Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multi-annual hydro-climatic trends in the Dunajec Basin (Polish Carpathians)

Owing to changing climate conditions, this study analyses potential hydro-climatic trends for the most recent 60 years (1956–2015). The study area is situated in the mountain basin of the Dunajec River in the Polish Carpathians. The focus of the study was to evaluate multi-annual trends in mean monthly river flow for each season of the year as well as to compare the direction of these trends with potential trends in seasonal values of surface air temperature and precipitation. An increase in minimum flow(p<0.05) during the winter was identified for sites located along the upper and middle course of the Dunajec River, while no trends in winter flow were found at the studied lower-course site. An increase in spring flow is significant (p<0.1, weak evidence) at the upper-course site only. Moreover, an increase in maximum flow was found for autumn at the studied middle-course and downstream sites (p<0.05 and p<0.1, respectively). Increasing trends in mean and maximum air temperature (p<0.005) were identified for the spring and summer, together with an increase in minimum summer air temperature (p<0.005). Precipitation shows an increasing tendency in maximum values for spring, but a decrease in minimum values for summer (p<0.05), as well as a decrease in maximum values for winter (p<0.1). Overall, the revealed trends imply discernible, multi-annual changes in hydro-climatic conditions for the studied mountain basin.
Transgenic tobacco plants expressing the Arabidopsis thaliana nitrilase II enzyme.

Nitrilase (E.C. 3.5.5.1) cloned from Arabidopsis thaliana converts indole-3-acetonitrile to the plant growth hormone, indole-3-acetic acid in vitro. To probe the capacity of ths enzyme under physiological conditions in vivo, the cDNA PM255, encoding nitrilase II, was stably integrated into the genome of Nicotiana tabacum by direct protoplast transformation under the control of the CaMV-35S promotor. The regenerated plants appeared phenotypically normal. Nitrilase II was expressed, based on the occurrence of its mRNA and polypeptide. The enzyme was catalytically active, when extracted from leaf tissue of transgenic plants (specific activity: 25 fkat mg(-1) protein with indole-3-acetonitrile as substrate). This level of activity was lower than that found in A. thaliana, and this was deemed essential for the in vivo analysis. Leaf tissue from the transgenic plants converted 1-[13C]-indole-3-acetonitrile to 1-[13C]-indole-3-acetic acid in vivo as determined by HPLC/GC-MS analysis. Untransformed tobacco was unable to catalyze this reaction. When transgenic seeds were grown on medium in the absence of indole-3-acetonitrile, germination and seedling growth appeared normal. In the presence of micromolar levels of exogenous indole-3-acetonitrile, a strong auxin-overproducing phenotype developed resulting in increased lateral root formation (at 10 microM indole-3-acetonitrile). Collectively, these data prove the ability of nitrilase II to convert low micromolar levels of indole-3-acetonitrile to indole-3-acetic acid in vivo, even when expressed at subphysiological levels thereby conferring a high-auxin phenotype upon transgenic plants. Thus, the Al thaliana nitrilase activity, which exceeds that of the transgenic plants, would be sufficient to meet the requirements for auxin biosynthesis in vivo.
Low anti-RhD IgG-Fc-fucosylation in pregnancy: a new variable predicting severity in haemolytic disease of the fetus and newborn

Haemolytic disease of the fetus and newborn (HDFN) may occur when maternal IgG antibodies against red blood cells (RBCs), often anti‐RhD (anti‐D) antibodies, cross the placenta and mediate the destruction of RBCs via phagocytic IgG‐Fc‐receptors (FcγR). Clinical severity is not strictly related to titre and is more accurately predicted by the diagnostically‐applied monocyte‐based antibody‐dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC), a sensitive test with relatively low specificity. This suggests that other factors are involved in the pathogenesis of HDFN. Binding of IgG to FcγR requires the N‐linked glycan at position 297 in the IgG‐Fc‐region, consisting of several different glycoforms. We therefore systematically analysed IgG‐derived glycopeptides by mass spectrometry from 70 anti‐D IgG1 antibodies purified from the plasma of alloimmunized pregnant women. This revealed a variable decrease in Fc‐fucosylation in the majority of anti‐D IgG1 (even down to 12%), whereas the total IgG of these patients remained highly fucosylated, like in healthy individuals (>90%). The degree of anti‐D fucosylation correlated significantly with CD16 (FcγRIIIa)‐mediated ADCC, in agreement with increased affinity of defucosylated IgG to human FcγRIIIa. Additionally, low anti‐D fucosylation correlated significantly with low fetal‐neonatal haemoglobin levels, thus with increased haemolysis, suggesting IgG‐fucosylation to be an important pathological feature in HDFN with diagnostic potential.
Address Entry While Driving: Speech Recognition Versus a Touch-Screen Keyboard

A driving simulator experiment was conducted to determine the effects of entering addresses into a navigation system during driving. Participants drove on roads of varying visual demand while entering addresses. Three address entry methods were explored: word-based speech recognition, character-based speech recognition, and typing on a touch-screen keyboard. For each method, vehicle control and task measures, glance timing, and subjective ratings were examined. During driving, word-based speech recognition yielded the shortest total task time (15.3 s), followed by character-based speech recognition (41.0 s) and touch-screen keyboard (86.0 s). The standard deviation of lateral position when performing keyboard entry (0.21 m) was 60% higher than that for all other address entry methods (0.13 m). Degradation of vehicle control associated with address entry using a touch screen suggests that the use of speech recognition is favorable. Speech recognition systems with visual feedback, however, even with excellent accuracy, are not without performance consequences. Applications of this research include the design of in-vehicle navigation systems as well as other systems requiring significant driver input, such as E-mail, the Internet, and text messaging.
Reactogenicity of live-attenuated Vibrio cholerae vaccines is dependent on flagellins

Cholera is a severe diarrheal disease caused by the motile Gram-negative rod Vibrio cholerae. Live-attenuated V. cholerae vaccines harboring deletions of the genes encoding cholera toxin have great promise for reducing the global burden of cholera. However, development of live vaccines has been hampered by the tendency of such strains to induce noncholeric reactogenic diarrhea in human subjects. The molecular bases of reactogenicity are unknown, but it has been speculated that reactogenic diarrhea is a response to V. cholerae’s flagellum and/or the motility that it enables. Here, we used an infant rabbit model of reactogenicity to determine what V. cholerae factors trigger this response. We found that V. cholerae ctx mutants that produced flagellins induced diarrhea, regardless of whether the proteins were assembled into a flagellum or whether the flagellum was functional. In contrast, ∼90% of rabbits infected with V. cholerae lacking all five flagellin-encoding genes did not develop diarrhea. Thus, flagellin production, independent of flagellum assembly or motility, is sufficient for reactogenicity. The intestinal colonization and intraintestinal localization of the nonreactogenic flagellin-deficient strain were indistinguishable from those of a flagellated motile strain; however, the flagellin-deficient strain stimulated fewer mRNA transcripts coding for proinflammatory cytokines in the intestine. Thus, reactogenic diarrhea may be a consequence of an innate host inflammatory response to V. cholerae flagellins. Our results suggest a simple genetic blueprint for engineering defined nonreactogenic live-attenuated V. cholerae vaccine strains.
DEFAULT RISK AND DIVERSIFICATION: THEORY AND EMPIRICAL IMPLICATIONS

Recent advances in the theory of credit risk allow the use of standard term structure machinery for default risk modeling and estimation. The empirical literature in this area often interprets the drift adjustments of the default intensity's diffusion state variables as the only default risk premium. We show that this interpretation implies a restriction on the form of possible default risk premia, which can be justified through exact and approximate notions of “diversifiable default risk. ” The equivalence between the empirical and martingale default intensities that follows from diversifiable default risk greatly facilitates the pricing and management of credit risk. We emphasize that this is not an equivalence in distribution, and illustrate its importance using credit spread dynamics estimated in Duffee (1999) . We also argue that the assumption of diversifiability is implicitly used in certain existing models of mortgage‐backed securities.
Culture, Ethnicity and Diversity

We investigate the empirical relationship between ethnicity and culture, defined as a vector of traits reflecting norms, attitudes and preferences. Using surveys of individual values in 76 countries, we find that ethnic identity is a significant predictor of cultural values, yet that within-group variation in culture trumps between-group variation. Thus, in contrast to a commonly held view, ethnic and cultural diversity are unrelated. We explore the correlates of cultural diversity and of the overlap between culture and ethnicity, finding that the level of economic development is positively associated with cultural diversity and negatively associated with the overlap between culture and ethnicity. Finally, although only a small portion of a country's overall cultural heterogeneity occurs between groups, this does not imply that cultural differences between groups are irrelevant. Indeed, we find that civil conflict becomes more likely when there is greater overlap between ethnicity and culture.
Towards Confidence with Capture-recapture Estimation: An Exploratory Study of Dependence within Inspections

Background: Capture-ReCapture (CRC), as a technique for post-inspection defect estimation, has been studied in Software Engineering (SE) community since 1990s. While most studies focused on the performance evaluation of various CRC models and estimators, few have been done on the assessment of the credibility of estimation results, rendering the difficulty of decision-making for quality management when applying CRC for defect estimation. Objective: This research aims to explore and investigate a reliable and practical approach to assess the credibility of CRC based defect estimation. Method: One fundamental assumption of applying CRC method is the statistical independence of samples that can be measured by 'Coefficient of CoVariation' (CCV). We applied CCV as an indicator of the statistical dependence between the observations (i.e., the defects detected by inspectors), and assessed the estimation results of CRC with the published datasets in SE literature by examining the correlation between Relative Error (RE) and CCV. Based on the observed correlation, we further propose CĈV, which replaces the unknown N (the actual number of defects) with the estimated number (N), to assess the credibility of CRC estimates. Results: We found that most datasets are with non-zero CCVs and the R2 (Coefficient of Determination) of non-linear curve-fitting for their CCVs and REs is higher than 0.8. Conclusions: Our study shows the evidence that the statistical dependence among inspectors is ubiquitous in the existing CRC-related studies. Besides, the significant correlation between CCV (by CĈV in practice) and RE may enable the possibility of the assessment of CRC-based estimation in support of quality management.
Similar discontinuation symptoms for withdrawal from medium-dose paroxetine and venlafaxine after nine years in the same patient

A woman who had developed a discontinuation syndrome nine years ago with paroxetine tapered from 10 to 5 mg/day represented the same syndrome recently when she occasionally missed her 75 mg q 12 h venlafaxine doses. The symptoms, comprising agitation, numbness, pricking sensations, sweating, difficulty concentrating, weakness, derealisation and perceived xerophthalmia, immediately subside upon drug dose reinstitution. The patient had used cannabis irregularly before the onset of pauci-symptomatic panic attacks, but none of her panic symptoms were present in her withdrawal symptomatology. Some symptoms waxed and waned during the withdrawal period. The syndrome is compatible with both hyper- and hypoactivity of the central serotonergic system.
Competing Mechanisms

<b>English Abstract:</b> The recent literature on competing mechanisms has devoted a lot of effort at understanding a very complex and abstract issue. In particular, an agent's type in a competitive environment is hard to conceptualize because it depends on information the agent has about what is going on in the rest of the market. This paper explains why this is such an important practical problem and illustrates how the literature has “solved” it. <b>French Abstract:</b> Concurrence par les mécanismes. La littérature spécialisée récente sur la concurrence par les mécanismes s'est attachée à comprendre un ensemble de problèmes complexes et abstraits. En particulier, un type d'agent dans un environnement concurrentiel est difficile à conceptualiser parce que cela dépend de l'information que l'agent a sur ce qui se passe dans le reste du marché. Ce texte explique pourquoi c'est un problème pratique tellement important et montre comment la littérature spécialisée l'arésolu'.
A Study on Compositional Semantics of Words in Distributional Spaces

This paper proposes two approaches to compositional semantics in distributional semantic spaces. Both approaches conceive the semantics of complex structures, such as phrases or sentences, as being other than the sum of its terms. Syntax is the plus used as a glue to compose words. The former kind of approach encodes information about syntactic dependencies directly into distributional spaces, the latter exploits compositional operators reflecting the syntactic role of words. We present a preliminary evaluation performed on GEMS 2011 "Compositional Semantics" dataset, with the aim of understanding the effects of these approaches when applied to simple word pairs of the kind Noun-Noun, Adjective-Noun and Verb-Noun. Experimental results corroborate our conjecture that exploiting syntax can lead to improved distributional models and compositional operators, and suggest new openings for future uses in real-application scenario.
Activity patterns of cerebellar cortical neurones and climbing fibre afferents in the awake cat.

1. Glass‐insulated tungsten micro‐electrodes were used to record from single neurones in the intermediate zone of the cerebellar cortex of cats in a state of quiet wakefulness. 2. Two hundred and seventy Purkinje (P) cells were recorded extracellularly, 95% of which displayed an irregular tonic discharge at rates between 19 and 95/s (over‐all mean 44/s), including complex spikes (c.s.) which occurred at 1.0‐‐2.5/s )over‐all mean 1.5/s). The remaining cells discharged c.s. at the usual rate but only one or two simple spikes (s.s.) per minute. C.s. of spike plus wavelet and of multi‐spiked type were present in approximately equal numbers of cells. 3. Presumed climbing fibre‐e.p.s.p.s were recorded from fifty‐six P cells and occurred both singly and in groups of two to six e.p.s.p.s at an intra‐group frequency of about 500/s. The cells giving rise to the c.f. s therefore discharge propagated impulses both singly and in short bursts as previously reported for anesthetized animals. A single e.p.s.p. can give rise to more than one spike in the multi‐spiked type of c.s. , and probably to a complete c.s. event. 4. Following spontaneous c.s. the interval to the next s.s. varied from 8 to 600 ms. There was an inverse correlation between duration of the post‐c.s. interval and the rate at which s.s. were discharged in the preceding 100 ms. The duration exceeded the mean s.s. interval provided s.s. rate was less than 40‐‐50/s, and the post‐c.s. interval would then constitute a real interruption of s.s. discharge. 5. When the superficial radial (s.r.) nerves were stimulated with single shocks too weak to produce a behavioural response changes in discharge pattern were detected in eighty‐eight of 151 P cells tested. The initial responses were almost always excitatory and consisted in seventy‐two cells of a c.s. , in eleven of a c.s. preceded by a brief increase in s.s. and in two cases of a s.s. discharge alone. The spino‐olivo‐cerebellar paths responsible for the c.s. showed transmission characteristics similar to those reported for animals anaesthetized with barbiturates. 6. C.s. were readily evoked by tapping or squeezing the forepaws. 7. Excitatory responses to nerve stimulation were usually followed by a depression of the tonic s.s. discharge. Its duration ranged widely in different cells (from 10 to 500 ms) and it would coincide with equally variable periods of facilitation previously seen in neurones of nucleus interpositus. It is therefore likely that such facilitations of the cerebellar nuclear cells result at least in part from reductions in the tonic inhibitory input from the P cells. 8. Thirty‐six units were classes as 'probable cortical interneurones'. They discharged more regularly, at rates between 9 and 28/s. Twenty such units (56%) responded to s.r. stimulation with a brief excitation not usually followed by any pronounced depression.
Scalable Constraint-based Virtual Data Center Allocation

Abstract Constraint-based techniques can solve challenging problems arising in highly diverse applications. This paper considers the problem of virtual data center (VDC) allocation, an important, emerging challenge for modern data center operators. To address this problem, we introduce Netsolver , a system for VDC allocation that is based on constraint solving. Netsolver represents a major improvement over existing approaches: it is sound, complete, and scalable, providing support for end-to-end, multi-path bandwidth guarantees across all the layers of hosting infrastructure, from servers to top-of-rack switches to aggregation switches to access routers. Netsolver scales to realistic data center sizes and VDC topologies, typically requiring just seconds to allocate VDCs of 5–15 virtual machines to physical data centers with 1000+ servers, maintaining this efficiency even when the data center is nearly saturated. In many cases, Netsolver can allocate 150 % − 300 % as many total VDCs to the same physical data center as previous methods. Finally, we show how Netsolver can be extended with additional optimization constraints, such as VM affinity and hotspot minimization, demonstrating the flexibility of our approach. The performance and flexibility of Netsolver are made possible by our formalization of the VDC allocation problem in terms of multi-commodity flows, and the corresponding efficient handling of network flow problems in the underlying constraint solvers. This shows the importance of supporting flow-based constraints, which are more mature in ILP- vs. SMT-based constraint solving.
Assessment of the impact of implementing the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the impact of the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative on the breastfeeding practices of mothers from the urban area of Montes Claros, MG, Brazil. METHODS A comparative analysis was performed of two cross-sectional breastfeeding indicator studies with randomized samples of children under 2 years of age. One study was carried out before and the other after the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative had been implemented throughout all public pregnancy and childbirth care services in the city. Kaplan-Meyer survival curves were constructed for different breastfeeding patterns. Log rank testing was used to calculate the level of significance of differences between curves for before and after the Initiative. RESULTS The survival curves demonstrate that breastfeeding rates increased during the study period. The log rank test detected significance for increases in all patterns of breastfeeding (p < 0.000). Median overall breastfeeding duration increased from 8.9 to 11.6 months and median duration of exclusive breastfeeding rose from 27 days to 3.5 months. CONCLUSIONS Implementation of the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative in all public maternity units in Montes Claros significantly increased breastfeeding rates in the city. Since the ideal state of affairs has not yet been reached, further strategies must be implemented to promote and support breastfeeding practices.
Guttural pouches, brain temperature and exercise in horses

Selective brain cooling (SBC) is defined as the lowering of brain temperature below arterial blood temperature. Artiodactyls employ a carotid rete, an anatomical heat exchanger, to cool arterial blood shortly before it enters the brain. The survival advantage of this anatomy traditionally is believed to be a protection of brain tissue from heat injury, especially during exercise. Perissodactyls such as horses do not possess a carotid rete, and it has been proposed that their guttural pouches serve the heat-exchange function of the carotid rete by cooling the blood that traverses them, thus protecting the brain from heat injury. We have tested this proposal by measuring brain and carotid artery temperature simultaneously in free-living horses. We found that despite evidence of cranial cooling, brain temperature increased by about 2.5 °C during exercise, and consistently exceeded carotid temperature by 0.2–0.5 °C. We conclude that cerebral blood flow removes heat from the brain by convection, but since SBC does not occur in horses, the guttural pouches are not surrogate carotid retes.
Clinical aspects of using exhaled NO in asthma diagnosis and management

Current guidelines recommend tailoring of asthma management according to disease control, which is largely defined by increased symptoms and deterioration in lung function. These features do not reflect the severity nor the type of the asthmatic airway inflammation. Fractional exhaled nitric oxide (FENO) is a simple, non‐invasive and cost‐effective online test applicable in both adults and children. In addition to symptoms and lung function measurements, FENO reflects airway eosinophilia and hence allows online assessment of the corticosteroid‐sensitive T helper 2 type airway inflammation in asthmatic patients. FENO can thus be applied to aid asthma diagnosis and treatment monitoring both in clinical practice and for research purposes.