Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
D-PLACE: A Global Database of Cultural, Linguistic and Environmental Diversity

From the foods we eat and the houses we construct, to our religious practices and political organization, to who we can marry and the types of games we teach our children, the diversity of cultural practices in the world is astounding. Yet, our ability to visualize and understand this diversity is limited by the ways it has been documented and shared: on a culture-by-culture basis, in locally-told stories or difficult-to-access repositories. In this paper we introduce D-PLACE, the Database of Places, Language, Culture, and Environment. This expandable and open-access database (accessible at https://d-place.org) brings together a dispersed corpus of information on the geography, language, culture, and environment of over 1400 human societies. We aim to enable researchers to investigate the extent to which patterns in cultural diversity are shaped by different forces, including shared history, demographics, migration/diffusion, cultural innovations, and environmental and ecological conditions. We detail how D-PLACE helps to overcome four common barriers to understanding these forces: i) location of relevant cultural data, (ii) linking data from distinct sources using diverse ethnonyms, (iii) variable time and place foci for data, and (iv) spatial and historical dependencies among cultural groups that present challenges for analysis. D-PLACE facilitates the visualisation of relationships among cultural groups and between people and their environments, with results downloadable as tables, on a map, or on a linguistic tree. We also describe how D-PLACE can be used for exploratory, predictive, and evolutionary analyses of cultural diversity by a range of users, from members of the worldwide public interested in contrasting their own cultural practices with those of other societies, to researchers using large-scale computational phylogenetic analyses to study cultural evolution. In summary, we hope that D-PLACE will enable new lines of investigation into the major drivers of cultural change and global patterns of cultural diversity.
Health effects of occupational exposure to acrylamide using hemoglobin adducts as biomarkers of internal dose.

OBJECTIVES This study assessed the health effects of occupational acrylamide exposure using hemoglobin (Hb) adducts as biomarkers of internal dose. METHODS Two hundred and ten tunnel workers exposed for about 2 months to a chemical-grouting agent containing acrylamide and N-methylolacrylamide underwent a health examination. Blood samples were drawn for the analysis of Hb adducts of acrylamide. Fifty workers claiming recently developed or deteriorated symptoms of the peripheral nervous system (PNS) were referred to a neurophysiological examination. Workers with Hb-adduct levels exceeding 0.3 nmol/g globin attended follow-up examinations 6, 12, and 18 months after exposure cessation. RESULTS Forty-seven workers had Hb-adduct levels within the normal background range (0.02-0.07 nmol/g globin), while the remaining 163 had increased levels up to a maximum of 17.7 nmol/g globin. Clear-cut dose-response associations were found between the Hb-adduct levels and PNS symptoms. Thirty-nine percent of those with Hb-adduct levels exceeding 1 nmol/g globin experienced tingling or numbness in their hands or feet. A no-observed adverse effect level of 0.51 nmol/g globin was estimated for numbness or tingling in the feet or legs. For 23 workers there was strong evidence of PNS impairment due to occupational exposure to acrylamide. All but two had recovered 18 months after the cessation of exposure. CONCLUSIONS Occupational exposure to a grouting agent containing acrylamide resulted in PNS symptoms and signs. The use of Hb adducts of acrylamide as a biomarker of internal dose revealed strong dose-response associations. The PNS symptoms were, however, generally mild, and in almost all cases they were reversible.
Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief

Frozen sadness - what we have when we cannot really know what we have lost. This is what Pauline Boss illuminates, and helps to ease. It could be a loved one still alive yet lost to a person: a soldier son missing in action, or a constantly travelling spouse. In another kind of ambiguous loss, the loved one may be physically present but beyond a person's reach - such as someone with Alzheimer's disease.
Partial extensively drug resistance (XDR) tuberculosis in children.

Emergence of resistance to two most potent first line anti-TB drugs i.e. isoniazid and rifampicin (multidrug resistant TB MDR TB) is well known, but, the second line drugs used to treat MDR-TB are also showing resistance to the same strain of Mycobacteria (extensively drug resistance TB, XDR-TB). We report 3 children with partial XDR TB. Two responded to treatment while one was lost to follow-up.
Effect of Macromolecular Crowding on the Electrostatic Interaction of Barnase-Barstar: Initial Steps Using an Explicit Solvent Model

Proteins that bind intracellularly are surrounded by other macromolecules. Macromolecular crowding has been shown to impact protein folding and binding, but its effects on the electrostatics of protein binding have not been thoroughly studied. Two ways crowding can affect binding are via loss of water mobility and water depletion. Crowding causes loss of water mobility because more water molecules will be organized into solvation shells around the crowding agents, instead of being in bulk form; waters in solvation shells are less mobile. Water is depleted because the crowders occupy volume that would have held water. We are interested in the effect of loss of water mobility, but it is difficult to separate the effects of loss of water mobility and water depletion. We had previously used implicit solvent to study the effect of water depletion due to crowding. An explicit solvent model will show both loss of water mobility and water depletion effects. In combination with the results from the implicit solvent study, we can then assess the effect of loss of water mobility. In this study, we used free energy perturbation and component analysis in explicit water to begin to examine the binding of barnase and barstar. Specifically, we evaluated the contribution of the charge of a particular residue, barstar’s aspartic acid 35, to the binding free energy of the barnase-barstar complex. In the future, we will introduce crowders into the system, so we may see how the contribution of the charge of a residue to the binding free energy changes in the presence of crowders.
AN ACOUSTICAL STUDY OF LONG DOMAIN / r / AND / l / COARTICULATION

Experimental and impressionistic observations show that syllable-initial liquids in Southern British English are p roduced with contrasting secondary articulations that seem to exhi bit far-spreading coarticulation on neighbouring syllables. This study aimed to elucidate some of the factors that affect thes e coarticulatory “resonance effects” due to /r/ vs. /l/. The f ocus was the range and the structural conditions that affect the s pr ad of anticipatory resonance effects. The main variable of int erest was metrical structure, with a secondary focus on segment ty pe. Formant frequencies were measured in selected words in 994 sentences spoken by one male. Anticipatory resonance effec ts can affect as many as five syllables before the conditioning / r/ or /l/ and can pass through up to two stressed syllables. The dat a are interpreted in terms of two components, a small, long-ra e effect, and a larger, more local one.
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Communications in Soil Science and Plant Analysis Upland Rice and Allelopathy

Upland rice ( Oryza sativa L.) is mainly grown in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Yield potential of upland rice is quite low and invariably this crop is subjected to many environmental stresses. Further, when upland rice is grown in monoculture for more than two to three years on the same land, allelopathy or autotoxicity is frequently reported. Allelopathy involves complex plant and plant chemical interactions. The level of phytotoxicity of allelochemicals is inﬂuenced by abiotic and biotic soil factors. Adopting suitable management strategies in crop rotation can reduce or eliminate allelochemicals phytotoxicity. Rice yields can be improved by growing rice in rotation with other crop species. Allelochemicals of rice can be used for control of weeds in this crop as well as other crops that are grown in rotation with rice. This review highlights that present knowledge of allelopathy in upland rice is inadequate and fragmentary, and therefore, more controlled and ﬁeld studies are needed to understand and to reduce the detrimental effects of allelopathy in the upland rice production.
Center of Excellence in Research Reporting in Neurosurgery - Diagnostic Ontology

Motivation: Evidence-based medicine (EBM), in the field of neurosurgery, relies on diagnostic studies since Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) are uncommon. However, diagnostic study reporting is less standardized which increases the difficulty in reliably aggregating results. Although there have been several initiatives to standardize reporting, they have shown to be sub-optimal. Additionally, there is no central repository for storing and retrieving related articles. Results: In our approach we formulate a computational diagnostic ontology containing 91 elements, including classes and sub-classes, which are required to conduct Systematic Reviews - Meta Analysis (SR-MA) for diagnostic studies, which will assist in standardized reporting of diagnostic articles. SR-MA are studies that aggregate several studies to come to one conclusion for a particular research question. We also report high percentage of agreement among five observers as a result of the interobserver agreement test that we conducted among them to annotate 13 articles using the diagnostic ontology. Moreover, we extend our existing repository CERR-N to include diagnostic studies. Availability: The ontology is available for download as an.owl file at: http://bioportal.bioontology. org/ontologies/3013.
A study of type I polar stratospheric cloud formation

Mechanisms for the formation of Type I (nitric acid-based) polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) are discussed. If the pre-existing sulfate aerosols are liquid prior to PSC formation, then nitric acid particles (Type Ib) form by HNO 3 dissolution in aqueous H2SO, solution droplets. This process does not require a nucleation step for the formation of HNO3 aerosols, so most pre-existing aerosols grow to become relatively small HNO3-containing particles. At significantly lower temperatures, the resulting supercooled solutions (Type Ib) may freeze to form HNO3 ice particles (Type Ia). If the pre- existing sUlfate aerosols are initially solid before PSC formation, then HNO 3 vapor can be deposited directly on the frozen Sulfate particles. However, because an energy barrier to the condensation exists a nucleation mechanism is involved. Here, we suggest a unique nucleation mechanism that involves formation of HNOIH20 solutions on the sulfate ice particles. These nucleation processes may be highly selective, resulting in the formation of relatively small number of large particles.
Recurrent Latent Variable Networks for Session-Based Recommendation

In this work, we attempt to ameliorate the impact of data sparsity in the context of session-based recommendation. Specifically, we seek to devise a machine learning mechanism capable of extracting subtle and complex underlying temporal dynamics in the observed session data, so as to inform the recommendation algorithm. To this end, we improve upon systems that utilize deep learning techniques with recurrently connected units; we do so by adopting concepts from the field of Bayesian statistics, namely variational inference. Our proposed approach consists in treating the network recurrent units as stochastic latent variables with a prior distribution imposed over them. On this basis, we proceed to infer corresponding posteriors; these can be used for prediction and recommendation generation, in a way that accounts for the uncertainty in the available sparse training data. To allow for our approach to easily scale to large real-world datasets, we perform inference under an approximate amortized variational inference (AVI) setup, whereby the learned posteriors are parameterized via (conventional) neural networks. We perform an extensive experimental evaluation of our approach using challenging benchmark datasets, and illustrate its superiority over existing state-of-the-art techniques.
In vitro anti-proliferative effects of the willow bark extract STW 33-I

Abstract The well-known anti-inflammatory and analgesic effects of the phytopharmacon willow bark extract have been attributed to the content of salicin; however, pharmacological studies have shown that salicin alone, despite being involved in its therapeutic action, cannot fully explain its clinical efficacy. In addition to reducing inflammation and pain, acetylsalicylic acid (ASA, CAS 50-78-2), like other synthetic non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), has been shown to exert anti-proliferative effects and to induce apoptosis in a variety of cell lines, e. g. colon, stomach, and prostate cancer cells. To investigate the mechanism of action and possible anti-proliferative and pro-apoptotic effects of willow bark, a water extract (STW 33-1) and a polyphenol rich fraction (fraction E) have been tested by using the colon-carcinoma cell line HT-29. Both, STW 33-1 and its fraction E showed significant anti-proliferative and pro-apoptotic effects on HT-29 cancer cells. Related to the salicin content of the willow bark extract, a higher dosage of ASA was needed. Furthermore, compared to ASA and to diclofenac (Diclo, CAS 15307-79-6), the COX-1 and COX-2 mRNA expressions were influenced differently by STW 33-1 and fraction E. ASA and Diclo inhibited both the COX-1 and COX-2 mRNA expressions, whereas STW 33-1 and its fraction E increased the COX-1 mRNA expression. In addition to the already well-known anti-inflammatory and analgesic effects, willow bark extract has been found to possess anti-proliferative and pro-apoptotic effects similar to NSAIDs. The different influence of willow bark on the COX-1 and COX-2 mRNA expressions in comparison to NSAIDs might be relevant, e. g. for prevention of undesirable side effects such as gastric erosions.
Short-term music-induced hearing loss after sound exposure to discotheque music: The effectiveness of a break in reducing temporary threshold shift

Abstract Objective: To investigate the effect of a break in music exposure on temporary threshold shifts. Design: A cross-over design where subjects are exposed to dance music for either two hours consecutively, or exposed to two hours of dance music with a one-hour break in between. Outcome measure was the change in hearing threshold, measured in 1-dB steps at different time points after ending the music. Study sample: Eighteen normal-hearing subjects participated in this study. Results: Changes in pure-tone threshold were observed in both conditions and were similar, regardless of the break. Threshold shifts could be averaged for 1000, 2000, and 4000 Hz. The shift immediately after the ending of the music was 1.7 dB for right ears, and 3.4 dB for left ears. The difference between left and right ears was significant. One hour after the exposure, right ears were recovered to baseline conditions whereas left ears showed a small but clinically irrelevant remaining shift of approximately 1 dB. Conclusions: The advice to use chill-out zones is still valid, because this helps to reduce the duration to the exposure. This study does not provide evidence that a rest period gives an additional reduction of temporary threshold shifts.
Ascorbate Biosynthesis during Early Fruit Development Is the Main Reason for Its Accumulation in Kiwi

Background Ascorbic acid (AsA) is a unique antioxidant as well as an enzyme cofactor. Although it has multiple roles in plants, it is unclear how its accumulation is controlled at the expression level, especially in sink tissues. Kiwifruit (Actinidia) is well-known for its high ascorbate content. Our objective was to determine whether AsA accumulates in the fruits primarily through biosynthesis or because it is imported from the foliage. Methodology/Principal Findings We systematically investigated AsA levels, biosynthetic capacity, and mRNA expression of genes involved in AsA biosynthesis in kiwi (A. deliciosa cv. Qinmei). Recycling and AsA localization were also monitored during fruit development and among different tissue types. Over time, the amount of AsA, with its capacity for higher biosynthesis and lower recycling, peaked at 30 days after anthesis (DAA), and then decreased markedly up to 60 DAA before declining more slowly. Expression of key genes showed similar patterns of change, except for L-galactono-1,4-lactone dehydrogenase and L-galactose-1-phosphate phosphatase (GPP). However, GPP had good correlation with the rate of AsA accumulation. The expression of these genes could be detected in phloem of stem as well as petiole of leaf and fruit. Additionally, fruit petioles had greater ascorbate amounts, although that was the site of lowest expression by most genes. Fruit microtubule tissues also had higher AsA. However, exogenous applications of AsA to those petioles did not lead to its transport into fruits, and distribution of ascorbate was cell-specific in the fruits, with more accumulation occurring in larger cells. Conclusions These results suggest that AsA biosynthesis in kiwi during early fruit development is the main reason for its accumulation in the fruits. We also postulate here that GPP is a good candidate for regulating AsA biosynthesis whereas GDP-L-galactose-1-phosphate phosphorylase is not.
Dependence of the time- and frequency-domain response of BCI injection probes on the common- mode characteristic impedance of the cable bundle

The common-mode characteristic impedance of a typical cable bundle has been suggested to be approximately 150 Ohms. However, standard test fixtures for BCI probes employ 50 Ohm coaxial ports. Here a representative injection probe (transformer) intended for bulk current injection applications is characterized experimentally in the frequency domain using a 2-port vector network analyzer and a standard (50 Ohm) test fixture as described in the IEC 61000-4-6 standard. The full 3-port scattering representation of the probe in the test fixture is then de-embedded and renormalized such that the coaxial ports of the test fixture are changed to 150 Ohms. The time-domain step response of the representative transformer is then computed from renormalized frequency-domain scattering matrix. It is seen that changing the impedance level from 50 Ohms to 150 Ohms significantly alters both the frequency and time domain performance of the transformer. Thus, the standard test fixture does not accurately predict the frequency- and time-domain performance of a typical BCI transformer. It is shown that the dependence of performance on port impedance can, to some extent, be anticipated by examining the equivalent network for the transformer.
Relevancy constraints revisited in ROC space

This paper presents relevancy constraints used in subgroup discovery and a novel interpretation of the concept of relevancy in the ROC space context. It provides definitions of feature relevancy and constraints for feature filtering, introduces relevancy based mechanisms for handling of missing values in the examples, and discusses the concept of relevancy as an approach that can help to avoid overfitting. It is argued that logical combinations of features (rules) can be also treated as features and that the same relevancy relations and constraints can be applied for them as well. The paper includes an experimental evaluation of the discussed concepts on a descriptive induction task of gene expression
Emotion Decoding and Incidental Processing Fluency as Antecedents of Attitude Certainty

Previous research demonstrates that attitude certainty influences the degree to which an attitude changes in response to persuasive appeals. In the current research, decoding emotions from facial expressions and incidental processing fluency, during attitude formation, are examined as antecedents of both attitude certainty and attitude change. In Experiment 1, participants who decoded anger or happiness during attitude formation expressed their greater attitude certainty, and showed more resistance to persuasion than participants who decoded sadness. By manipulating the emotion decoded, the diagnosticity of processing fluency experienced during emotion decoding, and the gaze direction of the social targets, Experiment 2 suggests that the link between emotion decoding and attitude certainty results from incidental processing fluency. Experiment 3 demonstrated that fluency in processing irrelevant stimuli influences attitude certainty, which in turn influences resistance to persuasion. Implications for appraisal-based accounts of attitude formation and attitude change are discussed.
Did the Community Reinvestment Act (Cra) Lead to Risky Lending?

Yes, it did. We use exogenous variation in banks' incentives to conform to the standards of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) around regulatory exam dates to trace out the effect of the CRA on lending activity. Our empirical strategy compares lending behavior of banks undergoing CRA exams within a given census tract in a given month to the behavior of banks operating in the same census tract-month that do not face these exams. We find that adherence to the act led to riskier lending by banks: in the six quarters surrounding the CRA exams lending is elevated on average by about 5 percent every quarter and loans in these quarters default by about 15 percent more often. These patterns are accentuated in CRA-eligible census tracts and are concentrated among large banks. The effects are strongest during the time period when the market for private securitization was booming.