Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
MLT-10 Defines a Family of DUF644 and Proline-rich Repeat Proteins Involved in the Molting Cycle of Caenorhabditis elegans

Molting of nematodes involves the synthesis and removal of a collagen-rich exoskeleton. We describe Caenorhabditis elegans MLT-10, which defines a large family of DUF644 and proline-rich repeat proteins. We show that MLT-10 is released from the epidermis during molting and that MLT-10 is involved in renewal of the exoskeleton and development of the epidermis.
Normal acquisition of expertise with greebles in two cases of acquired prosopagnosia

Significance The leading accounts of face recognition are the face-specific view and the expertise view. The face-specific account claims upright faces are processed by brain mechanisms specialized for faces, whereas the expertise hypothesis claims faces are processed by mechanisms engaged by fine-grained discrimination of the object of expertise. The effects of expertise on visual recognition have been studied in the laboratory using greebles (objects designed to place face-like demands on recognition mechanisms), and behavioral and neural markers characteristic of face processing have been reported for greebles after training. Here we present compelling evidence that performance with greebles does not depend on face recognition mechanisms. Two individuals with acquired prosopagnosia displayed normal greeble learning despite severely impaired face performance. These results support the face-specific account. Face recognition is generally thought to rely on different neurocognitive mechanisms than most types of objects, but the specificity of these mechanisms is debated. One account suggests the mechanisms are specific to upright faces, whereas the expertise view proposes the mechanisms operate on objects of high within-class similarity with which an observer has become proficient at rapid individuation. Much of the evidence cited in support of the expertise view comes from laboratory-based training experiments involving computer-generated objects called greebles that are designed to place face-like demands on recognition mechanisms. A fundamental prediction of the expertise hypothesis is that recognition deficits with faces will be accompanied by deficits with objects of expertise. Here we present two cases of acquired prosopagnosia, Herschel and Florence, who violate this prediction: Both show normal performance in a standard greeble training procedure, along with severe deficits on a matched face training procedure. Herschel and Florence also meet several response time criteria that advocates of the expertise view suggest signal successful acquisition of greeble expertise. Furthermore, Herschel’s results show that greeble learning can occur without normal functioning of the right fusiform face area, an area proposed to mediate greeble expertise. The marked dissociation between face and greeble expertise undermines greeble-based claims challenging face-specificity and indicates face recognition mechanisms are not necessary for object recognition after laboratory-based training.
Has the Affordable Care Act increased part-time employment?

Abstract We examine the impact of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on part-time employment. Because the ACA’s employer health insurance mandate applies to individuals who work 30 or more hours per week, employers may try to avoid the mandate by cutting workers’ hours below the 30-hour threshold in order to avoid having to provide them with health insurance. Although the employer mandate only went into effect in 2015, many observers have argued that forward-looking employers began to shift towards a part-time workforce well in advance of the mandate. To test this hypothesis, we examine relative shifts across two categories of part-time workers (25–29 hours and 31–35 hours). We find some evidence of a shift from the 31–35-hour category into the 25–29-hour category after the passage of ACA in March 2010. However, that shift is not more pronounced among low-wage workers or among workers in industries and occupations most likely to be affected by the mandate. Thus, there is little evidence that the ACA has caused the shift across hours categories, or led to an increase in part-time employment. However, the ACA could cause a shift towards part-time work in the future as the mandate takes effect.
Division of Household Labor: Changes Over the Course of the Marital Relationship

Division of Household Labor: Changes Over The Course Of the Marital Relationship Christopher W. Matteson Department of Marriage and Family Therapy Master of Science Previous research has established the influence of the division of household labor between spouses on marital satisfaction, as well as the mental health of each spouse. Less is known about how the division of labor changes during the course of marriage. The family development perspective suggests that division of labor will change in response to different stages and circumstances, while the homeostasis perspective suggests that the division of labor will remain stable throughout the life course. This study used data from a 35 year longitudinal study of married women to examine changes of household division of labor over the life course. Participants in this study were wives of medical trainees at an East Coast medical school. Data collection at Time-1 included 175 wives in 1969-1970. The wives were also contacted in 1980 (Time-2), 1990 (Time-3), and 2005 (Time-4). All the participants were white. The average age of the women at Time-1 was 25.5 years. Participation in household labor was measured using five questions reflecting how much the husband helped in traditionally female stereotyped tasks. The five tasks were: does the family wash, sets table for dinner, clears table after meals, washes the dishes, and prepares meals. Other variables were included to help explain the change in husband participation in household labor over the course of the marriage, including number of children, the number of hours worked by the wife, and the wife’s level of education. Multi-level growth curve modeling was used to examine stability and change in husband participation in household tasks over time. The fixed effects in the baseline model showed a significant positive linear slope indicating more husband participation over time. The random effect for time was also significant, suggesting variability in slopes across the sample. Results from the quadratic effect for time indicated a downward linear slope, attenuated by a positive quadratic slope. Thus, the results indicate that husbands participate less in household tasks early in marriage, but their level of participation increases in midlife. No predictor variables accounted for significant variability in the initial value or rate of change in the husband’s participation in household tasks.
Adjoint vector fields and differential operators on representation spaces

Let G be a semisimple algebraic group with Lie algebra 𝔤. In 1979, J. Dixmier proved that any vector field annihilating all G‐invariant polynomials on 𝔤 lies in the k[𝔤] ‐module generated by the ‘adjoint vector fields’, that is, vector fields ς of the form ς(y)(x) = [x, y], x, y ∈ 𝔤. A substantial generalisation of Dixmier's theorem was found by Levasseur and Stafford. They explicitly described the centraliser of k[𝔤]G in the algebra of differential operators on 𝔤. On the level of vector fields, their result reduces to Dixmier's theorem. The purpose of this paper is to explore similar problems in the general context of affine algebraic groups and their rational representations.
Measurements of desert dust optical characteristics at Porte au Sahara during SAMUM

Measurements of desert dust optical characteristics at Porte au Sahara during SAMUM By W. VO N H OY N IN G EN -H U EN E 1∗, T. D IN TER 1, A . A . KO K H A N OV SK Y 1, J. P. B U R ROW S 1, M . W EN D ISC H 2, E . B IERW IRTH 2, D . M Ü LLER 3 and M . D IO U R I4, 1IUP University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany; 2Institute of Physics of Atmosphere, University Mainz; 3Institute of Tropospheric Research; 4University of Oujda, Oujda, Morocco
Study on the robustness to retyping attacks of fingerprinted digital documents in the frequential domain

Retyping attacks intent to interpret the content of a digital document and rewrite it as a new document with the aim of removing possible watermarks inserted in the document. These attacks can be automated using Object Character Recognition software making possible to attack a big volume of digital documents handled in organizational environments. Previous works have studied the robustness of watermarked text-based digital documents to retyping attacks, using a syntactic and semantic approach. However, little attention has been put on watermarking of image-based digital documents, which have resulted to be totally vulnerable to retyping attacks. This paper presents a study of the robustness of fingerprinted image-based digital documents against automated retyping attacks using a state-of-the-art fingerprinting system. Robustness is achieved by inserting fingerprints/watermarks in the frequential components of the digital documents causing visual distortion on the fingerprinted documents, which makes that when a retyping attack be applied over it, the extracted text be useless. From the experiments in this study, it was found that the evaluated system resists automated retyping attacks generating an information loss above 50% for most of the fingerprinted documents in lossless and lossy formats. Additionally, it was found that exists a tradeoff between the robustness of fingerprinted image-based digital documents to retyping attacks and the robustness to other common attack in fingerprinted documents, the collusion attack.
Multi-scale analysis of stochastic delay differential equations

We apply multi-scale analysis to stochastic delay-differential equations, deriving approximate stochastic equations for the amplitudes of oscillatory solutions near critical delays of deterministic systems. Such models are particularly sensitive to noise when the system is near a critical point, which marks a transition to sustained oscillatory behavior in the deterministic system. In particular, we are interested in the case when the combined effects of the noise and the proximity to criticality amplify oscillations which would otherwise decay in the deterministic system. The derivation of reduced equations for the envelope of the oscillations provides an efficient analysis of the dynamics by separating the influence of the noise from the intrinsic oscillations over long time scales. We focus on two well-known problems: the linear SDDE, and the logistic equation with delay. In addition to the envelope equations, the analysis identifies scaling relationships between small noise and the proximity of the bifurcation due to the delay which enhances the resonance of the noise with the intrinsic oscillations of the systems.
Magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging in temporal lobe epilepsy: neuronal dysfunction or cell loss?

BACKGROUND Magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) has demonstrated consistent metabolic abnormalities in temporal lobe epilepsy. The reason for decreases in N-acetylated compounds are thought to be related to neuronal hippocampal cell loss as observed in hippocampal sclerosis. However, mounting evidence suggest that the N-acetylated compound decreases may be functional and reversible. OBJECTIVE To establish whether the metabolic changes measured by MRS correlate to hippocampal cell loss in temporal lobe epilepsy. SUBJECTS AND METHODS We prospectively performed quantitative hippocampal MR imaging volumetry and MRS imaging in 33 patients with intractable mesial temporal lobe epilepsy who were undergoing surgery. A neuronal-glial ratio of cornu ammonis and fascia dentata was obtained and correlated while validating the pathologic analysis by comparisons with specimens of age-matched autopsy control-case hippocampus (n = 14). RESULTS The neuronal-glial ratio of the patient group was statistically significantly lower than in the control group for the cornu ammonis region (P<.001). Correlations of hippocampal volumes with cornu ammonis and neuronal-glial ratios revealed a significant interdependence (P<.01). However, correlations of the resected hippocampal creatine-N-acetylated compound ratio with the cornu ammonis or fascia dentata neuronal-glial ratios showed no significant interdependence (P>.8). CONCLUSIONS Our findings support the concept that the metabolic dysfunction measured by MRS imaging and the hippocampal volume loss detected by MR imaging volumetry do not have the same neuropathologic basis. These findings suggest that the MRS imaging metabolic measures reflect neuronal and glial dysfunction rather than neuronal cell loss as previously assumed.
Sound Change and Hierarchical Inference. What Is Being Inferred? Effects of Words, Phones and Frequency

Articulatorily-motivated sound change is modeled as the outcome of two processes: 1) automatization of word production, which occurs in every instance of word use, and thus affects high-frequency words most, and 2) hierarchical inference during learning, in which words and phones (defining word groups) are assigned blame/credit for experienced pronunciations. I show that, unless we assume that learners also infer the effect of frequency on pronunciation, novel words should behave like run-of-the-mill known words, ones that have not become associated with either reduced or full pronunciations. The model predicts that, once the change has progressed far enough for the phone to become associated with the reduced pronunciation, novel words will be less reduced than existing words that, for any reason, have become associated with the unreduced variant. This prediction is tested using data from flapping in American English, a reductive sound change that has gone far enough for the reduced variant to be the default. Results are inconsistent with the model: novel words disfavor reduced pronunciations even more than real words that tend to occur in formal contexts and thus may be expected to be most associated with full pronunciations. Possible modifications to the model are discussed.
Relating Severe Poverty and Chronic Poverty

The severely poor are very poor since their consumption is far below the absolute poverty line, and the chronically poor are very poor since their consumption persists for long periods below the absolute poverty line. A combination of chronic poverty and severe poverty (CSP) must represent the very worst instance of poverty. Yet the exercise in this paper of asking simple questions about CSP shows large research gaps. Quantified statements on CSP at the country level can be made for just 14 countries, and at the household level in just six countries. This data suggests a positive correlation between severe poverty and chronic poverty, both at the country level and the household level. Understanding the CSP relationship – whether it is strong, where it arises, what causes it – may improve our explanation of observed cross-country variation in the elasticity between macroeconomic growth and poverty reduction, and why within countries, some households take better advantage of opportunities afforded by macroeconomic growth. Some limited data suggests similarity in socioeconomic characteristics of the severe poor and the chronic poor in terms of location, household size, gender, education and economic sector of work. Of concern is that microlongitudinal datasets drop large proportions of their base year samples, and how this affects our understanding of CSP is not well evaluated. On causal mechanisms, evidence suggests that CSP may be caused by parental CSP (i.e. an intergenerational CSP cycle) and in households not previously poor, CSP may be caused by a morbidity cycle.
Multicast Routing with Delay and Delay Variation Constraints for Collaborative Applications on Overlay Networks

Computer supported collaborative applications on overlay networks are gaining popularity among users who are geographically dispersed. Examples of these kinds of applications include video-conferencing, distributed database replication, and online games. This type of application requires a multicasting subnetwork, using which messages should arrive at the destinations within a specified delay bound. These applications also require that destinations receive the message from the source at approximately the same time. The problem of finding a multicasting subnetwork with delay and delay-variation bound has been proved to be an NP complete problem in the literature and heuristics have been proposed for this problem. In this paper, we provide an efficient heuristic to obtain a multicast subnetwork on an overlay network, given a source and a set of destinations that is within a specified maximum delay and a specified maximum variation in the delays from a source to the destinations. The time-complexity of our algorithm is O(|E|+nk log(|E|/n)+m2k), where n and |E| are the number of nodes and edges in the network, respectively, k is the number of shortest paths determined, and m is the number of destinations. We have shown that our algorithm is significantly better in terms of time-complexity than existing algorithms for the same problem. Our extensive empirical studies indicate that our heuristic uses significantly less runtime in comparison with the best-known heuristics while achieving the tightest delay variation for a given end-to-end delay bound
Adaptive linear prediction for block-based lossy image coding

Linear prediction model has been well investigated and applied in lossless image and video coding. In this paper, we investigate the linear prediction method for block-based lossy image coding and propose a method that merges linear prediction technique into H.264/AVC video coding framework. A block-based linear prediction method is designed instead of pixel-based one in order to cooperate with transform module. Furthermore, line-based linear prediction with 1D transform is developed by considering coding gain tradeoff between prediction and transform. Linear prediction model coefficients are derived by using neighboring reconstructed data with least square error method. The model coefficients implicitly embed the local texture characteristics and no bits overhead is needed for signaling the coefficients since we can derive them with same process at decoder side. We insert block-based and line-based linear prediction modes into H.264/AVC as additional intra prediction modes and select the best mode by minimum rate-distortion sense. Experimental results show that the proposed technique improves coding efficiency of H.264/AVC intra picture with average 4.3% bit saving and up to 7.0% bit saving.
Agenda 21; a form of joint environmental management in Manizales, Colombia

This paper describes the development of Bioplan-Manizales, a local environmental action plan (LEAP) for the city of Manizales, and the different groups that contributed to its development; also, how this plan became integrated into the municipal development plan and the municipal budget. The measures taken to monitor and evaluate the social, economic and environmental effects of the environmental policy are also described and these include a series of urban environmental observatories. The paper also describes the broader national and international context for the innovations in Manizales – including the political, legislative and fiscal changes in Colombia that have encouraged local authorities to develop local environmental agendas. Manizales’ own historical development is described including the environmental changes that this development brought and the environmental problems that it precipitated.
The Long-Run Determinants Variables of the Equilibrium Exchange Rates in the ASEAN-5 Economies

This paper analyses the long-run determinants variables of the equilibrium real effective exchange rates (REER) for ASEAN-5 currencies: Malaysian Ringgit, Indonesian Rupiah, the Philippines Peso, Thailand Bath, and Singapore Dollar. The real effective exchange rates (REER) of these currencies are measured against the US Dollar based on authoritative quarterly data time series between 1991:Q1 to 2006:Q2. A recently developed "Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL)" co-integration by Pesaran et. al., (2001) was the fundamental approach employed to analyse the relevant hypotheses of this study. The finding is that the domestic money supply (M1) followed by foreign interest rates (R*) are the significant long-run determinants variables for ASEAN-5 equilibrium REER.
Subinhibitory Concentrations of Thymol Reduce Enterotoxins A and B and α-Hemolysin Production in Staphylococcus aureus Isolates

Background Targeting bacterial virulence factors is now gaining interest as an alternative strategy to develop new types of anti-infective agents. It has been shown that thymol, when used at low concentrations, can inhibit the TSST-1 secretion in Staphylococcus aureus. However, there are no data on the effect of thymol on the production of other exotoxins (e.g., α-hemolysin and enterotoxins) by S. aureus. Methodology/Principal Findings Secretion of α-hemolysin, SEA and SEB in both methicillin-sensitive and methicillin-resistant S. aureus isolates cultured with graded subinhibitory concentrations of thymol was detected by immunoblot analysis. Hemolysin and tumor necrosis factor (TNF) release assays were performed to elucidate the biological relevance of changes in α-hemolysin, SEA and SEB secretion induced by thymol. In addition, the influence of thymol on the transcription of hla, sea, and seb (the genes encoding α-hemolysin, SEA and SEB, respectively) was analyzed by quantitative RT-PCR. Thymol inhibited transcription of hla, sea and seb in S. aureus, resulting in a reduction of α-hemolysin, SEA and SEB secretion and, thus, a reduction in hemolytic and TNF-inducing activities. Conclusions/Significance Subinhibitory concentrations of thymol decreased the production of α-hemolysin, SEA and SEB in both MSSA and MRSA in a dose-dependent manner. These data suggest that thymol may be useful for the treatment of S. aureus infections when used in combination with β-lactams and glycopeptide antibiotics, which induce expression of α-hemolysin and enterotoxins at subinhibitory concentrations. Furthermore, the structure of thymol may potentially be used as a basic structure for development of drugs aimed against these bacterial virulence factors.
The value of susceptibility weighted magnetic resonance imaging in evaluation of patients with familial cerebral cavernous angioma.

OBJECTIVES We investigated the imaging features of Cavernous angioma (CA) lesions and the value of Susceptibility-weighted imaging (SWI) by comparing with T2*-weighted gradient echo (GRE) sequences in patients with familial CA disease. MATERIAL AND METHODS We retrospectively evaluated 19 familial CA patients (8 men, 11 women; mean age, 36 years). T1-weighted, T2-weighted, T2*-weighted GRE, and SWI sequences were performed to all patients. The numbers of CA lesions seen on T2*-weighted GRE and SWI sequences were analyzed. The correlations between the numbers of lesions on both sequences with age were evaluated. CA lesions were classified according to the classification of Zabramski et al. RESULTS The number of CA lesions was higher on SWI than T2*-weighted GRE significantly (P<.001). There was a significant strong correlation between the age of the patients and number of lesions in the cohort on T2*-weighted GRE (r = 0.81, P<0.001) and SWI (r = 0.85, P<0.001) sequences. Approximately 44% of the CA lesions which were detected only by SWI could not be categorized according to the classification of Zabramski et al. CONCLUSION SWI can provide helpful additional information by determining the CA lesions more accurately than T2*-weighted GRE. Thus, routine clinical neuroimaging protocols should contain SWI to assess the true prevalence of lesions for optimal diagnosis and treatment. Moreover, this study show that the Zabramski classification is insufficient to identify all CA lesions, and a new type (type V) should be added to represent lesions that are seen on SWI but not on T2*-weighted GRE.