds of multiperiodic behavior. Previous OGLE-I database contained only about 200 RR Lyrae stars in the Galactic Bulge, that is twelve times less than the current sample. There are two most interesting outcomes for Bulge: very high percentage of Blazhko stars and very low percentage of RRd stars. Blazhko effect was confirmed in about 25 percent of all RRab stars. This incidence rate is almost 2.5 times greater than in the Large Magellanic Cloud. On the other hand I discovered only 3 RRd stars, which implies that the incidence rate of this type of variables is much smaller in Bulge than in the Magellanic Clouds.
Modern Challenges in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence

The usage and development of Machine Learning models along with the advancement and popularization of Artificial Intelligence, naturally leads to new challenges in multiple levels in the field. In one hand the trust in the field of AI needs to be boosted in order to increase the adoption rate, on the other hand the usage of AI has been largely abused by those who decided to adopt the term in their line of work. A clear line of what is expected from AI and what AI is, must be drawn so that the trust, acceptance and adoption of AI can be increased. These, and other data related problems are the primary subject of this paper.
Inhibitory efficacy of clove extract against some aflatoxin-producing fungi

This study was conducted in the Department of Life Sciences / College of Education for Pure Sciences / University of Karbala, where the effects of the alcoholic and aqueous extract of cloves on 21 aflatoxin-producing fungi isolated from foodstuffs were studied. 2.5 If compared to the comparison treatment and treatments in which concentrations of water and alcoholic extracts of cloves were used, if the alcoholic extract of cloves showed a high effectiveness in inhibiting the tested fungi, it was inhibitory for all fungi producing aflatoxin at a concentration of 2.5 mg/ml. As for the aqueous extract only, the results of the statistical analysis at the probability level of 2.5 mg / ml, there were clear significant differences between the tested fungi and high significant differences between The comparison treatment and the concentrations used for the extract Watery carnation The results of the study also showed that the alcoholic extract is more effective in inhibiting the growth of fungi than the aqueous extract.
Dendritic flux avalanches in Niobium single crystal near critical temperature

We report on the observation of dendritic flux avalanches in a large Niobium single crystal. In contrast to avalanches observed in thin films, they appear only in a very narrow temperature interval of about a tenth of a Kelvin near the critical temperature of Nb. At a fixed temperature, we find two sets of dendritic structures, which differ by the magnetic field required for their formation and by the maximum distance the dendrites penetrate into the sample. The effect is caused by dendritic flux penetration into thin superconducting surface layers formed in the single crystal close to the critical temperature.
Global Optimization Using Embedded Graphs

One of the challenges of computer vision is that the information we seek to extract from images is not even defined for most images. Because of this, we cannot hope to find a simple process that produces the information directly from a given image. Instead, we need a search, or an optimization, in the space of parameters that we are trying to estimate. In this thesis, I introduce two new optimization methods that use graph algorithms. They are characterized by their ability to find a global optimum efficiently. Each method defines a graph that can be seen as embedded in a Euclidean space. Graph-theoretic entities such as cuts and cycles represent geometric objects that embody the information we seek. The first method finds a hypersurface in a Euclidean space that minimizes a certain kind of energy functional. The hypersurface is approximated by a cut of an embedded graph so that the total cost of the cut corresponds to the energy. A globally optimal solution is found by using a minimum cut algorithm. In particular, it can globally solve first order Markov Random Field problems in more general cases than previously known. I prove that the convexity of the smoothing function in the energy is essential for the applicability of the method and provide an exact criterion in terms of the MRF energy. An optimal cycle in a Euclidean space can be found efficiently by the second method proposed here. It uses a minimum ratio cycle algorithm to find a cycle with minimum energy in an embedded graph. In the case of two dimensions, the energy can depend not only on the cycle itself but also on the region defined by the cycle. Because of this, the method unifies the two competing views of boundary and region segmentation. I demonstrate the utility of the methods in applications with the results of experiments in the areas of binocular stereo, image restoration, and image segmentation. The image segmentation, or contour extraction, experiments are carried out in various situations using different information such as motion, stereo, and intensity.
Effect of carrier materials on the properties of the andrographolide solid dispersion

In the work the andrographolide (AG)-solid dispersions (SDs) were prepared by the spray-drying method, using polyethylene glycol 8000 (PEG8000), Poloxamer188, polyvinylpyrrolidone K30 (PVPK30), Soluplus ® as carrier materials. The effect of different polymers as carrier materials on the properties of the AG-SDs were studied. The results showed obvious differences in intermolecular interaction, thermal stability, drug state, powder properties, dissolution behavior, and so on of AG-SDs prepared using different polymers as carrier materials. AG-PEG8000-SD was a partial-crystalline and partial-amorphous powder with smaller surface area and pore volume, but it was easy to wetting and did not swell in contact with dissolved medium. AG-Soluplus ® -SD was completely amorphous powder with larger specific surface area and pore volume, but it swelled in contact with water. Therefore, the dissolution profile of AG in AG-PEG8000-SD was similar to that in AG-Soluplus ® -SD. Soluplus ® and PEG8000 were suitable polymers to design AG-SDs, considering both physicochemical properties and dissolution behaviors. The results of this reseach showed that when selecting carrier materials for SD, we should not only consider the state of drugs in SD and the powder properties of SD, but also consider whether there is swelling when the carrier materials are in contact with the dissolution medium.
Treatment of Bovine Leptospirosis with Enrofloxacin HCl 2H2O (Enro-C): A Clinical Trial

Simple Summary Unlike standard enrofloxacin, its crystal solvate enrofloxacin HCl-2H2O (enro-C) exhibits favorable pharmacokinetics and PK/PD ratios compatible with its use as a treatment during the clinical phase of leptospirosis in cattle. Hence, a clinical trial was conducted in cattle located either in the highlands (HL) or the tropics (TL). A high dose of 15 mg/kg day IM of enro-C administered over 5 days was compared against the conventional treatment with streptomycin/penicillin-G. The cows treated with enro-C became PCR negative: 87.5% and 78.94% on day 5, and 92.85% and 94.73% on day 28 (in the HL and TL, respectively). For streptomycin/penicillin-G, the same values were 65.45% and 70.90% on day 5 and 73.68% in both scenarios on day 28. In both groups, the microagglutination titers dropped on day 28, and gestation rates were statistically indistinguishable between the groups. This is the first report of successful treatment with fluoroquinolone in treating bovine leptospirosis. Abstract Pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics ratios of enrofloxacin HCl-2H2O (enro-C) in cows to treat bovine leptospirosis prompted this clinical trial in the highlands (HL) and the tropics (TL) in Mexico. In the HL, 111 Holstein-Friesian cows were included and 38 F1 Zebu–Holstein/Friesians in the TL. Affected cows were randomly divided into two treatment groups, both in the HL and TL. PCR and MAT tests were performed before and after treatment. Treatments in both groups were administered for 5 d with either IM injections of enro-C or streptomycin/penicillin-G. Reproductive performance data were gathered for 90 d. The cows treated with enro-C became PCR negative: 87.5% and 78.94% on day 5, 92.85% and 94.73% on day 28 (in the HL and TL, respectively). For streptomycin/penicillin-G, the same values were 65.45% and 70.90% on day 5, and 73.68% twice on day 28 in the HL and TL, respectively. In both groups and geographical settings, the MAT titers dropped on day 28 but remained above reference values usually considered negative. The gestation rates were: 86.53% and 79.06% and 88.88% and 87.5% for the HL and TL, either with enro-C or streptomycin/penicillin-G, respectively. This is the first report of successful treatment with a fluoroquinolone derivative in treating bovine leptospirosis with a high bacteriological cure rate.