Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The early growth and fall frost damage of poplar clones in Latvia.

The early growth and frost damage of Populus spp. was studied in two sites. The height of 23 five-year-old poplar clones was measured in the central part of Latvia; and the early-fall frost damage of 19 one-year-old and two-year-old poplar clones were assessed in the eastern part of Latvia. The relation between the height growth and frost damage of 16 clones, which were common for both sites, was assessed. The phenologically dormant stage was denoted for three clones, among which two are collected across Latvia (the origin un-known; introduced in 1960s). All the other clones had trees with damaged leaves and two clones had stem damage. The height of the clones ranged from 273.3 ± 60.2 to 711.0 ± 32.0 cm. The 3 most productive clones (LV3, LV1 and LV4) significantly (P < 0.01) exceeded others, by 34 and 65% for height and biomass, respectively. The mean height of these clones was 649.0 ± 21.5 cm and stem biomass varied from 33.7 ± 4.2 to 55.0 ± 6.4 tfresh·ha (planting density 6,500 trees·ha-1). The clone had significant (P < 0.01) effect on the phenological stage, leaf and stem frost damage, as well as on the height and stem biomass. No relation (P > 0.05) between the frost damage of leaves and both tree height and stem biomass was found. The results suggest that fast-growing frost-tolerant clones might be selected.
Pharmacokinetics, absorption, and excretion of radiolabeled revexepride: a Phase I clinical trial using a microtracer and accelerator mass spectrometry-based approach

Purpose Gastroesophageal reflux disease involves the reflux of gastric and/or duodenal content into the esophagus. Prokinetic therapies, such as the selective 5-hydroxytryptamine receptor 4 agonist revexepride, may aid gastric emptying. This Phase I study evaluated the pharmacokinetics and excretion pathways of [14C]revexepride in healthy individuals using a microtracer approach with accelerator mass spectrometry. Participants and methods Six healthy men received a single oral dose of 2 mg [14C]revexepride containing ~200 nCi of radioactivity; blood, urine, and fecal samples were collected over a 10-day period. Results Almost 100% of 14C was recovered: 38.2%±10.3% (mean ± standard deviation) was recovered in urine, and 57.3%±0.4% was recovered in feces. Blood cell uptake was low, based on the blood plasma total radioactivity ratio of 0.8. The mean revexepride renal clearance was 8.6 L/h, which was slightly higher than the typical glomerular filtration rate in healthy individuals. Time to reach maximal concentration was 1.75±1.17 hours (mean ± standard deviation). No safety signals were identified. Conclusion This study demonstrated that revexepride had rapid and moderate-to-good oral absorption. Excretion of radioactivity was completed with significant amounts in feces and urine. Renal clearance slightly exceeded the typical glomerular filtration rate, suggesting the involvement of active transportation in the renal tubules.
Comment on the Article “On Patients Who Purchase Organ Transplants Abroad”

As transplant tourism (TT) provides patients with opportunities to obtain organ transplants illicitly in foreign countries, it has provoked considerable concern worldwide. Information about global activities and trends in TT is essential to raise awareness and prepare responses that will prevent the occurrence of illicit organ transplant practices through TT. Thus, the recent paper by Ambagtsheer et al. (1) is quite significant. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Metabolic pathway gene clusters in filamentous fungi.

Clusters of functionally related genes are a general feature of prokaryotic gene organization but are much less prevalent in eukaryotes. The discovery that genes for certain types of metabolic pathways are clustered in filamentous fungi is relatively recent. Only 8 years ago in a discussion of the proline utilization pathway genes, Hull et al. (1989) commented that ‘‘The organization and regulation of the genes involved in L-proline catabolism in the ascomycete fungus Aspergillus nidulans are of particular interest because, rather unusually for functionally related eukaryotic genes, they are all clustered. ’’ This view was supported by studies of metabolic pathway gene linkage relationships from a variety of eukaryotes. Although genetic evidence was available suggesting that some metabolic pathway genes were closely linked in A. nidulans (see Clutterbuck, 1992), recognition of gene clustering as an important feature of fungal metabolic pathways had to await the molecular characterization of specific pathways. Fungal gene clusters can be broadly defined as the close linkage of two or more genes that participate in a common metabolic or developmental pathway. Fungi possess numerous pathways for what can be described as ‘‘dispensable’’ metabolic functions, and research over the last 5 years has shown that the genes for these dispensable pathways are often organized in gene clusters. The term dispensable metabolic pathways is used here to describe pathways that either are not required for growth or are only required for growth under a limited range of conditions. Dispensable metabolic pathways are typically expressed under suboptimal growth conditions and most likely function to enhance fungal survival in response to nutrient deprivation or competing organisms. In this review, two major types of dispensable metabolic pathways will be discussed, catabolic pathways for the utilization of low-molecular-weight nutrients such as proline or quinate (nutrient utilization pathways) and biosynthetic pathways for low-molecularweight compounds which include antibiotics and mycotoxins (natural product pathways). Nutrient utilization pathways increase the metabolic versatility of filamentous fungi, enabling them to utilize a variety of complex compounds as alternative sources of nutrients. Expression of the appropriate catabolic pathways can be critically important for survival under limiting nutrient growth conditions. However, many of these nutrients are not commonly encountered by fungi, so there is little benefit derived from expressing pathway genes constitutively. To ensure that the required catabolic pathways are expressed appropriately in response to changing nutritional conditions while simultaneously limiting the loss of cellular resources due to unnecessary pathway gene expression, fungi have developed complex regulatory systems. To date, enzymatic and regulatory genes for four well-studied dispensable catabolic pathways (quinate, ethanol, proline, Fungal Genetics and Biology 21, 17–29 (1997) Article No. FG970970
Energetics of Shoaling Internal Waves and Turbulence in the St. Lawrence Estuary

xii List of Abbreviations and Symbols Used . xiii Acknowledgements . xvii Chapter
Prostate biopsy clinical and pathological variables that predict significant grading changes in patients with intermediate and high grade prostate cancer

To identify the clinical and pathological variables that predict pathological changes in the significant proportion of men with prostate cancer who have an intermediate‐ or high‐grade biopsy Gleason score (GS) of ≥7 and who are upgraded or downgraded on interpretation of radical prostatectomy (RP) pathological specimens, as GS is critical in treatment decisions.
Sequence Assembly Validation by Multiple Restriction Digest Fragment Coverage Analysis

DNA sequence analysis depends on the accurate assembly of fragment reads for the determination of a consensus sequence. This report examines the possibility of analyzing multiple, independent restriction digests as a method for testing the fidelity of sequence assembly. A dynamic programming algorithm to determine the maximum likelihood alignment of error prone electrophoretic mobility data to the expected fragment mobilities given the consensus sequence and restriction enzymes is derived and used to assess the likelihood of detecting rearrangements in genomic sequencing projects. The method is shown to reliably detect errors in sequence fragment assembly without the necessity of making reference to an overlying physical map. An html form-based interface is available at http:/(/)www.ibc. wustl.edu/services/validate. html.
Max Margin AND/OR Graph learning for parsing the human body

We present a novel structure learning method, Max Margin AND/OR graph (MM-AOG), for parsing the human body into parts and recovering their poses. Our method represents the human body and its parts by an AND/OR graph, which is a multi-level mixture of Markov random fields (MRFs). Max-margin learning, which is a generalization of the training algorithm for support vector machines (SVMs), is used to learn the parameters of the AND/OR graph model discriminatively. There are four advantages from this combination of AND/OR graphs and max-margin learning. Firstly, the AND/OR graph allows us to handle enormous articulated poses with a compact graphical model. Secondly, max-margin learning has more discriminative power than the traditional maximum likelihood approach. Thirdly, the parameters of the AND/OR graph model are optimized globally. In particular, the weights of the appearance model for individual nodes and the relative importance of spatial relationships between nodes are learnt simultaneously. Finally, the kernel trick can be used to handle high dimensional features and to enable complex similarity measure of shapes. We perform comparison experiments on the base ball datasets, showing significant improvements over state of the art methods.
Study of family factors in association with behavior problems amongst children of 6-18 years age group

Background: The ‘behaviour problems’ are having major impact on child's bodily and social development. The family provides emotional support to an individual as well as plays a major role in the formation of one's personality. The quality and nature of the parental nurturance that the child receives will profoundly influence his future development. The knowledge of these family factors associated with behaviour problems may be helpful to identify at risk children. Aims and Objective: To study the family factors associated with behaviour problems amongst children of 6-18 Yrs age group. Setting: an adopted urban slum area of Govt. Medical College, Miraj Dist-Sangli. Design: Cross sectional study. Materials and Methods: the sample size was calculated based upon 40% prevalence obtained in pilot study. Total 600 Children in the age group of 6-18 years residing in the urban slum area and their parents were interviewed with the help of predesigned, pretested proforma. Analysis: chi-square test and risk estimate with Odd's ratio. Results: Our study result reveals significant association between prevalence of behaviour problems with absence of either or both real parents and alcoholism in the parent or care taker. Conclusion: The behaviour problems have good prognosis if they are recognized earlier. Family has great role in prevention of behaviour problems in children, so parental counseling may be helpful.
Chronic infections in hip arthroplasties: comparing risk of reinfection following one-stage and two-stage revision: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Background Two-stage revision is regarded by many as the best treatment of chronic infection in hip arthroplasties. Some international reports, however, have advocated one-stage revision. No systematic review or meta-analysis has ever compared the risk of reinfection following one-stage and two-stage revisions for chronic infection in hip arthroplasties. Methods The review was performed in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis. Relevant studies were identified using PubMed and Embase. We assessed studies that included patients with a chronic infection of a hip arthroplasty treated with either one-stage or two-stage revision and with available data on occurrence of reinfections. We performed a meta-analysis estimating absolute risk of reinfection using a random-effects model. Results We identified 36 studies eligible for inclusion. None were randomized controlled trials or comparative studies. The patients in these studies had received either one-stage revision (n = 375) or two-stage revision (n = 929). Reinfection occurred with an estimated absolute risk of 13.1% (95% confidence interval: 10.0%–17.1%) in the one-stage cohort and 10.4% (95% confidence interval: 8.5%–12.7%) in the two-stage cohort. The methodological quality of most included studies was considered low, with insufficient data to evaluate confounding factors. Conclusions Our results may indicate three additional reinfections per 100 reimplanted patients when performing a one-stage versus two-stage revision. However, the risk estimates were statistically imprecise and the quality of underlying data low, demonstrating the lack of clear evidence that two-stage revision is superior to one-stage revision among patients with chronically infected hip arthroplasties. This systematic review underscores the need for improvement in reporting and collection of high-quality data and for large comparative prospective studies on this issue.
Fasting – the ultimate diet?

Adult humans often undertake acute fasts for cosmetic, religious or medical reasons. For example, an estimated 14% of US adults have reported using fasting as a means to control body weight and this approach has long been advocated as an intermittent treatment for gross refractory obesity. There are unique historical data sets on extreme forms of food restriction that give insight into the consequences of starvation or semi‐starvation in previously healthy, but usually non‐obese subjects. These include documented medical reports on victims of hunger strike, famine and prisoners of war. Such data provide a detailed account on how the body adapts to prolonged starvation. It has previously been shown that fasting for the biblical period of 40 days and 40 nights is well within the overall physiological capabilities of a healthy adult. However, the specific effects on the human body and mind are less clearly documented, either in the short term (hours) or in the longer term (days). This review asks the following three questions, pertinent to any weight‐loss therapy, (i) how effective is the regime in achieving weight loss, (ii) what impact does it have on psychology? and finally, (iii) does it work long‐term?
Imitation in children as a function of perceived similarity to a social model and vicarious reinforcement.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of perceived similarity to a social model and the model's response consequences on imitation in children. Preadolescent boys viewed a film in which a male model was portrayed as being either similar or dissimilar to S in terms of background and interests. The model being observed received either reward, punishment, or no consequences for performing a series of instrumental actions. High perceived similarity to the model resulted in greater imitation than low perceived similarity. High perceived similarity to the model appeared to facilitate acquisition of imitative responses as well as performance. The effects of response consequences to the model on imitation were not as widely generalized as the effects of perceived similarity. Previous research has shown that one determinant of matching behavior is the degree to which the subject perceives himself as similar to the model. It has been hypothesized, for example, that the perception of similarities existing between persons leads to perceiving or creating still further similarities. Stotland and his associates have tested this hypothesis using several different procedures. Stotland and Patchen (1961) found that perceived similarity to a model in background and personal characteristics produced a shift in attitudes of prejudice and authoritarianism toward those of the model. In a similar study (Burnstein, Stotland, & Zander, 1961), it was found that sixth-, seventh-, and eighthgrade boys adopted more of the sea-diving preferences of a deep-sea diver portrayed as being similar to them in background and other characteristics than of a deep-sea diver described as dissimilar. Also, Stotland, Zander, and Natsoulas (1962) found that subjects who believed themselves to be similar to a confederate on preferences for musical compositions matched the confederate's 1 This study was part of a doctoral dissertation submitted to the graduate school of the University of Minnesota. The author wishes to express her gratitude to Willard W. Hartup for his generous advice and assistance. The research was supported, in part, by the John E. Anderson Research Fund and completed with the aid of the facilities of the Numerical Analysis Center at the University of
IT confidentiality risk assessment for an architecture-based approach

Information systems require awareness of risks and a good understanding of vulnerabilities and their exploitations. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for the systematic assessment and analysis of confidentiality risks caused by disclosure of operational and functional information. The approach is based on a model integrating information assets and the IT infrastructure that they rely on for distributed systems. IT infrastructures enable one to analyse risk propagation possibilities and calculate the impact of confidentiality incidents. Furthermore, our approach is a mean to bridge the technical and business- oriented views of information systems, since the importance of information assets, which is leading the technical decisions, is set by the business.
Sense and simplicity in HADDOCK scoring: Lessons from CASP‐CAPRI round 1

Our information‐driven docking approach HADDOCK is a consistent top predictor and scorer since the start of its participation in the CAPRI community‐wide experiment. This sustained performance is due, in part, to its ability to integrate experimental data and/or bioinformatics information into the modelling process, and also to the overall robustness of the scoring function used to assess and rank the predictions. In the CASP‐CAPRI Round 1 scoring experiment we successfully selected acceptable/medium quality models for 18/14 of the 25 targets – a top‐ranking performance among all scorers. Considering that for only 20 targets acceptable models were generated by the community, our effective success rate reaches as high as 90% (18/20). This was achieved using the standard HADDOCK scoring function, which, thirteen years after its original publication, still consists of a simple linear combination of intermolecular van der Waals and Coulomb electrostatics energies and an empirically derived desolvation energy term. Despite its simplicity, this scoring function makes sense from a physico‐chemical perspective, encoding key aspects of biomolecular recognition. In addition to its success in the scoring experiment, the HADDOCK server takes the first place in the server prediction category, with 16 successful predictions. Much like our scoring protocol, because of the limited time per target, the predictions relied mainly on either an ab initio center‐of‐mass and symmetry restrained protocol, or on a template‐based approach whenever applicable. These results underline the success of our simple but sensible prediction and scoring scheme. Proteins 2017; 85:417–423. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Diffraction of a Plane Wave by a Circular Cone with an Impedance Boundary Condition

We consider the boundary-value problem for the Helmholtz equation in a circular cone with an impedance boundary condition on its face. A new approach for its solution is proposed. The scheme of solution includes applying the Kontorovich--Lebedev transform, derivation of a second-order difference equation in a strip of a complex variable, and reduction of the latter to an integral equation of the convolution type with variable coefficients. It is also shown that the equation is equivalent to a 2 × 2 matrix Riemann--Hilbert problem with a discontinuous coefficient. We analyze the behavior of the solution of the integral equation at the ends of the contour and construct an approximate solution using a collocation method. The diffraction coefficient is found in terms of the solution of the integral equation. Numerical results for the diffraction coefficient and comparative analysis of the results for the impedance cone with the limiting cases of the acoustically soft and hard cones are reported. A full high f.
Sod2 haploinsufficiency does not accelerate aging of telomere dysfunctional mice

Telomere shortening represents a causal factor of cellular senescence. At the same time, several lines of evidence indicate a pivotal role of oxidative DNA damage for the aging process in vivo. A causal connection between the two observations was suggested by experiments showing accelerated telomere shorting under conditions of oxidative stress in cultured cells, but has never been studied in vivo. We therefore have analysed whether an increase in mitochondrial derived oxidative stress in response to heterozygous deletion of superoxide dismutase (Sod2+/-) would exacerbate aging phenotypes in telomere dysfunctional (mTerc-/-) mice. Heterozygous deletion of Sod2 resulted in reduced SOD2 protein levels and increased oxidative stress in aging telomere dysfunctional mice, but this did not lead to an increase in basal levels of oxidative nuclear DNA damage, an accumulation of nuclear DNA breaks, or an increased rate of telomere shortening in the mice. Moreover, heterozygous deletion of Sod2 did not accelerate the depletion of stem cells and the impairment in organ maintenance in aging mTerc-/- mice. In agreement with these observations, Sod2 haploinsufficiency did not lead to a further reduction in lifespan of mTerc-/- mice. Together, these results indicate that a decrease in SOD2-dependent antioxidant defence does not exacerbate aging in the context of telomere dysfunction.
Hybrid OpenCL: Enhancing OpenCL for Distributed Processing

We have been developing Hybrid OpenCL, which enables the utilization of OpenCL devices by connecting them over the network. Hybrid OpenCL opens a gate to scale up OpenCL environments. By using Hybrid OpenCL, applications written in OpenCL can be easily ported to high performance cluster computers, thus, Hybrid OpenCL can provide more various distributed and parallel computing platforms. Hybrid OpenCL consists of two elements, a runtime system that provides the abstraction of OpenCL implementations and a bridge program that connects multiple OpenCL runtime systems over the network. This paper describes the design and implementation Hybrid OpenCL. Its performance for distributed processing is evaluated by using multiple nodes. The experimentation results show that the overhead introduced by Hybrid OpenCL is minimum and comparable with the combination of MPI and OpenCL.