Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Herbivory and Competition of Tibetan Steppe Vegetation in Winter Pasture: Effects of Livestock Exclosure and Plateau Pika Reduction

Rangeland degradation has been identified as a serious concern in alpine regions of western China on the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau (QTP). Numerous government-sponsored programs have been initiated, including many that feature long-term grazing prohibitions and some that call for eliminating pastoralism altogether. As well, government programs have long favored eliminating plateau pikas (Ochotona curzoniae), assumed to contribute to degraded conditions. However, vegetation on the QTP evolved in the presence of herbivory, suggesting that deleterious effects from grazing are, to some extent, compensated for by reduced plant-plant competition. We examined the dynamics of common steppe ecosystem species as well as physical indicators of rangeland stress by excluding livestock and reducing pika abundance on experimental plots, and following responses for 4 years. We established 12 fenced livestock exclosures within pastures grazed during winter by local pastoralists, and removed pikas on half of these. We established paired, permanent vegetation plots within and outside exclosures and measured indices of erosion and biomass of common plant species. We observed modest restoration of physical site conditions (reduced bare soil, erosion, greater vegetation cover) with both livestock exclusion and pika reduction. As expected in areas protected from grazing, we observed a reduction in annual productivity of plant species avoided by livestock and assumed to compete poorly when protected from grazing. Contrary to expectation, we observed similar reductions in annual productivity among palatable, perennial graminoids under livestock exclusion. The dominant grass, Stipa purpurea, displayed evidence of density-dependent growth, suggesting that intra-specific competition exerted a regulatory effect on annual production in the absence of grazing. Complete grazing bans on winter pastures in steppe habitats on the QTP may assist in the recovery of highly eroded pastures, but may not increase annual vegetative production.
SIZ1-Mediated Sumoylation of ICE1 Controls CBF3/DREB1A Expression and Freezing Tolerance in Arabidopsis[W][OA]

SIZ1 is a SUMO E3 ligase that facilitates conjugation of SUMO to protein substrates. siz1-2 and siz1-3 T-DNA insertion alleles that caused freezing and chilling sensitivities were complemented genetically by expressing SIZ1, indicating that the SIZ1 is a controller of low temperature adaptation in plants. Cold-induced expression of CBF/DREB1, particularly of CBF3/DREB1A, and of the regulon genes was repressed by siz1. siz1 did not affect expression of ICE1, which encodes a MYC transcription factor that is a controller of CBF3/DREB1A. A K393R substitution in ICE1 [ICE1(K393R)] blocked SIZ1-mediated sumoylation in vitro and in protoplasts identifying the K393 residue as the principal site of SUMO conjugation. SIZ1-dependent sumoylation of ICE1 in protoplasts was moderately induced by cold. Sumoylation of recombinant ICE1 reduced polyubiquitination of the protein in vitro. ICE1(K393R) expression in wild-type plants repressed cold-induced CBF3/DREB1A expression and increased freezing sensitivity. Furthermore, expression of ICE1(K393R) induced transcript accumulation of MYB15, which encodes a MYB transcription factor that is a negative regulator of CBF/DREB1. SIZ1-dependent sumoylation of ICE1 may activate and/or stabilize the protein, facilitating expression of CBF3/DREB1A and repression of MYB15, leading to low temperature tolerance.
Chemical transport models often underestimate aerosol acidity in Chemical transport models often underestimate aerosol acidity in remote regions of the atmosphere remote regions of the atmosphere

The inorganic fraction of ﬁ ne particles affects numerous physicochemical processes in the atmosphere. However, there is large uncertainty in its burden and composition due to limited global measurements. Here, we present observations from eleven different aircraft cam-paigns from around the globe and investigate how aerosol pH and ammonium balance change from polluted to remote regions, such as over the oceans. Both parameters show increasing acidity with remoteness, at all altitudes, with pH decreasing from about 3 to about − 1 and ammonium balance decreasing from almost 1 to nearly 0. We compare these observations against nine widely used chemical transport models and ﬁ nd that the simulations show more scatter (generally
Health‐related quality of life correlates with clinical and endoscopic activity indexes but not with demographic features in patients with ulcerative colitis

Background: Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) impairs health‐related quality of life (HRQOL). Our aim was to investigate whether the improvement in the Clinical Activity Index (CAI) and Endoscopic Activity Index (EAI) is significantly correlated with the advancement of HRQOL and its dimensions in ulcerative colitis (UC) and to assess whether demographic and disease‐related factors influence patients' experience of HRQOL. This examination was performed in the context of our recently published study of the anti‐inflammatory effect of phosphatidylcholine in UC. Methods: Sixty patients with chronic active UC were treated with phosphatidylcholine or placebo over 3 months. They were asked to complete the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Questionnaire‐Deutschland (IBDQ‐D) before and after the study. The correlations between CAI and EAI and IBDQ‐D scores were calculated. Demographic and disease‐related factors were obtained. Results: A statistically significant lowering of CAI and EAI after treatment in the phosphatidylcholine group led to a statistically significant improvement in HRQOL (r = −0.623, P = 0.0003 for CAI; r = −0.511, P = 0.005 for EAI). Constant disease activity indexes in the placebo group accompanied constant HRQOL (r = −0.747, P < 0.0001 for CAI; r = −0.634, P = 0.0002 for EAI). Furthermore, besides a few exceptions, significant correlations between CAI and EAI and the 4 dimensions of the IBDQ‐D could be shown. Demographic parameters did not significantly influence the IBDQ‐D scores. Conclusions: This study points out the strong relationship between CAI and EAI and all domains of HRQOL in patients with UC. Therefore, the IBDQ‐D is a valid and reliable assessment tool that reflects changes in the health status of UC patients. It is a useful measure of therapeutic efficacy and should be used in clinical trials in IBD.
Symmetry Groupoids and Patterns of Synchrony in Coupled Cell Networks

A coupled cell system is a network of dynamical systems, or "cells," coupled together. Such systems can be represented schematically by a directed graph whose nodes correspond to cells and whose edges represent couplings. A symmetry of a coupled cell system is a permutation of the cells that preserves all internal dynamics and all couplings. Symmetry can lead to patterns of synchronized cells, rotating waves, multirhythms, and synchronized chaos. We ask whether symmetry is the only mechanism that can create such states in a coupled cell system and show that it is not. The key idea is to replace the symmetry group by the symmetry groupoid, which encodes in- formation about the input sets of cells. (The input set of a cell consists of that cell and all cells connected to that cell.) The admissible vector fields for a given graph—the dynamical systems with the corresponding internal dynamics and couplings—are precisely those that are equivariant under the symmetry groupoid. A pattern of synchrony is "robust" if it arises for all admissible vector fields. The first main result shows that robust patterns of synchrony (invariance of "polydiagonal" subspaces under all admissible vector fields) are equivalent to the combinatorial condition that an equivalence relation on cells is "balanced. " The second main result shows that admissible vector fields restricted to polydiagonal subspaces are themselves admissible vector fields for a new coupled cell network, the "quotient network. " The existence of quotient networks has surprising implications for synchronous dynamics in coupled cell systems.
Italian vs. worldwide history of largest PGA and PGV

Earthquake engineering and engineering seismology greatly rely on the information gathered from observed data. This is especially true when it comes to ground motion intensity measures, which are related to the damaging potential of earthquakes. Observed maxima of peak ground acceleration (PGA) and peak ground velocity (PGV) can provide reference values for hazard assessment, which often needs to extrapolate towards large return periods. This simple study attempts to reconstruct the history of the largest values of PGA and PGV observed in Italy since 1972. Results reveal that the current maxima of PGA and PGV values were recorded during the 2016 central Italy earthquake sequence. For comparison, up-to-date global trends of PGA and PGV maxima are also compiled, following relevant literature on the topic and investigating a number of international databases. It is found that these trends, which are roughly linear in logarithmic scale, correspond to the increase of ground motion records worldwide.
PSR_2100013 1016..1033

doi:10.1017/S0003055421000137 © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Isalonactis, a new genus of Roccellaceae (Arthoniales), from southern Madagascar

Abstract The new genus and species Isalonactis madagascariensis is characterized by a crustose, non-corticate, often sorediate thallus containing psoromic acid, tiny white pruinose ascomata with a thalline margin, an inconspicuous excipulum, a pale brown hypothecium, 3-septate hyaline ascospores and curved filiform conidia. Phylogenetic analyses using nuLSU and RPB2 sequences place Isalonactis in the Roccellaceae, close to the genera Lecanactis and Chiodecton. The new species was collected on sheltered siliceous rocks in the dry landscape of the Isalo Massif (S Madagascar). Dermatiscum thunbergii is newly recorded from Madagascar.
Quality Measures and Assurance for AI Software1

This report is concerned with the application of software quality and assurance techniques to AI software. It describes work performed for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under contract NAS1 17067 (Task 5) and is also available as a NASA Contractor Report. The report is divided into three parts. In Part I we review existing software quality assurance measures and techniques–those that have been developed for, and applied to, conventional software. This part, which provides a fairly comprehensive overview of software reliability and metrics, static and dynamic testing, and formal specification and verification, may be of interest to those unconcerned with AI software. In Part II, we consider the characteristics of AI-based software, the applicability and potential utility of measures and techniques identified in the first part, and we review those few methods that have been developed specifically for AI-based software. In Part III of this report, we present our assessment and recommendations for the further exploration of this important area. An extensive bibliography with 194 entries is provided.
Various complications of percutaneous radiofrequency ablation for hepatic tumors: radiologic findings and technical tips

Radiofrequency ablation is a safe and effective treatment for primary and secondary liver malignancies and has a low complication rate; however, there are various radiofrequency ablation-related complications which can occur from the thorax to the pelvis. Although most of these complications are usually minor and self-limited, they may become fatal if diagnosis and treatment are delayed. It is important for radiologists performing radiofrequency ablation to have a perspective regarding the possible radiofrequency ablation-related complications and their risk factors as well as the radiologic findings for their timely detection and increase of the treatment efficacy, and thereby encouraging the use of the radiofrequency ablation technique. This article illustrates the various imaging features of common and rare radiofrequency ablation-related complications as well as offers technical tips in order to avoid these complications.
Multifunctional Gold Nanostar Conjugates for Tumor Imaging and Combined Photothermal and Chemo-therapy

Uniform gold nanostars (Au NS) were conjugated with cyclic RGD (cRGD) and near infrared (NIR) fluorescence probe (MPA) or anti-cancer drug (DOX) to obtain multi-functional nanoconstructs, Au-cRGD-MPA and Au-cRGD-DOX respectively. The NIR contrast agent Au-cRGD-MPA was shown to have low cytotoxicity. Using tumor cells and tumor bearing mice, these imaging nanoparticles demonstrated favorable tumor-targeting capability mediated by RGD peptide binding to its over-expressed receptor on the tumor cells. The multi-therapeutic analogue, Au-cRGD-DOX, integrates targeting tumor, chemotherapy and photo-thermotherapy into a single system. The synergistic effect of photo-thermal therapy and chemotherapy was demonstrated in different tumor cell lines and in vivo using S180 tumor-bearing mouse models. The viability of MDA-MB-231 cells was only 40 % after incubation with Au-cRGD-DOX and irradiation with NIR light. Both tail vein and intratumoral injections showed Au-cRGD-DOX treated mice exhibiting the slowest tumor increase. These results indicate that the multifunctional nanoconstruct is a promising combined therapeutic agent for tumor-targeting treatment, with the potential to enhance the anti-cancer treatment outcomes.
Eecient Retrieval of Similar Time Sequences Using Dft

We propose an improvement of the known DFT-based indexing technique for fast retrieval of similar time sequences. We use the last few Fourier coee-cients in the distance computation without storing them in the index since every coeecient at the end is the complex conjugate of a coeecient at the beginning and as strong as its counterpart. We show analytically that this observation can accelerate the search time of the index by more than a factor of two. This result was connrmed by our experiments, which were carried out on real stock prices and synthetic data.
Gyrokinetic turbulence: a nonlinear route to dissipation through phase space

This paper describes a conceptual framework for understanding kinetic plasma turbulence as a generalized form of energy cascade in phase space. It is emphasized that conversion of turbulent energy into thermodynamic heat is only achievable in the presence of some (however small) degree of collisionality. The smallness of the collision rate is compensated for by the emergence of a small-scale structure in the velocity space. For gyrokinetic turbulence, a nonlinear perpendicular phase-mixing mechanism is identified and described as a turbulent cascade of entropy fluctuations simultaneously occurring at spatial scales smaller than the ion gyroscale and in velocity space. Scaling relations for the resulting fluctuation spectra are derived. An estimate for the collisional cutoff is provided. The importance of adequately modelling and resolving collisions in gyrokinetic simulations is briefly discussed, as well as the relevance of these results to understanding the dissipation-range turbulence in the solar wind and the electrostatic microturbulence in fusion plasmas.
Diversity of Acinetobacter baumannii in Four French Military Hospitals, as Assessed by Multiple Locus Variable Number of Tandem Repeats Analysis

Background Infections by A. calcoaceticus-A. baumannii (ACB) complex isolates represent a serious threat for wounded and burn patients. Three international multidrug-resistant (MDR) clones (EU clone I-III) are responsible for a large proportion of nosocomial infections with A. baumannii but other emerging strains with high epidemic potential also occur. Methodology/Principal Findings We automatized a Multiple locus variable number of tandem repeats (VNTR) analysis (MLVA) protocol and used it to investigate the genetic diversity of 136 ACB isolates from four military hospitals and one childrens hospital. Acinetobacter sp other than baumannii isolates represented 22.6% (31/137) with a majority being A. pittii. The genotyping protocol designed for A.baumannii was also efficient to cluster A. pittii isolates. Fifty-five percent of A. baumannii isolates belonged to the two international clones I and II, and we identified new clones which members were found in the different hospitals. Analysis of two CRISPR-cas systems helped define two clonal complexes and provided phylogenetic information to help trace back their emergence. Conclusions/Significance The increasing occurrence of A. baumannii infections in the hospital calls for measures to rapidly characterize the isolates and identify emerging clones. The automatized MLVA protocol can be the instrument for such surveys. In addition, the investigation of CRISPR/cas systems may give important keys to understand the evolution of some highly successful clonal complexes.
Research progress on criteria for discontinuation of EGFR inhibitor therapy

: The clinical success of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKI) as therapeutic agents has prompted great interest in their further development and clinical testing for a wide variety of malignancies. However, most studies have focused on the efficacy of TKI, and few studies have been done on the criteria for their discontinuation. The current standard for drug discontinuation is “until progression”, based on change in tumor size. However, tumor size is not related to the gene expression which determines the efficacy of TKI in the final analysis, and it is also difficult to make a thorough and correct prediction based on tumor size when the TKI is discontinued. Nevertheless, clinical evaluation of the criteria for TKI discontinuation is still in its early days. Some promising findings have started to emerge. With the improving knowledge of EGFR and its inhibitors, it is expected that the criteria for discontinuation of EGFR inhibitor therapy will become clearer.
C-terminal domain of SARS-CoV main protease can form a 3D domain-swapped dimer

SARS coronavirus main protease (Mpro) plays an essential role in the extensive proteolytic processing of the viral polyproteins (pp1a and pp1ab), and it is an important target for anti‐SARS drug development. We have reported that both the Mpro C‐terminal domain alone (Mpro‐C) and the N‐finger deletion mutant of Mpro (Mpro‐Δ7) exist as a stable dimer and a stable monomer (Zhong et al., J Virol 2008; 82:4227‐4234). Here, we report structures of both Mpro‐C monomer and dimer. The structure of the Mpro‐C monomer is almost identical to that of the C‐terminal domain in the crystal structure of Mpro. Interestingly, the Mpro‐C dimer structure is characterized by 3D domain‐swapping, in which the first helices of the two protomers are interchanged and each is enwrapped by four other helices from the other protomer. Each folding subunit of the Mpro‐C domain‐swapped dimer still has the same general fold as that of the Mpro‐C monomer. This special dimerization elucidates the structural basis for the observation that there is no exchange between monomeric and dimeric forms of Mpro‐C and Mpro‐Δ7.
A Comparative Empirical Study of Communication in Distributed and Collocated Development Teams

Communication models adopted in large-scale software engineering projects have significant impact on the efficacy of communication. We strove to understand these models by empirically examining synchronous communication within distributed and collocated teams at a large Fortune 500 organization. Our data imply that the overhead for tool support of synchronous communication for distributed teams are generally unacceptably high and that collocated teams are as likely to employ alternatives to face-to-face communication with collocated team members as distributed. Data also imply that communication patterns and models for both distributed and collocated teams evolve naturally over time to meet needs as opposed to a well-defined process delineated at project inception. Finally, data imply that communication models tend to be hybrids of existing communication models, suggesting a continual evolution of team communications over time. These implications collectively suggest that developers are adapting to collaborating with remote team members within this organization, perhaps realizing a new stage of evolution within the software engineering community.
Negative Campaigning and the Logic of Retaliation in Multiparty Competition

The extant literature has demonstrated that the logic of retaliation is a core feature of negative campaigning. Attacks by one side induce counterattacks by the other. Yet most research on the interactive nature of negative campaigning is limited to two-party competition and provides little theoretical justification for why political actors should respond to attacks with counterattacks. The present paper addresses these research gaps. We argue that the negativity bias in human information processing and the zero-sum nature of elections make retaliation a rational strategy. Importantly, these arguments also imply that retaliation may not be the only plausible response to attacks in multiparty systems. Rather, parties may prefer to react to attacks from one competitor by attacking another. To grasp empirically how being attacked and attacking are related, we conduct a highly disaggregated time series analysis of such instances while controlling for other factors that may influence actor behavior. Our analyses draw on several thousand party press releases issued during three national election campaigns in Austria, a typical European multiparty system. They show that retaliation is an important strategy also in multiparty politics. Yet in such context, parties do not exclusively follow a tit-for-tat approach but rather display more complex patterns of attack behavior.
Risk Perception and the Economic Crisis: A Longitudinal Study of the Trajectory of Perceived Risk

We conducted a longitudinal survey of public response to the economic crisis to understand the trajectory of risk perception amidst an ongoing crisis. A nation‐wide panel responded to seven surveys beginning in late September 2008 at the peak of the crisis and concluded in October 2009. At least 600 respondents participated in each survey, with 413 completing all seven surveys. Our online survey focused on perceptions of risk (savings, investments, retirement, job), negative emotions toward the financial crisis (sadness, anxiety, fear, anger, worry, stress), confidence in national leaders to manage the crisis (President Obama, Congress, Treasury Secretary, business leaders), and belief in one's ability to realize personal objectives despite the crisis. We employed latent growth curve modeling to analyze change in risk perception throughout the crisis. Our results suggest that, in general, people's perceptions of risk appear to decrease most rapidly during the initial phase of a crisis and then begin to level off. Negative emotion about the crisis was the most predictive of increased risk perception, supporting the notion of risk as feelings. Belief in one's ability to realize personal objectives was also predictive. Confidence in national leaders, however, was not predictive of perceived risk. Finally, our results demonstrate that groups may experience a crisis differently depending on a combination of personal characteristics such as gender, income, numeracy, and political attitude. Risk management and communication should work in sync with these mechanisms and differences across groups.