Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Detecting tropical forest biomass dynamics from repeated airborne lidar measurements

Reducing uncertainty of terrestrial carbon cycle depends strongly on the accurate estimation of changes of global forest carbon stock. However, this is a challenging problem from either ground surveys or remote sensing techniques in tropical forests. Here, we examine the feasibility of estimating changes of tropical forest biomass from two airborne lidar measurements of forest height acquired about 10 yr apart over Barro Colorado Island (BCI), Panama. We used the forest inventory data from the 50 ha Center for Tropical Forest Science (CTFS) plot collected every 5 yr during the study period to calibrate the estimation. We compared two approaches for detecting changes in forest aboveground biomass (AGB): (1) relating changes in lidar height metrics from two sensors directly to changes in ground-estimated biomass; and (2) estimating biomass from each lidar sensor and then computing changes in biomass from the difference of two biomass estimates, using two models, namely one model based on five relative height metrics and the other based only on mean canopy height (MCH). We performed the analysis at different spatial scales from 0.04 ha to 10 ha. Method (1) had large uncertainty in directly detecting biomass changes at scales smaller than 10 ha, but provided detailed information about changes of forest structure. The magnitude of error associated with both the mean biomass stock and mean biomass change declined with increasing spatial scales. Method (2) was accurate at the 1 ha scale to estimate AGB stocks ( R 2 = 0.7 and RMSE mean = 27.6 Mg ha −1 ). However, to predict biomass changes, errors became comparable to ground estimates only at a spatial scale of about 10 ha or more. Biomass changes were in the same direction at the spatial scale of 1 ha in 60 to 64% of the subplots, corresponding to p values of respectively 0.1 and 0.033. Large errors in estimating biomass changes from lidar data resulted from the uncertainty in detecting changes at 1 ha from ground census data, differences of approximately one year between the ground census and lidar measurements, and differences in sensor characteristics. Our results indicate that the 50 ha BCI plot lost a significant amount of biomass (−0.8 Mg ha −1 yr −1 ± 2.2(SD)) over the past decade (2000–2010). Over the entire island and during the same period, mean AGB change was 0.2 ± 2.4 Mg ha −1 yr −1 with old growth forests losing −0.7 Mg ha −1 yr −1 ± 2.2 (SD), and secondary forests gaining +1.8 Mg ha yr −1 ± 3.4 (SD) biomass. Our analysis suggests that repeated lidar surveys, despite taking measurement with different sensors, can estimate biomass changes in old-growth tropical forests at landscape scales (>10 ha).
A critical period for experience-dependent synaptic plasticity in rat barrel cortex

Recordings were made from neurons in layers II, III, and IV of rat barrel cortex. The animals were raised either from the day of birth (P0) or from P2, P4, or P7 with just the D1 vibrissa protruding on one side of the face and the contralateral side intact. Follicles were not ablated, but vibrissae were carefully removed by applying steady tension to the base of each vibrissa. Deprivation was continued until the day of recording (P30-P90), though in most cases vibrissae were allowed to regrow for 4–7 d prior to recording. The area of cortex driven by stimulating the spared D1 vibrissa was found to be enlarged in uni-vibrissae animals, but the characteristic anatomical map of the barrel field, defined by cytochrome oxidase staining, retained its normal form. In animals deprived from P0, layer IV cells outside the D1 barrel responded with short latencies (5–10 msec) to D1 stimulation, a condition never observed in normally reared animals. Short-latency responses to stimulation of regrown, deprived vibrissae were still present in layer IV despite the deprivation. Plasticity decreased rapidly in layer IV between P0 and P4 as judged by two measures: first, the percentage of cells in neighboring barrels that showed short- latency responses to D1 fell from 30% in P0 deprived animals to 18% in P2 and 13% in P4 deprived animals. Second, the percentage of cells in barrels surrounding D1 with larger responses to D1 stimulation than to stimulation of their anatomically related vibrissa also fell from 37% in P0 to 23% in P2 and 12% in P4 deprived animals. The percentage of “shifted cells” showed no further reduction in P7 deprived animals (14%). Plasticity in layers II and III showed little sign of decreasing between P2 and P7 after an initial drop between P0 and P2. Therefore, deprivation started at P4 and P7 had a far greater effect on layers II and III than on layer IV. In animals deprived from P4 onward, not only were responses to D1 stimulation greater in barrels neighboring D1 (in layers II/III), but responses were smaller to principal vibrissa stimulation. This suggests increased lateral transmission from the “experienced” barrel and a failure of vertical transmission within the “deprived” barrels. These results show that changes in the balance of experience acquired through vibrissae can affect development of connectivity in the barrel cortex. The main locus of plasticity is cortical when deprivations are started at P4 and beyond. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Political Competition, Electoral Participation and Public Finance in 20th Century Latin America

Rational choice models predict that political competition and political participation have opposite effects on the size of government. We investigate these theories using data from a panel of 18 Latin American countries during the 20th century. Our research builds evidence for the prediction that reforms enhancing political competition tend to limit the size of government, while reforms increasing political participation tend to increase the size of government. Furthermore, we find that reforms which remove literacy requirements from franchise laws are associated with governmental expansion, while changes in women's suffrage laws have no impact on the size of government. Our findings demonstrate the empirical relevance of the distinction between political competition and participation.
Axonemal dynein light chain-1 locates at the microtubule-binding domain of the γ heavy chain

Dynein light chain 1 (LC1) of the outer arm dynein (OAD) complex associates with the microtubule-binding domain (MTBD) of γ heavy chain inside the complex. LC1 is considered to regulate the OAD activity and ciliary/flagellar motion by modulating γ MTBD's affinity to the B-tubule of the doublet microtubule in the axoneme.
Mechanization and Economic Fluctuation

This paper analyzes the technical change characterized by replacing labor with machinery in the production process. Generally, this type of technical change does not alter total factor productivity (TFP). Meanwhile, there exists a complementary relationship between the technical change and capital accumulation, so that an economy can attain long-run growth. Moreover, postulating discrete changes in technique, we show how an economy repeats two types of regimes by turns : one is a regime with technical change and the other is a regime without it. In the former regime, the new technique prevails gradually, and even a very weak externality can bring increasing returns. JEL classification : O30, O33, E32, O41
Extremal Expectations: A Paradigm for Fat-Tails

The 'rational expectations hypothesis (REH)' assumes that investors' subjective probability measures coincide with their objective probability measures and all new and relevant information is instantaneously absorbed into these objective distribution measure or prices. A related idea is the efficient market hypothesis which states that the prices of securities as observed reflect all publicly available information. The observed randomness of asset returns re-affirms this line of argument. However, the empirical nonnormality (or fat-tails) of the return distributions continues to be an unexplained anomaly. This paper is based on the rational expectations hypothesis but allows the objective probability measures to be modified to form subjective expectations. Investors remain rational but they revise their original expectations prior to trading based on their buy-sell decisions i.e. they attempt to maximize their expected utilities by adopting decision-biased extreme-valued posterior subjective probabilities based on their prior objective probability measures. A hypothesis called the 'extremal expectations hypothesis (EEH)' is proposed using extreme-valued theory concepts to support the empirical findings.
Grouping morphologically complex words in the mental lexicon: evidence from Russian verbs and nouns

Frequency is known to play a crucial role in lexical access. The notions primarily discussed in the literature are form frequency, (whole) word frequency and morpheme frequency, e.g. root frequency. In numerous studies (Alegre & Gordon, 1999; Baayen & al. 2007, a.m.o.), these characteristics were manipulated to find out whether various word forms are decomposed during lexical access or are stored and can be accessed as a whole. Similar issues arise when we turn from inflection to derivation, at least with semantically transparent derivates (Niswander-Klement & Pollatsek, 2006; Taft 2004, a.m.o.).
Engineering an Efficient Reachability Algorithm for Directed Graphs

I declare that I have developed and written the enclosed thesis completely by myself, and have not used sources or means without declaration in the text. A reachability query on a directed graph G asks if there exists a path from a node s to a node t. Answering such queries on large graph like datasets has become an issue in various fields of research and real world applications over the past 20 years. Therefore, answering reachbility queries fast and efficiently has become more and more relevant. Nowadays, most XML [2] files make extensive use of ID [11] and IDREF, which transforms their tree based layout into a more complex directed graph. Therefore, querying for reachability requires a reachability query on a directed graph instead of a simple ancestor query. Similarly, the RDF model [20] relies on directed graphs. Various queries on RDF graphs involve reachability, for example to infer the relationship between objects. Since the semantic web builds on RDF, this topic gains more attention as the semantic web becomes more popular. Network biology uses reachability queries to query for protein-protein interaction on databases like the DIP [33]. Furthermore, reachability plays a role in querying for metabolic pathways on metabolic networks [19] or interaction on gene regulatory networks [3]. Additionally , in the field of model checking [9] reachability queries are needed to check whether a state can reach another state. Similarly, source code analysis uses reachability queries for pointer and dataflow analysis [26, 25]. Since the answer of a reachability query on a directed graph, which contains a cycle covering all nodes is always true, we can reduce a directed graph to its condensation. This is done by calculating the strongly connected components and contracting them into a single node. The condensation is a directed acyclic graph (DAG) which is much smaller in most cases. The two naive algorithms to answer reachability queries for a DAG are either traversing the graph using a Depth-First Search (DFS) or a Breadth-First Search (BFS) or calculating the transitive closure of the DAG. Simply traversing the DAG results in a query time in O(m) whereas storing the transitive closure needs O(n 2) space and has a complexity of O(nm) to compute but can answer a query in O(1). Throughout the past years, numerous different approaches for graph reachability emerged. They often combine the previously mentioned two methods for reachability querying. Thus trading …
Identification of genes associated with the effect of inflammation on the neurotransmission of vascular smooth muscle cell

Vascular smooth muscle cell (VSMC) accumulation and hypertrophy are common in vascular disorders, and inflammation has a crucial role in the development of these diseases. To investigate the effect of inflammation on the neurotransmission of VSMC, bioinformatic analysis was performed, following next generation sequencing. Genes of lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-treated A7r5 cells and phosphate-buffered saline (PBS)-treated A7r5 cells were sequenced via next generation sequencing, and each assay was repeated three times. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were obtained using the NOISeq package in R. Subsequently, their potential functions were predicted by functional and pathway enrichment analyses using the Database for Annotation, Visualization and Integrated Discovery online tool. Interaction relationships of the proteins enriched in pathways associated with neurological diseases, the proteins which had interaction relationships with adrenoceptor α 1D (ADRA1D) or calcium voltage-gated channel subunit α1 S (CACNA1S), separately, were obtained from STRING, and protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks were constructed using Cytoscape software. A total of 2,038 DEGs, including 1,094 upregulated and 944 downregulated genes in the LPS treatment group were identified when compared with the control group. Enrichment analyses showed that NADH:Ubiquinone Oxidoreductase Core Subunit V2 (NDUFV2) was involved in several neurological diseases, including oxidative phosphorylation, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and Huntington's disease. Furthermore, NDUFV2 (degree, 20) had a higher degree in the PPI network for DEGs enriched in pathways associated with neurological diseases. In the PPI network for ADRA1D, CACNA1S and the DEGs interacting with them, prohibitin (PHB), oxytocin receptor (OXTR), collapsin response mediator protein 1 (CRMP1) and dihydropyrimidinase like 2 (DPYSL2) had interaction relationships with both ADRA1D and CACNA1S. To conclude, the present study revealed that NDUFV2, PHB, OXTR, CRMP1 and DPYSL2 may have key roles in the effect of inflammation on neurotransmission of VSMC.
Career Coupling: Career Making in the Elite World of Musicians and Scientists

This article analyzes the interaction between the careers of people working in artistic and intellectual worlds. Two ethnographic studies constitute the basis for the analysis of career building in connection with the careers of other actors. The concept of career coupling represents the process by which professional success is achieved through the forging of relationships between novice and elite actors. Career coupling in the social world of virtuoso musicians is compared to that of career coupling in the social world of elite scientists. It was found that both groups achieve status in a similar fashion by moving through a three-stage process: (1) matching; (2) active collaboration; and, (3) passive collaboration. It is argued that the analysis of career coupling developed here can also be transferred to other professional fields.
Secondary schools in disadvantaged areas: the impact of context on school processes and quality

This thesis explores how a disadvantaged context impacts on secondary school organisation and processes, and how this affects quality, as measured by OFSTED inspection. OFSTED data indicates a school quality problem in disadvantaged areas. This is often interpreted as arising from factors internal to the school. Policy interventions have concentrated on generic school improvement measures. However, it may be argued that if poor quality arises from context as well as from internal factors, policy responses should also be contextualised. Earlier work (Gewirtz 1998; Thrupp 1999) has begun to reveal process effects of disadvantaged contexts. This thesis builds on that work by exploring differences between disadvantaged areas, making an explicit link to quality measures, and using wider literatures from the fields of neighbourhood studies and organisation theory to develop an understanding of schools as contextualised organisations. The thesis begins with a quantitative analysis of context/quality relationships, but is principally based on four qualitative case studies. These consider context objectively, analysing socio-economic, market and institutional factors, and also explore staff’s subjective interpretations. Process implications for schools are examined, as are the schools’ responses, in terms of the design and delivery of schooling. These findings are discussed in relation to OFSTED quality measures. The research reveals that the quality problem in poor areas is partly an artefact of the inspection system but also reflects contextual effects. It also finds that there are significant differences between the contexts of schools in disadvantaged areas, and that these are not captured by typical context measures. The study concludes that changes are needed in school funding and inspection to recognise contextual effects, and that specific practices need to be developed to enable school improvement in poor areas. Relying on schools to apply generic ‘good practice’ within existing constraints will not be sufficient to eliminate the quality problem.
Equity in health and wellbeing: why does regional, rural and remote Australia matter?

The demographer Bernard Salt has stated that the unfolding story of our continent indicates that there are progressively becoming “two Australias” separated by a Great Divide stretching between Port Douglas in Far North Queensland and Eucla on the Great Australian Bight. To the east lies “heartland Australia”, a globally connected nation of 19 million people; to the west lies “frontier Australia”, a vast resource-rich state with only three million people (Salt, 2011). Key to this “frontier Australia” are our primary industries. Australia ranks tenth in the world as a major agricultural producer and exporter, and the mining industry contributes significantly to the economy of our country. Hence our regional, rural and remote (RRR) industries are at the core of the financial security of the nation. Given the overall reliance of Australia on the productivity of its regions, the health and wellbeing of those outside the metropolis is crucial to the overall prosperity of the nation. In stark contrast to the increasing wealth generated by these RRR-based industries, the health and wellbeing of our Indigenous population – primarily located in rural areas – has continued to deteriorate, during a time of rising prosperity for the country as a whole. There are large inequities in health service provision across Australia and enormous difficulty in recruiting and retaining health practitioners to rural, and particularly remote, areas. This article presents an overview of current population distribution and incidence of general and mental health problems in rural communities, and demonstrates why ‘RRR’ matters both to our country as a whole and to us as practising psychologists. There are unique and interesting opportunities for broad experience and service delivery innovation ‘in the bush’, often not feasible in metropolitan centres. Yet many of us remain limited and ‘metrocentric’ in our view of what constitutes worthwhile work. This needs to change if psychologists as a profession are to contribute to the overall health and wellbeing of our nation.
Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF) Bioavailability Regulates Angiogenesis and Intestinal Stem and Progenitor Cell Proliferation during Postnatal Small Intestinal Development

Background Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is a highly conserved, master regulatory molecule required for endothelial cell proliferation, organization, migration and branching morphogenesis. Podocoryne carnea and drosophila, which lack endothelial cells and a vascular system, express VEGF homologs, indicating potential roles beyond angiogenesis and vasculogenesis. The role of VEGF in the development and homeostasis of the postnatal small intestine is unknown. We hypothesized regulating VEGF bioavailability in the postnatal small intestine would exhibit effects beyond the vasculature and influence epithelial cell stem/progenitor populations. Methods VEGF mutant mice were created that overexpressed VEGF in the brush border of epithelium via the villin promotor following doxycycline treatment. To decrease VEGF bioavailability, sFlt-1 mutant mice were generated that overexpressed the soluble VEGF receptor sFlt-1 upon doxycycline administration in the intestinal epithelium. Mice were analyzed after 21 days of doxycycline administration. Results Increased VEGF expression was confirmed by RT-qPCR and ELISA in the intestine of the VEGF mutants compared to littermates. The VEGF mutant duodenum demonstrated increased angiogenesis and vascular leak as compared to littermate controls. The VEGF mutant duodenum revealed taller villi and increased Ki-67-positive cells in the transit-amplifying zone with reduced Lgr5 expression. The duodenum of sFlt-1 mutants revealed shorter villi and longer crypts with reduced proliferation in the transit-amplifying zone, reduced expression of Dll1, Bmp4 and VE-cadherin, and increased expression of Sox9 and EphB2. Conclusions Manipulating VEGF bioavailability leads to profound effects on not only the intestinal vasculature, but epithelial stem and progenitor cells in the intestinal crypt. Elucidation of the crosstalk between VEGF signaling in the vasculature, mesenchyme and epithelial stem/progenitor cell populations may direct future cell therapies for intestinal dysfunction or disease.
Virulent Type A Francisella tularensis actively suppresses cytokine responses in human monocytes

Background: Human monocyte inflammatory responses differ between virulent and attenuated Francisella infection. Results: A mixed infection model showed that the virulent F. tularensis Schu S4 can attenuate inflammatory cytokine responses to the less virulent F. novicida in human monocytes. Conclusion: F. tularensis dampens inflammatory response by an active process. Significance: This suppression may contribute to enhanced pathogenicity of F. tularensis. Francisella tularensis is a Gram-negative facultative bacterium that can cause the disease tularemia, even upon exposure to low numbers of bacteria. One critical characteristic of Francisella is its ability to dampen or subvert the host immune response. Previous work has shown that monocytes infected with highly virulent F. tularensis subsp. tularensis strain Schu S4 responded with a general pattern of quantitatively reduced pro-inflammatory signaling pathway genes and cytokine production in comparison to those infected with the less virulent related F. novicida. However, it has been unclear whether the virulent Schu S4 was merely evading or actively suppressing monocyte responses. By using mixed infection assays with F. tularensis and F. novicida, we show that F. tularensis actively suppresses monocyte pro-inflammatory responses. Additional experiments show that this suppression occurs in a dose-dependent manner and is dependent upon the viability of F. tularensis. Importantly, F. tularensis was able to suppress pro-inflammatory responses to earlier infections with F. novicida. These results lend support that F. tularensis actively dampens human monocyte responses and this likely contributes to its enhanced pathogenicity.