Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Norges Teknisk-naturvitenskapelige Universitet Prior for Flexibility Parameters: the Student's T Case

Extending a basic statistical model can be carried out by using a parametric family of distributions that contains the basic model as a particular case but has an extra parameter, which we denote by flexibility parameter, to control the amount of flexibility or deviation from the basic model. We propose a formal framework to construct prior distributions for the flexibility parameter that place the basic model in a central position within the flexible model, and allow the user to intuitively control the amount of flexibility around the basic model. We propose to assign a prior distribution to the divergence between the basic and the flexible model that encodes the centrality of the basic model within the flexible model. We apply our framework to relax a model based on Gaussian assumptions by extending it to a model based on the Student's t distribution. In this case the flexibility parameter is the degrees of freedom of the Student's t distribution. We show that our priors are robust with respect to its hyperparameters and give sensible results across many different scenarios. We also discuss disadvantages of using priors that do not place the basic model in a central position within the flexible model. Our framework to construct priors for the flexibility parameter is not restricted to the Student's t case and can be applied to a variety of models that can be seen as an extension of a basic model.
Efficient transmission of 'Candidatus phytoplasma prunorum' Is delayed by eight months due to a long latency in its host-alternating vector.

Understanding at which spatiotemporal scale a disease causes significant secondary spread has both theoretical and practical implications. We investigated this issue in the case of European stone fruit yellows (ESFY), a quarantine vector-borne phytoplasma disease of Prunus trees. Our work was focused on the processes underlying disease spread: the interplay between the life cycles of the pathogen ('Candidatus Phytoplasma prunorum') and of the vector (Cacopsylla pruni). We demonstrated experimentally that C. pruni has only one generation per year and we showed that, at least in southeastern France, C. pruni migrates between conifers in mountainous regions (where it overwinters) and Prunus spp. at lower altitude (where it breeds). In acquisition-inoculation experiments performed with C. pruni over its period of presence on Prunus spp. , both immature and mature C. pruni were hardly infectious (0.6%) despite effective phytoplasma acquisition and multiplication. We demonstrated that most immature vectors born on infected plants reach their maximum phytoplasma load (10(7) genomes per insect) only after migrating to conifers and that, after a life-long retention of the phytoplasma, their transmission efficiency was very high (60%) at the end of winter (when they migrate back to their Prunus host). Thus, most transmissions occur only after an effective latency of 8 months, following vector migrations and overwintering on conifers in mountainous regions. From this transmission cycle, we can infer that local secondary spread of ESFY in apricot orchards is marginal, and recommend that disease management strategies take more into account the processes occurring at a regional scale, including the role of wild Prunus spp. in ESFY epidemics.
Production of novel vinegar having antioxidant and anti-fatigue activities from Salicornia herbacea L.

BACKGROUND Salicornia herbacea L. is a halophyte that grows in salt marshes and contains significant amounts of salts and minerals. Because it is known as a folk medication to treat diseases, various processed products such as powder, globular type of powder, laver and extract have been developed. However, it is difficult to process as a drink because of its high salinity. In the present study, glasswort vinegar (GV) containing high amounts of organic acids and minerals was developed via two-step fermentation with unpolished rice substrates and investigated its antioxidant and anti-fatigue activities. RESULTS GV showed various free radical scavenging effects, reducing power, oxidized-LDL inhibition and superoxide dismutase-like activities. Compared with the control group (orally administered 7 g kg(-1) distilled water), the GV supplementation group showed increased running endurance and had higher glycogen accumulation in liver and muscles of rats exhausted by exercise. Furthermore, the GV-administered group demonstrated significantly elevated lactate and ATP metabolism, promoting enzyme activities such as muscle creatine kinase and lactate dehydrogenase, whereas serum fatigue biomarkers such as ammonia, lactate and inorganic acid were markedly decreased. CONCLUSION These results indicate that GV can be used as a functional food for the development of a dietary beverage to alleviate fatigue.
Tom70 Is Essential for PINK1 Import into Mitochondria

PTEN induced kinase 1 (PINK1) is a serine/threonine kinase in the outer membrane of mitochondria (OMM), and known as a responsible gene of Parkinson's disease (PD). The precursor of PINK1 is synthesized in the cytosol and then imported into the mitochondria via the translocase of the OMM (TOM) complex. However, a large part of PINK1 import mechanism remains unclear. In this study, we examined using cell-free system the mechanism by which PINK1 is targeted to and assembled into mitochondria. Surprisingly, the main component of the import channel, Tom40 was not necessary for PINK1 import. Furthermore, we revealed that the import receptor Tom70 is essential for PINK1 import. In addition, we observed that although PINK1 has predicted mitochondrial targeting signal, it was not processed by the mitochondrial processing peptidase. Thus, our results suggest that PINK1 is imported into mitochondria by a unique pathway that is independent of the TOM core complex but crucially depends on the import receptor Tom70.
ERP responses to person names as a measure of trait inference in person perception

Using event-related potentials (ERPs), this study examines how trait information inferred from behaviors is associated with person names. In linguistic discourses, person names were associated with descriptions of either positive or negative behaviors. In a subsequent explicit evaluation task, the previously described person names were presented in isolation, and the participants were asked to judge the emotional valence of these names. We found that the names associated with positive descriptions elicited a larger positivity in the ERP than the names associated with negative descriptions. The results indicate that the emotional valence of person names attached to person perception can be dynamically influenced by short descriptions of the target person, probably due to trait inference based on the provided behavioral descriptions.
Louseborne Relapsing Fever among East African Refugees, Italy, 2015

During June 9–September 30, 2015, five cases of louseborne relapsing fever were identified in Turin, Italy. All 5 cases were in young refugees from Somalia, 2 of whom had lived in Italy since 2011. Our report seems to confirm the possibility of local transmission of louse-borne relapsing fever.
Parallel implementation of the fluid particle model for simulating complex fluids in the mesoscale

Dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) and its generalization—the fluid particle model (FPM)—represent the ‘fluid particle’ approach for simulating fluid‐like behavior in the mesoscale. Unlike particles from the molecular dynamics (MD) method, the ‘fluid particle’ can be viewed as a ‘droplet’ consisting of liquid molecules. In the FPM, ‘fluid particles’ interact by both central and non‐central, short‐range forces with conservative, dissipative and Brownian character. In comparison to MD, the FPM method in three dimensions requires two to three times more memory load and a three times greater communication overhead. Computational load per step per particle is comparable to MD due to the shorter interaction range allowed between ‘fluid particles’ than between MD atoms. The classical linked‐cells technique and decomposing the computational box into strips allow for rapid modifications of the code and for implementing non‐cubic computational boxes. We show that the efficiency of the FPM code depends strongly on the number of particles simulated, the geometry of the box and the computer architecture. We give a few examples from long FPM simulations involving up to 8 million fluid particles and 32 processors. Results from FPM simulations in three dimensions of the phase separation in binary fluid and dispersion of the colloidal slab are presented. A scaling law for symmetric quench in phase separation has been properly reconstructed. We also show that the microstructure of dispersed fluid depends strongly on the contrast between the kinematic viscosities of this fluid phase and the bulk phase. This FPM code can be applied for simulating mesoscopic flow dynamics in capillary pipes or critical flow phenomena in narrow blood vessels. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Sexual dimorphism in tooth morphometrics: An evaluation of the parameters

Aims and Objectives: Sexual dimorphism refers to the variations in tooth size and shape between the sexes. The consistency of these variations is valuable in the identification of the sex of an individual in times of mass disaster when whole body parts get destroyed or are unavailable. There exist differences in the expression of these variables across races and regions. This study aims to tabulate and identify the variations in tooth measurements using standarized reference points in an attempt to establish parameters of sexual dimorphism. Materials and Methods: 100 individuals (50 of each sex) in the age group 19-23 years were assessed for standard morphometric parameters of the maxillary central incisor, canine, premolar and molar. Odontometric measurements of established parameters were recorded from impression casts of the maxillary jaws. The mesiodistal width (MDW), the bucco-ligual width (BLW), the crown length (CL) and the cervical angle (CA) were charted among the teeth. The consistency of the variations was statistically analyzed and a logistic regression table was prepared to identify the sex of the individual from the tooth measurements.Results and Conclusions: The BLW, MDW and CL reflected significant variations among all the teeth to be effective in establishing sexual dimorphism. CA as a parameter was inadequate across all the teeth. The permanent maxillary canine was the most important tooth to be reflective of the gender and statistically significant to be utilized for gender determination.
New metrics for blog mining

Blogs represent an important new arena for knowledge discovery in open source intelligence gathering. Bloggers are a vast network of human (and sometimes non-human) information sources monitoring important local and global events, and other blogs, for items of interest upon which they comment. Increasingly, issues erupt from the blog world and into the real world. In order to monitor blogging about important events, we must develop models and metrics that represent blogs correctly. The structure of blogs requires new techniques for evaluating such metrics as the relevance, specificity, credibility and timeliness of blog entries. Techniques that have been developed for standard information retrieval purposes (e.g. Google's PageRank) are suboptimal when applied to blogs because of their high degree of exophoricity, quotation, brevity, and rapidity of update. In this paper, we offer new metrics related for blog entry relevance, specificity, timeliness and credibility that we are implementing in a blog search and analysis tool for international blogs. This tools utilizes new blog-specific metrics and techniques for extracting the necessary information from blog entries automatically, using some shallow natural language processing techniques supported by background knowledge captured in domain-specific ontologies.
A Note on Measuring the Unofficial Economy in the Former Soviet Republics

This note argues that the most commonly used estimates of the size of the unofficial economies in the former Soviet republics are flawed. Most important, they are based on calculations that disregard the variation in unofficial economic activity across space in the pre-transition Soviet Union. In addition, these estimates appear to understate the size of the unofficial economies in these countries. We propose alternative estimates and find that they are more strongly related to the institutional factors commonly used to explain the size of the unofficial sector. Our estimates also show that the size of a country's pre-transition unofficial economy is an important predictor of its size during the transition. This suggests that the size of the unofficial economy is to a large extent a historical phenomenon only partly determined by contemporary institutional factors.
Agent Orange Exposure and Prevalence of Self-reported Diseases in Korean Vietnam Veterans

Objectives The aim of this study was to evaluate the association between Agent Orange exposure and self-reported diseases in Korean Vietnam veterans. Methods A postal survey of 114 562 Vietnam veterans was conducted. The perceived exposure to Agent Orange was assessed by a 6-item questionnaire. Two proximity-based Agent Orange exposure indices were constructed using division/brigade-level and battalion/company-level unit information. Adjusted odds ratios (ORs) for age and other confounders were calculated using a logistic regression model. Results The prevalence of all self-reported diseases showed monotonically increasing trends as the levels of perceived self-reported exposure increased. The ORs for colon cancer (OR, 1.13), leukemia (OR, 1.56), hypertension (OR, 1.03), peripheral vasculopathy (OR, 1.07), enterocolitis (OR, 1.07), peripheral neuropathy (OR, 1.07), multiple nerve palsy (OR, 1.14), multiple sclerosis (OR, 1.24), skin diseases (OR, 1.05), psychotic diseases (OR, 1.07) and lipidemia (OR, 1.05) were significantly elevated for the high exposure group in the division/brigade-level proximity-based exposure analysis, compared to the low exposure group. The ORs for cerebral infarction (OR, 1.08), chronic bronchitis (OR, 1.05), multiple nerve palsy (OR, 1.07), multiple sclerosis (OR, 1.16), skin diseases (OR, 1.05), and lipidemia (OR, 1.05) were significantly elevated for the high exposure group in the battalion/company-level analysis. Conclusions Korean Vietnam veterans with high exposure to Agent Orange experienced a higher prevalence of several self-reported chronic diseases compared to those with low exposure by proximity-based exposure assessment. The strong positive associations between perceived self-reported exposure and all self-reported diseases should be evaluated with discretion because the likelihood of reporting diseases was directly related to the perceived intensity of Agent Orange exposure.
Long-term Cognitive Decline in Older Subjects Was Not Attributable to Noncardiac Surgery or Major Illness

Background:Persistent postoperative cognitive decline is thought to be a public health problem, but its severity may have been overestimated because of limitations in statistical methodology. This study assessed whether long-term cognitive decline occurred after surgery or illness by using an innovative approach and including participants with early Alzheimer disease to overcome some limitations. Methods:In this retrospective cohort study, three groups were identified from participants tested annually at the Washington University Alzheimer's Disease Research Center in St. Louis, Missouri: those with noncardiac surgery, illness, or neither. This enabled long-term tracking of cognitive function before and after surgery and illness. The effect of surgery and illness on longitudinal cognitive course was analyzed using a general linear mixed effects model. For participants without initial dementia, time to dementia onset was analyzed using sequential Cox proportional hazards regression. Results:Of the 575 participants, 214 were nondemented and 361 had very mild or mild dementia at enrollment. Cognitive trajectories did not differ among the three groups (surgery, illness, control), although demented participants declined more markedly than nondemented participants. Of the initially nondemented participants, 23% progressed to a clinical dementia rating greater than zero, but this was not more common after surgery or illness. Conclusions:The study did not detect long-term cognitive decline independently attributable to surgery or illness, nor were these events associated with accelerated progression to dementia. The decision to proceed with surgery in elderly people, including those with early Alzheimer disease, may be made without factoring in the specter of persistent cognitive deterioration.
Communication patterns

Parallel applications have message-passing patterns that are important to understand. Network topology, routing decisions, and connection and buffer management need to match the communication patterns of an application for it to run efficiently and scale well. These patterns are not easily discerned from the source code of an application, and even when the data is available it is not easy to categorize it appropriately such that meaningful knowledge emerges. We describe a novel system to gather the information we need to discover an application's communication pattern. We create five categories that help us analyze that data and explain how information from each category can be useful in the design of networking hardware and software. We use the NAS parallel benchmarks as examples on how to apply our techniques.
In preeclampsia endogenous cardiotonic steroids induce vascular fibrosis and impair relaxation of umbilical arteries

Background Marinobufagenin (MBG), a bufadienolide cardiotonic steroid, induces cardiovascular fibrosis. Because levels of MBG in preeclampsia are increased, and anti-MBG monoclonal antibody reduces blood pressure (BP) in a rat model of preeclampsia, we hypothesized that in preeclampsia, elevated MBG levels would be associated with the development of fibrosis in feto-placental circulation and with impairment of vascular relaxation. Method We studied 16 patients with preeclampsia (systolic BP = 150 ± 4 mmHg; 28 ± 2 years, 37 ± 1 weeks gestational age) and 14 gestational age-matched normal pregnant women (systolic BP = 112 ± 2 mmHg). Results Preeclampsia was associated with a rise in plasma and placental levels of MBG. In preeclamptic umbilical arteries, the expression of Fli-1, a transcription factor and a negative regulator of fibrosis, was significantly reduced (P < 0.001), whereas procollagen-1 expression was increased (P < 0.01). As compared to control vessels, isolated rings of umbilical arteries from patients with preeclampsia demonstrated unaltered responsiveness to endothelin-1 (EC50 = 2.2 and 3.2 nmol/l, respectively), but exhibited an impaired response to the relaxant effect of sodium nitroprusside (EC50 = 1.5 vs. 32.4 nmol/l, P < .001) following endothelin-1-induced constriction. Ex-vivo treatment of normal umbilical arteries explants with 1 and 10 nmol/l MBG for 24 h mimicked the effects of preeclampsia, specifically suppressed Fli-1 and increased collagen-1 expression while impairing vasorelaxation. Conclusion Our results indicate that in preeclampsia, elevated levels of MBG induce vascular fibrosis via a Fli-1-dependent mechanism which leads to an impairment of vasorelaxation, and suggest that MBG represents a potential target for therapy of this syndrome.
The use of a modified Ebert-McBride technique to evaluate mesoscale model QPF as a function of convective system morphology during IHOP 2002

Abstract The Ebert–McBride technique (EMT) is an entity-oriented method useful for quantitative precipitation verification. The EMT was modified to optimize its ability to identify contiguous rain areas (CRAs) during the 2002 International H2O Project (IHOP). This technique was then used to identify systematic sources of error as a function of observed convective system morphology in three 12-km model simulations run over the IHOP domain: Eta, the fifth-generation Pennsylvania State University–NCAR Mesoscale Model (MM5), and the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF). The EMT was fine-tuned to optimize the pattern matching of forecasts to observations for the scales of precipitation systems observed during IHOP. To investigate several error measures provided by the EMT, a detailed morphological analysis of observed systems was performed using radar data for all CRAs identified in the IHOP domain. The modified EMT suggests that the Eta Model produced average rain rates, peak rainfall amounts, and total rai.
Diversity of Bacteria in the Marine Sponge Aplysina fulva in Brazilian Coastal Waters

ABSTRACT Microorganisms can account for up to 60% of the fresh weight of marine sponges. Marine sponges have been hypothesized to serve as accumulation spots of particular microbial communities, but it is unknown to what extent these communities are directed by the organism or the site or occur randomly. To address this question, we assessed the composition of specific bacterial communities associated with Aplysina fulva, one of the prevalent sponge species inhabiting Brazilian waters. Specimens of A. fulva and surrounding seawater were collected in triplicate in shallow water at two sites, Caboclo Island and Tartaruga beach, Búzios, Brazil. Total community DNA was extracted from the samples using “direct” and “indirect” approaches. 16S rRNA-based PCR-denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (PCR-DGGE) analyses of the total bacterial community and of specific bacterial groups—Pseudomonas and Actinobacteria—revealed that the structure of these assemblages in A. fulva differed drastically from that observed in seawater. The DNA extraction methodology and sampling site were determinative for the composition of actinobacterial communities in A. fulva. However, no such effects could be gleaned from total bacterial and Pseudomonas PCR-DGGE profiles. Bacterial 16S rRNA gene clone libraries constructed from directly and indirectly extracted DNA did not differ significantly with respect to diversity and composition. Altogether, the libraries encompassed 15 bacterial phyla and the candidate division TM7. Clone sequences affiliated with the Cyanobacteria, Chloroflexi, Gamma- and Alphaproteobacteria, Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, and Acidobacteria were, in this order, most abundant. The bacterial communities associated with the A. fulva specimens were distinct and differed from those described in studies of sponge-associated microbiota performed with other sponge species.