Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
No Observed Effect of Landscape Fragmentation on Pathogen Infection Prevalence in Blacklegged Ticks (Ixodes scapularis) in the Northeastern United States

Pathogen prevalence within blacklegged ticks (Ixodes scapularis Say, 1821) tends to vary across sites and geographic regions, but the underlying causes of this variation are not well understood. Efforts to understand the ecology of Lyme disease have led to the proposition that sites with higher host diversity will result in lower disease risk due to an increase in the abundance of inefficient reservoir species relative to the abundance of species that are highly competent reservoirs. Although the Lyme disease transmission cycle is often cited as a model for this “dilution effect hypothesis”, little empirical evidence exists to support that claim. Here we tested the dilution effect hypothesis for two pathogens transmitted by the blacklegged tick along an urban-to-rural gradient in the northeastern United States using landscape fragmentation as a proxy for host biodiversity. Percent impervious surface and habitat fragment size around each site were determined to assess the effect of landscape fragmentation on nymphal blacklegged tick infection with Borrelia burgdorferi and Anaplasma phagocytophilum. Our results do not support the dilution effect hypothesis for either pathogen and are in agreement with the few studies to date that have tested this idea using either a landscape proxy or direct measures of host biodiversity.
Highly Variable Bacterial Communities Associated with the Octocoral Antillogorgia elisabethae

Antillogorgia elisabethae (synonymous with Pseudopterogorgia elisabethae) is a common branching octocoral in Caribbean reef ecosystems. A. elisabethae is a rich source of anti-inflammatory diterpenes, thus this octocoral has been the subject of numerous natural product investigations, yet relatively little is known regarding the composition, diversity and the geographic and temporal stability of its microbiome. To characterize the composition, diversity and stability of bacterial communities of Bahamian A. elisabethae populations, 17 A. elisabethae samples originating from five sites within The Bahamas were characterized by 16S rDNA pyrosequencing. A. elisabethae bacterial communities were less diverse and distinct from those of surrounding seawater samples. Analyses of α- and β-diversity revealed that A. elisabethae bacterial communities were highly variable between A. elisabethae samples from The Bahamas. This contrasts results obtained from a previous study of three specimens collected from Providencia Island, Colombia, which found A. elisabethae bacterial communities to be highly structured. Taxa belonging to the Rhodobacteriales, Rhizobiales, Flavobacteriales and Oceanospiralles were identified as potential members of the A. elisabethae core microbiome.
Endovascular Aneurysm Repair in HIV Patients with Ruptured Abdominal Aneurysm and Low CD4

We report two HIV infected patients with ruptured abdominal aneurysm by using endovascular aneurysm repair (EVAR) technique. A 59-year-old Thai man had a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm and a 57-year-old man had a ruptured iliac artery aneurysm. Both patients had a CD4 level below 200 μ/L indicating a low immune status at admission. They were treated by EVAR. Neither patient had any complications in 3 months postoperatively. EVAR may have a role in HIV patients with ruptured abdominal aneurysm together with very low immunity.
Avoiding Convictions: Regression Discontinuity Evidence on Court Deferrals for First-Time Drug Offenders

This paper studies the causal impact of court deferrals, a legal strategy to help defendants avoid a felony conviction record, on the future criminal and labor market outcomes of first-time felony drug offenders. To accomplish this, we exploit two natural experiments in Harris County, Texas, in which defendants appearing in court one day versus the next experienced abruptly different likelihoods of deferral. In 1994 deferral rates dropped by 34 percentage points the day following the implementation of a penal code reform; in 2007 deferral rates increased by 22 percentage points the day after the unexpected failure of a ballot initiative to expand the county jail. Using administrative data and local polynomial regression discontinuity methods, we find robust evidence consistent across both experiments that regimes with expanded use of court deferrals generated substantially lower rates of reoffending and unemployment over a five-year follow-up period. Additional analysis delves further into the timing, nature and incidence of these impacts. Together our results suggest that increasing the use of deferral programs may be an attractive and feasible option for a jurisdiction seeking to reduce the fiscal cost and community impact of its criminal justice system.
Effects of the physicochemical properties of gold nanostructures on cellular internalization

Unique physicochemical properties of Au nanomaterials make them potential star materials in biomedical applications. However, we still know a little about the basic problem of what really matters in fabrication of Au nanomaterials which can get into biological systems, especially cells, with high efficiency. An understanding of how the physicochemical properties of Au nanomaterials affect their cell internalization is of significant interest. Studies devoted to clarify the functions of various properties of Au nanostructures such as size, shape and kinds of surface characteristics in cell internalization are under way. These fundamental investigations will give us a foundation for constructing Au nanomaterial-based biomedical devices in the future. In this review, we present the current advances and rationales in study of the relationship between the physicochemical properties of Au nanomaterials and cell uptake. We also provide a perspective on the Au nanomaterial-cell interaction research.
Turn taking , Utterance Density , and Gaze Patterns as Cues to Conversational Activity

Conversational activity can be measured in many ways, and often it is related to the participants’ turn-taking and feedback activity: the more the participants speak, i.e. produce independent contributions, overlap with each other and provide feedback, the more active and livelier the conversation appears to be. In this paper we discuss activity measures that refer to the frequency of speech and eye-gazing. The goal is to evaluate if the fairly simple “density” measures can produce useful information concerning the participants’ communicative activity, and be used to analyse their roles, strategies, and individual differences in conversations.
Defendant and juror race in a necessity case: An ultimate attribution error

ABSTRACT This study investigated whether Black and White mock jurors would commit the ultimate attribution error (i.e., over-rely on dispositional explanations to understand the negative actions of out-group members) in a necessity defense case. Participants (N = 97) read a fictional looting case, in which the race of the defendant varied. Mock jurors were expected to show out-group severity through more guilty verdicts and blame attributions. Mock juror and defendant race were not significantly related to verdicts, but for the Black defendant, White mock jurors attributed more control to him, and believed he was likely to reoffend more so than did Black mock jurors. This study adds to the literature on the mechanism by which racial bias interferes with juror decisions.
Changing perceptions of weight in Great Britain: comparison of two population surveys

Objectives To examine changes in public perceptions of overweight in Great Britain over an eight year period. Design Comparison of data on self perceived weight from population surveys in 1999 and 2007. Setting Household surveys of two representative samples in Great Britain. Participants 853 men and 944 women in 1999, and 847 men and 989 women in 2007. Main outcome measures Participants were asked to report their weight and height and classify their body size on a scale from “very underweight” to “obese. ” Results Self reported weights increased dramatically over time, but the weight at which people perceived themselves to be overweight also rose significantly. In 1999, 81% of overweight participants correctly identified themselves as overweight compared with 75% in 2007, demonstrating a decrease in sensitivity in the self diagnosis of overweight. Conclusions Despite media and health campaigns aiming to raise awareness of healthy weight, increasing numbers of overweight people fail to recognise that their weight is a cause for concern. This makes it less likely that they will see calls for weight control as personally relevant.
Mothers’ and Fathers’ Autonomy-Supportive and Controlling Behaviors: An Analysis of Interparental Contributions

SYNOPSIS Objective. The goal of this study was to examine how mothers and fathers contribute to each other’s autonomy supportive and controlling behaviors toward their child. Design. The participants were heterosexual parental dyads from two prospective studies (Study 1, n = 289; Study 2, n = 202). Mothers and fathers completed questionnaires assessing their autonomy supportive and controlling behaviors toward their adolescent child. Results. In both studies, results from structural equation modeling revealed reciprocal partner effects where mothers’ autonomy support at Time 1 predicted fathers’ autonomy support at Time 2, and fathers’ autonomy support at Time 1 predicted mothers’ autonomy support at Time 2. Reciprocal partner effects were also observed for controlling behaviors. These reciprocal relations were not statistically different across mothers and fathers. Conclusions. These results provide support for interparental contributions regarding autonomy supportive and controlling parenting behaviors. Mothers and fathers should thus be aware that their parenting behaviors can be influenced by each other, including both positive and negative parenting behaviors.
Shannon Theory for Compressed Sensing

Compressed sensing is a signal processing technique to encode analog sources by real numbers rather than bits, dealing with efficient recovery of a real vector from the information provided by linear measurements. By leveraging the prior knowledge of the signal structure (e.g., sparsity) and designing efficient non-linear reconstruction algorithms, effective compression is achieved by taking a much smaller number of measurements than the dimension of the original signal. However, partially due to the non-discrete nature of the problem, none of the existing models allow a complete understanding of the theoretical limits of the compressed sensing paradigm. As opposed to the conventional worst-case (Hamming) approach, this thesis presents a statistical (Shannon) study of compressed sensing, where signals are modeled as random processes rather than individual sequences. This framework encompasses more general signal models than sparsity. Focusing on optimal decoders, we investigate the fundamental tradeoff between measurement rate and reconstruction fidelity gauged by error probability and noise sensitivity in the absence and presence of measurement noise, respectively. Optimal phase transition thresholds are determined as a functional of the input distribution and compared to suboptimal thresholds achieved by various popular reconstruction algorithms. In particular, we show that Gaussian sensing matrices incur no penalty on the phase transition threshold of noise sensitivity with respect to optimal nonlinear encoding. Our results also provide a rigorous justification of previous results based on replica heuristics in the weak-noise regime.
Profiling of adhesive-related genes in the freshwater cnidarian Hydra magnipapillata by transcriptomics and proteomics

Abstract The differentiated ectodermal basal disc cells of the freshwater cnidarian Hydra secrete proteinaceous glue to temporarily attach themselves to underwater surfaces. Using transcriptome sequencing and a basal disc-specific RNA-seq combined with in situ hybridisation a highly specific set of candidate adhesive genes was identified. A de novo transcriptome assembly of 55,849 transcripts (>200 bp) was generated using paired-end and single reads from Illumina libraries constructed from different polyp conditions. Differential transcriptomics and spatial gene expression analysis by in situ hybridisation allowed the identification of 40 transcripts exclusively expressed in the ectodermal basal disc cells. Comparisons after mass spectrometry analysis of the adhesive secretion showed a total of 21 transcripts to be basal disc specific and eventually secreted through basal disc cells. This is the first study to survey adhesion-related genes in Hydra. The candidate list presented in this study provides a platform for unravelling the molecular mechanism of underwater adhesion of Hydra.
Dopamine depresses minute ventilation in patients with heart failure.

BACKGROUND Low-dose dopamine is frequently used in patients in the intensive care setting. Dopamine may inhibit chemoreceptor afferents and hence decrease chemoreflex sensitivity to hypoxia. METHODS AND RESULTS In a double-blind, randomized, crossover study, we determined the effects of dopamine (5 microg x kg(-1) x min(-1)) and placebo infusion on oxygen saturation, minute ventilation, and sympathetic nerve activity during normoxia and 5 minutes of hypoxia in 10 normal young subjects. We further investigated the effects of dopamine and placebo on minute ventilation during normoxic breathing in 8 patients with severe heart failure and in 8 age-matched control subjects. Dopamine did not decrease minute ventilation during normoxia in normal subjects. During hypoxia, minute ventilation was 12.9+/-1.3 L/min on dopamine and 15.8+/-1.5 L/min on placebo (P<0.0001). Oxygen saturation during hypoxia was lower with dopamine (78+/-3%) than placebo (84+/-2%; P<0.0001). Sympathetic nerve activity during hypoxia was not enhanced with dopamine despite the lower O2 saturation. Subjects were able to maintain a voluntary apnea to a lower oxygen saturation on dopamine than on placebo (P<0.05). In heart failure patients breathing room air, but not in age-matched control subjects, dopamine decreased minute ventilation despite decreased oxygen saturation and increased PETCO2 during dopamine (all P< or =0.02). CONCLUSIONS Dopamine inhibits chemoreflex responses during hypoxic breathing in normal humans, preferentially affecting the ventilatory response more than the sympathetic response. Dopamine also depresses ventilation in normoxic heart failure patients breathing room air. Ventilatory inhibition by low-dose dopamine may adversely influence outcome in hypoxic patients, especially in patients with heart failure.
Pregnant women quit smoking; what about fathers? Survey study in Bursa Region, Turkey.

AIM To evaluate maternal and paternal smoking habits during pregnancy and determine their correlation with pregnancy complications and newborn status. METHODS The study included 499 pregnant women who delivered at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology in Uludag University School of Medicine, over a period of one year. Women were interviewed about their smoking habits before and during pregnancy. They were also asked about the smoking habits of their spouses. The relationship between smoking habits and pregnancy complications and newborn status was researched. The outcomes measured included pregnancy complications, gestational age at the onset of labor, Apgar scores during labor, and fetal birth weight and height. RESULTS The percentage of maternal smoking before pregnancy was 26.5% (n=132) and decreased to 9.8% (n=49) at the end of pregnancy, with 52.5% (n=262) of the fathers who continued to smoke at home during their wife's pregnancy. Low birth weight and preterm delivery rate were significantly higher in maternal (n=15 [30.6%], and n=12 [24.5%], respectively) and paternal smoking groups (n=52 [22.4%] and n=54 [23.3%], respectively). Paternal smoking had no effect on intrauterine growth retardation (n=10 [4.3%]) and prenatal death (n=4 [1.7%]), although maternal smoking had such an effect (n=7 [14.3%] and n=3 [6.1%], respectively). CONCLUSION Maternal smoking is a major risk factor for preterm delivery, low birth weight, intrauterine growth retardation, and intrauterine death, but paternal smoking also carries risk for the fetus. During perinatal care, we should educate the expectant parents about the side effects, not only of maternal, but also of paternal smoking.
A 630μW zero-crossing-based ΔΣ ADC using switched-resistor current sources in 45nm CMOS

A delta-sigma analog-to-digital converter employs zero-crossing-based integrators to achieve low power operation at 50MHz sampling rate. Switched resistors, used as current sources, provide good dynamic current matching, eliminating the need for common-mode feedback circuits. The effect of the switched resistors on the linearity of the zero-crossing-based integrator is discussed. Also, a unidirectional 2-phase charging scheme is proposed to improve input signal swing and reduce overshoot voltage. Test chip implemented in a 45nm LP Digital CMOS achieves 54.3dB DR, 52.5dB SNR, and 47.7dB SNDR at 0.833MHz input while dissipating 630μ;W from a 1.1V supply.
Small GTPase Rab21 Mediates Fibronectin Induced Actin Reorganization in Entamoeba histolytica: Implications in Pathogen Invasion

The protozoan parasite Entamoeba histolytica causes a wide spectrum of intestinal infections. In severe cases, the trophozoites can breach the mucosal barrier, invade the intestinal epithelium and travel via the portal circulation to the liver, where they cause hepatic abscesses, which can prove fatal if left untreated. The host Extra Cellular Matrix (ECM) plays a crucial role in amoebic invasion by triggering an array of cellular responses in the parasite, including induction of actin rich adhesion structures. Similar actin rich protrusive structures, known as ‘invadosomes’, promote chemotactic migration of the metastatic cancer cells and non-transformed cells by remodeling the ECM. Recent studies showed a central role for Rab GTPases, the master regulators of vesicular trafficking, in biogenesis of invadosomes. Here, we showed that fibronectin, a major host ECM component induced actin remodeling in the parasite in a Rab21 dependent manner. The focalized actin structures formed were reminiscent of the mammalian invadosomes. By using various approaches, such as immunofluorescence confocal microscopy and scanning electron microscopy, along with in vitro invasion assay and matrix degradation assay, we show that the fibronectin induced formation of amoebic actin dots depend on the nucleotide status of the GTPase. The ECM components, fibronectin and collagen type I, displayed differential control over the formation of actin dots, with fibronectin positively and collagen type I negatively modulating it. The cell surface adhesion molecule Gal/GalNAc complex was also found to impose additional regulation on this process, which might have implication in collagen type I mediated suppression of actin dots.
The role of atmosphere and ocean physical processes in ENSO in a perturbed physics coupled climate model

Abstract. We examine the behaviour of the El Nino – Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in an ensemble of global climate model simulations with perturbations to parameters in the atmosphere and ocean components respectively. The influence of the uncertainty in these parametrisations on ENSO are investigated systematically. The ensemble exhibits a range of different ENSO behaviour in terms of the amplitude and spatial structure of the sea surface temperature (SST) variability. The nature of the individual feedbacks that operate within the ENSO system are diagnosed using an Intermediate Complexity Model (ICM), which has been used previously to examine the diverse ENSO behaviour of the CMIP3 multi-model ensemble. Unlike in that case, the ENSO in these perturbed physics experiments is not principally controlled by variations in the mean climate state. Rather the parameter perturbations influence the ENSO characteristics by modifying the coupling feedbacks within the cycle. The associated feedbacks that contribute most to the ensemble variations are the response of SST to local wind variability and damping, followed by the response of SST to thermocline anomalies and the response of the zonal wind stress to those SST anomalies. Atmospheric noise amplitudes and oceanic processes play a relatively minor role.
Emotions elicited by local food consumption, memories, place attachment and behavioural intentions

Abstract This study examines the influence of food consumption emotions on tourist’s memories of a trip, place attachment, and behavioural intentions. A web-based post-holiday survey was conducted among tourists to Rovaniemi, Finland, and a valid sample of 241 tourists was used for data analysis. Structural equation modelling was applied and all the proposed hypotheses were supported. The findings demonstrate the role of food consumption emotions on the formation of memories that further influence behavioural intentions and place attachment. Memories also mediate in both of the relationships (i.e. between “food consumption emotions” and “place attachment” and between “food consumption emotions” and “behavioural intentions”. The managerial implications include that restaurant managers should formulate a local food quality evaluation system and programme to enable tourists to gain sensual enjoyment. They should also ensure food safety to avoid negative feelings among tourists. Finally, they should focus on the servicescape and storytelling, as well as offer food souvenirs that appeal to tourists’ emotions.
Monocyte Chemotactic Protein 1 (MCP-1) Modulates Pro-Survival Signaling to Promote Progression of Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Background Monocyte chemotactic protein-1 (MCP-1) recruits monocytes and macrophages to inflammation sites, and inflammatory infiltration correlates with the progression of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). This study aims to determine whether MCP-1 expression is related to HNSCC malignancy and patient survival. We also investigated the relationship between MCP-1 expression and the phosphorylation state of the pro-survival pathway factors Akt, ERK, and STAT3. Methods Expression of MCP-1 and related proteins in HNSCC cell lines was investigated using western blotting. HNSCC patients (34) without distant metastasis at diagnosis were recruited for tissue specimen evaluation of MCP-1 expression and clinical outcomes. The relationship between MCP-1 expression and survival was evaluated using the Cox proportional hazard model with stepwise selection. Results High-grade HNSCC cell lines were found to have higher levels of active Akt, ERK, and/or STAT3 than did lower grade cell lines under serum-free condition. OCSL, the most malignant cell line, had the highest level of endogenous MCP-1. Administration of exogenous recombinant MCP-1 increased phosphorylation of Akt, ERK, and STAT3 in a dose- and time-dependent manner and increased cellular resistance to serum starvation. Inhibition of Akt, ERK, or STAT3 reduced cell growth and caused cell death. Long-term survival of HNSCC patients was negatively associated with the histological intensity of MCP-1, implicating MCP-1 as a potential prognostic marker for HNSCC. Conclusions These results suggest that overexpressed MCP-1 in cancer cells may promote HNSCC progression through upregulating pro-survival signaling pathways. High cellular MCP-1 expression is related to poor overall survival rate in HNSCC patients.