Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Plant Cell Wall: A Complex and Dynamic Structure As Revealed by the Responses of Genes under Stress Conditions

The plant cell wall has a diversity of functions. It provides a structural framework to support plant growth and acts as the first line of defense when the plant encounters pathogens. The cell wall must also retain some flexibility, such that when subjected to developmental, biotic, or abiotic stimuli it can be rapidly remodeled in response. Genes encoding enzymes capable of synthesizing or hydrolyzing components of the plant cell wall show differential expression when subjected to different stresses, suggesting they may facilitate stress tolerance through changes in cell wall composition. In this review we summarize recent genetic and transcriptomic data from the literature supporting a role for specific cell wall-related genes in stress responses, in both dicot and monocot systems. These studies highlight that the molecular signatures of cell wall modification are often complex and dynamic, with multiple genes appearing to respond to a given stimulus. Despite this, comparisons between publically available datasets indicate that in many instances cell wall-related genes respond similarly to different pathogens and abiotic stresses, even across the monocot-dicot boundary. We propose that the emerging picture of cell wall remodeling during stress is one that utilizes a common toolkit of cell wall-related genes, multiple modifications to cell wall structure, and a defined set of stress-responsive transcription factors that regulate them.
[Data on the life cycle of Ribeiroia marini guadeloupensis n. ssp., a trematode sterilizing Biomphalaria glabrata in Guadeloupe].

Data on the life cycle of Ribeiroia marini guadeloupensis n.ssp. , Trematode sterilizing Biomphalaria glabrata in Guadeloupe. Maintenance of the life cycle with a view to an eventual control of the populations of Molluscs. In Guadeloupe (French West Indies), the definitive hosts of Ribeiroia marini guadeloupensis n.ssp. are the two species of rats: Rattus rattus and R. norvegicus. The first intermediate host is Biomphalaria glabrata, the vector of intestinal schistosomiasis. The second intermediate host is a fish (Tilapia mossambica, Poecilia reticulata). The different stages of the life cycle are described; the transmission is studied experimentally and in natural conditions. A method for producing eggs of this Trematode in large quantities is described.
Food and the Social Identities of People with Learning Disabilities

The behaviors surrounding food provision and consumption provide subtle, yet fundamental ways of defining social identities and structuring social relationships. The food consumption patterns of young adults with learning disabilities, and the control over their food consumption exercised by others, define them as 'children' even though they are physically and chronologically adults. These food-based behaviors contribute to the difficulties they face in achieving full social adulthood and thereby accentuate stigmatizing aspects of their social identities. Unsurprisingly, in some cases food becomes an area of conflict between these young people and their caregivers. Food provision also highlights a dilemma of the philosophy of care based on normalization theory, namely that actions taken to encourage age-appropriate behavior, and hence promote social adulthood in one sphere, may undermine adult identity in another. The paper is based on 18 months of participant observation and interviews with young adults with learning disabilities and their caregivers.
The HHpred interactive server for protein homology detection and structure prediction

HHpred is a fast server for remote protein homology detection and structure prediction and is the first to implement pairwise comparison of profile hidden Markov models (HMMs). It allows to search a wide choice of databases, such as the PDB, SCOP, Pfam, SMART, COGs and CDD. It accepts a single query sequence or a multiple alignment as input. Within only a few minutes it returns the search results in a user-friendly format similar to that of PSI-BLAST. Search options include local or global alignment and scoring secondary structure similarity. HHpred can produce pairwise query-template alignments, multiple alignments of the query with a set of templates selected from the search results, as well as 3D structural models that are calculated by the MODELLER software from these alignments. A detailed help facility is available. As a demonstration, we analyze the sequence of SpoVT, a transcriptional regulator from Bacillus subtilis. HHpred can be accessed at .
Gradient descent GAN optimization is locally stable

Despite the growing prominence of generative adversarial networks (GANs), optimization in GANs is still a poorly understood topic. In this paper, we analyze the "gradient descent" form of GAN optimization i.e., the natural setting where we simultaneously take small gradient steps in both generator and discriminator parameters. We show that even though GAN optimization does not correspond to a convex-concave game (even for simple parameterizations), under proper conditions, equilibrium points of this optimization procedure are still \emph{locally asymptotically stable} for the traditional GAN formulation. On the other hand, we show that the recently proposed Wasserstein GAN can have non-convergent limit cycles near equilibrium. Motivated by this stability analysis, we propose an additional regularization term for gradient descent GAN updates, which \emph{is} able to guarantee local stability for both the WGAN and the traditional GAN, and also shows practical promise in speeding up convergence and addressing mode collapse.
Excess offspring as a maternal strategy: constraints in the shared nursery of a giant damselfly

Maternal reproductive strategies should optimize the quality and quantity of surviving offspring. In Megaloprepus caerulatus, a damselfly that exhibits male-biased size dimorphism, larval siblicide, and a disproportionate fitness advantage from large sons, mothers lay many more eggs in water-filled tree holes than can survive to emergence. Using field experiments, I tested the siblicide advantage of excess offspring (i.e., faster development and/or larger survivors) in small and large holes and 2 alternative functions of excess offspring (predator satiation and insurance against nonpredator mortality). In small pots, the sole siblicidal survivors emerged larger than noncannibals but no sooner. However, doubling or even quadrupling a modest clutch of 25 failed to produce larger offspring. In large tubs, the size advantage that survivors gained from siblicide was constrained by a trade-off between offspring size and number. A clutch of 20 produced half as many but larger offspring than one of 100. When multiple females contributed eggs to a large nursery, size of survivors was independent of the mother's clutch size. Finally, large clutches failed to satiate dragonfly predators, and although 25 neonates were better than 2 as insurance against nonpredator mortality, a clutch of 50 provided no additional benefit. In natural and experimental holes, survivorship was female biased, suggesting that sons suffered greater mortality than daughters. Because mothers seemed unable to adaptively bias offspring sex ratio, excess offspring may compensate for the lower survivorship of sons, particularly in large nurseries where males garner a disproportionate size advantage relative to females. Copyright 2011, Oxford University Press.
Improving the Diversity of Top-N Recommendation via Determinantal Point Process

Recommender systems take the key responsibility to help users discover items that they might be interested in. Many recommendation algorithms are built upon similarity measures, which usually result in low intra-list diversity. The deficiency in capturing the whole range of user interest often leads to poor satisfaction. To solve this problem, increasing attention has been paid on improving the diversity of recommendation results in recent years. In this paper, we propose a novel method to improve the diversity of top-$N$ recommendation results based on the determinantal point process (DPP), which is an elegant model for characterizing the repulsion phenomenon. We propose an acceleration algorithm to greatly speed up the process of the result inference, making our algorithm practical for large-scale scenarios. We also incorporate a tunable parameter into the DPP model which allows the users to smoothly control the level of diversity. More diversity metrics are introduced to better evaluate diversification algorithms. We have evaluated our algorithm on several public datasets, and compared it thoroughly with other reference algorithms. Results show that our proposed algorithm provides a much better accuracy-diversity trade-off with comparable efficiency.
Fibroblastic rheumatism: clinical, histological, immunohistological, ultrastructural and biochemical study of a case

We report a case of fibroblastic rheumatism (FR). Only eight other cases of this recently described entity have been reported previously. FR is characterized hy polyarthralgia and joint stiffness without joint destruction, associated with cutaneous nodules and sclerodactyly. Histology shows an increase in the number of fihroblasts and marked dermal fibrosis, Rheumatological and skin manifestations may improve with corticosteroid therapy.
A Proposal Linking Atherogenesis to the Interaction of Endothelial Lipoprotein Lipase with Triglyceride‐Rich Lipoproteins

• A high concentration of plasma cholesterol has been recognized as one of the principal risk factors in the development of coronary, peripheral, and, possibly, cerebral arteriosclerosis in man. Studies in experimental animals have shown a direct relationship between hypercholesterolemia and the accumulation of cholesterol in the arterial wall. It is usually assumed that cholesterol in blood plasma is transferred to the arterial wall as such or as part of a lipoprotein complex. Indeed, free or complexed beta-lipoprotein or apoprotein has been demonstrated in atheromatous plaques and fatty streaks (1-6). It is not known, however, whether the presence of lipoprotein in a diseased artery causes plaque formation or results from increased arterial permeability due to the disease. The finding that cholesterol can enter the normal aortic wall as a constituent of lipoprotein, primarily beta-lipoprotein (7, 8), suggests the possibility of a causal relationship. Various mechanisms proposed to explain the accumulation of lipids in the arterial wall have been summarized recently (9). Many of them include a high concentration of plasma cholesterol or a high concentration of low-density (beta) lipoproteins as a necessary condition for atherogenesis. More recently, clinical and epidemiological evidence (10-12) has implicated elevated plasma triglycerides or pre-beta-lipoproteins as an additional risk factor for clinical atherosclerosis. The mechanism by which the pre-beta-lipoproteins act as atherogenic
Fireworks Exploded in My Mouth

Abstract For many people, the very first kiss represents a significant life event, a developmental milestone that serves to usher them into the realm of sexual maturity and adulthood. Surprisingly, this important sexual event has received little systematic scientific attention. The goal of the present descriptive study was to examine the affective reactions that commonly accompany the very first kiss. Using a free response format, participants (N = 338) described the affective responses (i.e., emotions, feelings, sentiments) they experienced before, during, and after their very first kiss. Contrary to our hypothesis, the most common responses experienced immediately prior to the kiss were subjectively unpleasant (e.g., anxiety, fear, uncertainty). Our other hypotheses were confirmed. As predicted, more men than women recalled experiencing positive affect both during and after their first kiss, and more women than men reported negative affect during and after the kiss. These gender differences are in accord with earlier research on affective reactions to other first sexual events (i.e., intercourse), and may reflect the operation of sociocultural forces that encourage men to adopt more positive attitudes than women toward sexual experience and expression. In sum, a person's very first kiss appears to evoke a shifting array of positive and negative emotions, sentiments, and feelings.
Behavioral Shaping for Geometric Concepts

In a search problem, an agent uses the membership oracle of a target concept to find a positive example of the concept. In a shaped search problem the agent is aided by a sequence of increasingly restrictive concepts leading to the target concept (analogous to behavioral shaping). The concepts are given by membership oracles, and the agent has to find a positive example of the target concept while minimizing the total number of oracle queries. We show that for the concept class of intervals on the real line an agent using a bounded number of queries per oracle exists. In contrast, for the concept class of unions of two intervals on the real line no agent with a bounded number of queries per oracle exists. We then investigate the (amortized) number of queries per oracle needed for the shaped search problem over other concept classes. We explore the following methods to obtain efficient agents. For axis-parallel rectangles we use a bootstrapping technique to obtain gradually better approximations of the target concept. We show that given rectangles R ⊆ A ⊆ ℝd one can obtain a rectangle A' ⊇ R with vol(A') / vol(R) ≤ 2, using only O(d ⋅ vol(A) / vol(R)) random samples from A. For ellipsoids of bounded eccentricity in ℝd we analyze a deterministic ray-shooting process which uses a sequence of rays to get close to the centroid. Finally, we use algorithms for generating random points in convex bodies (Dyer et al., 1991; Kannan et al., 1997) to give a randomized agent for the concept class of convex bodies. In the final section, we explore connections between our bootstrapping method and active learning. Specifically, we use the bootstrapping technique for axis-parallel rectangles to active learn axis-parallel rectangles under the uniform distribution in O(d ln(1/e)) labeled samples.
The Effects of Autonomy-Supportive vs. Controlling Guidance on Learners' Motivational and Cognitive Achievement in a Structured Field Trip.

Field trips can provide unique opportunities for authentic, meaningful, and self-determined learning. Capitalizing on these opportunities requires that field trips be structured. A common way to do this is through the use of educational materials such as worksheets. The extent to which the guide's or teacher's autonomy-supportive or controlling motivating style influences learning structured by worksheets has not yet been investigated. We conducted two studies focusing on this specific issue. We hypothesized that autonomy-support is beneficial to intrinsic motivation and cognitive achievement. The setting for our research involved a field trip to the local zoo. The participants were 100 fifth graders (medium achievers) for Study 1 and 106 fifth and sixth graders (high achievers) for Study 2. The classes were divided into two groups for each study. While completing worksheets, some classes were given autonomy-supportive guidance and the others controlling guidance. We assessed the pupils' intrinsic motivation and knowledge using a pre-, post-, follow-up test design. Our research found that autonomy-support appears to be beneficial to motivation and does not seem to impair cognitive achievement. The beneficial effect of autonomy-support was found to be higher for the high-achieving pupils than for the medium achievers.
Synchronizing low-cost probes for IEC61850 transfer time estimation

The growth of Smart Grids based on the IEC61850 standard makes the communication infrastructure a key factor of a successful application. Due to the distributed nature of the Smart Grid, the evaluation of the main performance indicators requires specialized distributed measurement system with dozens of measuring probes. Clearly, the scalability of the measurement system is tied to the cost of the single probe, and a tradeoff between cost and accuracy is needed. In this paper, the possibility of using low-cost probes for the estimation of the IEC61850 Transfer Time over Smart Grid communication infrastructure is investigated. The key feature to enable distributed measurement is the accuracy of the time synchronization that the probe (based on of-the-shelf microcomputer) can achieve. The paper presents an experimental evaluation of the measuring performance using some probe prototypes attached to an IEE1588 compliant infrastructure: the synchronization extended uncertainty is below 3 μs, and the IEC61850 Transfer Time measurement has an extended uncertainty below 15 μs.
Progress And Persistent Problems

Recent scholarship suggests that feminist intervention has made progress reforming news representations of women, prompting some feminist media scholars to call for documenting and explaining instances of the movement's success. This case study examines how a series of local television news stories about a campus sexual assault scandal exemplifies both progress and persistent problems as defined by the critical feminist literature. Drawing on a framing analysis of the nine-story series, including a semi-structured interview with the key journalist, I argue that progressive possibilities arose from the pairing of a feminist journalist with resources afforded by investigative reporting. Many of those possibilities were exploited to produce progressive framing, especially when they served both feminist values and market-driven news values. Adherence to a single news narrative guided by the news value of conflict sometimes mitigated prospects for feminist framing, though, preventing adequate attention to the role social structures play in causing and justifying sexual assault.
A model on location-based service as infomediary

With the explosive growth of Smartphone and telecommunication network, Location Based Service (LBS) becomes an essential application of mobile commerce. LBS application can assist consumers in getting relevant information on the spot, thus helps the consumers to make purchase decision under that particular context. Motivated by this unique feature of LBS, we study how LBS as infomediary changes the way people using information for decision making and how it differs from previous internet infomediary. We firstly classify LBS into different types and then propose a stylized model by synthesizing the price dispersion with horizontal differentiation to investigate the impact of LBS as Infomediary on retail competition and the optimal LBS adoption strategies. Previous research on prevailing Internet Infomediary has shown that the optimal LBS adoption pattern is that only one retailer adopts LBS. However, our results show that the optimal LBS strategy for LBS infomediary is that neither retailer adopts LBS. The location feature of LBS would let the retailers to price more aggressively in order to get more demand at early stage, which would limit the equilibrium profit in the subsequent pricing stages. Moreover, by comparing the results for both Internet infomediary and LBS infomediary, retailers' profit is always lower for LBS infomediary and the reduced profit depends on location parameter and consumer segmentation. We discuss the implications of our findings for retailers' marketing and technology strategies in the market with LBS.
CD4+ T Cells Mediate Murine Syngeneic Graft-versus-Host Disease-Associated Colitis1

Syngeneic graft-vs-host disease (SGVHD) develops following lethal irradiation, reconstitution with syngeneic bone marrow, and treatment with a 21-day course of the immunosuppressive agent cyclosporin A (CsA). Following cessation of CsA, this inducible disease is characterized by weight loss, diarrhea, and development of inflammation in the colon and liver. Although nonspecific effector cells and Th1 cytokines have been shown to participate in disease induction, the role of T cells has not been fully elucidated. Initial studies demonstrated significant increases in CD4+ T cells, but not other T cell populations in the colons of diseased animals relative to transplant control animals. To demonstrate a functional linkage between increases in colonic CD4+ T cells and disease induction, in vivo T cell depletion studies were performed. Beginning on the day of bone marrow transplantation, groups of control and CsA-treated animals were treated with mAb against either CD4 or CD8 for 21 days. Treatment with anti-CD4, but not anti-CD8, eliminated clinical symptoms and colon pathology. Interestingly, neither anti-CD4 nor anti-CD8 therapy affected the development of liver pathology associated with SGVHD. These findings demonstrated that CD4+ T cells initiate development of the intestinal inflammation associated with murine SGVHD.
Transferring Object-Scene Convolutional Neural Networks for Event Recognition in Still Images

Event recognition in still images is an intriguing problem and has potential for real applications. This paper addresses the problem of event recognition by proposing a convolutional neural network that exploits knowledge of objects and scenes for event classification (OS2E-CNN). Intuitively, it stands to reason that there exists a correlation among the concepts of objects, scenes, and events. We empirically demonstrate that the recognition of objects and scenes substantially contributes to the recognition of events. Meanwhile, we propose an iterative selection method to identify a subset of object and scene classes, which help to more efficiently and effectively transfer their deep representations to event recognition. Specifically, we develop three types of transferring techniques: (1) initialization-based transferring, (2) knowledge-based transferring, and (3) data-based transferring. These newly designed transferring techniques exploit multi-task learning frameworks to incorporate extra knowledge from other networks and additional datasets into the training procedure of event CNNs. These multi-task learning frameworks turn out to be effective in reducing the effect of over-fitting and improving the generalization ability of the learned CNNs. With OS2E-CNN, we design a multi-ratio and multi-scale cropping strategy, and propose an end-to-end event recognition pipeline. We perform experiments on three event recognition benchmarks: the ChaLearn Cultural Event Recognition dataset, the Web Image Dataset for Event Recognition (WIDER), and the UIUC Sports Event dataset. The experimental results show that our proposed algorithm successfully adapts object and scene representations towards the event dataset and that it achieves the current state-of-the-art performance on these challenging datasets.
Intraductal Papillary Mucinous Neoplasm of the Pancreas: Current State of the Art and Ongoing Controversies

With the widespread use and advances in radiographic imaging, Intraductal Papillary Mucinous Neoplasms (IPMNs) of the pancreas are identified with increasing frequency. Although many studies have addressed its biology and treatment, true understanding of its natural history continues to elude us. Its malignant potential places careproviders in a clinical dilemma of balancing the morbidity of pancreatectomy against the risk of malignant transformation while under continuous surveillance. Recently, there have been conflicting data published in the literature, generating more uncertainty in the field. In this article, we critically analyze the contrasting consensus guidelines from the International Association of Pancreatology and the American Gastroenterology Association, and address lingering questions and controversies. We also synthesize newly published data in the context of current standard of care, and provide a comprehensive review and recommendations for the clinical diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up strategy in the management of patients with Intraductal Papillary Mucinous Neoplasms.