Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The energetic consequences of behavioral variation in a marine carnivore

Abstract Intraspecific variability in foraging behavior has been documented across a range of taxonomic groups, yet the energetic consequences of this variation are not well understood for many species. Understanding the effect of behavioral variation on energy expenditure and acquisition is particularly crucial for mammalian carnivores because they have high energy requirements that place considerable pressure on prey populations. To determine the influence of behavior on energy expenditure and balance, we combined simultaneous measurements of at‐sea field metabolic rate (FMR) and foraging behavior in a marine carnivore that exhibits intraspecific behavioral variation, the California sea lion (Zalophus californianus). Sea lions exhibited variability in at‐sea FMR, with some individuals expending energy at a maximum of twice the rate of others. This variation was in part attributable to differences in diving behavior that may have been reflective of diet; however, this was only true for sea lions using a foraging strategy consisting of epipelagic (<200 m within the water column) and benthic dives. In contrast, sea lions that used a deep‐diving foraging strategy all had similar values of at‐sea FMR that were unrelated to diving behavior. Energy intake did not differ between foraging strategies and was unrelated to energy expenditure. Our findings suggest that energy expenditure in California sea lions may be influenced by interactions between diet and oxygen conservation strategies. There were no apparent energetic trade‐offs between foraging strategies, although there was preliminary evidence that foraging strategies may differ in their variability in energy balance. The energetic consequences of behavioral variation may influence the reproductive success of female sea lions and result in differential impacts of individuals on prey populations. These findings highlight the importance of quantifying the relationships between energy expenditure and foraging behavior in other carnivores for studies addressing fundamental and applied physiological and ecological questions.
Course, Predictors, and Outcomes of Depressed Mood in a Cohort of Norwegian Adolescents Followed From Age 13 Into Adulthood Age 30

This study used latent growth modeling to examine continuity and changes in depressed mood, predictors, and outcomes in a cohort of Norwegian adolescents followed from age 13 into adulthood age 30. First, the average development of depressed mood can be described by a slight increase in adolescence followed by a decrease in emerging adulthood. There were considerable individual differences in baseline level and rate of change in depressed mood, especially among females. Second, relationship with parents was associated with the stability component of depressed mood for both genders, as were father’s education for males. Third, a general trajectory of increasing levels of depressed mood was associated with lower probability of achievement of adulthood milestones and lower income and occupational status at age 30. Finally, both high levels of depressed mood at baseline and an increasing trajectory of depressed mood were associated with lower levels of life satisfaction at age 30.
Title Isotopic evidence for the infiltration of mantle and metamorphic CO 2H 2 O fluids from below in faulted rocks from the San Andreas Fault System Permalink

To characterize the origin of the fluids involved in the San Andreas Fault (SAF) system, we carried out an isotope study of exhumed faulted rocks from deformation zones, vein fillings and their hosts and the fluid inclusions associated with these materials. Samples were collected from segments along the SAF system selected to provide a depth profile from upper to lower crust. In all, 75 samples from various structures and lithologies from 13 localities were analyzed for noble gas, carbon, and oxygen isotope compositions. Fluid inclusions exhibit helium isotope ratios (He/He) of 0.1–2.5 times the ratio in air, indicating that past fluids percolating through the SAF system contained mantle helium contributions of at least 35%, similar to what has been measured in present-day ground waters associated with the fault (Kennedy et al., 1997). Calcite is the predominant vein mineral and is a common accessory mineral in deformation zones. A systematic variation of Cand O-isotope compositions of carbonates from veins, deformation zones and their hosts suggests percolation by external fluids of similar compositions and origin with the amount of fluid infiltration increasing from host rocks to vein to deformation zones. The isotopic trend observed for carbonates in veins and deformation zones follows that shown by carbonates in host limestones, marbles, and other host rocks, increasing with increasing contribution of deep metamorphic crustal volatiles. At each crustal level, the composition of the infiltrating fluids is thus buffered by deeper metamorphic sources. A negative correlation between calcite δC and fluid inclusion He/He is consistent with a mantle origin for a fraction of the infiltrating CO2. Noble gas and stable isotope systematics show consistent evidence for the involvement of mantle-derived fluids combined with infiltration of deep metamorphic H2O and CO2 in faulting, supporting the involvement of deep fluids percolating through and perhaps weakening the fault zone. There is no clear evidence for a significant contribution from meteoric water, except for overprinting related to late weathering.
Ethyl Acetate Fraction from Hedyotis diffusa plus Scutellaria barbata Exerts Anti-Inflammatory Effects by Regulating miR-155 Expression and JNK Signaling Pathway

Hedyotis diffusa Willd and Scutellaria barbata D. Don (HDSB) were the core couplet in medicines that were commonly used for the purpose of anti-inflammation and anticancer treatments in China. However, biological properties of this couplet have not been fully elucidated. In this study, we screened fractions of HDSB for their anti-inflammatory activities and explored pertinent molecular mechanisms on murine macrophage RAW264.7 cell model. Ethyl acetate fraction from the aqueous extract of the couplet at equal weight ratio (EA11) showed the strongest inhibition of the nitrite accumulation in supernatant of RAW264.7 cells stimulated with lipopolysaccharide (LPS)/interferon-γ (IFN-γ). In addition, EA11 inhibited iNOS and IL-1β expression in a concentration-dependent manner while promoting the expression of HO-1 and PPAR-γ. Anti-inflammatory capability is most likely facilitated by its inhibitory effect on JNK signaling pathway and miR-155 expression. This study suggests that EA11 may be represented as a potential anti-inflammatory therapeutic candidate.
Eccentric Resistance Training and Muscle Hypertrophy

Resistance exercise is a key component of any training program aiming to increase strength or muscle mass, regardless of final training goal (e.g. athletic performance, rehabilitation, healthy lifestyle). Great number of studies emphasizes the importance of eccentric muscle actions as a key component of resistance training programs. Thus, resistance eccentric training programs have been compared with other training paradigms analyzing maximum strength manifestations, metabolic cost, muscle activation and fiber recruitment pattern, hypertrophy, as well perceived fatigue. On the other hand, it is well known that the muscle damage and pain induced by eccentric exercise is higher when compared to other training modalities (e.g. concentric exercise). Besides the higher muscle damage, most studies involving eccentric training programs are suggesting greater muscle mass and muscular strength gains with shorter periods of training. The aim of this brief review is to point out the benefits of eccentric training programs, highlighting its effects on muscle hypertrophy, and to indicate the difficulties that can rise when employing such a model.
Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University

Background: Guidelines recommend the use of multiple pharmacologic agents and/or mechanical compressive devices for prevention of venous thromboembolism, but preference for any specific agent is no longer given in regard to safety or efficacy. Objective: To compare postoperative bleeding rates in patients receiving enoxaparin, rivaroxaban, or aspirin for thrombo-prophylaxis after undergoing elective total hip arthroplasty or total knee arthroplasty. Methods: This retrospective cohort analysis evaluated patients who received thromboprophylaxis with either enoxaparin, rivaroxaban, or aspirin. All data were collected from the electronic medical record. The primary outcome was any postoperative bleeding. Results: A total of 1244 patients were included with 366 in the aspirin, 438 in the enoxaparin, and 440 in the rivaroxaban arms. Those who received aspirin or enoxaparin were less likely to experience any bleeding compared to those patients who received rivaroxaban ( P < .05). There was also a lower rate of major bleeding in these groups, but the differences were not significant. Conclusions: Aspirin and enoxaparin conferred similar bleeding risks, and both exhibited less bleeding than patients who received rivaroxaban.
Risky Sexual Behavior and Associated Factors Among Adolescent Students in Tana Haik High School, Bahir Dar, Northern Ethiopia

Introduction: Adolescence is a period of transition from childhood to adulthood. World Health Organization defines adolescent as the person between 10 and 19 years of age. Adolescents’ sexual behavior threatens the physical, psychological, social health and well-being of this group. Therefore, assessing the sexual behavior of adolescent students is essential to evaluate vulnerability and this enables one take appropriate preventive measure. Objective: The objective of this study is to assess the risky sexual behavior of school adolescents and responsible factors influencing their risky sexual behavior practices in Tana Haik Secondary and Preparatory School, Bahir Dar, Northern Ethiopia, 2016. Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out using questionnaire. A systematic random sampling was used to get the total sample size of 308 participants. A pre-tested, structured questionnaire was used to collect quantitative data and Data analysis was done using SPSS version 16.0 software packages. Result: Out of the study participants, 79 (26%) respondents were practiced sexual intercourse. Among the sexually active students 73% were not utilized condoms, 34% of them had more than one partner and 5% reported to have sexual intercourse with commercial sex workers. Personal pressure (46%), peer pressure (27%), forced (10%), alcohol and chat influence (9%) and economic problem (9%) were the reasons reported for the initiation of the first sexual practice. Fifty-nine (19%) of the study participants were developed risky sexual behaviors. Participants’ educational level, marital status, parental marital status, living status, and alcohol consumption were predictor factors for the existence of different sexual behaviors. Conclusion: A considerable number of school adolescents had started sexual activity early and have practiced risky sexual behavior that might predispose them to different sexual and reproductive health problems. Delay in sex debut and reducing risky sexual behavior among adolescents can be achieved through well designed sexual education programs at the school.
CoNekT: an open-source framework for comparative genomic and transcriptomic network analyses

The recent accumulation of gene expression data in the form of RNA sequencing creates unprecedented opportunities to study gene regulation and function. Furthermore, comparative analysis of the expression data from multiple species can elucidate which functional gene modules are conserved across species, allowing the study of the evolution of these modules. However, performing such comparative analyses on raw data is not feasible for many biologists. Here, we present CoNekT (Co-expression Network Toolkit), an open source, user-friendly web server, that contains user-friendly tools and interactive visualizations for comparative analyses of gene expression data and co-expression networks. These tools allow analysis and cross-species comparison of (i) gene expression profiles; (ii) co-expression networks; (iii) co-expressed clusters involved in specific biological processes; (iv) tissue-specific gene expression; and (v) expression profiles of gene families. To demonstrate these features, we constructed CoNekT-Plants for green alga, seed plants and flowering plants (Picea abies, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, Vitis vinifera, Arabidopsis thaliana, Oryza sativa, Zea mays and Solanum lycopersicum) and thus provide a web-tool with the broadest available collection of plant phyla. CoNekT-Plants is freely available from http://conekt.plant. tools, while the CoNekT source code and documentation can be found at https://github.molgen. mpg.de/proost/CoNekT/.
Universal evolutionary selection for high dimensional silent patterns of information hidden in the redundancy of viral genetic code

Abstract Motivation Understanding how viruses co-evolve with their hosts and adapt various genomic level strategies in order to ensure their fitness may have essential implications in unveiling the secrets of viral evolution, and in developing new vaccines and therapeutic approaches. Here, based on a novel genomic analysis of 2625 different viruses and 439 corresponding host organisms, we provide evidence of universal evolutionary selection for high dimensional ‘silent’ patterns of information hidden in the redundancy of viral genetic code. Results Our model suggests that long substrings of nucleotides in the coding regions of viruses from all classes, often also repeat in the corresponding viral hosts from all domains of life. Selection for these substrings cannot be explained only by such phenomena as codon usage bias, horizontal gene transfer and the encoded proteins. Genes encoding structural proteins responsible for building the core of the viral particles were found to include more host-repeating substrings, and these substrings tend to appear in the middle parts of the viral coding regions. In addition, in human viruses these substrings tend to be enriched with motives related to transcription factors and RNA binding proteins. The host-repeating substrings are possibly related to the evolutionary pressure on the viruses to effectively interact with host's intracellular factors and to efficiently escape from the host's immune system. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Secrecy Analysis of Physical Layer over κ-μ Shadowed Fading Scenarios

In this paper, the secrecy analysis of physical layer when both the main and wiretap channels undergo $\kappa-\mu$ shadowed fading channel is investigated. In particular, the average secrecy capacity (ASC), secure outage probability (SOP), the lower bound of SOP (SOP$^L$), and the probability of strictly positive secrecy capacity (SPSC) are derived by using the classic Wyner's wiretap model. Two different scenarios for the fading parameters, i.e., $\mu$ and $m$ which represents the shadowing impact have been studied. These parameters are chosen first as arbitrary numbers, thus the performance metrics are expressed in single infinite series with multivariate Meijer $G$-function. In the second scenario, both the aforementioned fading parameters are assumed to be integer numbers in order to obtain the derived results in simple exact closed-form analytic mathematically tractable expressions. The numerical results of this analysis are verified via Monte Carlo simulations.
Breaking the $ilde$Omega($sqrt{n})$ Barrier: Fast Consensus under a Late Adversary

We study the consensus problem in a synchronous distributed system of n nodes under an adaptive adversary that has a slightly outdated view of the system and can block all incoming and outgoing communication of a constant fraction of the nodes in each round. Motivated by a result of Ben-Or and Bar-Joseph (1998), showing that any consensus algorithm that is resilient against a linear number of crash faults requires $\tilde Ømega(\sqrtn )$ rounds in an n -node network against an adaptive adversary, we consider a late adaptive adversary, who has full knowledge of the network state at the beginning of the previous round and unlimited computational power, but is oblivious to the current state of the nodes. % Our main contributions are randomized distributed algorithms that achieve consensus with high probability among all except a small constant fraction of the nodes (i.e.,\ "almost-everywhere'') against a late adaptive adversary who can block up to ε n$ nodes in each round, for a small constant ε >0$. Our first protocol achieves binary almost-everywhere consensus and also guarantees a decision on the majority input value, thus ensuring plurality consensus. We also present an algorithm that achieves the same time complexity for multi-value consensus. Both of our algorithms succeed in $O(łog n)$ rounds with high probability, thus showing an exponential gap to the $\tildeØmega(\sqrtn )$ lower bound of Ben-Or and Bar-Joseph for strongly adaptive crash-failure adversaries, which can be strengthened to $Ømega(n)$ when allowing the adversary to block nodes instead of permanently crashing them. Our algorithms are scalable to large systems as each node contacts only an (amortized) constant number of peers in each communication round. We show that our algorithms are optimal up to constant (resp.\ sub-logarithmic) factors by proving that every almost-everywhere consensus protocol takes $Ømega(łog_d n)$ rounds in the worst case, where d is an upper bound on the number of communication requests initiated per node in each round. We complement our theoretical results with an experimental evaluation of the binary almost-everywhere consensus protocol revealing a short convergence time even against an adversary blocking a large fraction of nodes.
Gaussian Process Behaviour in Wide Deep Neural Networks

Whilst deep neural networks have shown great empirical success, there is still much work to be done to understand their theoretical properties. In this paper, we study the relationship between random, wide, fully connected, feedforward networks with more than one hidden layer and Gaussian processes with a recursive kernel definition. We show that, under broad conditions, as we make the architecture increasingly wide, the implied random function converges in distribution to a Gaussian process, formalising and extending existing results by Neal (1996) to deep networks. To evaluate convergence rates empirically, we use maximum mean discrepancy. We then compare finite Bayesian deep networks from the literature to Gaussian processes in terms of the key predictive quantities of interest, finding that in some cases the agreement can be very close. We discuss the desirability of Gaussian process behaviour and review non-Gaussian alternative models from the literature.
Role of bile acids in inflammatory bowel disease

Bile acids (BAs) are the end product of cholesterol catabolism. Their synthesis is regulated by the nuclear receptor farnesoid X receptor, also involved in the control of their enterohepatic circulation. Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), which include Crohn’s disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC), are multifactorial diseases characterized by diarrhea. The pathogenesis of diarrhea in IBD is still debated. The most important factor is the inflammatory process of the intestinal wall, causing alterations of solute and water absorption/secretion, deterioration of epithelial cell integrity, disruption of the intestinal microflora homeostasis, and impairment of specific transport mechanisms within the gut (including that of BAs). In this review, we summarize the current state of the art in this area and we critically evaluate the alterations of BA metabolism in patients with CD and UC.
HKBU at MediaEval 2017 - Medico: Medical Multimedia Task

In this paper, we describe our model designed for automatic detection of diseases based on multimedia data collected in hospitals. Specifically, a two-stage learning strategy is designed to predict the diseases. In the first stage, a dimensionality reduction method called bidirectional marginal Fisher analysis (BMFA) is proposed to project the original data to the low-dimensional space, with the key discriminant information being well preserved. In the second stage, the multi-class support vector machine (SVM) is utilized on the low-dimensional space for detection. Experimental results demonstrate the efficiency of designed model.
Early age-related macular degeneration, cognitive function, and dementia: the Cardiovascular Health Study.

OBJECTIVE To describe the association of cognitive function and dementia with early age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in older individuals. METHODS This population-based study included 2,088 persons aged 69 to 97 years who participated in the Cardiovascular Health Study. The AMD was assessed from retinal photographs based on a modified Wisconsin AMD grading system. Cognitive function was assessed using the Digit Symbol Substitution Test (DSST) and the Modified Mini-Mental State Examination. Participants were also evaluated for dementia using detailed neuropsychological testing. RESULTS After controlling for age, sex, race, and study center, persons with low DSST scores (lowest quartile of scores, < or =30) were more likely to have early AMD (odds ratio, 1.38; 95% confidence interval, 1.03-1.85) than were persons with higher DSST scores. In analyses further controlling for education, systolic blood pressure, total cholesterol level, diabetes mellitus, smoking status, and apolipoprotein E genotype, this association was stronger (odds ratio, 2.00; 95% confidence interval, 1.29-3.10). There was no association of low Modified Mini-Mental State Examination scores, dementia, or Alzheimer disease with early AMD. CONCLUSIONS In this older population, cognitive impairment may share common age-related pathogenesis and risk factors with early AMD.
A small RNA that regulates motility and biofilm formation in response to changes in nutrient availability in Escherichia coli

In bacteria, many small regulatory RNAs (sRNAs) are induced in response to specific environmental signals or stresses and act by base‐pairing with mRNA targets to affect protein translation or mRNA stability. In Escherichia coli, the gene for the sRNA IS061/IsrA, here renamed McaS, was predicted to reside in an intergenic region between abgR, encoding a transcription regulator and ydaL, encoding a small MutS‐related protein. We show that McaS is a ∼ 95 nt transcript whose expression increases over growth, peaking in early‐to‐mid stationary phase, or when glucose is limiting. McaS uses three discrete single‐stranded regions to regulate mRNA targets involved in various aspects of biofilm formation. McaS represses csgD, the transcription regulator of curli biogenesis and activates flhD, the master transcription regulator of flagella synthesis leading to increased motility, a process not previously reported to be regulated by sRNAs. McaS also regulates pgaA, a porin required for the export of the polysaccharide poly β‐1,6‐N‐acetyl‐d‐glucosamine. Consequently, high levels of McaS result in increased biofilm formation while a strain lacking mcaS shows reduced biofilm formation. Based on our observations, we propose that, in response to limited nutrient availability, increasing levels of McaS modulate steps in the progression to a sessile lifestyle.