Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Separating the Influences of Land Warming, the Direct CO2 Effect, the Plant Physiological Effect, and SST Warming on Regional Precipitation Changes

Regional precipitation responses to land warming are separated from other aspects of CO2 forcing using idealized atmosphere‐only climate model experiments. Land warming is crucial in determining the regional responses to direct CO2 forcing and the plant physiological effect and partially mitigates the response to sea surface temperature (SST) warming. The plant physiological effect causes large reductions in transpiration over forest regions but also produces significant land warming which increases moisture convergence in tropical forest regions, opposing transpiration‐related reductions in precipitation. The balance between these two large terms differs by region and explains why some regions actually experience increased precipitation in response to reduced transpiration. Regional circulation changes driven by increased CO2 atmospheric radiative heating appear to be mainly related to land‐sea differences in water cycle adjustments rather than spatial variations in radiative heating. This drives increased rainfall in several monsoon regions, particularly over West Africa. SST warming generally leads to reduced precipitation over land and increases over the oceans, while the associated land warming enhances moisture convergence and precipitation over land. However, the combination of SST and land warming effects is highly nonlinear in the tropics, which is likely to be because of strong coupling between precipitation change and land warming.
Brain Reactivity and Selective Attention to Sleep-Related Words in Patients With Chronic Insomnia

ABSTRACT Objective/Background: Sleep-related attentional bias has been suggested to represent an important factor for the maintenance of chronic insomnia. However, little is known about potentially underlying psychological mechanisms such as threat or craving. As these are associated with distinguishable brain activation patterns, we performed a functional neuroimaging study. Participants/Methods: Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to investigate brain reactivity to sleep-related words in 20 patients with primary insomnia according to DSM-IV criteria and 35 good sleeper controls according to Research Diagnostic Criteria. In addition, an emotional Stroop task was performed in all participants outside the scanner to investigate sleep-related attentional bias. Results: Contrary to the hypotheses, patients with chronic insomnia did not differ from good sleeper controls in terms of threat- or craving-related brain reactivity to sleep-related words. In addition, the emotional Stroop task did not reveal any significant group difference in sleep-related attentional bias. Exploratory analyses did not show any significant correlations between brain reactivity/selective attention to sleep-related words and questionnaire scores/PSG parameters. Conclusions: The results from the present study call into question that attentional bias to sleep-related stimuli is a core feature of chronic insomnia. Future studies may use pictorial stimuli and larger sample sizes for investigating sleep-related information processing in insomnia.
Difference in Buccal Gingival Thickness between the Mandible and Maxilla in the Aesthetic Zone: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Background: Fragile gingival tissue is a risk factor for the development of gingival recessions. Despite the fact that gingival recessions are more commonly seen around anterior mandibular teeth, previous research has predominantly concentrated on the gingival dimensions in the anterior maxilla. The objective was to systematically compare buccal gingival thicknesses between the upper and lower jaws in individuals with healthy gingival conditions in the aesthetic zone. Methods: A comprehensive search of three databases was carried out until October 2023. Gingival thickness differences between the maxilla and mandible were evaluated by calculating the mean differences along with the corresponding 95% confidence interval (CI). Subgroup analysis was conducted based on the measurement area, measurement method, and tooth category. Results: A total of seventeen studies were included in this systematic review. Eleven studies were included in the quantitative analysis. Quantitative analysis comparing gingival thickness around 2100 teeth in the anterior mandible to 2056 teeth in the anterior maxilla revealed a statistically significant thinner buccal gingiva in the mandible (mean difference: 0.16 mm; 95% CI [−0.24, −0.07]; p = 0.0003). Conclusions: The present systematic review revealed a more delicate buccal gingiva in the anterior mandible. However, further scientific validation is required due to the considerable heterogeneity in study design and the potential presence of confounding variables.
Geographic Distribution of Archaeal Ammonia Oxidizing Ecotypes in the Atlantic Ocean

In marine ecosystems, Thaumarchaeota are most likely the major ammonia oxidizers. While ammonia concentrations vary by about two orders of magnitude in the oceanic water column, archaeal ammonia oxidizers (AOA) vary by only one order of magnitude from surface to bathypelagic waters. Thus, the question arises whether the key enzyme responsible for ammonia oxidation, ammonia monooxygenase (amo), exhibits different affinities to ammonia along the oceanic water column and consequently, whether there are different ecotypes of AOA present in the oceanic water column. We determined the abundance and phylogeny of AOA based on their amoA gene. Two ecotypes of AOA exhibited a distribution pattern reflecting the reported availability of ammonia and the physico-chemical conditions throughout the Atlantic, and from epi- to bathypelagic waters. The distinction between these two ecotypes was not only detectable at the nucleotide level. Consistent changes were also detected at the amino acid level. These changes include substitutions of polar to hydrophobic amino acid, and glycine substitutions that could have an effect on the configuration of the amo protein and thus, on its activity. Although we cannot identify the specific effect, the ratio of non-synonymous to synonymous substitutions (dN/dS) between the two ecotypes indicates a strong positive selection between them. Consequently, our results point to a certain degree of environmental selection on these two ecotypes that have led to their niche specialization.
Effect of Severe Image Compression on Iris Recognition Performance

We investigate three schemes for severe compression of iris images in order to assess what their impact would be on recognition performance of the algorithms deployed today for identifying people by this biometric feature. Currently, standard iris images are 600 times larger than the IrisCode templates computed from them for database storage and search; but it is administratively desired that iris data should be stored, transmitted, and embedded in media in the form of images rather than as templates computed with proprietary algorithms. To reconcile that goal with its implications for bandwidth and storage, we present schemes that combine region-of-interest isolation with JPEG and JPEG2000 compression at severe levels, and we test them using a publicly available database of iris images. We show that it is possible to compress iris images to as little as 2000 bytes with minimal impact on recognition performance. Only some 2% to 3% of the bits in the IrisCode templates are changed by such severe image compression, and we calculate the entropy per code bit introduced by each compression scheme. Error tradeoff curve metrics document very good recognition performance despite this reduction in data size by a net factor of 150, approaching a convergence of image data size and template size.
Breaking GUT groups in $F$-theory

We consider the possibility of breaking the GUT group to the StandardModel gauge group in $F$-theory compactifications by turning on certain$U(1)$ fluxes. We show that the requirement of massless hypercharge isequivalent to a topological constraint on the UV completion of the localmodel. The possibility of this mechanism is intrinsic to $F$-theory. Weaddress some of the phenomenological signatures of this scenario. Weshow that our models predict monopoles as in conventional GUT models.We discuss in detail the leading threshold corrections to the gauge kineticterms and their effect on unification. They turn out to be related toRay–Singer torsion. We also discuss the issue of proton decay in $F$-theorymodels and explain how to engineer models which satisfy currentexperimental bounds.
Shape‐Up: Shaping Discrete Geometry with Projections

We introduce a unified optimization framework for geometry processing based on shape constraints. These constraints preserve or prescribe the shape of subsets of the points of a geometric data set, such as polygons, one‐ring cells, volume elements, or feature curves. Our method is based on two key concepts: a shape proximity function and shape projection operators. The proximity function encodes the distance of a desired least‐squares fitted elementary target shape to the corresponding vertices of the 3D model. Projection operators are employed to minimize the proximity function by relocating vertices in a minimal way to match the imposed shape constraints. We demonstrate that this approach leads to a simple, robust, and efficient algorithm that allows implementing a variety of geometry processing applications, simply by combining suitable projection operators. We show examples for computing planar and circular meshes, shape space exploration, mesh quality improvement, shape‐preserving deformation, and conformal parametrization. Our optimization framework provides a systematic way of building new solvers for geometry processing and produces similar or better results than state‐of‐the‐art methods.
A basic linear algebra compiler for embedded processors

Many applications in signal processing, control, and graphics on embedded devices require efficient linear algebra computations. On general-purpose computers, program generators have proven useful to produce such code, or important building blocks, automatically. An example is LGen, a compiler for basic linear algebra computations of fixed size. In this work, we extend LGen towards the embedded domain using as example targets Intel Atom, ARM Cortex-A8, ARM Cortex-A9, and ARM1176 (Raspberry Pi). To efficiently support these processors we introduce support for the NEON vector ISA and a methodology for domain-specific load/store optimizations. Our experimental evaluation shows that the new version of LGen produces code that performs in many cases considerably better than well-established, commercial and non-commercial libraries (Intel MKL and IPP), software generators (Eigen and ATLAS), and compilers (icc, gcc, and clang).
Visual Recognition Based on Temporal Cortex Cells: Viewer-Centred Processing of Pattern Configuration

Abstract A model of recognition is described based on cell properties in the ventral cortical stream of visual processing in the primate brain. At a critical intermediate stage in this system, ‘Elaborate’ feature sensitive cells respond selectively to visual features in a way that depends on size (± 1 octave), orientation (± 4 5 °) but does not depend on position within central vision (± 5 °). These features are simple conjunctions of 2-D elements (e.g. a horizontal dark area above a dark smoothly convex area). They can arise either as elements of an object’s surface pattern or as a 3-D component bounded by an object’s external contour. By requiring a combination of several such features without regard to their position within the central region of the visual image, ‘Pattern’ sensitive cells at higher levels can exhibit selectivity for complex configurations that typify objects seen under particular viewing conditions. Given that input features to such Pattern sensitive cells are specified in approximate size and orientation, initial cellular ‘representations’ of the visual appearance of object type (or object example) are also selective for orientation and size. At this level, sensitivity to object view (± 6 0 °) arises because visual features disappear as objects are rotated in perspective. Processing is thus viewer-centred and the neurones only respond to objects seen from particular viewing conditions or ‘object instances’. Combined sensitivity to multiple features (conjunctions of elements) independent of their position, establishes selectivity for the configurations of object parts (from one view) because rearranged configurations of the same parts yield images lacking some of the 2-D visual features present in the normal configuration. Different neural populations appear to be selectively tuned to particular components of the same biological object (e.g. face, eyes, hands, legs), perhaps because the independent articulation of these components gives rise to correlated activity in different sets of input visual features. Generalisation over viewing conditions for a given object can be established by hierarchically pooling outputs of view-condition specific cells with pooling operations dependent on the continuity in experience across viewing conditions. Different object parts are seen together and different views are seen in succession when the observer walks around the object. The view specific coding that characterises the selectivity of cells in the temporal lobe can be seen as a natural consequence of selective experience of objects from particular vantage points. View specific coding for the face and body also has great utility in understanding complex social signals, a property that may not be feasible with object-centred processing.
Randomized Open Trial Comparing 2-Dose Regimens of the Human Papillomavirus 16/18 AS04-Adjuvanted Vaccine in Girls Aged 9–14 Years Versus a 3-Dose Regimen in Women Aged 15–25 Years

Background. This randomized, open trial compared regimens including 2 doses (2D) of human papillomavirus (HPV) 16/18 AS04-adjuvanted vaccine in girls aged 9–14 years with one including 3 doses (3D) in women aged 15–25 years. Methods. Girls aged 9–14 years were randomized to receive 2D at months 0 and 6 (M0,6; (n = 550) or months 0 and 12 (M0,12; n = 415), and women aged 15–25 years received 3D at months 0, 1, and 6 (n = 482). End points included noninferiority of HPV-16/18 antibodies by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay for 2D (M0,6) versus 3D (primary), 2D (M0,12) versus 3D, and 2D (M0,6) versus 2D (M0,12); neutralizing antibodies; cell-mediated immunity; reactogenicity; and safety. Limits of noninferiority were predefined as <5% difference in seroconversion rate and <2-fold difference in geometric mean antibody titer ratio. Results. One month after the last dose, both 2D regimens in girls aged 9–14 years were noninferior to 3D in women aged 15–25 years and 2D (M0,12) was noninferior to 2D (M0,6). Geometric mean antibody titer ratios (3D/2D) for HPV-16 and HPV-18 were 1.09 (95% confidence interval, .97–1.22) and 0.85 (.76–.95) for 2D (M0,6) versus 3D and 0.89 (.79–1.01) and 0.75 (.67–.85) for 2D (M0,12) versus 3D. The safety profile was clinically acceptable in all groups. Conclusions. The 2D regimens for the HPV-16/18 AS04-adjuvanted vaccine in girls aged 9–14 years (M0,6 or M0,12) elicited HPV-16/18 immune responses that were noninferior to 3D in women aged 15–25 years. Clinical Trials Registration. NCT01381575.
Effects of an Opal Termination Codon Preceding the nsP4 Gene Sequence in the O'Nyong-Nyong Virus Genome on Anopheles gambiae Infectivity

ABSTRACT The genomic RNA of an alphavirus encodes four different nonstructural proteins, nsP1, nsP2, nsP3, and nsP4. The polyprotein P123 is produced when translation terminates at an opal termination codon between nsP3 and nsP4. The polyprotein P1234 is produced when translational readthrough occurs or when the opal termination codon has been replaced by a sense codon in the alphavirus genome. Evolutionary pressures appear to have maintained genomic sequences encoding both a stop codon (opal) and an open reading frame (arginine) as a general feature of the O'nyong-nyong virus (ONNV) genome, indicating that both are required at some point. Alternate replication of ONNVs in both vertebrate and invertebrate hosts may determine predominance of a particular codon at this locus in the viral quasispecies. However, no systematic study has previously tested this hypothesis in whole animals. We report here the results of the first study to investigate in a natural mosquito host the functional significance of the opal stop codon in an alphavirus genome. We used a full-length cDNA clone of ONNV to construct a series of mutants in which the arginine between nsP3 and nsP4 was replaced with an opal, ochre, or amber stop codon. The presence of an opal stop codon upstream of nsP4 nearly doubled (75.5%) the infectivity of ONNV over that of virus possessing a codon for the amino acid arginine at the corresponding position (39.8%). Although the frequency with which the opal virus disseminated from the mosquito midgut did not differ significantly from that of the arginine virus on days 8 and 10, dissemination did began earlier in mosquitoes infected with the opal virus. Although a clear fitness advantage is provided to ONNV by the presence of an opal codon between nsP3 and nsP4 in Anopheles gambiae, sequence analysis of ONNV RNA extracted from mosquito bodies and heads indicated codon usage at this position corresponded with that of the virus administered in the blood meal. These results suggest that while selection of ONNV variants is occurring, de novo mutation at the position between nsP3 and nsP4 does not readily occur in the mosquito. Taken together, these results suggest that the primary fitness advantage provided to ONNV by the presence of an opal codon between nsP3 and nsP4 is related to mosquito infectivity.
Hypocarnitinemia in the Handicapped Individuals who Receive a Polypharmacy of Antiepileptic Drugs

Decrease in the serum concentrations of total and free carnitine were found in patients who had received multiple doses of antiepileptic drugs, either including or excluding sodium valproate. These concentrations were more depressed in a former patient group. In all patients there were no abnormal losses of carnitine in urine. Several factors which may be relevant to the hypocarnitinemia were surveyed statistically. The univariate correlation analyses revealed that in all the patients the total and the free carnitine levels were each correlated with the values of arm muscle circumference, and they were inversely correlated with the dosages of sodium valproate. Double regression analyses again revealed that the value of arm muscle circumference is the most critical positive factor, and dosage of sodium valproate is the most critical negative contributor, to both the total and the free serum carnitine concentrations. There was, however, some additional negative contribution by the dosage of phenytoin to the total carnitine concentration. These results indicate that although sodium valproate itself reduces the carnitine concentrations in serum, a poor muscle volume and co-administration of phenytoin with sodium valproate enhance hypocarnitinemia.
Partner-Drug Resistance and Population Substructuring of Artemisinin-Resistant Plasmodium falciparum in Cambodia

Abstract Plasmodium falciparum in western Cambodia has developed resistance to artemisinin and its partner drugs, causing frequent treatment failure. Understanding this evolution can inform the deployment of new therapies. We investigated the genetic architecture of 78 falciparum isolates using whole-genome sequencing, correlating results to in vivo and ex vivo drug resistance and exploring the relationship between population structure, demographic history, and partner drug resistance. Principle component analysis, network analysis and demographic inference identified a diverse central population with three clusters of clonally expanding parasite populations, each associated with specific K13 artemisinin resistance alleles and partner drug resistance profiles which were consistent with the sequential deployment of artemisinin combination therapies in the region. One cluster displayed ex vivo piperaquine resistance and mefloquine sensitivity with a high rate of in vivo failure of dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine. Another cluster displayed ex vivo mefloquine resistance and piperaquine sensitivity with high in vivo efficacy of dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine. The final cluster was clonal and displayed intermediate sensitivity to both drugs. Variations in recently described piperaquine resistance markers did not explain the difference in mean IC90 or clinical failures between the high and intermediate piperaquine resistance groups, suggesting additional loci may be involved in resistance. The results highlight an important role for partner drug resistance in shaping the P. falciparum genetic landscape in Southeast Asia and suggest that further work is needed to evaluate for other mutations that drive piperaquine resistance.
Neuroprotective effects of green and black teas and their catechin gallate esters against β‐amyloid‐induced toxicity

Teas represent a large family of plants containing high amounts of polyphenols that may confer health benefits in various diseases. Recently, it has been hypothesized that tea consumption may also reduce the risk of age‐related neurodegenerative pathologies. Considering the deleterious role of β‐amyloid (Aβ) in the aetiology of Alzheimer's disease (AD), we investigated green and black tea extracts and flavan‐3‐ols (present as monomers and dimers in green and black forms, respectively) against toxicity induced by Aβ‐derived peptides using primary cultures of rat hippocampal cells as model. Both green and black tea extracts (5–25 µg/mL) displayed neuroprotective action against Aβ toxicity. These effects were shared by gallic acid (1–20 µm), epicatechin gallate (ECG; 1–20 µm) and epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG; 1–10 µm), the former being the most potent flavan‐3‐ol. In contrast, epicatechin and epigallocatechin were ineffective in the same range of concentrations. Moreover, only tea flavan‐3‐ol gallate esters (i.e. ECG, EGCG) and gallic acid inhibited apoptotic events induced by Aβ25‐35. Interestingly, EGCG and gallic acid inhibited Aβ aggregation and/or the formation of Aβ‐derived diffusible neurotoxin ligands. Taken together, these results indicate that the catechin gallates (through the galloyl moiety) contribute to the neuroprotective effects of both green and black teas. Moreover, the protective effect of EGCG is likely to be associated, at least in part, with its inhibitory action on Aβ fibrils/oligomers formation. These data also support the hypothesis that not only green but also black teas may reduce age‐related neurodegenerative diseases, such as AD.