Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Journal of Insect Science: Vol. 2006 | Article 24

Wolbachia are maternally inherited intracellular bacteria that infect a wide range of arthropods and nematodes and are associated with various reproductive abnormalities in their hosts. The infection by Wolbachia of the psocid, Liposcelis tricolor (Psocoptera: Liposcelididae), was investigated using long PCR amplification of the wsp gene that codes for a Wolbachia surface protein. The results showed that L. tricolor was positive for Wolbachia. Phylogenetic analysis showed that the Wolbachia found in L. tricolor was related to the B-group. Wolbachia infection in L. tricolor could be removed through antibiotic treatment. The results of crosses including ♀W+ x ♂W+, ♀W− x ♂W+, ♀W+ x ♂W−, and ♀W− x ♂W−, suggested that the removal of Wolbachia resulted in lower egg production by L. tricolor. The mean embryonic mortality of offspring produced by L. tricolor without Wolbachia was significantly higher than that of control.
Assessing Software Service Quality and Trustworthiness at Selection Time

The integration of external software in project development is challenging and risky, notably because the execution quality of the software and the trustworthiness of the software provider may be unknown at integration time. This is a timely problem and of increasing importance with the advent of the SaaS model of service delivery. Therefore, in choosing the SaaS service to utilize, project managers must identify and evaluate the level of risk associated with each candidate. Trust is commonly assessed through reputation systems; however, existing systems rely on ratings provided by consumers. This raises numerous issues involving the subjectivity and unfairness of the service ratings. This paper describes a framework for reputation-aware software service selection and rating. A selection algorithm is devised for service recommendation, providing SaaS consumers with the best possible choices based on quality, cost, and trust. An automated rating model, based on the expectancy-disconfirmation theory from market science, is also defined to overcome feedback subjectivity issues. The proposed rating and selection models are validated through simulations, demonstrating that the system can effectively capture service behavior and recommend the best possible choices.
Nurse work engagement impacts job outcome and nurse-assessed quality of care: model testing with nurse practice environment and nurse work characteristics as predictors

Aim: To explore the mechanisms through which nurse practice environment dimensions, such as nurse–physician relationship, nurse management at the unit level and hospital management and organizational support, are associated with job outcomes and nurse-assessed quality of care. Mediating variables included nurse work characteristics of workload, social capital, decision latitude, as well as work engagement dimensions of vigor, dedication and absorption. Background: Understanding how to support and guide nurse practice communities in their daily effort to answer complex care most accurate, alongside with the demand of a stable and healthy nurse workforce, is challenging. Design: Cross-sectional survey. Method: Based on earlier empirical findings, a structural equation model, designed with valid measurement instruments, was tested. The study population included registered acute care hospital nurses (N = 1201) in eight hospitals across Belgium. Results: Nurse practice environment dimensions predicted nurses’ ratings of job outcome variables as well as quality of care. Features of nurses’ work characteristics, e.g., perceived workload, decision latitude, social capital, and the three dimension of work engagement, played mediating roles between nurse practice environment and outcomes. A revised model, using various fit measures, explained 60% of job outcomes and 47% of nurse-assessed quality of care. Conclusion: The findings in this study show that nurse work characteristics as workload, decision latitude, and social capital, alongside with nurse work engagement (e.g., vigor, dedication, and absorption) influence nurses’ perspective of their nurse practice environment, job outcomes, and quality of care. The results underline aspects to considerate for various stakeholders, such as executives, nurse managers, physicians, and staff nurses, in setting up and organizing health care services.
Financial Sector Shocks, External Finance Premium and Business Cycle

This paper extends Nolan and Thoenissen (2009), hence NT, model with an explicit financial intermediary that transfer funds from households to entrepreneurs subject to a well defined loan production function. The loan productivity shock is treated as the supply side financial disturbance. Together with NT.s net worth shock that resembles the credit demand perturbation, both of the two-sided shocks are robustly extracted by combining the model with US quarterly data. The two shocks are found to be tightly linked with the post-war recessions. Each recession happens when both of the two shocks become contractionary. A few potential economic downturns seem to have been avoided because of the expansion of credit which offset the simultaneous contraction of entrepreneurial net wealth. This new introduced shock has significant explanatory power for the variance of EFP and the model simulated EFP holds high correlation with various spreads as proxies for empirical EFP.
Discomfort-related changes in pup ultrasonic calls of fat-tailed gerbils Pachyuromys duprasi

Abstract Rodent pups vocalize when placed in social isolation. We apply a method of “joint calls” for examining discomfort in rodent pup ultrasonic (>20 kHz) calls. Previously, this method has been developed for audible calls of fur farm mammals. Using a repeated measures design to exclude effects of individual identity and age on the analysed variables, we compared the ultrasonic call variables produced by 8–40-day pups of fat-tailed gerbils Pachyuromys duprasi during two subsequent experimental stages, the Isolation Stage and the Handling Stage. We considered that discomfort-related negative emotional arousal increased towards the Handling Stage compared to the Isolation Stage because of cumulative effects of handling and time of pup isolation from the nest. At the Isolation Stage, the call rate (calls/s) was higher from 10 to 18 days of age, whereas both the maximum amplitude frequency and power quartiles of joint calls were lower than at the Handling Stage from 20 to 32 days of age. At the same time, in audible (<20 kHz) vocalizations of a wide range of mammalian species, both the higher call rate and the upward shift of the maximum amplitude frequency and power quartiles indicate the discomfort-related increase of negative emotional arousal. We discuss the advantages of the method of joint calls for express-analyses of power variables for large sequences of ultrasonic vocalizations of complex acoustic structure during experimental trials.
The Korean Version of the Pediatric Symptom Checklist: Psychometric Properties in Korean School-aged Children

Psychosocial problems increase the risk for mental health problems and increase the need for health care services in children and adolescents. Primary care practice is a valuable avenue for identifying the need for more specialized mental health care. We hypothesized that Korean version of the pediatric symptom checklist (PSC) would be a useful tool for early detection of psychosocial problems in children and adolescents in Korea and we aimed to suggest cut-off scores for detecting meaningful psychosocial problems. A total of 397 children with their parents and 97 child patients with their parents were asked to complete the PSC Korean version and the child behavior checklist (CBCL). The internal reliability and test-retest reliability of the PSC as well as the cut-off score of the PSC was determined via receiver operating characteristic analysis of the CBCL score, clinical group scores and non-clinical group scores. The internal consistency of the PSC-Korean version was excellent (Cronbach's alpha = 0.95). The test-retest reliability was r = 0.73 (P < 0.001). Using clinical CBCL scores (total score, externalizing score, internalizing score, respectively ≥ 60) and presence of clinical diagnosis, the recommended cut-off score of the PSC was 14. Using 494 Korean children aged 7-12 yr, the current study assessed the reliability and validity of a Korean version of the PSC and suggested a cut-off for recommending further clinical assessment. The present results suggest that the Korean version of the PSC has good internal consistency and validity using the standard of CBCL scores. Graphical Abstract
Modelling Morphographemic Alternations in Derivation of Czech

Abstract The present paper deals with morphographemic alternations in Czech derivation with regard to the build-up of a large-coverage lexical resource specialized in derivational morphology of contemporary Czech (DeriNet database). After a summary of available descriptions in the Czech linguistic literature and Natural Language Processing, an extensive list of alternations is provided in the first part of the paper with a focus on their manifestation in writing. Due to the significant frequency and limited predictability of alternations in Czech derivation, several bottom-up methods were used in order to adequately model the alternations in DeriNet. Suffix-substitution rules proved to be efficient for alternations in the final position of the stem, whereas a specialized approach of extracting alternations from inflectional paradigms was used for modelling alternations within the roots. Alternations connected with derivation of verbs were handled as a separate task. DeriNet data are expected to be helpful in developing a tool for morphemic segmentation and, once the segmentation is available, to become a reliable resource for data-based description of word formation including alternations in Czech.
Characterization of silicifid fossil assemblage from upper Carnian “Amphiclina beds” at Crngrob (central Slovenia)

The village of Crngrob (central Slovenia) is known to geologists for the silicified fossils found in the thick soil covering the “Amphiclina beds”, a Carnian lithostratigraphic unit of the Mesozoic Slovenian Basin. Due to silicification, the assemblage may provide an important insight into Carnian marine life; however, the nature of the fossil assemblage, as well as the timing and mode of silicification are unknown. A detailed sedimentological section, which covers the uppermost part of the “Amphiclina beds” and their transition to the “Bača Dolomite”, was recorded at one of the fossil-bearing localities. The section consists of limestone (including bioturbated filament and radiolaria-filament wackestones, laminated filament packstone, bioclast wackestone, peloid packstone, floatstone with intraclasts and bioclasts, and intraclast floatstone and rudstone), marlstone and dolomite. Chert is locally present in nodules or as dispersed silicified patches, giving a speckled appearance to the host rock. According to our interpretation, the deposition of the limestone occurred via hemipelagic settling, turbidite currents and debris flows in a slope-to-basin or outer ramp setting. The composition of the grains (which include green algae fragments, thick-shelled bivalves, corals and solenoporacean algae) clearly points to the allochthonous nature of the material, which was largely derived from shallow-water environments. Fossils, as well as the intraclasts and sometimes the matrix, are locally replaced by chalcedony and granular megaquartz. This type of silicification does not appear to be selective to particular microfacies. As the silicification occurred after the down-slope transport of shells and the deposition of the sediment, the Crngrob fossil assemblage represents a thanatocoenosis or even a taphocoenosis, and it is not representative of autochthonous Carnian associations.
Differential deficits in expression recognition in gene-carriers and patients with Huntington ’ s disease

Previous studies in symptomatic patients and asymptomatic gene-carriers of Huntington’s disease (HD) reported a differential deficit in the recognition of facial expressions of disgust. This impairment may point to involvement of the basal ganglia in the recognition of disgust. In this study, we compared the performance of 20 patients with symptoms of HD, 20 gene-carriers of HD and 20 healthy controls on two tests of facial expressions in order to further investigate the role of the basal ganglia in disgust recognition. Recognition of fear, rather than disgust, was most severely impaired in the patients, who were also impaired at recognising expressions of anger, disgust and sadness. Direct testing for a differential deficit in disgust at the group level (and at the level of individual HD cases) revealed that the patients were in fact significantly more impaired on the other negative expressions than on disgust. The gene-carriers were not impaired on any expression, although there was a trend for the gene-carriers to be poorer at recognising fearful faces than the controls. We argue that the expression recognition performance of the patients and gene-carriers simply reflects differences in task difficulty, rather than dysfunction of any mechanisms dedicated to specific emotions. In contrast to previous studies in patients or gene-carriers of HD, our findings provide no evidence for a role of the basal ganglia in the recognition of disgust and cast doubt on whether results from HD patients and gene-carriers can be used in support of a double dissociation between recognition of disgust and fear. © 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Increased serum interleukin-6 levels in patients with hidradenitis suppurativa

Address for correspondence: Xinfeng Wu, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Molecular Biology for Skin Diseases and STIs, Jiangsu, China, phone: 86-13675109778, fax: 86-25-85478035, e-mail: wuxinfengdr@163.com; Baoxi Wang, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Molecular Biology for Skin Diseases and STIs, Jiangsu, China, phone: 86-13815441336, fax: 86-10-88771611, e-mail: wangbx@ncstdlc.org Received: 23.11. 2015, accepted: 11.04. 2016. Increased serum interleukin-6 levels in patients with hidradenitis suppurativa
Acoustic characteristics of a multi-rotor MAV and its noise reduction technology

The present paper is devoted to identify the acoustic characteristic of a multi-rotor MAV, and then explore effective noise reduction technologies for suppressing its high-level noise. It is found that the noise is mainly generated by the high-speed rotating propellers. Surrounding engine rotors with ducts designed to absorb their acoustic emissions is one of the methods typically used for reducing their noise. Thus two duct configurations, with non-perforated internal wall and with micro-perforated internal wall with back cavity, are designed, fabricated using 3D printing, and tested on a multi-rotor MAV. The acoustic performance of these ducts for achieving a quieter flying multi-rotor MAV are analyzed and discussed.
Monocyte Chemotactic Protein-1 Gene Expression in Blood and Ascitic Fluid of Cirrhotic Patients with Spontaneous Bacterial Peritonitis

group showed a significant decrease in level of MCP-1 gene expression in blood and ascitic fluid after resolution of infection by appropriate treatment of SBP. Conclusion: MCP-1 gene expression in both blood and ascitic fluid may be related to pathophysiology and course of SBP and can be used as a marker for diagnosis.
The complex allosteric and redox regulation of the fumarate hydratase and malate dehydratase reactions of Arabidopsis thaliana Fumarase 1 and 2 gives clues for understanding the massive accumulation of fumarate

Arabidopsis thaliana possesses two fumarase genes (FUM), AtFUM1 (At2g47510) encoding for the mitochondrial Krebs cycle‐associated enzyme and AtFUM2 (At5g50950) for the cytosolic isoform required for fumarate massive accumulation. Here, the comprehensive biochemical studies of AtFUM1 and AtFUM2 shows that they are active enzymes with similar kinetic parameters but differential regulation. For both enzymes, fumarate hydratase (FH) activity is favored over the malate dehydratase (MD) activity; however, MD is the most regulated activity with several allosteric activators. Oxalacetate, glutamine, and/or asparagine are modulators causing the MD reaction to become preferred over the FH reaction. Activity profiles as a function of pH suggest a suboptimal FUM activity in Arabidopsis cells; moreover, the direction of the FUM reaction is sensitive to pH changes. Under mild oxidation conditions, AtFUMs form high mass molecular aggregates, which present both FUM activities decreased to a different extent. The biochemical properties of oxidized AtFUMs (oxAtFUMs) were completely reversed by NADPH‐supplied Arabidopsis leaf extracts, suggesting that the AtFUMs redox regulation can be accomplished in vivo. Mass spectrometry analyses indicate the presence of an active site‐associated intermolecular disulfide bridge in oxAtFUMs. Finally, a phylogenetic approach points out that other plant species may also possess cytosolic FUM2 enzymes mainly encoded by paralogous genes, indicating that the evolutionary history of this trait has been drawn through a process of parallel evolution. Overall, according to our results, a multilevel regulatory pattern of FUM activities emerges, supporting the role of this enzyme as a carbon flow monitoring point through the organic acid metabolism in plants.
Some further evidence about magnification and shape in neural gas

Neural gas (NG) is a robust vector quantization algorithm for which a descriptive mathematical model is known. According to this model, the output configuration produced by the NG algorithm samples the input data distribution with a density that follows a power law with a magnification factor that depends on data dimensionality only. The effects of shape in the input data distribution on the NG behavior, however, are not entirely covered by the NG model above, due to the technical difficulties involved. The results of the experimental work described here show that the effects of shape are indeed relevant; more specifically, experiments reveal that shape can induce richer and more complex NG behaviors than those predicted by the power law alone. Although a more comprehensive analytical model remains to be defined, the evidence collected in these experiments suggests that these specific NG behaviors have an interesting potential for detecting complex shapes in noisy datasets.
Exceptionally preserved North American Paleogene metatherians: adaptations and discovery of a major gap in the opossum fossil record

A major gap in our knowledge of the evolution of marsupial mammals concerns the Paleogene of the northern continents, a critical time and place to link the early history of metatherians in Asia and North America with the more recent diversification in South America and Australia. We studied new exceptionally well-preserved partial skeletons of the Early Oligocene fossil Herpetotherium from the White River Formation in Wyoming, which allowed us to test the relationships of this taxon and examine its adaptations. Herpetotheriidae, with a fossil record extending from the Cretaceous to the Miocene, has traditionally been allied with opossums (Didelphidae) based on fragmentary material, mainly dentitions. Analysis of the new material reveals that several aspects of the cranial and postcranial anatomy, some of which suggests a terrestrial lifestyle, distinguish Herpetotherium from opossums. We found that Herpetotherium is the sister group to the crown group Marsupialia and is not a stem didelphid. Combination of the new palaeontological data with molecular divergence estimates, suggests the presence of a long undocumented gap in the fossil record of opossums extending some 45 Myr from the Early Miocene to the Cretaceous.
Female and Male Hacker Conferences Attendees: Their Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ) Scores and Self-Reported Adulthood Experiences

To date, studies on those in the Computer Underground have tended to focus not on aspects of hackers’ life experiences but on the skills needed to hack, the differences and similarities between insider and outsider crackers, and the differences in motivation for hacking. Little is known about the personality traits of the White Hat hackers, as compared to the Black Hat hackers. This chapter focuses on hacker conference attendees’ self-reported Autism-spectrum Quotient (AQ) predispositions. It also focuses on their self-reports about whether they believe their somewhat odd thinking and behaving patterns—at least as others in the mainstream society view them—help them to be successful in their chosen field of endeavor.
Development and Psychometric Analysis of the Sense of Community Descriptors Scale

The authors report the development and robust evaluation of the psychometric properties of the Sense of Community Descriptors Scale, which, as one of the few scales that measures the psychological sense of community regardless of context, can be utilized in all kinds of communities for assessing community intervention effectiveness. The Sense of Community Descriptors Scale uses a semi-projective method in the form of a semantic differential. Contrary to the majority of sense of community measures stemming from the theory of McMillan and Chavis, the Sense of Community Descriptors Scale is based on Peck’s theory. It measures the sense of community in a real and ideal community. The degree of differences between them is then used to determine the level of satisfaction. The reliability of the scale was high, and its convergent validity was supported by the correlation of the Perceived Sense of Community Scale and the Brief Sense of Community Scale. Factor analysis showed three dimensions (Acceptance, Dynamics, and Openness). The Sense of Community Descriptors Scale is a reliable and valid instrument for measuring the level of psychological sense of community beyond the specific context of such community and in various multilayer communities.
Postnatal Depression and Child Development

Summary This study investigates whether three-year-old children whose mothers had been depressed after their birth showed more behaviour disturbance than children of mothers who were not depressed at that time. Ninety-one of 103 mothers who took part in an earlier prospective study of postnatal depression were reinterviewed three years later to determine their present mental state, and to assess their child's behaviour, using Richman's Behavioural Screening Questionnaire. No relationship was found between a prolonged postnatal depression and behaviour disturbance in the child, but children whose mothers had brief postnatal depressive episodes showed more behaviour disturbance than those whose mothers had not been depressed since childbirth.