Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Plant Lectin-Like Bacteriocin from a Rhizosphere-Colonizing Pseudomonas Isolate

ABSTRACT Rhizosphere isolate Pseudomonas sp. strain BW11M1, which belongs to the Pseudomonas putida cluster, secretes a heat- and protease-sensitive bacteriocin which kills P. putida GR12-2R3. The production of this bacteriocin is enhanced by DNA-damaging treatment of producer cells. We isolated a TnMod mutant of strain BW11M1 that had lost the capacity to inhibit the growth of strain GR12-2R3. A wild-type genomic fragment encompassing the transposon insertion site was shown to confer the bacteriocin phenotype when it was introduced into Escherichia coli cells. The bacteriocin structural gene was identified by defining the minimal region required for expression in E. coli. This gene was designated llpA (lectin-like putidacin) on the basis of significant homology of its 276-amino-acid product with mannose-binding lectins from monocotyledonous plants. LlpA is composed of two monocot mannose-binding lectin (MMBL) domains. Several uncharacterized bacterial genes encoding diverse proteins containing one or two MMBL domains were identified. A phylogenetic analysis of the MMBL domains present in eukaryotic and prokaryotic proteins assigned the putidacin domains to a new bacterial clade within the MMBL-containing protein family. Heterologous expression of the llpA gene also conveyed bacteriocin production to several Pseudomonas fluorescens strains. In addition, we demonstrated that strain BW11M1 and heterologous hosts secrete LlpA into the growth medium without requiring a cleavable signal sequence. Most likely, the mode of action of this lectin-like bacteriocin is different from the modes of action of previously described Pseudomonas bacteriocins.
Minding the Minds: A Primer on Cognitive Challenge for Marine Mammals in Human Care

Simple Summary Over the past several decades, the attention paid to the physical needs of marine mammals in zoos and aquariums has led to steady improvements in their physical well-being. Up until now, however, we haven’t paid as much attention to their cognitive needs. Studies have suggested that providing animals with puzzles and games that engage their thinking skills can improve their welfare. To help marine mammal managers and trainers achieve this for the animals in their care, this paper discusses different ways of creating such puzzles and thinking games, along with the pros and cons of each. Abstract The past several decades have witnessed significant improvement in the physical welfare of marine mammals in zoos and aquariums. Over that same time period, research has revealed complex cognitive abilities in at least some of these species, yet there has been comparatively little attention paid to addressing their cognitive welfare per se. Studies primarily conducted with terrestrial animals have suggested that providing appropriate cognitive challenges in managed care settings can improve animal well-being. As a step toward facilitating this practice with marine mammals, this paper discusses factors relevant for creating appropriate cognitive challenges, outlines the three major categories of cognitive challenge that have been utilized with marine mammals, along with the logistical pros and cons of each, and calls on organizations that care for marine mammals to cultivate a bias for action with respect to providing cognitive care.
Effect of Hospital Practices on Breastfeeding: A Survey in the Italian Region of Lazio

To investigate hospital practices associated with infant feeding during hospital stay and at 1 month of age, all women who were in 17 maternity hospitals on a given day and had delivered a singleton newborn were contacted. Of the 165 eligible women, 153 participated in the survey. Data were collected from the mothers' clinical records and through interview. Odds ratios were calculated to estimate the effect of hospital practices on breastfeeding rates. The main findings are that cesarean section (adjusted odds ratio [ORadj] = 3.69; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.19-11.47), lack of information about the advantages of breastfeeding (ORadj = 4.78; 95% CI, 1.50-15.26), and absence or partial absence of rooming-in (ORadj = 14.64; 95% CI, 2.24-95.75) increase the risk of complementary breastfeeding during hospital stay. In turn, complementary breastfeeding during hospital stay was the major factor associated with not breastfeeding at 1 month of age (ORadj = 6.35; 95% CI, 2.52-16.01). These findings suggest that some hospital practices might have a negative effect on the initiation and continuation of breastfeeding. J Hum Lact. 25(3):333-340.
DelosDLMS : infrastructure and services for future digital library systems

DelosDLMS is a prototype of a next-generation Digital Library (DL) management system. It is the result of integrating various specialized DL services provided by partners of the DELOS network of excellence into the OSIRIS platform. OSIRIS is a middleware environment for the reliable and scalable distributed execution of processes. Processes, in turn, are DL applications that are built from the specialized services available in the integrated system. DelosDLMS provides support for content-based retrieval in image, audio, video, and 3D collections and combination of any of these media types with keyword queries. It allows annotating retrieved information, provides a rich set of advanced graphical user interfaces to browse and explore large collections, and supports users in interacting with the system using a speech interface and interactive paper. Finally, it can even be applied in settings where DL content is available in a distributed P2P system.
The sound-induced flash illusion reveals dissociable age-related effects in multisensory integration

While aging can lead to significant declines in perceptual and cognitive function, the effects of age on multisensory integration, the process in which the brain combines information across the senses, are less clear. Recent reports suggest that older adults are susceptible to the sound-induced flash illusion (Shams et al., 2000) across a much wider range of temporal asynchronies than younger adults (Setti et al., 2011). To assess whether this cost for multisensory integration is a general phenomenon of combining asynchronous audiovisual input, we compared the time courses of two variants of the sound-induced flash illusion in young and older adults: the fission illusion, where one flash accompanied by two beeps appears as two flashes, and the fusion illusion, where two flashes accompanied by one beep appear as one flash. Twenty-five younger (18–30 years) and older (65+ years) adults were required to report whether they perceived one or two flashes, whilst ignoring irrelevant auditory beeps, in bimodal trials where auditory and visual stimuli were separated by one of six stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs). There was a marked difference in the pattern of results for the two variants of the illusion. In conditions known to produce the fission illusion, older adults were significantly more susceptible to the illusion at longer SOAs compared to younger participants. In contrast, the performance of the younger and older groups was almost identical in conditions known to produce the fusion illusion. This surprising difference between sound-induced fission and fusion in older adults suggests dissociable age-related effects in multisensory integration, consistent with the idea that these illusions are mediated by distinct neural mechanisms.
Chaos of Vowel /a/ in Japanese Patients with Depression: A Preliminary Study

Chaos theory has recently given us a new insight into cardiology , otolaryngology, the nervous system, and psychiatry . Yeragani et al. found the phenomenon whereby chaos of heart rate time series diminished in patients with major depression. Drawing on recent developments in voice analyses, it is a well-known fact that the Japanese vowel /a/ has chaotic characteristics of voice . We have empirically found that patients with depression have a specific vocal sound, that is, a low, discouraged, and sorrowful tone of voice. Furthermore, the screening tests for depression are self-reported and subjective, and depend on respondents’ intention. To investigate the possibility of an objective depression scale, we investigated the relationship between depression and the chaos of vocal sounds. The orbit instability of time series data, i.e. an electrocardiogram, pulsation wave, and vocal sounds, is expressed as the Lyapunov exponents (λi). This represents the degree of extension of the orbit displacement embedded in the reconstructed space. In the λi, the largest one is called the largest and first Lyapunov exponent (λ 1 ). The sum of the positive values in the λ set is called the Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy (KS). Long-term unpredictability of the embedded orbits is quantified using the KS . The λ 1 refers to the instability of trajectories reconstructed in time series data and the KS refers to their unpredictability. High λ 1 denotes high instability of the trajectories, while high KS denotes high unpredictability. We hypothesized that there was a difference between the chaotic characteristics of the voices of patients with depression and those of healthy controls. We performed non-linear analyses of the voices of patients with depression and healthy controls in order to verify our hypothesis.
The Perioperative Implications of Tobacco, Marijuana, and Other Inhaled Toxins

The past decade has witnessed an aggressive antismoking campaign that has resulted in the passage of laws in many states banning the practice in public places. Dramatic increases in taxation have been enacted in an attempt to further place these items out of reach of the majority of consumers. In addition, large fines and settlements have been leveled against the tobacco industry as compensation for health damages and false advertising. The Family Smoking and Prevention and Tobacco Control Act was signed into law in June 2009 and granted the
Merging of oculomotor and somatomotor space coding in the human right precentral gyrus.

Using PET and H215O, we investigated the cortical areas that merge two different ways of coding space in the cerebral cortex, those concerned with the oculomotor and the somatomotor space. Normal subjects performed a visuomotor task that required the spatial coding of visual stimuli in oculomotor space and of motor responses in somatomotor space. We manipulated the mapping of oculomotor and somatomotor space by instructing subjects to respond in half of the PET scans with uncrossed hands, i.e. each hand was in the homonymous hemispace (standard oculomotor-somatomotor mapping), and in the other half with crossed hands, i.e. with the left hand in the right hemispace and the right hand in the left hemispace (nonstandard oculomotor-somatomotor mapping). Reaction times were slower for crossed hands than uncrossed hands. Crossed hands produced increases in blood flow in the precentral and postcentral gyri of the right hemisphere. Increases in blood flow in the precentral gyrus were correlated with increases in reaction time comparing the crossed-hand task with the uncrossed one, whereas the increases in blood flow in the postcentral gyrus were not. These findings suggest that the right precentral gyrus merges oculomotor and somatomotor space coding in the human brain.
Ventilation of Northern and Southern Sources of Aged Carbon in the Eastern Equatorial Pacific During the Younger Dryas Rise in Atmospheric CO2

Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels rose by ~90 ppmv during the last deglaciation, but the source of this carbon remains unknown. One popular hypothesis suggests carbon accumulated in the deep Southern Ocean, becoming increasingly radiocarbon (14C) depleted during the last glacial period, and was released into Antarctic Intermediate Water (AAIW) and, subsequently, the atmosphere during deglaciation. Detection of extremely 14C depleted carbon in the intermediate‐depth tropical oceans during periods of atmospheric CO2 rise was initially considered the smoking gun for the hypothesis, but attempts to reproduce the anomalies closer to the Southern Ocean source have largely failed. Here we present new 14C records from four cores recovered at intermediate depths in the eastern equatorial Pacific (EEP). In the context of additional geochemical records, including benthic foraminiferal stable isotopes and sedimentary nitrogen isotopes, we demonstrate that the extreme 14C anomalies observed during the last deglaciation do not reflect the radiocarbon content of AAIW. We show that although AAIW likely transported modestly 14C depleted carbon to the EEP subsurface, the extreme 14C signatures might reflect a distinct source of aged carbon arriving from the north, suggesting the North Pacific helped transport deep ocean carbon to the atmosphere during the last deglaciation. In the EEP, additional local hydrothermal inputs of 14C‐free carbon near the Galapagos Islands magnified the already low‐14C signatures. Finally, regardless of arrival route (North/South Pacific or hydrothermal), 14C‐depleted carbon was released from the EEP subsurface during a late deglacial pulse of renewed upwelling, likely contributing to the Younger Dryas rise in atmospheric CO2.
Environmental conditions, potential heat-stress state and their relations in a sheep barn under hot climate

The aim of this study was to examine climate conditions, air quality, potential heat stress and their relations in a sheep barn under Greek hot weather conditions. Hourly averaged values of temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, and coarse and fine airborne Particulate Matter (PM) concentration recorded inside and outside a naturally ventilated sheep barn during July, August and September of 2015 were used. Indoors potential heat-stress levels were assessed by means of the Temperature Humidity Index (THI). Descriptive statistics were presented and relations between the environmental parameters and the THI values were investigated. The results showed that inside the sheep barn, THI was positively correlated (p < 0.0001) with temperature and wind speed and negatively correlated with relative humidity. Additionally, inside the sheep barn, the concentration of coarse PM was positively and negatively correlated (p < 0.0001) with temperature and relative humidity, respectively, whereas the opposite was observed for the concentration of fine PM. Measures that could be applied to alleviate animals’ heat-stress were proposed.
Learning to Segment Object Candidates

Recent object detection systems rely on two critical steps: (1) a set of object proposals is predicted as efficiently as possible, and (2) this set of candidate proposals is then passed to an object classifier. Such approaches have been shown they can be fast, while achieving the state of the art in detection performance. In this paper, we propose a new way to generate object proposals, introducing an approach based on a discriminative convolutional network. Our model is trained jointly with two objectives: given an image patch, the first part of the system outputs a class-agnostic segmentation mask, while the second part of the system outputs the likelihood of the patch being centered on a full object. At test time, the model is efficiently applied on the whole test image and generates a set of segmentation masks, each of them being assigned with a corresponding object likelihood score. We show that our model yields significant improvements over state-of-the-art object proposal algorithms. In particular, compared to previous approaches, our model obtains substantially higher object recall using fewer proposals. We also show that our model is able to generalize to unseen categories it has not seen during training. Unlike all previous approaches for generating object masks, we do not rely on edges, superpixels, or any other form of low-level segmentation.
Cluster and Fold Stability of E. coli ISC-Type Ferredoxin

Iron-sulfur clusters are essential protein prosthetic groups that provide their redox potential to several different metabolic pathways. Formation of iron-sulfur clusters is assisted by a specialised machine that comprises, among other proteins, a ferredoxin. As a first step to elucidate the precise role of this protein in cluster assembly, we have studied the factors governing the stability and the dynamic properties of E. coli ferredoxin using different spectroscopic techniques. The cluster-loaded protein is monomeric and well structured with a flexible C-terminus but is highly oxygen sensitive so that it readily loses the cluster leading to an irreversible unfolding under aerobic conditions. This process is slowed down by reducing conditions and high ionic strengths. NMR relaxation experiments on the cluster-loaded protein also show that, once the cluster is in place, the protein forms a globular and relatively rigid domain. These data indicate that the presence of the iron-sulfur cluster is the switch between a functional and a non-functional state.
COMPARISON OF THE YIELD OF INFECTIOUS VIRUS FROM CLONES OF HUMAN AND SIMIAN LYMPHOBLASTOID LINES TRANSFORMED BY EPSTEIN-BARR VIRUS

Three lymphoblastoid cell lines, of human, squirrel monkey, and marmoset origin, all transformed by the same strain of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), differed markedly in their content of infectious virus. Single cell clones were obtained from each line to learn whether these differences were dependent upon factors shared by all cells in each line or upon factors present only in a proportion of the total cell population. A total of 17 primary clones were examined: 6 human, 6 squirrel monkey, and 5 marmoset. Cloning efficiency on human placental cell feeder layers varied from 16 to 24%. EBV antiserum, present in the cloning suspension, was shown to neutralize all extracellular virus. 15 of the 17 clones released EBV as measured by the transformation assay. Titers of infectious virus released by daughter clones paralleled titers of virus in the parent line. The median virus titers from human, squirrel monkey, and marmoset clones were respectively 101.5, 103.0, and 104.3 50% transforming doses per 0.2 ml. The median yield of virus from clones of the three species was, respectively, 4, 96, and 786 transforming units per 1,000 cells containing viral capsid antigen. Two nonproducer clones (one human and one squirrel monkey) did not release infectious virus after treatment with 5'-bromodeoxyuridine, or with X ray followed by co-cultivation with marmoset leukocytes. The nonproducer clones could not be superinfected by biologically active EBV. These results show that differences in production of infectious EBV among the lines tested are reflected in the majority of cells of these lines. The data imply that the mechanism for regulation of the expression of the EBV genome is cellular rather than viral in origin. There are presumably genetic differences among primate species in this regulatory process.
Politicians’ Luck of the Draw: Evidence from the Spanish Christmas Lottery

Incumbent politicians tend to receive more votes when economic conditions are good. In this paper we explore the source of this correlation, exploiting the exceptional evidence provided by the Spanish Christmas Lottery. Because winning tickets are typically sold by one lottery outlet, winners tend to be geographically clustered. This allows us to study the impact of exogenous good economic conditions on voting behavior. We find that incumbents receive significantly more votes in winning provinces. The evidence is consistent with a temporary increase in happiness making voters more lenient toward the incumbent, or with a stronger preference for the status quo.
Decoding of human hand actions to handle missing limbs in neuroprosthetics

The only way we can interact with the world is through movements, and our primary interactions are via the hands, thus any loss of hand function has immediate impact on our quality of life. However, to date it has not been systematically assessed how coordination in the hand’s joints affects every day actions. This is important for two fundamental reasons. Firstly, to understand the representations and computations underlying motor control “in-the-wild” situations, and secondly to develop smarter controllers for prosthetic hands that have the same functionality as natural limbs. In this work we exploit the correlation structure of our hand and finger movements in daily-life. The novelty of our idea is that instead of averaging variability out, we take the view that the structure of variability may contain valuable information about the task being performed. We asked seven subjects to interact in 17 daily-life situations, and quantified behaviour in a principled manner using CyberGlove body sensor networks that, after accurate calibration, track all major joints of the hand. Our key findings are: 1. We confirmed that hand control in daily-life tasks is very low-dimensional, with four to five dimensions being sufficient to explain 80-90% of the variability in the natural movement data. 2. We established a universally applicable measure of manipulative complexity that allowed us to measure and compare limb movements across tasks. We used Bayesian latent variable models to model the low-dimensional structure of finger joint angles in natural actions. 3. This allowed us to build a naïve classifier that within the first 1000ms of action initiation (from a flat hand start configuration) predicted which of the 17 actions was going to be executed - enabling us to reliably predict the action intention from very short-time-scale initial data, further revealing the foreseeable nature of hand movements for control of neuroprosthetics and tele operation purposes. 4. Using the Expectation-Maximization algorithm on our latent variable model permitted us to reconstruct with high accuracy (<5°-6° MAE) the movement trajectory of missing fingers by simply tracking the remaining fingers. Overall, our results suggest the hypothesis that specific hand actions are orchestrated by the brain in such a way that in the natural tasks of daily-life there is sufficient redundancy and predictability to be directly exploitable for neuroprosthetics.
Exponential Error Bounds on Parameter Modulation–Estimation for Discrete Memoryless Channels

We consider the problem of modulation and estimation of a random parameter U to be conveyed across a discrete memoryless channel. Upper and lower bounds are derived for the best achievable exponential decay rate of a general moment of the estimation error, E|Û-U|ρ, ρ ≥ 0, when both the modulator and the estimator are subjected to optimization. These exponential error bounds turn out to be intimately related to error exponents of channel coding and to channel capacity. While in general, there is some gap between the upper and the lower bounds, they asymptotically coincide both for very small and for very large values of the moment power ρ. This means that our achievability scheme, which is based on simple quantization of U followed by channel coding, is nearly optimum in both limits. Some additional properties of the bounds are discussed and demonstrated, and finally, an extension to the case of a multidimensional parameter vector is outlined, with the principal conclusion that our upper and lower bounds asymptotically coincide also for a high dimensionality.