Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
BAT-BORNE RABIES IN LATIN AMERICA

The situation of rabies in America is complex: rabies in dogs has decreased dramatically, but bats are increasingly recognized as natural reservoirs of other rabies variants. Here, bat species known to be rabies-positive with different antigenic variants, are summarized in relation to bat conservation status across Latin America. Rabies virus is widespread in Latin American bat species, 22.5%75 of bat species have been confirmed as rabies-positive. Most bat species found rabies positive are classified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as “Least Concern”. According to diet type, insectivorous bats had the most species known as rabies reservoirs, while in proportion hematophagous bats were the most important. Research at coarse spatial scales must strive to understand rabies ecology; basic information on distribution and population dynamics of many Latin American and Caribbean bat species is needed; and detailed information on effects of landscape change in driving bat-borne rabies outbreaks remains unassessed. Finally, integrated approaches including public health, ecology, and conservation biology are needed to understand and prevent emergent diseases in bats.
Latency-aware strategy for static list caching in flash-based web search engines

Caching is a widely used technique to boost the performance of search engines. Based on the observation that the speed gap between the random access of flash-based solid state drive and its sequential access is much inapparent than that of magnetic hard disk drive, we introduce a new static list caching algorithm which takes the block-level access latency into consideration. The experimental results show that the proposed policy can reduce the average disk access latency per query by up to 14\% over the state-of-the-art algorithms in the SSD-based infrastructure. Besides, the results also reveal that our new strategy outperforms other existing algorithms even on HDD-based architecture.
A moderated mediation model of political collective action in Hong Kong: examining the roles of social media consumption and social identity

ABSTRACT Adopting a communication mediation approach, this study explores the role of overall social networking service (SNS) use in facilitating people’s participation in collective political action through the mediation of online and offline political discussions. The study also underscores the moderating effect on the mediation process of both social identity and geographical origin. Moderated mediation analyses reveal that the positive impact of overall SNS use on participation mediated by offline discussion is stronger for people with higher Hong Kong identity and for people from Hong Kong. This moderated mediation model specifies the socio-psychological mechanism of participation in collective political action in an immigrant society such as Hong Kong.
ASEAN Plus Three: Emerging East Asian Regionalism?

Over the last few years the institutionalization of the ASEAN Plus Three (APT) process has started to take shape. Government leaders, ministers, and senior officials from the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)1 and the three Northeast Asian states—China, Japan, and South Korea—that together comprise the participants in the process are consulting on an increasing range of issues. The APT’s emergence raises questions about relations between it and other regional groupings such as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum and ASEAN itself, as well as about the overall prospects for its future development. There are a number of obstacles to this development that arise from the many differences among the countries of East Asia. However, the argument presented here is that the combined effect of such key developments as an increase in regionalization; the success of other regional organizations and arrangements such as the European Union (EU) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA); the now-apparent limitations of
Vocal aging and adductor spasmodic dysphonia: Response to botulinum toxin injection

Aging of the larynx is characterized by involutional changes which alter its biomechanical and neural properties and create a biological environment that is different from younger counterparts. Illustrative anatomical examples are presented. This natural, non-disease process appears to set conditions which may influence the effectiveness of botulinum toxin injection and our expectations for its success. Adductor spasmodic dysphonia, a type of laryngeal dystonia, is typically treated using botulinum toxin injections of the vocal folds in order to suppress adductory muscle spasms which are disruptive to production of speech and voice. A few studies have suggested diminished response to treatment in older patients with adductor spasmodic dysphonia. This retrospective study provides a reanalysis of existing pre-to-post treatment data as function of age. Perceptual judgments of speech produced by 42 patients with ADSD were made by two panels of professional listeners with expertise in voice or fluency of speech. Results demonstrate a markedly reduced positive response to botulinum toxin treatment in the older patients. Perceptual findings are further elucidated by means of acoustic spectrography. Literature on vocal aging is reviewed to provide a specific set of biological mechanisms that best account for the observed interaction of botulinum toxin treatment with advancing age.
Star clusters with primordial binaries ¿ II. Dynamical evolution of models in a tidal field

We extend our analysis of the dynamical evolution of simple star cluster models, in order to provide comparison standards that will aid in interpreting the results of more complex realistic simulations. We augment our previous primordial-binary simulations by introducing a tidal field, and starting with King models of different central concentrations. We present the results of N-body calculations of the evolution of equal-mass models, starting with primordial binary fractions of 0–100 per cent, and N values from 512 to 16 384. We also attempt to extrapolate some of our results to the larger number of particles that are necessary to model globular clusters. We characterize the steady-state ‘deuterium main-sequence’ phase in which primordial binaries are depleted in the core in the process of ‘gravitationally burning’. In this phase, we find that the ratio of the core to half-mass radius, rc/rh, is similar to that measured for isolated systems. In addition to the generation of energy due to hardening and depletion of the primordial binary population, the overall evolution of the star clusters is driven by a competing process: the tidal dissolution of the system. If the primordial binary fraction is greater than 5 per cent and the total number of particles N≥ 8192, we find that primordial binaries are not fully depleted before tidal dissolution, in systems initially described by a King model with a self-consistent tidal field. We compare our findings, obtained by means of direct N-body simulations but scaled, where possible, to larger N, with similar studies carried out by means of Monte Carlo methods. We find significant qualitative and quantitative differences with the results in the earlier paper. Some of these differences are explicable by the different treatment of the tidal field in the two studies. Others, however, confirm the conclusion of Fregeau et al. that the efficiency of binary burning in the earlier Monte Carlo runs was too high. There remain unexplained differences, however. In particular, the binary population appears to be depleted too quickly, even in the most recent Monte Carlo results.
Significant and Non-significant Implicational Universals 1

Cysouw (this volume) argues against the use of implicational universals in linguistic typology. While some of the points he makes are valid, his argumentation is in other places somewhat confused. I attempt in this paper to give some clarity to some of the issues, drawing on examples based on my typological database (Dryer 1989, 1991, 1992, 1997, 1998), which currently contains data for over 1200 languages.
Research report Attention to motion enhances processing of both visual and auditory stimuli: an event-related potential study

The present event-related potential (ERP) study investigated whether attending to a particular direction of motion similarly enhances the processing of auditory and visual stimuli. ERPs were recorded while participants perceived horizontally moving visual and auditory stimuli. Attention was manipulated by asking participants to detect an infrequent target stimulus that was of a specified modality (either visual or auditory) and that moved in a specified direction (either leftward or rightward). Stimuli moving in the attended direction elicited ERPs that were more negative thanERPs to stimuli moving in the unattended direction. Thisdifferencestarted around140 ms post stimulus onset for visual and around 120 ms for auditory stimuli. The auditory effect had a frontal scalp topography, whereas the visual effect was distributed parietooccipitally. Later parts of the difference waves were maximal at centro-parietal electrodes for both modalities. Crossmodal effects of attention to motion from one modality to the other could not be detected. The results are discussed with regard to hierarchical models of attention. D 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Theme I: Neural basis of behavior Topic: Cognition
Effects of weak acids, UV and proton motive force inhibitors on pyrazinamide activity against Mycobacterium tuberculosis in vitro.

BACKGROUND Pyrazinamide is a paradoxical frontline tuberculosis drug characterized by high sterilizing in vivo activity but poor in vitro activity. Pyrazinamide is thought to act by the entrapment of pyrazinoic acid in the bacterial cell, leading to acidification and membrane damage. Consequently, the effects of weak acids and molecules affecting membranes added to pyrazinamide were studied. OBJECTIVES To examine the effects of weak acids, UV, oxidative stress and additional energy inhibitors on pyrazinamide activity in vitro against Mycobacterium tuberculosis as well as the effect of pyrazinamide on Escherichia coli ampicillin persisters. METHODS Drug exposure experiments followed by cfu counts were performed to determine the effects of the above various factors on pyrazinamide activity in vitro against M. tuberculosis. RESULTS Some weak acids such as benzoic acid, sorbic acid and propyl hydroxybenzoic acid could enhance the activity of pyrazinamide in vitro against old tubercle bacilli but not young bacilli whereas other weak acids such as salicylic acid and lactic acid did not appear to enhance pyrazinamide activity. While energy inhibitors carbonylcyanide m-chlorophenylhydrazone and dinitrophenol enhanced pyrazinamide activity for old tubercle bacilli but not young bacilli, valinomycin and KCN increased pyrazinamide activity for both young and old bacilli. Oxidative stresses due to H2O2 and menadione did not have a significant effect on pyrazinamide activity. UV, which presumably damages the membrane, enhanced the activity of pyrazinamide. Pyrazinamide, which otherwise has no activity against actively growing E. coli bacteria, could kill non-growing starved E. coli and also ampicillin-tolerant persisters. CONCLUSIONS Some weak acids, UV and various energy inhibitors were found to enhance the activity of pyrazinamide in vitro against M. tuberculosis. Pyrazinamide shows preferential activity against both M. tuberculosis and E. coli persisters over the growing forms.
Barriocide: Investigating the Temporal and Spatial Influence of Neighborhood Structural Characteristics on Gang and Non-Gang Homicides in East Los Angeles

This study explored how changes in neighborhood structural characteristics predicted variation in gang versus non-gang homicides in a policing division of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). Longitudinal negative binomial models were examined to test the relationship between-neighborhood structural covariates with gang and non-gang homicides over a 35-year period. This study highlights the potential to estimate temporal effects not captured by cross-sectional analyses alone. The results underscore a unique feature that distinguishes gang homicides from other forms of non-gang violence, its tenacious clustering, and spatial dependence over time.
Multiwavelength Observations of the Soft Gamma Repeater SGR 1900+14 during Its 2001 April Activation

The soft gamma repeater SGR 1900+14 became active on 2001 April 18 after about 2 years of quiescence; it had remained at a very low state of activity since the fall of 1998, when it exhibited extraordinary flaring. We have observed the source in the gamma-rays and X-rays with Ulysses and Chandra and in the radio with MERLIN. We report here the confirmation of a two-component X-ray spectrum (power law + blackbody), indicating emission from the neutron star surface. We have determined that there is a dust halo, due to scattering in the interstellar medium, surrounding the source that extends up to ≳100'' from the center of SGR 1900+14.
Reshaping deep neural network for fast decoding by node-pruning

Although deep neural networks (DNN) has achieved significant accuracy improvements in speech recognition, it is computationally expensive to deploy large-scale DNN in decoding due to huge number of parameters. Weights truncation and decomposition methods have been proposed to speed up decoding by exploiting the sparseness of DNN. This paper summarizes different approaches of restructuring DNN and proposes a new node pruning approach to reshape DNN for fast decoding. In this approach, hidden nodes of a fully trained DNN are pruned with certain importance function and the reshaped DNN is retuned using back-propagation. The approach requires no modification on code and can directly save computational costs during decoding. Furthermore, it is complementary to weight decomposition methods. Experiments on a switchboard task shows that, by using the proposed node-pruning approach, DNN complexity can be reduced to 37.9%. The complexity can be further reduced to 12.3% without accuracy loss when node-pruning is combined with weight decomposition.
An Information-Theoretic Machine Learning Approach to Expression QTL Analysis

Expression Quantitative Trait Locus (eQTL) analysis is a powerful tool to study the biological mechanisms linking the genotype with gene expression. Such analyses can identify genomic locations where genotypic variants influence the expression of genes, both in close proximity to the variant (cis-eQTL), and on other chromosomes (trans-eQTL). Many traditional eQTL methods are based on a linear regression model. In this study, we propose a novel method by which to identify eQTL associations with information theory and machine learning approaches. Mutual Information (MI) is used to describe the association between genetic marker and gene expression. MI can detect both linear and non-linear associations. What’s more, it can capture the heterogeneity of the population. Advanced feature selection methods, Maximum Relevance Minimum Redundancy (mRMR) and Incremental Feature Selection (IFS), were applied to optimize the selection of the affected genes by the genetic marker. When we applied our method to a study of apoE-deficient mice, it was found that the cis-acting eQTLs are stronger than trans-acting eQTLs but there are more trans-acting eQTLs than cis-acting eQTLs. We compared our results (mRMR.eQTL) with R/qtl, and MatrixEQTL (modelLINEAR and modelANOVA). In female mice, 67.9% of mRMR.eQTL results can be confirmed by at least two other methods while only 14.4% of R/qtl result can be confirmed by at least two other methods. In male mice, 74.1% of mRMR.eQTL results can be confirmed by at least two other methods while only 18.2% of R/qtl result can be confirmed by at least two other methods. Our methods provide a new way to identify the association between genetic markers and gene expression. Our software is available from supporting information.
Adenovirus keratitis: a role for interleukin-8.

PURPOSE Adenovirus type 19 (Ad19) infection of the human cornea results in a chronic, multifocal, subepithelial keratitis. Existing evidence suggests that early subepithelial corneal infiltrates are composed of polymorphonuclear neutrophils. In this study, the capacity of Ad19-infected human corneal stromal fibroblasts (HCFs) to produce neutrophil chemotactants (chemokines) was tested. METHODS HCFs grown from human donor corneas and passaged thrice were infected with a corneal isolate of Ad19 or mock-infected with virus-free media. Bioactivity of the cell supernatants was tested by a neutrophil chemotaxis assay. Supernatants were assayed by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay for the neutrophil chemotactants interleukin-8 (IL-8) and GRO-alpha. Corneal facsimiles were generated with HCFs and collagen type I, infected with Ad19, and assayed by immunohistochemistry. RESULTS Ad19 infection of HCFs increased neutrophil chemotaxis from a baseline of 0.4+/-0.7 cells/high-powered field (hpf; mock-infected) to 21.8+/-2.3 cells/hpf (Ad19-infected). Chemotaxis was reduced by the addition of neutralizing antibodies against IL-8 and GRO-alpha. Infection of HCFs induced quantities of IL-8 protein 300- and 1000-fold over mock-infected controls at 4 and 24 hours, respectively (33 versus 11,813 pg/mL at 4 hours, and 57 versus 76,376 pg/mL at 24 hours, P< or = 0.001 for both). In contrast, GRO-alpha protein levels were only sevenfold higher at 24 hours postinfection (118 pg/mL in mock-infected controls versus 880 pg/mL in Ad19-infected cell supernatants). Neither chemokine was induced by infection of an immortalized human corneal epithelial cell line. Immunohistochemistry of infected corneal facsimiles demonstrated IL-8 in the extracellular matrix within 3 days after infection. CONCLUSIONS Production of chemokines in infected tissues facilitates an early innate immune response to infection, and in the infected corneal stroma represents an elementary defense mechanism. Interleukin-8 may play a role in the development of subepithelial infiltrates in adenovirus keratitis.
PAC-Bayesian estimation and prediction in sparse additive models

The present paper is about estimation and prediction in high-dimensional additive models under a sparsity assumption ($p\gg n$ paradigm). A PAC-Bayesian strategy is investigated, delivering oracle inequalities in probability. The implementation is performed through recent outcomes in high-dimensional MCMC algorithms, and the performance of our method is assessed on simulated data.
Psychophysiology of duration estimation in experienced mindfulness meditators and matched controls

Recent research suggests that bodily signals and interoception are strongly related to our sense of time. Mindfulness meditators train to be aware of their body states and therefore could be more accurate at interval timing. In this study, n = 22 experienced mindfulness meditators and n = 22 matched controls performed both, an acoustic and a visual duration reproduction task of 8, 14, and 20 s intervals, while heart rate and skin conductance were continuously assessed. In addition, participants accomplished a heart beat perception task and two selective attention tasks. Results revealed no differences between meditators and controls with respect to performance in duration reproduction or attentional capacities. Additionally no group difference in heart beat perception scores was found. Across all subjects, correlational analyses revealed several associations between performance in the duration reproduction tasks and psychophysiological changes, the latter being also related to heart beat perception scores. Furthermore, former findings of linearly increasing cardiac periods and decreasing skin conductance levels during the auditory duration estimation task (Meissner and Wittmann, 2011) could be replicated, and these changes could also be observed during a visual duration reproduction task. In contrast to our earlier findings, the heart beat perception test was not related with timing performance. Overall, although experienced meditators did not differ from matched controls with respect to duration reproduction and interoceptive awareness, this study adds significantly to the emerging view that time perception is related to autonomic regulation and awareness of body states.
Treatment of Variant Angina with Drugs: A Survey of 11 Cardiology Institutes in Japan

Data from 11 cardiology institutes in Japan were examined to determine the effectiveness of drug therapy, especially with calcium antagonists, on variant angina. The subjects were 243 males and 43 females, most of whom were 40–59 years old. Coronary artery lesions were found in 92 of 162 patients (56.7%) in whom cinecoronary arteriograms were done.The efficacy rates of nifedipine, diltiazem and verapamil were 94.0%, 90.8% and 85.7%, respectively. Regardless of the presence or absence of organic coronary artery lesions, the drugs were effective in 92.3% of the patients with normal or nearly normal coronary arteries and in 82.6% of those with stenosis of more than 50% of the luminal diameter. These findings suggest that the drugs are effective through their antispasmodic actions.
Schedulers as model-based design elements in programmable heterogeneous multiprocessors

As System On a Chip (SoC) designs become more like Programmable Heterogeneous Multiprocessors (PHMs), the highest levels of design will place emphasis on the custom design of elements that were traditionally associated with systems in the large. We motivate how schedulers that make dynamic, data-dependent decisions at run-time will be key design elements in PHM SoCs. Starting from a fundamental model, the role schedulers play in PHMs is developed. Model-based scheduling is introduced as an approach to designing schedulers that optimize a PHMs performance. Due to the complexity of the PHM design space, convergence on optimal design requires high-level modeling and simulation. In model-based scheduling, high-level models of scheduling decisions result in actual design elements that appear in real systems. Experiments for a simple two-processor PHM that does a mix of image and text compression are included. Results show the effectiveness of model-based scheduling.
What's Good for GM...? Using Auto Industry Stock Returns to Forecast Business Cycles and Test the Q-Theory of Investment

We examine the ability of auto industry stock returns to forecast quarterly changes in the growth rates of real GDP, consumption, and investment. We find that auto stock returns are superior to aggregate stock market returns in predicting growth rates of GDP and various forms of consumption. The superior predictive power of auto returns holds for both in-sample and out-of-sample forecasts and has not declined over time. We then apply a finding in this paper---that market returns have no explanatory power for future output or consumption growth when auto returns are included in the regression---to analyze the causal relation between the stock market and investment. We use auto returns to proxy for forecasts of future fundamentals, allowing market returns to capture the effect of the stock market on investment. We find that aggregate returns forecast equipment investment in the presence of auto returns, providing empirical support for q-theory. Results for structures investment are less convincing.