Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Responses of Caragana korshinskii to different aboveground shoot removal: combining defence and tolerance strategies.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS It is generally assumed that plants respond to natural enemies by either allocating resources to resistance traits or compensating for damage. This study evaluated how different methods of artificial shoot removal influence two alternative strategies (i.e. tolerance and defence) of Caragana korshinskii in the semi-arid area of China. METHODS Zero per cent (control), 30% (30%) and 60% (60%) of the main shoot length and 25% (25%), 50% (50%) and 100% (100%) of the numbers of main shoots were removed from shrubs. KEY RESULTS Moderate clipping treatments [30% removal of partial shoot length (RSL), 25% removal of shoot number (RSN) and 50% RSN] improved seed production, whereas the most intensive clipping treatments (60% RSL and 100% RSN) with most or total removal of potential flower buds reduced current reproduction fitness compared with controls. All treatments produced a similar leaf phenolic content, with the exception of 100% RSN which resulted in a low leaf phenolic content. In spite of a substantial investment in regrowth, clipped plants increased biomass allocation to physical defence. Control plants almost did not grow, had lower levels of physical defence and a lower photosynthetic rate, mobilized fewer carbohydrates from roots and produced more flowers. However, their current fitness was lower than that of plants undergoing clipping treatments (30% RSL, 25% RSN and 50% RSN) because of the high level of abortion of flowers and fruits. CONCLUSIONS Caragana korshinskii responded to aboveground shoot removal through combining defence and tolerance strategies.
Bulges versus discs: the evolution of angular momentum in cosmological simulations of galaxy formation

We investigate the evolution of angular momentum in simulations of galaxy formation in a cold dark matter universe. We analyse two model galaxies generated in the N-body/hydrodynamic simulations of Okamoto et al. Starting from identical initial conditions, but using different assumptions for the baryonic physics, one of the simulations produced a bulge-dominated galaxy and the other one a disc-dominated galaxy. The main difference is the treatment of star formation and feedback, both of which were designed to be more efficient in the disc-dominated object. We find that the specific angular momentum of the disc-dominated galaxy tracks the evolution of the angular momentum of the dark matter halo very closely: the angular momentum grows as predicted by linear theory until the epoch of maximum expansion and remains constant thereafter. By contrast, the evolution of the angular momentum of the bulge-dominated galaxy resembles that of the central, most bound halo material: it also grows at first according to linear theory, but 90 per cent of it is rapidly lost as pre-galactic fragments, into which gas had cooled efficiently, merge, transferring their orbital angular momentum to the outer halo by tidal effects. The disc-dominated galaxy avoids this fate because the strong feedback reheats the gas, which accumulates in an extended hot reservoir and only begins to cool once the merging activity has subsided. Our analysis lends strong support to the classical theory of disc formation whereby tidally torqued gas is accreted into the centre of the halo conserving its angular momentum.
Sentimental Preferences and the Organizational Regime of Betting Markets

We analyze the price impact of sentimental bettor preferences within a bookmaker betting market. Our model demonstrates that, under reasonable assumptions about the nature of demand in a market with strong competition, the bookmaker will offer lower prices for bets with comparatively stronger demand. Using a sample of more than 16,000 English soccer matches we find evidence that more favorable odds are extended to bets on more popular clubs and that this effect is amplified on weekends when sentimental bettors face lower opportunity costs to wager. Our findings help to explain why the market for sports gambling operates as a hybrid structure with bookmakers able to attract a considerable share of the betting volume although identical contracts are traded on exchange markets at lower costs; the organizational design of a quote-driven market enables the dealer to take advantage of sentimental bettor preferences.
A statistical approach to snakes for bimodal and trimodal imagery

We describe a new region based approach to active contours for segmenting images composed of two or three types of regions characterizable by a given statistic. The essential idea is to derive curve evolutions which separate two or more valves of a pre-determined set of statistics computed over geometrically determined subsets of the image. Both global and local image information is used to evolve the active contour. Image derivatives, however, are avoided, thereby giving rise to a further degree of noise robustness compared to most edge based snake algorithms.
High‐performance capillary electrophoresis of meat, dairy, and cereal proteins

Food proteins play important roles in food functionality, nutrition, and human health. For these reasons, new analytical methods are continually being developed to separate and characterize these important proteins. High‐performance capillary electrophoresis (HPCE) is one of the latest analytical methods to be applied to the separation of food proteins. This review covers methods and applications for the separation of three major groups of food proteins, meat, dairy, and cereal proteins.
Autocrine FGF signaling is required for vascular smooth muscle cell survival in vitro

Expression of both basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) and FGF receptors (FGFR) by vascular smooth muscle cells suggests that autocrine FGF signaling mechanisms may have important functions. Inhibition of smooth muscle cell bFGF expression provokes apoptosis, suggesting that endogenous bFGF generates an anti‐apoptotic signal. The purpose of this study was to determine whether the survival function of endogenous bFGF requires signaling through FGFR. A recombinant adenovirus encoding a truncated murine FGFR‐1 lacking the kinase domain (DN‐FGFR) efficiently expressed the transgene in cultured rat aortic smooth muscle cells. The truncated receptor acted in a dominant negative fashion to effectively prevent receptor‐mediated signaling, assessed by phosphorylation of p42/p44 MAP kinase. Expression of DN‐FGFR provoked apoptosis of SMC in a dose‐dependent fashion that was insensitive to recombinant bFGF but could be rescued by platelet derived growth factor or epidermal growth factor. Heterologous growth factor rescue was inhibited by PD98059, an inhibitor of MEK (MAP kinase‐kinase). These data demonstrate that inhibition of FGF receptor activation results in apoptosis and suggest that an intact autocrine FGF signaling loop is required for vascular smooth muscle cell survival in vitro. These findings also implicate the Ras/Raf/MEK/MAP kinase cascade in generating or sustaining the survival signal. The functional significance of an autocrine FGF signaling loop in non‐transformed cells has important implications for cardiovascular development, remodeling and disease. J. Cell. Physiol. 177:58–67, 1998. © 1998 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Iron deficiency anemia, papilledema, thrombocytosis, and transient hemiparesis.

The signs and symptoms found in iron deficiency anemia are nu merous and diverse, but the morbid ity is usually mild. However, several manifestations if wrongly diagnosed and incorrectly treated can lead to serious consequences. Papilledema as sociated with iron deficiency is a known but rare phenomenon which may so alarm the physician as to pro voke extensive and needless eval uations for intracranial lesions. Other associated neurological defects pre viously reported have usually been minimal but when present arouse an even higher suspicion of a space-oc cupying mass. Thrombocytosis is fre quently seen in adults with iron deficiency, but it is sufficiently unrecognized that patients may be thought to have a myeloproliferative disease with insufficient consid eration to iron as an etiological mech anism. We wish to emphasize through the following patient summary the reversible nature of these complications by the simple and oral administration of iron.
Improvements in language and translation modeling

Virtually any modern speech recognition system relies on count-based language models. In this thesis, such models are investigated, and potential improvements are analyzed with respect to optimized discounting methods, where empirical count statistics are adjusted such that they better match unseen held-out data. Neural networks have recently emerged as a promising alternative to count-based approaches. This work introduces the recurrent long short-term memory neural network into the field of language modeling, and provides an in-depth comparison with other neural network technologies as well as count-based approaches. Due to the high computational complexity, neural network models are combined with several speed-up techniques. In thesis, novel approximations for direct word error minimization in lattice rescoring are proposed, too. Finally, long short-term memory neural network language models are generalized to the translation modeling problem of statistical machine translation. Two novel methods are presented, preserving word order of source and target language dependences. Both approaches allow the integration in state-of-the-art machine translation systems, complementing the improvements obtained by neural network language models. Zusammenfassung Nahezu alle modernen Spracherkennunssysteme bauen auf häufigkeitsbasierten Sprachmodellen auf. In dieser Dissertation werden diese Modelle untersucht und die möglichen Verbesserungen mit Hilfe von Discounting-Methoden analysiert, wobei empirische Häufigkeiten so angepasst werden, dass sie denjenigen von ungesehenen Daten besser entsprechen. In letzter Zeit sind Neuronale Netze als vielversprechende Alternative zu häufigkeitsbasierten Sprachmodellen hinzugekommen. Diese Arbeit führt rekurrente Long-Short-TermMemory-Neuronale-Netze in die Sprachmodellierung ein und stellt einen detaillierten Vergleich zwischen anderen Neuronale-Netze-Ansätzen sowie den häufigkeitsbasierten Sprachmodellen vor. Wegen der hohen Rechenanforderungen werden neuronale Netze mit verschiedenen Beschleunigungstechniken kombiniert. Außerdem werden in dieser Dissertation neue Approximationen zur direkten Minimierung der Wortfehlerrate auf Wortgraphen vorgestellt. Darüber hinaus werden Long-Short-Term-Memory-Neuronale-Netze-Sprachmodelle verallgemeinert auf das Problem der Übersetzungsmodellierung aus der statistischen maschinellen Übersetzung. Zwei neue Methoden werden eingeführt, die die Reihenfolge der Wortabhängigkeiten in Quellund Zielsprache beibehalten. Beide Ansätze lassen sich in aktuelle Übersetzungssysteme integrieren und ergänzen damit die Verbesserungen, die mit NeuronaleNetze-Sprachmodellen erzielt werden können.
Assessment of Occupational Health Hazards Due to Particulate Matter Originated from Spices

Spices have been known for their various health activities; however, they also possess the allergic potential for the respiratory system and the skin as they are fine particulate matter. Persons involved in spice agriculture and food industries are at greater risk since they are exposed to a considerable amount of combustible dust, which may be the cause of fire and explosion and adversely affect the health. These workers may experience allergy, long-term and short-term respiratory issues including occupational asthma, dermatitis, etc. Some spices induce T cell-based inflammatory reaction upon contact recognition of the antigen. Antigen Presenting Cells (APC) on binding to the causative metabolite results in activation of macrophages by allergen cytokine interleukin (IL)-12 and tumor necrosis factor-beta (TNF). Cross-reactivity for protein allergens is another factor which seems to be a significant trigger for the stimulation of allergic reactions. Thus, it was imperative to perform a systematic review along with bioinformatics based representation of some evident allergens has been done to identify the overall conservation of epitopes. In the present manuscript, we have covered a multifold approach, i.e., to categorize the spice particles based on a clear understanding about nature, origin, mechanisms; to assess metabolic reactions of the particles after exposure as well as knowledge on the conditions of exposure along with associated potential health effects. Another aim of this study is to provide some suggestions to prevent and to control the exposure up to some extent.
The Association of Thyroid Nodule with Non-Iodized Salt among Chinese Children

Objective The controversy that iodized salt may increase the risk of thyroid disorders has been aroused in China during the past decade. Most of studies focused on adult rather than children. We aimed to explore whether iodized salt was associated with an increased risk of thyroid nodule in Chinese children. Methods The cross-sectional study was conducted in Hangzhou, China, in 2010. Iodized salt intake, urine iodine concentration (UIC) and thyroid nodule (by ultrasonography) were measured in 3026 children. The associations of iodized salt with thyroid nodule were evaluated using multiple logistic regression models. Results The prevalence of thyroid nodule was 10.59% among Chinese children. Girls (11.89%) had higher prevalence of thyroid nodule than boys (9.26%). No significant association was observed between type of salt and thyroid nodule in pooled samples, boys and girls, respectively. Similar associations were observed between UIC and thyroid nodule. There was no significant association between milk consumption and thyroid nodule as well. Conclusion The present study indicated that non-iodized salt may not increase the risk of thyroid nodules among Chinese children. Similar associations were observed between milk consumption, UIC and thyroid nodules.
Robotic etiquette : structured interaction in humans and robots

* {B.Ogden | K.Dautenhahn}@herts.ac. uk Abstract. Visual nonverbal behaviour plays a significant role in allowing humans to structure their interactions meaningfully, thus facilitating communication between individuals. Such behaviour may be exploited in the design of socially intelligent robots. While much visual behaviour (e.g. facial expression) is hard to detect using a machine vision system, especially in unconstrained situations such as natural interaction, simple gestures and the positions of interactants are relatively easy to detect. This paper begins with a description of some related work, followed by an overview of some systems that track and/or interpret human movement. This is followed by a discussion of what is known about the structure of human interactions and a detailed example of a particular kind of structured interaction (the greeting). Ways in which interactional structure can be exploited in the development of socially intelligent robots are considered: finally, a specific application involving the use of robots in the rehabilitation of autistic children is described. We refer to this approach, using knowledge of interactional structure both to generate social behaviour for a robot and to interpret interactions for a machine vision system, as interactive vision. The work described in this paper is still in its early stages and there are no experimental results to report as yet: the purpose of this paper is rather to outline ways in which sociological and psychological work on human interactional behaviour can be exploited in socially intelligent agents and machine vision systems.
Sweets and sugar-sweetened soft drink intake in childhood in relation to adult BMI and overweight. The Cardiovascular Risk in Young Finns Study

Abstract Objective To investigate the associations of BMI and overweight in adulthood with consumption of sweets and sugar-sweetened soft drinks in childhood and with the change in consumption between childhood and adulthood. Design Longitudinal 21-year follow-up study of Finnish children and adolescents from childhood to adulthood. Setting The Cardiovascular Risk in Young Finns Study, comprising participants from both eastern and western Finland. Subjects Boys (n 967) and girls (n 1172) aged 3–18 years at baseline in 1980. Results The increase in consumption of sugar-sweetened soft drinks from childhood to adulthood was directly associated with BMI in adulthood in women (b = 0·45, P = 0·0001) but not in men. In women, BMI increased by 0·45 kg/m2 for every 10-unit increase per month. Consumption of sweets and sugar-sweetened soft drinks in childhood and adolescence was not associated with BMI in adulthood. The change in consumption of sweets was not associated with BMI in adulthood. The increase in the consumption of sugar-sweetened soft drinks from childhood to adulthood was associated with being overweight (OR = 1·90, 95 % CI 1·38, 2·61) in women, but not in men. No association was found between overweight (BMI ≥ 25 kg/m2) in adulthood and consumption of sweets in childhood or the change in consumption from childhood to adulthood. Conclusions We conclude that direct associations exist between adulthood overweight and BMI and an increase in consumption of sugar-sweetened soft drinks in women. Thus sugar-sweetened soft drinks consumption may be important when considering weight management in women.
Tumor Evolution in Two Patients with Basal-like Breast Cancer: A Retrospective Genomics Study of Multiple Metastases

Background Metastasis is the main cause of cancer patient deaths and remains a poorly characterized process. It is still unclear when in tumor progression the ability to metastasize arises and whether this ability is inherent to the primary tumor or is acquired well after primary tumor formation. Next-generation sequencing and analytical methods to define clonal heterogeneity provide a means for identifying genetic events and the temporal relationships between these events in the primary and metastatic tumors within an individual. Methods and Findings We performed DNA whole genome and mRNA sequencing on two primary tumors, each with either four or five distinct tissue site-specific metastases, from two individuals with triple-negative/basal-like breast cancers. As evidenced by their case histories, each patient had an aggressive disease course with abbreviated survival. In each patient, the overall gene expression signatures, DNA copy number patterns, and somatic mutation patterns were highly similar across each primary tumor and its associated metastases. Almost every mutation found in the primary was found in a metastasis (for the two patients, 52/54 and 75/75). Many of these mutations were found in every tumor (11/54 and 65/75, respectively). In addition, each metastasis had fewer metastatic-specific events and shared at least 50% of its somatic mutation repertoire with the primary tumor, and all samples from each patient grouped together by gene expression clustering analysis. TP53 was the only mutated gene in common between both patients and was present in every tumor in this study. Strikingly, each metastasis resulted from multiclonal seeding instead of from a single cell of origin, and few of the new mutations, present only in the metastases, were expressed in mRNAs. Because of the clinical differences between these two patients and the small sample size of our study, the generalizability of these findings will need to be further examined in larger cohorts of patients. Conclusions Our findings suggest that multiclonal seeding may be common amongst basal-like breast cancers. In these two patients, mutations and DNA copy number changes in the primary tumors appear to have had a biologic impact on metastatic potential, whereas mutations arising in the metastases were much more likely to be passengers.
Secretory proteins are delivered to the septin-organized penetration interface during root infection by Verticillium dahliae

Successful infection of the host requires secretion of effector proteins to evade or suppress plant immunity. Secretion of effectors in root-infecting fungal pathogens, however, remains unexplored. We previously reported that Verticillium dahliae, a root-infecting phytopathogenic fungus, develops a penetration peg from a hyphopodium to infect cotton roots. In this study, we report that a septin ring, requiring VdSep5, partitions the hyphopodium and the invasive hypha and form the specialized fungus-host interface. The mutant strain, VdΔnoxb, in which NADPH oxidase B (VdNoxB) is deleted, impaired formation of the septin ring at the hyphal neck, indicating that NADPH oxidases regulate septin ring organization. Using GFP tagging and live cell imaging, we observed that several signal peptide containing secreted proteins showed ring signal accumulation/secretion at the penetration interface surrounding the hyphal neck. Targeted mutation for VdSep5 reduced the delivery rate of secretory proteins to the penetration interface. Blocking the secretory pathway by disrupting the vesicular trafficking factors, VdSec22 and VdSyn8, or the exocyst subunit, VdExo70, also arrested delivery of the secreted proteins inside the hyphopodium. Reduced virulence was observed when cotton roots were infected with VdΔsep5, VdΔsec22, VdΔsyn8 and VdΔexo70 mutants compared to infection with the isogenic wild-type V592. Taken together, our data demonstrate that the hyphal neck is an important site for protein secretion during plant root infection, and that the multiple secretory routes are involved in the secretion.
Shot Boundary Determination on MPEC Compressed Domain and Story Segmentation Experiments for TRECVID 2003

KDDI R&D Laboratories has been participating in the past TREC conferences for text retrieval tasks. In this year we are newly participating in TRECVID 2003, namely the shot boundary determination and story segmentation tasks. In shot boundary determination task, we applied our proprietary shot segmentation algorithm originally proposed in [1] and slightly upgraded for this task. In our methods, statistics such as histogram as well as motion vector information from MPEG coded bitstream are used to adaptively determine various types of shot boundaries. For the story segmentation task, we conducted experiments under the conditions “Audio/Video” and “ASR Only”. Our officially submitted results were based on the ASR Only condition, where we implemented a story segmentation method based on the TextTiling algorithm. This paper also describes our Audio/Video story segmentation experiments conducted after official result submission.
Cyclic GMP Reduces Myocardial Stunning Through Non-Cyclic GMP Protein Kinase Mechanisms

We tested the hypothesis that myocardial stunning would be reduced by increased cyclic GMP and cGMP protein kinase activity. Hearts were instrumented in eight open-chest anesthetized dogs. The left anterior descending coronary artery (LAD) was occluded for 15 minutes followed by a 30-minute recovery and infusion of 8-Bromo-cGMP (0.1 and 1 μg/kg/min) during functional and metabolic data collection. Myocytes from circumflex and LAD regions were then used to obtain data at baseline, with 8-Br-cGMP (10−7,−6,−5 M) and KT5823 10−6 M, cGMP protein kinase inhibitor. The in vivo time delay of regional shortening increased significantly from 55 ± 12 to 99 ± 3 msec following stunning, but was reduced to 81 ± 2 by 1 μg/kg/min 8-Br-cGMP. The % regional work during systole decreased during stunning (93 ± 2 to 76 ± 8%), but was restored by 8-Br-cGMP (91 ± 7). Stunning lengthened the time of myocyte contraction and relaxation and reduced baseline shortening. 8-Br-cGMP reduced myocyte shortening in both regions. However, KT5823 only restored myocyte shortening in controls. These data indicated that regional myocardial stunning could be reduced by cyclic GMP but this appeared to be through non-cGMP protein kinase mechanisms.