Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multivariate Geographic Clustering in A Metacomputing Environment Using Globus

The authors present a metacomputing application of multivariate, nonhierarchical statistical clustering to geographic environmental data from the 48 conterminous United States in order to produce maps of regions of ecological similarity, called ecoregions. These maps represent finer scale regionalizations than do those generated by the traditional technique: an expert with a marker pen. Several variables (e.g., temperature, organic matter, rainfall etc.) thought to affect the growth of vegetation are clustered at resolutions as fine as one square kilometer (1 km2). These data can represent over 7.8 million map cells in an n-dimensional (n = 9 to 25) data space. A parallel version of the iterative statistical clustering algorithm is developed by the authors using the MPI (Message Passing Interface) message passing routines. The parallel algorithm uses a classical, self-scheduling, single-program, multiple data (SPMD) organization; performs dynamic load balancing for reasonable performance in heterogeneous metacomputing environments; and provides fault tolerance by saving intermediate results for easy restarts in case of hardware failure. The parallel algorithm was tested on various geographically distributed heterogeneous metacomputing configurations involving an IBM SP3TM, an IBM SP2TM, and two SGI Origin 2000TM ’s. The tests were performed with minimal code modification, and were made possible by GlobusTM (a metacomputing software toolkit) and the Globus-enabled version of MPI (MPICH-G). Our performance tests indicate that while the algorithm works reasonably well under the metacomputing environment for a moderate number of processors, the communication overhead can become prohibitive for large processor configurations.
Impact of an Online Alcohol Education Course on Behavior and Harm for Incoming First-Year College Students: Short-Term Evaluation of a Randomized Trial

Abstract. Objective: The authors assessed short-term effectiveness of a Web-based alcohol education program on entering freshmen. Participants: 3,216 incoming first-year students were randomized to a control or intervention group. Methods: Controls completed a survey and knowledge test the summer before college; 4 to 6 weeks after arrival on campus, they completed a follow-up survey of behaviors and harms followed by an invitation to complete the online course. Intervention students completed the precourse survey and test, the online course, and final exam prior to coming to campus. This was followed by a survey 4 to 6 weeks after arrival on campus. Results: Although the intervention group showed significantly higher alcohol-related postcourse knowledge compared to the control group, protective behavior, risk-related behavior, high-risk drinking, and alcohol-related harm did not favor the intervention group, with the sole exception of playing drinking games. Conclusions: Alcohol knowledge alone was insufficient to mitigate alcohol-related high-risk behaviors in this student population.
Twofold cost of reproduction: an increase in parental effort leads to higher malarial parasitaemia and to a decrease in resistance to oxidative stress

Parental effort is usually associated with high metabolism that could lead to an increase in the production of reactive oxidative species giving rise to oxidative stress. Since many antioxidants involved in the resistance to oxidative stress can also enhance immune function, an increase in parental effort may diminish the level of antioxidants otherwise involved in parasite resistance. In the present study, we performed brood size manipulation in a population of great tits (Parus major) to create different levels of parental effort. We measured resistance to oxidative stress and used a newly developed quantitative PCR assay to quantify malarial parasitaemia. We found that males with an enlarged brood had significantly higher level of malarial parasites and lower red blood cell resistance to free radicals than males rearing control and reduced broods. Brood size manipulation did not affect female parasitaemia, although females with an enlarged brood had lower red blood cell resistance than females with control and reduced broods. However, for both sexes, there was no relationship between the level of parasitaemia and resistance to oxidative stress, suggesting a twofold cost of reproduction. Our results thus suggest the presence of two proximate and independent mechanisms for the well-documented trade-off between current reproductive effort and parental survival.
Mutations in accessory DNA replicating functions alter the relative mutation frequency of herpes simplex virus type 1 strains in cultured murine cells

The contribution of the herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1)-encoded uracil DNA glycosylase (UNG), thymidine kinase (TK), and dUTPase to the relative mutant frequency (RMF) of the virus in cultured murine cells was examined. A panel of HSV-1 mutants that lacked singly or doubly the UNG, TK, or dUTPase activity were generated by disruption of the enzyme coding regions with the Escherichia coli beta-galactosidase (beta-gal) gene in strain 17syn+. To establish a baseline RMF of strain 17syn+, the beta-gal gene was inserted into the UL3 locus. In all of the viruses, the beta-gal insert served as a phenotypic marker of RMF. A mutant plaque was identified by the lack of beta-gal activity and, in selected cases, positive in situ hybridization for beta-gal sequences. Replication kinetics in NIH 3T3 cells demonstrated that all of the mutants replicated efficiently, generating stocks with equivalent titers. Two independently generated UL3-beta-gal viruses were examined and established a baseline RMF of approximately 0.5% in both NIH 3T3 and LM TK- cells. Loss of dUTPase activity resulted in viruses with fivefold-increased RMFs, indicating that the HSV-1 dUTPase has an antimutator function. The RMF observed for the tk- viruses was reduced as much as 40-fold (RMF of 0.02%), suggesting that the viral TK is a mutator activity. The RMF of two independent UNG- viruses showed no significant difference from the baseline RMF in limited passage; however, following successive passage, the data suggested that UNG activity serves as an antimutator. These results have implications for the natural history of HSV and the development of antiviral therapies.
Involvement of dopaminergic system in phencyclidine-induced place preference in mice pretreated with phencyclidine repeatedly.

In the conditioned place preference test, phencyclidine (PCP) produces place aversion in naive rats, whereas PCP produces place preference in rats treated with PCP repeatedly. Although the PCP-induced place aversion is thought to involve the serotonergic system, the mechanisms of the PCP-induced place preference are unclear. We investigated whether the dopaminergic system is involved in place preference induced by PCP in mice repeatedly treated with PCP, because it is well known that the dopaminergic system plays an important role in the rewarding effect of drugs. PCP (2-8 mg/kg s.c.) induced a dose-dependent place aversion in naive mice, whereas PCP (2-8 mg/kg s.c.) induced a dose-dependent place preference in mice pretreated with PCP (10 mg/kg/day s.c.) for 28 days. The place preference induced by PCP (8 mg/kg s.c.) was attenuated significantly by alpha-methyl-rho-tyrosine (100 mg/kg i.p.), a tyrosine hydroxylase inhibitor, 6-hydroxydopamine (100 micrograms/mouse i.c.v.), a dopaminergic neurotoxin, and R-(+)-7-chloro-8-hydroxy-3-methyl-1-phenyl-2,3,4,5-tetrahydro-1H-3-benza zepine (0.5 mg/kg s.c.), a dopamine D1 receptor antagonist. These agents themselves produced neither the place preference nor aversion. In contrast to the attenuating effects of these agents, N-(2-chloroethyl)-N-ethyl-2-bromobenzylamine (30 mg/kg i.p.), a noradrenergic neurotoxin, ritanserin (1 mg/kg i.p.), a serotonin2 receptor antagonist, and (-) sulpiride (50 and 100 mg/kg i.p.), a dopamine D2 receptor antagonist, failed to affect the PCP-induced place preference. In mice pretreated with methamphetamine (1 mg/kg/day s.c.) for 14 days, PCP (8 mg/kg s.c.) induced the place preference, but not aversion. These results demonstrate that the PCP-induced place preference depends on dopaminergic, but not on serotonergic and noradrenergic, neuronal systems and suggest a role for D1 receptors in the mediation of the PCP-induced place preference.
Unanticipated evolution of web service provision software using generative object communication

Providing service via theWeb differs from other service provision environments in that it is possible for the unexpected arrival of a massive number of service requests in a small time-frame, a situation commonly referred to as a flash crowd. Events of this nature are beyond the control of the service provider, and have the potential to severely degrade service quality and, in the worst case, to deny service to all clients completely. The occurrence, severity and sought Web content of a flash crowd is beyond the control of service provision software. How this software reacts to such a flash crowd, however, is not. Given the short-lived nature of flash crowds, it is unreasonable to expect such systems to increase the system resources they can apply to a particular flash crowd event. It is also difficult to predict the particular nature of any flash crowd, and subsequently which system resources will bottleneck. The driving hypothesis of this research is that, if we are to reasonably expect to have software react effectively to flash crowd events, we need to alter that software at runtime to remove system bottlenecks, whilst a flash crowd event is in progress. This is a special case of what is usually known as "unanticipated software evolution". This thesis reports on an investigation into how unanticipated software evolution can be applied to running Web service provision software to remove system bottlenecks. It does so by introducing automated dynamic Web content degradation to running software currently subject to simulated flash crowd events. The thesis describes and validates appropriate runtime extensions to allow generative object communication architectures (a promising class of architecture for unanticipated software evolution) to be converted initially into a Web application server, and then later accept further runtime behaviour changes. Such changes could alter system bottlenecks by replacing the key programming logic causing system bottlenecks at runtime.
The Burden of Rabies in Tanzania and Its Impact on Local Communities

Background Rabies remains a major public health threat in many parts of the world and is responsible for an estimated 55,000 human deaths annually. The burden of rabies is estimated to be around US$20 million in Africa, with the highest financial expenditure being the cost of post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP). However, these calculations may be substantial underestimates because the costs to households of coping with endemic rabies have not been investigated. We therefore aimed to estimate the household costs, health-seeking behaviour, coping strategies, and outcomes of exposure to rabies in rural and urban communities in Tanzania. Methods and Findings Extensive investigative interviews were used to estimate the incidence of human deaths and bite exposures. Questionnaires with bite victims and their families were used to investigate health-seeking behaviour and costs (medical and non-medical costs) associated with exposure to rabies. We calculated that an average patient in rural Tanzania, where most people live on less than US$1 per day, would need to spend over US$100 to complete WHO recommended PEP schedules. High costs and frequent shortages of PEP led to poor compliance with PEP regimens, delays in presentation to health facilities, and increased risk of death. Conclusion The true costs of obtaining PEP were twice as high as those previously reported from Africa and should be considered in re-evaluations of the burden of rabies.
Pose for Action - Action for Pose

In this work we propose to utilize information about human actions to improve pose estimation in monocular videos. To this end, we present a pictorial structure model that exploits high-level information about activities to incorporate higher-order part dependencies by modeling action specific appearance models and pose priors. However, instead of using an additional expensive action recognition framework, the action priors are efficiently estimated by our pose estimation framework. This is achieved by starting with a uniform action prior and updating the action prior during pose estimation. We also show that learning the right amount of appearance sharing among action classes improves the pose estimation. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method on two challenging datasets for pose estimation and action recognition with over 80,000 test images.
Evidence of a Role for Phosphatidylinositol 3-Kinase Activation in the Blocking of Apoptosis by Polyomavirus Middle T Antigen

ABSTRACT A polyomavirus mutant (315YF) blocked in binding phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI 3-kinase) has previously been shown to be partially deficient in transformation and to induce fewer tumors and with a significant delay compared to wild-type virus. The role of polyomavirus middle T antigen-activated PI 3-kinase in apoptosis was investigated as a possible cause of this behavior. When grown in medium containing 1d-3-deoxy-3-fluoro-myo-inositol to block formation of 3′-phosphorylated phosphatidylinositols, F111 rat fibroblasts transformed by wild-type polyomavirus (PyF), but not normal F111 cells, showed a marked loss of viability with evidence of apoptosis. Similarly, treatment with wortmannin, an inhibitor of PI 3-kinase, stimulated apoptosis in PyF cells but not in normal cells. Activation of Akt, a serine/threonine kinase whose activity has been correlated with regulation of apoptosis, was roughly twofold higher in F111 cells transformed by either wild-type virus or mutant 250YS blocked in binding Shc compared to cells transformed by mutant 315YF. In the same cells, levels of apoptosis were inversely correlated with Akt activity. Apoptosis induced by serum withdrawal in Rat-1 cells expressing a temperature-sensitive p53 was shown to be at least partially p53 independent. Expression of either wild-type or 250YS middle T antigen inhibited apoptosis in serum-starved Rat-1 cells at both permissive and restrictive temperatures for p53. Mutant 315YF middle T antigen was partially defective for inhibition of apoptosis in these cells. The results indicate that unlike other DNA tumor viruses which block apoptosis by inactivation of p53, polyomavirus achieves protection from apoptotic death through a middle T antigen–PI 3-kinase–Akt pathway that is at least partially p53 independent.
LightSync: unsynchronized visual communication over screen-camera links

A key challenge for smartphone based visual communication over screen-camera links is imperfect frame synchronization. The difficulty arises from frame rate diversity and variability due to camera capability, lighting conditions, and system factors. On the 4 smartphone cameras we tested, the frame rate varies between 8 and 30 frames per second. If the transmit frame rate is too high, the receiver might lose original frames or capture mixed frames, which are normally not decodable. Previous systems simply reduce the effective screen frame rate to be half the camera frame capture rate, to guarantee receiving a decodable frame every other frame. This under-utilizes the transmitter side capacity and is inefficient. We achieve frame synchronization with LightSync, which features in-frame color tracking to decode imperfect frames and a linear erasure code across frames to recover lost frames. LightSync allows smooth communication between the screen and the camera at any combination of the transmit and receive frame rates, as long as the receive rate is at least half the transmit rate. This means that each receiver can scale the decoding performance with its own camera capability. Across several phones, our system can more than double the average throughput compared to previous approaches.
Heterologous Expression of Two Jatropha Aquaporins Imparts Drought and Salt Tolerance and Improves Seed Viability in Transgenic Arabidopsis thaliana

Drought and high salinity are environmental conditions that cause adverse effects on the growth and productivity of crops. Aquaporins are small integral membrane proteins that belong to the family of the major intrinsic proteins (MIPs), with members in animals, plants and microbes, where they facilitate the transport of water and/or small neutral solutes thereby affecting water balance. In this study we characterized two aquaporin genes namely, plasma membrane intrinsic protein (PIP2;7) and tonoplast intrinsic protein TIP1;3 from Jatropha curcas that are localised to the plasma membrane and vacuole respectively. Transgenic Arabidopsis thaliana lines over-expressing JcPIP2;7 and JcTIP1;3 under a constitutive promoter show improved germination under high salt and mannitol compared to control seeds. These transgenic plants also show increased root length under abiotic stress conditions compared to wild type Col-0 plants. Transgenic lines exposed to drought conditions by withholding water for 20 days, were able to withstand water stress and attained normal growth after re-watering unlike control plants which could not survive. Transgenic lines also had better seed yield than control under salt stress. Importantly, seed viability of transgenic plants grown under high salt concentration was 35%-45% compared to less than 5% for control seeds obtained from plants growing under salt stress. The effect of JcPIP2;7 and JcTIP1;3 on improving germination and seed viability in drought and salinity make these important candidates for genetic manipulation of plants for growth in saline soils.
Irisin Lowers Blood Pressure by Improvement of Endothelial Dysfunction via AMPK‐Akt‐eNOS‐NO Pathway in the Spontaneously Hypertensive Rat

Background Exercise is a major nonpharmacological treatment for hypertension, but its underlying mechanisms are still not completely elucidated. Irisin, a polypeptide containing 112 amino acids, which is secreted mainly by skeletal muscle cells during exercise, exerts a protective role in metabolic diseases, such as diabetes mellitus and obesity. Because of the close relationship between irisin and metabolic diseases, we hypothesized that irisin may play a role in the regulation of blood pressure. Methods and Results Blood pressures of male Wistar‐Kyoto (WKY) rats and spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHRs) were monitored through the carotid artery. Our study found that acute intravenous injection of irisin reduced blood pressure in SHRs, but not WKY rats. Irisin, by itself, had no direct vasorelaxing effect in phenylephrine‐preconstricted mesenteric arteries from SHRs. However, irisin augmented the acetylcholine‐induced vasorelaxation in mesenteric arteries from SHRs that could be reversed by Nω‐nitro‐l‐arginine‐methyl ester (L‐NAME; 100 μmol/L), indicating a role of nitric oxide (NO) in this action. Indeed, irisin increased NO production and phosphorylation of endothelial nirtic oxide synthase (eNOS) in endothelial cells. 5′‐AMP‐activated protein kinase (AMPK) was involved in the vasorelaxing effect of irisin because compound C (20 μmol/L), an AMPK inhibitor, blocked the irisin‐mediated increase in phosphorylation of eNOS and protein kinase B (Akt) in endothelial cells and vasodilation in mesenteric arteries. Conclusions We conclude that acute administration of irisin lowers blood pressure of SHRs by amelioration of endothelial dysfunction of the mesenteric artery through the AMPK‐Akt‐eNOS‐NO signaling pathway.
How Early is Infants' Attention to Objects and Actions Shaped by Culture? New Evidence from 24-Month-Olds Raised in the US and China

Researchers have proposed that the culture in which we are raised shapes the way that we attend to the objects and events that surround us. What remains unclear, however, is how early any such culturally-inflected differences emerge in development. Here, we address this issue directly, asking how 24-month-old infants from the US and China deploy their attention to objects and actions in dynamic scenes. By analyzing infants' eye movements while they observed dynamic scenes, the current experiment revealed striking convergences, overall, in infants' patterns of visual attention in the two communities, but also pinpointed a brief period during which their attention reliably diverged. This divergence, though modest, suggested that infants from the US devoted relatively more attention to the objects and those from China devoted relatively more attention to the actions in which they were engaged. This provides the earliest evidence for strong overlap in infants' attention to objects and events in dynamic scenes, but also raises the possibility that by 24 months, infants' attention may also be shaped subtly by the culturally-inflected attentional proclivities characteristic of adults in their cultural communities.
Is Cartilage Tympanoplasty More Effective Than Fascia Tympanoplasty? A Systematic Review

Objective A systematic review to compare the effectiveness of the use of cartilage (with or without perichondrium) with temporalis fascia used in tympanoplasty. Data Source The following databases were searched for relevant studies: MEDLINE, Embase, CINAHL, the Cochrane Library including the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Google scholar, and the PubMed. There was no restriction as to the design or date of publication. Study Selections We selected randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and retrospective studies comparing cartilage and temporalis fascia tympanoplasty in relation to 2 outcomes: morphological and functional success. Initial search identified 2,091 publications. All titles and abstracts were reviewed by 2 of the authors, and 103 relevant articles were studied. However, only 14 studies met the inclusion criteria for this review. These included 3 RCTs, 10 retrospective studies, and 1 literature review. Results Three level 1 (RCTs) and 11 level 3 and 4 evidence-based studies were included (n = 1,475 patients). One RCT and 3 retrospective studies showed a statistically significant better morphological success, that is, intact ear drum with cartilage graft with or without perichondrium. There was, however, no statistically significant difference between cartilage and temporalis fascia tympanoplasty regarding function, namely, hearing outcome. The need for revision rates was approximately 10% with cartilage and 19% with fascia tympanoplasty. Conclusion Tympanoplasty using cartilage with or without perichondrium has better morphological outcome than tympanoplasty using temporalis fascia. However, there was no statistically significant difference in hearing outcomes between the 2 grafts.
Urotensin-II and the cardiovascular system – the importance of developing modulators

Urotensin-II (U-II) potently contracts some large isolated blood vessels and cardiac tissue. However, the maximum effects on human blood vessels and heart are relatively small. U-II dilates human resistance arteries. It markedly decreased myocardial function and increased vascular resistance in cynomolgus monkeys, but the major effects of U-II have not been observed in healthy humans. A major role for U-II in human cardiovascular disease has not been clearly established despite studies in patients with coronary artery disease, heart failure, essential hypertension and diabetes. Peptide and non-peptide agonists and antagonists of the U-II receptor are being developed and will be useful in the characterisation of the effects of U-II, and may have some therapeutic potential.