Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Climate Variability and Its Effects on Gender and Coping Strategies in Baringo County, Kenya

Climate variability has often been described as one of the most pressing environmental challenges. Our lifestyles, economy, health, income, livelihood and our social well-being are all affected by climate. This paper therefore, assessed climate variability, its effect of gender and coping strategies they adopt in Baringo County, Kenya. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used in analyzing the data obtained for the study. Findings show that there is consisent decrease in rainfall and increase in temperature in recent times. Male gender dominates household decisions and roles such as land preparation, livestock keeping/feeding, pesticide application and fence construction in Baringo County, Kenya while the female gender dominates household roles such as water supply, domestic home chores and more of agricultural activities. Livestock migration was the major traditional coping strategy adopted in Baringo County. 56.8% of the respondents shows that cutting grasses for livestock was the major short term coping strategy adopted while Rainfall harvesting and storage (5.92%) was the least adopted in the studied area. Long term coping strategy to climate variability mostly adopted by the rural populace in is livestock migration (48.52%), it was also observed here that the least long term coping strategy adopted is finding alternative job as reputed by 4.44% of the respondents. Special intervention projects such as rain water harvesting techniques, drought resistant crops, short term crops etc, should be provided to rural populace/dwellers in Baringo County, and other parts of Kenya experiencing severe variability in climate, resulting to drought.
Differences in gray matter volume corresponding to delusion and hallucination in patients with schizophrenia compared with patients who have bipolar disorder

Background Although schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (BD) are classified as different disease entities, they share critical pathognomonic symptoms in terms of hallucination and delusion. Because the characteristics of clinical symptoms are not sufficient to differentiate schizophrenia from BD, several studies have applied brain imaging methods to provide biological evidence of differences. We compared gray matter (GM) volume differences in schizophrenia and BD patients and examined volumetric differences associated with hallucination and delusion in these two groups. Methods Ninety-three schizophrenia patients and 75 BD patients who were followed for at least 3 years in an outpatient department were recruited for this study. Magnetic resonance data from 71 schizophrenia patients and 44 BD patients were obtained using a 3.0 T scanner. Volumetric differences were analyzed using Matlab 8.0. 0 and SPM8 software. Results The results showed that delusion symptoms were negatively correlated with GM volume within both frontal and both temporal cortices in the schizophrenia group and were negatively correlated with GM volume within the bilateral frontal cortices in the BD group. Hallucination symptoms were negatively correlated with GM volume within the bilateral frontal, bilateral temporal, and left parietal cortices in the schizophrenia group and were negatively correlated with GM volume within the bilateral frontal, right parietal, occipital, and insular cortices in the BD group. Conclusion Delusions in schizophrenia were correlated with GM volume in multiple brain regions, including the frontal, temporal, and parietal cortices, compared to those in patients with BD. Hallucination was associated with temporal lobe GM volume in patients with schizophrenia and with insular cortex GM volume in patients with BD.
Treehugger or petrolhead?: identifying bias by comparing online news articles with political speeches

The Web is a very democratic medium of communication allowing everyone to express his or her opinion about any type of topic. This multitude of voices makes it more and more important to detect bias and help Internet users understand the background of information sources. Political bias of Web sites, articles, or blog posts is hard to identify straightaway. Manual content analysis conducted by experts is the standard way in political and social science to detect this bias. In this paper we present an automated approach relying on methods from information retrieval and corpus statistics to identify biased vocabulary use. As an example, we analyzed 15 years of parliamentary speeches of the German Bundestag and we investigated whether there is bias towards a political party in major national online newspapers and magazines. The results show that bias exists with respect to vocabulary use and it coincides with human judgement.
Active Learning for Classification with Maximum Model Change

Most existing active learning studies focus on designing sample selection algorithms. However, several fundamental problems deserve investigation to provide deep insight into active learning. In this article, we conduct an in-depth investigation on active learning for classification from the perspective of model change. We derive a general active learning framework for classification called maximum model change (MMC), which aims at querying the influential examples. The model change is quantified as the difference between the model parameters before and after training with the expanded training set. Inspired by the stochastic gradient update rule, the gradient of the loss with respect to a given candidate example is adopted to approximate the model change. This framework is applied to two popular classifiers: support vector machines and logistic regression. We analyze the convergence property of MMC and theoretically justify it. We explore the connection between MMC and uncertainty-based sampling to provide a uniform view. In addition, we discuss its potential usability to other learning models and show its applicability in a wide range of applications. We validate the MMC strategy on two kinds of benchmark datasets, the UCI repository and ImageNet, and show that it outperforms many state-of-the-art methods.
Analysis of paradoxical observations on the association between leptin and insulin resistance

Obesity is commonly associated with the development of insulin resistance and diabetes in humans and rodents. Insulin resistance and diabetes are observed in lipoatrophic individuals or rodent models of lipoatrophy. Here we focus on the role of leptin, the product of the obesity (ob) gene, in the development of insulin resistance and diabetes associated with obesity and lipoatrophy. We review the reported effects of leptin on whole body glucose metabolism and compare and contrast these with direct effects on skeletal muscle, fat and liver. This summary of paradoxical observations on the effects of leptin on glucose homeostasis and the ability of leptin to induce or improve insulin resistance suggests that a complex interplay exists between direct peripheral and centrally mediated effects of the hormone. Evidence suggesting that leptin acts as a mediator of insulin release from pancreatic β cells is reviewed. Finally, intracellular signaling mechanisms stimulated by both leptin and insulin are discussed, with potential points of cross‐talk suggested. —Ceddia, R. B. , Koistinen, H. A. , Zierath, J. R. , Sweeney, G. Analysis of paradoxical observations on the association between leptin and insulin resistance. FASEB J. 16, 1163–1176 (2002)
Electrophysiological Localization of Eyeblink-Related Microzones in Rabbit Cerebellar Cortex

The classically conditioned eyeblink response in the rabbit is one of the best-characterized behavioral models of associative learning. It is cerebellum dependent, with many studies indicating that the hemispheral part of Larsell's cerebellar cortical lobule VI (HVI) is critical for the acquisition and performance of learned responses. However, there remain uncertainties about the distribution of the critical regions within and around HVI. In this learning, the unconditional stimulus is thought to be carried by periocular-activated climbing fibers. Here, we have used a microelectrode array to perform systematic, high-resolution, electrophysiological mapping of lobule HVI and surrounding folia in rabbits, to identify regions with periocular-evoked climbing fiber activity. Climbing fiber local field potentials and single-unit action potentials were recorded, and electrode locations were reconstructed from histological examination of brain sections. Much of the sampled cerebellar cortex, including large parts of lobule HVI, was unresponsive to periocular input. However, short-latency ipsilateral periocular-evoked climbing fiber responses were reliably found within a region in the ventral part of the medial wall of lobule HVI, extending to the base of the primary fissure. Small infusions of the AMPA/kainate receptor antagonist CNQX into this electrophysiologically defined region in awake rabbits diminished or abolished conditioned responses. The known parasagittal zonation of the cerebellum, supported by zebrin immunohistochemistry, indicates that these areas have connections consistent with an essential role in eyeblink conditioning. These small eyeblink-related areas provide cerebellar cortical targets for analysis of eyeblink conditioning at a neuronal level but need to be localized with electrophysiological identification in individual animals.
Probing the formation of intermediate- to high-mass stars in protoclusters - A detailed millimeter study of the NGC 2264 clumps

We present the results of dust continuum and molecular line observations of two massive cluster-forming clumps, NGC 2264-C and NGC 2264-D, including extensive mapping performed with the MAMBO bolometer array and the HERA heterodyne array on the IRAM 30 m telescope. Both NGC 2264 clumps are located in the Mon OB1 giant molecular cloud complex, adjacent to one another. Twelve and fifteen compact millimeter continuum sources (i.e. MMSs) were identified in clumps C and D, respectively. These MMSs have larger sizes and masses than the millimeter continuum condensations detected in well-known nearby protoclusters such as $\rho$ Ophiuchi. The MMSs of NGC 2264 are closer in size to the DCO+ "cores" of $\rho$ Oph, although they are somewhat denser and exhibit broader linewidths. Most of the MMSs of NGC 2264-C harbor candidate Class 0 protostars associated with shocked molecular hydrogen jets. Evidence of widespread infall motions was found in, e.g., HCO+(3-2) or CS(3-2) in both NGC 2264-C and NGC 2264-D. A sharp velocity discontinuity ~2 km s-1 in amplitude was observed in N2H+(1-0) and H13CO+(1-0) in the central, innermost part of NGC 2264-C, which we interpreted as the signature of a strong dynamical interaction between two MMSs and their possible merging with the central MMS C-MM3. Radiative transfer modelling supports the idea that NGC 2264-C is a highly unstable prolate clump in the process of collapsing along its long axis on a near free-fall dynamical timescale ~ $1.7 \times 10 ^5$ yr. Our model fit of this large-scale collapse suggests a maximum mass inflow rate ~ $3\times 10^{-3}~M_{\odot}$ yr-1 toward the central protostellar object C-MM3. In NGC 2264-D, we estimated a mass infall rate $\dot{M}_{\rm DMM1} \sim 1.1 \times 10 ^{-4}~M_{\odot}$ yr-1 toward the rotating Class 0 object D-MM1, also based on radiative transfer modelling of the observations. Such infall rates are sufficiently high to overcome radiation pressure and allow the formation of ~ $20~M_{\odot}$ stars by accretion in ~ $1.7 \times 10 ^5$ yr, i.e., a time that is similar to the global dynamical timescale of the central part of NGC 2264-C. We conclude that we are likely witnessing the formation of a high-mass ($\ga$ $10~M_{\odot}$) protostar in the central part of NGC 2264-C. Our results suggest a picture of massive star formation intermediate between the scenario of stellar mergers of Bonnell et al. (1998) and the massive turbulent core model of McKee & Tan (2003), whereby a turbulent, massive ultra-dense core is formed by the gravitational merger of two or more Class 0 protostellar cores at the center of a collapsing protocluster.
Influence of surgical margins on overall survival after resection of intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma

Background:Surgical resection is shown to present the best chance of cure in the treatment of intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC). However, the appropriate length of the negative margin remains unclear. The aim of the present meta-analysis was to investigate whether a clear margin of 10 mm or more (≥10 mm) conferred any survival benefit over a margin of less than 10 mm (<10 mm) in patients with resected ICC. Methods:The meta-analysis was conducted in adherence with the PRISMA guidelines. PubMed, Web of Science, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Library were systematically searched to identify eligible studies published in English from the initiation of the databases to February 2016. Overall survival rates were pooled by using the hazard ratio and the corresponding 95% confidence interval (CI). Random-effect models were utilized because of between-study heterogeneity. Results:Six studies (eight cohorts) reporting on 712 patients were analyzed: 269 (37.80%) were in the 10 mm or more negative margin group, and 443 (62.20%) were in the less than 10 mm negative margin group. The pooled hazard ratio for the less than 10 mm group was found to be 1.59 (95% CI: 1.09–2.32) when this group was compared with the 10 mm or more group (reference), with moderate between-study heterogeneity (I2 = 45.30%, P = 0.07). Commensurate results were identified by sensitivity analysis. Conclusion:The result of this meta-analysis suggests a long-term survival (overall survival) advantage for negative margins of 10 mm or more in comparison with negative margins less than 10 mm for patients undergoing surgical resection of ICC.
Indoxyl Sulfate Down-Regulates SLCO4C1 Transporter through Up-Regulation of GATA3

The accumulated uremic toxins inhibit the expression of various renal transporters and this inhibition may further reduce renal function and subsequently cause the accumulation of uremic toxins. However, the precise mechanism of the nephrotoxicity of uremic toxins on renal transport has been poorly understood. Here we report that indoxyl sulfate, one of the potent uremic toxins, directly suppresses the renal-specific organic anion transporter SLCO4C1 expression through a transcription factor GATA3. The promoter region of SLCO4C1 gene has several GATA motifs, and indoxyl sulfate up-regulated GATA3 mRNA and subsequently down-regulated SLCO4C1 mRNA. Overexpression of GATA3 significantly reduced SLCO4C1 expression, and silencing of GATA3 increased SLCO4C1 expression vice versa. Administration of indoxyl sulfate in rats reduced renal expression of slco4c1 and under this condition, plasma level of guanidinosuccinate, one of the preferable substrates of slco4c1, was significantly increased without changing plasma creatinine. Furthermore, in 5/6 nephrectomized rats, treatment with oral adsorbent AST-120 significantly decreased plasma indoxyl sulfate level and conversely increased the expression of slco4c1, following the reduction of plasma level of guanidinosuccinate. These data suggest that the removal of indoxyl sulfate and blocking its signal pathway may help to restore the SLCO4C1-mediated renal excretion of uremic toxins in CKD.
Primed Immune Responses Triggered by Ingested Bacteria Lead to Systemic Infection Tolerance in Silkworms

In the present study, we examined whether microorganisms collaterally ingested by insects with their food activate the innate immune system to confer systemic resistance against subsequent bacterial invasion. Silkworms orally administered heat-killed Pseudomonas aeruginosa cells showed resistance against intra-hemolymph infection by P. aeruginosa. Oral administration of peptidoglycans, cell wall components of P. aeruginosa, conferred protective effects against P. aeruginosa infection, whereas oral administration of lipopolysaccharides, bacterial surface components, did not. In silkworms orally administered heat-killed P. aeruginosa cells, P. aeruginosa growth was inhibited in the hemolymph, and mRNA amounts of the antimicrobial peptides cecropin A and moricin were increased in the hemocytes and fat body. Furthermore, the amount of paralytic peptide, an insect cytokine that activates innate immune reactions, was increased in the hemolymph of silkworms orally administered heat-killed P. aeruginosa cells. These findings suggest that insects sense bacteria present in their food by peptidoglycan recognition, which activates systemic immune reactions to defend the insects against a second round of infection.
Flow characterization for in-stream energy sites

Flow characterization for in-stream energy sites Maricarmen Guerra Paris Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Associate Professor Jim Thomson Civil and Environmental Engineering A successful in-stream energy project requires an accurate description of the flow characteristics. Numerical models are commonly used to detect feasible locations for energy extraction, but such models have limitations in resolution and accuracy, thus field measurements are crucial for their calibration and validation. In combination with numerical models, highresolution observations of flow velocities in both time and space are needed to specify the location of turbines, estimate turbine design loads, and to evaluate their interaction with the environment. Promising sites for in-stream energy extraction have strong currents (greater than 1 ms−1), and field measurements in such conditions are challenging. Hence, most field measurements are sparse and of limited duration. Efficient measurement techniques that can accurately map turbulent flows in space for long periods of time are critical as the in-stream energy industry reaches a commercial stage. In this thesis, traditional and novel methods are applied to the characterization of turbulent flows at several locations already selected for in-stream energy extraction. In addition, a new technique is developed to capture the wake of a full-scale hydrokinetic turbine under steady state conditions. First, new five-beam acoustic current Doppler profilers (ADCPs) are demonstrated to measure turbulence parameters through the water column at two locations within Puget Sound, WA. The low Doppler noise and high-sampling frequency of these new profilers allow for the observation of the turbulent inertial subrange (typically obscured in previous generations of ADCPs), and the addition of the 5 beam allows for a direct estimation of the Reynolds stresses from along-beam velocity fluctuations. These results are then used to assess a turbulent kinetic energy budget, in which depth profiles of the turbulent kinetic energy dissipation and production rates are compared. Long-term measurements of tidal currents across Admiralty Inlet, WA, are performed using ADCPs mounted onboard ferries. This cost-effective method results in a new map of tidal currents harmonics across and through the depth of the inlet. Obtained results agree well with those from stationary measurements, significantly expanding the available data here. Applications to residual flows are explored. Finally, a new method is developed for detailed flow field mapping prior to and during the operation of a full-scale hydrokinetic turbine. A drifting five-beam ADCP, the Nortek Signature 1000, is used to evaluate the spatial extent of the turbine’s wake and its evolution in terms of mean flow velocities and turbulence parameters. These results are valuable for numerical modelers, turbine designers, and stakeholders, as they quantify the environmental effects of in-stream energy extraction under real conditions.
INDIRECT PULP TREATMENT IN A PERMANENT MOLAR: CASE REPORT OF 4-YEAR FOLLOW-UP

This case report describes the Indirect Pulp Treatment (IPT) of deep caries lesion in a permanent molar. A 16-year-old male patient reported discomfort associated with thermal stimulation on the permanent mandibular left first molar. The radiographs revealed a deep distal caries lesion, very close to the pulp, absence of radiolucencies in the periapical region, and absence of periodontal space thickening. Pulp sensitivity was confirmed by thermal pulp vitality tests. Based on the main complaint and the clinical and radiographic examinations, the treatment plan was established to preserve pulp vitality. Clinical procedures consisted of removing the infected dentin and lining the caries-affected dentin with calcium hydroxide paste. The tooth was provisionally sealed for approximately 60 days. After this period, tooth vitality was confirmed, the remaining carious dentin was removed, and the tooth was restored. At 4-year follow-up, no clinical or radiographic pathological findings were found.
Alternatively spliced mRNAs code for different polypeptide chains of the chicken neural cell adhesion molecule (N-CAM)

Rabbit polyclonal antibodies directed against the chicken neural cell adhesion molecule (N-CAM) were used to isolate four overlapping cDNA clones from a chicken cDNA expression library in bacteriophage gamma gt11. These clones collectively accounted for 3.8 kilobases of N-CAM mRNA sequence and hybridized specifically to two 6-7-kilobase brain polyadenylated RNA species that co-migrated with previously identified N-CAM mRNAs. DNA fragments derived from an internal region of the cloned cDNA sequences hybridized to the larger but not to the smaller N- CAM mRNA species, while fragments on either side of this region hybridized to both mRNAs. A cDNA fragment that recognized only the larger mRNA was subcloned into gamma gt11, and the expressed fusion protein was used to affinity-purify rabbit polyclonal antibodies; the antibodies recognized only the larger of the two structurally related N- CAM polypeptides. In contrast, when several cDNA clones that recognized both mRNAs were used to purify antibodies, the antibodies recognized both polypeptides. The results, in conjunction with other data indicating that there is one gene specifying N-CAM, suggest that different N-CAM polypeptides are synthesized from multiple N-CAM messages generated by alternative splicing of transcripts from a single N-CAM gene.
Grouping and partner selection in cooperative wireless networks

Various results to date have demonstrated the advantages of one or several relay nodes assisting transmissions in a wireless network. In many practical scenarios, not all nodes in the network are simultaneously involved in every transmission; therefore, protocols are needed to form groups or subsets of nodes for the purposes of cooperation. We consider this problem in the context of regenerative nodes and non-altruistic cooperation (all nodes have data of their own to transmit). For a network-wide diversity advantage, the protocol must provide each transmitting node with enough "partners" that can decode its message with high-enough probability. Assuming that the nodes cannot communicate their control decisions (distributed scenario), and that each node chooses to help n other nodes, we point out a simple, static selection strategy that guarantees diversity n+1 for all transmissions. We then consider centralized control strategies and study the additional gains that arise from a central control, under various amounts of information being available to the central controller.