Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Do Mechanical Turks dream of square pie charts?

Online studies are an attractive alternative to the laborintensive lab study, and promise the possibility of reaching a larger variety and number of people than at a typical university. There are also a number of draw-backs, however, that have made these studies largely impractical so far. Amazon's Mechanical Turk is a web service that facilitates the assignment of small, web-based tasks to a large pool of anonymous workers. We used it to conduct several perception and cognition studies, one of which was identical to a previous study performed in our lab. We report on our experiences and present ways to avoid common problems by taking them into account in the study design, and taking advantage of Mechanical Turk's features.
Competence in Streptococcus pneumoniae Is a Response to an Increasing Mutational Burden

Competence for genetic transformation in Streptococcus pneumoniae has previously been described as a quorum-sensing trait regulated by a secreted peptide pheromone. Recently we demonstrated that competence is also activated by reduction in the accuracy of protein biosynthesis. We have now investigated whether errors upstream of translation in the form of random genomic mutations can provide a similar stimulus. Here we show that generation of a mutator phenotype in S. pneumoniae through deletions of mutX, hexA or hexB enhanced the expression of competence. Similarly, chemical mutagenesis with the nucleotide analog dPTP promoted development of competence. To investigate the relationship between mutational load and the activation of competence, replicate lineages of the mutX strain were serially passaged under conditions of relaxed selection allowing random accumulation of secondary mutations. Competence increased with propagation in these lineages but not in control lineages having wild-type mutX. Resequencing of these derived strains revealed between 1 and 9 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) per lineage, which were broadly distributed across the genome and did not involve known regulators of competence. Notably, the frequency of competence development among the sequenced strains correlated significantly with the number of nonsynonymous mutations that had been acquired. Together, these observations provide support for the hypothesis that competence in S. pneumoniae is regulated in response to the accumulated burden of coding mutations in the bacterial genome. In contrast to previously described DNA damage response systems that are activated by physical lesions in the chromosome, this pneumococcal pathway may represent a unique stress response system that monitors the coding integrity of the genome.
Cytosine arabinoside potentiates the apoptotic effect of bendamustine on several B- and T-cell leukemia/lymphoma cells and cell lines

Abstract Bendamustine and cytosine arabinoside (ara-c) are commonly used cytotoxic agents with unique mechanisms of action. We have previously reported a striking additive cytotoxic effect of the consecutive combination of bendamustine and ara-c in mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) cell lines. In the present study, cell lines of follicular lymphoma (DOHH-2), chronic lymphocytic leukemia/lymphoma (EHEB), diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (SU-DHL-4), T-cell leukemia/lymphoma (JURKAT and KARPAS-299) and MCL (JEKO-1 and GRANTA-519) were exposed to the two single drugs or the drugs combined, given simultaneously and consecutively. Peripheral blood chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) B-cells from five patients were also analyzed. Apoptosis, cell proliferation/metabolic activity and mitochondrial damage were evaluated. The combination index (CI) was used to assess synergy between the drugs. Bendamustine exhibited a relevant cytotoxic effect that was dose- and time-dependent, except for SU-DHL-4 and T-cell lymphoma cells. The addition of ara-c after bendamustine significantly potentiated the single-drug cytotoxic effect of bendamustine on all cell lines, including 17p − CLL B-cells, JURKAT and SU-DHL-4, the latter presenting the highest synergism (CI < 0.01). Bendamustine and ara-c are highly synergistic on T- and B-cell lymphoma cells and cell lines, similar to MCL, overcoming resistance to the single agents.
Confluence of genes, environment, development, and behavior in a post Genome-Wide Association Study world

Abstract This article serves to outline a research paradigm to investigate main effects and interactions of genes, environment, and development on behavior and psychiatric illness. We provide a historical context for candidate gene studies and genome-wide association studies, including benefits, limitations, and expected payoffs. Using substance use and abuse as our driving example, we then turn to the importance of etiological psychological theory in guiding genetic, environmental, and developmental research, as well as the utility of refined phenotypic measures, such as endophenotypes, in the pursuit of etiological understanding and focused tests of genetic and environmental associations. Phenotypic measurement has received considerable attention in the history of psychology and is informed by psychometrics, whereas the environment remains relatively poorly measured and is often confounded with genetic effects (i.e., gene–environment correlation). Genetically informed designs, which are no longer limited to twin and adoption studies thanks to ever-cheaper genotyping, are required to understand environmental influences. Finally, we outline the vast amount of individual difference in structural genomic variation, most of which remains to be leveraged in genetic association tests. Although the genetic data can be massive and burdensome (tens of millions of variants per person), we argue that improved understanding of genomic structure and function will provide investigators with new tools to test specific a priori hypotheses derived from etiological psychological theory, much like current candidate gene research but with less confusion and more payoff than candidate gene research has to date.
Giving physical significance to the Hi-GAL data: determining the distance of cold dusty cores in the Milky Way

Context. Hi-GAL, an open time key-project of the Herschel satellite, was awarded 343 hours observing time to carry out a 5-band photometric imaging survey at 70, 160, 250, 350, and 500 μm of a |b| ≤ 1° wide strip of the Milky Way Galactic plane in the longitude range -70° ≤ l ≤ 70°. Two 2° × 2° fields centred at l = 30° and l = 59° have been observed with the SPIRE and PACS photometric cameras in parallel mode during the Herschel science demonstration phase (SDP). From the images, compact sources are extracted for which the distance must be established in order to determine their physical properties. Aims: The aim of this paper is to present the distance determination strategy for the Hi-GAL compact sources. We illustrate this strategy for the two fields at l = 30° and l = 59°. Methods: The first step to determine the distance is to establish the LSR (local standard of rest) velocity of each compact source. The kinematic distance is then determined assuming a rotation curve for our Galaxy. To resolve the distance ambiguity for sources within the solar circle, we adopt a multiwavelength approach combining extinction maps, optical, and near infrared images, and velocity information from NH3, CO and HI data. When sources can be kinematically linked to optical H ii regions, the stellar distance of the exciting stars, when known, can be attributed to all linked sources. Results: In the two 2° × 2° SDP fields, 2678 compact sources have been identified and listed in the band-merged catalogue. About 93% of these sources have been assigned a radial velocity and distance. Conclusions: A multiwavelength approach is necessary to assign the correct velocity to sources (especially when CO spectra have a lot of features) and to determine the distance by solving the distance ambiguity. Also, several Hi-GAL sources seem to be in the interarm region. These sources have to be investigated with dedicated programme to be compared with sources located in the spiral arms. Hi-GAL (Herschel infrared Galactic plane Survey) is a Herschel key-project. Herschel is an ESA space observatory with science instruments provided by European-led Principal Investigator consortia and with important participation from NASA.Appendices A and B are only available in electronic form at http://www.aanda. org
Prevalence and risk factors of problematic Internet use: A cross-national comparison of Japanese and Chinese university students

The aim of the present study was to compare risk factors for problematic Internet use (PIU) among Japanese and Chinese university students. A sample of 267 Japanese and 236 Chinese first year university students responded to questionnaires on the severity of PIU, depression, self-image/image of others, and perceived parental child-rearing styles. The results indicated that Japanese participants were more likely to demonstrate PIU than their Chinese counterparts. Compared to Chinese students, Japanese students reported more negative self-image, lower parental care, greater overcontrol, and higher depression scores. The PIU group had a higher depression score compared to the normal Internet use group. Compared with the non-PIU group, the PIU group consisted of more male and Japanese participants. Further, they tended to have more negative self-images, saw their mothers to be less caring, and perceived their mothers and fathers as more overcontrolling. PIU is strongly associated with depression, negative self-image, and parental relations. Finally, mediation analysis revealed that such national differences in PIU between Japanese and Chinese were clarified in depression and perceived mother’s care. This cross-national study indicated that depression and perceived mother’s care were both significant risk factors that were associated with the national difference in PIU between Japanese and Chinese participants.
Where Am I Now? Distinct Roles for Parahippocampal and Retrosplenial Cortices in Place Recognition

A key component of spatial navigation is the ability to use visual information to ascertain where one is located and how one is oriented in the world. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine the neural correlates of this phenomenon in humans. Subjects were scanned while retrieving different kinds of topographical and nontopographical information in response to visual scenes. In the three critical conditions, they viewed images of a familiar college campus, and reported either the location of the place depicted in the image (location task), the compass direction that the camera was facing when the image was taken (orientation task), or whether the location was on campus or not (familiarity task). Our analyses focused on the retrosplenial cortex (RSC)/parietal-occipital sulcus region and the parahippocampal place area (PPA), which previous studies indicate play a critical role in place recognition. RSC activity depended on the type of information retrieved, with the strongest response in the location task. In contrast, PPA activity did not depend on the retrieval task. Additional analyses revealed a strong effect of familiarity in RSC but not in the PPA, with the former region responding much more strongly to images of the familiar campus than to images of an unfamiliar campus. These results suggest that the PPA and RSC play distinct but complementary roles in place recognition. In particular, the PPA may primarily support perception of the immediate scene, whereas RSC may support memory retrieval mechanisms that allow the scene to be localized within the broader spatial environment.
f -GANs Settle Scores!

Generative adversarial networks (GANs) comprise a generator, trained to learn the underlying distribution of the desired data, and a discriminator, trained to distinguish real samples from those output by the generator. A majority of GAN literature focuses on understanding the optimality of the discriminator, typically under divergence minimization losses. In this paper, we propose a uniﬁed approach to analyzing the generator optimization through variational Calculus, uncovering links to score-based diffusion models. Considering f -divergence-minimizing GANs, we show that the optimal generator is the one that matches the score of its output distribution with that of the data distribution. The proposed approach serves to unify score-based training and existing f -GAN ﬂavors by leveraging results from normalizing ﬂows, while also providing explanations for empirical phenomena such as the stability of non-saturating GAN losses, or the state-of-the-art performance of discriminator guidance in diffusion models.
Bifurcation and Chaos in the Tinkerbell Map

In this paper, the dynamical behaviors of the Tinkerbell map are investigated in detail. Conditions for the existence of fold bifurcation, flip bifurcation and Hopf bifurcation are derived, and chaos in the sense of Marotto is verified by both analytical and numerical methods. Numerical simulations include bifurcation diagrams in two- and three-dimensional spaces, phase portraits, and the maximum Lyapunov exponent and fractal dimension, as well as the distribution of dynamics in the parameter plane, which exhibit new and interesting dynamical behaviors. More specifically, this paper reports the findings of chaos in the sense of Marotto, a route from an invariant circle to transient chaos with a great abundance of periodic windows, including period-2, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 17, 19, 23, 26 and so on, and suddenly appearing or disappearing chaos, convergence of an invariant circle to a period-one orbit, symmetry-breaking of periodic orbits, interlocking period-doubling bifurcations in chaotic regions, interior crisis, chaotic attractors, coexisting (2, 10, 13) chaotic sets, two coexisting invariant circles, two attracting chaotic sets coexisting with a non-attracting chaotic set, and so on, all in the Tinkerbell map. In particular, it is found that there is no obvious road from period-doubling bifurcations to chaos, but there is a route from a period-one orbit to an invariant circle and then to transient chaos as the parameters are varied. Combining the existing results in the current literature with the new results reported in this paper, a more complete understanding of the Tinkerbell map is obtained.
A case for direct-mapped caches

Direct-mapped caches are defined, and it is shown that trends toward larger cache sizes and faster hit times favor their use. The arguments are restricted initially to single-level caches in uniprocessors. They are then extended to two-level cache hierarchies. How and when these arguments for caches in uniprocessors apply to caches in multiprocessors are also discussed. <<ETX>>
Statin Use and Risk of Lymphoid Neoplasms: Results from the European Case-Control Study EPILYMPH

Background: Statins, drugs used to treat dyslipidemia, may have anticancer properties. We have evaluated lymphoma risk associated with regular statin use in an international case-control study. Methods: This case-control study included 2,362 cases of incident B- and T-cell lymphoma from Czech Republic, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Spain and 2,206 hospital or population controls. Information on drug use, diagnosis at admission (for hospital controls), and putative risk factors for lymphoma was collected with personal interviews. Hospital controls admitted for diseases possibly entailing use of statins were excluded from the analysis. Results: The odds ratio for regular statin use was 0.61 (95% confidence interval, 0.45-0.84); all major lymphoma subtypes showed similarly decreased risks. Decreased risks were observed in all centers. Duration of statin use was not associated with a greater reduction in the risk of lymphoma. Use of other lipid lowering drugs, such as fibrates, did not significantly modify the risk of lymphoma (odds ratio, 0.75; 95% confidence interval, 0.44-1.27). Conclusion: Statin use was associated with an important reduction in lymphoma risk, adding to the growing evidence of anticancer properties of this group of drugs. These results are reassuring for the increasing number of patients taking statins on a regular basis. (Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2006;15(5):921–5)
TBscore: Signs and symptoms from tuberculosis patients in a low-resource setting have predictive value and may be used to assess clinical course

We developed a clinical score to monitor tuberculosis patients in treatment and to assess clinical outcome. We used the WHO clinical manual to choose signs and symptoms, including cough, haemoptysis, dyspnoea, chest pain, night sweating, anaemia, tachycardia, lung-auscultation finding, fever, low body-mass index, low mid-upper arm circumference giving patients a TBscore from 0 to 13. We validated the score with data from a cohort of 698 TB patients, assessing sensitivity to change and ability to predict mortality. The TBscore declined for 96% of the surviving patients from initiation to end of treatment, and declined with a similar pattern in HIV-infected and HIV-uninfected patients, as well as in smear negative and smear positive patients. The risk of dying during treatment increased with higher TBscore at inclusion. For patients with a TBscore of >8 at inclusion, mortality during the 8 months treatment was 21% (45/218) versus 11% (55/480) for TBscore <8 (p<0.001). TBscore assessed at end of treatment also strongly predicted subsequent mortality. The TBscore is a simple and low-cost tool for clinical monitoring of tuberculosis patients in low-resource settings and may be used to predict mortality risk. Low TBscore or fall in TBscore at treatment completion may be used as a measure of improvement.
AIRBORNE LIDAR FEATURE SELECTION FOR URBAN CLASSIFICATION USING RANDOM FORESTS

Various multi-echo and Full-waveform (FW) lidar features can be processed. In this paper, multiple classifers are applied to lidar feature selection for urban scene classification. Random forests are used since they provide an accurate classification and run efficiently on large datasets. Moreover, they return measures of variable importance for each class. The feature selection is obtained by backward elimination of features depending on their importance. This is crucial to analyze the relevance of each lidar feature for the classification of urban scenes. The Random Forests classification using selected variables provide an overall accuracy of 94.35%.
Pathogenicity of Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. melonis to Melon Genotypes ( Cucumis melo L.) and Its Biocontrol

Fusarium wilt in melon ( Cucumis melo L.) is widespread, responsible for serious economic losses in yield of melon in Egypt. Laboratory and greenhouse experiments were performed to evaluate the effects of different biocontrol agents (BCAs) against Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. melonis . In vitro , Trichoderma viride and Gliocladium virens significantly reduced the mycelia growth of F. oxysporum f.sp. melonis that produced 86.33 and 86.11% reduction, respectively. Under greenhouse conditions, 1022, caruso, primal and ideal genotype were the best genotypes for tolerant the infestation by F. oxysporum f. sp. melonis by 60% survival plants when compared with other genotypes. On the other hand, all BCAs tested significantly decreased the disease incidence of F. oxysporum f.sp . melonis . The treatment with T. viride completely suppressed the disease incidence after 15 days from sowing giving 100% survival plants and 96% living plants after 45 days.
Theory of dynamic critical phenorr-iena

An introductory review of the central ideas in the modern theory of dynamic critical phenomena is followed by a more detailed account of recent developments in the field, The concepts of the conventional theory, mode-coupling, scaling, universality, and the renormalization group are introduced and are illustrated in the context of a simple example — the phase separation of a symmetric binary fluid. The renormalization group is then developed in some detail, and applied to a variety of systems. The main dynamic universality classes are identified and characterized. It is found that the mode-coupling and renormahzation group theories successfully explain available experimental data at the critical point of pure fluids, and binary mixtures, and at many magnetic phase transitions, but that a number of discrepancies exist with data at the superfluid transition of He.
New coumarin‐based anti‐inflammatory drug: putative antagonist of the integrins αLβ2 and αMβ2

This study was conducted to investigate putative antagonism of integrin receptors αMβ2 and αLβ2 by a novel coumarin derivative (BOL‐303225‐A), its efficacy in‐vivo after retinal ischaemia‐reperfusion injury, and its bioavailability in rat plasma. A cellular adhesion assay in Jurkat and U937 cells, and a flow cytometry assay with an antibody against the β2 subunit were conducted. BOL‐303225‐A bioavailability in rat plasma and the retinal levels of myeloperoxidase (MPO) after ischaemia‐ reperfusion injury were evaluated after oral administration (10 mg kg−1). In‐vitro cell viability assays revealed no cytotoxicity for BOL‐303225‐A over a wide dose range, and IC50 values of 32.3 ± 1.5 μM and 84.95 ± 2.3 μM were found for Jurkat and U937 cells, respectively. The drug showed specific binding to the αMβ2 and αLβ2 integrin receptors expressed by U937 and Jurkat cells, respectively, producing a fluorescence shift towards lower values in a concentration‐dependent manner. The pharmacokinetic profile of BOL‐303225‐A exhibited rapid absorption following oral administration in the rat. A significant reduction of retinal MPO levels was observed in drug‐treated rats. This study demonstrated that BOL‐303225‐A acts as an antagonist of the integrin αLβ2 and αMβ2 receptors, suggesting that this drug could be used for ocular diseases such as diabetic retinopathy.
characterization, pharmacokinetics, and hypoglycemic effect of berberine loaded solid lipid nanoparticles

: The high aqueous solubility, poor permeability, and absorption of berberine (BBR) result in its low plasma level after oral administration, which greatly limits its clinical application. BBR solid lipid nanoparticles (SLNs) were prepared to achieve improved bioavailability and prolonged effect. Developed SLNs showed homogeneous spherical shapes, small size (76.8 nm), zeta potential (7.87 mV), encapsulation efficiency (58%), and drug loading (4.2%). The power of X-ray diffraction combined with 1 H nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy was employed to analyze chemical functional groups and the microstructure of BBR-SLNs, and indicated that the drug was wrapped in a lipid carrier. Single dose (50 mg/kg) oral pharmacokinetic studies in rats showed significant improvement ( P , 0.05) in the peak plasma concentration, area under the curve, and variance of mean residence time of BBR-SLNs when compared to BBR alone ( P , 0.05), suggesting improved bioavailability. Furthermore, oral administration of both BBR and BBR-SLNs significantly suppressed body weight gain, fasting blood glucose levels, and homeostasis assessment of insulin resistance, and ameliorated impaired glucose tolerance and insulin tolerance in db/db diabetic mice. BBR-SLNs at high dose (100 mg/kg) showed more potent effects when compared to an equivalent dose of BBR. Morphologic analysis demonstrated that BBR-SLNs potentially promoted islet function and protected the islet from regeneration. In conclusion, our study demonstrates that by entrapping BBR into SLNs the absorption of BBR and its anti-diabetic action were effectively enhanced.