Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Massive Consumption of Gelatinous Plankton by Mediterranean Apex Predators

Stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen were used to test the hypothesis that stomach content analysis has systematically overlooked the consumption of gelatinous zooplankton by pelagic mesopredators and apex predators. The results strongly supported a major role of gelatinous plankton in the diet of bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus), little tunny (Euthynnus alletteratus), spearfish (Tetrapturus belone) and swordfish (Xiphias gladius). Loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta) in the oceanic stage and ocean sunfish (Mola mola) also primarily relied on gelatinous zooplankton. In contrast, stable isotope ratios ruled out any relevant consumption of gelatinous plankton by bluefish (Pomatomus saltatrix), blue shark (Prionace glauca), leerfish (Lichia amia), bonito (Sarda sarda), striped dolphin (Stenella caerueloalba) and loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta) in the neritic stage, all of which primarily relied on fish and squid. Fin whales (Balaenoptera physalus) were confirmed as crustacean consumers. The ratios of stable isotopes in albacore (Thunnus alalunga), amberjack (Seriola dumerili), blue butterfish (Stromaeus fiatola), bullet tuna (Auxis rochei), dolphinfish (Coryphaena hyppurus), horse mackerel (Trachurus trachurus), mackerel (Scomber scombrus) and pompano (Trachinotus ovatus) were consistent with mixed diets revealed by stomach content analysis, including nekton and crustaceans, but the consumption of gelatinous plankton could not be ruled out completely. In conclusion, the jellyvorous guild in the Mediterranean integrates two specialists (ocean sunfish and loggerhead sea turtles in the oceanic stage) and several opportunists (bluefin tuna, little tunny, spearfish, swordfish and, perhaps, blue butterfish), most of them with shrinking populations due to overfishing.
The Little Engine That Could: Regularization by Denoising (RED)

Removal of noise from an image is an extensively studied problem in image processing. Indeed, the recent advent of sophisticated and highly effective denoising algorithms has led some to believe that existing methods are touching the ceiling in terms of noise removal performance. Can we leverage this impressive achievement to treat other tasks in image processing? Recent work has answered this question positively, in the form of the Plug-and-Play Prior ($P^3$) method, showing that any inverse problem can be handled by sequentially applying image denoising steps. This relies heavily on the ADMM optimization technique in order to obtain this chained denoising interpretation. Is this the only way in which tasks in image processing can exploit the image denoising engine? In this paper we provide an alternative, more powerful, and more flexible framework for achieving the same goal. As opposed to the $P^3$ method, we offer Regularization by Denoising (RED): using the denoising engine in defining the regulariza.
Deep Neural Network Compression with Single and Multiple Level Quantization

Network quantization is an effective solution to compress deep neural networks for practical usage. Existing network quantization methods cannot sufficiently exploit the depth information to generate low-bit compressed network. In this paper, we propose two novel network quantization approaches, single-level network quantization (SLQ) for high-bit quantization and multi-level network quantization (MLQ) for extremely low-bit quantization (ternary). We are the first to consider the network quantization from both width and depth level. In the width level, parameters are divided into two parts: one for quantization and the other for re-training to eliminate the quantization loss. SLQ leverages the distribution of the parameters to improve the width level. In the depth level, we introduce incremental layer compensation to quantize layers iteratively which decreases the quantization loss in each iteration. The proposed approaches are validated with extensive experiments based on the state-of-the-art neural networks including AlexNet, VGG-16, GoogleNet and ResNet-18. Both SLQ and MLQ achieve impressive results.
Gliding Direction of Mycoplasma mobile

ABSTRACT Mycoplasma mobile glides in the direction of its cell pole by a unique mechanism in which hundreds of legs, each protruding from its own gliding unit, catch, pull, and release sialylated oligosaccharides fixed on a solid surface. In this study, we found that 77% of cells glided to the left with a change in direction of 8.4° ± 17.6° μm−1 displacement. The cell body did not roll around the cell axis, and elongated, thinner cells also glided while tracing a curved trajectory to the left. Under viscous conditions, the range of deviation of the gliding direction decreased. In the presence of 250 μM free sialyllactose, in which the binding of the legs (i.e., the catching of sialylated oligosaccharides) was reduced, 70% and 30% of cells glided to the left and the right, respectively, with changes in direction of ∼30° μm−1. The gliding ghosts, in which a cell was permeabilized by Triton X-100 and reactivated by ATP, glided more straightly. These results can be explained by the following assumptions based on the suggested gliding machinery and mechanism: (i) the units of gliding machinery may be aligned helically around the cell, (ii) the legs extend via the process of thermal fluctuation and catch the sialylated oligosaccharides, and (iii) the legs generate a propulsion force that is tilted from the cell axis to the left in 70% and to the right in 30% of cells. IMPORTANCE Mycoplasmas are bacteria that are generally parasitic to animals and plants. Some Mycoplasma species form a protrusion at a pole, bind to solid surfaces, and glide. Although these species appear to consistently glide in the direction of the protrusion, their exact gliding direction has not been examined. This study analyzed the gliding direction in detail under various conditions and, based on the results, suggested features of the machinery and the mechanism of gliding.
Optimal welding parameters for small-scale resistance spot welding with response surface methodology

In this study, Ti–1Al–1Mn thin foils with thickness of 0.05 mm were welded by small-scale resistance spot welding. Welding current, electrode force and welding time have been changed while other welding parameters remained constant. The welded joints were subjected to tensile shear tests for determining the values of shear force and absorption energy. A quadratic model of response surface methodology based on Box–Behnken design was employed in establishing regression equations between input variables (current, electrode force and time) and output variables (shear force, absorption energy, variance of shear force and variance of absorption energy). The models were satisfied in optimising the welding parameters. Besides, the microstructure analysis on the typical spot welds was also conducted. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT
Heterogeneous fault prediction with cost‐sensitive domain adaptation

In the early phases of software testing, projects may have only limited historical defect data. Learning prediction model with such insufficient training data will limit the efficacy of learned predictor. In practice, there are usually many publicly available fault prediction datasets. Recently, heterogeneous fault prediction (HFP) has been proposed. However, existing HFP models do not investigate how to use mixed project data to predict target. Furthermore, defect data are often imbalanced. The imbalanced data distribution of source usually leads to serious misclassification of fault‐prone instances, which will degrade the predictor's performance. Existing HFP methods do not consider the class imbalance problem in the training stages. In this paper, we propose a novel Cost‐sensitive Label and Structure‐consistent Unilateral Projection (CLSUP) approach for HFP. CLSUP can not only make better use of the within‐project and cross‐project data but also alleviate the class imbalance problem by setting different misclassification costs for fault‐prone and non–fault‐prone instances. Extensive experiments on 30 projects demonstrate the effectiveness of CLSUP.
Cultural Distance, Firm Boundaries, and Global Sourcing

Casual observation suggests that cultural differences play an important role in business transactions, yet systematic evidence on this relationship is scarce. This paper provides a novel investigation of the effect of cultural distance on multinational firms’ decisions to integrate their cooperation partners into firm boundaries, rather than transact with independent companies at arm’s-length. To guide our empirical analysis, we develop a simple theoretical model which suggests that (i) cultural distance between contracting parties decreases the relative attractiveness of integration, and (ii) this effect is mitigated in more productive firms. We test these predictions using extensive product-, industry-, and firm-level data. We find a robust negative relationship between cultural distance and the relative attractiveness of integration. In line with our theoretical predictions, we also find that the effect of cultural distance on firm boundaries is less pronounced the higher firm’s productivity. JEL Classification: F14, F23, L14, L23
A Randomized Controlled Trial of Group Triple P With Chinese Parents in Mainland China

This study evaluated the effects of Group Triple P with Chinese parents on parenting and child outcomes as well as outcomes relating to child academic learning in Mainland China. Participants were 81 Chinese parents and their children in Shanghai, who were randomly allocated to an intervention group or wait-list control group. Parents in the intervention condition received Group Triple P training, and parents and children were assessed at three/two time points. Compared with the control group, parents in the intervention group reported significant improvements in child adjustment problems, parenting practices, parental adjustment, and parenting self-efficacy at post-assessment. Moreover, there was a significant increase in parents’ satisfaction with children’s academic achievement and a reduction in children’s academic problem behaviors at post-intervention. All these effects were maintained at 6-month follow-up. There was also a significant increase in the child report of positive parenting at post-intervention.
Enhanced Immune Responses to HIV-1 Envelope Elicited by a Vaccine Regimen Consisting of Priming with Newcastle Disease Virus Expressing HIV gp160 and Boosting with gp120 and SOSIP gp140 Proteins

ABSTRACT Newcastle disease virus (NDV) expressing HIV-1 BaL gp160 was evaluated either alone or with monomeric BaL gp120 and BaL SOSIP gp140 protein in a prime-boost combination in guinea pigs to enhance envelope (Env)-specific humoral and mucosal immune responses. We showed that a regimen consisting of an NDV prime followed by a protein boost elicited stronger serum and mucosal Th-1-biased IgG responses and neutralizing antibody responses than NDV-only immunizations. Additionally, these responses were higher after the gp120 than after the SOSIP gp140 protein boost.
Relationships between concentrations of trace metals in wheat grains and soil

In order to reduce the amount of trace metals such as cadmium in human food, it is useful to predict the trace metal composition of cereal grains from well-chosen topsoil variables. Statistical relationships between soil properties and metal concentration in plant organs have already been studied. However, such studies involved only a few common soil properties such as pH, organic carbon content and cation exchange capacity. Here, we compared metal contents in grain and in topsoil samples. 198 samples of grains of winter wheat were collected from paired topsoil and crop surveys in the northern half of France. The soils belong to 18 contrasting pedogeological families. Grain and topsoil samples were analysed for Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb, Zn, Fe, Mg and Mn. For soil samples, three pools of metal were determined: total concentration by HF digestion, and two available pools by partial extraction using either diethylenetriamine pentaacetic acid (DTPA) or NH4NO3. Canonical correlation analysis including multiple linear regression was used to study relationships between soil and grain data. Our findings show the occurrence of six significant and independent relations between the topsoil variables and the grain variables. The adjustment quality of those relations is measured by six coefficients equivalent to individual determination coefficients. The maximum coefficient of 0.79 is higher than any individual ones. Our findings show in particular an excellent regression model for grain Cd with a small number of topsoil variables, thus allowing an accurate prediction for winter wheat grains. Practically, farmers can use the prediction model to increase soil pH and by growing a less metal-accumulating cultivar upon detection of a threat. The strengths of our study are the following: (1) we studied a very large number of sites, including soils with very diverse parent materials, soil-forming processes and geochemical properties; (2) we measured and tested a large number of variables, including in particular available metal fractions; and (3) we applied unusual statistical methods such as canonical correlation analysis.
The Structure of Children's Perceived Self-Efficacy: A Cross-National Study

Summary: The present study investigated the replicability of the factor structure of the Children’s Perceived Self-Efficacy scales (CPSE; Bandura, 1990) in Italy, Hungary, and Poland. The findings of this cross-national study support the generalizability of the factor structure of children’s social and academic efficacy. Perceived efficacy to resist peer pressure to engage transgressive conduct had a somewhat different factor structure for Hungarian children. Gender and national differences in the pattern of efficacy beliefs underscore the value of treating perceived self-efficacy as a multifaceted attribute. There were no overall gender differences in perceived social efficacy, but girls in all three societies have a higher sense of efficacy for academic activities and to resist peer pressure for transgressive activities. Italian children judge themselves more academically efficacious than do Hungarian children and more socially efficacious than their counterparts in both of the other two countries. An analysis of the facets of academic efficacy revealed that Hungarian children have a high sense of efficacy to master academic subjects but a lower efficacy than their Italian and Polish counterparts to take charge of their own learning. Polish children surpassed their counterparts in academic self-regulatory efficacy. Perceived self-efficacy concerns people’s beliefs in their capabilities to produce given attainments. This construct was developed by Bandura (1977) within a social-cognitive theory of human functioning. According to this perspective, sense of personal efficacy is a key factor in the exercise of human agency within a causal structure involving triadic reciprocal causation between the person, the environment, and behavior (Bandura, 1986). People
Attention-based Graph Neural Network for Semi-supervised Learning

Recently popularized graph neural networks achieve the state-of-the-art accuracy on a number of standard benchmark datasets for graph-based semi-supervised learning, improving significantly over existing approaches. These architectures alternate between a propagation layer that aggregates the hidden states of the local neighborhood and a fully-connected layer. Perhaps surprisingly, we show that a linear model, that removes all the intermediate fully-connected layers, is still able to achieve a performance comparable to the state-of-the-art models. This significantly reduces the number of parameters, which is critical for semi-supervised learning where number of labeled examples are small. This in turn allows a room for designing more innovative propagation layers. Based on this insight, we propose a novel graph neural network that removes all the intermediate fully-connected layers, and replaces the propagation layers with attention mechanisms that respect the structure of the graph. The attention mechanism allows us to learn a dynamic and adaptive local summary of the neighborhood to achieve more accurate predictions. In a number of experiments on benchmark citation networks datasets, we demonstrate that our approach outperforms competing methods. By examining the attention weights among neighbors, we show that our model provides some interesting insights on how neighbors influence each other.
A High‐Efficiency Organic Solar Cell Enabled by the Strong Intramolecular Electron Push–Pull Effect of the Nonfullerene Acceptor

Besides broadening of the absorption spectrum, modulating molecular energy levels, and other well‐studied properties, a stronger intramolecular electron push–pull effect also affords other advantages in nonfullerene acceptors. A strong push–pull effect improves the dipole moment of the wings in IT‐4F over IT‐M and results in a lower miscibility than IT‐M when blended with PBDB‐TF. This feature leads to higher domain purity in the PBDB‐TF:IT‐4F blend and makes a contribution to the better photovoltaic performance. Moreover, the strong push–pull effect also decreases the vibrational relaxation, which makes IT‐4F more promising than IT‐M in reducing the energetic loss of organic solar cells. Above all, a power conversion efficiency of 13.7% is recorded in PBDB‐TF:IT‐4F‐based devices.
COMPARATIVE EFFICACY OF INSECT REPELLENTS AGAINST MOSQUITO BITES

A BSTRACT Background The worldwide threat of arthropodtransmitted diseases, with their associated morbidity and mortality, underscores the need for effective insect repellents. Multiple chemical, botanical, and “alternative” repellent products are marketed to consumers. We sought to determine which products available in the United States provide reliable and prolonged complete protection from mosquito bites. Methods We conducted studies involving 15 volunteers to test the relative efficacy of seven botanical insect repellents; four products containing N,N -diethylm -toluamide, now called N,N -diethyl-3-methylbenzamide (DEET); a repellent containing IR3535 (ethyl butylacetylaminopropionate); three repellent-impregnated wristbands; and a moisturizer that is commonly claimed to have repellent effects. These products were tested in a controlled laboratory environment in which the species of the mosquitoes, their age, their degree of hunger, the humidity, the temperature, and the light–dark cycle were all kept constant. Results DEET-based products provided complete protection for the longest duration. Higher concentrations of DEET provided longer-lasting protection. A formulation containing 23.8 percent DEET had a mean complete-protection time of 301.5 minutes. A soybeanoil–based repellent protected against mosquito bites for an average of 94.6 minutes. The IR3535-based repellent protected for an average of 22.9 minutes. All other botanical repellents we tested provided protection for a mean duration of less than 20 minutes. Repellent-impregnated wristbands offered no protection. Conclusions Currently available non-DEET repellents do not provide protection for durations similar to those of DEET-based repellents and cannot be relied on to provide prolonged protection in environments where mosquito-borne diseases are a substantial threat. (N Engl J Med 2002;347:13-8.)
Hand function and recurrence after limited fasciectomy for Dupuytren’s contracture: Long-term follow-up

Purpose: The aim of this study was to analyze long-term results after limited fasciectomy for Dupuytren’s contracture. Methods: The study included 34 patients (52 rays), with an average follow-up of 9.5 years (range: 7–13 years). Range of motion, functional status, recurrence, and complications were recorded. Results: Preoperative metacarpophalangeal joint (MCPJ) contracture (median: 35°, range: 0–90°) improved postoperatively to full extension in all but one patient, with no recurrence at the most recent follow-up. Preoperative proximal interphalangeal joint (PIPJ) contractures (median: 52°, range: 5–100°) were initially corrected, but recurred with time (median: 25°, range 0°–80°). Hand function was assessed using the Disabilities of the Arm, Shoulder and Hand questionnaire. Postoperative hand function improved (median: 0, range: 0–27), compared to preoperative function (median: 20, range: 0–51). Hand function worsened with time (at most recent follow-up: median: 3, range: 0–40), mainly due to PIPJ contracture recurrence, but function remained better than before surgery. Conclusion: Limited fasciectomy is an effective treatment method for MCPJ, with full correction achievable in both the short and long term. Regarding the PIPJ, treatment outcomes seem to be multifactorial. Further clarification is required to distinguish between local recurrence and remaining contracture of the PIPJ.
Predicting the dopamine D2 receptor occupancy of ropinirole in rats using positron emission tomography and pharmacokinetic–pharmacodynamic modeling

Abstract 1. The purpose of this study was to measure dopamine D2/3 receptor occupancy (RO) as a marker of the clinical efficacy of ropinirole in rats via positron emission tomography (PET) using 18F-fallypride as the radiotracer and to explore the relationship between dopamine RO and the plasma concentration of ropinirole via pharmacokinetic–pharmacodynamic modeling. 2. Plasma was collected from 16 rats treated with one of four doses of ropinirole. For the time-dependent study, the data of 16 rats in the 15 mg/kg dose group at four time points were averaged, and another 24 rats were divided into three dose groups (5 mg/kg, 30 mg/kg and 60 mg/kg) for the dose-dependent study; the animals were assessed via 18F-fallypride PET scans. The correlation between dopamine RO and the ropinirole plasma concentration was investigated, and a pharmacokinetic–pharmacodynamic (PK–PD) model was established with WinNonlin 6.3 software. Both the plasma concentration and the binding potential changed in a time- and dose-dependent manner, and the plasma concentration that induces 50% RO (EC50) as calculated by the PK–PD model was 1391 ng/mL. 3. 18F-fallypride appeared to be a suitable radiotracer for ropinirole imaging, and its binding to the dopamine D2 receptor has time- and concentration-dependent characteristics. A theory-based PK–PD model was developed to describe the relationship between the plasma ropinirole concentration and RO, providing a methodological foundation for noninvasive and in vivo clinical evaluations of ropinirole treatment.
Heart rate variability as predictive factor for sudden cardiac death

Sudden cardiac death (SCD) represents about 25% of deaths in clinical cardiology. The identification of risk factors for SCD is the philosopher's stone of cardiology and the identification of non-invasive markers of risk of SCD remains one of the most important goals for the scientific community. The aim of this review is to analyze the state of the art around the heart rate variability (HRV) as a predictor factor for SCD. HRV is probably the most analyzed index in cardiovascular risk stratification technical literature, therefore an important number of models and methods have been developed. Nowadays, low HRV has been shown to be independently predictive of increased mortality in post- myocardial infarction patients, heart failure patients, in contrast with the data of the general population. Contrariwise, the relationship between HRV and SCD has received scarce attention in low-risk cohorts. Furthermore, in general population the attributable risk is modest and the cost/benefit ratio is not always convenient. The HRV evaluation could become an important tool for health status in risks population, even though the use of HRV alone for risk stratification of SCD is limited and further studies are needed.