Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Changes in precipitation with climate change

There is a direct influence of global warming on precipitation. Increased heating leads to greater evaporation and thus surface drying, thereby increasing the intensity and duration of drought. However, the water holding capacity of air increases by about 7% per 1°C warming, which leads to increased water vapor in the atmosphere. Hence, storms, whether individual thunderstorms, extratropical rain or snow storms, or tropical cyclones, supplied with increased moisture, produce more intense precipitation events. Such events are observed to be widely occurring, even where total precipitation is decreasing: 'it never rains but it pours! ' This increases the risk of flooding. The atmo- spheric and surface energy budget plays a critical role in the hydrological cycle, and also in the slower rate of change that occurs in total precipitation than total column water vapor. With modest changes in winds, patterns of precipitation do not change much, but result in dry areas becoming drier (generally throughout the subtropics) and wet areas becoming wetter, especially in the mid- to high latitudes: the 'rich get richer and the poor get poorer'. This pattern is simulated by climate mod- els and is projected to continue into the future. Because, with warming, more precipitation occurs as rain instead of snow and snow melts earlier, there is increased runoff and risk of flooding in early spring, but increased risk of drought in summer, especially over continental areas. However, with more precipitation per unit of upward motion in the atmosphere, i.e. 'more bang for the buck', atmo- spheric circulation weakens, causing monsoons to falter. In the tropics and subtropics, precipitation patterns are dominated by shifts as sea surface temperatures change, with El Nino a good example. The volcanic eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991 led to an unprecedented drop in land precipitation and runoff, and to widespread drought, as precipitation shifted from land to oceans and evaporation faltered, providing lessons for possible geoengineering. Most models simulate precipitation that occurs prematurely and too often, and with insufficient intensity, resulting in recycling that is too large and a lifetime of moisture in the atmosphere that is too short, which affects runoff and soil moisture.
Transforming ecosystems: When, where, and how to restore contaminated sites

Chemical contamination has impaired ecosystems, reducing biodiversity and the provisioning of functions and services. This has spurred a movement to restore contaminated ecosystems and develop and implement national and international regulations that require it. Nevertheless, ecological restoration remains a young and rapidly growing discipline and its intersection with toxicology is even more nascent and underdeveloped. Consequently, we provide guidance to scientists and practitioners on when, where, and how to restore contaminated ecosystems. Although restoration has many benefits, it also can be expensive, and in many cases systems can recover without human intervention. Hence, the first question we address is: “When should we restore contaminated ecosystems? ” Second, we provide suggestions on what to restore—biodiversity, functions, services, all 3, or something else—and where to restore given expected changes to habitats driven by global climate change. Finally, we provide guidance on how to restore contaminated ecosystems. To do this, we analyze critical aspects of the literature dealing with the ecology of restoring contaminated ecosystems. Additionally, we review approaches for translating the science of restoration to on‐the‐ground actions, which includes discussions of market incentives and the finances of restoration, stakeholder outreach and governance models for ecosystem restoration, and working with contractors to implement restoration plans. By explicitly considering the mechanisms and strategies that maximize the success of the restoration of contaminated sites, we hope that our synthesis serves to increase and improve collaborations between restoration ecologists and ecotoxicologists and set a roadmap for the restoration of contaminated ecosystems. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2016;12:273–283. © 2015 The Authors. Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of SETAC
The Analysis of Left Ventricular Wall Thickness and Shear by an Ultrasonic Triangulation Technique in the Dog

We developed a new ultrasonic triangulation technique to measure regional wall thickness and shear motion of the left ventricular wall under normal conditions and during complete and partial coronary occlusions. In 10 open-chest dogs, a left ventricular micromanometer was inserted, and a screw-driven arterial clamp and flowmeter were placed around the left circumflex coronary artery. A single miniature ultrasonic crystal was placed in the subendocardium of the left ventricular free wall in a region to be made ischemic, and three receiving crystals were sutured to the opposing epicardium at the corners of a 45-degree right triangle. By the trigonometric combination of three measured lengths from ultrasonic dimension gauges, the exact position of the endocardial crystal in X, Y, and Z coordinates could be displayed by computer. The endocardial surface moved in a longitudinal direction relative to the epicardial surface during normal systole [0.58 ± 0.26 (mean ± SEM) mm]. With coronary occlusion, this myocardial shear became less marked (0.11 ± 0.12 mm), and systolic wall thickening changed to thinning. When coronary occlusion was released, end-diastolic wall thickness and percnt wall thickening rapidly increased to 104.8% and 141.7% of control, respectively, concurrent with the reactive hyperemia. With partial coronary constriction, these postreperfusion changes were markedly reduced, suggesting a role for reactive hyperemia in postreperfusion wall thickness dynamics. These techniques allow measurement of shear and three-dimensional display of dimensions and thereby permit documentation of true wall thickness dynamics both during and after coronary occlusion. Circ Res 47:173-181, 1980
Prevalência de transtornos mentais menores em estudantes universitários 1

Prevalence of minor mental disorders in undergraduate students. The present study had as its main objective to estimate the prevalence of Minor Mental Disorders (TMM) in students enrolled in the courses offered at State University of Mato Grosso do Sul (Computer Science, Law, Arts, and Nursing), and at Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul (Nursing) to investigate the relationship of MMD with both sociodemographic variables and learning process. This was a transversal study that included all students of all years in each course, enrolled in the first semester of 2002. The sample was composed of 558 students: 396 (71%) females and 161 (29%) males. Two self-report questionnaires (QSG-60 and QDSD) were used for collection of data. A prevalence of 25% of MMT was found among the students and the main disorder was psychosomatic disturbance.
Parametric quantitative acoustic analysis of conversation produced by speakers with dysarthria and healthy speakers.

PURPOSE This study's main purpose was to (a) identify acoustic signatures of hypokinetic dysarthria (HKD) that are robust to phonetic variation in conversational speech and (b) determine specific characteristics of the variability associated with HKD. METHOD Twenty healthy control (HC) participants and 20 participants with HKD associated with idiopathic Parkinson's disease (PD) repeated 3 isolated sentences (controlled phonetic content) and 2 min of conversational speech (phonetic content treated as a random variable). A MATLAB-based program automatically calculated measures of contrastivity: speech-pause ratio, intensity variation, median and maximum formant slope, formant range, change in the upper and lower spectral envelope, and range of the spectral envelope. t tests were used to identify which measures were sensitive to HKD and which measures differed by task. Discriminant analysis was used to identify the combination of measures that best predicted HKD, and this analysis was then used as a general measure of contrastivity (Contrastivity Index). Differential effects of HKD on maximum and typical contrastivity levels were tested with interaction of maximum, minimum, and median observations of individual speakers and with pairwise comparisons of skewness and kurtosis of the contrastivity index distributions. RESULTS Group differences were detected with pairwise comparisons with t tests in 8 of the 9 measures. Percentage pause time and spectral range were identified as the most specific (95%) and accurate (95%) differentiators of HKD and HC conversational speech. Sentence repetition elicited significantly higher levels of contrastivity than conversational speech in both HC and HKD speakers. Maximum and minimum contrastivities were significantly lower in HKD speech, but there was no evidence that HKD affects maximum contrastivity levels more than median contrastivity levels. The HKD speakers' contrastivity distributions were significantly more skewed to lower levels of production. CONCLUSION HKD can be consistently distinguished from HC speech in both sentence repetition and conversational speech on the basis of intensity variation and spectral range. Although speakers with HKD were effectively able to produce higher contrastivity levels in sentence repetition tasks, they habitually performed closer to the lower end of their production ranges.
Improved First-Principles Calculation of the Third Virial Coefficient of Helium

We employ state-of-the-art pair and three-body potentials with path-integral Monte Carlo (PIMC) methods to calculate the third density virial coefficient C(T) for helium. The uncertainties are much smaller than those of the best experimental results, and approximately one-fourth the uncertainty of our previous work. We have extended our results in temperature down to 2.6 K, incorporating the effect of spin statistics that become important below approximately 7 K. Results are given for both the 3He and 4He isotopes. We have also performed PIMC calculations of the third acoustic virial coefficient γa; our calculated values compare well with the limited experimental data available. A correlating equation for C(T) of 4He is presented; differentiation of this equation provides a reliable and simpler way of calculating γa.
A computational electoral competition model with social clustering and endogenous interest groups as information brokers

We extend the basic model of spatial competition in two directions. First, political parties and voters do not have complete information but behave adaptively. Political parties use polls to search for policy platforms that maximize the probability of winning an election and the voting decision of voters is influenced by social interaction. Second, we allow for the emergence of interest groups. These interest groups transmit information about voter preferences to the political parties, and they coordinate voting behavior. We use simulation methods to investigate the convergence properties of this model. We find that the introduction of social dynamics and interest groups increases the separation between parties platforms, prohibits convergence to the center of the distribution of voter preferences, and increases the size of the winning set.
PCR Assay for Identification of Histoplasma capsulatum Based on the Nucleotide Sequence of the M Antigen

ABSTRACT The major diagnostic antigens of Histoplasma capsulatum var. capsulatum are the H and M antigens, pluripotent glycoproteins that elicit both humoral and T-cell-mediated immune responses. The gene encoding the M antigen has previously been sequenced, and its sequence has significant overall homology to those of the genes for fungal catalases. Regions of the M-antigen gene with little or no homology were used to design four oligonucleotide sequences for application in the PCR detection and identification of H. capsulatum var. capsulatum. The PCR correctly identified the 31 H. capsulatum var. capsulatum strains isolated from human, animal, and soil specimens and 1 H. capsulatum var. duboisii isolate. PCR products of 111 and 279 bp were amplified with primers Msp1F-Msp1R and Msp2F-Msp2R, respectively. No amplification product was obtained from DNA extracted from an H. capsulatum var. farciminosum isolate. The specificity of the PCR with the M-antigen-derived primers was confirmed by the total absence of amplification products when genomic DNA from Paracoccidioides brasiliensis, Candida spp. , Sporothrix schenckii, Cryptococcus neoformans, Blastomyces dermatitidis, Coccidioides immitis, Aspergillus niger, and Aspergillus fumigatus were applied in the reaction. This rapid, sensitive, and specific assay provides a way to identify typical and atypical isolates of H. capsulatum var. capsulatum.
Can spatial sorting associated with spawning migration explain evolution of body size and vertebral number in Anguilla eels?

Abstract Spatial sorting is a process that can contribute to microevolutionary change by assembling phenotypes through space, owing to nonrandom dispersal. Here we first build upon and develop the “neutral” version of the spatial sorting hypothesis by arguing that in systems that are not characterized by repeated range expansions, the evolutionary effects of variation in dispersal capacity and assortative mating might not be independent of but interact with natural selection. In addition to generating assortative mating, variation in dispersal capacity together with spatial and temporal variation in quality of spawning area is likely to influence both reproductive success and survival of spawning migrating individuals, and this will contribute to the evolution of dispersal‐enhancing traits. Next, we use a comparative approach to examine whether differences in spawning migration distance among 18 species of freshwater Anguilla eels have evolved in tandem with two dispersal‐favoring traits. In our analyses, we use information on spawning migration distance, body length, and vertebral number that was obtained from the literature, and a published whole mitochondrial DNA‐based phylogeny. Results from comparative analysis of independent contrasts showed that macroevolutionary shifts in body length throughout the phylogeny have been associated with concomitant shifts in spawning migration. Shifts in migration distance were not associated with shifts in number of vertebrae. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that spatial sorting has contributed to the evolution of more elongated bodies in species with longer spawning migration distances, or resulted in evolution of longer migration distances in species with larger body size. This novel demonstration is important in that it expands the list of ecological settings and hierarchical levels of biological organization for which the spatial sorting hypothesis seems to have predictive power.
Factors associated with severe disease in hospitalized adults with pandemic (H1N1) 2009 in Spain.

The risk factors for complications in patients with influenza A (H1N1)v virus infection have not been fully elucidated. We performed an observational analysis of a prospective cohort of hospitalized adults with confirmed pandemic influenza A (H1N1)v virus infection at 13 hospitals in Spain, between June 12 and November 10, 2009, to identify factors associated with severe disease. Severe disease was defined as the composite outcome of intensive-care unit (ICU) admission or in-hospital mortality. During the study period, 585 adult patients (median age 40 years) required hospitalization because of pandemic (H1N1) 2009. At least one comorbid condition was present in 318 (54.4%) patients. Pneumonia was diagnosed in 234 (43.2%) patients and bacterial co-infection in 45 (7.6%). Severe disease occurred in 75 (12.8%) patients, of whom 71 required ICU admission and 13 (2.2%) died. Independent factors for severe disease were age <50 years (OR, 2.39; 95% CI, 1.05-5.47), chronic comorbid conditions (OR, 2.93; 95% CI, 1.41-6.09), morbid obesity (OR, 6.7; 95% CI, 2.25-20.19), concomitant and secondary bacterial co-infection (OR, 2.78; 95% CI, 1.11-7) and early oseltamivir therapy (OR, 0.32; 95% CI 0.16-0.63). In conclusion, although adults hospitalized for pandemic (H1N1) 2009 suffer from significant morbidity, mortality is lower than that reported in the earliest studies. Younger age, chronic comorbid conditions, morbid obesity and bacterial co-infection are independent risk factors for severe disease, whereas early oseltamivir therapy is a protective factor.
CHAPTER 13:Non-aqueous Foams Based on Edible Oils

The most common types of foams are aqueous foams. Non-aqueous foams are composed of gas bubbles dispersed in a non-aqueous phase. The physical properties of the non-aqueous liquid phase drive the foaming properties. Contrary to aqueous foams, the foaming properties are not only related to the foaming capacity of the foam stabilizer, but are linked to the nature of the non-aqueous phase and to the interactions between this liquid phase and the foam stabilizer. In the literature, non-aqueous foams are scarcely studied. However, this topic is important for various industries, such as the petroleum industry. New interest in these systems has emerged recently owing to their potential use in low-calorie food products. The non-aqueous foams can be produced based on three different foam stabilizer categories: surfactants, solid particles and crystalline particles. The crystalline particles are also well known in the literature to be involved in the formation of oleogels. Therefore, edible oil foams can be obtained based on oleogels. In this book chapter, the more recent advances in the non-aqueous foams field are described. The mechanisms leading to the formation and stabilization of these non-aqueous foams are described with a focus on oil foams based on oleogel systems.
Measurement of excitability of tonically firing neurones tested in a variable‐threshold model motoneurone

A new measure of excitability of tonically firing neurones termed the ‘estimated potential’ (EP) was tested on a model motoneurone (MN) with a voltage‐dependent threshold; the threshold followed the noisy membrane potential with an exponential delay. First, the model MN's after‐hyperpolarisation (AHP) was deduced from its interval histogram for tonic firing, using a recently described transform. This provided a ‘distance‐to‐threshold’ measure which underestimated the AHP's absolute size but had the same time course, thereby providing the time constant of the AHP's decay of conductance. The ‘estimated potential’ was then obtained from the classical ‘firing index’ (no. of responses/no. of stimuli) by using the estimated AHP to create a fixed threshold ‘daughter’ model MN to mimic its variable threshold parent and reproduce its input‐output non‐linearities. The EP gave a linear measure of the parent's stimulus‐evoked depolarisation for firing indices up to about 60 %, corresponding to depolarisations of three to four times the noise s.d. The EP was scaled in units of voltage whose absolute value will usually be unknown for real neurones, since it depended upon the details of the parent model. The EP's virtue is that, within its range, combining stimuli gives arithmetical addition and subtraction, thereby improving on the firing index which scales sigmoidally with the input. Moreover, with weak stimuli, the EP for a given input did not change on varying the parent model's firing rate. The estimated ‘distance‐to‐threshold’ AHP did not, however, give an accurate measure of the recovery of excitability following a spike during tonic firing. Excitability then depends upon the ‘survivors’ trajectory’ giving the mean membrane potential, relative to threshold, of those intervals which have ‘survived’ up to the time in question rather than upon the AHP per se; the survivors’ mean is more hyperpolarised because spiking preferentially eliminates trajectories with noise‐induced depolarisation.
Nonconscious Influences from Emotional Faces: A Comparison of Visual Crowding, Masking, and Continuous Flash Suppression

In the study of nonconscious processing, different methods have been used in order to render stimuli invisible. While their properties are well described, the level at which they disrupt nonconscious processing remains unclear. Yet, such accurate estimation of the depth of nonconscious processes is crucial for a clear differentiation between conscious and nonconscious cognition. Here, we compared the processing of facial expressions rendered invisible through gaze-contingent crowding (GCC), masking, and continuous flash suppression (CFS), three techniques relying on different properties of the visual system. We found that both pictures and videos of happy faces suppressed from awareness by GCC were processed such as to bias subsequent preference judgments. The same stimuli manipulated with visual masking and CFS did not bias significantly preference judgments, although they were processed such as to elicit perceptual priming. A significant difference in preference bias was found between GCC and CFS, but not between GCC and masking. These results provide new insights regarding the nonconscious impact of emotional features, and highlight the need for rigorous comparisons between the different methods employed to prevent perceptual awareness.
Understanding the Sub-Cellular Dynamics of Silicon Transportation and Synthesis in Diatoms Using Population-Level Data and Computational Optimization

Controlled synthesis of silicon is a major challenge in nanotechnology and material science. Diatoms, the unicellular algae, are an inspiring example of silica biosynthesis, producing complex and delicate nano-structures. This happens in several cell compartments, including cytoplasm and silica deposition vesicle (SDV). Considering the low concentration of silicic acid in oceans, cells have developed silicon transporter proteins (SIT). Moreover, cells change the level of active SITs during one cell cycle, likely as a response to the level of external nutrients and internal deposition rates. Despite this topic being of fundamental interest, the intracellular dynamics of nutrients and cell regulation strategies remain poorly understood. One reason is the difficulties in measurements and manipulation of these mechanisms at such small scales, and even when possible, data often contain large errors. Therefore, using computational techniques seems inevitable. We have constructed a mathematical model for silicon dynamics in the diatom Thalassiosira pseudonana in four compartments: external environment, cytoplasm, SDV and deposited silica. The model builds on mass conservation and Michaelis-Menten kinetics as mass transport equations. In order to find the free parameters of the model from sparse, noisy experimental data, an optimization technique (global and local search), together with enzyme related penalty terms, has been applied. We have connected population-level data to individual-cell-level quantities including the effect of early division of non-synchronized cells. Our model is robust, proven by sensitivity and perturbation analysis, and predicts dynamics of intracellular nutrients and enzymes in different compartments. The model produces different uptake regimes, previously recognized as surge, externally-controlled and internally-controlled uptakes. Finally, we imposed a flux of SITs to the model and compared it with previous classical kinetics. The model introduced can be generalized in order to analyze different biomineralizing organisms and to test different chemical pathways only by switching the system of mass transport equations.