Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Why Trees Migrate So Fast: Confronting Theory with Dispersal Biology and the Paleorecord

Reid's paradox describes the fact that classical models cannot account for the rapid ( \documentclass{aastex} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{bm} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{pifont} \usepackage{stmaryrd} \usepackage{textcomp} \usepackage{portland,xspace} \usepackage{amsmath,amsxtra} \usepackage[OT2,OT1]{fontenc} \newcommand\cyr{ \renewcommand\rmdefault{wncyr} \renewcommand\sfdefault{wncyss} \renewcommand\encodingdefault{OT2} \normalfont \selectfont} \DeclareTextFontCommand{\textcyr}{\cyr} \pagestyle{empty} \DeclareMathSizes{10}{9}{7}{6} \begin{document} \landscape $$10^{2}\,- \,10^{3}\,\mathrm{m\,yr}\,^{- 1}$$ \end{document} ) spread of trees at the end of the Pleistocene. I use field estimates of seed dispersal with an integrodifference equation and simulation models of population growth to show that dispersal data are compatible with rapid spread. Dispersal estimates lay to rest the possibility that rapid spread occurred by diffusion. The integrodifference model predicts that, if the seed shadow has a long ‘fat’ tail, then rapid spread is possible, despite short average dispersal distances. It further predicts that velocity is more sensitive to life history than is classical diffusion. Application of such models is frustrated because the tail of the seed shadow cannot be fitted to data. However, the data can be used to test a ‘long‐distance’ hypothesis against alternative (‘local’) models of dispersal using Akaike's Information Criterion and likelihood ratio tests. Tests show that data are consistent with >10% of seed dispersed as a long ( \documentclass{aastex} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{bm} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{pifont} \usepackage{stmaryrd} \usepackage{textcomp} \usepackage{portland,xspace} \usepackage{amsmath,amsxtra} \usepackage[OT2,OT1]{fontenc} \newcommand\cyr{ \renewcommand\rmdefault{wncyr} \renewcommand\sfdefault{wncyss} \renewcommand\encodingdefault{OT2} \normalfont \selectfont} \DeclareTextFontCommand{\textcyr}{\cyr} \pagestyle{empty} \DeclareMathSizes{10}{9}{7}{6} \begin{document} \landscape $$10^{2}$$ \end{document} m) fat‐tailed kernel. Models based on such kernels predict spread as rapid as that inferred from the pollen record. If fat‐tailed dispersal explains these rapid rates, then it is surprising not to see large differences in velocities among taxa with contrasting life histories. The inference of rapid spread, together with lack of obvious life‐history effects, suggests velocities may have not reached their potentials, being stalled by rates of climate change, geography, or both.
Bats respond to polarity of a magnetic field

Bats have been shown to use information from the Earth's magnetic field during orientation. However, the mechanism underlying this ability remains unknown. In this study we investigated whether bats possess a polarity- or inclination-based compass that could be used in orientation. We monitored the hanging position of adult Nyctalus plancyi in the laboratory in the presence of an induced magnetic field of twice Earth-strength. When under the influence of a normally aligned induced field the bats showed a significant preference for hanging at the northern end of their roosting basket. When the vertical component of the field was reversed, the bats remained at the northern end of the basket. However, when the horizontal component of the field was reversed, the bats changed their positions and hung at the southern end of the basket. Based on these results, we conclude that N. plancyi, unlike all other non-mammalian vertebrates tested to date, uses a polarity-based compass during orientation in the roost, and that the same compass is also likely to underlie bats' long-distance navigation abilities.
Phylogeny of Calyptraeotheres Campos, 1990 (Crustacea, Decapoda, Brachyura, Pinnotheridae) with the description of C. pepeluisi new species from the tropical Mexican Pacific

A reassessment of the adult and larval morphology as well as comparison with published molecular information confirms the monophyly of the genus Calyptraeotheres Campos, 1990, and its relationship with Dissodactylus Smith, 1870, Clypeasterophilus Campos & Griffith, 1990 and Tumidotheres Campos, 1990. Calyptraeotheres pepeluisi new species, is described from Michoacan, Mexico on the basis of a female specimen. The new species is distinguished from the other nominal species of the genus by having a subarcuate carapace with longer setae on its front and anterolateral margin, the eyes are dorsally visible, and a third maxilliped with a 2-segmented palp and a conical propodus.
General secretion pathway (eps) genes required for toxin secretion and outer membrane biogenesis in Vibrio cholerae

The general secretion pathway (GSP) of Vibrio cholerae is required for secretion of proteins including chitinase, enterotoxin, and protease through the outer membrane. In this study, we report the cloning and sequencing of a DNA fragment from V. cholerae, containing 12 open reading frames, epsC to -N, which are similar to GSP genes of Aeromonas, Erwinia, Klebsiella, Pseudomonas, and Xanthomonas spp. In addition to the two previously described genes, epsE and epsM (M. Sandkvist, V. Morales, and M. Bagdasarian, Gene 123: 81-86, 1993; L. J. Overbye, M. Sandkvist, and M. Bagdasarian, Gene 132:101-106, 1993), it is shown here that epsC, epsF, epsG, and epsL also encode proteins essential for GSP function. Mutations in the eps genes result in aberrant outer membrane protein profiles, which indicates that the GSP, or at least some of its components, is required not only for secretion of soluble proteins but also for proper outer membrane assembly. Several of the Eps proteins have been identified by use of the T7 polymerase-promoter system in Escherichia coli. One of them, a pilin-like protein, EpsG, was analyzed also in V. cholerae and found to migrate as two bands on polyacrylamide gels, suggesting that in this organism it might be processed or otherwise modified by a prepilin peptidase. We believe that TcpJ prepilin peptidase, which processes the subunit of the toxin-coregulated pilus, TcpA, is not involved in this event. This is supported by the observations that apparent processing of EpsG occurs in a tcpJ mutant of V. cholerae and that, when coexpressed in E. coli, TcpJ cannot process EpsG although the PilD peptidase from Neisseria gonorrhoeae can.
Reduction of autoregressive noise with shift-invariant wavelet-packets

We present a new wavelet-based method for reducing additive autoregressive noise. The method uses a shift-invariant wavelet-packet transform to facilitate a linear transformation of wavelet-packet basis vectors. The transformed basis vectors are shown to be better suited than the original basis vectors for use in conventional wavelet-based denoising algorithms which use the minimum description length (MDL) or thresholding approaches. A computational example is presented which demonstrates the advantages of the new algorithm. Autoregressive (AR) models provide a useful tool for adapting the MDL algorithm to the reduction of correlated noise. A straightforward adaptation involves fitting an AR model to the noise component, building an FIR prediction-error filter from the AR model, and using the filter to whiten the noise component.
Increased Risk of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Following Atopy

Abstract Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain the etiopathogenesis of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), including immune dysregulation. However, few population-based prospective cohort studies have been conducted on CFS and atopy. We investigated the relationship between atopy and CFS by using a population-based cohort study. In this prospective, population-based cohort study of the National Health Insurance Research Database, we identified 42,558 patients with atopy and 170,232 patients without atopy from 2005 to 2007 with follow-up to 2011. The incidence rates and risks for CFS were estimated using Cox proportion hazards regression. The overall incidence rate of CFS was higher in the atopy cohort compared with the nonatopy cohort (1.37 versus 0.87 per 1000 person-year), with an adjusted hazard ratio of 1.48 (95% confidence interval 1.30–1.69). The risk of CFS in the atopy cohort increased 1.47- to 1.50-fold for each nonexisting comorbidity. Patients with numerous atopic symptoms exhibited a biological gradient of increasing risk for CFS, and the risk changed significantly after adjustment for age, sex, and comorbidities, increasing from 1.46- to 2.59-fold. We revealed that atopy is associated with CFS, particularly in patients with numerous atopic syndromes. The actual mechanism for CFS development in patients with atopy remains unclear and requires further investigation. We recommend researching the subsequent fatigue symptom in patients with atopy, particularly those with multiple atopic syndromes.
Low Cost VLSI Architecture for Sample Adaptive Offset Encoder in HEVC

Sample Adaptive Offset (SAO) has been adopted as a new in-loop filtering block in High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC). It can significantly increase compression efficiency especially for sequences that contain computer graphics content up to 23%. To get the optimum SAO parameters, exhaustive operations are required because of the huge amount of samples which the encoder has to study. In this work, a low cost high throughput VLSI implementation for the parameter estimation (encoding) phase is proposed. The proposed novel architecture reduces the cost in terms of gates count by 47% in comparison with prior work. The proposed design is prototyped using 65 nm CMOS technology. It has 89.3 Kgates, 8832 bits SRAM, and a maximum clock frequency of 426 MHz. It can support real time 8K×4K@120fps videos at 378 MHz.
Capacity, throughput, and delay of slotted ALOHA DS-CDMA links with adaptive space-time auxiliary-vector receivers

We investigate the user capacity, throughput, and delay characteristics of a mobile slotted ALOHA direct-sequence code-division-multiple-access (DS-CDMA) link with dedicated signatures under multipath fading and packet-rate adaptive antenna array signal reception. For a given system transmission bit rate, the packet size is designed to be sufficiently small to conform with the coherence time of the channel. Then, on an individual packet-by-packet basis, a phase-ambiguous spatial-temporal channel estimate is produced by a blind (unsupervised) eigensubspace procedure. The space-time channel estimate is phase corrected via a few pilot packet mid-amble bits and used for joint spatial-temporal multiple-access-interference suppression according to the principles of auxiliary-vector filtering. Subsequently, packet success probabilities are derived in the presence or absence of forward error correction and are used to evaluate the throughput and delay characteristics of the link.
Hierarchical Segmentation Using Tree-Based Shape Spaces

Current trends in image segmentation are to compute a hierarchy of image segmentations from fine to coarse. A classical approach to obtain a single meaningful image partition from a given hierarchy is to cut it in an optimal way, following the seminal approach of the scale-set theory. While interesting in many cases, the resulting segmentation, being a non-horizontal cut, is limited by the structure of the hierarchy. In this paper, we propose a novel approach that acts by transforming an input hierarchy into a new saliency map. It relies on the notion of shape space: a graph representation of a set of regions extracted from the image. Each region is characterized with an attribute describing it. We weigh the boundaries of a subset of meaningful regions (local minima) in the shape space by extinction values based on the attribute. This extinction-based saliency map represents a new hierarchy of segmentations highlighting regions having some specific characteristics. Each threshold of this map represents a segmentation which is generally different from any cut of the original hierarchy. This new approach thus enlarges the set of possible partition results that can be extracted from a given hierarchy. Qualitative and quantitative illustrations demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed method.
MicroRNA-21 plays an oncogenic role by targeting FOXO1 and activating the PI3K/AKT pathway in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma

The prognostic implications of miR-21, miR-17-92 and miR-155 were evaluated in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) patients, and novel mechanism by which miR-21 contributes to the oncogenesis of DLBCL by regulating FOXO1 and PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway was investigated. The expressions of miR-21, miR-17-92 and miR-155 measured by quantitative reverse-transcription-PCR were significantly up-regulated in DLBCL tissues (n=200) compared to control tonsils (P=0.012, P=0.001 and P<0.0001). Overexpression of miR-21 and miR-17-92 was significantly associated with shorter progression-free survival (P=0.003 and P=0.014) and overall survival (P=0.004 and P=0.012). High miR-21 was an independent prognostic factor in DLBCL patients treated with rituximab-combined chemotherapy. MiR-21 level was inversely correlated with the levels of FOXO1 and PTEN in DLBCL cell lines. Reporter-gene assay showed that miR-21 directly targeted and suppressed the FOXO1 expression, and subsequently inhibited Bim transcription in DLBCL cells. MiR-21 also down-regulated PTEN expression and consequently activated the PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway, which further decreased FOXO1 expression. Moreover, miR-21 inhibitor suppressed the expression and activity of MDR1, thereby sensitizing DLBCL cells to doxorubicin. These data demonstrated that miR-21 plays an important oncogenic role in DLBCL by modulating the PI3K/AKT/mTOR/FOXO1 pathway at multiple levels resulting in strong prognostic implication. Therefore, targeting miR-21 may have therapeutic relevance in DLBCL.
Competition's Role in Developing Psychological Strength and Outstanding Performance

Competition, a topic closely associated with outstanding performance, continues to be a contentious topic (Bonta, 1997; Murayama & Elliot, 2012a, 2012b), particularly in the realm of education and schooling (D. W. Johnson & Johnson, 1987, 2009). Is competition a useful or detrimental strategy for promoting outstanding performance? Does competition contribute positively to performance or should it be avoided? In this article, we took on the challenge of exploring the relationship between competition and high performance and making recommendations about how competition can be used in promoting adaptive youth development. We begin by defining competition and outstanding performance. We then discuss competition in the context of the positive psychology movement, followed by brief reviews of literature showcasing how competition is related to enhanced performance in sport, organizational settings, and academic domains. Next, we discuss competition's relationship to creativity. The article closes with a discussion of the implications of this work for practice and research. It is our hope that this work will result in increased attention to high performance psychology as an important focus for scholarship and application in a wide range of arenas, from schools and the workplace to athletic and artistic venues.
Are patients with Parkinson’s disease blind to blindsight?

Diederich et al. propose that patients with Parkinson’s disease are “blind to blindsight” as they show preserved conscious vision, but erroneous “guess” localization of visual stimuli, poor saccades/motion perception, and poor emotional face perception with blunted autonomic reactions. Changes may reflect dysfunction of the phylogenetically old subconscious retino-colliculo-thalamo-amygdala and retino-geniculo-extrastriate pathways.
Weighted Sums of Random Kitchen Sinks: Replacing minimization with randomization in learning

Randomized neural networks are immortalized in this AI Koan: In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6. "What are you doing? " asked Minsky. "I am training a randomly wired neural net to play tic-tac-toe," Sussman replied. "Why is the net wired randomly? " asked Minsky. Sussman replied, "I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play. " Minsky then shut his eyes. "Why do you close your eyes? " Sussman asked his teacher. "So that the room will be empty," replied Minsky. At that moment, Sussman was enlightened. We analyze shallow random networks with the help of concentration of measure inequalities. Specifically, we consider architectures that compute a weighted sum of their inputs after passing them through a bank of arbitrary randomized nonlinearities. We identify conditions under which these networks exhibit good classification performance, and bound their test error in terms of the size of the dataset and the number of random nonlinearities.
First Early Hominin from Central Africa (Ishango, Democratic Republic of Congo)

Despite uncontested evidence for fossils belonging to the early hominin genus Australopithecus in East Africa from at least 4.2 million years ago (Ma), and from Chad by 3.5 Ma, thus far there has been no convincing evidence of Australopithecus, Paranthropus or early Homo from the western (Albertine) branch of the Rift Valley. Here we report the discovery of an isolated upper molar (#Ish25) from the Western Rift Valley site of Ishango in Central Africa in a derived context, overlying beds dated to between ca. 2.6 to 2.0 Ma. We used µCT imaging to compare its external and internal macro-morphology to upper molars of australopiths, and fossil and recent Homo. We show that the size and shape of the enamel-dentine junction (EDJ) surface discriminate between Plio-Pleistocene and post-Lower Pleistocene hominins, and that the Ishango molar clusters with australopiths and early Homo from East and southern Africa. A reassessment of the archaeological context of the specimen is consistent with the morphological evidence and suggest that early hominins were occupying this region by at least 2 Ma.
Credit Constraints in Education

We review studies of the impact of credit constraints on the accumulation of human capital. Evidence suggests that credit constraints have recently become important for schooling and other aspects of households' behavior. We highlight the importance of early childhood investments, as their response largely determines the impact of credit constraints on the overall lifetime acquisition of human capital. We also review the intergenerational literature and examine the macroeconomic impacts of credit constraints on social mobility and the income distribution. A common limitation across all areas of the human capital literature is the imposition of ad hoc constraints on credit. We propose a more careful treatment of the structure of government student loan programs and the incentive problems underlying private credit. We show that endogenizing constraints on credit for human capital helps explain observed borrowing, schooling, and default patterns and offers new insights about the design of government policy.
Ambulatory assessed implicit affect is associated with salivary cortisol

One of the presumed pathways linking negative emotions to adverse somatic health is an overactive HPA-axis, usually indicated by elevated cortisol levels. Traditionally, research has focused on consciously reported negative emotions. Yet, given that the majority of information processing occurs without conscious awareness, stress physiology might also be influenced by affective processes that people are not aware of. In a 24-h ambulatory study we examined whether cortisol levels were associated with two implicit measures. Implicit affect was assessed using the Implicit Positive and Negative Affect Test, and implicit negative memory bias was assessed with the word fragment completion tasks. In 55 healthy participants, we measured subjective stress levels, worries, implicit, and explicit affect each hour during waking hours. Also, saliva samples were collected at three fixed times during the day, as well as upon waking and 30 min thereafter (cortisol awakening response). Multilevel analyses of the daytime cortisol levels revealed that the presence of an implicit negative memory bias was associated with increased cortisol levels. Additionally, implicit PA and, unexpectedly, implicit NA were negatively associated with cortisol levels. Finally, participants demonstrating higher levels of implicit sadness during the first measurement day, had a stronger cortisol rise upon awakening at the next day. Contrary to previous research, no associations between explicit affect and cortisol were apparent. The current study was the first to examine the concurrent relation between implicit measures and stress physiology in daily life. The results suggest that the traditional focus on consciously reported feelings and emotions is limited, and that implicit measures can add to our understanding of how stress and emotions contribute to daily physiological activity and, in the long term, health problems.
J un 2 00 4 CRYSTAL STRUCTURES OF Ni 2 MnGa FROM DENSITY FUNCTIONAL CALCULATIONS

The different crystal structures of ferromagnetic Ni2MnGa have been calculated using density functional theory (DFT) with special emphasis on the modulated structures 10M and 14M. These are important for understanding the stability of Ni2MnGa martensites and their functionality as shape-memory materials. The modulated structures have been optimized in the calculations and their properties are discussed in relation to the structures without modulation. The occurrence of the modulated structures is related to the soft TA2 phonon mode observed in Ni2MnGa. The latter is related to the specific nesting behavior of the Fermi surface in Ni2MnGa. Particular shapes of the modulated structures are stabilized by the covalent interaction mediated by the p-orbitals of Ga and d-orbitals of Ni. The role of this interaction becomes clear seen when considering the phonon dispersion spectrum of Ni2MnGa, where some characteristic anomalies occur in the coupling of acoustical vibrational modes and the optical modes of Ni.