Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evolutionary origins of taste buds: phylogenetic analysis of purinergic neurotransmission in epithelial chemosensors

Taste buds are gustatory endorgans which use an uncommon purinergic signalling system to transmit information to afferent gustatory nerve fibres. In mammals, ATP is a crucial neurotransmitter released by the taste cells to activate the afferent nerve fibres. Taste buds in mammals display a characteristic, highly specific ecto-ATPase (NTPDase2) activity, suggesting a role in inactivation of the neurotransmitter. The purpose of this study was to test whether the presence of markers of purinergic signalling characterize taste buds in anamniote vertebrates and to test whether similar purinergic systems are employed by other exteroceptive chemosensory systems. The species examined include several teleosts, elasmobranchs, lampreys and hagfish, the last of which lacks vertebrate-type taste buds. For comparison, Schreiner organs of hagfish and solitary chemosensory cells (SCCs) of teleosts, both of which are epidermal chemosensory end organs, were also examined because they might be evolutionarily related to taste buds. Ecto-ATPase activity was evident in elongate cells in all fish taste buds, including teleosts, elasmobranchs and lampreys. Neither SCCs nor Schreiner organs show specific ecto-ATPase activity, suggesting that purinergic signalling is not crucial in those systems as it is for taste buds. These findings suggest that the taste system did not originate from SCCs but arose independently in early vertebrates.
The Quiet Life Hypothesis in Banking - Evidence from German Savings Banks

The "quiet life hypothesis (QLH)" posits that banks enjoy the advantages of market power in terms of foregone revenues or cost savings. We suggest a unied approach to measure competition and efficiency simultaneously to test this hypothesis. We estimate bank-specific Lerner indices as measures of competition and test if cost and profitt efficiency are negatively related to market power in the case of German savings banks. We find that both market power and average revenues declined among these banks between 1996 and 2006. While we find clear evidence supporting the QLH, estimated effects of the QLH are small from an economical perspective.
Significant Protection against High-Dose Simian Immunodeficiency Virus Challenge Conferred by a New Prime-Boost Vaccine Regimen

ABSTRACT We constructed vaccine vectors based on live recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) and a Semliki Forest virus (SFV) replicon (SFVG) that propagates through expression of the VSV glycoprotein (G). These vectors expressing simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) Gag and Env proteins were used to vaccinate rhesus macaques with a new heterologous prime-boost regimen designed to optimize induction of antibody. Six vaccinated animals and six controls were then given a high-dose mucosal challenge with the diverse SIVsmE660 quasispecies. All control animals became infected and had peak viral RNA loads of 106 to 108 copies/ml. In contrast, four of the vaccinees showed significant (P = 0.03) apparent sterilizing immunity and no detectable viral loads. Subsequent CD8+ T cell depletion confirmed the absence of SIV infection in these animals. The two other vaccinees had peak viral loads of 7 × 105 and 8 × 103 copies/ml, levels below those of all of the controls, and showed undetectable virus loads by day 42 postchallenge. The vaccine regimen induced high-titer prechallenge serum neutralizing antibodies (nAbs) to some cloned SIVsmE660 Env proteins, but antibodies able to neutralize the challenge virus swarm were not detected. The cellular immune responses induced by the vaccine were generally weak and did not correlate with protection. Although the immune correlates of protection are not yet clear, the heterologous VSV/SFVG prime-boost is clearly a potent vaccine regimen for inducing virus nAbs and protection against a heterogeneous viral swarm.
Quantum Indeterminism and First Passage Random Walks in Hilbert Space

We propose a new model for a measurement of a characteristic of a microscopic quantum state by a large system that selects stochastically the different eigenstates with appropriate quantum weights. Unlike previous works which formulate a modified Schr\"odinger equation or an explicit modified Hamiltonian, or more complicated mechanisms for reduction and decoherence to introduce transition to classical stochasticity, we propose the novel use of couplings to the environment, and random walks in the product Hilbert space of the combined system, with first passage stopping rules, which seem intuitively simple, as quantum weights and related stochasticity is a commonality that must be preserved under the widest range of applications, independent of the measured quantity and the specific properties of the measuring device.
Learning Bayesian Networks from Inaccurate Data

The wealth of data collected by automated systems, or pen and paper processes, and available on the World Wide Web, is staggering. With these vast amounts of data come amazing possibilities for data mining and learning of data patterns through automated and semi-automated tools. However, these tools are inherently reliant on the quality of the data with which they are supplied. Without a thorough understanding of our data’s quality and the effects of poor quality on our learning algorithms, we are consequently unable to accurately judge the quality of our models. We have distilled the ideas of prominent data quality researchers into four features of data sources: data accuracy, completeness, timeliness, and consistency. After understanding various dimensions of data quality we were able to test the effects of inaccurate data on learning of Bayesian Networks, specifically in Parameter Estimation and Structure Learning. By testing the learning algorithms with differing percentages and amounts of inaccurate data, we have begun to develop guidelines for adjusting the learning techniques and judging the quality of the learned models.
Feeding wet distillers grains plus solubles with and without a direct-fed microbial to determine performance, carcass characteristics, and fecal shedding of Escherichia coli O157:H7 in feedlot heifers1

The inclusion of wet distillers grains plus solubles (WDGS) in feedlot diets has become a common practice in many regions of the United States due to the expanded production of byproducts and fluctuating corn prices related to ethanol production and other factors. In addition, societal concerns over the continued use of antimicrobials in agriculture production combined with an enhanced interest in disease and pathogen prevention in the food supply have led to an increased interest in use of direct-fed microbials (DFM) in growing and finishing cattle. Direct-fed microbials have been shown to improve ADG and feed efficiency, alter ruminal fermentation, and decrease fecal shedding of potential harmful pathogens in feedlot cattle in some experiments. The objective of this experiment was to evaluate the effects of WDGS inclusion with or without a DFM containing Lactobacillus acidophilus (1 × 106 cfu ∙ heifer−1 ∙ d−1) combined with Propionibacterium freudenreichii (1 × 109 cfu ∙ heifer−1 ∙ d−1) on the performance, carcass characteristics, and Escherichia coli O157:H7 shedding in feedlot heifers. In early August, 288 crossbred heifers (initial BW = 295 ± 28 kg) were assigned to 1 of 4 treatments (12 pens per treatment; 6 heifers per pen) in a randomized complete block design with a 2 × 2 factorial arrangement of treatments. Body weights and fecal grab samples were obtained at approximately 28-d intervals throughout the experiment. Across the feeding period, heifers fed 30% WDGS tended (P = 0.09) to have greater ADG and had greater carcass-adjusted ADG (P = 0.05) compared with heifers fed dry-rolled corn (DRC). Dry matter intake was not affected (P = 0.65) by diet, although carcass-adjusted G:F tended (P = 0.10) to be improved for heifers fed WDGS. Heifers fed 30% WDGS tended (P  0.10) to have greater fat thickness at the 12th rib, lower marbling scores, and higher yield grades. The inclusion of L. acidophilus combined with P. freudenreichii in the diet had no effect (P > 0.10) on performance or carcass merit in the present experiment. The incidence of E. coli O157:H7 throughout the experiment was low, with only 18 positive samples across all sampling periods. Neither WDGS inclusion nor the inclusion of L. acidophilus combined with P. freudenreichii in the diet had any effect (P > 0.10) on E. coli O157:H7 shedding in this experiment. Feeding 30% WDGS to feedlot heifers improved animal performance compared to the DRC-based control diet.
Living different lives: Early social differentiation identified through linking mortuary and isotopic variability in Late Neolithic/ Early Chalcolithic north-central Spain

Variation in burial location and treatment is often observed in the prehistoric archaeological record, but its interpretation is usually highly ambiguous. Biomolecular approaches provide the means of addressing this variability in a way not previously possible, linking the lives of individuals to their funerary treatment. Here, we undertake stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses on a substantial sample of 166 individuals from a series of broadly contemporary Late Neolithic/ Early Chalcolithic (3500 to 2900 cal BC) mortuary monuments (El Sotillo, Alto de la Huesera, Chabola de la Hechicera and Longar) and caves (Las Yurdinas II, Los Husos I and Peña Larga) within a very spatially restricted area of north-central Spain, with sites separated by no more than 10 km on average. This spatial and temporal proximity allows us to focus on the question at the appropriate scale of analysis, avoiding confounding variables such as environmental change, diachronic trends in the subsistence economy, etc. The results demonstrate a statistically significant difference in human δ13C values between those interred in caves and those placed in monuments. The difference appears to be correlated with fine-grained environmental factors (elevation/ temperature/ precipitation), suggesting that use of the landscape was being divided at a very local scale. The reasons for this partitioning may involve differential social status (e.g. those interred in caves may be of lower standing with more restricted access to the valley’s arable resources) or economic specialization (e.g. upland herding vs. valley farming) within the same community or, alternatively, different populations performing different funerary practices and following distinct subsistence economies in some respect. Our results contribute to a better understanding of the development of social differentiation and community specialisation on the scale of the immediate lived landscape.
Outpatient oral prednisone after emergency treatment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

BACKGROUND In this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, we studied the effectiveness of prednisone in reducing the risk of relapse after outpatient exacerbations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). METHODS We enrolled 147 patients who were being discharged from the emergency department after an exacerbation of COPD and randomly assigned them to 10 days of treatment with 40 mg of oral prednisone once daily or identical-appearing placebo. All patients received oral antibiotics for 10 days, plus inhaled bronchodilators. The primary end point was relapse, defined as an unscheduled visit to a physician's office or a return to the emergency department because of worsening dyspnea, within 30 days after randomization. RESULTS The overall rate of relapse at 30 days was lower in the prednisone group than in the placebo group (27 percent vs. 43 percent, P=0.05), and the time to relapse was prolonged in those taking prednisone (P=0.04). After 10 days of therapy, patients in the prednisone group had greater improvements in forced expiratory volume in one second than did patients in the placebo group (mean [+/-SD] increase from base line, 34+/-42 percent vs. 15+/-31 percent; P=0.007). Patients in the prednisone group also had significant improvements in dyspnea, as measured by the transitional dyspnea index (P=0.04) and by the dyspnea domain of the Chronic Respiratory Disease Index Questionnaire (P=0.02), but not in health-related quality of life (P=0.14). CONCLUSIONS Outpatient treatment with oral prednisone offers a small advantage over placebo in treating patients who are discharged from the emergency department with an exacerbation of COPD.
A Not-So-Grim Tale: How Childhood Family Structure Influences Reproductive and Risk-Taking Outcomes in a Historical U.S. Population

Childhood family structure has been shown to play an important role in shaping a child's life course development, especially in industrialised societies. One hypothesis which could explain such findings is that parental investment is likely to be diluted in families without both natural parents. Most empirical studies have examined the influence of only one type of family disruption or composition (e.g. father absence) making it difficult to simultaneously compare the effects of different kinds of family structure on children's future outcomes. Here we use a large, rich data source (n = 16,207) collected by Alfred Kinsey and colleagues in the United States from 1938 to 1963, to examine the effects of particular childhood family compositions and compare between them. The dataset further allows us to look at the effects of family structure on an array of traits relating to sexual maturity, reproduction, and risk-taking. Our results show that, for both sexes, living with a single mother or mother and stepfather during childhood was often associated with faster progression to life history events and greater propensity for risk-taking behaviours. However, living with a single father or father and stepmother was typically not significantly different to having both natural parents for these outcomes. Our results withstand adjustment for socioeconomic status, age, ethnicity, age at puberty (where applicable), and sibling configuration. While these results support the hypothesis that early family environment influences subsequent reproductive strategy, the different responses to the presence or absence of different parental figures in the household rearing environment suggests that particular family constructions exert independent influences on childhood outcomes. Our results suggest that father-absent households (i.e. single mothers or mothers and stepfathers) are most highly associated with subsequent fast life history progressions, compared with mother-absent households, and those with two natural parents.
Accidents in Malaysian Construction Industry: Statistical Data and Court Cases

Safety and health issues remain critical to the construction industry due to its working environment and the complexity of working practises. This research attempts to adopt 2 research approaches using statistical data and court cases to address and identify the causes and behavior underlying construction safety and health issues in Malaysia. Factual data on the period of 2000–2009 were retrieved to identify the causes and agents that contributed to health issues. Moreover, court cases were tabulated and analyzed to identify legal patterns of parties involved in construction site accidents. Approaches of this research produced consistent results and highlighted a significant reduction in the rate of accidents per construction project in Malaysia.
Dust Heating by the Interstellar Radiation Field in Models of Turbulent Molecular Clouds

We have calculated the radiation field, dust grain temperatures, and far-infrared emissivity of numerical models of turbulent molecular clouds. When compared to a uniform cloud of the same mean optical depth, most of the volume inside the turbulent cloud is brighter, but most of the mass is darker. There is little mean attenuation from center to edge, and clumping causes the radiation field to be somewhat bluer. There is also a large dispersion, typically by a few orders of magnitude, of all quantities relative to their means. However, despite the scatter, the 850 μm emission maps are well correlated with surface density. The fraction of mass as a function of intensity can be reproduced by a simple hierarchical model of density structure.
Normative measurements of orbital structures using MRI.

PURPOSE The purpose of this work was to establish criteria for the diameters of normal extraocular muscles and superior ophthalmic vein and width of the optic nerve-sheath complex, to determine normal globe position as seen on MRI, and to investigate the effects of age and sex on these structures. METHOD Diameters of the extraocular muscles and superior ophthalmic vein, width of the optic nerve-sheath complex, and distance from the interzygomatic line to the posterior margin of the globe were calculated for 200 normal orbits of 100 patients on T1-weighted MR scans. RESULTS Normal ranges for diameters of the extraocular muscles were as follows (mean +/- 2 SD): medial rectus, 3.2-4.9 mm; lateral rectus, 2.6-4.8 mm; inferior rectus, 3.7-6.0 mm; superior group, 3.1-5.6 mm; superior oblique, 2.4-4.1 mm. The normal position of the posterior pole of the globe was 8.9 mm behind the interzygomatic line (range 5.0-12.7 mm). The mean diameters of the extraocular muscles in male patients were significantly larger than those in female patients (p < 0.001). CONCLUSION These data may be of value in quantitatively evaluating MRI of the orbit.
Evidence for Enhanced Interoceptive Accuracy in Professional Musicians

Interoception is defined as the perceptual activity involved in the processing of internal bodily signals. While the ability of internal perception is considered a relatively stable trait, recent data suggest that learning to integrate multisensory information can modulate it. Making music is a uniquely rich multisensory experience that has shown to alter motor, sensory, and multimodal representations in the brain of musicians. We hypothesize that musical training also heightens interoceptive accuracy comparable to other perceptual modalities. Thirteen professional singers, twelve string players, and thirteen matched non-musicians were examined using a well-established heartbeat discrimination paradigm complemented by self-reported dispositional traits. Results revealed that both groups of musicians displayed higher interoceptive accuracy than non-musicians, whereas no differences were found between singers and string-players. Regression analyses showed that accumulated musical practice explained about 49% variation in heartbeat perception accuracy in singers but not in string-players. Psychometric data yielded a number of psychologically plausible inter-correlations in musicians related to performance anxiety. However, dispositional traits were not a confounding factor on heartbeat discrimination accuracy. Together, these data provide first evidence indicating that professional musicians show enhanced interoceptive accuracy compared to non-musicians. We argue that musical training largely accounted for this effect.
When a Movement Becomes a Party: Computational Assessment of New Forms of Political Organization in Social Media

Social media has become a key mechanism for the organization of grassroots movements. In the 2015 Barcelona City Council election, Barcelona en Comú, an emerging grassroots party, was the most voted one. This candidacy was devised by activists involved in the Spanish 15M movement in order to turn citizen outrage into political change. On the one hand, the 15M movement is based on a decentralized structure. On the other hand, political science literature postulates that parties historically develop oligarchical leadership structures. This tension motivates us to examine whether Barcelona en Comú preserved a decentralized structure or adopted a conventional centralized organization. In this article we propose a computational framework to analyze the Twitter networks of the parties that ran for this election by measuring their hierarchical structure, small-world phenomenon and coreness. The results of our assessment show that in Barcelona en Comú two well-defined groups co-exist: a cluster dominated by the party leader and the collective accounts, and another cluster formed by the movement activists. While the former group is highly centralized like traditional parties, the latter one stands out for its decentralized, cohesive and resilient structure.
Performance analysis of decode and forward cooperative diversity networks with threshold scheme

Cooperative diversity technique is used for achieving high data rate and low BER with low transmit power. The paper proposes a new scheme for selection of first relay having SNR above a predefined threshold level in cooperative diversity network, based on geometric distribution. Closed form expression for outage probability is derived for independent and identically distributed channels with decode and forward protocol. Numerical results show that the proposed scheme not only minimizes resource requirements but also improves the overall outage probability over previously proposed schemes for cooperative diversity network.
On Detecting Adversarial Perturbations

Machine learning and deep learning in particular has advanced tremendously on perceptual tasks in recent years. However, it remains vulnerable against adversarial perturbations of the input that have been crafted specifically to fool the system while being quasi-imperceptible to a human. In this work, we propose to augment deep neural networks with a small "detector" subnetwork which is trained on the binary classification task of distinguishing genuine data from data containing adversarial perturbations. Our method is orthogonal to prior work on addressing adversarial perturbations, which has mostly focused on making the classification network itself more robust. We show empirically that adversarial perturbations can be detected surprisingly well even though they are quasi-imperceptible to humans. Moreover, while the detectors have been trained to detect only a specific adversary, they generalize to similar and weaker adversaries. In addition, we propose an adversarial attack that fools both the classifier and the detector and a novel training procedure for the detector that counteracts this attack.
Family-Joining: A Fast Distance-Based Method for Constructing Generally Labeled Trees

The widely used model for evolutionary relationships is a bifurcating tree with all taxa/observations placed at the leaves. This is not appropriate if the taxa have been densely sampled across evolutionary time and may be in a direct ancestral relationship, or if there is not enough information to fully resolve all the branching points in the evolutionary tree. In this article, we present a fast distance-based agglomeration method called family-joining (FJ) for constructing so-called generally labeled trees in which taxa may be placed at internal vertices and the tree may contain polytomies. FJ constructs such trees on the basis of pairwise distances and a distance threshold. We tested three methods for threshold selection, FJ-AIC, FJ-BIC, and FJ-CV, which minimize Akaike information criterion, Bayesian information criterion, and cross-validation error, respectively. When compared with related methods on simulated data, FJ-BIC was among the best at reconstructing the correct tree across a wide range of simulation scenarios. FJ-BIC was applied to HIV sequences sampled from individuals involved in a known transmission chain. The FJ-BIC tree was found to be compatible with almost all transmission events. On average, internal branches in the FJ-BIC tree have higher bootstrap support than branches in the leaf-labeled bifurcating tree constructed using RAxML. 36% and 25% of the internal branches in the FJ-BIC tree and RAxML tree, respectively, have bootstrap support greater than 70%. To the best of our knowledge the method presented here is the first attempt at modeling evolutionary relationships using generally labeled trees.