Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Specialists and generalists coexist within a population of spider-hunting mud dauber wasps

Lay Summary Mud dauber wasp females hunt, sting, paralyze, and pack spider prey into a mud nest for their offspring to eat. Individual female wasps of the same species, in the same population, with access to the same resources have different preferences for the spider prey that they capture. Some females specialize on only one species of spider (prey specialists) while others catch a number of species (prey generalists). Individuals’ preferences remain consistent over time.
Comparisons of proteomic profiles of whey protein between donor human milk collected earlier than 3 months and 6 months after delivery.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Human milk has nutritional, protective, and developmental advantages for premature infants. However, proteomic information of low abundant protein of donor milk is insufficient. The purpose of this study is to analyze and compare the proteome of low abundant protein of donor milk obtained at different postpartum ages other than the colostrum. METHODS AND STUDY DESIGN Donor breast milk from 12 healthy mothers was collected 15 days, 2 months and 6 months after delivery and stored by medically approved methods. The whey milk proteomes were analyzed by mass spectrometry and classified using bioinformatics analysis. RESULTS Human milk obtained 15 days and 2 months after delivery showed more abundant expression of whey proteins related to the generation of precursor metabolites and energy, metabolism, and catalytic activity, compared with milk collected at 3 months. Immune and transport-related proteins were abundant at all time points. Proteins involved in cellular movement, immune cell trafficking, and the carbohydrate metabolism network was more abundant in whey milk collected at 15 day and 2 months using a network analysis. CONCLUSIONS We report proteomic information for human donor whey protein. As significant changes were found in whey proteome collected earlier than 2 months and 6 months after delivery, selecting human donor milk earlier than 2 months might be more helpful for early postnatal recipients.
A three-dimensional smartphone positioning method using a spinning magnet marker

We propose a method of detecting the precise three-dimensional position of a smartphone using a Spinning Magnet Marker (SMM). An SMM is a device that generates a dynamic magnetic field by spinning a strong magnet with a motor. In the proposed method, the magnetic sensor of a smartphone detects the magnetic field generated by an SMM, and the three-imensional position of the smartphone is estimated with an accuracy of better than several tens of centimeters based on the magnetic field and the motor angle of the SMM. It is expected that such precise three-dimensional positioning will enable not only better navigation of users to their destinations but also a better understanding of human behavior. First, we construct theoretical equations relating the magnetic field generated by the SMM to the three-dimensional position of the smartphone in three-dimensional polar coordinates. Second, we evaluate the estimation accuracy of the proposed method with the distance between the SMM and the smartphone fixed at 1.0 m. The azimuth is estimated with a mean error of within 11 degrees, and the elevation is estimated with a mean error of within 10 degrees. The distance is estimated with a mean error of within 19 cm at distances of up to 3.0 m.
A Single-Photon Avalanche Diode Array for Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging Microscopy

We describe the design, characterization, and demonstration of a fully integrated single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) imager for use in time-resolved fluorescence imaging. The imager consists of a 64-by-64 array of active SPAD pixels and an on-chip time-to-digital converter (TDC) based on a delay-locked loop (DLL) and calibrated interpolators. The imager can perform both standard time-correlated single-photon counting (TCSPC) and an alternative gated-window detection useful for avoiding pulse pile-up when measuring bright signal levels. To illustrate the use of the imager, we present measurements of the decay lifetimes of fluorescent dyes of several types with a timing resolution of 350 ps.
Electroacupuncture Potentiates Cannabinoid Receptor-Mediated Descending Inhibitory Control in a Mouse Model of Knee Osteoarthritis

Knee osteoarthritis (KOA) is a highly prevalent, chronic joint disorder, which can lead to chronic pain. Although electroacupuncture (EA) is effective in relieving chronic pain in the clinic, the involved mechanisms remain unclear. Reduced diffuse noxius inhibitory controls (DNIC) function is associated with chronic pain and may be related to the action of endocannabinoids. In the present study, we determined whether EA may potentiate cannabinoid receptor-mediated descending inhibitory control and inhibit chronic pain in a mouse model of KOA. We found that the optimized parameters of EA inhibiting chronic pain were the low frequency and high intensity (2 Hz + 1 mA). EA reversed the reduced expression of CB1 receptors and the 2-arachidonoylglycerol (2-AG) level in the midbrain in chronic pain. Microinjection of the CB1 receptor antagonist AM251 into the ventrolateral periaqueductal gray (vlPAG) can reversed the EA effect on pain hypersensitivity and DNIC function. In addition, CB1 receptors on GABAergic but not glutamatergic neurons are involved in the EA effect on DNIC function and descending inhibitory control of 5-HT in the medulla, thus inhibiting chronic pain. Our data suggest that endocannabinoid (2-AG)-CB1R-GABA-5-HT may be a novel signaling pathway involved in the effect of EA improving DNIC function and inhibiting chronic pain.
Amyloid blood biomarker detects Alzheimer's disease

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is currently incurable, but there is general agreement that a minimally invasive blood biomarker for screening in preclinical stages would be crucial for future therapy. Diagnostic tools for detection of AD are either invasive like cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers or expensive such as positron emission tomography (PET) scanning. Here, we determine the secondary structure change of amyloid‐β (Aβ) in human blood. This change used as blood amyloid biomarker indicates prodromal AD and correlates with CSF AD biomarkers and amyloid PET imaging in the cross‐sectional BioFINDER cohort. In a further population‐based longitudinal cohort (ESTHER), the blood biomarker detected AD several years before clinical diagnosis in baseline samples with a positive likelihood ratio of 7.9; that is, those who were diagnosed with AD over the years were 7.9 times more likely to test positive. This assay may open avenues for blood screening of early AD stages as a funnel for further more invasive and expensive tests.
Model-based Bayesian inference of neural activity and connectivity from all-optical interrogation of a neural circuit

Population activity measurement by calcium imaging can be combined with cellular resolution optogenetic activity perturbations to enable the mapping of neural connectivity in vivo. This requires accurate inference of perturbed and unperturbed neural activity from calcium imaging measurements, which are noisy and indirect, and can also be contaminated by photostimulation artifacts. We have developed a new fully Bayesian approach to jointly inferring spiking activity and neural connectivity from in vivo all-optical perturbation experiments. In contrast to standard approaches that perform spike inference and analysis in two separate maximum-likelihood phases, our joint model is able to propagate uncertainty in spike inference to the inference of connectivity and vice versa. We use the framework of variational autoencoders to model spiking activity using discrete latent variables, low-dimensional latent common input, and sparse spike-and-slab generalized linear coupling between neurons. Additionally, we model two properties of the optogenetic perturbation: off-target photostimulation and photostimulation transients. Using this model, we were able to fit models on 30 minutes of data in just 10 minutes. We performed an all-optical circuit mapping experiment in primary visual cortex of the awake mouse, and use our approach to predict neural connectivity between excitatory neurons in layer 2/3. Predicted connectivity is sparse and consistent with known correlations with stimulus tuning, spontaneous correlation and distance.
A Case of Toxic Hepatitis and Acute Liver Failure Induced by Ingestion of Raw Sansevieria

Citation: Sohn JH, Kim JY, Kim TY, Jeong JY, Kim SM, Pyo JY. A Case of Toxic Hepatitis and Acute Liver Failure Induced by Ingestion of Raw Sansevieria. Ann Clin Case Rep. 2017; 2: 1429. ISSN: 2474-1655 Copyright © 2017 Joo Hyun Sohn. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Case Report Published: 03 Sep, 2017
Prediction of internet addiction based on information literacy among students of Iran University of Medical Sciences

Background A considerable group of internet users consists of university users; however, despite internet benefits and capabilities, internet overuse is a threat to societies especially to young people and students. Objective The objective of this study was to determine the predictive role of information literacy in internet addiction among students of Iran University of Medical Sciences during 2016. Methods This analytical cross-sectional study was conducted in Iran University of Medical Sciences in 2016. Using stratified random sampling method, 365 students from different disciplines were selected. Measuring tools included the Information Literacy Questionnaire, the Yang Online Drug Addiction Scale and the General Health Questionnaire. The collected data were analyzed by Pearson product-moment correlation, independent samples t-test and multiple linear regression using SPSS version 22. Results According to this study, 31.2% of students had internet addiction (29.9% were mildly addicted and 1.3% had severe addiction). There was a significant and inverse relationship between higher information literacy and internet addiction (R= −0.45) and (p<0.001). The predictor variable “Information literacy” explained 20% of the variation in the outcome variable “Internet addiction”. Conclusion Students play a substantial role in promoting the cultural and scientific level of knowledge in society; the higher their information literacy, the lower the level of Internet addiction, and consequently the general health of society will improve. It seems that wise planning by authorities of Iran’s universities to prevent internet addiction and to increase information literacy among students is needed.
The Economic Tragedy of the Xxth Century: Growth in Africa

The dismal growth performance of Africa is the worst economic tragedy of the XXth century. We document the evolution of per capita GDP for the continent as a whole and for subset of countries south of the Sahara desert. We document the worsening of various income inequality indexes and we estimate poverty rates and headcounts. We then analyze some of the central robust determinants of economic growth reported by Sala-i-Martin, Doppelhofer and Miller (2003) and project the annual growth rates Africa would have enjoyed if these key determinants had taken OECD rather than African values. Expensive investment goods, low levels of education, poor health, adverse geography, closed economies, too much public expenditure and too many military conflicts are seen as key explanations of the economic tragedy.
Mega Clonality in an Aquatic Plant—A Potential Survival Strategy in a Changing Environment

Many ecosystems are experiencing rapid transformations due to global environmental change. Understanding how ecological shifts affect species persistence is critical to modern management strategies. The edge of a species range is often where physiological tolerances are in conflict with ability to persist. Extreme examples of clonality over large spatial and temporal scales can occur where the life history of a species allows for it. We examine extreme clonality in an aquatic plant species at the edge if its range. Here we describe an ancient seagrass clone of unprecedented size inhabiting a 47 km stretch of a central Florida estuary, the Indian River Lagoon (IRL). Amongst the largest clones on earth detected, this Thalassia testudinum (turtlegrass) genet had ramets dispersed across 47 km of this water body. Indeed among 382 samples collections along the length of the IRL, 89% were a single shared multilocus genotype. Furthermore, this clone was the only genet detected at 63% of sample sites. The presence of such a large clone demonstrates they can form and persist over long periods. In addition, we must challenge the paradigm that fragmentation is not possible in this species. Reliance on clonality is an expected component of a classic ‘bet-hedging’ strategy enabling persistence on timescales typically not considered, including millennia. At locations near ocean inlets we did find a few other individuals of T. testudinum supporting the concept that recruitment is dispersal limited. These additional clones indicate there is the potential, albeit limited, for seeds based recruitment to occur when environmental conditions are favorable during a “window of opportunity. ” Extreme clonality represents a potential strategy for survival such that in the extreme, clonal populations of a species would be the first to decline or disappear if conditions extend beyond the adaptability of the local genotype. This disappearance possibility makes the species a potential sentinel of system decline.
Bump detection in heterogeneous Gaussian regression

We analyze the effect of a heterogeneous variance on bump detection in a Gaussian regression model. To this end we allow for a simultaneous bump in the variance and specify its impact on the difficulty to detect the null signal against a single bump with known signal strength. This is done by calculating lower and upper bounds, both based on the likelihood ratio. Lower and upper bounds together lead to explicit characterizations of the detection boundary in several subregimes depending on the asymptotic behavior of the bump heights in mean and variance. In particular, we explicitly identify those regimes, where the additional information about a simultaneous bump in variance eases the detection problem for the signal. This effect is made explicit in the constant and / or the rate, appearing in the detection boundary. We also discuss the case of an unknown bump height and provide an adaptive test and some upper bounds in that case.
Neighborhood Child Opportunity and Individual-Level Pediatric Acute Care Use and Diagnoses

By linking individual-level health care records and a composite neighborhood-level index, we examine the associations between neighborhood child opportunity and pediatric acute care use. BrightcoveDefaultPlayer10.1542/6138655440001PEDS-VA_2017-2309 Video Abstract OBJECTIVES: Although health care providers and systems are increasingly interested in patients’ nonmedical needs as a means to improve health, little is known about neighborhood conditions that contribute to child health problems. We sought to determine if a novel, publicly available measure of neighborhood context, the Child Opportunity Index, was associated with pediatric acute care visit frequency and diagnoses. METHODS: This cross-sectional study included San Francisco residents <18 years of age with an emergency department and/or urgent care visit to any of 3 medical systems (N = 47 175) between 2007 and 2011. Hot-spot analysis was used to compare the spatial distribution of neighborhood child opportunity and income. Generalized estimating equation logistic regression models were used to examine independent associations between neighborhood child opportunity and frequent acute care use (≥4 visits per year) and diagnosis group after adjusting for neighborhood income and patient age, sex, race and/or ethnicity, payer, and health system. RESULTS: Neighborhood child opportunity and income had distinct spatial distributions, and we identified different clusters of high- and low-risk neighborhoods. Children living in the lowest opportunity neighborhoods had significantly greater odds of ≥4 acute care visits per year (odds ratio 1.33; 95% confidence interval 1.03–1.73) compared with those in the highest opportunity neighborhoods. Neighborhood child opportunity was negatively associated with visits for respiratory conditions, asthma, assault, and ambulatory care–sensitive conditions but positively associated with injury-related visits. CONCLUSIONS: The Child Opportunity Index could be an effective tool for identifying neighborhood factors beyond income related to child health.
Glycolytic Flux Signals to mTOR through Glyceraldehyde-3-Phosphate Dehydrogenase-Mediated Regulation of Rheb

ABSTRACT The mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) interacts with raptor to form the protein complex mTORC1 (mTOR complex 1), which plays a central role in the regulation of cell growth in response to environmental cues. Given that glucose is a primary fuel source and a biosynthetic precursor, how mTORC1 signaling is coordinated with glucose metabolism has been an important question. Here, we found that the glycolytic enzyme glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) binds Rheb and inhibits mTORC1 signaling. Under low-glucose conditions, GAPDH prevents Rheb from binding to mTOR and thereby inhibits mTORC1 signaling. High glycolytic flux suppresses the interaction between GAPDH and Rheb and thus allows Rheb to activate mTORC1. Silencing of GAPDH or blocking of the Rheb-GAPDH interaction desensitizes mTORC1 signaling to changes in the level of glucose. The GAPDH-dependent regulation of mTORC1 in response to glucose availability occurred even in TSC1-deficient cells and AMPK-silenced cells, supporting the idea that the GAPDH-Rheb pathway functions independently of the AMPK axis. Furthermore, we show that glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate, a glycolytic intermediate that binds GAPDH, destabilizes the Rheb-GAPDH interaction even under low-glucose conditions, explaining how high-glucose flux suppresses the interaction and activates mTORC1 signaling. Taken together, our results suggest that the glycolytic flux regulates mTOR's access to Rheb by regulating the Rheb-GAPDH interaction, thereby allowing mTORC1 to coordinate cell growth with glucose availability.
Thermal Analysis of Engineered MultiBarrier System for Hazardous Waste Management

Soil thermal properties are of great importance in many engineering projects and other situations where heat transfer takes place in the soil. Estimation of soil thermal properties are of prodigious importance in design and laying of buried high voltage power cables, pipe lines of oil and gas, nuclear waste disposal facilities, Modification techniques of ground engaging heating and freezing and soil shrinkage studies etc.Due to daily temperature fluctuations the solar and diffuse radiations exchange takes place at the earth‟s surface. Particularly changes in the amount, phase and condition of water. This leads to variations in the thermal properties of the soil. The present research deals with the thermal properties of soils and the factors influencing them. Heat transfer depends upon thermal properties of the soil, such as specific heat, conductivity and thermal diffusivity. Thermal properties affect the soil temperature profile and soil heat flux transport and distribution. With this in view, efforts were made to develop an apparent soil method for long-term scenarios that can be applied to thermal modeling for various soils.
Human IgG Increases Virulence of Streptococcus pyogenes through Complement Evasion

Streptococcus pyogenes is an exclusively human pathogen that can provoke mild skin and throat infections but can also cause fatal septicemia. This gram-positive bacterium has developed several strategies to evade the human immune system, enabling S. pyogenes to survive in the host. These strategies include recruiting several human plasma proteins, such as the complement inhibitor, C4b-binding protein (C4BP), and human (hu)-IgG through its Fc region to the bacterial surface to evade immune recognition. We identified a novel virulence mechanism whereby IgG-enhanced binding of C4BP to five of 12 tested S. pyogenes strains expressed diverse M proteins that are important surface-expressed virulence factors. Importantly, all strains that bound C4BP in the absence of IgG bound more C4BP when IgG was present. Further studies with an M1 strain that additionally expressed protein H, also a member of the M protein family, revealed that binding of hu-IgG Fc to protein H increased the affinity of protein H for C4BP. Increased C4BP binding accentuated complement downregulation, resulting in diminished bacterial killing. Accordingly, mortality from S. pyogenes infection in hu-C4BP transgenic mice was increased when hu-IgG or its Fc portion alone was administered concomitantly. Electron microscopy analysis of human tissue samples with necrotizing fasciitis confirmed increased C4BP binding to S. pyogenes when IgG was present. Our findings provide evidence of a paradoxical function of hu-IgG bound through Fc to diverse S. pyogenes isolates that increases their virulence and may counteract the beneficial effects of IgG opsonization.
Deficits in recall following partial and complete commissurotomy.

There have been reports in the literature of both impaired (Zaidel and Sperry, 1974) and intact (LeDoux et al., 1977) memory performance following callosotomy. In the present article, memory is examined in patients who received either partial or complete callosotomy in an effort to determine (1) if there is a memory deficit following callosotomy, (2) if certain types of callosotomy are more likely to lead to a deficit (i.e., anterior vs posterior), and (3) if there is a global memory deficit or if some mnemonic functions are affected more than others. Patients receiving either partial or complete section of the corpus callosum were examined pre- and postoperatively on standardized memory tests and tests of recall and recognition. In addition, two patients with complete callosotomy and matched control subjects were given tests of verbal recall and recognition. A deficit in both visual and verbal recall was found in patients with posterior section, but not those receiving anterior section. No impairment was found on tests of verbal recognition for any patients. Posterior callosal section generally includes the hippocampal commissure and other hippocampal connections, while anterior sectioning does not. Given the known importance of the hippocampus (Milner, 1970) and the differences between recall and recognition memory (Bransford and Johnson, 1972) in normal memory functioning, several hypotheses are proposed as to why these results might be expected.
Multiple degrees of freedom wrist prostheses

Current wrist prostheses offer limited functionality regarding degrees of freedom and range of motion. A new two degrees of freedom wrist mechanism was designed and based on this concept a prototype was build and tested. Testing included generated torque measurements, externally applied torques, weight and size measurements. The prototype has a 50 mm diameter, stands 68 mm tall and weighs 230 grams. The device is capable of providing active flexion/extension and pronation/supination with approximate output torques of 0.3 and 0.2 Nm respectively. The lack of output torques is most likely caused by the use of a 3D printed housing which resulted in several alignment issues, introducing additional friction into the system. In conclusion the concept provides the desired motion in a relatively compact size, however future work should increase the performance starting by designing a better, preferably non 3D printed, housing.