Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Discovering the mechanisms underlying serotonin (5‐HT)2A and 5‐HT2C receptor regulation following nicotine withdrawal in rats

We have previously demonstrated that nicotine withdrawal produces depression‐like behavior and that serotonin (5‐HT)2A/2C receptor ligands modulate that mood‐like state. In the present study we aimed to identify the mechanisms (changes in radioligand binding, transcription or RNA‐editing) related to such a behavioral outcome. Rats received vehicle or nicotine (0.4 mg/kg, s.c.) for 5 days in home cages. Brain 5‐HT2A/2C receptors were analyzed on day 3 of nicotine withdrawal. Nicotine withdrawal increased [3H]ketanserin binding to 5‐HT2A receptors in the ventral tegmental area and ventral dentate gyrus, yet decreased binding in the nucleus accumbens shell. Reduction in [3H]mesulergine binding to 5‐HT2C receptors was seen in the ventral dentate gyrus. Profound decrease in the 5‐HT2A receptor transcript level was noted in the hippocampus and ventral tegmental area. Out of five 5‐HT2C receptor mRNA editing sites, deep sequencing data showed a reduction in editing at the E site and a trend toward reduction at the C site in the hippocampus. In the ventral tegmental area, a reduction for the frequency of CD 5‐HT2C receptor transcript was seen. These results show that the reduction in the 5‐HT2A receptor transcript level may be an auto‐regulatory response to the increased receptor density in the hippocampus and ventral tegmental area during nicotine withdrawal, while decreased 5‐HT2C receptor mRNA editing may explain the reduction in receptor labeling in the hippocampus. Serotonin (5‐HT)2A/2C receptor ligands alleviate depression‐like state in nicotine‐withdrawn rats. Here, we show that the reduction in 5‐HT2A receptor transcript level may be an auto‐regulatory response to the increased receptor number in the hippocampus and ventral tegmental area during nicotine withdrawal, while attenuated 5‐HT2C receptor mRNA editing in the hippocampus might explain reduced inverse agonist binding to 5‐HT2C receptor and suggest a shift toward a population of more active receptors. 5‐HT, serotonin; 5‐HT2AR, 5‐HT2A receptor; 5‐HT2CR, 5‐HT2C receptor.
Dimension-changing exact solutions of string theory

Superstring theories in the critical dimension D = 10 are connected to one another by a well-explored web of dualities. In this paper we use closed-string tachyon condensation to connect the supersymmetric moduli space of the critical superstring to non-supersymmetric string theories in more than ten dimensions. We present a new set of classical solutions that exhibit dynamical transitions between string theories in different dimensions, with different degrees of stability and different amounts of spacetime supersymmetry. In all examples, the string-frame metric and dilaton gradient readjust themselves during the transition. The central charge of the worldsheet theory remains equal to 15, even as the total number of dimensions changes. This phenomenon arises entirely from a one-loop diagram on the string worldsheet. Allowed supersymmetric final states include half-BPS vacua of type II and SO(32) heterotic string theory. We also find solutions that bypass the critical dimension altogether and proceed directly to spacelike linear dilaton theories in dimensions greater than or equal to two.
Hypersensitive response and acyl‐homoserine lactone production of the fire blight antagonists Erwinia tasmaniensis and Erwinia billingiae

Fire blight caused by the Gram‐negative bacterium Erwinia amylovora can be controlled by antagonistic microorganisms. We characterized epiphytic bacteria isolated from healthy apple and pear trees in Australia, named Erwinia tasmaniensis, and the epiphytic bacterium Erwinia billingiae from England for physiological properties, interaction with plants and interference with growth of E. amylovora. They reduced symptom formation by the fire blight pathogen on immature pears and the colonization of apple flowers. In contrast to E. billingiae, E. tasmaniensis strains induced a hypersensitive response in tobacco leaves and synthesized levan in the presence of sucrose. With consensus primers deduced from lsc as well as hrpL, hrcC and hrcR of the hrp region of E. amylovora and of related bacteria, these genes were successfully amplified from E. tasmaniensis DNA and alignment of the encoded proteins to other Erwinia species supported a role for environmental fitness of the epiphytic bacterium. Unlike E. tasmaniensis, the epiphytic bacterium E. billingiae produced an acyl‐homoserine lactone for bacterial cell‐to‐cell communication. Their competition with the growth of E. amylovora may be involved in controlling fire blight.
Children’s looking preference for biological motion may be related to an affinity for mathematical chaos

Recognition of biological motion is pervasive in early child development. Further, viewing the movement behavior of others is a primary component of a child’s acquisition of complex, robust movement repertoires, through imitation and real-time coordinated action. We theorize that inherent to biological movements are particular qualities of mathematical chaos and complexity. We further posit that this character affords the rich and complex inter-dynamics throughout early motor development. Specifically, we explored whether children’s preference for biological motion may be related to an affinity for mathematical chaos. Cross recurrence quantification analysis (cRQA) was used to investigate the coordination of gaze and posture with various temporal structures (periodic, chaotic, and aperiodic) of the motion of an oscillating visual stimulus. Children appear to competently perceive and respond to chaotic motion, both in rate (cRQA-percent determinism) and duration (cRQA-maxline) of coordination. We interpret this to indicate that children not only recognize chaotic motion structures, but also have a preference for coordination with them. Further, stratification of our sample (by age) uncovers the suggestion that this preference may become refined with age.
Restoration of an Indiana, USA, stream: bridging the gap between basic and applied lotic ecology

Abstract Stream restoration attempts to reverse the global degradation of rivers and streams, but rigorous evaluations are needed to advance the science. We evaluated a 3rd-order channelized Indiana (USA) stream that was restored in 1997 by constructing two meanders, each ∼400 m long. Pool and riffle sequences were constructed, coarse substrate and wood were added to the channel, banks were stabilized and revegetated, and sedimentation was reduced by creating a sediment retention basin upstream. Habitat, periphyton, macroinvertebrates, and fishes were measured before restoration and for 5 y after restoration in the restored reaches and in an upstream, unrestored reach. Restoration improved habitat conditions (e.g., more pools, fewer fine sediments) in both restored reaches compared to the unrestored reach. Within 1 y after restoration, major trophic groups (i.e., periphyton, macroinvertebrates, and fishes) recovered to or exceeded levels in the degraded, unrestored reach. However, biotic responses varied with time, trophic level, and community parameter measured. Five years after the restoration, habitat quality, algal abundance, and macroinvertebrate density remained higher in the restored reaches, whereas macroinvertebrate diversity and fish abundance in the restored reaches were similar to or below levels in the unrestored, channelized reach. Although biotic recovery was relatively rapid, long-term persistence is uncertain because of continued sedimentation at a watershed scale. In many instances, reach-scale restorations may be ineffective in the face of basin-wide degradation. This study illustrates the importance of conducting long-term assessments of stream restorations, which can improve both knowledge and management of stream ecosystems.
Minimal Sex-Differential Modulation of Reactivity to Pathogens and Toll-Like Receptor Ligands following Infant Bacillus Calmette–Guérin Russia Vaccination

Bacillus Calmette–Guérin (BCG), the only licensed vaccine against tuberculosis, has been shown to provide heterologous protection against unrelated pathogens and enhance antibody responses to several routine expanded program on immunization (EPI) vaccines. Understanding these heterologous effects is important for the development of optimal vaccination strategies. We set out to assess the effect of vaccination with BCG Russia of 6-week-old infants on in vitro reactivity to a panel of toll-like receptor (TLR) agonists (TLR2, 4, and 7/8) and heat-killed pathogens [Streptococcus pneumoniae, Candida albicans (CA), and Escherichia coli], and antibody responses to other EPI vaccines compared to BCG naïve infants. We observed no effect of BCG vaccination on innate (TNF-α) or Th2 (IL-4) cytokine responses, but found enhanced CA-specific CD8+IFN-γ+ responses in BCG vaccinated males and females 1 week after vaccination and decreased IFN-γ:IL4 ratio to SP in females. By 12 weeks (but not 1 week) of post-vaccination, there was significant downmodulation of Th1 cytokine responses in BCG vaccinated infants; and TLR-stimulated IL-10 and IL-17 responses declined in BCG vaccinated females but not males. Significant changes also occurred in the BCG naïve group, mainly at 18 weeks, including decreased Th1 and increased IL-10 responses. The effects at 18 weeks were most likely a result of immune modulation by the intervening EPI vaccines given at 8, 12, and 16 weeks of age. There was no effect of BCG vaccination on EPI antibody levels at either time point. Taken together, our results support minimal early heterologous immune modulation by BCG Russia vaccination that did not persist 12 weeks after vaccination.
Adaptive Control of Heterogeneous Marine Sensor Platforms in an Autonomous Sensor Network

This paper describes an investigation into the control of autonomous mobile sensor platforms in a marine sensor network used to provide monitoring of transitory phenomenon over a wide area. A distributed network of small, inexpensive vehicles with heterogeneous sensors allows us to build a robust monitoring network capable of real-time response to rapidly changing sensor data. The major objective of this paper is to describe a framework for adaptive and cooperative control of the autonomous sensor platforms in such a network. This framework has two major components, a sensor that provides high-level state information to a behavior-based autonomous vehicle control system and a new approach to behavior-based control of autonomous vehicles using multiple objective functions that allow reactive control in complex environments with multiple constraints. Experimental results are presented for a 2-D target tracking application using a network of autonomous surface craft in which one platform with a simulated bearing sensor tracks a moving target and relays the target state information to a second vehicle that is moving in a classification mode. From these results, it is readily seen that there is the potential for potent synergy from the cooperation of multiple sensor platforms which can each view an event of interest from a different vantage point
Girls at puberty : biological and psychosocial perspectives

Section 1 * Biological Aspects of Puberty. - 1 * Physical and Biological Aspects of Puberty. - 2 * Fatness, Puberty, and Fertility: The Effects of Nutrition and Physical Training on Menarche and Ovulation. - 3 * Pubertal Changes in Adolescence. - 4 * Menarche and Dysmenorrhea. - 5 * Pituitary Desensitization with a Long-Acting Luteinizing-Hormone-Releasing Hormone Analog: A Potential New Treatment for Idiopathic Precocious Puberty. - Section 2 * Psychological Aspects of Puberty. - 6 * Alternative Constructions of Adolescent Growth. - 7 * The Psychological Significance of Pubertal Change: Sex Differences in Perceptions of Self during Early Adolescence. - 8 * The Experience of Menarche from a Developmental Perspective. - 9 * Pubertal Change and Cognition. - Section 3 * Sociocultural Aspects of Puberty. - 10 * The Intensification of Gender-Related Role Expectations during Early Adolescence. - 11 * The Social and Psychological Effects of Puberty on White Females. - 12 * Sociosexual Development of Preadolescents. - 13 * A Bargaining Theory of Menarcheal Responses in Preindustrial Cultures. - Section 4 * The Study of Puberty: Integrated Biopsychosocial Perspectives. - 14 * Future Directions in Research.
Laurasian migration explains Gondwanan disjunctions: Evidence from Malpighiaceae

Explanations for biogeographic disjunctions involving South America and Africa typically invoke vicariance of western Gondwanan biotas or long distance dispersal. These hypotheses are problematical because many groups originated and diversified well after the last known connection between Africa and South America (≈105 million years ago), and it is unlikely that “sweepstakes” dispersal accounts for many of these disjunctions. Phylogenetic analyses of the angiosperm clade Malpighiaceae, combined with fossil evidence and molecular divergence-time estimates, suggest an alternative hypothesis to account for such distributions. We propose that Malpighiaceae originated in northern South America, and that members of several clades repeatedly migrated into North America and subsequently moved via North Atlantic land connections into the Old World during episodes starting in the Eocene, when climates supported tropical forests. This Laurasian migration route may explain many other extant lineages that exhibit western Gondwanan distributions.
Fixation by Grain Legume Varieties as Affected By Rhizobia Inoculation in The Sandy Loam Soil Of Sudano-Sahelian Zone of North Eastern Nigeria

229 ABSTRACT: Rhizobium – legume symbiotic association contributes considerable amount of N in tropical soils. However, low rainfall and high temperature in Sudano-Sahelian region of Northeastern Nigeria may affect the Rhizobial population in the soil. Therefore, the influence of Rhizobia inoculation on N2 fixation by cowpea (Vigna unguiculata (L.) Walp. ), groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L.) and bambara groundnut (Vigna subterranean L.Verdc.) was evaluated under field condition in Maiduguri. The seeds of the crops were inoculated with their Rhizobium strains and grown for 50 days, after which they were harvested and the amount of N fixed was measured. The results showed that rhizobia inoculation increased the amount of N fixed by 46% over the control. Cowpea differed significantly (P<0.05) from groundnut and bambara groundnut. Cowpea fixed 42.68 KgNha -1 while groundnut and bambara groundnut fixed 27.19 and 32.53 KgNha, respectively. Cultivation of Bornoji red cowpea variety inoculated with Rhizobium will alleviate soil N level.
Ongoing unraveling of a continental fauna: Decline and extinction of Australian mammals since European settlement

Significance The island continent of Australia harbors much of the world’s most distinctive biodiversity, but this review describes an extent of recent and ongoing loss of its mammal fauna that is exceptionally high and appreciably greater than previously recognized. The causes of loss are dissimilar to those responsible for most biodiversity decline elsewhere in the world. The highly distinctive and mostly endemic Australian land mammal fauna has suffered an extraordinary rate of extinction (>10% of the 273 endemic terrestrial species) over the last ∼200 y: in comparison, only one native land mammal from continental North America became extinct since European settlement. A further 21% of Australian endemic land mammal species are now assessed to be threatened, indicating that the rate of loss (of one to two extinctions per decade) is likely to continue. Australia’s marine mammals have fared better overall, but status assessment for them is seriously impeded by lack of information. Much of the loss of Australian land mammal fauna (particularly in the vast deserts and tropical savannas) has been in areas that are remote from human population centers and recognized as relatively unmodified at global scale. In contrast to general patterns of extinction on other continents where the main cause is habitat loss, hunting, and impacts of human development, particularly in areas of high and increasing human population pressures, the loss of Australian land mammals is most likely due primarily to predation by introduced species, particularly the feral cat, Felis catus, and European red fox, Vulpes vulpes, and changed fire regimes.
Relativity of Space and Time Constraints in Dispersed Collaboration : Theoretical Explanation and an Empirical Investigation

Globally distributed collaboration is becoming increasingly common nowadays, yet research on this topic has remained limited. Literature on global collaboration can be classified into two streams: pessimistic and optimistic perspectives on the impact of distance and time zone differences. Researchers in the pessimistic tradition found support for the proposition that collaboration suffers from dispersion. The optimistic stream of research provides anecdotal and empirical evidence of projects where people were not hindered by constraints, or even used them to their advantage. Research is needed to explain this difference. A similar debate has emerged in literature on media use, between proponents of Media Richness Theory and social communications theories. The recent status of this debate suggests that
Children's Social Goals and Retaliation Beliefs: A Comparison of Multiple Relationship Contexts

Dara Musher-Eizenman, Advisor Social information-processing models provide theoretical support for an association between social cognitive processes and aggressive behavior (Crick and Dodge, 1994; Huesmann, 1998). However, little empirical research has investigated how two social cognitive factors, social goals and beliefs about the acceptability of aggressive behavior, are related to one another and how they combine to influence child behavior. The present study examined the relationship among children’s social goals, retaliation beliefs, and behavior within and across best friend, sibling, and peer relationship contexts. Elementary and middle school children’s desire to pursue aggressive and prosocial goals and their approval of verbal, physical, and relational acts of retaliatory aggression were assessed across relationship context, type of aggression, age, and gender. In addition, path models were constructed to determine whether the relationship between children’s social goals and aggressive behavior is direct or mediated by children’s retaliation beliefs within multiple relationship contexts. The findings indicated that the relationship between social goals and aggressive behavior in relationships with best friends and peers operates differently than in relationships with siblings. Further, children’s social goal endorsements and beliefs regarding the appropriateness of aggressive behavior varied by age, type of aggression, and relationship context.
The Use of Bayesian Networks for Web Effort Estimation: Further Investigation

The objective of this paper is to further investigate the use of Bayesian Networks (BN) for Web effort estimation when using a cross-company dataset. Four BNs were built; two automatically using the Hugin tool with two training sets; two using a structure elicited by a domain expert, with parameters obtained from automatically fitting the network to the same training sets used in the automated elicitation (hybrid models). The accuracy of all four models was measured using two validation sets, and point estimates. As a benchmark, the BN-based predictions were also compared to predictions obtained using Manual StepWise Regression (MSWR), and Case-Based Reasoning (CBR). The BN model generated using Hugin presented similar accuracy to CBR and Mean effort-based predictions. Our results suggest that Hybrid BN models can provide significantly superior prediction accuracy. However, good results also seem to depend on characteristics of the training and validation sets used.
Diffusive clock synchronization in highly dynamic networks

This paper studies the clock synchronization problem in highly dynamic networks. We show that diffusive synchronization algorithms are well adapted to environments in which the network topology may change unpredictably. In a diffusive algorithm, each node repeatedly (i) estimates the clock difference to its neighbors via broadcast of zero-bit messages, and (ii) updates its local clock according to a weighted average of the estimated differences. The system model allows for drifting local clocks, running at possibly different frequencies. We show that having a rooted spanning tree in the network at every time instance suffices to solve clock synchronization. We do not require any stability of the spanning tree, nor do we impose that the links of the spanning tree be known to the nodes. Explicit bounds on the convergence speed are obtained. In particular, our results settle an open question posed by Simeone and Spagnolini to reach clock synchronization in dynamic networks in the presence of nonzero clock drift. We also identify certain reasonable assumptions that allow for a significant higher convergence speed, e.g., bidirectional networks or random graph models.
Scale Recovery for Monocular Visual Odometry Using Depth Estimated with Deep Convolutional Neural Fields

Scale recovery is one of the central problems for monocular visual odometry. Normally, road plane and camera height are specified as reference to recover the scale. The performances of these methods depend on the plane recognition and height measurement of camera. In this work, we propose a novel method to recover the scale by incorporating the depths estimated from images using deep convolutional neural fields. Our method considers the whole environmental structure as reference rather than a specified plane. The accuracy of depth estimation contributes to the scale recovery. We improve the performance of depth estimation by considering two consecutive frames and egomotion of camera into our networks. The depth refinement and scale recovery are obtained iteratively. In this way, our method can eliminate the scale drift and improve the depth estimation simultaneously. The effectiveness of our method is verified on the KITTI dataset for both monocular visual odometry and depth estimation tasks.
On denoising autoencoders trained to minimise binary cross-entropy

Denoising autoencoders (DAEs) are powerful deep learning models used for feature extraction, data generation and network pre-training. DAEs consist of an encoder and decoder which may be trained simultaneously to minimise a loss (function) between an input and the reconstruction of a corrupted version of the input. There are two common loss functions used for training autoencoders, these include the mean-squared error (MSE) and the binary cross-entropy (BCE). When training autoencoders on image data a natural choice of loss function is BCE, since pixel values may be normalised to take values in [0,1] and the decoder model may be designed to generate samples that take values in (0,1). We show theoretically that DAEs trained to minimise BCE may be used to take gradient steps in the data space towards regions of high probability under the data-generating distribution. Previously this had only been shown for DAEs trained using MSE. As a consequence of the theory, iterative application of a trained DAE moves a data sample from regions of low probability to regions of higher probability under the data-generating distribution. Firstly, we validate the theory by showing that novel data samples, consistent with the training data, may be synthesised when the initial data samples are random noise. Secondly, we motivate the theory by showing that initial data samples synthesised via other methods may be improved via iterative application of a trained DAE to those initial samples.