Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Size, Rarity and Charisma: Valuing African Wildlife Trophies

We explore variation in the prices paid by recreational hunters of trophy animals in Africa and its possible causes, including perceived rarity. Previous work has raised the possibility that extinction can result if demand rises fast enough as a species becomes rarer. We attempt to disentangle this from other inter-correlated influences affecting price. Species with larger body sizes and larger trophies were more valuable. Value increased less steeply as a function of size for bovids than for felids and the effect was consistent across countries. Power laws, ubiquitous in physical and social systems, described the trends. The exponent was approximately 0.4 for bovids, compared with approximately 1.0 for felids. Rarity (as indexed by IUCN score) influenced the value of bovid trophies – price was higher for species in categories denoting higher global threat. There was substantial variation in price among and within families not explained by either size or rarity. This may be attributable to a ‘charisma’ effect, which seems likely to be a general attribute of human perceptions of wildlife. Species where prices were higher than predicted by size or rarity are ranked high in published accounts of desirability by hunters. We conclude that the valuation of these species is explicable to a large extent by body size and perceived rarity, and that differences in valuation between taxonomic groups are related to less easily quantified ‘charisma’ effects. These findings are relevant for conservationists considering the threat status of species exploited in open access markets, and where license quotas are adjusted in response to changes in perceived rarity.
Classification of human liver transplant recipients by their preoperative CD8+ T cell subpopulation and its relation to outcome

The primed status of T cells is markedly different among liver transplant recipients, due to a lifetime of antigen exposure and reduced thymopoiesis by aging, and diseases. This study aims to characterize the preoperative immunological status of CD8+ T cell subpopulations and relate it to the outcome for liver transplant recipients. We classified 112 liver transplant recipients into 5 groups, based on hierarchical clustering of the CD8+CD45 isoform proportion of T cells. In Groups I and II (pediatric), the naive T cell proportion was more than 50%. In adult recipients, Group III was characterized by a naive T cell proportion of 50%, Group IV had the greatest effector/memory T cells (EM), and Group V had the greatest proportion of effector T cells. In Groups IV and V, the effector T cell proportion was considerably higher, and was accompanied by marked downregulation of the CD27+CD28+ subsets and upregulation of interferon gamma (IFN)‐γ, tumor necrosis factor‐alpha, and perforin expression. Group V recipients tended to be complicated postoperatively, with a significantly reduced survival rate (1 yr, 66.8%) and markedly reduced Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status. Liver Transpl 12:792–800, 2006. © 2006 AASLD.
INHERITED RETINAL DYSTROPHY IN THE RAT

Retinal dystrophies, known in man, dog, mouse, and rat, involve progressive loss of photoreceptor cells with onset during or soon after the developmental period. Functional (electroretinogram), chemical (rhodopsin analyses) and morphological (light and electron microscopy) data obtained in the rat indicated two main processes: (a) overproduction of rhodopsin and an associated abnormal lamellar tissue component, (b) progressive loss of photoreceptor cells. The first abnormality recognized was the appearance of swirling sheets or bundles of extracellular lamellae between normally developing retinal rods and pigment epithelium; membrane thickness and spacing resembled that in normal outer segments. Rhodopsin content reached twice normal values, was present in both rods and extracellular lamellae, and was qualitatively normal, judged by absorption maximum and products of bleaching. Photoreceptors attained virtually adult form and ERG function. Then rod inner segments and nuclei began degenerating; the ERG lost sensitivity and showed selective depression of the a-wave at high luminances. Outer segments and lamellae gradually degenerated and rhodopsin content decreased. No phagocytosis was seen, though pigment cells partially dedifferentiated and many migrated through the outer segment-debris zone toward the retina. Eventually photoreceptor cells and the b-wave of the ERG entirely disappeared. Rats kept in darkness retained electrical activity, rhodopsin content, rod structure, and extracellular lamellae longer than litter mates in light.
Learning Local Descriptors by Optimizing the Keypoint-Correspondence Criterion : Applications to Face Matching , Learning from Unlabeled Videos and 3 D-Shape Retrieval

Current best local descriptors are learned on a large dataset of matching and non-matching keypoint pairs. However, data of this kind is not always available since detailed keypoint correspondences can be hard to establish. On the other hand, we can often obtain labels for pairs of keypoint bags. For example, keypoint bags extracted from two images of the same object under different views form a matching pair, and keypoint bags extracted from images of different objects form a nonmatching pair. On average, matching pairs should contain more corresponding keypoints than non-matching pairs. We describe an end-to-end differentiable architecture that enables the learning of local keypoint descriptors from such weakly-labeled data. Additionally, we discuss how to improve the method by incorporating the procedure of mining hard negatives. We also show how can our approach be used to learn convolutional features from unlabeled video signals and 3D models.
Assessment and management of the obese patient

BackgroundThe perioperative care of the clinically severe obese patient presents numerous unique challenges. As an increasing number of people in North America fall into the category of the clinically severe obese, the care of these patients will become increasingly more challenging and prevalent. These patients have unique issues with regards to cardiovascular, pulmonary, and thromboembolic complications. In addition, hospital equipment must be able to accommodate the body habitus of this population. Materials and MethodsA Medline search using “perioperative care,” “morbid obesity,” “thromboembolic complications,” “preoperative screening,” and “postoperative care” as key words was performed for English-language articles. Further references were obtained through cross-referencing the bibliography cited in each work. DiscussionThe management of the clinically severe obese patient requires meticulous preoperative, perioperative, and postoperative care. Careful preoperative planning is essential before taking the patient to the operating room. To have excellent outcomes, a multidisciplinary approach, including the primary care physician, anesthesiologist, surgeon, nursing staff, and social work, is necessary.
DNA Methylation Signature of Childhood Chronic Physical Aggression in T Cells of Both Men and Women

Background High frequency of physical aggression is the central feature of severe conduct disorder and is associated with a wide range of social, mental and physical health problems. We have previously tested the hypothesis that differential DNA methylation signatures in peripheral T cells are associated with a chronic aggression trajectory in males. Despite the fact that sex differences appear to play a pivotal role in determining the development, magnitude and frequency of aggression, most of previous studies focused on males, so little is known about female chronic physical aggression. We therefore tested here whether or not there is a signature of physical aggression in female DNA methylation and, if there is, how it relates to the signature observed in males. Methodology/Principal Findings Methylation profiles were created using the method of methylated DNA immunoprecipitation (MeDIP) followed by microarray hybridization and statistical and bioinformatic analyses on T cell DNA obtained from adult women who were found to be on a chronic physical aggression trajectory (CPA) between 6 and 12 years of age compared to women who followed a normal physical aggression trajectory. We confirmed the existence of a well-defined, genome-wide signature of DNA methylation associated with chronic physical aggression in the peripheral T cells of adult females that includes many of the genes similarly associated with physical aggression in the same cell types of adult males. Conclusions This study in a small number of women presents preliminary evidence for a genome-wide variation in promoter DNA methylation that associates with CPA in women that warrant larger studies for further verification. A significant proportion of these associations were previously observed in men with CPA supporting the hypothesis that the epigenetic signature of early life aggression in females is composed of a component specific to females and another common to both males and females.
HBV Genotype B/C and Response to Lamivudine Therapy: A Systematic Review

A number of nucleoside analogues such as lamivudine (LAM), actually used for the treatment of chronic hepatitis B, can suppress HBV DNA replication, improve transaminase level and liver histology, and enhance the rate of hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg) clearance. The responses to LAM therapy involve HBeAg clearance and HBV DNA conversion of negative. However, the associations between HBV genotype B/C and response to LAM therapy remain ambiguous. The aim of this meta-analysis is to determine more precise estimations of the relationship. All the publications on the associations between HBV genotype B/C and response to LAM (HBeAg clearance and HBV DNA conversion of negative) through June 2013 were collected. Relative risk (RR) with 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) was calculated in fixed or random model, I 2 was calculated to examine heterogeneity, and funnel plots were plotted to examine small study effects with Stata 11 software. Overall, for HBeAg clearance and genotype B/C, the RR (95% CI) was 1.27 (0.94–1.71), while for HBV DNA conversion of negative and genotype B/C, the RR (95% CI) was 1.07 (0.98–1.17). HBV genotype B/C shows no significance associations with response to lamivudine therapy (HBeAg clearance and HBV DNA conversion of negative).
Biological and Morphological Aspects of the Growth of Equine Abortion Virus

Darlington, R. W. (St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, Tenn.), and C. James. Biological and morphological aspects of the growth of equine abortion virus. J. Bacteriol. 92:250–257. 1966. —The growth of equine abortion virus (EAV) was studied by bioassay and electron microscopy in L-cell monolayer and suspension cultures, and in HeLa and BHK 21/13 cell monolayers. Results of virus assay (plaque-forming units) indicated that production of cell-associated virus (CAV) began at 6 to 9 hr after infection in all of the cell strains used. Virus release occurred 1 to 2 hr later. By 15 to 20 hr after infection, the amount of released virus (RV) equaled or surpassed that of CAV in all cells other than the HeLa cells, where the amount of RV did not equal CAV until 48 hr after infection. Electron microscopy of infected cells revealed no differences in the morphology of virus development in any of the cells used. Developing virus particles were first detected in cell nuclei at 9 hr after infection. At 12 hr, virus particles could be seen budding from the inner nuclear envelope. Budding into cytoplasmic vacuoles was not seen. Budding virus, virus in cytoplasmic vacuoles, and extracellular virus were all approximately 145 mμ in diameter, and were indistinguishable morphologically. These results indicated that EAV is quite similar to herpes simplex virus with respect to growth and morphology, and that the inner nuclear membrane is the principal site of virus envelopment.
An efficient approximate algorithm for winner determination in combinatorial auctions

Auctions on the Internet have become especially popular in Electronic Commerce. Amongthe various studies on the Internet auctions, those on combinatorial auctions have lately attracted considerable attention. Combinatorial auctions simultaneously sell multiple items with interdependent values and allow the bidders to bid on any combination of items. Therefore, they tend to increase the buyers’ utilities and the seller’s revenue.
Threat-Related Attention Bias Variability and Posttraumatic Stress.

OBJECTIVE Threat monitoring facilitates survival by allowing one to efficiently and accurately detect potential threats. Traumatic events can disrupt healthy threat monitoring, inducing biased and unstable threat-related attention deployment. Recent research suggests that greater attention bias variability, that is, attention fluctuations alternating toward and away from threat, occurs in participants with PTSD relative to healthy comparison subjects who were either exposed or not exposed to traumatic events. The current study extends findings on attention bias variability in PTSD. METHOD Previous measurement of attention bias variability was refined by employing a moving average technique. Analyses were conducted across seven independent data sets; in each, data on attention bias variability were collected by using variants of the dot-probe task. Trauma-related and anxiety symptoms were evaluated across samples by using structured psychiatric interviews and widely used self-report questionnaires, as specified for each sample. RESULTS Analyses revealed consistent evidence of greater attention bias variability in patients with PTSD following various types of traumatic events than in healthy participants, participants with social anxiety disorder, and participants with acute stress disorder. Moreover, threat-related, and not positive, attention bias variability was correlated with PTSD severity. CONCLUSIONS These findings carry possibilities for using attention bias variability as a specific cognitive marker of PTSD and for tailoring protocols for attention bias modification for this disorder.
ROBUST BALANCING IN B-TREES Extended Abstract

Robust balancing is a technique for maintaining generalized B-trees with a cumulative rebalancing cost that is asymptotically linear. It is especially significant in conjunction with fingers, which can make cumulative search cost linear. We define a new family of robust balancing algorithms which includes algorithms with sublinear rebalancing cost, extending previous work that has shown linear algorithms. An accounting technique is developed which gives strong bounds on rebalancing cost. We also consider robust balancing for B*-trees, a B-tree variant with improved space utilization.
Porter, PaleAle 4.0: high-accuracy prediction of protein secondary structure and relative solvent accessibility

SUMMARY Protein secondary structure and solvent accessibility predictions are a fundamental intermediate step towards protein structure and function prediction. We present new systems for the ab initio prediction of protein secondary structure and solvent accessibility, Porter 4.0 and PaleAle 4.0. Porter 4.0 predicts secondary structure correctly for 82.2% of residues. PaleAle 4.0's accuracy is 80.0% for prediction in two classes with a 25% accessibility threshold. We show that the increasing training set sizes that come with the continuing growth of the Protein Data Bank keep yielding prediction quality improvements and examine the impact of protein resolution on prediction performances. AVAILABILITY Porter 4.0 and PaleAle 4.0 are freely available for academic users at http://distillf.ucd. ie/porterpaleale/. Up to 64 kb of input in FASTA format can be processed in a single submission, with predictions now being returned to the user within a single web page and, optionally, a single email.
Neutrino masses from cosmological probes

There is a renewed interest in constraining the sum of the masses of the three neutrino flavours by using cosmological measurements. Solar, atmospheric, reactor and accelerator neutrino experiments have confirmed neutrino oscillations, implying that neutrinos have non-zero mass, but without pinning down their absolute masses. While it has been established that the effect of light neutrinos on the evolution of cosmic structure is small, the upper limits derived from a large-scale structure could help significantly to constrain the absolute scale of the neutrino masses. It is also important to know the sum of neutrino masses as it is degenerate with the values of other cosmological parameters, e.g. the amplitude of fluctuations and the primordial spectral index. A summary of the cosmological neutrino mass limits is given. Current results from cosmology set an upper limit on the sum of the neutrino masses at ∼1 eV, somewhat dependent on the datasets used in the analyses and assumed priors on cosmological parameters. It is important to emphasize that the total neutrino mass (‘hot dark matter’) is derived by assuming that the other components in the universe are baryons, cold dark matter and dark energy. We assessed the impact of neutrino masses on the matter power spectrum, the cosmic microwave background, peculiar velocities and gravitational lensing. We also discuss possible methods to improve the mass upper limits by an order of magnitude.
Environmental correlates for tree occurrences, species distribution and richness on a high-elevation tropical island

This article focuses on the distribution of trees on a high-elevation tropical island of the New Caledonian archipelago. The aim was to determine how the variety of environments occurring on this island (in terms of elevation, rainfall, substrate and vegetation types) shapes the distribution of tree species. We analyzed the distribution of 702 native rainforest species through ca. 40,000 occurrence records and GIS environmental layers. Results showed that species exhibit high environmental tolerance while their distribution is spatially highly aggregated. We concluded that tree species distribution in New Caledonia is shaped by dispersal limitation rather than by environmental specialization.
Comments on Springer and Tsai's Method of Predicting Effective Thermal Conductivities of Unidirectional Materials

in a single direction so that they do not bend toward regions of higher conductivity as may actually occur. In steady conduction in the principal direction parallel to the filaments this assumption is accurate since the isotherms are planes. However, in the principal direction normal to the filaments the lines of heat flux do bend toward regions of higher conductivity. A comparison between effective thermal conductivities obtained from calculations including two-dimensional heat fiow effects with those obtained by the Springer and Tsai method will indicate
Is “rescue” therapy ethical in randomized controlled trials?*

Objective: There is a commonly held belief that randomized, placebo-controlled trials in pediatric critical care should incorporate “rescue” therapy (open-label administration of active drug) when a child’s condition is deteriorating. The ethical, conceptual, and analytic challenges related to rescue therapy in randomized trials can be misrepresented. Design: Narrative review. Methods: The ethical basis of rescue therapy, the equipoise concept, and intention-to-treat analysis are examined in the setting of a hypothetical randomized trial comparing corticosteroids vs. placebo in pediatric septic shock. Findings: The perceived need for rescue therapy may be partly motivated by the moral imperative to save a child’s life. However, allowing rescue therapy in a trial is misconceived and inconsistent with equipoise regarding the efficacy of the study drug. If rescue therapy is permitted, intention-to-treat analysis can only compare immediate vs. delayed use of the study drug. When rescue therapy is beneficial, the observed treatment effect is substantially diminished from true effect of the study drug, leading to increased sample size and thereby placing more children at risk (18 “excess” placebo-arm deaths occur in our hypothetical example). Analysis of a trial incorporating rescue therapy cannot definitively assess overall efficacy of the agent, or distinguish beneficial or harmful treatment effects related to timing of drug use. Conclusions: Although a rescue therapy component in a randomized trial may be perceived as ethically desirable, inconsistency of rescue therapy with full equipoise may itself raise significant ethical concerns. Increased sample sizes expose more children to the risks of study participation, including death. Researchers should be aware that clinical trials designed with rescue therapy cannot definitively determine the beneficial or harmful effects of a treatment per se, and can only assess the effects of delayed vs. immediate provision of the treatment.
Multi-rate operational space control of compliant motion in robotic manipulators

In this paper, we introduce a new multi-rate hybrid motion and force control using operational space framework. Conventional implementation of operational space control (OSC) does not perform well in the presence of model uncertainties. In order to overcome this issue, a two layered hierarchical controller structure is proposed in this paper. In the outer control loop, the control torque from the OSC is applied to the joint space dynamic model of the robot. By integrating the output of this system, reference joint velocities for the next control loop can be obtained. At the inner control loop, the conventional computed-torque control scheme is used to ensure the robot can track the above desired joint velocities. To illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed controller, intensive experiments have been conducted on the Mitsubishi PA10 7-DOF manipulator. Experimental results indicate that there is a significant improvement in comparison to the conventional implementation and the proposed approach is shown to have performed favorably in comparison to the commercial force controller from PushCorp.
Comparison of Intraparenchymal and Intradermal Injection for Identification of the Sentinel Node in Patients with Breast Cancer

Background Sentinel lymph node (SLN) mapping with radioisotope and blue dye has been advocated for the staging of clinically negative axillae in patients with breast cancer. The optimal radiotracer injection technique is still being defined. This study compares the results of intraparenchymal and intradermal injection of technetium 99m (Tc 99m) sulfur colloid to establish an optimal method for SLN localization. Methods Consecutive patients (n = 435) with clinically T0-2N0 breast cancer had SLN biopsy performed by a single surgeon. All patients but one received injections of both blue dye and Tc 99m sulfur colloid; one patient had injection of blue dye only and was excluded from analysis. Blue dye injections were intraparenchymal in all patients. The results of intraparenchymal (n = 107) and intradermal (n = 327) injections of radioisotope were compared for the following endpoints: 1) successful SLN identification, 2) false-negative rate, and 3) ratio of SLN/axillary background isotope counts. Results Intradermal radioisotope injection was as effective as intraparenchymal radioisotope injection, identifying the SLN in 99.4% and 92.5% of cases, respectively. False-negative rates for both radioisotope injection techniques were <5%. Ratios of SLN/axillary background isotope counts were higher with intradermal than with intraparenchymal injection (193/1 vs 41/1). Patient follow-up has revealed no axillary recurrence of tumor. Conclusions Intradermal radioisotope injection for SLN identification appears to be a highly accurate technique with acceptable false-negative and SLN identification rates. Compared with intraparenchymal isotope injection, the intradermal technique is associated with higher levels of isotope uptake by the SLN, facilitating SLN identification.