Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Temporal Changes in Randomness of Bird Communities across Central Europe

Many studies have examined whether communities are structured by random or deterministic processes, and both are likely to play a role, but relatively few studies have attempted to quantify the degree of randomness in species composition. We quantified, for the first time, the degree of randomness in forest bird communities based on an analysis of spatial autocorrelation in three regions of Germany. The compositional dissimilarity between pairs of forest patches was regressed against the distance between them. We then calculated the y-intercept of the curve, i.e. the ‘nugget’, which represents the compositional dissimilarity at zero spatial distance. We therefore assume, following similar work on plant communities, that this represents the degree of randomness in species composition. We then analysed how the degree of randomness in community composition varied over time and with forest management intensity, which we expected to reduce the importance of random processes by increasing the strength of environmental drivers. We found that a high portion of the bird community composition could be explained by chance (overall mean of 0.63), implying that most of the variation in local bird community composition is driven by stochastic processes. Forest management intensity did not consistently affect the mean degree of randomness in community composition, perhaps because the bird communities were relatively insensitive to management intensity. We found a high temporal variation in the degree of randomness, which may indicate temporal variation in assembly processes and in the importance of key environmental drivers. We conclude that the degree of randomness in community composition should be considered in bird community studies, and the high values we find may indicate that bird community composition is relatively hard to predict at the regional scale.
Distribution of Cystic Fibrosis Transmembrane Conductance Regulator (CFTR) Mutations in a Cohort of Patients Residing in Palestine

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is an autosomal recessive inherited life-threatening disorder that causes severe damage to the lungs and the digestive system. In Palestine, mutations in the Cystic Fibrosis Transmembrane Conductance Regulator gene (CFTR) that contributes to the clinical presentation of CF are ill defined. A cohort of thirty three clinically diagnosed CF patients from twenty one different Palestinian families residing in the central and southern part of Palestine were incorporated in this study. Sweat chloride testing was performed using the Sweat Chek Conductivity Analyzer (ELITECH Group, France) to confirm the clinical diagnosis of CF. In addition, nucleic acid from the patients’ blood samples was extracted and the CFTR mutation profiles were assessed by direct sequencing of the CFTR 27 exons and the intron-exon boundaries. For patient’s DNA samples where no homozygous or two heterozygous CFTR mutations were identified by exon sequencing, DNA samples were tested for deletions or duplications using SALSA MLPA probemix P091-D1 CFTR assay. Sweat chloride testing confirmed the clinical diagnosis of CF in those patients. All patients had NaCl conductivity >60mmol/l. In addition, nine different CFTR mutations were identified in all 21 different families evaluated. These mutations were c.1393-1G>A, F508del, W1282X, G85E, c.313delA, N1303K, deletion exons 17a-17b-18, deletion exons 17a-17b and Q1100P. c.1393-1G>A was shown to be the most frequent occurring mutation among tested families. We have profiled the underling mutations in the CFTR gene of a cohort of 21 different families affected by CF. Unlike other studies from the Arab countries where F508del was reported to be the most common mutation, in southern/central Palestine, the c.1393-1G>A appeared to be the most common. Further studies are needed per sample size and geographic distribution to account for other possible CFTR genetic alterations and their frequencies. Genotype/phenotype assessments are also recommended and finally carrier frequency should be ascertained.
Fraudulent Practices: Academic Misrepresentations of Plagiarism In the Name of Good Pedagogy

This article describes analyses of three contexts (civic, business, and military) in which understandings of intellectual property differ from those taught in the schools. In each of these contexts, it is possible to document specific examples of unattributed material that would be considered to violate most academic plagiarism policies. Yet in these contexts, entirely acceptable purposes for non-attribution relate to the specific goals of the communication; whether original authors stand to gain, in Latour and Woolgar’s sense, either credit or credibility from their creations; and how the broader community’s goals are defined relative to individuals working within it (see Adler-Kassner, Anson, and Howard). After a brief synthesis of this research, the essay returns to the problem of discursive representation and the honesty with which we teach students about worlds of written discourse.
An Analysis of Visibility and Anatomic Variations of Mandibular Canal in Digital Panoramic Radiographs of Dentulous and Edentulous Patients in Northern Iran Populations

Statement of the Problem Insufficient information about the anatomical positions and structure of mandibular canal provokes unwanted damage to this important structure of mandible. Purpose The aim of this study was to determine the visibility and anatomical variations of mandibular canal in digital panoramic radiographs of dentulous and edentulous patients in a sample of Iranian population. Materials and Method In this retrospective-analytical research, 249 digital panoramic radiographs in dentulous group and 126 in edentulous group were studied by an expert oral and maxillofacial radiologist. In both groups, the visibility of canal borders in anterior, middle, and posterior areas were examined. In dentulous group, the distance between the canal and apex of the first and second molars were measured. Canal-to-alveolar crest distance and lower mandibular border was measured in three different points for both groups. Finally, the upper-lower positions of canals were determined. Results In both groups, most visibility occurred in 1/3 of posterior and the least visibility was detected in 1/3 of anterior, with the intermediate being the most visible part (Type 2). There was no significant difference between the left and right sides in all cases. In dentulous group, no correlation was found between the visibility, age, and gender (p> 0.05); however, canal position was related to gender (p= 0.03 and p= 0.04 in right and left sides, respectively). High position was more frequent in females and intermediate position was more common in males. In edentulous group, no correlation was found between age, gender, and canal position (p> 0.05). Conclusion The most visibility of mandibular canal was in its third posterior and the least was in its third anterior part. Although the middle position of canal was more frequently visible than the high position in this study, it does not refute the possibility of damaging the mandibular canal in critical surgeries.
The awakening of the γ-ray narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxy PKS 1502+036

After a long low-activity period, a γ-ray flare from the narrow-line Seyfert 1 PKS 1502+036 (z = 0.4089) was detected by the Large Area Telescope (LAT) on board Fermi in 2015. On 2015 December 20, the source reached a daily peak flux, in the 0.1–300 GeV band, of (93 ± 19) × 10^(−8) ph cm^(−2) s^(−1), attaining a flux of (237 ± 71) × 10^(−8) ph cm^(−2) s^(−1) on 3-h time-scales, which corresponds to an isotropic luminosity of (7.3 ± 2.1) × 10^(47) erg s^(−1). The γ-ray flare was not accompanied by significant spectral changes. We report on multiwavelength radio-to-γ-ray observations of PKS 1502+036 during 2008 August–2016 March by Fermi-LAT, Swift, XMM–Newton, Catalina Real-Time Transient Survey and the Owens Valley Radio Observatory (OVRO). An increase in activity was observed on 2015 December 22 by Swift in optical, UV and X-rays. The OVRO 15 GHz light curve reached the highest flux density observed from this source on 2016 January 12, indicating a delay of about three weeks between the γ-ray and 15 GHz emission peaks. This suggests that the γ-ray-emitting region is located beyond the broad-line region. We compared the spectral energy distribution (SED) of an average activity state with that of the flaring state. The two SED, with the high-energy bump modelled as an external Compton component with seed photons from a dust torus, could be fitted by changing the electron distribution parameters as well as the magnetic field. The fit of the disc emission during the average state constrains the black hole mass to values lower than 10^8 M_⊙. The SED, high-energy emission mechanisms and γ-ray properties of the source resemble those of a flat spectrum radio quasar.
Subcellular segregation of distinct heteromeric NMDA glutamate receptors in the striatum

Functional N‐methyl‐d‐aspartate (NMDA) glutamate receptors are composed of heteromeric complexes of NR1, the obligatory subunit for channel activity, and NR2 or NR3 family members, which confer variability in the properties of the receptors. Recent studies have provided evidence for the existence of both binary (containing NR1 and either NR2A or NR2B) and ternary (containing NR1, NR2A, and NR2B) receptor complexes in the adult mammalian brain. However, the mechanisms regulating subunit assembly and receptor localization are not well understood. In the CNS, NMDA subunits are present both at intracellular sites and the post‐synaptic membrane of neurons. Using biochemical protein fractionation and co‐immunoprecipitation approaches we have found that in rat striatum binary NMDA receptors are widely distributed, and can be identified in the light membrane, synaptosomal membrane, and synaptic vesicle‐enriched subcellular compartments. In contrast, ternary receptors are found exclusively in the synaptosomal membranes. When striatal proteins are chemically cross‐linked prior to subcellular fractionation, ternary NMDA receptors can be precipitated from the light membrane and synaptic vesicle‐enriched fractions where this type of receptor complex is not detectable under normal conditions. These findings suggest differential targeting of distinct types of NMDA receptor assemblies between intracellular and post‐synaptic sites based on subunit composition. This targeting may underlie important differences in the regulation of the transport pathways involved in both normal as well as pathological receptor functions.
PANDA: Pose Aligned Networks for Deep Attribute Modeling

We propose a method for inferring human attributes (such as gender, hair style, clothes style, expression, action) from images of people under large variation of viewpoint, pose, appearance, articulation and occlusion. Convolutional Neural Nets (CNN) have been shown to perform very well on large scale object recognition problems. In the context of attribute classification, however, the signal is often subtle and it may cover only a small part of the image, while the image is dominated by the effects of pose and viewpoint. Discounting for pose variation would require training on very large labeled datasets which are not presently available. Part-based models, such as poselets [4] and DPM [12] have been shown to perform well for this problem but they are limited by shallow low-level features. We propose a new method which combines part-based models and deep learning by training pose-normalized CNNs. We show substantial improvement vs. state-of-the-art methods on challenging attribute classification tasks in unconstrained settings. Experiments confirm that our method outperforms both the best part-based methods on this problem and conventional CNNs trained on the full bounding box of the person.
Intravenous versus Nebulized Ceftazidime in Ventilated Piglets with and without Experimental Bronchopneumonia: Comparative Effects of Helium and Nitrogen

Background: Lung deposition of intravenous cephalosporins is low. The lung deposition of equivalent doses of ceftazidime administered either intravenously or by ultrasonic nebulization using either nitrogen–oxygen or helium–oxygen as the carrying gas of the aerosol was compared in ventilated piglets with and without experimental bronchopneumonia. Methods: Five piglets with noninfected lungs and 5 piglets with Pseudomonas aeruginosa experimental bronchopneumonia received 33 mg/kg ceftazidime intravenously. Ten piglets with noninfected lungs and 10 others with experimental P. aeruginosa bronchopneumonia received 50 mg/kg ceftazidime by ultrasonic nebulization. In each group, the ventilator was operated in half of the animals with a 65%/35% helium–oxygen or nitrogen–oxygen mixture. Animals were killed, and multiple lung specimens were sampled for measuring ceftazidime lung tissue concentrations by high-performance liquid chromatography. Results: As compared with intravenous administration, nebulization of ceftazidime significantly increased lung tissue concentrations (17 ± 13 vs. 383 ± 84 &mgr;g/g in noninfected piglets and 10 ± 3 vs. 129 ± 108 &mgr;g/g in piglets with experimental bronchopneumonia; P < 0.001). The use of a 65%/35% helium–oxygen mixture induced a 33% additional increase in lung tissue concentrations in noninfected piglets (576 ± 141 &mgr;g/g; P < 0.001) and no significant change in infected piglets (111 ± 104 &mgr;g/g). Conclusion: Nebulization of ceftazidime induced a 5- to 30-fold increase in lung tissue concentrations as compared with intravenous administration. Using a helium–oxygen mixture as the carrying gas of the aerosol induced a substantial additional increase in lung deposition in noninfected piglets but not in piglets with experimental bronchopneumonia.
On the similarities and differences of non-traumatic sound exposure during the critical period and in adulthood

There is an almost dogmatic view of the different effects of moderate-level sound stimulation in neonatal vs. adult animals. It is often stated that exposure in neonates results in an expansion of the cortical area that responds to the frequencies present in the sound, being either pure tones or frequency modulated sounds. In contrast, recent findings on stimulating adult animals for a sufficiently long time with similar sounds show a contraction of the cortical region responding to those sounds. In this review I will suggest that most neonatal animal results have been wrongly interpreted (albeit generally not by the original authors) and that the changes caused in the critical period (CP) and in adulthood are very similar. Thus, the mechanisms leading to the cortical map changes appear to be similar in the CP and in adulthood. Despite this similarity, the changes induced in the CP are occurring faster and are generally permanent (unless extensive training paradigms to revert the changes are involved), whereas in adults the induction is slower and a slow recovery (months) to pre-exposure conditions takes place.
BMN operators with three scalar impurites and the vertex-correlator duality in pp-wave

We calculate 3-point correlation functions of Δ-BMN operators with 3 scalar impurites in = 4 supersymmetric gauge theory. We use these results to test the pp-wave/SYM duality correspondence of the vertex-correlator type. This correspondence relates the coefficients of 3-point correlators of Δ-BMN operators in gauge theory to the 3-string vertex in lightcone string field theory in the pp-wave background. We verify the vertex-correlator duality equation of [6] at the 3 scalar impurites level for supergravity and for string modes.
The Conjoint Importance of the Hippocampus and Anterior Thalamic Nuclei for Allocentric Spatial Learning: Evidence from a Disconnection Study in the Rat

A disconnection procedure was used to test whether the hippocampus and anterior thalamic nuclei form functional components of the same spatial memory system. Unilateral excitotoxic lesions were placed in the anterior thalamic (AT) nuclei and hippocampus (HPC) in either the same (AT-HPC Ipsi group) or contralateral (AT-HPC Contra group) hemispheres of rats. The behavioral effects of these combined lesions were compared in several spatial memory tasks sensitive to bilateral hippocampal lesions. In all of the tasks tested, T-maze alternation, radial arm maze, and Morris water maze, those animals with lesions placed in the contralateral hemispheres were more impaired than those animals with lesions in the same hemisphere. These results provide direct support for the notion that the performance of tasks that require spatial memory rely on the operation of the anterior thalamus and hippocampus within an integrated neural network.
A Grammar Inference Algorithm for the World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a treasure trove of information. The Web’s sheer scale m,l~. s automatic location and extraction of information appealing. However, much of the information lies bmied in documents designed for human consumption, such as home pages or product ~ta_Sogs. Before software agents can extract nuggets of infonnmion fi’om Web documents, they have to be able to recognize it despite the multitude of formats in wh/ch it may appear. In this paper, we take a machine learning approach to the problem. We explain why existing grammar inference techniques face difficulties in this domain, present a new techn/que, and demonstrate its success on examples drawn f~om the Web ranging f~om CMU Tech Report codes to bus schedules. Our algorithm is shown to learn target languages found on the Web in si~mlfw.aufly fewer examples than Inevious methods. In addition, our algmiH~n is guaranteed to learn in the limit, and rims in time OOS~, where ISI is the size of the sample.
Consumers Perceptions and Acceptances Towards Mobile Advertising: An Empirical Study in China

This research presents an integrated model for explores consumer's perceptions and acceptances towards mobile advertising based short message service via an empirical study. A research framework for measuring acceptances toward mobile advertising is developed from the theory of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT), innovation diffusion theory, and task-technology fit theory. It does this by adding an innovation-related construct, task-related construct and a construct of permission to the UTAUT. Data from China tested using the structural equation modeling approach. The results indicate consumers' general attitudes and the factors that will determine consumer acceptance of mobile advertise.
Time-Course Changes of Steroidogenic Gene Expression and Steroidogenesis of Rat Leydig Cells after Acute Immobilization Stress

Leydig cells secrete testosterone, which is essential for male fertility and reproductive health. Stress increases the secretion of glucocorticoid (corticosterone, CORT; in rats), which decreases circulating testosterone levels in part through a direct action by binding to the glucocorticoid receptors (NR3C1) in Leydig cells. The intratesticular CORT level is dependent on oxidative inactivation of glucocorticoid by 11β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase 1 (HSD11B1) in Leydig cells. In the present study, we investigated the time-course changes of steroidogenic gene expression levels after acute immobilization stress in rats. The plasma CORT levels were significantly increased 0.5, 1, 3 and 6 h after immobilization stress, while plasma testosterone levels were significantly reduced 3 and 6 h, after stress and luteinizing hormone (LH) did not change. Immobilization stress caused the down-regulation of Scarb1, Star and Cyp17a1 expression levels in the rat testis starting at the first hour of stress, ahead of the significant decreases of plasma testosterone levels. Other mRNA levels, including Cyp11a1, Hsd3b1 and Hsd17b3, began to decline after 3 h. Hsd11b1 and Nos2 mRNA levels did not change during the course of stress. Administration of glucocorticoid antagonist RU486 significantly restored plasma testosterone levels. In conclusion, Scarb1, Star and Cyp17a1 expression levels are more sensitive to acute stress, and acute immobilization stress causes the decline of the steroidogenic pathway via elevating the levels of glucocorticoid, which binds to NR3C1 in Leydig cells to inhibit steroidogenic gene expression.
Augmenting Decisions of Taxi Drivers through Reinforcement Learning for Improving Revenues

Taxis (which include cars working with car aggregation systems such as Uber, Grab, Lyft etc.) have become a critical component in the urban transportation. While most research and applications in the context of taxis have focused on improving performance from a customer perspective, in this paper, we focus on improving performance from a taxi driver perspective. Higher revenues for taxi drivers can help bring more drivers into the system thereby improving availability for customers in dense urban cities. Typically, when there is no customer on board, taxi drivers will cruise around to find customers either directly (on the street) or indirectly (due to a request from a nearby customer on phone or on aggregation systems). For such cruising taxis, we develop a Reinforcement Learning (RL) based system to learn from real trajectory logs of drivers to advise them on the right locations to find customers which maximize their revenue. There are multiple translational challenges involved in building this RL system based on real data, such as annotating the activities (e.g., roaming, going to a taxi stand, etc.) observed in trajectory logs, identifying the right features for a state, action space and evaluating against real driver performance observed in the dataset. We also provide a dynamic abstraction mechanism to improve the basic learning mechanism. Finally, we provide a thorough evaluation on a real world data set from a developed Asian city and demonstrate that an RL based system can provide significant benefits to the drivers.
DNA damage and repair kinetics after microbeam radiation therapy emulation in living cells using monoenergetic synchrotron X-ray microbeams

The molecular response of mammalian cells to a monoenergetic synchrotron X-ray microbeam which emulated microbeam radiation configurations has been investigated. Very few γH2AX foci were found outside the irradiated zone within 1 h of irradiation, even within a single nucleus. Furthermore, 12 h after radiation there was a large decrease in foci number but many cells still contained γH2AX foci, of which many were outside the directly irradiated regions.
J-substitution algorithm in magnetic resonance electrical impedance tomography (MREIT): phantom experiments for static resistivity images

Recently, a new static resistivity image reconstruction algorithm is proposed utilizing internal current density data obtained by magnetic resonance current density imaging technique. This new imaging method is called magnetic resonance electrical impedance tomography (MREIT). The derivation and performance of J-substitution algorithm in MREIT have been reported as a new accurate and high-resolution static impedance imaging technique via computer simulation methods. In this paper, we present experimental procedures, denoising techniques and image reconstructions using a 0.3-tesla (T) experimental MREIT system and saline phantoms. MREIT using J-substitution algorithm effectively utilizes the internal current density information resolving the problem inherent in a conventional EIT, that is, the low sensitivity of boundary measurements to any changes of internal tissue resistivity values. Resistivity images of saline phantoms show an accuracy of 6.8%-47.2% and spatial resolution of 64 /spl times/ 64. Both of them can be significantly improved by using an MRI system with a better signal-to-noise ratio.