Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Morphological stasis in an ongoing gastropod radiation from Lake Malawi

Evolutionary processes leading to adaptive radiation regularly occur too fast to be accurately recorded in the fossil record but too slowly to be readily observed in living biota. The study of evolutionary radiations is thereby confronted with an epistemological gap between the timescales and approaches used by neontologists and paleontologists. Here we report on an ongoing radiation of extant Bellamya species (n = 4) from the African Rift Lake Malawi that provides an unusual opportunity to bridge this gap. The substantial molecular differentiation in this monophyletic Bellamya clade has arisen since Late Pleistocene megadroughts in the Malawi Basin caused by climate change. Morphological time-series analysis of a high-resolution, radiocarbon-dated sequence of 22 faunas spanning the Holocene documents stasis up to the middle Holocene in all traits studied (shell height, number of whorls, and two variables obtained from geometric morphometrics). Between deposition of the last fossil fauna (∼5 ka) and the present day, a drastic increase in morphological disparity was observed (3.7–5.8 times) associated with an increase in species diversity. Comparison of the rates of morphological evolution obtained from the paleontological time-series with phylogenetic rates indicates that the divergence in two traits could be reconstructed with the slow rates documented in the fossils, that one trait required a rate reduction (stabilizing selection), and the other faster rates (divergent selection). The combined paleontological and comparative approach taken here allows recognition that morphological stasis can be the dominant evolutionary pattern within species lineages, even in very young and radiating clades.
Risk perception about zoonoses in immigrants and Italian workers in Northwestern Italy.

OBJECTIVE To assess factors associated with a low risk perception of zoonoses and to identify the gaps in knowledge about transmission and prevention of zoonoses in immigrant and Italian workers. METHODS A cross-sectional study with 175 workers in the agro-livestock and agro-food industry in Piemonte, Italy, was carried out. Data were collected with a semi-structured questionnaire based on knowledge, attitudes and practices (KAP) survey. We calculated proportions and used chi-square tests and odds ratios to assess associations. Eight individual interviews with key informants on immigration and public health in Piemonte were carried out. RESULTS Participants were 82 (47%) Italians and 93 (53%) immigrants. Immigrants were from Romania, Morocco, Albania, India, China, Argentina, Peru, Macedonia, Ivory Coast, Ukraine and Colombia. The study revealed significant differences in risk perception at work (p = 0.001). We found associations between "not having correct knowledge about zoonoses" and the following variables: i. "being immigrant" OR = 4.1 (95%CI 1.7;9.8 p ≤ 0.01); ii. "working in the livestock industry" OR = 2.9 (95%CI 1.2;15.4 p = 0.01); and iii. "being an unqualified worker" OR = 4.4 (95%CI 2.9;15.4 p ≤ 0.01). Another strong association was found between being immigrant and having a low job qualification OR = 6.7 (IC95% 2.9 - 15.4 p ≤ 0.01). Asian immigrants were the group with the highest frequency of risky behaviours and the lowest level of knowledge about zoonoses. CONCLUSIONS Our results indicate that there were differences in risk perception of zoonoses between the groups participating in our study. These results suggest that immigrant status can be considered a risk factor for having lower risk perception and lower level of knowledge of zoonoses at work. There is a relationship between this specific knowledge of zoonoses and lack of training and instruction among migrant populations. Our results stress the need for developing education programs on zoonoses prevention among the immigrant population in Piemonte, Italy.
Biocompatibility of bacterial magnetosomes: Acute toxicity, immunotoxicity and cytotoxicity

Abstract In this study, we examined the acute toxicity, immunotoxicity, and cytotoxicity of bacterial magnetosomes (BMs). LD50 of BMs injected into the sublingual vein of SD rats was 62.7 mg/kg. Further studies with injection of 40 mg/kg BMs showed no significant difference between BM-treated and control rats in terms of routine blood exam results, liver and kidney function tests, organ coefficients of major organs, or Stimulation Index (SI) of lymph cells with ConA and/or LPS antigens. Histological examination of major organs from 40 mg/kg BM-treated rats showed no obvious pathological changes except for increased number of vacuoles in livers, and somewhat thicker interlobular septa in lungs. BMs showed little cytotoxic effect on H22, HL60, or EMT-6 cells. Growth of all three cells was neither inhibited nor stimulated by incubation with 9 μg/ml BMs, which also had no effect on DNA content, cell size, or cell membrane integrity.
Resting-State Eeg: A Study on Its Non-Stationarity for Biometric Applications

In the last years, several papers on EEG-based biometric recognition systems have been published. Specifically, most of the proposed contributions focus on brain signals recorded in resting state conditions, with either closed or open eyes. A common assumption is that the acquired signals are quasi-stationarity. In this paper, we investigate such property in terms of discriminative capability, and we analyze whether or not it holds throughout the entire duration of data collected over long periods. An extensive set of experimental tests, conducted over a database comprising signals collected from 50 subjects in three distinct acquisition sessions, shows that the most distinctive information of the brain signals is temporally located at the beginning of each recording.
On multicast trees: structure and size estimation

This work presents a thorough investigation of the structure of multicast trees cut from the Internet and power-law topologies. Based on both generated topologies and real Internet data, we characterize the structure of such trees and show that they obey the rank-degree power law; that most high degree tree nodes are concentrated in a low diameter neighborhood; and that the sub-tree size also obeys a power law. Our most surprising empirical finding suggests that there is a linear ratio between the number of high degree network nodes, namely nodes whose tree degree is higher than some constant, and the number of leaf nodes in the multicast tree (clients). We also derive this ratio analytically. Based on this finding, we develop the Fast Algorithm, that estimates the number of clients, and show that it converges faster than one round trip delay from the root to a randomly selected client
Increasing Water Temperature Triggers Dominance of Small Freshwater Plankton

Climate change scenarios predict that lake water temperatures will increase up to 4°C and rainfall events will become more intense and frequent by the end of this century. Concurrently, supply of humic substances from terrestrial runoff is expected to increase, resulting in darker watercolor (“brownification”) of aquatic ecosystems. Using a multi-seasonal, low trophic state mesocosm experiment, we investigated how higher water temperature and brownification affect plankton community composition, phenology, and functioning. We tested the hypothesis that higher water temperature (+3°C) and brownification will, a) cause plankton community composition to shift toward small sized phytoplankton and cyanobacteria, and, b) extend the length of the growing season entailing higher phytoplankton production later in the season. We demonstrate that the 3°C increase of water temperature favored the growth of heterotrophic bacteria and small sized autotrophic picophytoplankton cells with significantly higher primary production during warmer fall periods. However, 3X darker water (effect of brownification) caused no significant changes in the plankton community composition or functioning relative to control conditions. Our findings reveal that increased temperature change plankton community structure by favoring smaller sized species proliferation (autotrophic phytoplankton and small size cladocerans), and increase primary productivity and community turnover. Finally, results of this multi-seasonal experiment suggest that warming by 3°C in aquatic ecosystems of low trophic state may cause planktonic food web functioning to become more dominated by fast growing, r-trait species (i.e., small sizes and rapid development).
Context, but not proficiency, moderates the effects of metaphor framing: A case study in India

Metaphors suffuse language and affect how people think. A meta-analysis of metaphor framing studies conducted between 1983 and 2000 concluded that metaphors are about 6% more persuasive than literal language (Sopory & Dillard, 2002). However, each of these studies was conducted in English with samples drawn from populations of native English speakers. Here, we test whether and how language proficiency moderates the influence of metaphor frames. Sampling from a population of non-native, but generally proficient English speakers from India, we found that metaphor frames systematically affected people who reported using English primarily in informal contexts (i.e., among friends and family and through the media) but not those who reported using English primarily in formal contexts (i.e., for school or work). We discuss the implications of this finding for countries like the US, where English is increasingly a non-native language for its residents, and for theories of language processing more generally.
HOW SUCCESSFUL YOU HAVE BEEN IN LIFE DEPENDS ON THE RESPONSE SCALE USED: THE ROLE OF CULTURAL MINDSETS IN PRAGMATIC INFERENCES DRAWN FROM QUESTION FORMAT

To respond to a question, respondents must make culturally relevant, context-sensitive pragmatic inferences about what the question means. Participants in a culture of modesty (China), a culture of honor (Turkey), and a culture of positivity (U.S.) rated their own (Study 1) or someone else's (their parents or people their parents' age, Study 2) success in life using either a rating scale that implied a continuum from failure to success (−5 to +5) or varying degrees of success (0 to 10). As predicted, culture and rating format interacted with rating target to influence response patterns. Americans, sensitive to the possibility of negativity, rated all targets more positively in the bipolar condition. Chinese were modesty-sensitive, ignoring the implications of the scale, unless rating strangers for whom modesty is irrelevant. Turks were honor-sensitive, rating themselves and their parents more positively in the bipolar scale condition and ignoring scale implications of rating strangers.
Impaired Nitric Oxide Synthase Pathway in Diabetes Mellitus: Role of Asymmetric Dimethylarginine and Dimethylarginine Dimethylaminohydrolase

Background—An endogenous inhibitor of nitric oxide synthase, asymmetric dimethylarginine (ADMA), is elevated in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM). This study explored the mechanisms by which ADMA becomes elevated in DM. Methods and Results—Male Sprague-Dawley rats were fed normal chow or high-fat diet (n=5 in each) with moderate streptozotocin injection to induce type 2 DM. Plasma ADMA was elevated in diabetic rats (1.33±0.31 versus 0.48±0.08 &mgr;mol/L;P <0.05). The activity, but not the expression, of dimethylarginine dimethylaminohydrolase (DDAH) was reduced in diabetic rats and negatively correlated with their plasma ADMA levels (P <0.05). DDAH activity was significantly reduced in vascular smooth muscle cells and human endothelial cells (HMEC-1) exposed to high glucose (25.5 mmol/L). The impairment of DDAH activity in vascular cells was associated with an accumulation of ADMA and a reduction in generation of cGMP. In human endothelial cells, coincubation with the antioxidant polyethylene glycol–conjugated superoxide dismutase (22 U/mL) reversed the effects of the high-glucose condition on DDAH activity, ADMA accumulation, and cGMP synthesis. Conclusions—A glucose-induced impairment of DDAH causes ADMA accumulation and may contribute to endothelial vasodilator dysfunction in DM.
Development of a consensus protocol to quantify primate anti‐non‐Gal xenoreactive antibodies using pig aortic endothelial cells

Scientists working in the field of xenotransplantation do not employ a uniform method to measure and report natural and induced antibody responses to non‐Galα(1,3)Gal (non‐Gal) epitopes. Such humoral responses are thought to be particularly pathogenic after transplantation of vascularized GalTKO pig organs and having a more uniform assay and reporting format would greatly facilitate comparisons between laboratories.
The density algorithm for pairwise interaction testing

There are many published algorithms for generating interaction test suites for software testing, exemplified by AETG, IPO, TCG, TConfig, simulated annealing and other heuristic search, and combinatorial design techniques. Among these, greedy one‐test‐at‐a‐time methods (such as AETG and TCG) have proven to be a reasonable compromise between the needs for small test suites, fast test‐suite generation, and flexibility to accommodate a variety of testing scenarios. However, such methods suffer from the lack of a worst‐case logarithmic guarantee on test suite size, while methods that provide such a guarantee at present are less efficient or flexible, or do not produce test suites that are competitive in size for practical testing scenarios. In this paper, a new algorithm establishes that efficient, greedy, one‐test‐at‐a‐time methods can indeed produce a logarithmic worst‐case guarantee on the test suite size. In addition, this can be done while still producing test suites that are of competitive size, and in a time that is comparable to the published methods. It is deterministic, guaranteeing reproducibility. It generates only one candidate test at a time, permits users to ‘seed’ the test suite with specified tests, and allows users to specify constraints of combinations that should be avoided. Further, statistical analysis examines the impact of five variables used to tune this density algorithm for execution time and test suite size: weighting of density for factors, scaling of density, tie‐breaking, use of multiple candidates, and multiple repetitions using randomization. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Histone acetylation and DNA demethylation of T cells result in an anaplastic large cell lymphoma-like phenotype

A characteristic feature of anaplastic large cell lymphoma is the significant repression of the T-cell expression program despite its T-cell origin. The reasons for this down-regulation of T-cell phenotype are still unknown. To elucidate whether epigenetic mechanisms are responsible for the loss of the T-cell phenotype, we treated anaplastic large cell lymphoma and T-cell lymphoma/leukemia cell lines (n=4, each) with epigenetic modifiers to evoke DNA demethylation and histone acetylation. Global gene expression data from treated and untreated cell lines were generated and selected, and differentially expressed genes were evaluated by real-time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction and western blot analysis. Additionally, histone H3 lysine 27 trimethylation was analyzed by chromatin immunoprecipitation. Combined DNA demethylation and histone acetylation of anaplastic large cell lymphoma cells was not able to reconstitute their T-cell phenotype. Instead, the same treatment induced in T cells: (i) an up-regulation of anaplastic large cell lymphoma-characteristic genes (e.g. ID2, LGALS1, c-JUN), and (ii) an almost complete extinction of their T-cell phenotype including CD3, LCK and ZAP70. In addition, suppressive trimethylation of histone H3 lysine 27 of important T-cell transcription factor genes (GATA3, LEF1, TCF1) was present in anaplastic large cell lymphoma cells, which is in line with their absence in primary tumor specimens as demonstrated by immunohistochemistry. Our data suggest that epigenetically activated suppressors (e.g. ID2) contribute to the down-regulation of the T-cell expression program in anaplastic large cell lymphoma, which is maintained by trimethylation of histone H3 lysine 27.
Fast context-free grammar parsing requires fast boolean matrix multiplication

In 1975, Valiant showed that Boolean matrix multiplication can be used for parsing context-free grammars (CFGs), yielding the asympotically fastest (although not practical) CFG parsing algorithm known. We prove a dual result: any CFG parser with time complexity <i>O</i>(<i>gn</i><sup>3-∈</sup>), where <i>g</i> is the size of the grammar and <i>n</i> is the length of the input string, can be efficiently converted into an algorithm to multiply <i>m</i> × <i>m</i> Boolean matrices in time <i>O</i>(<i>m</i><sup>3-∈/3</sup>). Given that practical, substantially subcubic Boolean matrix multiplication algorithms have been quite difficult to find, we thus explain why there has been little progress in developing practical, substantially subcubic general CFG parsers. In proving this result, we also develop a formalization of the notion of parsing.
The Alternative-Outcomes Effect

Distributions of possible scenario outcomes were manipulated without changing the probabilities of focal outcomes (e.g., you hold 3 raffle tickets and 7 other people each hold 1 vs. you hold 3 and another person holds 7 ). Participants' probability estimates confirmed that beliefs about the objective likelihood of the focal outcomes were largely unaffected by the manipulations. As expected, however, nonnumeric certainty estimates (Studies 1-3), feelings of concern (Study 4), and choice behaviors (Study 5) revealed that the manipulations did affect subjective certainty. The consistent direction of this alternative-outcomes effect and findings from Study 6 suggest that comparisons between the focal outcome and the strongest alternative have an important influence on subjective certainty. A potential function for these comparison processes is described, and their similarities with social comparison and social judgment processes are discussed.
An fMRI Study of Syntactic Adaptation

It is easier to produce and comprehend a series of sentences when they have similar syntactic structures. This syntactic priming effect was investigated during silent sentence reading using (i) blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) response as a physiological measure in an f MRI study and (ii) reading time as a behavioral measure in a complementary selfpaced reading paradigm. We found that reading time and left anterior temporal activation were decreased when subjects read sentences with similar relative to dissimilar syntactic forms. Thus, syntactic adaptation during sentence comprehension is demonstrated in a neural area that has previously been linked to both lexical semantic and sentence processing.
Aurora A kinase expression is increased in leukemia stem cells, and a selective Aurora A kinase inhibitor enhances Ara-C-induced apoptosis in acute myeloid leukemia stem cells

Background The overexpression of Aurora A kinase (AurA) has been reported in various malignancies, including acute myeloid leukemia (AML). However, the expression of AurA and the effects of AurA inhibition in cancer stem cells are not yet fully understood. We investigated the expression and inhibition of AurA in AML stem cells (CD34+/CD38-). Methods Expression of AurA was investigated in cell lines (NB4 and KG1) that express high levels of CD34 and low levels of CD38. Primary AML cells were harvested from 8 patients. The expression of AurA and cell death induced by inhibition of AurA were analyzed in CD34+/CD38- cells. Results AurA was shown to be overexpressed in both primary AML cells and leukemia stem cells (LSCs) compared to normal hematopoietic stem cells. Inhibition of AurA plus cytarabine treatment in LSCs resulted in increased cytotoxicity compared to cytarabine treatment alone. Additional stimulation with granulocyte-colony stimulating factor (G-CSF) increased the cell death caused by AurA inhibition plus cytarabine treatment. Conclusion To our knowledge, this is the first report describing increased expression of AurA in LSCs. Our results suggest that selective AurA inhibition may be used to reduce LSCs, and this reduction may be enhanced by stimulation with G-CSF. Further exploration of relationship between nuclear factor kappa-B and AurA inhibition and the potential of AurA inhibition for use in leukemia treatment is needed.
Active penetration of Trypanosoma cruzi into host cells: historical considerations and current concepts

In the present short review, we analyze past experiments that addressed the interactions of intracellular pathogenic protozoa (Trypanosoma cruzi, Toxoplasma gondii, and Plasmodium) with host cells and the initial use of the term active penetration to indicate that a protozoan “crossed the host cell membrane, penetrating into the cytoplasm. ” However, the subsequent use of transmission electron microscopy showed that, for all of the protozoans and cell types examined, endocytosis, classically defined as involving the formation of a membrane-bound vacuole, took place during the interaction process. As a consequence, the recently penetrated parasites are always within a vacuole, designated the parasitophorous vacuole (PV).
Combining global optimization with local selection for efficient QoS-aware service composition

The run-time binding of web services has been recently put forward in order to support rapid and dynamic web service compositions. With the growing number of alternative web services that provide the same functionality but differ in quality parameters, the service composition becomes a decision problem on which component services should be selected such that user's end-to-end QoS requirements (e.g. availability, response time) and preferences (e.g. price) are satisfied. Although very efficient, local selection strategy fails short in handling global QoS requirements. Solutions based on global optimization, on the other hand, can handle global constraints, but their poor performance renders them inappropriate for applications with dynamic and real-time requirements. In this paper we address this problem and propose a solution that combines global optimization with local selection techniques to benefit from the advantages of both worlds. The proposed solution consists of two steps: first, we use mixed integer programming (MIP) to find the optimal decomposition of global QoS constraints into local constraints. Second, we use distributed local selection to find the best web services that satisfy these local constraints. The results of experimental evaluation indicate that our approach significantly outperforms existing solutions in terms of computation time while achieving close-to-optimal results.