Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fungal Diversity and Community Composition of Culturable Fungi in Stanhopea trigrina Cast Gibberellin Producers

Stanhopea tigrina is a Mexican endemic orchid reported as a threatened species. The naturally occurring microorganisms present in S. tigrina are unknown. In this work, we analyzed the diversity of endophytic and epiphytic culturable fungi in S. tigrina according to morphological and molecular identification. Using this combined approach, in this study we retrieved a total of 634 fungal isolates that presented filamentous growth, which were grouped in 134 morphotypes that were associated to 63 genera, showing that S. tigrina harbors a rich diversity of both endophytic and epiphytic fungi. Among these, the majority of the isolates corresponded to Ascomycetes, with Trichoderma and Penicillium as the most frequent genera followed by Fusarium and Aspergillus. Non-ascomycetes isolated were associated only to the genus Mucor (Mucoromycota) and Schizophyllum (Basidiomycota). Identified genera showed a differential distribution considering their epiphytic or endophytic origin, the tissue from which they were isolated, and the ability of the orchid to grow on different substrates. To our knowledge, this work constitutes the first study of the mycobiome of S. tigrina. Interestingly, 21 fungal isolates showed the ability to produce gibberellins. Almost half of the isolates were related to the gibberellin-producer genus Penicillium based on morphological and molecular identification. However, the rest of the isolates were related to the following genera, which have not been reported as gibberellin producers so far: Bionectria, Macrophoma, Nectria, Neopestalotiopsis, Talaromyces, Trichoderma, and Diplodia. Taken together, we found that S. tigrina possess a significant fungal diversity that could be a rich source of fungal metabolites with the potential to develop biotechnological approaches oriented to revert the threatened state of this orchid in the near future.
An fMRI study of finger tapping in children and adults

Functional brain imaging studies have characterized the neural bases of voluntary movement for finger tapping in adults, but equivalent information for children is lacking. When contrasted to adults, one would expect children to have relatively greater activation, reflecting compensation for an underdeveloped motor system combined with less experience in the execution of voluntary movement. To test this hypothesis, we acquired functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data on 17 healthy right‐handed children (7.48 ± 0.66 years) and 15 adults (24.9 ± 2.9 years) while they performed an irregularly paced finger‐tapping task in response to a visual cue (left‐ and right‐hand examined separately). Whole‐brain within‐group analyses revealed that finger tapping in either age group and for either hand activated contralateral SM1, SMA, ipsilateral anterior cerebellum, and occipital cortices. We used an ANOVA factorial design to test for main effects of Age Group (children vs adults), Hand (left vs. right), and their interactions. For main effects of Age Group, children showed relatively greater activity in left SM1 (extending into bilateral SMA), and, surprisingly, adults exhibited relatively greater activity in right pre‐SMA/SMA (extending into left pre‐SMA/SMA), right lateral globus pallidus, left putamen, and right anterior cerebellum. The interaction of Age Group × Hand revealed that while both groups activated right SM1 during left finger tapping and exhibited signal decreases (i.e., below fixation baseline) during right finger tapping, both these responses were attenuated in children relative to adults. These data provide an important foundation by which to study children with motor disorders.
Evaluation of breadfruit (Artocarpus communis) in traditional stiff porridge foods

Process parameters for producing the best breadfruit flours for stiff porridges were determined. Physical properties, chemical composition, and storage properties of the flours; and sensory properties of stiff porridges of the flours were determined. Chips of dimensions 1.0 x 1.5 x 1.5 cm of the pulp of unripe, but matured breadfruit, dried at 80°C for 18 hours produced the best flour. Concentrations of the chemical components of pre-cooked pulp flour were higher than that of the raw pulp flour, with the exception of starch, while flour from the mixture of pulp and core contains higher percentages of ash, fat, protein and fibre compared with either the raw or pre-cooked pulp flours. Flours from the core were brown, while the other breadfruit parts, including pulp with core, produced cream-coloured flours. Viscosity of flour pastes increased rapidly as from flour concentration of 30 g kg -1 . Sugar content increased, while swelling power and paste viscosity decreased during storage of breadfruit flour. Flour of raw pulp cooked at 300 g kg -1 flour concentration resembled breadfruit stiff porridge best, while pre-cooked flour at 350 g kg -1 flour concentration produced a porridge comparable with stiff porridge of freshly cooked and pounded breadfruit pulp in terms of hardness, stickiness and mouldability.
Thermal and water vapor transport properties of selected lofty nonwoven products

The mechanism of dry heat flow through lofty nonwoven structures (i.e. thermal resistance) as occurs in quilts has been established. By contrast, there is a scarcity of published information on the water vapor transport properties. This work explores the thermal and water vapor transport properties of a number of different quilt samples with a focus on identifying fiber type effects. Both commercial product and matched laboratory samples were examined. Steady-state thermal resistance and water vapor resistance measurements confirmed that both properties are primarily determined by sample thickness and are largely independent of fiber type. Experiments were also undertaken to observe transient effects. Test samples were initially equilibrated on a ‘dry’ guarded hotplate (35 ± 0.1℃) in a low relative humidity environment (45%). The relative humidity was then rapidly increased to 85%. Compared to polyester, wool samples exhibited a large reduction in the heat flux required to maintain the hotplate temperature. This transient peak lasted for in excess of 1000 seconds. The magnitude of this transient peak in heat flux was proportional to the quantity of wool in the sample and is believed to be associated with the known exothermic nature of water vapor absorption by wool as relative humidity increases. Based on the published values of the heat of water absorption of wool it is estimated that this additional transient heat source is significant relative to a typical human resting metabolic rate and so the effect may be of practical relevance in the bedding environment.
Early Maladaptive Schemas in Eating Disordered Patients With or Without Non-Suicidal Self-Injury.

This study investigates early maladaptive schemas (EMSs) in function of eating disorder (ED) subtypes (restrictive/bulimic) and the presence/absence of non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI). Female inpatients (N = 491) completed the Young Schema Questionnaire and the Self-Injury Questionnaire. The influence of ED subtype and the presence/absence of NSSI and their interaction on the EMS were investigated by means of a MANCOVA. The results showed main effects of ED subtype and the presence of NSSI on EMS. Patients with bulimia scored significantly higher on insufficient self-control and emotional deprivation, which are more related to cluster B compared with restrictive patients, whereas restrictive patients scored significantly higher on social undesirability, failure to achieve, subjugation and unrelenting standards compared with patients with bulimia that are more related to cluster C. Patients with ED with NSSI reported significantly higher EMS levels compared with patients without NSSI, suggesting that they could be of particular interest to benefit from schema therapy. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and Eating Disorders Association.
Design and Validation of Three-Dimensional Scaffolds for Bone Tissue Engineering Applications Using Human Adipose-Derived Adult Stem Cells

HASLAUER, CARLA MARIA. Design and Validation of Three-Dimensional Scaffolds for Bone Tissue Engineering Applications Using Human Adipose-Derived Adult Stem Cells. (Under the direction of Elizabeth G. Loboa). Functional bone tissue engineering has arisen to address the need for implantable bone tissue in cases of trauma or disease. Some challenges to generating functional bone tissue have included the need to identify biocompatible substrates with appropriate mechanical properties, as well as a suitable cell source. Subsequently, human adipose-derived adult stem cells (hASCs) have been used in an assortment of tissue engineering applications in recent years. They are attractive cells for use in clinical applications due to their multi-lineage potential, relative abundance, and ease of harvest relative to other cell lines. The pluripotency of hASCs isolated from adipose tissue and used in the various studies described here has been tested by inducing both osteogenic and adipogenic differentiation pathways. These hASCs were then seeded on three different types of threedimensional scaffolds. In the first study, hASC viability and proliferation were compared between custom-designed titanium implants and commercially available implants of the same composition. In the second study, viability and proliferation of hASCs were assessed for cell-seeded collagen-PCL sheath-core electrospun scaffolds. Osteogenic differentiation of hASCs on these scaffolds was also quantified. In the final study, islands-in-the-sea nanoporous fibers were designed
Inhibition of Ovarian Follicular with a Decrease in Luteinizing Estrous Cycle of the Rat Development A Hormone Levels ssociated During the

To examine the importance of tonic LH secretion in ovarian follicular development, plasma concentrations of LH were lowered by administering antiserum to GnRH (GnRH AS). At 1100 h on metestrus or diestrus of the 4-day estrous cycle, rats were injected with GnRH AS, and blood samples were collected at 6 h intervals until 1100 h on the next metestrus. Separately, rats were injected with hCG after the administration of GnRH AS to examine the effect of lowered LH on the number of ovulatory follicles. Treatment with GnRH AS on either metestrus or diestrus lowered plasma concentrations of LH, inhibin, and estradiol. In contrast, the plasma concentrations of FSH increased after the GnRH AS treatment, probably due to a decrease in plasma levels of inhibin associated with suppression of ovarian follicular development. Administration of GnRH AS on metestrus noticeably reduced the number of ovulatory follicles in spite of the high FSH secretion. Such a reduction in the number of ovulatory follicles was blocked by replacing rat LH with ovine LH. These data indicate that tonic secretion of LH plays an important role in the regulation of follicular development during the estrous cycle of the rat.
Use of telemedicine-based care for the aging and elderly: promises and pitfalls

Telemedicine-based care provides remote health and social care to maintain people's autonomy and increase their quality of life. The rapidly aging population has come with a sig- nificant increase in the prevalence of chronic diseases and their effects, and thus the need for increased care and welfare. The elderly have become one of the main target groups for telecare technologies. Smart home systems allow older adults to live in the environment of their choice and protect them against institutionalization or placement in a nursing home. It gives the elderly person a feeling of reassurance and safety, and appears to be one of the most promising approaches to facilitate independent living in a community-dwelling situation. Telecare solu- tions give a new opportunity for diagnosis, treatment, education, and rehabilitation, and make it possible to monitor patients with a number of chronic diseases. It also reduces socioeconomic disparity with regard to access to care and gives equal chances to patients from urban and rural areas. However, although telecare has undisputed benefits, it also has some limitations. Older people are often resistant to use of new technology, in particular acquiring the knowledge and skills necessary for use of electronic devices and computer systems. Further, privacy and security are important elements when building confidence in telemedicine systems. Leaking of sensitive information, such as health or test results, may have a negative and far-reaching impact on the personal and professional life of the patient. Telemedicine-based care should now be personalized for the needs, capabilities, and preferences of the elderly, with adapta tion over time as care needs evolve. If technologies are introduced that are familiar, usable, desir- able, and cost-effective, and able to be adapted to seniors' lives and plans, then telecare would become an integral part of the lives of the elderly in the near future, allowing them to function independently in a friendly home environment.
Third Party Punishment and Social Norms

We examine the characteristics and relative strength of third-party sanctions in a series of experiments. We hypothesize that egalitarian distribution norms and cooperation norms apply in our experiments, and that third parties, whose economic payoff is unaffected by the norm violation, may be willing to enforce these norms although the enforcement is costly for them. Almost two-thirds of the third parties indeed punished the violation of the distribution norm and their punishment increased the more the norm was violated. Likewise, up to roughly 60% of the third parties punished violations of the cooperation norm. Thus, our results show that the notion of strong reciprocity extends to the sanctioning behavior of ‘‘unaffected’’ third parties. In addition, these experiments suggest that thirdparty punishment games are powerful tools for studying the characteristics and the content of social norms. Further experiments indicate that second parties, whose economic payoff is reduced by the norm violation, punish the violation much more strongly than do third parties.
Factors Associated with Korean Immigrants' Medical Tourism to the Homeland.

OBJECTIVES This study examined factors associated with first-generation Korean immigrants' medical tours to the homeland, which has emerged as a field of study in immigrant medical transnationalism and immigrant healthcare behaviors. METHODS This paper reports survey data from 507 Korean immigrants and indepth interviews with 120 Korean immigrants in the New York-New Jersey area. RESULTS About one-fourth of survey respondents have visited their home country for medical care since their migration to the US. Of those with relatives in Korea, 29% have experienced at least one medical tour, compared to only 9.2% of those without relatives in Korea. Having frequent contacts with relatives in the home country was positively associated with the number of medical tour visits. CONCLUSION Except for social transnational ties, other types of transnational ties with the home country were marginally related to Korean immigrants' medical tourism. Surprisingly, their health insurance status itself, which is assumed to be important, was not statistically associated with medical tourism. Although this study has the limitation of analyzing a convenience sample, it contributes to the literature on immigrant transnationalism and immigrant healthcare behaviors by using a mixed-methods approach to focus on one ethnic group's medical transnationalism.
Convolutional Neural Networks with Alternately Updated Clique

Improving information flow in deep networks helps to ease the training difficulties and utilize parameters more efficiently. Here we propose a new convolutional neural network architecture with alternately updated clique (CliqueNet). In contrast to prior networks, there are both forward and backward connections between any two layers in the same block. The layers are constructed as a loop and are updated alternately. The CliqueNet has some unique properties. For each layer, it is both the input and output of any other layer in the same block, so that the information flow among layers is maximized. During propagation, the newly updated layers are concatenated to re-update previously updated layer, and parameters are reused for multiple times. This recurrent feedback structure is able to bring higher level visual information back to refine low-level filters and achieve spatial attention. We analyze the features generated at different stages and observe that using refined features leads to a better result. We adopt a multiscale feature strategy that effectively avoids the progressive growth of parameters. Experiments on image recognition datasets including CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100, SVHN and ImageNet show that our proposed models achieve the state-of-the-art performance with fewer parameters1.
Deep End-to-End Time-of-Flight Imaging

We present an end-to-end image processing framework for time-of-flight (ToF) cameras. Existing ToF image processing pipelines consist of a sequence of operations including modulated exposures, denoising, phase unwrapping and multipath interference correction. While this cascaded modular design offers several benefits, such as closed-form solutions and power-efficient processing, it also suffers from error accumulation and information loss as each module can only observe the output from its direct predecessor, resulting in erroneous depth estimates. We depart from a conventional pipeline model and propose a deep convolutional neural network architecture that recovers scene depth directly from dual-frequency, raw ToF correlation measurements. To train this network, we simulate ToF images for a variety of scenes using a time-resolved renderer, devise depth-specific losses, and apply normalization and augmentation strategies to generalize this model to real captures. We demonstrate that the proposed network can efficiently exploit the spatio-temporal structures of ToF frequency measurements, and validate the performance of the joint multipath removal, denoising and phase unwrapping method on a wide range of challenging scenes.
Fisheries Exploitation by Albatross Quantified With Lipid Analysis

Mortality from incidental bycatch in longline fishery operations is a global threat to seabird populations, and especially so for the albatross family (Diomedeidae) in which fifteen out of twenty-two species are threatened by extinction. Despite the risks, fisheries remain attractive to many species of seabird by providing access to high-energy foods in the form of discarded fish and offal, target fish, and baited hooks. Current policy regarding fisheries management is increasingly aimed at discard reform, exemplified by a discard ban initiated in the European Union Common Fisheries Policy in 2014. While there is global agreement in the importance of minimizing the waste inherent in bycatch and discards, there is also growing concern that there is also a need to understand the extent to which marine animals rely on fisheries-associated resources, especially at the colony and individual levels. We used a novel adaptation of quantitative fatty acid signature analysis (QFASA), to quantify fisheries-associated prey in the diet of two threatened North Pacific albatross species. Diet was estimated with QFASA using multiple lipid classes from stomach oil collected from breeding Laysan and black-footed albatrosses across multiple breeding seasons. Prey-specific error was estimated by comparing QFASA estimated diets from known “simulated” diets, which informed the level of precaution appropriate when interpreting model results. Fisheries-associated diet occurred in both albatross species across both the incubation and chick-brood stages; however, neither species relied on fisheries food as the dominant food source (consisting of <10 % of the total pooled proportional diet in each species). While total diet proportion was low, the incidence of fisheries-associated resources in albatross diets was highest in the 2009-2010 breeding season when there was a strong central Pacific El Nino. Additionally, the diets of a few individuals consisted almost entirely of fisheries-associated food, indicating that some birds might specialize on this foraging tactic. QFASA proved a tractable method for estimating the importance of fisheries-associated resources in albatross diet, and, as a tool, has the potential to enable long-term monitoring of diet and fisheries reliance of breeding colonies in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands.
Investigation of fracture toughness parameters of epoxy nanocomposites for different crack angles

Abstract The effects of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) on the mechanical properties of nanocomposites with epoxy matrix were studied, with the emphasis on fracture toughness under tensile loading conditions. It has been demonstrated that adding CNTs into polymer-based materials can improve the mechanical properties of this material. CNTs possess a certain potential to improve the fracture toughness of epoxy systems due to their mechanical properties and increase the fracture toughness of nanocomposites. Since the fracture toughness parameters were best manifested in the scaling properties and were the main parameters, the angles of different cracks have been simulated in a 3D finite element framework and the effects of different angles of crack, on the fracture toughness of polymers, have been modeled and investigated. The simulations are run for different bias angles. The influence of angle, the crack lengths and the variations of different lengths of nanocomposite in different volume fractions (vol%) are investigated. That is to say, at first, nanocomposites had a significantly higher fracture toughness compared to the pure epoxy. We found that nanocomposites, in the presence of SWCNTs, had a greater effect on fracture toughness of nanocomposites in a greater volume of fractions. Also, the nanocomposites exhibited a significant increase in fracture toughness, with zero angle of crack compared with greater angles. In addition, it is found that at a constant volume fracture, fracture toughness, increases by increasing crack lengths.