Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
TEMPORAL VARIATION IN DIVERGENT SELECTION ON SPINE NUMBER IN THREESPINE STICKLEBACK

Abstract Short-term temporal cycles in ecological pressures, such as shifts in predation regime, are widespread in nature yet estimates of temporal variation in the direction and intensity of natural selection are few. Previous work on threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) has revealed that dorsal and pelvic spines are a defense against gape-limited predators but may be detrimental against grappling insect predators. In this study, we examined a 15-year database from an endemic population of threespine stickleback to look for evidence of temporal shifts in exposure to these divergent predation regimes and correlated shifts in selection on spine number. For juveniles, we detected selection for increased spine number during winter when gape-limited avian piscivores were most common but selection for decreased spine number during summer when odonate predation was more common. For subadults and adults, which are taken primarily by avian piscivores, we predicted selection should generally be for increased spine number in all seasons. Among 59 comparisons, four selection differentials were significant (Bonferroni corrected) and in the predicted direction. However, there was also substantial variability in remaining differentials, including two examples with strong selection for spine reduction. These reversals were associated with increased tendency of the fish to shift to a benthic niche, as determined from examination of stomach contents. These dietary data suggest that increased encounter rates with odonate predation select for spine reduction. Strong selection on spine number was followed by changes in mean spine number during subsequent years and a standard quantitative genetic formula revealed that spine number has a heritable component. Our results provide evidence of rapid morphological responses to selection from predators and suggest that temporal variation in selection may help maintain variation within populations. Furthermore, our findings indicate that variable selection can be predicted if the agents of selection are known.
Sentiment During Recessions

This paper studies the effect of sentiment on asset prices during the 20th century (1905 to 2005). As a proxy for sentiment, we use the fraction of positive and negative words in two columns of financial news from the New York Times. The main contribution of the paper is to show that, controlling for other well-known time-series patterns, the predictability of stock returns using news' content is concentrated in recessions. A one standard deviation shock to our news measure during recessions predicts a change in the conditional average return on the DJIA of twelve basis points over one day.
Novel Boosting Scheme Using Asymmetric Pass Voltage for Reducing Program Disturbance in 3-Dimensional NAND Flash Memory

In this paper, novel boosting scheme using asymmetric pass voltage (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text{V}_{\mathrm{ pass}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>) is proposed to obtain high channel boosting potential and to reduce program disturbance in 3-D NAND flash memory. The proposed scheme has the same program bias and timing conditions as conventional self-boosting except for <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text{V}_{\mathrm{ pass}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> voltages applied to both adjacent word-lines of selected word-line (WL<sub>sel</sub>). Reduced <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text{V}_{\mathrm{ pass}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text{V}_{\mathrm{ pass1}} =\,\,\text{V}_{\mathrm{ pass}} - {\Delta }\text{V}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>) is applied to previous word-line (WL<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$_{\rm n-{1}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>) of WL<sub>sel</sub> and increased <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text{V}_{\mathrm{ pass}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text{V}_{\mathrm{ pass2}} =\,\,\text{V}_{\mathrm{ pass}}+{\Delta }\text{V}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>) is applied to next word-line (WL<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$_{\rm n+{1}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>). In this scheme, the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text{V}_{\mathrm{ pass1}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> cuts the channel off and causes local boosting when the channel potentials of inhibit strings are boosted up. Meanwhile, the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text{V}_{\mathrm{ pass2}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> compensates the program speed reduction of selected cell (cell<sub>sel</sub>) induced by the decreased voltage of the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text{V}_{\mathrm{ pass1}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>. Through the measurements of program disturbance in fabricated devices, it is revealed that the program disturbance is significantly improved without the reduction of program speed by the proposed scheme. Furthermore, the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text{V}_{\mathrm{ pass1}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text{V}_{\mathrm{ pass2}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> are optimized to maximize the improvement.
Thermodynamics-Based Evaluation of Various Improved Shannon Entropies for Configurational Information of Gray-Level Images

The quality of an image affects its utility and image quality assessment has been a hot research topic for many years. One widely used measure for image quality assessment is Shannon entropy, which has a well-established information-theoretic basis. The value of this entropy can be interpreted as the amount of information. However, Shannon entropy is badly adapted to information measurement in images, because it captures only the compositional information of an image and ignores the configurational aspect. To fix this problem, improved Shannon entropies have been actively proposed in the last few decades, but a thorough evaluation of their performance is still lacking. This study presents such an evaluation, involving twenty-three improved Shannon entropies based on various tools such as gray-level co-occurrence matrices and local binary patterns. For the evaluation, we proposed: (a) a strategy to generate testing (gray-level) images by simulating the mixing of ideal gases in thermodynamics; (b) three criteria consisting of validity, reliability, and ability to capture configurational disorder; and (c) three measures to assess the fulfillment of each criterion. The evaluation results show only the improved entropies based on local binary patterns are invalid for use in quantifying the configurational information of images, and the best variant of Shannon entropy in terms of reliability and ability is the one based on the average distance between same/different-value pixels. These conclusions are theoretically important in setting a direction for the future research on improving entropy and are practically useful in selecting an effective entropy for various image processing applications.
Harmonic Response of the Organ of Corti: Results for Wave Dispersion

Inner ear is a remarkable multiphysical system and its modelling is a great challenge. The approach used in this paper aims to reproduce physic with a realistic description of the radial cross section of the cochlea. A 2D‐section of the organ of Corti is fully described. Wavenumbers and corresponding modes of propagation are calculated taking into account passive structural responses. The study is extended to six cross sections of the organ of Corti and a large frequency bandwidth from 100 Hz to 3 kHz. Dispersion curves reveal the influence of fluid structure interactions with a dispersive behavior at high frequencies. Longitudinal mechanical coupling provides new interacting modes of propagation.
Impact of Ambulatory Blood Pressure on Early Cardiac and Renal Dysfunction in Hypertensive Patients without Clinically Apparent Target Organ Damage

Purpose Impaired left ventricular (LV) global longitudinal strain (GLS) and the presence of microalbuminuria indicate early cardiac and renal dysfunction. We aimed to determine the relationships among 24-h ambulatory blood pressure (BP) variables, LV GLS, and urine albumin creatinine ratio (UACR) in hypertensive patients. Materials and Methods A total of 130 hypertensive patients (mean age 53 years; 59 men) underwent 24-h ambulatory BP monitoring, measurements of peripheral and central BPs, and transthoracic echocardiography. Patients with apparent LV systolic dysfunction (LV ejection fraction <50%) or chronic kidney disease were not included. LV GLS was calculated using two-dimensional speckle tracking, and UACR was analyzed from spot urine samples. Results In simple correlation analysis, LV GLS showed the most significant correlation with mean daytime diastolic BP (DBP) (r=0.427, p<0.001) among the various BP variables analyzed. UACR revealed a significant correlation only with night-time mean systolic BP (SBP) (r=0.253, p=0.019). In multiple regression analysis, daytime mean DBP and night-time mean SBP were independent determinants for LV GLS (β=0.35, p=0.028) and log UACR (β=0.49, p=0.007), respectively, after controlling for confounding factors. Daytime mean DBP showed better diagnostic performance for impaired LV GLS than did peripheral or central DBPs, which were not diagnostic. Night-time mean SBP showed satisfactory diagnostic performance for microalbuminuria. Conclusion There are different associations for daytime and night-time BP with early cardiac and renal dysfunction. Ambulatory BP monitoring provides more relevant BP parameters than do peripheral or central BPs regarding early cardiac and renal dysfunction in hypertensive patients.
Local intra-articular injection of vascular endothelial growth factor accelerates articular cartilage degeneration in rat osteoarthritis model

In the pathophysiology of osteoarthritis (OA), articular cartilage degeneration exhibits a significant role. Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is considered to be an effective angiogenic factor and a crucial regulator of articular cartilage degeneration in the development of OA. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the underlying influences of exogenous VEGF on articular cartilage degeneration in OA model rat. A total of 24 male Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly allocated into 3 groups. In the normal saline (NS) and VEGF groups, animals received bilateral anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) transection to establish the OA model; at 4 weeks post-surgery, the rats received local intra-articular injections of 100 µl NS or VEGF solution, respectively, every week for 4 weeks. The Control group received neither surgery nor injections. All animals were sacrificed at 12 weeks following surgery. Prominent cartilage degeneration was observed in rats in the NS- and VEGF-injected groups. The extent and the grade of cartilage damage in the VEGF-injected group were notably more severe compared with those in the NS-treated group. Western blotting results demonstrated that the expression levels of aggrecan and type II collagen were significantly reduced in OA model rats that were treated with VEGF. In addition, the expression levels of matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-3, MMP-9, MMP-13, a disintegrin and metalloproteinase with thrombospondin motifs (a disintegrin and metalloproteinase; ADAMTS)-4, −5 and −12, type III collagen and transforming growth factor-β1 were significantly increased following VEGF administration. Results from the present study indicated that VEGF may exhibit a promoting role in the development of OA by destroying articular cartilage matrix.
Effect of extrusion temperature and screw speed on properties of oat and rice flour extrudates.

BACKGROUND Whole oat and rice flours were mixed to develop instant flours by a high pressure and low mechanical shear extrusion process. The screw profile was designed aiming to obtain an infant food with gelatinized starch and high hydration ability. Response surface methodology was selected to study the impact of operating parameters such as temperature and screw speed (73-186 °C; 109-391 rpm) on physicochemical and pasting properties of the final extruded product. The main challenge of this study was to process high oats content, since they are characterized by high lipid and fiber content, which impact on material processing. RESULTS The optimal response was achieved at 170 °C and 350 rpm. The optimal expansion ratio, bulk density, water absorption index, and water solubility index were 2.24, 289.65 kg m-3 , 6.42 g g-1 , and 4.75 g g-1 respectively. Overall, both temperature and screw speed affected the responses studied, except for water absorption index (only screw speed affected this response). Although lipids from oats reduce the expansion ratio of extrudates compared with samples containing higher starch proportions, their lipids protect the starch granules from mechanical degradation when higher screw speed values are used. As a result, both ungelatinized and gelatinized starches may be found in extrudates, which was confirmed by pasting property analyses. CONCLUSION High oat content may be efficiently processed by optimizing the extruder conditions (temperature, screw speed, and profile), improving the nutritional properties of the final product. © 2017 Society of Chemical Industry.
Inheritance of Cry 1 F resistance in laboratory-selected European corn borer and its survival on transgenic corn expressing the Cry 1 F toxin

A major assumption of the high-dose/refuge strategy proposed for insect resistance management strategies for transgenic crop plants that express toxins from Bacillus thuringiensis is that resistance traits that evolve in pest species will be recessive. The inheritance of Cry1F resistance and larval survival on commercially available Cry1F corn hybrids were determined in a laboratory-selected strain of European corn borer, Ostrinia nubilalis (Hübner), displaying more than 3000-fold resistance to Cry1F. Concentration-response bioassays of reciprocal parental crosses indicated that the resistance is autosomal and recessive. Bioassays of the backcross of the F1 generation with the selected strain were consistent with the hypothesis that a single locus, or a set of tightly linked loci, is responsible for the resistance. Greenhouse experiments with Cry1F-expressing corn hybrids indicated that some resistant larvae survived the high dose of toxin delivered by Cry1F-expressing plants although F1 progeny of susceptible by resistant crosses had fitness close to zero. These results provide the first direct evidence that the high dose/refuge strategy currently in place to manage resistance in Cry1F-expressing corn is appropriate.
Integrating State Representation Learning Into Deep Reinforcement Learning

Most deep reinforcement learning techniques are unsuitable for robotics, as they require too much interaction time to learn useful, general control policies. This problem can be largely attributed to the fact that a state representation needs to be learned as a part of learning control policies, which can only be done through fitting expected returns based on observed rewards. While the reward function provides information on the desirability of the state of the world, it does not necessarily provide information on how to distill a good, general representation of that state from the sensory observations. State representation learning objectives can be used to help learn such a representation. While many of these objectives have been proposed, they are typically not directly combined with reinforcement learning algorithms. We investigate several methods for integrating state representation learning into reinforcement learning. In these methods, the state representation learning objectives help regularize the state representation during the reinforcement learning, and the reinforcement learning itself is viewed as a crucial state representation learning objective and allowed to help shape the representation. Using autonomous racing tests in the TORCS simulator, we show how the integrated methods quickly learn policies that generalize to new environments much better than deep reinforcement learning without state representation learning.
Lack of functional redundancy in the relationship between microbial diversity and ecosystem functioning

Biodiversity is declining world‐wide with detrimental effects on ecosystems. However, we lack a quantitative understanding of the shape of the relationship between microbial biodiversity and ecosystem function (BEF). This limits our understanding of how microbial diversity depletion can impact key functions for human well‐being, including pollutant detoxification. Three independent microcosm experiments were conducted to evaluate the direction (i.e. positive, negative or null) and the shape of the relationships between bacterial diversity and both broad (i.e. microbial respiration) and specialized (i.e. toxin degradation) functions in five Australian and two UK freshwater ecosystems using next‐generation sequencing platforms. Reduced bacterial diversity, even after accounting for biomass, caused a decrease in broad (i.e. cumulative microbial respiration) and specialized (biodegradation of two important toxins) functions in all cases. Unlike the positive but decelerating BEF relationship observed most frequently in plants and animals, most evaluated functional measurements were related to bacterial diversity in a non‐redundant fashion (e.g. exponentially and/or linearly). Synthesis. Our results suggest that there is a lack of functional redundancy in the relationship between bacterial diversity and ecosystem functioning; thus, the consequences of declining microbial diversity on ecosystem functioning and human welfare have likely been considerably underestimated.
Effects of marble powder as a partial replacement of cement on some engineering properties of self-compacting concrete

Abstract Self-compacting concretes (SCC) are highly fluid concretes that can flow and be placed in formwork under their own weight without the requirement of internal or external energy. This fluidity is obtained with the use of high paste volume and superplasticizer. The paste of SCC is made principally of cement, which is the most expensive component of concrete. As a result, the production cost of SCC is higher than conventional concrete. However, to make the manufacture of SCC more practical and economical, the binder is often a binary, ternary even quaternary compound: Portland cement mixed with mineral additions. The primary aim of this work is to study the effect of incorporating the marble powder as a supplementary cementations material on the rheological and mechanical properties of SCC. The fresh properties were measured using the slump flow, J-Ring, V-funnel, and modified slump flow. The properties of hardened SCC such as strengths and ultrasonic pulse velocity (UPV) were determined at age of 3, 28, and 90 days. The results have shown that using of marble powder in SCC enhances their fresh properties. At hardened state, the incorporation of marble powder decreases the mechanical strengths and UPV. It can be noted that it is possible to produce an economical SCC when the cement is partially substituted by the marble powder.
Right Forceps Minor and Anterior Thalamic Radiation Predict Executive Function Skills in Young Bilingual Adults

Executive function (EF) skills enhance learning across domains, and are particularly linked to the acquisition of a second language. Previous studies have shown that bilingual individuals show enhanced EF skills in cognitive tasks where they attended a targeted dimension of a stimulus while inhibiting other competing cues. Brain imaging revealed that bilingual young adults’ performances in the Stroop color-naming task were related to the volume of anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and inferior frontal lobe. Subjects who had greater white-matter in the frontal cortex showed enhanced performances in the same task, suggesting that brain fiber pathways connecting ACC to the frontal region may be related to the Stroop color-naming task. No studies to date have examined the tissue properties of brain fiber pathways connecting these brain regions and their association with subjects’ EF performances. Importantly, there are no data establishing whether bilingual subjects exhibit different reaction times when words are presented in their first versus second language. To study these questions, we used behavioral and unbiased whole-brain analyses, recruiting 21 Chinese students. Using the Stroop color-naming task, we measured subjects’ reaction times (RTs) in which color names were displayed using fonts that matched the named color (congruent task) or mismatched the color (incongruent task). Students performed the task twice, first in English, the subjects’ second language, then in Chinese, the subjects’ primary language. Results from whole-brain analysis showed that students’ RTs in both the English and Chinese tasks were significantly correlated with the mode of anisotropy (MO) in a brain cluster containing the forceps minor and anterior thalamic radiation in the right hemisphere. We also found that fractional anisotropy (FA) significantly predicted students’ RTs, with higher FA predicting shorter RT. Taken together, our findings demonstrate that right forceps minor and anterior thalamic radiation predict EF skills, suggesting that this brain feature may be important for young bilingual adults using their first and second languages to direct their attention when conflicting cues are present.
Turbulence-induced contact rates of plankton: the question of scale

Modelling encounter rates between planktonic predators and prey in turbulent waters requires an estimate of a spatial scale. One spatial scale proposed in the literature based on prey concentration is shown to be systematically inconsistent and its use is shown to imply that plankton sampllng methodology can bias encounter rate estimates in turbulent situations. We show that a scale based on the predator's reactive distance is more appropriate, as it has clear theoretical support, and is consistent with other mathematical treatments of encounter problen~s. Applying the reactive distance as the length scale produces encounter rates for small (e.g. 4 to 10 mm) fish larvae 2to 3-fold lower than those using prey separation distance.