Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Assessing Social Engagement in Heterogeneous Groups of Zebrafish: A New Paradigm for Autism-Like Behavioral Responses

Because of its highly developed social character, zebrafish is a promising model system for the study of the genetic and neurochemical basis of altered social engagement such as is common in autism and schizophrenia. The traditional shoaling paradigm investigates social cohesion in homogeneous groups of zebrafish. However, the social dynamics of mixed groups is gaining interest from a therapeutic point of view and thus warrants animal modeling. Furthermore, mutant zebrafish are not always available in large numbers. Therefore, we developed a new paradigm that allows exploring shoaling in heterogeneous groups. The effects of MK-801, a non-competitive antagonist of the glutamate N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor, on social cohesion were studied to evaluate the paradigm. The drug has previously been shown to mimic aspects of autism and schizophrenia. Our results show that a single MK-801-treated zebrafish reduced social cohesion of the entire shoal drastically. Preliminary observations suggest that the social dynamics of the shoal as a whole was altered.
Orbital stabilization of mechanical systems through semidefinite Lyapunov functions

In this paper we address the problem of generating asymptotically stable limit cycles for a fully actuated multibody mechanical system through a feedback control law. Using the concept of conditional stability the limit cycle can be designed for a lower dimensional dynamical system describing how the original one evolves on a chosen submanifold and the corresponding velocity space. Moreover, the controller can be split up in two parts that can be independently designed and analyzed in order to reach the constraint submanifold and then produce the oscillation. Even if designed assuming a lower dimensional system, the limit cycle implies a periodic motion for the whole system.
Changes in genetic selection differentials and generation intervals in US Holstein dairy cattle as a result of genomic selection

Significance The introduction of genomic selection in dairy cattle improvement programs in 2008 was expected to increase rates of genetic gain, particularly for traits with low heritabilities, such as fertility and longevity. Our analysis of the US national dairy database found that generation intervals have decreased dramatically over the past 6 y, and selection intensity for lowly heritable traits has increased considerably. Genetic trends rapidly increased for fertility, lifespan, and udder health. These results clearly demonstrate the positive impact of genomic selection in US dairy cattle, even though this technology has only been in use for a short time. This progress in US Holsteins will have a favorable impact on other populations worldwide due to the widespread dissemination of US germplasm. Seven years after the introduction of genomic selection in the United States, it is now possible to evaluate the impact of this technology on the population. Selection differential(s) (SD) and generation interval(s) (GI) were characterized in a four-path selection model that included sire(s) of bulls (SB), sire(s) of cows (SC), dam(s) of bulls (DB), and dam(s) of cows (DC). Changes in SD over time were estimated for milk, fat, and protein yield; somatic cell score (SCS); productive life (PL); and daughter pregnancy rate (DPR) for the Holstein breed. In the period following implementation of genomic selection, dramatic reductions were seen in GI, especially the SB and SC paths. The SB GI reduced from ∼7 y to less than 2.5 y, and the DB GI fell from about 4 y to nearly 2.5 y. SD were relatively stable for yield traits, although modest gains were noted in recent years. The most dramatic response to genomic selection was observed for the lowly heritable traits DPR, PL, and SCS. Genetic trends changed from close to zero to large and favorable, resulting in rapid genetic improvement in fertility, lifespan, and health in a breed where these traits eroded over time. These results clearly demonstrate the positive impact of genomic selection in US dairy cattle, even though this technology has only been in use for a short time. Based on the four-path selection model, rates of genetic gain per year increased from ∼50–100% for yield traits and from threefold to fourfold for lowly heritable traits.
Prestellar and protostellar cores in Orion B9

Context. Dense molecular cores are studied to gain insight into the processes causing clouds to fragment and form stars. In this study, we concentrate on a region that is assumed to represent an early stage of clustered star-formation in a giant molecular cloud. Aims. We aim to determine the properties and spatial distribution of dense cores in the relatively quiescent Ori B9 cloud, and to estimate their ages and dynamical timescales. Methods. The cloud was mapped in the 870 μm continuum with APEX/LABOCA, and selected positions were observed in the lines of N2H + and N2D + using IRAM-30 m. These were used together with our previous H2D + observations to derive the degree of deuteration and some other chemical characteristics. Archival far-infrared Spitzer/MIPS maps were combined with the LABOCA map to distinguish between prestellar and protostellar cores, and to estimate the evolutionary stages of protostars. Results. Twelve dense cores were detected at 870 μm continuum in the Ori B9 cloud. The submm cores constitute ∼4% of the total mass of the Ori B9 region. There is an equal number of prestellar and protostellar cores. Two of the submm sources, which we call SMM 3 and SMM 4, are previously unknown Class 0 candidates. There is a high likelihood of the core masses and mutual separations representing the same distributions as observed in other parts of Orion. We found a moderate degree of deuteration in N2H + (0.03–0.04). There is, furthermore, evidence of N2H + depletion in the core SMM 4. These features suggest that the cores have reached chemical maturity. We derive a relatively high degree of ionization (∼10 −7 ) in the clump associated with IRAS 05405-0117. The ambipolar diffusion timescales for two of the cores are ∼70–100 times longer than the free-fall time. Conclusions. The distribution and masses of dense cores in Ori B9 are similar to those observed in more active regions of Orion, where the statistical core properties have been explained by turbulent fragmentation. The 50/50 proportions of prestellar and protostellar cores imply that the duration of the prestellar phase is comparable to the free-fall time. However, on the basis of chemical data of the IRAS 05405-0117 region, this timescale could be questioned. A possible explanation is that this survey samples only the densest, i.e., dynamically most advanced cores.
Life Span of the Red Cell

local hands to central government. " He points out that the "management arrangements provided in the Bill will, in practice, deny any real measure of local initiative and responsibility and, in consequence, it may well be difficult to attract the right type of people to participate in the running of the service. " He draws attention to the Exchequer brake on local initiative and deplores the power of the Minister to control the administrative units by " directions without reference to Parliament. " In the Tinmes of April 9 Sir Ernest Pooley and Sir Hugh Lett, speaking for the King Edward's Hospital Fund, back Sir William Goodenough's plea for increased status and power for hospital management committees, and in one passage state the real case against the one-man ownership of the country's hospitals. We quote it in full. "Central guidance is no substitute for the appeal of the individual hospital, and anything which weakens that appeal is a dead loss to the service as a whole, and will react most gravely upon recruitment. In maintaining it no factor is more important than the existence of a management jealous for the reputation of its own hospital, and willing and able to take endless pains to that end. By and large, and of course with exceptions, the voluLntary hospitals have throughout their long history solved the problem: they have shown that they can attract and retain medical and nursing staff; and the task before the Minister is how so to arrange matters that all hospitals possess the maximum degree of real freedom compatible with a properly organized and efficient service. " The Minister of Health has the support of the profession in his plan for basing the hospital service on sixteen or twenty Regions linked with the eleven university centres of England and Wales. In his proposals to nationalize the hospitals he has a divided profession. In his hospital plan he could secure the willing co-operation of the medical profession if he would modify his proposals for ownership and control.
Adoptive therapy by transfusing expanded donor murine natural killer T cells can suppress acute graft‐versus‐host disease in allogeneic bone marrow transplantation

BACKGROUND: Invariant natural killer T cells (iNKT cells) may suppress graft‐versus‐host disease (GVHD) after allogeneic transplantation. The purpose of this study was to investigate the therapeutic potential of iNKT cells from major histocompatibility complex (MHC)‐mismatched donors for preventing GVHD after allogeneic bone marrow transplantation (BMT).
EMOTIONAL ENHANCEMENT AND REPETITION EFFECTS DURING WORKING MEMORY IN PERSONS WITH MILD COGNITIVE IMPAIRMENT

OF DISSERTATION EMOTIONAL ENHANCEMENT AND REPETITION EFFECTS DURING WORKING MEMORY IN PERSONS WITH MILD COGNITIVE IMPAIRMENT This dissertation introduces a framework for understanding differences in how emotional enhancement effects might influence memory in aging adults and then summarizes the findings of three studies of how repetition effects and emotional enhancement effects influence working memory in older adults without cognitive impairment (NC), older adults with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and older adults with mild Alzheimer’s disease (AD). In these experiments, individuals with AD showed cognitive impairment in terms of accuracy and reaction time, but individuals with MCI showed milder behavioral impairment that was confined to manipulations of working memory. Individuals with AD showed relative sparing of repetition effects in behavioral performance, and this sparing was linked to an altered cortical repetition effect using eventrelated potentials (ERPs). Repetition effects in MCI appear absent in emotional tasks that lack a working memory component, but are present in a neural repetition mechanism that is evoked in the presence of working memory. Finally, persons with MCI showed working memory processing similar to persons without impairment when working with stimuli of low arousal and positive hedonic valence, but when working with stimuli of high arousal and negative hedonic valence, their working memory processing more resembled the AD phenotype.
A Study on Weight Control Behavior by Female Consumers Eating Life Styles

The study investigated the eating lifestyles of female consumers and whether they influenced weight control behavior. The findings of the study can be summarized as follows. First, the eating lifestyles of the subjects were presented four types: 'active eating life pursuit type', 'safe economical type', 'gourmet type' and 'passive negligence type'. In general, most cases were of the 'passive negligence type'. Second, weight control behavior was analyzed according to eating lifestyle. The results of the analysis indicated that the female consumers of the 'active eating life pursuit type' and 'safe economy type' had high behavior levels in each aspect of weight control attitude, subjective regulation, perceived behavior control, and behavior intention. Third, the 'gourmet type', with a strong preference for taste, and the 'passive negligence type', with fewer eating considerations in general, showed weaker attitudes towards weight control and the recognition of pressure from people around them. As such, the level of consideration for food or eating was correlated with weight control. These findings impliedy that the more active, safer, and economical women are in their general eating style, the stronger they perceive weight control issues.
The GALEX Arecibo SDSS Survey I: gas fraction scaling relations of massive galaxies and first data release

We introduce the GALEX Arecibo SDSS Survey (GASS), an on-going large programme that is gathering high quality H i-line spectra using the Arecibo radio telescope for an unbiased sample of ~1000 galaxies with stellar masses greater than 10^(10) M_⊙ and redshifts 0.025 < z < 0.05 , selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) spectroscopic and Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) imaging surveys. The galaxies are observed until detected or until a low gas mass fraction limit (1.5–5 per cent) is reached. This paper presents the first Data Release, consisting of ~20 per cent of the final GASS sample. We use this data set to explore the main scaling relations of the H i gas fraction with galaxy structure and NUV−r colour. A large fraction (~60 per cent) of the galaxies in our sample are detected in H i. Even at stellar masses above 10^(11) M_⊙, the detected fraction does not fall below ~40 per cent. We find that the atomic gas fraction M_(HI)/M★ decreases strongly with stellar mass, stellar surface mass density and NUV−r colour, but is only weakly correlated with the galaxy bulge-to-disc ratio (as measured by the concentration index of the r-band light). We also find that the fraction of galaxies with significant (more than a few per cent) H I decreases sharply above a characteristic stellar surface mass density of 10^(8.5) M_⊙ kpc^(−2). The fraction of gas-rich galaxies decreases much more smoothly with stellar mass. One of the key goals of GASS is to identify and quantify the incidence of galaxies that are transitioning between the blue, star-forming cloud and the red sequence of passively evolving galaxies. Likely transition candidates can be identified as outliers from the mean scaling relations between M_(HI)/M★ and other galaxy properties. We have fitted a plane to the two-dimensional relation between the H I mass fraction, stellar surface mass density and NUV−r colour. Interesting outliers from this plane include gas-rich red sequence galaxies that may be in the process of regrowing their discs, as well as blue, but gas-poor spirals.
Isoflurane modulates glutamatergic and GABAergic neurotransmission in the amygdala

Attempts have been made to attribute the particular features of general anaesthesia such as hypnosis, analgesia, amnesia and autonomic stability to certain brain regions. In the present study, we examined the effects of the commonplace volatile anaesthetic isoflurane on synaptic transmission in an in vitro slice preparation of the murine amygdala. Despite the established role of this limbic structure in the formation of aversive memories, conditioned fear and anxiety, as well as pain processing and regulation of sympathetic tone, the influence of volatile anaesthetics on synaptic signalling has not yet been investigated in this region of the brain. Evoked postsynaptic currents were monitored from principal neurons in the basolateral nucleus of the amygdala by means of patch‐clamp recording. The mixed postsynaptic currents were mediated by non‐NMDA, NMDA, GABAA and GABAB receptors. Isoflurane added to the perfusion medium reduced the strength of synaptic signalling following the activation of non‐NMDA, NMDA, and GABAB receptors, whereas the GABAA receptor‐mediated responses were enhanced. The overall reduction of neuronal excitability was also reflected in a reduction of field potential amplitudes. Isoflurane neither changed the membrane resting potential nor the input resistance of principal neurons in the amygdala. The present results may contribute to the understanding of how stress reactions and long‐lasting neuroplastic processes are suppressed under general anaesthesia.
Characterizing a psychiatric symptom dimension related to deficits in goal-directed control

Prominent theories suggest that compulsive behaviors, characteristic of obsessive-compulsive disorder and addiction, are driven by shared deficits in goal-directed control, which confers vulnerability for developing rigid habits. However, recent studies have shown that deficient goal-directed control accompanies several disorders, including those without an obvious compulsive element. Reasoning that this lack of clinical specificity might reflect broader issues with psychiatric diagnostic categories, we investigated whether a dimensional approach would better delineate the clinical manifestations of goal-directed deficits. Using large-scale online assessment of psychiatric symptoms and neurocognitive performance in two independent general-population samples, we found that deficits in goal-directed control were most strongly associated with a symptom dimension comprising compulsive behavior and intrusive thought. This association was highly specific when compared to other non-compulsive aspects of psychopathology. These data showcase a powerful new methodology and highlight the potential of a dimensional, biologically-grounded approach to psychiatry research. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.7554/eLife.11305. 001
Websigns: Hyperlinking Physical Locations to the Web

HP researchers are developing handheld devices that combine wireless technology and ubiquitous computing to provide a transparent linkage between physical entities in the environment and resources available on the Web. First-generation mobile computing technologies typically use protocols such as WAP and i-mode to let PDAs, smart phones, and other wireless devices with Web browsers access the Internet, thereby freeing users from the shackles of their desktops. We believe, in addition, users would benefit from having access to devices that combine the advantages of wireless technology and ubiquitous computing to provide a transparent linkage between the physical world around them and the resources available on the Web. We are developing devices that augment users' reality with Web services related to the physical objects they see.
Symbiont-driven sulfur crystal formation in a thiotrophic symbiosis from deep-sea hydrocarbon seeps

The siboglinid tubeworm Sclerolinum contortum symbiosis inhabits sulfidic sediments at deep-sea hydrocarbon seeps in the Gulf of Mexico. A single symbiont phylotype in the symbiont-housing organ is inferred from phylogenetic analyses of the 16S ribosomal ribonucleic acid (16S rRNA) gene and fluorescent in situ hybridization. The phylotype we studied here, and a previous study from an arctic hydrocarbon seep population, reveal identical 16S rRNA symbiont gene sequences. While sulfide is apparently the energy source for the symbionts (and ultimately the gutless host), both partners also have to cope with its toxicity. This study demonstrates abundant large sulfur crystals restricted to the trophosome area. Based on Raman microspectroscopy and energy dispersive X-ray analysis, these crystals have the same S8 sulfur configuration as the recently described small sulfur vesicles formed in the symbionts. The crystals reside adjacent to the symbionts in the trophosome. This suggests that their formation is either extra- or intracellular in symbionts. We propose that formation of these crystals provides both energy-storage compounds for the symbionts and serves the symbiosis by removing excess toxic sulfide from host tissues. This symbiont-mediated sulfide detoxification may have been crucial for the establishment of thiotrophic symbiosis and continues to remain an important function of the symbionts.
On standby? A comparison of online and offline witnesses to bullying and their bystander behaviour

Given their ubiquitous presence as witnesses to school-yard bullying, the role of the ‘bystander’ has been studied extensively. The prevalence and behaviour of bystanders to cyberbullying, however, is less understood. In an anonymous, school-based questionnaire, 716 secondary school students from South-East Queensland reported whether they had witnessed traditional and/or cyberbullying, and how they responded to each type. Overlap in bystander roles between online and offline environments was examined, as was their relationship to age and gender. Students who witnessed traditional bullying were more likely to have witnessed cyberbullying. Bystanders’ behaviour was sometimes similar in both contexts of traditional and cyberbullying, mainly if they were outsiders but half of the 256 students who reported witnessing both traditional and cyberbullying, acted in different roles across the two environments. The implications of the findings are discussed in the context of previous research on cyberbullying and traditional-bystanders. Future research should further explore the role of bystanders online, including examining whether known predictors of traditional-bystander behaviour similarly predict cyber-bystander behaviour.
Differential Impact of the HEN1 Homolog HENN-1 on 21U and 26G RNAs in the Germline of Caenorhabditis elegans

RNA interference (RNAi)–related pathways affect gene activity by sequence-specific recruitment of Ago proteins to mRNA target molecules. The sequence specificity of this process stems from small RNA (sRNA) co-factors bound by the Ago protein. Stability of sRNA molecules in some pathways is in part regulated by Hen1-mediated methylation of their 3′ ends. Here we describe the effects of the Caenorhabditis elegans HEN1 RNA–methyl-transferase homolog, HENN-1, on the different RNAi pathways in this nematode. We reveal differential effects of HENN-1 on the two pathways that are known to employ methylated sRNA molecules: the 26G and 21U pathways. Surprisingly, in the germline, stability of 21U RNAs, the C. elegans piRNAs, is only mildly affected by loss of methylation; and introduction of artificial 21U target RNA does not further destabilize non-methylated 21U RNAs. In contrast, most 26G RNAs display reduced stability and respond to loss of HENN-1 by displaying increased 3′-uridylation frequencies. Within the 26G RNA class, we find that specifically ERGO-1–bound 26G RNAs are modified by HENN-1, while ALG-3/ALG-4–bound 26G RNAs are not. Global gene expression analysis of henn-1 mutants reveals mild effects, including down-regulation of many germline-expressed genes. Our data suggest that, apart from direct effects of reduced 26G RNA levels of henn-1 on gene expression, most effects on global gene expression are indirect. These studies further refine our understanding of endogenous RNAi in C. elegans and the roles for Hen1 like enzymes in these pathways.
Energy-efficient heterogeneous reconfigurable sensor node for distributed structural health monitoring

Distributed structural health monitoring (SHM) using wireless sensor nodes (WSN) requires frugal spending of the limited energy budget. We propose a reconfigurable heterogeneous architecture, combining a low-power micro-controller (MCU) with a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), as a means for energy-efficient in-sensor processing. Details covered include a generic communication interface between both computing units and several clock-management schemes for energy efficiency. We evaluate the architecture on the use-case of a Random Decrement (RD) algorithm and also consider additional pre-filtering to reduce the volume of wirelessly transmitted data. Compared to conventional low-power sensor nodes, we can reduce the energy required for data processing by up to 81%.