Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A molecular and genomic reference system for conifer defence against insects

Abstract Insect pests are part of natural forest ecosystems contributing to forest rejuvenation but can also cause ecological disturbance and economic losses that are expected to increase with climate change. The white pine or spruce weevil (Pissodes strobi) is a pest of conifer forests in North America. Weevil–host interactions with various spruce (Picea) species have been explored as a genomic and molecular reference system for conifer defence against insects. Interactions occur in two major phases of the insect life cycle. In the exophase, adult weevils are free‐moving and display behaviour of host selection for oviposition that is affected by host traits. In the endophase, insects live within the host where mobility and development from eggs to young adults are affected by a complex system of host defences. Genetic resistance exists in several spruce species and involves synergism of constitutive and induced chemical and physical defences that comprise the conifer defence syndrome. Here, we review conifer defences that disrupt the weevil life cycle and mechanisms by which trees resist weevil attack. We highlight molecular and genomic aspects and a possible role for the weevil microbiome. Knowledge of this conifer defence system is supporting forest health strategies and tree breeding for insect resistance.
Update on Descemet membrane endothelial keratoplasty.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW To provide an update on new perspectives on Descemet membrane endothelial keratoplasty (DMEK). RECENT FINDINGS Preloaded DMEK grafts allow optimization of DMEK surgery time and reduce costs of the procedure, which is allowing the procedure to become more easily performed as reflected in the increasing number of cases. The surgical technique in the United States differs from the technique in Europe, but outcomes have been similar. Hemi-DMEK and quarter-DMEK have shown similar outcomes to conventional DMEK with respect to corneal transparency and visual acuity. Three-year follow-up of hemi-DMEK has also shown stability in endothelial cell count while maintaining corneal transparency. SUMMARY DMEK is becoming more accepted as the procedure of choice for treating endothelial failure. However, challenges with the surgical technique have limited wider implementation of this lamellar corneal transplantation. Preloaded DMEK provides one solution for the surgical challenges associated with the procedure while also reducing costs. Variations in the surgical technique for DMEK, including hemi-DMEK and quarter-DMEK, allow for central corneal clarity similar to traditional DMEK, but both result in lower endothelial cell density (ECD).
Acceleration of Solar Wind Ions by Nearby Interplanetary Shocks: Comparison of Monte Carlo Simulations with Ulysses Observations

Various theoretical techniques have been devised to determine distribution functions of particles accelerated by the first-order Fermi mechanism at collisionless astrophysical shocks. The most stringent test of these models as descriptors of the phenomenon of diffusive acceleration is a comparison of the theoretical predictions with observational data on particle populations. Such comparisons have yielded good agreement between observations at the quasi-parallel portion of the Earth's bow shock and three theoretical approaches, namely, Monte Carlo kinetic simulations, hybrid plasma simulations, and numerical solution of the diffusion-convection equation. Testing of the Monte Carlo method is extended in this paper to the realm of oblique interplanetary shocks: here observations of proton and He2+ distributions made by the SWICS ion mass spectrometer on Ulysses at nearby interplanetary shocks (less than about 3 AU distant from the Sun) are compared with test-particle Monte Carlo simulation predictions of accelerated populations. The plasma parameters used in the simulation are obtained from measurements of solar wind particles and the magnetic field upstream of individual shocks; pickup ions are omitted from the simulations, since they appear, for the most part, at greater heliospheric distances. Good agreement between downstream spectral measurements and the simulation predictions are obtained for two shocks by allowing the parameter λ/rg, the ratio of the mean-free scattering length to the ionic gyroradius, to vary in an optimization of the fit to the data; generally λ/rg ≲ 5, corresponding to the case of strong scattering. Simultaneous H+ and He2+ data, presented only for the 1991 April 7 shock event, indicate that the acceleration process is roughly independent of the mass or charge of the species. This naturally arises if all particles interact elastically with a massive background, as occurs in collisionless “scattering” off a background magnetic field, and is a patent property of the Monte Carlo technique, since it assumes elastic and quasi-isotropic scattering of particles in the local plasma frame.
Correlates of Protective Motivation Theory (PMT) to Adolescents’ Drug Use Intention

Early onset and increasing proliferation of illicit adolescent drug-use poses a global health concern. This study aimed to examine the correlation between Protective Motivation Theory (PMT) measures and the intention to use drugs among adolescents. An exploratory quantitative correlation design and convenience sampling were adopted. A total of 318 students completed a self-reported questionnaire that solicited information related to their demographics and activities, measures of threat appraisal and coping appraisal, and the intention to use drugs. Logistic regression analysis showed that intrinsic and extrinsic rewards were significant predictors of intention. The odds ratios were equal to 2.90 (p < 0.05) and 8.04 (p < 0.001), respectively. The logistic regression model analysis resulted in a high Nagelkerke R2 of 0.49, which suggests that PMT related measures could be used in predicting drug use intention among adolescents. Further research should be conducted with non-school adolescents to confirm the application.
Body mass index in urban Canada: neighborhood and metropolitan area effects.

OBJECTIVES We investigated the influence of neighborhood and metropolitan area characteristics on body mass index (BMI) in urban Canada in 2001. METHODS We conducted a multilevel analysis with data collected from a cross-sectional survey of men and women nested in neighborhoods and metropolitan areas in urban Canada during 2001. RESULTS After we controlled for individual sociodemographic characteristics and behaviors, the average BMIs of residents of neighborhoods in which a large proportion of individuals had less than a high school education were higher than those BMIs of residents in neighborhoods with small proportions of such individuals (P< .01). Living in a neighborhood with a high proportion of recent immigrants was associated with lower BMI for men (P<.01), but not for women. Neighborhood dwelling density was not associated with BMI for either gender. Metropolitan sprawl was associated with higher BMI for men (P=.02), but the effect was not significant for women (P= .09). CONCLUSIONS BMI is strongly patterned by an individual's social position in urban Canada. A neighborhood's social condition has an incremental influence on the average BMI of its residents. However, BMI is not influenced by dwelling density. Metropolitan sprawl is associated with higher BMI for Canadian men, which supports recent evidence of this same association among American men. Individuals and their environments collectively influence BMI in urban Canada.
Efficient Model-free Reinforcement Learning in Metric Spaces

Model-free Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms such as Q-learning [Watkins, Dayan 92] have been widely used in practice and can achieve human level performance in applications such as video games [Mnih et al. 15]. Recently, equipped with the idea of optimism in the face of uncertainty, Q-learning algorithms [Jin, Allen-Zhu, Bubeck, Jordan 18] can be proven to be sample efficient for discrete tabular Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) which have finite number of states and actions. In this work, we present an efficient model-free Q-learning based algorithm in MDPs with a natural metric on the state-action space--hence extending efficient model-free Q-learning algorithms to continuous state-action space. Compared to previous model-based RL algorithms for metric spaces [Kakade, Kearns, Langford 03], our algorithm does not require access to a black-box planning oracle.
Determinants of treatment plan implementation in multidisciplinary team meetings for patients with chronic diseases: a mixed-methods study

Objective Multidisciplinary team (MDT) meetings are assumed to produce better decisions and are extensively used to manage chronic disease in the National Health Service (NHS). However, evidence for their effectiveness is mixed. Our objective was to investigate determinants of MDT effectiveness by examining factors influencing the implementation of MDT treatment plans. This is a proxy measure of effectiveness, because it lies on the pathway to improvements in health, and reflects team decision making which has taken account of clinical and non-clinical information. Additionally, this measure can be compared across MDTs for different conditions. Methods We undertook a prospective mixed-methods study of 12 MDTs in London and North Thames. Data were collected by observation of 370 MDT meetings, interviews with 53 MDT members, and from 2654 patient medical records. We examined the influence of patient-related factors (disease, age, sex, deprivation, whether their preferences and other clinical/health behaviours were mentioned) and MDT features (as measured using the ‘Team Climate Inventory’ and skill mix) on the implementation of MDT treatment plans. Results The adjusted odds (or likelihood) of implementation was reduced by 25% for each additional professional group represented at the MDT meeting. Implementation was more likely in MDTs with clear goals and processes and a good ‘Team Climate’ (adjusted OR 1.96; 95% CI 1.15 to 3.31 for a unit increase in Team Climate Inventory (TCI) score). Implementation varied by disease category, with the lowest adjusted odds of implementation in mental health teams. Implementation was also lower for patients living in more deprived areas (adjusted odds of implementation for patients in the most compared with least deprived areas was 0.60, 95% CI 0.39 to 0.91). Conclusions Greater multidisciplinarity is not necessarily associated with more effective decision making. Explicit goals and procedures are also crucial. Decision implementation should be routinely monitored to ensure the equitable provision of care.
THE BAR PATTERN SPEED OF NGC 1433 ESTIMATED VIA STICKY-PARTICLE SIMULATIONS

We present detailed numerical simulations of NGC 1433, an intermediate-type barred spiral showing strong morphological features including a secondary bar, nuclear ring, inner ring, outer pseudoring, and two striking, detached spiral arcs known as “plumes. ” This galaxy is an ideal candidate for recreating the observed morphology through dynamical models and determining the pattern speed. We derived a gravitational potential from an H-band image of the galaxy and simulated the behavior of a two-dimensional disk of 100,000 inelastically colliding gas particles. We find that the closest matching morphology between a B-band image and a simulation occurs with a pattern speed of 0.89 km s−1 arcsec−1 ± 5–10%. We also determine that the ratio of corotation radius to the average published bar radius is 1.7 ± 0.3, with the ambiguity in the bar radius being the largest contributor to the error.
Total positivity in structured binary distributions

We study binary distributions that are multivariate totally positive of order 2 (MTP2). Binary distributions can be represented as an exponential family and we show that MTP2 exponential families are convex. Moreover, MTP2 quadratic exponential families, which contain ferromagnetic Ising models and attractive Gaussian graphical models, are defined by intersecting the space of canonical parameters with a polyhedral cone whose faces correspond to conditional independence relations. Hence MTP2 serves as an implicit regularizer for quadratic exponential families and leads to sparsity in the estimated graphical model. We prove that the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) in an MTP2 binary exponential family exists if and only if the sign patterns $(1,-1)$ and $(-1,1)$ are represented in the sample for every pair of vertices; in particular, this implies that the MLE may exist with $n=d$ samples, in stark contrast to unrestricted binary exponential families where $2^d$ samples are required. Finally, we provide a globally convergent algorithm for computing the MLE for MTP2 Ising models similar to iterative proportional scaling and apply it to the analysis of data from two psychological disorders. Throughout, we compare our results on MTP2 Ising models with the Gaussian case and identify similarities and differences.
Malignant Melanoma in Egypt

Sono presentati 42 casi di melanoma maligno in pazienti egiziani e una rassegna di 165 casi precedentemente riportati in letteratura. L'età media era di 48 anni e leggermente superiore nei maschi. Di tutti i casi studiati, il 67% dei melanomi erano cutanei, il 22% extracutanei e l'11% a sede primaria sconosciuta. Lentigo maligna e i melanomi a diffusione superficiale sono stati eccezionalmente rari. Il piede è stata la sede più comune (43%) del melanoma cutaneo, seguito dalla regione testa-collo (26%). La frequenza di melanomi del piede è stata superiore a quella riscontrata nei caucasiani di pelle più chiara, mentre è stata inferiore a quella osservata nella razza negra. Vengono discussi i possibili fattori responsabili di questa variazione di localizzazione dei melanomi tra le differenti razze.
Bubble mapping with the Square Kilometre Array – I. Detecting galaxies with Euclid, JWST, WFIRST, and ELT within ionized bubbles in the intergalactic medium at z > 6

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is expected to provide the first tomographic observations of the neutral intergalactic medium at redshifts z > 6 and pinpoint the locations of individual ionized bubbles during early stages of cosmic reionization. In scenarios where star-forming galaxies provide most of the ionizing photons required for cosmic reionization, one expects the first ionized bubbles to be centred on overdensities of such galaxies. Here, we model the properties of galaxy populations within isolated, ionized bubbles that SKA-1 should be able to resolve at z ≈ 7–10, and explore the prospects for galaxy counts within such structures with various upcoming near-infrared telescopes. We find that, for the bubbles that are within reach of SKA-1 tomography, the bubble volume is closely tied to the number of ionizing photons that have escaped from the galaxies within. In the case of galaxy-dominated reionization, galaxies are expected to turn up above the spectroscopic detection threshold of JWST and ELT in even the smallest resolvable bubbles at z ≤ 10. The prospects of detecting galaxies within these structures in purely photometric surveys with Euclid, WFIRST, JWST, or ELT are also discussed. While spectroscopy is preferable towards the end of reionization to provide a robust sample of bubble members, multiband imaging may be a competitive option for bubbles at z ≈ 10, due to the very small number of line-of-sight interlopers expected at these redshifts.
Deep Generative Models for Sparse, High-dimensional, and Overdispersed Discrete Data

Many applications, such as text modelling, high-throughput sequencing, and recommender systems, require analysing sparse, high-dimensional, and overdispersed discrete (count/binary) data. With the ability of handling high-dimensional and sparse discrete data, models based on probabilistic matrix factorisation and latent factor analysis have enjoyed great success in modeling such data. Of particular interest among these are hierarchical Bayesian count/binary matrix factorisation models and nonlinear latent variable models based on deep neural networks, such as recently proposed variational autoencoders for discrete data. However, unlike the extensive research on sparsity and high-dimensionality, another important phenomenon, overdispersion, which large-scale discrete data exhibit, is relatively less studied. It can be shown that most existing latent factor models do not capture overdispersion in discrete data properly due to their ineffectiveness of modelling self- and cross-excitation (e.g., word burstiness in text), which may lead to inferior modelling performance. In this paper, we provide an in-depth analysis on how self- and cross-excitation are modelled in existing models and propose a novel variational autoencoder framework, which is able to explicitly capture self-excitation and also better model cross-excitation. Our model construction is originally designed for count-valued observations with the negative-binomial data distribution (and an equivalent representation with the Dirichlet-multinomial distribution) and it also extends seamlessly to binary-valued observations via a link function to the Bernoulli distribution. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our framework, we conduct extensive experiments on both large-scale bag-of-words corpora and collaborative filtering datasets, where the proposed models achieve state-of-the-art results.
CEO Power, Compensation and Governance

This paper presents a contracting model of governance based on the premise that CEOs are the main promoters of governance change. CEOs use their power to extract higher pay or private benefits, and different governance structures are preferred by different CEOs as they favour one or the other type of compensation. The model explains why good countrywide investor protection breeds good firm governance and predicts a 'race to the top' in firm-governance quality after the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. However, such governance changes may be associated with higher rather than lower CEO pay as CEOs substitute away from private benefits. The model also provides an explanation for the observed correlation of CEO pay and firm governance based on CEO power. Finally, we discuss the optimality of introducing randomness in CEO hiring, for example, by evaluating CEOs based on qualitative characteristics, or soft skills, that are prone to diverse judgements.
Providing information to children before and during venepuncture.

AIM To explore the nature, process and consequences of giving information to children aged three to 11 years before and during venepuncture. METHOD This was a non-participant, observational, qualitative study of 11 children and four healthcare professionals before and during venepuncture. The healthcare professionals were: a sister, a healthcare assistant, a junior doctor and a staff nurse. FINDINGS There was little assessment of children's levels of knowledge of venepuncture and they received no information before the procedure. During the procedure, the children under six years of age only received information about the local anaesthetic cream during the application of the cream, not the venepuncture; the older children received information about the application of the cream and the venepuncture during both procedures. Practitioners used different language with the younger children when applying the local anaesthetic cream. Although the younger children did not appear distressed by the application of the cream, they appeared to be distressed by the venepuncture--more so than the older children--protesting and crying during the procedure. CONCLUSION Some of the distress associated with venepuncture can be avoided if children are given information about the procedure in a way they can understand.
A Multichannel Scheduler for High-Speed Wireless Backhaul Links with Packet Concatenation

Capacity has been an important issue for many wireless backhaul networks. Both the multihop nature and the large per packet channel access overhead can lead to its low channel efficiency. The problem may get even worse when there are many applications transmitting packets with small data payloads, e.g., Voice over Internet protocol (VoIP). Previously, the use of multiple parallel channels and employing packet concatenation were treated as separate solutions to these problems. However, there is no available work on the integrated design and performance analysis of a complete scheduler architecture combining these two schemes. In this paper, we propose a scheduler that concatenates small packets into large frames and sends them through multiple parallel channels with an intelligent channel selection algorithm between neighboring nodes. Besides the expected capacity improvements, we also derive delay bounds for this scheduler. Based on the delay bound formula, call admission control (CAC) of a broad range of scheduling algorithms can be obtained. We demonstrate the significant capacity and resequencing delay improvements of this novel design with a voice-data traffic mixing example, via both numerical and simulation results. It is shown that the proposed packet concatenation and channel selection algorithms greatly outperform the round-robin scheduler in a multihop scenario.
Factors Affecting Use of Preventive Tests for Cardiovascular Risk among Greeks

Data from a Greek national representative sample was used to investigate socio-demographic, self-perceived health, and health risk factors that determine the use of cardiovascular preventive tests (blood pressure, cholesterol and blood glucose). Chi-square and logistic regression analyses were used (p < 0.05). Older age, marriage, regular family doctor and chronic diseases increased the likelihood of receiving preventive tests, whereas low education and alcohol consumption reduced the likelihood of having these tests. The effect of obesity varied. Interventions which improve the knowledge of the poorly educated and empower the preventive role of the physicians may redress the inequalities and improve the effectiveness of preventive services utilization.
Modeling Magnification and Anisotropy in the Primate Foveal Confluence

A basic organizational principle of the primate visual system is that it maps the visual environment repeatedly and retinotopically onto cortex. Simple algebraic models can be used to describe the projection from visual space to cortical space not only for V1, but also for the complex of areas V1, V2 and V3. Typically a conformal (angle-preserving) projection ensuring local isotropy is regarded as ideal and primate visual cortex is often regarded as an approximation of this ideal. However, empirical data show systematic deviations from this ideal that are especially relevant in the foveal projection. The aims of this study were to map the nature of anisotropy predicted by existing models, to investigate the optimization targets faced by different types of retino-cortical maps, and finally to propose a novel map that better models empirical data than other candidates. The retino-cortical map can be optimized towards a space-conserving homogenous representation or a quasi-conformal mapping. The latter would require a significantly enlarged representation of specific parts of the cortical maps. In particular it would require significant enlargement of parafoveal V2 and V3 which is not supported by empirical data. Further, the recently published principal layout of the foveal singularity cannot be explained by existing models. We suggest a new model that accurately describes foveal data, minimizing cortical surface area in the periphery but suggesting that local isotropy dominates the most foveal part at the expense of additional cortical surface. The foveal confluence is an important example of the detailed trade-offs between the compromises required for the mapping of environmental space to a complex of neighboring cortical areas. Our models demonstrate that the organization follows clear morphogenetic principles that are essential for our understanding of foveal vision in daily life.