Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Genetic influence on athletic performance

Purpose of reviewTo summarize the existing literature on the genetics of athletic performance, with particular consideration for the relevance to young athletes. Recent findingsTwo gene variants, ACE I/D and ACTN3 R577X, have been consistently associated with endurance (ACE I/I) and power-related (ACTN3 R/R) performance, though neither can be considered predictive. The role of genetic variation in injury risk and outcomes is more sparsely studied, but genetic testing for injury susceptibility could be beneficial in protecting young athletes from serious injury. Little information on the association of genetic variation with athletic performance in young athletes is available; however, genetic testing is becoming more popular as a means of talent identification. Despite this increase in the use of such testing, evidence is lacking for the usefulness of genetic testing over traditional talent selection techniques in predicting athletic ability, and careful consideration should be given to the ethical issues surrounding such testing in children. SummaryA favorable genetic profile, when combined with an optimal training environment, is important for elite athletic performance; however, few genes are consistently associated with elite athletic performance, and none are linked strongly enough to warrant their use in predicting athletic success.
Impact of transmit impairments on multiuser MIMO non-linear transceivers

This paper analyzes the impact of residual transmit impairments on the performance of multiuser Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) systems. We focus on the uplink with Decision Feedback (DF) non-linear receivers and the downlink with Tomlinson-Harashima non-linear precoders. We show that transmit noise severely affects the performance of both non-linear transmission schemes, specially for the downlink with THP. Nevertheless, this degradation can be significantly alleviated when including the transmit noise into the transceiver design.
A Digital Blind Watermarking for Depth-Image-Based Rendering 3D Images

The content protection for image-based 3D data is getting more importance with the advance of low cost 3D display devices. The depth-image-based rendering (DIBR) 3D image is one of the image-based 3D data which consists of the center image and the depth image generated by the content provider. The left-eye image and the right-eye image are rendered from the center image and the depth image at the content consumer side. The blind watermarking for DIBR 3D image is rarely studied in the literature. In this paper, a novel blind multiple watermarking scheme is proposed to deal with the content protection problem of DIBR 3D images. Besides the usual requirement of mutual orthogonality among reference patterns for multiple watermark embedding, we found that proper embedding order plays an even more important role in watermarking the DIBR 3D images. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme is robust against the JPEG compression and noise adding attacks. More interestingly, it is found that the proposed watermarking can also tolerate large range variations of the depth image during rendering.
APPL1 potentiates insulin secretion in pancreatic β cells by enhancing protein kinase Akt-dependent expression of SNARE proteins in mice

Insulin resistance and defective insulin secretion are the two major features of type 2 diabetes. The adapter protein APPL1 is an obligatory molecule in regulating peripheral insulin sensitivity, but its role in insulin secretion remains elusive. Here, we show that APPL1 expression in pancreatic β cells is markedly decreased in several mouse models of obesity and diabetes. APPL1 knockout mice exhibit glucose intolerance and impaired glucose-stimulated insulin secretion (GSIS), whereas transgenic expression of APPL1 prevents high-fat diet (HFD)-induced glucose intolerance partly by enhancing GSIS. In both pancreatic islets and rat β cells, APPL1 deficiency causes a marked reduction in expression of the exocytotic machinery SNARE proteins (syntaxin-1, synaptosomal-associated protein 25, and vesicle-associated membrane protein 2) and an obvious decrease in the number of exocytotic events. Such changes are accompanied by diminished insulin-stimulated Akt activation. Furthermore, the defective GSIS and reduced expression of SNARE proteins in APPL1-deficient β cells can be rescued by adenovirus-mediated expression of APPL1 or constitutively active Akt. These findings demonstrate that APPL1 couples insulin-stimulated Akt activation to GSIS by promoting the expression of the core exocytotic machinery involved in exocytosis and also suggest that reduced APPL1 expression in pancreatic islets may serve as a pathological link that couples insulin resistance to β-cell dysfunction in type 2 diabetes.
Multivariate sexual selection on male tegmina in wild populations of sagebrush crickets, Cyphoderris strepitans (Orthoptera: Haglidae)

Although the strength and form of sexual selection on song in male crickets have been studied extensively, few studies have examined selection on the morphological structures that underlie variation in males’ song, particularly in wild populations. Geometric morphometric techniques were used to measure sexual selection on the shape, size and symmetry of both top and bottom tegmina in wild populations of sagebrush crickets, a species in which nuptial feeding by females imposes an unambiguous phenotypic marker on males. The size of the tegmina negatively covaried with song dominant frequency and positively covaried with song pulse duration. Sexual selection was more intense on the bottom tegmen, conceivably because it interacts more freely with the subtegminal airspace, which may play a role in song amplification. An expanded coastal/subcostal region was one of the phenotypes strongly favoured by disruptive selection on the bottom tegmen, an adaptation that may form a more effective seal with the thorax to prevent noise cancellation. Directional selection also favoured increased symmetry in tegminal shape. Assuming more symmetrical males are better able to buffer against developmental noise, the song produced by these males may make them more attractive to females. Despite the strong stabilizing selection documented previously on the dominant frequency of the song, stabilizing selection on the resonator that regulates dominant frequency was surprisingly absent. Nonetheless, wing morphology had an important influence on song structure and appears to be subject to significant linear and nonlinear sexual selection through female mate choice.
Why Nicaraguan Peasants Stay in Agricultural Production Cooperatives

Despite the official support for parcellation of agricultural production cooperatives created under the Sandinista land reform in Nicaragua, a substantial number of peasants have decided to continue membership. Although theory suggests that individual farms are more productive and more efficient, Nicaraguan cooperatives did not fully split up. We aim to identify the factors that govern the choice of Nicaraguan peasants between staying in a cooperative and exiting to start a privately owned farm. We used sample data from 475 landed households in four agroecological macroregions to compare resources, incomes and productivity of peasants continuing in production cooperatives, former members of cooperatives who became independent farmers, and peasants who had always been engaged in independent farming. Low capital endowments of the new independent farmers adversely affect their standard of living. Better access to non-farm income encourages peasants to remain in the cooperative where they are less exposed to risk. Uncertainty associated with land ownership and difficulties with resolution of cooperative debt play a dominant role in keeping Nicaraguan peasants in cooperatives. Cooperative members still maintain a high degree of coordination of activities in order to capture the benefits of rural development programmes. Resumen: Porque los campesinos nicaraguenses permanecen en las cooperativas agricolas de produccion A pesar del apoyo oficial para la parcelacion de las cooperativas agricolas de produccion creadas durante la reforma agraria Sandinista en Nicaragua, un numero significativo de campesinos decidieron continuar con su membresia. Mientras la teoria sugiere que fincas individuales son mas productivas y mas eficientes, las cooperativas nicaraguenses no fueron completamente seccionadas en fincas individuales. Nuestro objetivo es identificar los factores que rigen la decision de campesinos nicaraguenses de permanecer en la cooperativa, o desligarse y emprender una finca privada. Hemos utilizado informacion estadistica de 475 hogares rurales en cuatro regiones agroecologicas, donde se comparan los recursos, ingresos y productividad tanto de campesinos miembros de cooperativas de produccion, como de anteriores miembros de cooperativas quienes se independizaron, y tambien de campesinos quienes siempre han sido agricultores por cuenta propia. Para los campesinos recientemente independientes, sus reducidos capitales afectan desfavorablemente su estandar de vida. Quienes se quedan en la cooperativa, enfrentan menos riesgos y registran ingresos extra fuera de la finca. Inseguridad asociada con la propiedad de la tierra y las dificultades para pagar la deuda contraida con la cooperativa, juegan un papel predominante para mantener los campesinos Nicaraguenses en las cooperativas. Los miembros de las cooperativas siguen manteniendo un alto grado de coordinacion en actividades que les permiten captar beneficios de los programas de desarrollo rural.
Microbial Community Responses to Modern Environmental and Past Climatic Conditions in Omongwa Pan, Western Kalahari: A Paired 16S rRNA Gene Profiling and Lipid Biomarker Approach

Due to a lack of well‐preserved terrestrial climate archives, paleoclimate studies are sparse in southwestern Africa. Because there are no perennial lacustrine systems in this region, this study relies on a saline pan as an archive for climate information in the western Kalahari (Namibia). Molecular biological and biogeochemical analyses were combined to examine the response of indigenous microbial communities to modern and past climate‐induced environmental conditions. The 16S rRNA gene high‐throughput sequencing was applied to sediment samples from Omongwa pan to characterize the modern microbial diversity. Highest diversity of microorganisms, dominated by the extreme halophilic archaeon Halobacteria and by the bacterial phylum Gemmatimonadetes, was detected in the near‐surface sediments of Omongwa pan. In deeper sections abundance and diversity significantly decreases and Bacillus, known to form spores, become dominant. Lipid biomarkers for living and past microbial life were analyzed to track the influence of climate variation on the abundance of microbial communities from the Last Glacial Maximum to Holocene time. Since water is an inevitable requirement for microbial life, in this dry region the abundance of past microbial biomarkers was evaluated to conclude on periods of increased paleoprecipitation in the past. The data point to a period of increased humidity in the western Kalahari during the Last Glacial to Holocene transition indicating a southward shift of the Intertropical Convergence Zone during this period. Comparison with results from a southwestern Kalahari pan suggests complex displacements of the regional atmospheric systems since the Last Glacial Maximum.
Changes of Cardiac Biomarkers after High-intensity Exercise in Male and Female Elite Athletes of Dragon Boating

This study investigated the effects of three sport-specific high-intensity training units on cardiac biomarker alteration in elite athletes of dragon boating. Thirty six male (age 33 ± 9) and twenty nine female (age 31 ± 8) elite athletes, members of the German national team, were examined in their final training camp preparing for world championship. At two time points blood panels (pre-training and one hour post-training) were collected and concentrations of high sensitive troponin T, N-terminal pro brain natriuretic peptide (NT-pro BNP), creatine phosphokinase (CPK), MB-creatine kinase (CKMB) and myoglobin were assessed. After exercise, serum levels of NT-pro BNP, CPK, myoglobin and CKMB increased significantly (P < 0.01 for each) with only few values exceeding the upper reference limits. High sensitive troponin T remained below the limit of detection both before and after exercise in all athletes. Significant gender-related differences were found with a higher increase of NT-pro BNP levels in female athletes (P < 0.01) compared to males. In contrast, male athletes displayed a significant higher increase of CPK (P < 0.01) and myoglobin (P < 0.01) compared to female athletes. In conclusion, three high-intensity training units did not lead to elevated high sensitive troponin T concentrations in elite athletes of dragon boating but to significant increases of NT-pro BNP, CPK and myoglobin levels. This suggests that high-intensity training units do not lead to a cardiac injury in these athletes.
DIFFERENTIAL REGULATION OF SYSTEMIC IL-18 AND IL-12 RELEASE DURING POSTOPERATIVE SEPSIS: HIGH SERUM IL-18 AS AN EARLY PREDICTIVE INDICATOR OF LETHAL OUTCOME

Systemic levels of the key immune regulatory cytokines IL-12 and IL-18 were measured over time in 66 patients with postoperative sepsis (38 survivors and 28 nonsurvivors). Sepsis mortality was not significantly associated with any of the clinical parameters examined, including age, gender, underlying disease, and surgical procedure. Analysis of cytokine levels showed that during the entire observation period, IL-12 was significantly reduced in sepsis patients compared with control surgical patients without sepsis. IL-12 serum levels did not significantly differ between sepsis survivors and nonsurvivors. In contrast to IL-12, IL-18 serum levels were significantly higher in both surviving and nonsurviving sepsis patients than in controls. Importantly, we also observed that IL-18 levels were significantly increased in patients with lethal sepsis compared with sepsis survivors at all time points studied, including day 1 after sepsis diagnosis. IL-18 levels were significantly increased during the course of lethal sepsis, but remained at a comparable level in sepsis survivors. Logistic regression analysis of IL-18 values measured on days 1 or 2 of sepsis revealed that high serum IL-18 represents an early predictive factor for the lethal outcome of postoperative sepsis. Consistent with previous work in mouse models, our results suggest that IL-12 may contribute to protective immune reactions against a septic challenge, whereas IL-18 may preferentially promote organ injury and lethal shock.
Upper Jurassic, Upper Cretaceous and Palaeocene conifer woods from Mexico

ABSTRACT Although there are reports of permineralised woods in Mesozoic and Cenozoic strata in Mexico, there are few palaeobotanical studies based on coniferous stems. Four taxa of fossil wood from three localities in Mexico are described at the anatomical level and identified taxonomically based on detailed comparisons with woods of extant and fossil taxa. Agathoxylon gilii sp. nov. and A. jericonse sp. nov. are determined from the Todos Santos Formation (Upper Jurassic), in Chiapas; A. parrensis sp. nov. is described from the Las Encinas Formation (Palaeocene) in Coahuila; and Taxodioxylon cabullensis sp. nov. corresponds with material from the Packard Shale Formation in Sonora. Dominance of Araucariaceae and Cupressaceae in this region during the Mesozoic and early Cenozoic is further supported by leaf records, but these materials may also represent other taxa, like Cheirolepidaceae, which may have araucarioid secondary xylem. Records of Brachyphyllum and/or Pagiophyllum, which may represent araucarioid or cheirolepidaceous taxa, and different cupressaceous leaves, have been collected in rocks of the same period in nearby formations. At present, the amalgamation of isolated organs to form one plant is uncertain and, thus, there is an open challenge to reconstruct the plants and better understand these extinct communities. The new fossil taxa will add to the diversity of extinct plants and conifer communities during the Mesozoic and early Cenozoic in low-latitude North America.
Feature Selection and Reduction for Persian Text Classification

the rapid growth of the World Wide Web and increasing availability of electronic documents, the automatic text classification became a general and important machine learning problem in text mining domain. In text classification, feature selection is used for reducing the size of feature vector and for improving the performance of classifier. This paper improved Dominance which is a feature selection criterion and proposed Extended Dominance (E-Dominance) as a new criterion. E-Dominance is compared favorably with usual feature selection methods based on document frequency (DF), information gain (IG), Entropy, χ2 and Dominance on a collection of XML documents from Hamshahri2 which is a commonly used in Persian text classification. The comparative study confirms the effectiveness of proposed feature selection criterion derived from the Dominance.
Temporal Changes in Individualism and Their Ramification in Japan: Rising Individualism and Conflicts with Persisting Collectivism

Many studies have shown that American culture has become more individualistic over time. However, it was unclear whether other cultures, especially East Asian cultures, have also shifted toward greater individualism. Therefore, this article reviewed studies investigating temporal changes in individualism in Japan and their ramifications on psychology and behavior. Japan has experienced rapid and dramatic economic growth and urbanization and has adopted more social systems based on individualistic concepts in various contexts (e.g., workplace, school). Recent studies have suggested that, along with these socioeconomic changes, Japanese culture has become more individualistic over time. Specifically, the divorce rate increased and household size decreased. Moreover, people give more unique names to their children and dogs, and individualistic words such as “individual” and “uniqueness” appear more frequently in newspapers. Furthermore, social values became more individualistic. Yet, it has also been shown that some collectivistic values still remain. As a result, people have difficulty in adapting to this coexistence, which injures interpersonal relationships and well-being. This paper discussed how Japanese culture changed over time and how such changes affected Japanese psychology and behavior.
Topology Design Games and Dynamics in Adversarial Environments

We study the problem of network topology design within a set of policy-compliant topologies as a game between a designer and an adversary. At any time instant, the designer aims to operate the network in an optimal topology within the set of policy compliant topologies with respect to a desired network property. Simultaneously, the adversary counters the designer trying to force operation in a suboptimal topology. Specifically, if the designer and the attacker choose the same link in the current topology to defend/grow and attack, respectively, then the latter is thwarted. However, if the defender does not correctly guess where the attacker is going to attack, and, hence, acts elsewhere, the topology reverts to the best policy-compliant configuration after a successful attack. We show the existence of various mixed strategy equilibria in this game and systematically study its structural properties. We study the effect of parameters, such as probability of a successful attack, and characterize the steady state behavior of the underlying Markov chain. While the intuitive adversarial strategy here is to attack the most important links, the Nash equilibrium strategy is for the designer to defend the most crucial links and for the adversary to focus attack on the lesser crucial links. We validate these properties through two use cases with example sets of network topologies. Next, we consider a multi-stage framework where the designer is not only interested in the instantaneous network property costs but a discounted sum of costs over many time instances. We establish structural properties of the equilibrium strategies in the multi-stage setting, and also demonstrate that applying algorithms based on the Q-Learning and Rollout methods can result in significant benefits for the designer compared with strategies resulting from a one-shot based game.
Species-specific prevalence of vaginal candidiasis among patients with diabetes mellitus and its relation to their glycaemic status.

OBJECTIVES Non- C. albicans Candida species are increasingly being recognized as the cause of vulvo-vaginal candidiasis. These species are often less susceptible to antifungal agents. Patients with diabetes mellitus are at risk for vulvo-vaginal candidasis. We assessed the species-specific prevalence rate and risk of candidiasis in patients with diabetes mellitus and healthy controls. METHODS Genital tract examination, direct microscopy and fungal cultures of discharge collected by high vaginal swab were undertaken among 78 consecutive patients with diabetes mellitus (mean (+/-sd) age 32+/-12 years and body mass index (BMI) 22.3+/-5.5kg/m(2)) and 88 age- and BMI-matched healthy females. Glycaemic control in the diabetic cohort was assessed by measuring total glycosylated haemoglobin. RESULTS Candida species were isolated in 36 of 78 (46%) subjects with diabetes mellitus and in 21 of 88 (23%) healthy subjects (Chi-squared 9.11, P=0.0025). The predominant Candida species isolated in diabetics with vulvo-vaginal candidiasis were Candida glabrata (39%), C. albicans (26%) and C. tropicalis (17%). In contrast, in the control group, C. albicans, C. glabrata and C. hemulonii comprised 30% each, with none having C. tropicalis infection (for C. tropicalis: diabetic vs. control; 17% vs. nil, P=0. 05). Among the diabetic group, subjects with vulvo-vaginal candidiasis had significantly higher mean HbA1 when compared to those who had no such infection (12.8+/-2.6% vs. 9.7+/-1.7% respectively, P=0.001). The overall accuracy of direct microscopy and clinical examination for predicting vulvo-vaginal candidiasis was only 77% and 51%, respectively, in the diabetic group, and 83% and 65% in the control group. CONCLUSIONS Patients with diabetes mellitus had a high prevalence rate (46%) of vulvo-vaginal candidiasis with relative risk of 2.45. The non- C. albicans species such as C. glabrata and C. tropicalis were the predominant species isolated among them. There seems to be a significant link between hyperglycaemia and vulvo-vaginal candidiasis.