Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Adaptive Change of HLA-DRB1 Allele Frequencies Caused by Natural Selection in a Mongolian Population That Migrated to the South of China

Pathogen-driven balancing selection determines the richness of human leukocyte antigen (HLA) alleles. Changes in the pathogen spectrum may cause corresponding changes in HLA loci. Approximately 700 years ago, a Mongolian population moved from the north of China to the Yunnan region in the south of China. The pathogen spectrum in the south of China differs from that in the north. In this study, changes in the HLA genes in the Yunnan Mongolian population, as well as the underlying mechanism, were investigated. A sequence-based typing method (SBT) was used to genotype HLA-DRB1 in 470 individuals from two Mongolian populations and another five ethnic groups. Meanwhile, 10 autosomal short tandem repeats (STRs) were genotyped to assess the influence of genetic background on HLA-DRB1 frequencies. The frequencies of certain alleles changed significantly in the Mongolian population that migrated to Yunnan. For example, DRB1*12:02:01 increased from 6.1% to 35.4%. STR analysis excluded the possibility of a recent bottleneck and indicated that 50% of the genetic consistency between northern and southern Mongolians; Tajima's D value for HLA-DRB1 exon2 and dN/dS analysis showed that the HLA-DRB1 genes in both Mongolian populations were under balancing selection. However, the sites under natural selection changed. We proposed that the dramatically change of HLA frequencies in southern Mongolian was caused by a combination of inter-population gene flow and natural selection. Certain diseases specific to the south of China, such as malaria, may be the driving force behind the enhanced DRB1*12:02:01 frequency.
Coral reef calcifiers buffer their response to ocean acidification using both bicarbonate and carbonate

Central to evaluating the effects of ocean acidification (OA) on coral reefs is understanding how calcification is affected by the dissolution of CO2 in sea water, which causes declines in carbonate ion concentration [CO32−] and increases in bicarbonate ion concentration [HCO3−]. To address this topic, we manipulated [CO32−] and [HCO3−] to test the effects on calcification of the coral Porites rus and the alga Hydrolithon onkodes, measured from the start to the end of a 15-day incubation, as well as in the day and night. [CO32−] played a significant role in light and dark calcification of P. rus, whereas [HCO3−] mainly affected calcification in the light. Both [CO32−] and [HCO3−] had a significant effect on the calcification of H. onkodes, but the strongest relationship was found with [CO32−]. Our results show that the negative effect of declining [CO32−] on the calcification of corals and algae can be partly mitigated by the use of HCO3− for calcification and perhaps photosynthesis. These results add empirical support to two conceptual models that can form a template for further research to account for the calcification response of corals and crustose coralline algae to OA.
Periodic Density Functional Calculations in Order to Assess the Cooperativity of the Spin Transition in Fe(phen)2(NCS)2

Periodic density functional calculations combined with the Hubbard model (DFT+U) have been performed for the archetype spin crossover complex Fe(phen) 2 (NCS) 2 with phen = 1,2-phenanthroline. The relative energies of the 16 different configurations of two possible spin states for each of the four molecules in the unit cell have been calculated in order to determine from first principles the phenomenological interaction parameter Γ of the Slichter-Drickamer model. These kind of calculations may help to predict important spin crossover characteristics like the abruptness or hysteresis of the transition.
Relación entre atribuciones de éxito y fracaso académico y ansiedad escolar en estudiantes chilenos de educación secundaria

espanolEl objetivo de este estudio fue comprobar la relacion entre las atribuciones de exito y fracaso academico en lenguaje y matematicas y la ansiedad escolar en estudiantes de educacion secundaria chilenos. Participaron 1314 estudiantes de 15 establecimientos de la provincia de Nuble, en Chile, cuyo rango de edad oscilo entre 13 y 17 anos (M = 15.55; DE = 1.32). La ansiedad escolar se evaluo con el inventario de ansiedad escolar (IAES) y las atribuciones causales con la Sydney Attribution Scale (SAS). Los resultados mostraron que los estudiantes que atribuyeron menos sus exitos y fracasos a causas externas en lenguaje obtuvieron medias mas altas de ansiedad escolar. Por otro lado, presentaron mayor ansiedad escolar los sujetos que atribuyeron menos sus exitos a la capacidad en matematicas y mas sus fracasos a la falta de capacidad tanto en matematicas como en lenguaje. Por ultimo, los estudiantes que atribuyeron mas sus exitos al esfuerzo en lenguaje mostraron puntuaciones medias mas altas en ansiedad escolar. Se concluye que los datos corroboran hallazgos anteriores y alertan acerca de la necesidad de atender estas problematicas en los procesos pedagogicos EnglishThe aim of this study was to determine the relationship between attributions of academic success and failure in Language and Maths, and School Anxiety in Chilean high school students. It involved 1314 students from 15 secondary educational institutions, of Nuble’s province in Chile, whose age range was from 13 to 17 years (M=15.55, SD=1.32). School Anxiety was assessed with the School Anxiety Inventory (SAI), and causal attributions with the Sydney Attribution Scale (SAS). Results showed that students who attributed less their successes and failures to external causes in Language had higher means in school anxiety. On the other hand, subjects who had higher school anxiety attributed their success due to less ability in Maths and their failures to the lack of ability in Maths and Language. Finally, students who attributed their success due to effort in Language showed higher means in school anxiety. We conclude that the data support previous findings and warn about the need to manage these issues in school processes
Associations between the COMT Val/Met polymorphism, early life stress, and personality among healthy adults

Efforts to identify genetic factors that confer an increased risk for the expression of psychiatric symptoms have focused on polymorphisms in variety of candidate genes, including the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) gene. Results from previous studies that have examined associations between the functional COMT polymorphism (Val158Met) and mental health have been mixed. In the present study, we examined the relationships between COMT, early life stress, and personality in a healthy adult sample. Consistent with previous studies, we hypothesized that individuals with the low-activity genotype would have higher neuroticism and lower extraversion and that this effect would be more pronounced in females. In addition, we extended the previous literature by investigating the potential influence of early life stress. A total of 486 healthy adults underwent genetic testing and personality assessment. Results revealed that individuals homozygous for the COMT low enzyme activity allele had lower extraversion on the NEO-FFI and demonstrated a trend toward greater neuroticism. These relationships were not influenced by sex or the presence of reported early life stress. The finding that COMT genotype was associated with extraversion, and more weakly with neuroticism, is consistent with previous studies. Future research to clarify the influence of sex and gene–environmental interactions is warranted.
Horizon divergences of fields and strings in black hole backgrounds.

General arguments based on curved space-time thermodynamics show that any extensive quantity, such as the free energy or the entropy of thermal matter, always has a divergent boundary contribution in the presence of event horizons, and this boundary term comes with the Hawking-Bekenstein form. Although the coefficients depend on the particular geometry we show that intensive quantities, such as the free energy density, are universal in the vicinity of the horizon. From the point of view of the matter degrees of freedom this divergence is of infrared type rather than ultraviolet, and we use this remark to speculate about the fate of these pathologies in string theory. Finally, we interpret them as instabilities of the canonical ensemble with respect to gravitational collapse via the Jeans mechanism.
Leptin Inhibits Neutrophil Apoptosis in Children via ERK/NF-κB-Dependent Pathways

Introduction and Rationale Previous studies have shown that delayed neutrophil apoptosis is associated with chronic airway diseases. Leptin is an adipocyte-derived hormone that acts as a regulator of energy homeostasis and food intake. Emerging evidence suggests that leptin can regulate immune responses including the release of proinflammatory cytokines and protection of inflammatory cells from apoptosis. Serum leptin is increased during allergic reactions in the airways. However, the expression and function of leptin receptor in neutrophils isolated from children is not known. Methods Flow cytometry was used to detect leptin receptor expression in neutrophils isolated from allergic asthmatic (n = 14), allergic non asthmatic (n = 21), non allergic asthmatic (n = 7) and healthy children (n = 23); confocal laser scanning microscopy combined with immunofluorescence was performed to detect intracellular pool of leptin receptor; Annexin-V/PI staining and caspase 3 activity was used to determine neutrophil survival. Pharmacological inhibitors were utilized to understand the role of MAPK and NF-κB pathway in leptin-induced neutrophil survival. Results and Conclusion A heterogeneous leptin receptor expression was observed on neutrophils isolated from children. Neutrophils isolated from healthy children expressed more leptin receptor than those from allergic asthmatic (P<0.05) but not allergic non-asthmatic (P>0.05) or non-allergic asthmatic children (n = 7, P>0.05). Neutrophils isolated from children express an intracellular pool of leptin receptor that was mobilized to the cell surface upon GM-CSF stimulation. Finally, leptin exhibited anti-apoptotic properties on neutrophils via NF-κB and MEK1/2 MAPK pathway. Collectively, our data suggest that leptin may enhance airway inflammation by promoting neutrophil survival.
Object boundary extraction using Active B-Snake Model

A new deformable model called active b-snake model (ABM) is presented for object boundary extraction. First, an affine-invariant landmark point assignment strategy is proposed to avoid manually assign landmarks. Second, an adaptive control point insertion algorithm is used to enhance the flexibility of B-Snake to describe complex shape. Third, for modeling the shape distribution and appearance characteristics of landmark points in the training samples, a statistical framework is embedded into ABM. Finally, the minimum mean square error (MMSE) approach with control point insertion provides fine deformation to the desired object boundaries. Experimental results show that ABM can be used to achieve more accurate object extraction.
Prosocial behaviors in context: Examining the role of children's social companions

This study examines the role of immediate social companions in the prosocial behaviors of children from two cultural communities from the USA and the Philippines. Materials for this study comprised behavioral observations drawn from the Six Cultures Study — with 612 five-minute observations of 23 children (12 girls, 11 boys) from Orchard Town, MA and 570 observations of 24 children (12 girls, 12 boys) from Tarong, Philippines, ranging in age from 3 to 11 years. Data were coded for instances of prosocial behaviors, as well as characteristics of social companions (age and relationship to actor). Results revealed several interesting findings. First, frequency of children's behaviors varied as a function of the age of their social companions. Children generally directed the highest number of prosocial behaviors towards infants and toddlers, except for younger children's prosocial behaviors towards relatives which were directed mostly towards adults. Second, frequency of prosocial behaviors varied as a function of kinship, but differently for the community groups. Tarong children were generally more prosocial towards relatives, while Orchard Town children showed more prosocial behaviors towards non-relatives. Results highlight the role of immediate contexts in prosocial behaviors of children, and the value of using cross-cultural methodology to examine contextual factors in developmental processes.
The Relationship Between Personality and Parental Confidence in Mothers of School-Aged Children

This study explores the relationship between personality and parental confidence among mothers of school-aged children. The relationships between personality and parenting competence and also between parental confidence and parenting competence are established in the literature, but the relationship between personality and parental confidence is little explored. One hundred twenty-one mothers of school-aged children were surveyed regarding their demographics and parenting confidence, and they also completed the 16PF personality measure. Hierarchical regression analysis found that higher Dominance, Self-Control, and Independence predicted higher maternal confidence, whereas higher Apprehension and Anxiety predicted lower maternal confidence. Black mothers had higher levels of parental confidence overall than mothers of other ethnicities. These results are discussed in the context of understanding parenting behaviors and designing parenting interventions.
The ties problem resulting from counting-based error estimators and its impact on gene selection algorithms

MOTIVATION Feature selection approaches, such as filter and wrapper, have been applied to address the gene selection problem in the literature of microarray data analysis. In wrapper methods, the classification error is usually used as the evaluation criterion of feature subsets. Due to the nature of high dimensionality and small sample size of microarray data, however, counting-based error estimation may not necessarily be an ideal criterion for gene selection problem. RESULTS Our study reveals that evaluating genes in terms of counting-based error estimators such as resubstitution error, leave-one-out error, cross-validation error and bootstrap error may encounter severe ties problem, i.e. two or more gene subsets score equally, and this in turn results in uncertainty in gene selection. Our analysis finds that the ties problem is caused by the discrete nature of counting-based error estimators and could be avoided by using continuous evaluation criteria instead. Experiment results show that continuous evaluation criteria such as generalised the absolute value of w2 measure for support vector machines and modified Relief's measure for k-nearest neighbors produce improved gene selection compared with counting-based error estimators. AVAILABILITY The companion website is at http://www.ntu. edu.sg/home5/pg02776030/wrappers/ The website contains (1) the source code of all the gene selection algorithms and (2) the complete set of tables and figures of experiments.
Networked Stabilization of Multi-Input Systems with Channel Resource Allocation ⋆

Abstract In this paper, we study the problem of stabilizing a linear time-invariant discrete-time system with information constraints in the input channels. The information constraint in each input channel is modelled as a sector uncertainty. Equivalently, the transmission error of an input channel is modelled as an additive system uncertainty with a bound in the induced norm. We attempt to find the least information required, or equivalently the largest allowable uncertainty bound, in each input channel which renders the stabilization possible. The solution for the single-input case, which gives a typical H∞ optimal control problem, is available in the literature and is given analytically in terms of the Mahler measure or topological entropy of the plant. The main purpose of this paper is to address the multi-input case. In the multi-input case, if the information constraint in each input channel is given a priori, then our stabilization problem turns out to be a so-called µ synthesis problem, a notoriously hard problem. In this paper, we assume that the information constraints in the input channels are determined by the network resources assigned to the channels and they can be allocated subject to a total recourse constraint. With this assumption, the resource allocation becomes part of the design problem and a modified µ synthesis problem arises. Surprisingly, this modified µ-synthesis problem can be solved analytically and the solution is also given in terms of the Mahler measure or topological entropy as in the single-input case.
Why the Dichotomy ‘L1 Versus LX User’ is Better than ‘Native Versus Non-native Speaker’

The traditional dichotomy, ‘native’ versus ‘non-native speaker’ has to be rejected because of the inherent ideological assumptions about the superiority of the former and the inferiority of the latter. Cook's (2002) substitution of ‘non-native speaker’ by ‘L2 user’ represented a big step forward in creating a more balanced dichotomy but it kept the first part, namely the term ‘native speaker’. The present contribution argues that the final step should be the substitution of ‘native speaker’ by ‘L1 user’. The dichotomy ‘L1 user’ versus ‘LX user’ does not imply that one is superior to the other. They are equal and can be complementary. It also suggests that variation can exist within both L1(s) and LX(s) and that all individuals can be multicompetent users of multiple languages.
Approximately n-Jordan derivations: A fixed point approach

Let n ∈ N − {1}, and let A be a Banach algebra. An additive map D : A → A is called n-Jordan derivation if D(a n ) = D(a)a n−1 + aD(a)a n−2 + . + a n−2 D(a)a + a n−1 D(a), for all a ∈ A. Using fixed point methods, we investigate the stability of n-Jordan derivations (n-Jordan ∗ −derivations) on Banach algebras (C ∗ −algebras). Also we show that to each ap- proximate ∗ −Jordan derivation f in a C ∗ − algebra there corresponds a unique ∗ −derivation near to f.
Long-Term Surgical Outcomes of Primary Congenital Glaucoma in China

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the long-term outcomes of three surgical procedures for the treatment of primary congenital glaucoma (PCG). INTRODUCTION: PCG is one of the main causes of blindness in children. There is a paucity of contemporary data on PCG in China. METHODS: A retrospective study of 48 patients (81 eyes) with PCG who underwent primary trabeculectomy, trabeculotomy, or combined trabeculotomy and trabeculectomy (CTT). RESULTS: All patients were less than 4 years (yrs) of age, with a mean age of 2.08 ± 1.23 yrs. The mean duration of follow-up was 5.49 ± 3.09 yrs. The difference in success rates among the three surgical procedures at 1, 3, 6 and 9 yrs was not statistically significant (p = 0.492). However, in patients with over 4 yrs of follow-up, Kaplan-Meier survival analysis revealed that the success rates of trabeculectomy and CTT declined more slowly than that of trabeculotomy. Among the patients, 66.22% acquired good vision (VA ≥ 0.4), 17.57% acquired fair vision (VA = 0.1 – 0.3), and 16.22% acquired poor vision (VA < 0.1). The patients with good vision were mostly in the successful surgery group. Myopia was more prevalent postoperatively (p = 0.009). Reductions in the cup-disc ratio and corneal diameter were only seen in the successful surgery group (p = 0.000). In addition, the successful surgery group contained more patients that complied with a regular follow-up routine (p = 0.002). DISCUSSION: Our cases were all primary surgeries. Primary trabeculectomy was performed in many cases because no treatment was sought until an advanced stage of disease had been reached. CONCLUSIONS: In contrast to most reports, in the present study, trabeculectomy and CTT achieved higher long-term success rates than trabeculotomy. The patients with successful surgical results had better vision. Compliance with a routine of regular follow-up may increase the chances of a successful surgical outcome.
EPODE approach for childhood obesity prevention: methods, progress and international development

Childhood obesity is a complex issue and needs multistakeholder involvement at all levels to foster healthier lifestyles in a sustainable way. ‘Ensemble Prévenons l'ObésitéDes Enfants’ (EPODE, Together Let's Prevent Childhood Obesity) is a large‐scale, coordinated, capacity‐building approach for communities to implement effective and sustainable strategies to prevent childhood obesity. This paper describes EPODE methodology and its objective of preventing childhood obesity.
Interaction Between Phonological and Semantic Representations: Time Matters

Computational modeling and eye-tracking were used to investigate how phonological and semantic information interact to influence the time course of spoken word recognition. We extended our recent models (Chen & Mirman, 2012; Mirman, Britt, & Chen, 2013) to account for new evidence that competition among phonological neighbors influences activation of semantically related concepts during spoken word recognition (Apfelbaum, Blumstein, & McMurray, 2011). The model made a novel prediction: Semantic input modulates the effect of phonological neighbors on target word processing, producing an approximately inverted-U-shaped pattern with a high phonological density advantage at an intermediate level of semantic input-in contrast to the typical disadvantage for high phonological density words in spoken word recognition. This prediction was confirmed with a new analysis of the Apfelbaum et al. data and in a visual world paradigm experiment with preview duration serving as a manipulation of strength of semantic input. These results are consistent with our previous claim that strongly active neighbors produce net inhibitory effects and weakly active neighbors produce net facilitative effects.
The Durham/UKST Galaxy Redshift Survey - III. Large-scale structure via the two-point correlation function

ABSTRACT We have investigated the statistical clustering properties of galaxies by calculating the2-point galaxy correlation function from the Durham/UKST Galaxy Redshift Survey.This survey is magnitude limited to b J ∼ 17, contains ∼2500galaxiessampled at a rateof one on three and surveysa ∼4×10 6 (h −1 Mpc) 3 volume of space. We have empiricallydetermined the optimalmethod ofestimatingthe 2-point correlationfunction from justsuch a magnitude limited survey. Applying our methods to this survey,we ﬁnd that ourredshift space results agreewell with those from previous optical surveys.In particular,we conﬁrm the previously claimed detections of large scale power out to ∼40h −1 Mpcscales. We compare with two common models of cosmological structure formationand ﬁnd that our 2-point correlation function has power signiﬁcantly in excess of thestandard cold dark matter model in the 10-30h −1 Mpc region. We therefore supportthe observational results of the APM galaxy survey. Given that only the redshift spaceclustering can be measured directly we use standard modelling methods and indirectlyestimate the real space 2-point correlation function. This real space 2-point correlationfunction has a lower amplitude than the redshift space one but a steeper slope.Key words: galaxies: clusters – galaxies: general – cosmology: observations – large-scale structure of Universe.