Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Behavior of larval Aedes triseriatus (Diptera: Culicidae).

The behavior of Aedes triseriatus (Say) fourth instars was studied in laboratory microcosms. A list of 14 larval behaviors was developed from observations of 108 larvae performing 1,836 different acts, and a time budget was developed from 88 larvae by recording the proportion of time each larva spent in the different behavioral states. Larval behavior was organized into clusters of surface and subsurface activities, linked by "dive" and "rise" behaviors. Eight behaviors formed the major activity pattern for larvae and dominated the time budget. Feeding behavior consisted of suspension feeding, feeding at the air-water interface, brushing container and leaf surfaces, and chewing leaf veins. Most (90.8%) of the time budget was devoted to feeding, and larvae spent 52.5% of their time feeding at or near the surface of the water and 37.5% brushing while submerged. When feeding at the air-water interface, larvae rotated about the axis formed by the respiratory siphon in alternating clockwise and counterclockwise directions, possibly to rest the muscles used to twist the larval body into the U-shaped posture characterizing this feeding behavior. Our studies showed that Ae. triseriatus larvae were not exclusively brushers nor bottom feeders as has been assumed for many Aedes larvae but showed great flexibility in feeding, where nearly the entire habitat was the "feeding zone. "
AltitudeOmics: Resetting of Cerebrovascular CO2 Reactivity Following Acclimatization to High Altitude

Previous studies reported enhanced cerebrovascular CO2 reactivity upon ascent to high altitude using linear models. However, there is evidence that this response may be sigmoidal in nature. Moreover, it was speculated that these changes at high altitude are mediated by alterations in acid-base buffering. Accordingly, we reanalyzed previously published data to assess middle cerebral blood flow velocity (MCAv) responses to modified rebreathing at sea level (SL), upon ascent (ALT1) and following 16 days of acclimatization (ALT16) to 5260 m in 21 lowlanders. Using sigmoid curve fitting of the MCAv responses to CO2, we found the amplitude (95 vs. 129%, SL vs. ALT1, 95% confidence intervals (CI) [77, 112], [111, 145], respectively, P = 0.024) and the slope of the sigmoid response (4.5 vs. 7.5%/mmHg, SL vs. ALT1, 95% CIs [3.1, 5.9], [6.0, 9.0], respectively, P = 0.026) to be enhanced at ALT1, which persisted with acclimatization at ALT16 (amplitude: 177, 95% CI [139, 215], P < 0.001; slope: 10.3%/mmHg, 95% CI [8.2, 12.5], P = 0.003) compared to SL. Meanwhile, the sigmoidal response midpoint was unchanged at ALT1 (SL: 36.5 mmHg; ALT1: 35.4 mmHg, 95% CIs [34.0, 39.0], [33.1, 37.7], respectively, P = 0.982), while it was reduced by ~7 mmHg at ALT16 (28.6 mmHg, 95% CI [26.4, 30.8], P = 0.001 vs. SL), indicating leftward shift of the cerebrovascular CO2 response to a lower arterial partial pressure of CO2 (PaCO2) following acclimatization to altitude. Sigmoid fitting revealed a leftward shift in the midpoint of the cerebrovascular response curve which could not be observed with linear fitting. These findings demonstrate that there is resetting of the cerebrovascular CO2 reactivity operating point to a lower PaCO2 following acclimatization to high altitude. This cerebrovascular resetting is likely the result of an altered acid-base buffer status resulting from prolonged exposure to the severe hypocapnia associated with ventilatory acclimatization to high altitude.
Towards a Robust People Tracking Framework for Service Robots in Crowded , Dynamic Environments

People tracking is an important prerequisite for socially compliant service robots that operate in human environments. In this paper, we take this challenge to new extremes by attempting to robustly track people in a 360-degree field around the robot in very crowded environments like a busy airport terminal. As a first contribution, we present a novel multimodal people tracking framework that is modular, flexible and fully integrated with ROS. We believe that our framework can be of great benefit to researchers as it covers the entire people tracking pipeline, including powerful visualization and evaluation tools. Secondly, we present a number of simple extensions that can make tracking in crowded scenarios more robust. Finally, we compare our tracking method against a complex multi-hypothesis tracking system. Our results on real and synthetic data suggest that it is not the choice of data association which has the largest impact, but the underlying models that, for instance, control track initiation, deletion, and handling of occlusions. By showing that the simpler data association may be sufficient, we provide reasoning why the available resources on a resource-constrained mobile robot might be better spent on other tasks such as higher-level perception and reasoning.
Development and Investigation of Tungsten Copper Sintered Parts for Using in Medium and High Voltage Switching Devices

Abstract Tungsten-copper (W–Cu) sintered parts with 75 wt. % W, 24 wt. % Cu and 1 wt. % Ni for using as arcing contacts in medium and high voltage switching devices were developed successfully by powder metallurgy (PM) techniques. Sintered parts with diameter of 50±0.5 mm and height of 6±0.5 mm were manufactured by pressing-sintering-infiltration (P–S–I) and spark plasma sintering (SPS) at sintering temperature of 1150°C, and 1050°C, respectively. Physical, chemical, electrical, thermal and mechanical properties of the samples were investigated. Microstructure was analyzed by optical microscopy and scanning electron microscopy. Material properties were influenced by the consolidation processes. The best results were achieved by SPS process. The relative density was more than 95 %, Vickers hardness HV1/15 was over 227, elastic modulus was over 143 GPa, and homogeneous microstructure was revealed. These good properties can contribute to higher lifetime of arcing contacts under severe working conditions.
Enhanced Passive and Active Processing of Syllables in Musician Children

The aim of this study was to examine the influence of musical expertise in 9-year-old children on passive (as reflected by MMN) and active (as reflected by discrimination accuracy) processing of speech sounds. Musician and nonmusician children were presented with a sequence of syllables that included standards and deviants in vowel frequency, vowel duration, and VOT. Both the passive and the active processing of duration and VOT deviants were enhanced in musician compared with nonmusician children. Moreover, although no effect was found on the passive processing of frequency, active frequency discrimination was enhanced in musician children. These findings are discussed in terms of common processing of acoustic features in music and speech and of positive transfer of training from music to the more abstract phonological representations of speech units (syllables).
Oxidative Stress‐Related Enzyme Polymorphisms Associated With the Immunological Biomarkers Levels in Heavy Drinkers in Taiwan

Excessive alcohol intake can result in the oxidative stress in cells and the genetic variations of alcohol‐metabolizing enzymes are responsible for the different degrees of toxicity of alcohol in several organs, such as the liver and immunological systems. We hypothesized that the alteration of oxidative stress due to some genetic variations of oxidative stress‐related enzymes could result in changes of specific biomarkers, and heavy drinkers could be cautioned about the predictive likelihood to induce drinking‐induced diseases.
Interobserver Reliability of a CT-Based Fracture Classification System

Objectives: This study was designed to determine whether the interobserver reliability of a fracture classification scheme applied based on a single, carefully defined, computed tomography (CT) cut is greater than those previously reported for systems designed for use with plain radiographs. Design: Observer review of selected cases. Setting: Four, level one, trauma centers. Patients: Pretreatment CT scans of patients with calcaneus fractures were screened by the authors. Thirty cases were selected that had an appropriate semicoronal CT image. Ten orthopaedic traumatologists who were members of the Orthopaedic Trauma Association and had a minimum of 5 years postresidency experience were selected as reviewers. Intervention: The reviewers were provided with a digital CT image for each case as well as written and diagrammatic representations of the Sanders classification system. The observers then classified each fracture according to the Sanders classification. Results: The mean kappa value for interobserver reliability for fracture types I-IV was 0.41 ± 0.02 (mean ± standard error of the mean; range, 0.07-0.64). Observers disagreed by more than 1 fracture type (ie, I vs. III or II vs. IV) in 10% of the cases. Observers agreed on the location of the fracture lines (A, B, C) in 90% of type II fractures and 52% of type III fractures. Conclusions: The results indicate that in a carefully controlled paradigm, the interobserver reliability with a classification system based on interpretation of a single, carefully defined CT image was no better than the results reported for the same classification system used with full CT data or for other classification systems used for various fractures in the skeleton. Agreement in identifying the location of the fracture lines was very good for simple fractures but much worse for complex injuries. Additional study may determine whether the use of a full complement of CT images can improve reliability in classification of complex injuries.
Role of the Pi3k Regulatory Subunit in the Control of Actin Organization and Cell Migration

Cell migration represents an important cellular response that utilizes cytoskeletal reorganization as its driving force. Here, we describe a new signaling cascade linking PDGF receptor stimulation to actin rearrangements and cell migration. We demonstrate that PDGF activates Cdc42 and its downstream effector N-WASP to mediate filopodia formation, actin stress fiber disassembly, and a reduction in focal adhesion complexes. Induction of the Cdc42 pathway is independent of phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) enzymatic activity, but it is dependent on the p85α regulatory subunit of PI3K. Finally, data are provided showing that activation of this pathway is required for PDGF-induced cell migration on collagen. These observations show the essential role of the PI3K regulatory subunit p85α in controlling PDGF receptor–induced cytoskeletal changes and cell migration, illustrating a novel signaling pathway that links receptor stimulation at the cell membrane with actin dynamics.
Preventing Left Ventricular Hypertrophy by ACE Inhibition in Hypertensive Patients With Type 2 Diabetes

OBJECTIVE—In patients with type 2 diabetes, left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) predicts cardiovascular events, and the prevention of LVH is cardioprotective. We sought to compare the effect of ACE versus non-ACE inhibitor therapy on incident electrocardiographic (ECG) evidence of LVH (ECG-LVH). RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS—This prespecified study compared the incidence of ECG-LVH by Sokolow-Lyon and Cornell voltage criteria in 816 hypertensive type 2 diabetic patients of the Bergamo Nephrologic Diabetes Complications Trial (BENEDICT), who had no ECG-LVH at baseline and were randomly assigned to at least 3 years of blinded ACE inhibition with trandolapril (2 mg/day) or to non-ACE inhibitor therapy. Treatment was titrated to systolic/diastolic blood pressure <130/80 mmHg. ECG readings were centralized and blinded to treatment. RESULTS—Baseline characteristics of the two groups were similar. Over a median (interquartile range) follow-up of 36 (24–48) months, 13 of the 423 patients (3.1%) receiving trandolapril compared with 31 of the 376 patients (8.2%) receiving non-ACE inhibitor therapy developed ECG-LVH (hazard ratio [HR] 0.34 [95% CI 0.18–0.65], P = 0.0012 unadjusted, and 0.35 [0.18–0.68], P = 0.0018 adjusted for predefined baseline covariates). The HR was significant even after adjustment for follow-up blood pressure and blood pressure reduction versus baseline. Compared with baseline, both Sokolow-Lyon and Cornell voltages significantly decreased with trandolapril but did not change with non-ACE inhibitor therapy. CONCLUSIONS—ACE inhibition has a specific protective effect against the development of ECG-LVH that is additional to its blood pressure–lowering effect. Because ECG-LVH is a strong cardiovascular risk factor in people with hypertension and diabetes, early ACE inhibition may be cardioprotective in this population.
Finding Bursty Topics from Microblogs

Microblogs such as Twitter reflect the general public's reactions to major events. Bursty topics from microblogs reveal what events have attracted the most online attention. Although bursty event detection from text streams has been studied before, previous work may not be suitable for microblogs because compared with other text streams such as news articles and scientific publications, microblog posts are particularly diverse and noisy. To find topics that have bursty patterns on microblogs, we propose a topic model that simultaneously captures two observations: (1) posts published around the same time are more likely to have the same topic, and (2) posts published by the same user are more likely to have the same topic. The former helps find event-driven posts while the latter helps identify and filter out "personal" posts. Our experiments on a large Twitter dataset show that there are more meaningful and unique bursty topics in the top-ranked results returned by our model than an LDA baseline and two degenerate variations of our model. We also show some case studies that demonstrate the importance of considering both the temporal information and users' personal interests for bursty topic detection from microblogs.
Satellites, Self-Reports, and Submersion: Exposure to Floods in Bangladesh

A burgeoning "Climate-Economy" literature has uncovered many effects of changes in temperature and precipitation on economic activity, but has made considerably less progress in modeling the effects of other associated phenomena, like natural disasters. We develop new, objective data on floods, focusing on Bangladesh. We show that rainfall and self-reported exposure are weak proxies for true flood exposure. These data allow us to study adaptation, giving accurate measures of both long-term averages and short term variation in exposure. This is important in studying climate change impacts, as people will not only experience new exposures, but also experience them differently.
Evaluation of Mast Cells in Dermal versus Subcutaneous Hemangiomas and Hemangiosarcomas in Dogs

This study investigated the role of mast cells in canine cutaneous vascular tumors, and is the first such study to distinguish between tumors arising in the dermis versus the subcutis. Mast cell numbers in canine cutaneous hemangiomas (HA) and hemangiosarcomas (HSA) were evaluated to identify a relationship between mast cells, tumor type (HA, HSA), histologic location (dermis, subcutis) and tumor recurrence. One hundred and sixty-seven biopsies from 148 dogs were evaluated. Using only one biopsy from each dog, mast cell counts (MCC) for each tumor (n = 148) were obtained by averaging the number of mast cells counted in ten 400× fields. A significant difference in mean MCC was found only between tumor types, with HA having more mast cells than HSA (4.2 ± 4.2 vs. 2.2 ± 2.6; p < 0.001). No significant difference in mean MCC existed between tumors that recurred and those that did not. There was no difference in recurrence rate between tumor type or histologic location. Our results indicate that benign HA contain more mast cells than malignant endothelial cell tumors, regardless of histologic location; whether this is a cause or effect relationship remains to be determined.
Modification of commercial liposomal drug carrier by plasmon resonant coating

Multiple liposomal drugs have been successfully marketed as pharmaceuticals within the past two decades. Some of these clinically approved drugs, Doxil ® in particular, have been shown to selectively localize within tumors due to the enhanced permeability and retention effect. However, a limitation exists with the inability to control content release once the drug gets to the desired location. Here we investigated the ability to apply a plasmon resonant coating to commercially available Doxil with the intention of spatially and temporally controlling doxorubicin release. While Doxil was successfully gold coated with a maximum plasmon resonant peak at 631 nm, the release at elevated temperature and on exposure to light was less than 10%. This result is similar to that observed for uncoated Doxil. Decreasing the pH had the same effect on both uncoated and plasmon resonant sample where a 10% increase in release was observed after samples were exposed to elevated temperature. Development of a highly efficient mechanism of light-activated drug release from Doxil will require a temperature-sensitive lipid composition.
An Illumination Representation Approach to the Chevreul Effect

Within cognitive science of brightness and color perception, the argument has repeatedly been brought forward that it is necessary to consider mental representations for illuminations as well as mental representations for surfaces as integral elements of the functional architecture of the perceptual system. Here, we show that such an approach of dual semantic categories for perceptual representations can fruitfully be applied to the Chevreul effect, a brightness phenomenon of enhanced contrast at borders that played a prototypical role for a very different type of approaches. In these approaches, mechanisms processing retinal intensities are postulated that result in just one brightness dimension without explicitly referring to semantic categories of the perceptual system (surface vs. illumination representation). We argue that the Chevreul effect arises as a result of an interpretation by the visual system that the Chevreul stimulus is covered by a gradual illumination. Our first experiment shows that the Chevreul effect diminishes substantially when this interpretation is prevented by separating the elements of the Chevreul stimulus in depth. In the second experiment, we show that the strength of the Chevreul effect is strongly affected by embedding the Chevreul stimulus into three-dimensional scenes that either support or conflict with the interpretation of an illumination gradient across the stimulus.
The Estimation of Population Microdata by Using Data from Small Area Statistics and Samples of Anonymised Records

Census data can be represented both as lists and as tabulations of household/individual attributes. List representation of Census data offers greater flexibility, as the exploration of interrelationships between population characteristics is limited only by the quality and scope of the data collected. Unfortunately, the released lists of household/individual attributes (Samples of Anonymised Records, SARs) are spatially referenced only to areas (single or merged districts) with populations of 120 000 or more, whereas released tabulations are available for units as small as single enumeration districts (Small Area Statistics, SAS). Intuitively, it should be possible to derive list-based estimates of enumeration district populations by combining information contained in the SAR and the SAS. In this paper we explore the range of solutions that could be adapted to this problem which, ultimately, is presented as a complex combinatorial optimisation problem. Various techniques of combinatorial optimisation are tested, and preliminary results from the best performing algorithm are evaluated. Through this process, the lack of suitable test statistics for the comparison of observed and expected tabulations of population data is highlighted.
PERSONALITY PROCESSES AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES Culture , Personality , and Subjective Well-Being : Integrating Process Models of Life Satisfaction

The authors examined the interplay of personality and cultural factors in the prediction of the affective (hedonic balance) and the cognitive (life satisfaction) components of subjective well-being (SWB). They predicted that the influence of personality on life satisfaction is mediated by hedonic balance and that the relation between hedonic balance and life satisfaction is moderated by culture. As a consequence, they predicted that the influence of personality on life satisfaction is also moderated by culture. Participants from 2 individualistic cultures (United States, Germany) and 3 collectivistic cultures (Japan, Mexico, Ghana) completed measures of Extraversion, Neuroticism, hedonic balance, and life satisfaction. As predicted, Extraversion and Neuroticism influenced hedonic balance to the same degree in all cultures, and hedonic balance was a stronger predictor of life satisfaction in individualistic than in collectivistic cultures. The influence of Extraversion and Neuroticism on life satisfaction was largely mediated by hedonic balance. The results suggest that the influence of personality on the emotional component of SWB is pancultural, whereas the influence of personality on the cognitive component of SWB is moderated by culture.
Neural Activity Underlying the Effect of Approach-Motivated Positive Affect on Narrowed Attention

Positive affects high in approach motivational intensity narrow attention. The present study extended this recent finding by testing whether a neural activation associated with approach-motivation intensity—relative left frontal-central activity—would underlie the effect of appetitive stimuli on narrowed attention (as measured by local attentional bias). It also tested whether individual differences in approach motivation relate to this attentional narrowing. Results supported predictions, suggesting a common association of relative left frontal hemispheric processing for approach-motivational processes and narrowed attention.
The Complexity of Recognition of Linguistically Adequate Dependency Grammars

Results of computational complexity exist for a wide range of phrase structure-based grammar formalisms, while there is an apparent lack of such results for dependency-based formalisms. We here adapt a result on the complexity of ID/LP-grammars to the dependency framework. Contrary to previous studies on heavily restricted dependency grammars, we prove that recognition (and thus, parsing) of linguistically adequate dependency grammars is NP-complete.
Cognitive coping and depressive symptoms in definitive infertility: A prospective study

The objective of the present study was to examine the relationships between infertility characteristics, cognitive coping strategies, and depressive symptoms in definitive involuntarily childless people. Both cross-sectional and prospective relationships were studied in a sample of 169 persons for whom an involuntarily childless future was definitive. The Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ) and the Symptom Check List (SCL-90) were filled out at home. Almost no infertility characteristics were related to depressive symptoms. The cognitive coping strategies self-blame, rumination, catastrophizing and positive reappraisal appeared to be related to depressive symptoms. In addition, catastrophizing was related to depressive symptoms two years later. These findings suggest that intervention programs for people with definitive involuntary childlessness should pay attention to cognitive coping strategies.