Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Relationship between attitudes to health, body weight and physical activity and level of physical activity in a nationally representative sample in the European Union

Abstract Objective To explore the factors that influence attitudes and beliefs about the effects of body weight and physical activity on health. Design Cross-sectional survey using a face-to-face interview-assisted questionnaire. Setting The survey was conducted between March and April 1997 in the 15 member states of the EU. Subjects Approximately 1000 adults aged 15 years plus from each country were selected by quota-controlled sampling; the total sample was of 15 239 persons (7162 males and 8077 females). Data were weighted by population size for each country and by age, gender and regional distribution within countries. Results Overall 27% of men and 35% of women reported not engaging in any form of recreational activity; rates were highest in those with a primary-level education (37% men, 43% women) compared with tertiary-level education (20% men, 25% women). Recreational activity levels declined with age and tended to be lowest in those who were more physically active at work. Eighteen per cent of respondents believed that physical activity was one of the two greatest influences on health; 13% mentioned body weight, 38% mentioned food, 41% mentioned smoking and 33% mentioned stress. Logistic regression was used to assess for the effects of gender, age, educational level, body mass index (BMI), smoking status, activity level and country on beliefs that body weight and physical activity influenced health. Primary-educated, overweight, ex- and non-smoking women were most likely to mention body weight as an influence; young tertiary-educated, thinner, non-smoking and active males were most likely to mention physical activity. There was wide variation across Europe in reported behaviour and beliefs, which persisted after taking account of all of the other factors in the regression model. Conclusions Relatively few people in some countries believed body weight and physical activity were important influences on health. Many people mentioned stress and it might be possible to use this interest to motivate changes in physical activity to relieve stress. It may be important to take a more integrated approach to activity patterns that consider the role of work and recreation. Although social and demographic factors were important, after adjusting for these factors there was still wide between-country variation in reported attitudes, beliefs and behaviour. This will need to be taken into account in any activity promotion campaigns.
Lack of Obvious Influence of PLLA Nanofibers on the Gene Expression of BMP-2 and VEGF during Growth and Differentiation of Human Mesenchymal Stem Cells

Growth factors like bone morphogenetic protein 2 (BMP-2) and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) play an important role in bone remodeling and fracture repair. Therefore, with respect to tissue engineering, an artificial graft should have no negative impact on the expression of these factors. In this context, the aim of this study was to analyze the impact of poly(L-lactic acid) (PLLA) nanofibers on VEGF and BMP-2 gene expression during the time course of human mesenchymal stem cell (hMSC) differentiation towards osteoblasts. PLLA matrices were seeded with hMSCs and cultivated over a period of 22 days under growth and osteoinductive conditions, and analyzed during the course of culture, with respect to gene expression of VEGF and BMP-2. Furthermore, BMP-2–enwoven PLLA nanofibers were used in order to elucidate whether initial down-regulation of growth factor expression could be compensated. Although there was a great interpatient variability with respect to the expression of VEGF and BMP-2, PLLA nanofibers tend to result in a down-regulation in BMP-2 expression during the early phase of cultivation. This effect was diminished in the case of VEGF gene expression. The initial down-regulation was overcome when BMP-2 was directly incorporated into the PLLA nanofibers by electrospinning. Furthermore, the incorporation of BMP-2 into the PLLA nanofibers resulted in an increase in VEGF gene expression. Summarized, the results indicate that the PLLA nanofibers have little effect on growth factor production. An enhancement in gene expression of BMP-2 and VEGF can be achieved by an incorporation of BMP-2 into the PLLA nanofibers.
Transcriptional response of Escherichia coli to ammonia and glucose fluctuations

In large‐scale production processes, metabolic control is typically achieved by limited supply of essential nutrients such as glucose or ammonia. With increasing bioreactor dimensions, microbial producers such as Escherichia coli are exposed to changing substrate availabilities due to limited mixing. In turn, cells sense and respond to these dynamic conditions leading to frequent activation of their regulatory programmes. Previously, we characterized short‐ and long‐term strategies of cells to adapt to glucose fluctuations. Here, we focused on fluctuating ammonia supply while studying a continuously running two‐compartment bioreactor system comprising a stirred tank reactor (STR) and a plug‐flow reactor (PFR). The alarmone ppGpp rapidly accumulated in PFR, initiating considerable transcriptional responses after 70 s. About 400 genes were repeatedly switched on/off when E. coli returned to the STR. E. coli revealed highly diverging long‐term transcriptional responses in ammonia compared to glucose fluctuations. In contrast, the induction of stringent regulation was a common feature of both short‐term responses. Cellular ATP demands for coping with fluctuating ammonia supply were found to increase maintenance by 15%. The identification of genes contributing to the increased ATP demand together with the elucidation of regulatory mechanisms may help to create robust cells and processes for large‐scale application.
The mbo Operon Is Specific and Essential for Biosynthesis of Mangotoxin in Pseudomonas syringae

Mangotoxin is an antimetabolite toxin produced by certain Pseudomonas syringae pv. syringae strains. This toxin is an oligopeptide that inhibits ornithine N-acetyl transferase, a key enzyme in the biosynthesis of ornithine and arginine. Previous studies have reported the involvement of the putative nonribosomal peptide synthetase MgoA in virulence and mangotoxin production. In this study, we analyse a new chromosomal region of P. syringae pv. syringae UMAF0158, which contains six coding sequences arranged as an operon (mbo operon). The mbo operon was detected in only mangotoxin-producing strains, and it was shown to be essential for the biosynthesis of this toxin. Mutants in each of the six ORFs of the mbo operon were partially or completely impaired in the production of the toxin. In addition, Pseudomonas spp. mangotoxin non-producer strains transformed with the mbo operon gained the ability to produce mangotoxin, indicating that this operon contains all the genetic information necessary for mangotoxin biosynthesis. The generation of a single transcript for the mbo operon was confirmed and supported by the allocation of a unique promoter and Rho-independent terminator. The phylogenetic analysis of the P. syringae strains harbouring the mbo operon revealed that these strains clustered together.
Finding First Foliation Tangencies in the Lorenz System

Classical studies of chaos in the well-known Lorenz system are based on reduction to the one-dimensional Lorenz map, which captures the full behavior of the dynamics of the chaotic Lorenz attractor. This reduction requires that the stable and unstable foliations in a particular Poincare section are transverse locally near the chaotic Lorenz attractor. We study when this so-called foliation condition fails for the first time and the classic Lorenz attractor becomes a quasi-attractor. This transition is characterized by the creation of tangencies between the stable and unstable foliations and the appearance of hooked horseshoes in the Poincare return map. We consider how the three-dimensional phase space is organized by the global invariant manifolds of saddle equilibria and saddle periodic orbits---before and after the loss of the foliation condition. We compute these global objects as families of orbit segments, which are found by setting up a suitable two-point boundary value problem (BVP). We then formu.
A Gaussian Mixture Model Representation of Endmember Variability in Hyperspectral Unmixing

Hyperspectral unmixing while considering endmember variability is usually performed by the normal compositional model, where the endmembers for each pixel are assumed to be sampled from unimodal Gaussian distributions. However, in real applications, the distribution of a material is often not Gaussian. In this paper, we use Gaussian mixture models (GMM) to represent endmember variability. We show, given the GMM starting premise, that the distribution of the mixed pixel (under the linear mixing model) is also a GMM (and this is shown from two perspectives). The first perspective originates from random variable transformations and gives a conditional density function of the pixels given the abundances and GMM parameters. With proper smoothness and sparsity prior constraints on the abundances, the conditional density function leads to a standard maximum a posteriori (MAP ) problem which can be solved using generalized expectation maximization. The second perspective originates from marginalizing over the endmembers in the GMM, which provides us with a foundation to solve for the endmembers at each pixel. Hence, compared to the other distribution based methods, our model can not only estimate the abundances and distribution parameters, but also the distinct endmember set for each pixel. We tested the proposed GMM on several synthetic and real datasets, and showed its potential by comparing it to current popular methods.
Existence of Weak Solutions to an Evolutionary Model for Magnetoelasticity

We prove existence of weak solutions to an evolutionary model derived for magnetoelastic materials. The model is phrased in Eulerian coordinates and consists in particular of (i) a Navier-Stokes equation that involves magnetic and elastic terms in the stress tensor obtained by a variational approach, of (ii) a regularized transport equation for the deformation gradient and of (iii) the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation for the dynamics of the magnetization. The proof is built on a Galerkin method and a fixed-point argument. It is based on ideas from F. -H. Lin and the third author for systems modeling the flow of liquid crystals as well as on methods by G. Carbou and P. Fabrie for solutions of the Landau-Lifshitz equation.
FUNCTIONAL GENOMICS OF ADAPTATION TO HYPOXIC COLD‐STRESS IN HIGH‐ALTITUDE DEER MICE: TRANSCRIPTOMIC PLASTICITY AND THERMOGENIC PERFORMANCE

In species that are distributed across steep environmental gradients, adaptive variation in physiological performance may be attributable to transcriptional plasticity in underlying regulatory networks. Here we report the results of common‐garden experiments that were designed to elucidate the role of regulatory plasticity in evolutionary adaptation to hypoxic cold‐stress in deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus). We integrated genomic transcriptional profiles with measures of metabolic enzyme activities and whole‐animal thermogenic performance under hypoxia in highland (4350 m) and lowland (430 m) mice from three experimental groups: (1) wild‐caught mice that were sampled at their native elevations; (2) wild‐caught/lab‐reared mice that were deacclimated to low‐elevation conditions in a common‐garden lab environment; and (3) the F1 progeny of deacclimated mice that were maintained under the same low‐elevation common‐garden conditions. In each experimental group, highland mice exhibited greater thermogenic capacities than lowland mice, and this enhanced performance was associated with upregulation of transcriptional modules that influence several hierarchical steps in the O2 cascade, including tissue O2 diffusion (angiogenesis) and tissue O2 utilization (metabolic fuel use and cellular oxidative capacity). Most of these performance‐related transcriptomic changes occurred over physiological and developmental timescales, suggesting that regulatory plasticity makes important contributions to fitness‐related physiological performance in highland deer mice.
Contrasting Ecosystem-Effects of Morphologically Similar Copepods

Organisms alter the biotic and abiotic conditions of ecosystems. They can modulate the availability of resources to other species (ecosystem engineering) and shape selection pressures on other organisms (niche construction). Very little is known about how the engineering effects of organisms vary among and within species, and, as a result, the ecosystem consequences of species diversification and phenotypic evolution are poorly understood. Here, using a common gardening experiment, we test whether morphologically similar species and populations of Diaptomidae copepods (Leptodiaptomus ashlandi, Hesperodiaptomus franciscanus, Skistodiaptomus oregonensis) have similar or different effects on the structure and function of freshwater ecosystems. We found that copepod species had contrasting effects on algal biomass, ammonium concentrations, and sedimentation rates, and that copepod populations had contrasting effects on prokaryote abundance, sedimentation rates, and gross primary productivity. The average size of ecosystem-effect contrasts between species was similar to those between populations, and was comparable to those between fish species and populations measured in previous common gardening experiments. Our results suggest that subtle morphological variation among and within species can cause multifarious and divergent ecosystem-effects. We conclude that using morphological trait variation to assess the functional similarity of organisms may underestimate the importance of species and population diversity for ecosystem functioning.
Improving Object Localization with Fitness NMS and Bounded IoU Loss

We demonstrate that many detection methods are designed to identify only a sufficently accurate bounding box, rather than the best available one. To address this issue we propose a simple and fast modification to the existing methods called Fitness NMS. This method is tested with the DeNet model and obtains a significantly improved MAP at greater localization accuracies without a loss in evaluation rate, and can be used in conjunction with Soft NMS for additional improvements. Next we derive a novel bounding box regression loss based on a set of IoU upper bounds that better matches the goal of IoU maximization while still providing good convergence properties. Following these novelties we investigate RoI clustering schemes for improving evaluation rates for the DeNet wide model variants and provide an analysis of localization performance at various input image dimensions. We obtain a MAP of 33.6%@79Hz and 41.8%@5Hz for MSCOCO and a Titan X (Maxwell). Source code available from: https://github.com/lachlants/denet
Analysis of the promoter activity of a wheat dehydrin gene (DHN-5) under various stress conditions

A wheat dehydrin gene (DHN-5) is inducible by either treatment with abscisic acid (ABA) or by abiotic stress such as drought and salinity. To further investigate the regulation of the gene, a 1,128-bp genomic fragment upstream of the DHN-5 translated sequence has been isolated, cloned, and designated as the ''PrDHN-5'' promoter. Sequence analysis of PrDHN-5 revealed the presence of cis-regulatory elements which could be required for abiotic stress and ABA responsiveness. The PrDHN-5 promoter was fused to the Beta-glucuronidase (gusA) gene and the resulting construct was transferred into Arabidopsis thaliana (heterologous dicotyledonous system) and wheat (homologous monocot system). Histochemical assays of stably transformed Arabidopsis plants showed that PrDHN-5 is active in this heterologous system. The accumulation of gusA transcripts was up-regulated by salt, osmotic and ABA treatment. Histochemical assay in wheat embryos showed a staining in callus and younger leaves treated with various stress. Altogether, these results show that PrDHN-5 is an abiotic-stress-inducible promoter.
Predicting Adverse Outcomes in Heart Failure Patients Using Different Frailty Status Measures

Frailty is an important outcome predictor in older patients. We randomly sampled 12,000 veterans with heart failure diagnosed in 2010. The topic modeling method was applied to identify frailty-related topics from the clinical notes in the electronic medical records. The frailty topics were classified into five deficit areas including physical functioning (PF), role-physical (RP), general health (GH), social functioning (SF), and mental health (MH). We experimented with different covariates and four different frailty measures: individual frailty topics, number of distinct frailty topics, a dichotomous deficit category, and the number of distinct deficits, respectively. A total of 8,531 (71.1%) patients had at least one frailty topic. The prevalence of GH, PF, MH, SF, and RP deficits were 89.0%, 61.3%, 56.9%, 40.6%, and 9.5%, respectively. PF deficits (yes/no) and the number of distinct deficits were the most consistent, significant predictors of adverse outcomes of rehosptalization or death.
Resource Quantity Affects Benthic Microbial Community Structure and Growth Efficiency in a Temperate Intertidal Mudflat

Estuaries cover <1% of marine habitats, but the carbon dioxide (CO2) effluxes from these net heterotrophic systems contribute significantly to the global carbon cycle. Anthropogenic eutrophication of estuarine waterways increases the supply of labile substrates to the underlying sediments. How such changes affect the form and functioning of the resident microbial communities remains unclear. We employed a carbon-13 pulse-chase experiment to investigate how a temperate estuarine benthic microbial community at 6.5°C responded to additions of marine diatom-derived organic carbon equivalent to 4.16, 41.60 and 416.00 mmol C m−2. The quantities of carbon mineralized and incorporated into bacterial biomass both increased significantly, albeit differentially, with resource supply. This resulted in bacterial growth efficiency increasing from 0.40±0.02 to 0.55±0.04 as substrates became more available. The proportions of diatom-derived carbon incorporated into individual microbial membrane fatty acids also varied with resource supply. Future increases in labile organic substrate supply have the potential to increase both the proportion of organic carbon being retained within the benthic compartment of estuaries and also the absolute quantity of CO2 outgassing from these environments.
Pseudo-Labels for Supervised Learning on Dynamic Vision Sensor Data, Applied to Object Detection Under Ego-Motion

In recent years, dynamic vision sensors (DVS), also known as event-based cameras or neuromorphic sensors, have seen increased use due to various advantages over conventional frame-based cameras. Using principles inspired by the retina, its high temporal resolution overcomes motion blurring, its high dynamic range overcomes extreme illumination conditions and its low power consumption makes it ideal for embedded systems on platforms such as drones and self-driving cars. However, event-based data sets are scarce and labels are even rarer for tasks such as object detection. We transferred discriminative knowledge from a state-of-the-art frame-based convolutional neural network (CNN) to the event-based modality via intermediate pseudo-labels, which are used as targets for supervised learning. We show, for the first time, event-based car detection under ego-motion in a real environment at 100 frames per second with a test average precision of 40.3% relative to our annotated ground truth. The event-based car detector handles motion blur and poor illumination conditions despite not explicitly trained to do so, and even complements frame-based CNN detectors, suggesting that it has learnt generalized visual representations.
Selective targeting of collagen IV in the cancer cell microenvironment reduces tumor burden

Goodpasture antigen-binding protein (GPBP) is an exportable1 Ser/Thr kinase that induces collagen IV expansion and has been associated with chemoresistance following epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT). Here we demonstrate that cancer EMT phenotypes secrete GPBP (mesenchymal GPBP) which displays a predominant multimeric oligomerization and directs the formation of previously unrecognized mesh collagen IV networks (mesenchymal collagen IV). Yeast two-hybrid (YTH) system was used to identify a 260SHCIE264 motif critical for multimeric GPBP assembly which then facilitated design of a series of potential peptidomimetics. The compound 3-[4''-methoxy-3,2'-dimethyl-(1,1';4',1'')terphenyl-2''-yl]propionic acid, or T12, specifically targets mesenchymal GPBP and disturbs its multimerization without affecting kinase catalytic site. Importantly, T12 reduces growth and metastases of tumors populated by EMT phenotypes. Moreover, low-dose doxorubicin sensitizes epithelial cancer precursor cells to T12, thereby further reducing tumor load. Given that T12 targets the pathogenic mesenchymal GPBP, it does not bind significantly to normal tissues and therapeutic dosing was not associated with toxicity. T12 is a first-in-class drug candidate to treat cancer by selectively targeting the collagen IV of the tumor cell microenvironment.
From the Cover: Aloin, a Component of the Aloe Vera Plant Leaf, Induces Pathological Changes and Modulates the Composition of Microbiota in the Large Intestines of F344/N Male Rats

In a previous study, the oral administration of an Aloe vera whole leaf extract induced dose-related mucosal and goblet cell hyperplasia in the rat colon after 13 weeks and colon cancer after 2 years. The primary goal of this study was to determine whether or not the administration of aloin, a component of the Aloe vera plant leaf, would replicate the pathophysiological effects that were observed in rats in the previous study with an Aloe vera whole leaf extract. Groups of 10 male F344/N rats were administered aloin at 0, 6.95, 13.9, 27.8, 55.7, 111, 223, and 446 mg/kg drinking water for 13 weeks. At the end of study, rat feces were collected, and the composition of fecal bacteria was investigated by next generation sequencing of the PCR-amplified V3/V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene. At necropsy, blood was collected by cardiac puncture and organs and sections of the large intestine were collected for histopathology. Aloin induced dose-related increased incidences and severities of mucosal and goblet cell hyperplasia that extended from the cecum to the rectum, with increased incidences and severities detected at aloin doses ≥55.7 mg/kg drinking water. Analysis of the 16S rRNA metagenomics sequencing data revealed marked shifts in the structure of the gut microbiota in aloin-treated rats at each taxonomic rank. This study highlights the similarities in effects observed for aloin and the Aloe vera whole leaf extract, and points to a potential mechanism of action to explain the observed pathological changes via modulation of the gut microbiota composition.