Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Bayesian inference in a quantitative genetic study of growth traits in Nelore cattle (Bos indicus)

The objective of this study was to estimate (co)variance components and genetic parameters for weights (W) and scrotal circumferences (SC) at 365 and 450 days of age, of Nelore (Bos indicus) cattle, using Bayesian inference in single and multiple-trait animal models. The fitted linear models included, besides the animal and residual random effects, the contemporary group (herd-year-season-sex-management group) and age-of-dam as "fixed effects". The analyses were carried out using a Gibbs sampler implemented through the MTGSAM program. The heritabilities (in parentheses) obtained fitting single-trait models were W365 (0.49), W450 (0.52), SC365 (0.68) and SC450 (0.66). Estimates of means, modes and medians for genetic parameters obtained from marginal posterior distributions were similar for all traits. The W365 and SC365 can be considered as suitable traits to be included as selection criteria in genetic improvement programs, not only because of their relatively high heritabilities but also due to the fact that they can be measured when the animals are relatively young compared to the corresponding traits W450 and SC450. The Bayesian approach appears to be an appropriate alternative for estimating genetic parameters, and has the advantage over point estimation methods of allowing inferences on marginal posterior distributions.
Differential Sensitivity of Human Visual Cortex to Faces, Letterstrings, and Textures: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study

Twelve normal subjects viewed alternating sequences of unfamiliar faces, unpronounceable nonword letterstrings, and textures while echoplanar functional magnetic resonance images were acquired in seven slices extending from the posterior margin of the splenium to near the occipital pole. These stimuli were chosen to elicit initial category-specific processing in extrastriate cortex while minimizing semantic processing. Overall, faces evoked more activation than did letterstrings. Comparing hemispheres, faces evoked greater activation in the right than the left hemisphere, whereas letterstrings evoked greater activation in the left than the right hemisphere. Faces primarily activated the fusiform gyrus bilaterally, and also activated the right occipitotemporal and inferior occipital sulci and a region of lateral cortex centered in the middle temporal gyrus. Letterstrings primarily activated the left occipitotemporal and inferior occipital sulci. Textures primarily activated portions of the collateral sulcus. In the left hemisphere, 9 of the 12 subjects showed a characteristic pattern in which faces activated a discrete region of the lateral fusiform gyrus, whereas letterstrings activated a nearby region of cortex within the occipitotemporal and inferior occipital sulci. These results suggest that different regions of ventral extrastriate cortex are specialized for processing the perceptual features of faces and letterstrings, and that these regions are intermediate between earlier processing in striate and peristriate cortex, and later lexical, semantic, and associative processing in downstream cortical regions.
Network Embeddedness and the Exploration of Novel Technologies: Technological Distance, Betweenness Centrality and Density

This paper aims to understand better the innovation potential of a firm's alliance network. Here we analyze the role of an alliance network in terms of the technological distance between partners, a firm's network position (centrality) and total network density. We study how these three elements of an alliance network, separately and in combination, affect the 'twin tasks' in exploration, namely novelty creation on the one hand and its efficient absorption on the other hand. For an empirical test, we study technology-based alliance networks in the pharmaceutical, chemical and automotive industries. Our findings indicate that successful exploration indeed seems to require a delicate balance between these two exploration tasks. A second conclusion is that different network positions yield different pay-offs in terms of the number of explorative patents. In other words, success rates for exploration are not spread equally across firms. However, position alone does not tell the full story. Our empirical findings clearly indicate that exploration success also depends on the other two dimensions of embeddedness, namely technological distance and network density. The three elements of network embeddedness need to be considered jointly in order to understand their complementary effects on both novelty creation and absorptive capacity. (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.) (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.) (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.) (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.) (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.) (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.) (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
Canonical Wnt Signaling Regulates Organ-Specific Assembly and Differentiation of CNS Vasculature

Every organ depends on blood vessels for oxygen and nutrients, but the vasculature associated with individual organs can be structurally and molecularly diverse. The central nervous system (CNS) vasculature consists of a tightly sealed endothelium that forms the blood-brain barrier, whereas blood vessels of other organs are more porous. Wnt7a and Wnt7b encode two Wnt ligands produced by the neuroepithelium of the developing CNS coincident with vascular invasion. Using genetic mouse models, we found that these ligands directly target the vascular endothelium and that the CNS uses the canonical Wnt signaling pathway to promote formation and CNS-specific differentiation of the organ's vasculature.
The Body Mass Index-Mortality Link across the Life Course: Two Selection Biases and Their Effects

In this study, we investigated two selection biases that may affect the obesity-mortality link over the life course: mortality selection and healthy participant effects. If these selection mechanisms are stronger among obese adults than among non-obese adults, they may contribute to the weakening obesity-mortality link over the life course. We used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1988–2010 with linked mortality files from 1988–2011. We employed weighted Cox models to test and adjust for these two selection biases. We also used complementary log-log models, adjusted for a normal distribution of frailty, to test for mortality selection effects; accelerated failure-time models to mitigate the mortality selection effect; and ordinary least squares regression to test for healthy participant effects. The link between class II/III obesity and mortality weakens at older ages. We did not find evidence for significant mortality selection or healthy participant effects. Also, even if the healthy participant effects were stronger among obese adults, they are not strong enough to produce a weakening association between obesity and morbidity at higher ages at the time of the survey. Therefore, neither of these selection biases explains the diminishing effect of class II/III obesity on mortality over the life course.
Prothonotary warbler nestling growth and condition in response to variation in aquatic and terrestrial prey availability

Abstract Aquatic prey subsidies entering terrestrial habitats are well documented, but little is known about the degree to which these resources provide fitness benefits to riparian consumers. Riparian species take advantage of seasonal pulses of both terrestrial and aquatic prey, although aquatic resources are often overlooked in studies of how diet influences the reproductive ecology of these organisms. Ideally, the timing of resource pulses should occur at the time of highest reproductive demand. This study investigates the availability of aquatic (mayfly) and terrestrial (caterpillar) prey resources as well as the nestling diet of the prothonotary warbler (Protonotaria citrea) at two sites along the lower James River in Virginia during the 2014 breeding season. We found large differences in availability of prey items between the two sites, with one having significantly higher mayfly availability. Nestling diet was generally reflective of prey availability, and nestlings had faster mean growth rates at the site with higher aquatic prey availability. Terrestrial prey were fed more readily at the site with lower aquatic prey availability, and at this site, nestlings fed mayflies had higher mean growth rates than nestlings fed only terrestrial prey. Our results suggest that aquatic subsidies are an important resource for nestling birds and are crucial to understanding the breeding ecology of riparian species.
Zhedanov's Algebra AW(3) and the Double Affine Hecke Algebra in the Rank One Case. II. The Spherical Subalgebra ?

This paper builds on the previous paper by the author, where a relationship between Zhedanov's algebra AW(3) and the double affine Hecke algebra (DAHA) corre- sponding to the Askey-Wilson polynomials was established. It is shown here that the spherical subalgebra of this DAHA is isomorphic to AW(3) with an additional relation that the Casimir operator equals an explicit constant. A similar result with q-shifted parameters holds for the antispherical subalgebra. Some theorems on centralizers and centers for the algebras under consideration will finally be proved as corollaries of the characterization of the spherical and antispherical subalgebra.
Occupational health hazards among health care workers in an obstetrics and gynaecology unit of a Nigerian teaching hospital

The occupational health hazards among health-care workers in an obstetrics and gynaecology unit were investigated. A total of 78 pretested questionnaires were administered to the doctors, nurses and ward orderlies in the unit of Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospitals Complex, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. The common occupational health hazards were work-related stress (83·3%), needle-stick injuries (75·6%), bloodstains on skin (73·1%), sleep disturbance (42·3%), skin reactions (37·2%) assault from patients (24·3%) and hepatitis (8·9%). Nearly half of the staff used diazepam, lexotan or alcohol to cope with the stress of work. A greater percentage of doctors compared to nurses and ward orderlies used safety precautions such as gloves, facemasks and aprons. All the staff employed regular handwashing after various procedures. However no category of staff adopted regularly proper disposal of needles and sharps into separate puncture-resistant containers. About 59% of the staff recap used needles. The implications of the findings were discussed and recommendations made appropriately.
Perinatal Depression: A Systematic Review of Prevalence and Incidence

OBJECTIVE: We systematically review evidence on the prevalence and incidence of perinatal depression and compare these rates with those of depression in women at nonchildbearing times. DATA SOURCES: We searched MEDLINE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, and Sociofile for English-language articles published from 1980 through March 2004, conducted hand searches of bibliographies, and consulted with experts. METHODS OF STUDY SELECTION: We included cross-sectional, cohort, and case-control studies from developed countries that assessed women for depression during pregnancy or the first year postpartum with a structured clinical interview. TABULATION, INTEGRATION, AND RESULTS: Of the 109 articles reviewed, 28 met our inclusion criteria. For major and minor depression (major depression alone), the combined point prevalence estimates from meta-analyses ranged from 6.5% to 12.9% (1.0-5.6%) at different trimesters of pregnancy and months in the first postpartum year. The combined period prevalence shows that as many as 19.2% (7.1%) of women have a depressive episode (major depressive episode) during the first 3 months postpartum; most of these episodes have onset following delivery. All estimates have wide 95% confidence intervals, showing significant uncertainty in their true levels. No conclusions could be made regarding the relative incidence of depression among pregnant and postpartum women compared with women at nonchildbearing times. CONCLUSION: To better delineate periods of peak prevalence and incidence for perinatal depression and identify high risk subpopulations, we need studies with larger and more representative samples.
Experiments on concrete conical shells for otec structural systems, June 1976

Described herein are tests of thirteen conical concrete shells under monotonically increasing axial load conditions. The load-deformation response, internal stresses and crack propagation through the elastic, inelastic and ultimate stress ranges are presented. The properties of concrete and the behavior of the shells are varied by (1) polymer impregnation; (2) steel reinforcement as ring stiffening and (3) general wire mesh reinforcement. The stress-strain behavior of concrete for both reinforced and unreinforced specimens is tailored to range from strong linear elastic but brittle to tough and ductile by the combination of rubbery and brittle polymers like butyl acrylate and methyl methacrylate, respectively. The behavior of such composite specimens is ideal for the purpose of comparison with various material models now available in the extended NONSAP finite element analysis program which includes, among others, the nonlinear concrete constitutive relations developed recently at Fritz Engineering Laboratory. Data from these experiments will be used to demonstrate the general validity of the proposed material model for concrete in the regime of tension-compression state of stresses. In-depth, interpretative studies of the experiments and analytical predictions based on the extended NONSAP program will be presented in a later report. Preliminary comparisons for plain concrete specimens indicate a close agreement between the experiments and the proposed theory. Extensive correlation studies in the future shall provide final confirmation of the proposed concrete constitutive relations which have been implemented as a subroutine in a nonlinear general purpose finite element program.
Clinical commentary with video sequences Bilateral symmetric tonic posturing suggesting propagation to the supplementary motor area in a patient with precuneate cortical dysplasia

We report a patient manifesting seizures with bilateral symmetric tonic posturing, which were markedly reduced after resection of the left precuneus. A 16-year-old man had sudden onset, complex partial seizures with bilateral symmetric tonic posturing since the age of eight years. Magnetic resonance fluid-attenuated inversion-recovery imaging revealed a hyperintense lesion in left precuneus. In almost all focal seizures recorded during an invasive EEG evaluation, ictal onset was detected from the inferomesial aspect of the lesion, but fast paroxysmal discharges from the ipsilateral supplementary motor area (SMA) were observed just before the clinical onset. After surgical excision of the EEG onset zone, including the lesion, seizure frequency was markedly (> 95%) reduced. By the 20 month after surgery, there were only brief nocturnal seizures involving slight elevation of both shoulders and slight abduction of both arms, with preservation of consciousness occurring once every few days. Invasive EEG findings and surgical outcome suggested that the epileptic activity originating from the epileptogenic zone may have propagated to the symptomatogenic zone including mainly the ipsilateral SMA. In summary, we report an interesting case of bilateral symmetric tonic posturing suggesting propagation to the SMA. MRI and invasive EEG confirmed the epileptogenic focus as a precuneate cortical dysplasia lesion. [Published with video sequences]
Human Neuroscience

it is seen at elevated rates among non-depressed relatives of those with a history of depression (e. Prefrontal brain asymmetry in these contexts, however, has been measured almost exclusively with assessments of resting EEG alpha activity (Allen et al., 2004a; Coan and Allen, 2004), deriving summary metrics that may reflect anywhere from 2 to 12 min of resting brain electrical activity. Such resting assessments are often viewed from the somewhat endemic model that resting frontal EEG asymmetry taps trait-like dispositions for affective responses (Davidson, 1998b) of approach (indexed by relatively greater left frontal activity) or withdrawal (indexed by relatively greater right frontal activity; Coan et al., 2006). Although there is now a substantial literature of more than 80 studies to suggest that resting frontal EEG activity may serve as an indicator of a trait-like diathesis to respond to emotional situations with a characteristic pattern of emotional negativity and behavioral withdrawal (for review, see
Assembly and positioning of actomyosin rings by contractility and planar cell polarity

The actomyosin cytoskeleton is a primary force-generating mechanism in morphogenesis, thus a robust spatial control of cytoskeletal positioning is essential. In this report, we demonstrate that actomyosin contractility and planar cell polarity (PCP) interact in post-mitotic Ciona notochord cells to self-assemble and reposition actomyosin rings, which play an essential role for cell elongation. Intriguingly, rings always form at the cells′ anterior edge before migrating towards the center as contractility increases, reflecting a novel dynamical property of the cortex. Our drug and genetic manipulations uncover a tug-of-war between contractility, which localizes cortical flows toward the equator and PCP, which tries to reposition them. We develop a simple model of the physical forces underlying this tug-of-war, which quantitatively reproduces our results. We thus propose a quantitative framework for dissecting the relative contribution of contractility and PCP to the self-assembly and repositioning of cytoskeletal structures, which should be applicable to other morphogenetic events. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.7554/eLife.09206. 001
The Arbitrarily Varying Multiple-Access Channel With Conferencing Encoders

We derive the capacity region of arbitrarily varying multiple-access channels (AV-MACs) with conferencing encoders for both deterministic and random coding. For a complete description, it is sufficient that one conferencing capacity is positive. We obtain a dichotomy: either the channel's deterministic capacity region is zero or it equals the 2-D random coding region. We determine exactly when either case holds. We also discuss the benefits of conferencing. We give the example of an AV-MAC which does not achieve any nonzero rate pair without encoder cooperation, but the 2-D random coding capacity region if conferencing is possible. Unlike compound multiple-access channels, arbitrarily varying multiple-access channels may exhibit a discontinuous increase of the capacity region when conferencing in at least one direction is enabled.
Resistance to thyroid hormone is modulated in vivo by the nuclear receptor corepressor (NCOR1)

Mutations in the ligand-binding domain of the thyroid hormone receptor β (TRβ) lead to resistance to thyroid hormone (RTH). These TRβ mutants function in a dominant-negative fashion to interfere with the transcription activity of wild-type thyroid hormone receptors (TRs), leading to dysregulation of the pituitary–thyroid axis and resistance in peripheral tissues. The molecular mechanism by which TRβ mutants cause RTH has been postulated to be an inability of the mutants to properly release the nuclear corepressors (NCORs), thereby inhibiting thyroid hormone (TH)-mediated transcription activity. To test this hypothesis in vivo, we crossed ThrbPV mice (a model of RTH) expressing a human TRβ mutant (PV) with mice expressing a mutant Ncor1 allele (Ncor1ΔID mice) that cannot recruit a TR or a PV mutant. Remarkably, in the presence of NCOR1ΔID, the abnormally elevated thyroid-stimulating hormone and TH levels found in ThrbPV mice were modestly but significantly corrected. Furthermore, thyroid hyperplasia, weight loss, and other hallmarks of RTH were also partially reverted in mice expressing NCOR1ΔID. Taken together, these data suggest that the aberrant recruitment of NCOR1 by RTH TRβ mutants leads to clinical RTH in humans. The present study suggests that therapies aimed at the TR–NCOR1 interaction or its downstream actions could be tested as potential targets in treating RTH.
Photogrammetry Applied to Wind Tunnel Testing

In image-based measurements, quantitative image data must be mapped to three-dimensional object space. Analytical photogrammetric methods, which may be used to accomplish this task, are discussed from the viewpoint of experimental fluid dynamicists. The Direct Linear Transformation (DLT) for camera calibration, used in pressure sensitive paint, is summarized. An optimization method for camera calibration is developed that can be used to determine the camera calibration parameters, including those describing lens distortion, from a single image. Combined with the DLT method, this method allows a rapid and comprehensive in-situ camera calibration and therefore is particularly useful for quantitative flow visualization and other measurements such as model attitude and deformation in production wind tunnels. The paper also includes a brief description of typical photogrammetric applications to temperature- and pressure-sensitive paint measurements and model deformation measurements in wind tunnels.
Phase I study of intraperitoneal recombinant human interleukin 12 in patients with Müllerian carcinoma, gastrointestinal primary malignancies, and mesothelioma.

PURPOSE The purpose is to determine dose-limiting toxicity, pharmacokinetics,pharmacodynamics, and immunobiology after i.p. injections of recombinant human IL-12 (rhIL-12). EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN rhIL-12 was administered to 29 previously treated patients with peritoneal carcinomatosis from Müllerian carcinomas, gastrointestinal tract carcinomas and peritoneal mesothelioma in a Phase I trial. rhIL-12 doses were increased from 3 to 600 ng/kg. Three or more patients at each level received weekly i.p. injections of rhIL-12. RESULTS Dose-limiting toxicity (elevated transaminase) occurred in 2 of 4 patients at the 600 ng/kg dose. More frequent toxicities included fever, fatigue, abdominal pain, nausea, and catheter-related infections. Ten patients received 300 ng/kg with acceptable frequency and severity of side effects. Two patients (one with ovarian cancer and one with mesothelioma) had no remaining disease at laparoscopy. Eight patients had stable disease and 19 progressive disease. At 300 ng/kg i.p., IL-12 was cleared from peritoneal fluid in a biphasic manner with a terminal-phase half-life of 18.7 h; peritoneal fluid levels of IL-12 5 min after i.p. injection were 100-200 pg/ml, and serum levels reached approximately 10 pg/ml between 24 and 36 h. IL-1-alpha, IL-2, IL-10, tumor necrosis factor alpha, and IFN-gamma were determined in serum and peritoneal fluid. IFN-gamma, IL-10, and tumor necrosis factor alpha were detected most frequently. Immunobiological effects included peritoneal tumor cell apoptosis, decreased tumor cell expression of basic fibroblast growth factor and vascular endothelial growth factor, elevated IFN-gamma and IFN-inducible protein 10 transcripts in peritoneal exudate cells, and increased proportions of peritoneal CD3(+) relative to CD14(+) cells. CONCLUSIONS rhIL-12 at 300 ng/kg by weekly i.p. injection is biologically active and adequately tolerated for Phase II studies.