Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Physiological and morphological changes during early and later stages of fruit growth in Capsicum annuum.

Fruit-set involves a series of physiological and morphological changes that are well described for tomato and Arabidopsis, but largely unknown for sweet pepper (Capsicum annuum). The aim of this paper is to investigate whether mechanisms of fruit-set observed in Arabidopsis and tomato are also applicable to C. annuum. To do this, we accurately timed the physiological and morphological changes in a post-pollinated and un-pollinated ovary. A vascular connection between ovule and replum was observed in fertilized ovaries that undergo fruit development, and this connection was absent in unfertilized ovaries that abort. This indicates that vascular connection between ovule and replum is an early indicator for successful fruit development after pollination and fertilization. Evaluation of histological changes in the carpel of a fertilized and unfertilized ovary indicated that increase in cell number and cell diameter both contribute to early fruit growth. Cell division contributes more during early fruit growth while cell expansion contributes more at later stages of fruit growth in C. annuum. The simultaneous occurrence of a peak in auxin concentration and a strong increase in cell diameter in the carpel of seeded fruits suggest that indole-3-acetic acid stimulates a major increase in cell diameter at later stages of fruit growth. The series of physiological and morphological events observed during fruit-set in C. annuum are similar to what has been reported for tomato and Arabidopsis. This indicates that tomato and Arabidopsis are suitable model plants to understand details of fruit-set mechanisms in C. annuum.
Protective Effect of Withania coagulans Fruit Extract on Cisplatin-induced Nephrotoxicity in Rats

Background: Fruits of Withania coagulans (Solanaceae) reported to possess several bioactive compounds as curative agents for various clinical conditions. Cisplatin is a chemotherapeutic drug to treat sarcomas, carcinomas, lymphomas, cervical cancer, germ cell tumors, etc. The major factor that limits its clinical use is its dose-dependent nephrotoxicity. Aim: To explore the nephroprotective effect of W. coagulans extract and its modulatory effects against cisplatin-induced nephrotoxicity and genotoxicity. Materials and Methods: W. coagulans fruit extract was quantitatively standardized with withaferin A using high-performance thin-layer chromatography. The subacute toxicity study was performed according to OECD guidelines in experimental rats. Nephrotoxicity in rats was induced by a single dose of cisplatin (6 mg/kg, intraperitoneal). Nephroprotective role of W. coagulans fruit extract at different doses had been evaluated. It includes quantification of serum kidney toxicity markers, renal tissue oxidative stress biomarkers and pro-inflammatory cytokines level, DNA fragmentation assay, and histopathological examination of renal tissue. Results: Withaferin A was found 3.56 mg/g of W. coagulans fruit extract. It significantly prevented the rise in serum urea and creatinine level and also preserve rat kidneys from oxidative stress and free radical induced DNA damage. Histopathological study showed extract treatment eliminates tubular swelling, cellular necrosis, and protein cast deposition in cisplatin treated kidney tissue. It averted the decline in glutathione content, activities of superoxide dismutase and catalase. These parameters were restored to near normal levels by extract in a dose of 400 mg/kg, per oral. Conclusion: It can be justified that W. coagulans possess dose dependent protective effect against cisplatin induced kidney damages, primarily through its free radical scavenging and anti inflammatory activity Abbreviations Used: WHO: World Health Organization, SOD: Superoxide dismutase, CAT: Catalase, HPTLC: High-performance thin layer chromatography, p.o. : Per-oral, i.p.: Intraperitoneal, TNF-α: Tumor necrosis factor-alpha, IL-1β: Interleukin 1-beta, IL-6: Interleukin-6
Combustion characteristic of refuse derived fuel under oxygen-enriched atmosphere

The combustion processes of refuse derived fuel (RDF) under oxygen-enriched atmosphere were analyzed by thermogravimetry and the combustion characteristics of RDF were studied (the effect on the combustion characteristics of RDF by factors including plastic content, heating rate and oxygen concentration). Studying the combustion characteristics of RDF can provide important basis for the design and selection of combustion equipment. Meanwhile, the combustion activation energy and frequency factor were obtained by Doyle method, then the combustion model of RDF under oxygen-enriched atmosphere was established. This study provided essential basis for the spread and oxygen-enriched combustion of RDF technology.
Antimicrobial and Anti-Virulence Activity of Capsaicin Against Erythromycin-Resistant, Cell-Invasive Group A Streptococci

Capsaicin (8-methyl-N-vanillyl-6-nonenamide) is the active component of Capsicum plants (chili peppers), which are grown as food and for medicinal purposes since ancient times, and is responsible for the pungency of their fruit. Besides its multiple pharmacological and physiological properties (pain relief, cancer prevention, and beneficial cardiovascular, and gastrointestinal effects) capsaicin has recently attracted considerable attention because of its antimicrobial and anti-virulence activity. This is the first study of its in vitro antibacterial and anti-virulence activity against Streptococcus pyogenes (Group A streptococci, GAS), a major human pathogen. The test strains were previously characterized, erythromycin-susceptible (n = 5) and erythromycin-resistant (n = 27), cell-invasive pharyngeal isolates. The MICs of capsaicin were 64–128 μg/mL (the most common MIC was 128 μg/mL). The action of capsaicin was bactericidal, as suggested by MBC values that were equal or close to the MICs, and by early detection of dead cells in the live/dead assay. No capsaicin-resistant mutants were obtained in single-step resistance selection studies. Interestingly, growth in presence of sublethal capsaicin concentrations induced an increase in biofilm production (p ≤ 0.05) and in the number of bacteria adhering to A549 monolayers, and a reduction in cell-invasiveness and haemolytic activity (both p ≤ 0.05). Cell invasiveness fell so dramatically that a highly invasive strain became non-invasive. The dose-response relationship, characterized by opposite effects of low and high capsaicin doses, suggests a hormetic response. The present study documents that capsaicin has promising bactericidal activity against erythromycin-resistant, cell-invasive pharyngeal GAS isolates. The fact that sublethal concentrations inhibited cell invasion and reduced haemolytic activity, two important virulence traits of GAS, is also interesting, considering that cell-invasive, erythromycinresistant strains can evade β-lactams by virtue of intracellular location and macrolides by virtue of resistance, thus escaping antibiotic treatment. By inhibiting intracellular invasion and haemolytic activity, capsaicin could thus prevent both formation of a difficult to eradicate intracellular reservoir, and infection spread to deep tissues.
The dangerous nature of intimate relationship stalking: threats, violence, and associated risk factors.

Although previous studies of forensic and law enforcement stalking populations (Harmon, Rosner, & Owens, 1995; Meloy & Gothard, 1995; Zona, Sharma, & Lane, 1993) agree that the degree of intimacy of the victim-suspect relationship is an important factor in stalking cases, they have not conducted in-depth analyses of this variable. This study compared 223 intimate (n=135) and non-intimate (n=88) stalking cases managed by the Los Angeles Police Department's Threat Management Unit. A path analysis revealed a significant relationship between the stalkers' intimate versus non-intimate status and violence committed toward persons and property. This relationship was positively influenced by the suspect's level of proximity to the victim and threats toward the victim and property, but not influenced by suspect's criminal, psychiatric, and domestic violence histories. Overall, intimate relationship stalkers used more dangerous stalking behaviors than non-intimate relationship stalkers. Risk factors for assessing dangerousness of stalkers are discussed.
Performance of Summer Sesame under Different Irrigation Scheduling and Nutrient Levels in Vidarbha Region

Sesame (Sesamum indicum L.) is a prehistoric oilseed crop. The crop has early origins in East Africa and in India (Bedigian, 2003). Sesame is known as the king of oil seeds due to the high oil content (50% 60%) of its seed (Toan et al., 2010). Sesame oil is used as food (cooking and salad), medicine and soap manufacturing etc. Its seeds and young leaves are eaten as stews and soaps in Asia (Pakissan.com, 2010). Its oil-cake is good feed for poultry, goat, sheep, fish and cattle (Khan et al., 2009).
New Results on the Complexity of p-Center Problems

An $O(n\log ^3 n)$ algorithm for the continuous p-center problem on a tree is presented. Following a sequence of previous algorithms, ours is the first one whose time bound in uniform in p and less than quadratic in n. We also present an $O(n\log ^2 n\log \log n)$ algorithm for a weighted discrete p-center problem.
BRIDGING SCALES IN THE EVOLUTION OF INFECTIOUS DISEASE LIFE HISTORIES: APPLICATION

Within‐ and between‐host disease processes occur on the same timescales, therefore changes in the within‐host dynamics of parasites, resources, and immunity can interact with changes in the epidemiological dynamics to affect evolutionary outcomes. Consequently, studies of the evolution of disease life histories, that is, infection‐age‐specific patterns of transmission and virulence, have been constrained by the need for a mechanistic understanding of within‐host disease dynamics. In a companion paper ( Day et al. 2011), we develop a novel approach that quantifies the relevant within‐host aspects of disease through genetic covariance functions. Here, we demonstrate how to apply this theory to data. Using two previously published datasets from rodent malaria infections, we show how to translate experimental measures into disease life‐history traits, and how to quantify the covariance in these traits. Our results show how patterns of covariance can interact with epidemiological dynamics to affect evolutionary predictions for disease life history. We also find that the selective constraints on disease life‐history evolution can vary qualitatively, and that “simple” virulence‐transmission trade‐offs that are often the subject of experimental investigation can be obscured by trade‐offs within one trait alone. Finally, we highlight the type and quality of data required for future applications.
Multiple Multilocus DNA Barcodes from the Plastid Genome Discriminate Plant Species Equally Well

A universal barcode system for land plants would be a valuable resource, with potential utility in fields as diverse as ecology, floristics, law enforcement and industry. However, the application of plant barcoding has been constrained by a lack of consensus regarding the most variable and technically practical DNA region(s). We compared eight candidate plant barcoding regions from the plastome and one from the mitochondrial genome for how well they discriminated the monophyly of 92 species in 32 diverse genera of land plants (N = 251 samples). The plastid markers comprise portions of five coding (rpoB, rpoC1, rbcL, matK and 23S rDNA) and three non-coding (trnH-psbA, atpF–atpH, and psbK–psbI) loci. Our survey included several taxonomically complex groups, and in all cases we examined multiple populations and species. The regions differed in their ability to discriminate species, and in ease of retrieval, in terms of amplification and sequencing success. Single locus resolution ranged from 7% (23S rDNA) to 59% (trnH-psbA) of species with well-supported monophyly. Sequence recovery rates were related primarily to amplification success (85–100% for plastid loci), with matK requiring the greatest effort to achieve reasonable recovery (88% using 10 primer pairs). Several loci (matK, psbK–psbI, trnH-psbA) were problematic for generating fully bidirectional sequences. Setting aside technical issues related to amplification and sequencing, combining the more variable plastid markers provided clear benefits for resolving species, although with diminishing returns, as all combinations assessed using four to seven regions had only marginally different success rates (69–71%; values that were approached by several two- and three-region combinations). This performance plateau may indicate fundamental upper limits on the precision of species discrimination that is possible with DNA barcoding systems that include moderate numbers of plastid markers. Resolution to the contentious debate on plant barcoding should therefore involve increased attention to practical issues related to the ease of sequence recovery, global alignability, and marker redundancy in multilocus plant DNA barcoding systems.
Online Bursty Event Detection from Microblog

Microblogs (e.g., Twitter and Weibo) have become a large social media platform for users to share contents, their interests and events with friends. A surge of the number of event related posts always reflects that some people's concern real-life events happened. In this paper, we propose an incremental temporal topic model for microblogs namely BEE (Bursty Event Detection) to detect these bursty events. BEE supports to detect these bursty events from short text datasets through modeling the temporal information of events. And BEE employs processing the post streaming incrementally to track the topic of events drifting over time. Therefore, the latent semantic indices are preserved from one time period to the next. After BEE detects the event-driven posts and related events, the bur sty detection module can identify the bursty patterns for each event and rank the events using the bursty patterns. Our experiments on a large Weibo dataset show that our algorithm can outperform the baselines for detecting the meaningful bur sty events. Subsequently, we also show some case studies that indicate the effectiveness of the temporal factor for bursty event detection and how well BEE can track the topic drifting of events.
Effects of Divalent Cations on Binding of Aminoglycoside Antibiotics to Human Serum Proteins and to Bacteria

Binding of gentamicin and related deoxystreptamine-containing aminoglycoside antibiotics to proteins in human serum can vary significantly with changes in experimental conditions. The concentrations of divalent cations are important variables, and binding increases progressively as the concentrations of calcium and magnesium decrease. Maximal binding of deoxystreptamine-containing aminoglycosides to human serum is approximately 70% in the absence of divalent cations. The binding of 3H-labeled gentamicin to Pseudomonas aeruginosa increases and its bactericidal activity against P. aeruginosa is enhanced in the absence of divalent cations. In contrast, binding of 3H-labeled gentamicin to Escherichia coli and bactericidal activity against E. coli do not vary significantly in the presence and in the absence of divalent cations. Interference with uptake of gentamicin provides a plausible explanation for the observation that the minimal inhibitory concentration of gentamicin for P. aeruginosa increases as the concentration of calcium or magnesium in bacteriological media increases. Although significant binding of deoxystreptamine-containing aminoglycosides to plasma proteins does not occur under normal physiological conditions in man, the possibility remains that variations in protein binding of these aminoglycosides might be significant under pathological conditions.
One-Bit Compressed Sensing: Provable Support and Vector Recovery

In this paper, we study the problem of one-bit compressed sensing (1-bit CS), where the goal is to design a measurement matrix A and a recovery algorithm such that a k-sparse unit vector x* can be efficiently recovered from the sign of its linear measurements, i.e., b = sign(Ax*). This is an important problem for signal acquisition and has several learning applications as well, e.g., multi-label classification (Hsu et al., 2009). We study this problem in two settings: a) support recovery: recover the support of x*, b) approximate vector recovery: recover a unit vector x such that ||x - x*||2 = e. For support recovery, we propose two novel and efficient solutions based on two combinatorial structures: union free families of sets and expanders. In contrast to existing methods for support recovery, our methods are universal i.e. a single measurement matrix A can recover all the signals. For approximate recovery, we propose the first method to recover a sparse vector using a near optimal number of measurements. We also empirically validate our algorithms and demonstrate that our algorithms recover the true signal using fewer measurements than the existing methods.
Diagnosis and treatment of an obsessive–compulsive disorder following traumatic brain injury: A single case and review of the literature

A 27-year-old patient with traumatic brain injury and neuropsychiatric symptoms fitting the obsessive–compulsive disorder was investigated. Brain CT-scan revealed left temporal and bilateral fronto-basal parenchymal contusions. Main Outcome Measure was the Yale–Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale at pre- and post-treatment and at 6 months follow-up. The combination of pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy resulted in lower intensity and frequency of symptoms. Our case illustrates the importance of a detailed diagnostic procedure in order to provide appropriate therapeutic interventions. Further studies are needed to guide the clinician in determining which patients are likely to benefit from a psychotherapeutic intervention in combination with pharmacotherapy.
Low Integrated DNA Repair Score and Lung Cancer Risk

DNA repair is a prime mechanism for preventing DNA damage, mutation, and cancers. Adopting a functional approach, we examined the association with lung cancer risk of an integrated DNA repair score, measured by a panel of three enzymatic DNA repair activities in peripheral blood mononuclear cells. The panel included assays for AP endonuclease 1 (APE1), 8-oxoguanine DNA glycosylase (OGG1), and methylpurine DNA glycosylase (MPG), all of which repair oxidative DNA damage as part of the base excision repair pathways. A blinded population-based case–control study was conducted with 96 patients with lung cancer and 96 control subjects matched by gender, age (±1 year), place of residence, and ethnic group (Jews/non-Jews). The three DNA repair activities were measured, and an integrated DNA repair OMA (OGG1, MPG, and APE1) score was calculated for each individual. Conditional logistic regression analysis revealed that individuals in the lowest tertile of the integrated DNA repair OMA score had an increased risk of lung cancer compared with the highest tertile, with OR = 9.7; 95% confidence interval (CI), 3.1–29.8; P < 0.001, or OR = 5.6; 95% CI, 2.1–15.1; P < 0.001 after cross-validation. These results suggest that pending validation, this DNA repair panel of risk factors may be useful for lung cancer risk assessment, assisting prevention and referral to early detection by technologies such as low-dose computed tomography scanning. Cancer Prev Res; 7(4); 398–406. ©2013 AACR.
Spatial and temporal variations in subsidence due to the natural consolidation and compaction of sediment in the yellow river delta, china

ABSTRACT The Yellow River Delta, which is the second-largest delta in China, has experienced varying degrees of land subsidence since the late 1970s. Although recent studies have identified the natural consolidation and compaction of sediment among the most important contributors to geologic processes, their processes have rarely been quantified. We estimated the sediment compaction over different time ranges to determine the temporal evolution of subsidence parameters (i.e., cumulative compaction). Estimates of primary consolidation, secondary consolidation, and the degree of consolidation in 152 boreholes revealed the spatial–temporal characteristics of sediment compaction and consolidation using geotechnical parameters collected from 152 boreholes, soil mechanics equations and the Kriging interplolation method. In addition, these estimates were partially constrained and cross-validated using the interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) results from early 2007 to late 2010 which were provided in a previous study. By performing a comparison analysis between theoretical evaluations of compaction for borehole data and InSAR observations, we were able to quantify subsidence due to sediment compaction. The comparison results suggest that the theoretical solutions agreed well with the measurements recorded by the well-validated, advanced InSAR method and that the deviations between the InSAR technique and geotechnical evaluations ranged from −22 to 3 mm. The results reveal that the land subsidence of the chosen borehole sites during the investigative period was dominated by the primary consolidation and compaction of sediment. The underprediction of subsidence may be explained by fluid withdrawal, oil exploitation and engineering construction. To speculate, more geological disasters may occur if the current subsidence condition extends into the future.
Heterogeneous architecture design with emerging 3D and non-volatile memory technologies

Energy becomes the primary concern in nowadays multi-core architecture designs. Moore's law predicts that the exponentially increasing number of cores can be packed into a single chip every two years, however, the increasing power density is the obstacle to continuous performance gains. Recent studies show that heterogeneous multi-core is a competitive promising solution to optimize performance per watt. In this paper, different types of heterogeneous architecture are discussed. For each type, current challenges and latest solutions are briefly introduced. Preliminary analyses are performed to illustrate the scalability of the heterogeneous system and the potential benefits towards future application requirements. Moreover, we demonstrate the advantages of leveraging three-dimensional (3D) integration on heterogeneous architectures. With 3D die stacking, disparate technologies can be integrated on the same chip, such as the CMOS logic and emerging non-volatile memory, enabling a new paradigm of architecture design.1
Recovery Analysis for Weighted ℓ1-Minimization Using a Null Space Property

We study the recovery of sparse signals from underdetermined linear measurements when a potentially erroneous support estimate is available. Our results are twofold. First, we derive necessary and sufficient conditions for signal recovery from compressively sampled measurements using weighted $\ell_1$-norm minimization. These conditions, which depend on the choice of weights as well as the size and accuracy of the support estimate, are on the null space of the measurement matrix. They can guarantee recovery even when standard $\ell_1$ minimization fails. Second, we derive bounds on the number of Gaussian measurements for these conditions to be satisfied, i.e., for weighted $\ell_1$ minimization to successfully recover all sparse signals whose support has been estimated sufficiently accurately. Our bounds show that weighted $\ell_1$ minimization requires significantly fewer measurements than standard $\ell_1$ minimization when the support estimate is relatively accurate.