Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Where are the genes? The implications of a network perspective on gene hunting in psychopathology. [A commentary on Johnson et al.].

The missing heritability problem is pervasive and Johnson, Penke and Spinath (2011) present a number of compelling reasons for its existence. In this comment, we present another reason for the apparent discrepancy between heritability estimates and gene‐hunting results in psychopathological research: if syndromes are networks of causally related symptoms in which both symptoms and relations between them are driven by different sets of genetic polymorphisms, then gene hunting based on a phenotypic sumscore might be ill‐advised because it will only capture genetic variance shared among those symptoms and their relations.
Genetic Linkage Map of a High Yielding FELDA Deli×Yangambi Oil Palm Cross

Enroute to mapping QTLs for yield components in oil palm, we constructed the linkage map of a FELDA high yielding oil palm (Elaeis guineensis), hybrid cross. The parents of the mapping population are a Deli dura and a pisifera of Yangambi origin. The cross out-yielded the average by 8–21% in four trials all of which yielded comparably to the best current commercial planting materials. The higher yield derived from a higher fruit oil content. SSR markers in the public domain - from CIRAD and MPOB, as well as some developed in FELDA - were used for the mapping, augmented by locally-designed AFLP markers. The female parent linkage map comprised 317 marker loci and the male parent map 331 loci, both in 16 linkage groups each. The number of markers per group ranged from 8–47 in the former and 12–40 in the latter. The integrated map was 2,247.5 cM long and included 479 markers and 168 anchor points. The number of markers per linkage group was 15–57, the average being 29, and the average map density 4.7 cM. The linkage groups ranged in length from 77.5 cM to 223.7 cM, with an average of 137 cM. The map is currently being validated against a closely related population and also being expanded to include yield related QTLs.
Factors Influencing Early Admission in a French Stroke Unit

Background and Purpose— Intravenous tissue plasminogen activator improves outcome after ischemic stroke when given within 3 hours of symptoms onset in carefully selected patients. However, only a small proportion of acute stroke patients are currently eligible for thrombolysis, mainly because of excessive delay to hospital presentation. We sought to determine the factors associated with early admission in a French stroke unit. Methods— We prospectively studied the admission delay of acute stroke patients in a French stroke unit during a 12-month period ending July 1999. Univariate and multivariate regression analyses were performed to evaluate the factors influencing early stroke unit admission and transport by the Emergency Medical Services (EMS) or Fire Department (FD) ambulances. Results— One hundred sixty-six patients were primarily admitted to the stroke unit, with a median admission time of 4 hours 5 minutes. Twenty-nine percent presented within 3 hours of symptoms onset and 75% within 6 hours. Univariate analysis showed that early stroke unit arrival was significantly associated with the following factors: female sex, stroke severity assessed by the National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale score, lowered consciousness, sudden onset of stroke, not living alone, recognition of symptoms by bystanders, and transport by EMS or FD ambulances. Age, ethnicity, level of education, employment status, nocturnal onset, distance from place of stroke to the stroke unit, stroke lesion location, presence of brain hemorrhage, and awareness about the symptoms and risk factors of stroke had no measurable effect on early admission. A multivariate regression model demonstrated that the most significant factors associated with early stroke unit arrival were transport by EMS or FD ambulances and sudden onset of stroke. Female sex and not living alone were also significantly associated with early admission in the multivariate model. Multivariate analysis of the mode of transport showed that transport by EMS or FD ambulances was significantly more frequent among female patients, when stroke symptoms were recognized by bystanders, and when the general practitioner was not the first medical contact. Conclusions— The present study shows that hospital arrival within the first hours of stroke is feasible in a French stroke unit. As many as 75% of the patients are admitted within the first 6 hours of stroke. This is the first study demonstrating that stroke unit admission in France is fastest in patients brought to the hospital by EMS or FD ambulances. However, only 35% of stroke patients activate the emergency telephone system and are currently transported by EMS or FD ambulances. French stroke patients should be encouraged to seek immediate medical attention by using the emergency telephone system, and stroke management should be reprioritized in the French EMS as a time-dependent medical emergency, with the same level of organization and expertise currently applied to myocardial infarction.
Distinct regions of the colicin A translocation domain are involved in the interaction with TolA and TolB proteins upon import into Escherichia coli

Group A colicins need proteins of the Escherichia coli envelope Tol complex (TolA, TolB, TolQ and TolR) to reach their cellular target. The N‐terminal domain of colicins is involved in the import process. The N‐terminal domains of colicins A and E1 have been shown to interact with TolA, and the N‐terminal domain of colicin E3 has been shown to interact with TolB. We found that a pentapeptide conserved in the N‐terminal domain of all group A colicins, the ‘TolA box’, was important for colicin A import but was not involved in the colicin A–TolA interaction. It was, however, involved in the colicin A–TolB interaction. The interactions of colicin A N‐terminal domain deletion mutants with TolA and TolB were investigated. Random mutagenesis was performed on a construct allowing the colicin A N‐terminal domain to be exported in the bacteria periplasm. This enabled us to select mutant protein domains unable to compete with the wild‐type domain of the entire colicin A for import into the cells. Our results demonstrate that different regions of the colicin A N‐terminal domain interact with TolA and TolB. The colicin A N‐terminal domain was also shown to form a trimeric complex with TolA and TolB.
Kelp-Fed Beef, Swimming Caribou, Feral Reindeer, and Their Hunters: Island Mammals in a Marine Economy

Aleutian Islands and Alaska Peninsula residents have selectively introduced land mammals to their primarily marine based economy over the past two centuries. This paper describes these many introductions, contexts, and the longer term roles of these cattle, sheep, reindeer, and other land mammals in discrete island settings and the regional food economy based upon interviews in ten communities and comprehensive household surveys in eight of these. Caribou are indigenous and traditionally hunted in other parts of the state but are legally “invasive” in island contexts now managed by the federal government. Access to land and natural resources by Alaska Natives and rural peoples is regulated by state and federal agencies, but Aleutian residents have shaped their environment and engineered food sources to support their communities. This paper demonstrates that hardline approaches to removing invasive land mammal species will have human consequences and an integrated management policy emphasizing food security and conservation that includes reducing the density of these introduced species is most appropriate.
A novel joint channel and multi-user interference statistics estimator for UWB-IR based on Gaussian mixture model

Ultra-wideband impulse radio communications have been growing rapidly over the last few years, as a promising technique for high bit-rate and multi-user transmissions over the 3-10 GHz unlicensed spectrum. In literature, multi-user interference is often approximated with a white Gaussian process and embodied in the overall noise term. However, it has been found that, in typical indoor environments, such approximation is inadequate. In this paper, we propose a new approach to characterize the interference, based on the Gaussian mixture model, which allows to derive a joint channel and multi-user interference statistics estimator, based on the iterative space-alternating generalized expectation maximization algorithm. The effectiveness of the proposed estimator is shown by means of numerical examples.
Demyelination causes synaptic alterations in hippocampi from multiple sclerosis patients

Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is an inflammatory demyelinating disease of the human central nervous system. Although the clinical impact of gray matter pathology in MS brains is unknown, 30 to 40% of MS patients demonstrate memory impairment. The molecular basis of this memory dysfunction has not yet been investigated in MS patients.
The Theory of Loose Parts, An important principle for design methodology.

Creativity is for the gifted few : the rest of us are compelled to live in environments const r ucted by the gifted few, listen to the gifted few's music, use gifted few's inventions and art, and read the poems, fantasies and plays by the gifted few. This is what our education and culture conditions us to believe, and this is a culturally induced and perpetuated lie. Building upon this lie, the dominant cultural elite tell us that the planning, design and building of any part of the environment is so difficult and so special that only the gifted few - those with degrees and certificates in planning, engineering, architecture, art, education, behavioural psychology, and so on - can properly solve environmental problems.
Adaptive stereo-based stochastic mapping

Stereo-based stochastic mapping (SSM) is a technique based on constructing a Gaussian mixture model for the joint distribution of stereo data. This paper considers the use of SSM for noise robust speech recognition, in which clean and noisy speech features form the stereo data. The Gaussian mixture model, whose parameters are estimated from the observed stereo features during training time, is then used in test time to predict the clean speech from its noisy observation. This paper proposes to leverage the noisy speech observation for updating the model parameters during test time, and thus improve the prediction of the clean speech from its noisy observation. Speciﬁcally, an expectation-maximization procedure is developed for adapting the model parameters during test time. This adaptation is especially important when there is a mismatch between the training and testing sets, or when the size of the training set is relatively small, resulting in a poor estimation of the parameters. The proposed method is tested on a noise robustness task and is shown to improve the performance achieved by SSM.
S‐Glutathionylation of troponin I (fast) increases contractile apparatus Ca2+ sensitivity in fast‐twitch muscle fibres of rats and humans

• Reactive oxygen‐based molecules generated within muscle fibres in both exercise and pathological conditions can greatly affect muscle function. These and consequent reactions can lead to either decreased or increased force response by the contractile proteins, but the mechanisms are unknown. • This study demonstrates that the increase in force response appears to be due to a specific chemical process, known as S‐glutathionylation, of a particular cysteine residue present on the troponin I molecule in fast‐twitch muscle fibres, which is involved in sensing and responding to changes in intracellular calcium levels. • S‐Glutathionylation can occur when glutathione, the primary cellular anti‐oxidant, reacts with oxidized cysteine residues. • S‐Glutathionylation of troponin I not only helps protect the molecule from oxidative stress, but evidently also makes the contractile apparatus much more sensitive to calcium ions. • This process seemingly occurs in exercising humans and is likely to be an important mechanism helping delay onset of muscle fatigue.
Raman spectroscopy study of the interaction between biogenic polyamines and an alternating AT oligodeoxyribonucleotide

The interaction between the 15-mer oligonucleotide d[A(TA)7] d[T(AT)7] and the three biogenic polyamines, putrescine, spermidine and spermine, under physiological conditions has been studied by Raman spectroscopy. Solutions containing 60 mM (phosphate) of the oligonucleotide and different polyamine concentrations ranging from 1 to 75 mM have been studied. Both natural and heavy water were used as solvents. Difference Raman spectra were computed by subtracting the sum of the separated component spectra from the experimental spectra of the complexes. The Raman data suggested that the interaction of biogenic polyamines with d[A(TA)7] d[T(AT)7] presents differences related with their sizes and electric charges. Preferential bindings through the oligonucleotide minor groove for putrescine and spermidine were proposed. Spermine would interact by both minor and major grooves, although interaction by the minor groove seems to be more favored. Main reactive sites were thymine-O2 and adenine-N3 atoms at the minor grooves and adenine-N7 and thymine-O4 at the major groove. Electrostatic attractions between the polyamine amino and oligonucleotide phosphodioxy groups were also proposed. Under our experimental conditions, no macromolecular effects on d[A(TA)7] d[T(AT)7] (changes on secondary or tertiary structures) were detected from Raman spectroscopy, contrary to what happened for GC sequences at the same experimental settings. This fact agrees with the role of the biogenic polyamines during the first steps of the macromolecular synthesis, which involve DNA opening in AT motifs. D 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Recent advances towards tuberculosis control: vaccines and biomarkers

Of all infectious diseases, tuberculosis (TB) remains one of the most important causes of morbidity and mortality. Recent advances in understanding the biology of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) infection and the immune response of the infected host have led to the development of several new vaccines, a number of which are already undergoing clinical trials. These include pre‐exposure prime vaccines, which could replace bacille Calmette–Guérin (BCG), and pre‐exposure booster vaccines given in addition to BCG. Infants are the target population of these two types of vaccines. In addition, several postexposure vaccines given during adolescence or adult life, in addition to BCG as a priming vaccine during infancy, are undergoing clinical testing. Therapeutic vaccines are currently being assessed for their potential to cure active TB as an adjunct to chemotherapy. BCG replacement vaccines are viable recombinant BCG or double‐deletion mutants of Mtb. All booster vaccines are composed of one or several antigens, either expressed by viral vectors or formulated with adjuvants. Therapeutic vaccines are killed mycobacterial preparations. Finally, multivariate biomarkers and biosignatures are being generated from high‐throughput data with the aim of providing better diagnostic tools to specifically determine TB progression. Here, we provide a technical overview of these recent developments as well of the relevant computational approaches and highlight the obstacles that still need to be overcome.
‘This has happened since ancient times…it's something that you are born with’: ancestral wives among same-sex sangomas in South Africa

abstract This article is an abbreviated form of chapter seven of Tommy Boys, Lesbian Men and Ancestral Wives: Female same-sex practices in Africa. The research consists of five life story interviews as part of a larger oral history project of the Gay and Lesbian Archives of South Africa. We demonstrate that there are traditional and institutionalised ways in which those African women who are sangomas (traditional healers), engage in same-sex relations thus challenging the notion that same-sex relationships are unAfrican. The institution of sangoma is rooted in an indigenous belief system in which the ancestors are primary. A person receives ‘the calling' from their ancestors to become a healer. The sangomas interviewed generally had a dominant male ancestor who commanded them to take a wife. We focus on women sangomas’ use of the institution of unyankwabe (ancestral wives) as a safe space in which they can secretly have intimate, loving and sexual same-sex relationships with their partners with the consent of their dominant male ancestors. We explore the space in which these women appropriate the language of power. The voices of their ancestors are used to give credence to their same-sex relationships in an indigenous African framework.
Metaphor and Thought: Images and models, similes and metaphors

I shall try to defend a version of the traditional view that a metaphor is an abbreviated simile, and that the thought provoked is the kind required to appreciate similarities and analogies. In the nineteenth century that kind of thought was called “apperception. ” “Apperception” is one mentalistic term that has not been rehabilitated by cognitive psychologists in recent years; perhaps it is time we got around to it. For Herbart (1898) “apperception” was a general term for those mental processes whereby an attended experience is brought into relation with an already acquired and familiar conceptual system. Today our psychological journals are full of terms like “encoding,” “mapping,” “categorizing,” “inference,” “assimilation and accommodation,” “attribution,” and so on; perhaps “apperception” would be a useful superordinate for all of them. If I understand Herbart correctly, his general claim was that new things are learned by being related to things already known; he built his educational psychology on the belief that if teachers know what their pupils know, they can relate ideas they want to teach to ideas the pupil has already mastered. Although Herbart's term has passed from fashion, the educational philosophy of maximizing transfer of training seems as sensible now as it did a century ago. In my view, much of the scientific interest of an analysis of metaphor derives from what it might contribute to a theory of apperception appropriate to the psychological and educational concepts of the twentieth century.
A Tuning Parameter Free Nearly Optimal Test of the Autoregressive Unit Root Hypothesis 1

This paper presents a family of simple nonparametric tests of the autoregressive unit root hypothesis. The tests are constructed as a ratio of the sample variance of the observed series and that of a fractional partial sum of the series, and the family is indexed by one parameter, d, to determine the order of the (fractional) partial summation. However, there are several important di¤erences between this parameter and the choice of, e.g., lag length in augmented Dickey-Fuller regressions or bandwidth in Phillips-Perron type tests. (i) Each member of the family with d > 0 is consistent. (ii) The asymptotic distribution depends on d, and thus reects the parameter chosen to implement the test. (iii) Since the asymptotic distribution depends on d and the test remains consistent for all d > 0, it is possible to locate a member of the family which has the highest (within the family) power against relevant alternatives. The usual Phillips-Perron or Dickey-Fuller type tests, possibly with GLS detrending, have tuning parameters (bandwidth, lag length, etc.), i.e. parameters which change the test statistic but are not reected in the asymptotic distribution, and thus have none of these three properties. When d is small, the asymptotic local power of the proposed nonparametric test is relatively close to the parametric power envelope, particularly in the case with a linear time-trend. Furthermore, simulations demonstrate that the proposed test has good nite sample properties in the presence of both linear and nonlinear short-run dynamics, and even rivals the (nearly) optimal parametric GLS detrended augmented Dickey-Fuller test with lag length chosen by an information criterion. JEL Classi cation: C22.
Structural covariance in the hallucinating brain: a voxel-based morphometry study.

BACKGROUND Neuroimaging studies have indicated that a number of cortical regions express altered patterns of structural covariance in schizophrenia. The relation between these alterations and specific psychotic symptoms is yet to be investigated. We used voxel-based morphometry to examine regional grey matter volumes and structural covariance associated with severity of auditory verbal hallucinations. METHODS We applied optimized voxel-based morphometry to volumetric magnetic resonance imaging data from 26 patients with medication-resistant auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs); statistical inferences were made at p < 0.05 after correction for multiple comparisons. RESULTS Grey matter volume in the left inferior frontal gyrus was positively correlated with severity of AVHs. Hallucination severity influenced the pattern of structural covariance between this region and the left superior/middle temporal gyri, the right inferior frontal gyrus and hippocampus, and the insula bilaterally. LIMITATIONS The results are based on self-reported severity of auditory hallucinations. Complementing with a clinician-based instrument could have made the findings more compelling. Future studies would benefit from including a measure to control for other symptoms that may covary with AVHs and for the effects of antipsychotic medication. CONCLUSION The results revealed that overall severity of AVHs modulated cortical intercorrelations between frontotemporal regions involved in language production and verbal monitoring, supporting the critical role of this network in the pathophysiology of hallucinations.
Evaluation of the Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System in Beitbridge District, Zimbabwe 2015

Back ground: Notifiable Disease Surveillance system serves as an early warning system for public health emergencies. Since January 2013 to August 2014, Beitbridge never submitted T2 forms to the province. Four suspected cases of rabies were reported through the generic report. The electronic District Health Information System 2, T2 forms had not been updated. This discrepancy may imply under reporting of Notifiable Diseases. The study was conducted to evaluate the NDSS in Beitbridge district. Methods: Descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted. Health workers in sampled health facilities were interviewed using questionnaires. Checklists were used to assess resource availability. Epi InfoTM was used to calculate frequencies and proportions. Results: From 11 facilities, 53 respondents were interviewed of which the 59% were females. For Knowledge, 57% recalled at least 9 Notifiable diseases, 11% knew the T1 form required to notify. Respondents willing to participate in the NDSS were 87%. Responsibility to notify was placed other health workers other than themselves by 55% of the respondents. All facilities did not have completed T1 forms. T1 forms were available in 1/11 health facilities. Three outbreaks were reported using the Weekly Disease Surveillance System (WDSS). NDSS information was used for planning and mobilizing resources for indoor residual spraying. It costs an average $12.15 to notify a single case, against $1.50 if it was electronic. Conclusion: NDSS is acceptable, simple, flexible, unstable, not sensitive and useful. Reasons for under reporting were lack of forms, lack of induction and poor knowledge on the NDSS. The cost of operating the NDSS could be reduced if the system is electronic. T1 forms and guidelines for completing the forms should be distributed to all health facilities. On the job training of health workers through tutorials, supervision is recommended.