Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Territory quality drives intraspecific patterns of extrapair paternity

Despite the potential reproductive benefits of extrapair matings, extrapair paternity rates in many avian species often vary greatly among populations. Although ecological factors have been shown to influence intraspecific patterns of extrapair paternity in some species, for cooperatively breeding species living in family groups, social/demographic factors may also play a role. This study examined how ecological factors related to territory quality (vegetation cover, insect abundance) and social/demographic factors (group size, number of breeding pairs, genetic relatedness) influenced intraspecific patterns of extrapair paternity in cooperatively breeding superb starlings, Lamprotornis superbus. Superb starlings inhabit spatiotemporally variable African savannas where high temporal variability drives reproductive decisions (adoption of breeding roles, offspring sex allocation) and where territories suitable for breeding are limited. Although extrapair paternity rates were only 14% of offspring and 25% of nests, they varied greatly among groups, ranging from 4% to 32% of offspring and from 7% to 60% of nests. These among-group differences in extrapair paternity were not related to social/demographic factors but instead to territory quality; extrapair paternity was higher on lower quality territories (lower vegetation cover and grasshopper abundance) than on higher quality territories (higher vegetation cover and grasshopper abundance). These results suggest that even in a heterogeneous landscape where suitable breeding territories are limited, subtle differences in habitat quality can have profound effects on reproductive decisions and patterns of extrapair paternity. Understanding the interaction between spatial (habitat heterogeneity) and temporal (temporal variability) environmental variation will be important for determining how environmental and social factors drive avian reproductive and mating decisions. Copyright 2007, Oxford University Press.
Cultural Health Assets of Somali and Oromo Refugees and Immigrants in Minnesota: Findings from a Community-Based Participatory Research Project

This community-based participatory research study sought to identify the cultural health assets of the Somali and Oromo communities in one Minnesota neighborhood that could be mobilized to develop culturally appropriate health interventions. Community asset mappers conducted 76 interviews with Somali and Oromo refugees in in Minnesota regarding the cultural assets of their community. A community-university data analysis team coded data for major themes. Key cultural health assets of the Somali and Oromo refugee communities revealed in this study include religion and religious beliefs, religious and cultural practices, a strong culture of sharing, interconnectedness, the prominence of oral traditions, traditional healthy eating and healthy lifestyles, traditional foods and medicine, and a strong cultural value placed on health. These cultural health assets can be used as building blocks for culturally relevant health interventions.
Multi-task warped Gaussian process for personalized age estimation

Automatic age estimation from facial images has aroused research interests in recent years due to its promising potential for some computer vision applications. Among the methods proposed to date, personalized age estimation methods generally outperform global age estimation methods by learning a separate age estimator for each person in the training data set. However, since typical age databases only contain very limited training data for each person, training a separate age estimator using only training data for that person runs a high risk of overfitting the data and hence the prediction performance is limited. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to age estimation by formulating the problem as a multi-task learning problem. Based on a variant of the Gaussian process (GP) called warped Gaussian process (WGP), we propose a multi-task extension called multi-task warped Gaussian process (MTWGP). Age estimation is formulated as a multi-task regression problem in which each learning task refers to estimation of the age function for each person. While MTWGP models common features shared by different tasks (persons), it also allows task-specific (person-specific) features to be learned automatically. Moreover, unlike previous age estimation methods which need to specify the form of the regression functions or determine many parameters in the functions using inefficient methods such as cross validation, the form of the regression functions in MTWGP is implicitly defined by the kernel function and all its model parameters can be learned from data automatically. We have conducted experiments on two publicly available age databases, FG-NET and MORPH. The experimental results are very promising in showing that MTWGP compares favorably with state-of-the-art age estimation methods.
Effects of CreERT2, 4-OH Tamoxifen, and Gender on CFU-F Assays

Gene function in stem cell maintenance is often tested by inducing deletion via the Cre-loxP system. However, controls for Cre and other variables are frequently not included. Here we show that when cultured in the presence of 4-OH tamoxifen, bone and marrow cells containing the CreERT2 construct have a reduced colony forming ability. Inactive CreERT2 recombinase, however, has the opposite effect. Young female marrow cells containing the inactive CreERT2 construct grew more colonies than cells lacking the construct altogether. Young female control marrow cells (i.e., negative for CreERT2) also produced significantly greater colony numbers when cultured with 4-OH tamoxifen, compared with the ethanol vehicle control. In conclusion, we report that the use of the Cre-loxP system is inadvisable in combination with CFU-F assays, and that appropriate controls should be in place to extend the future use of Cre-loxP in alternate assays.
Monte Carlo simulations of clinical PET and SPECT scans: impact of the input data on the simulated images

Monte Carlo simulations of emission tomography have proven useful to assist detector design and optimize acquisition and processing protocols. The more realistic the simulations, the more straightforward the extrapolation of conclusions to clinical situations. In emission tomography, accurate numerical models of tomographs have been described and well validated under specific operating conditions (collimator, radionuclide, acquisition parameters, count rates, etc). When using these models under these operating conditions, the realism of simulations mostly depends on the activity distribution used as an input for the simulations. It has been proposed to derive the input activity distribution directly from reconstructed clinical images, so as to properly model the heterogeneity of the activity distribution between and within organs. However, reconstructed patient images include noise and have limited spatial resolution. In this study, we analyse the properties of the simulated images as a function of the properties of the reconstructed images used to define the input activity distributions in 18F-FDG PET and 131I SPECT simulations. The propagation through the simulation/reconstruction process of the noise and spatial resolution in the input activity distribution was studied using simulations. We found that the noise properties of the images reconstructed from the simulated data were almost independent of the noise in the input activity distribution. The spatial resolution in the images reconstructed from the simulations was slightly poorer than that in the input activity distribution. However, using high-noise but high-resolution patient images as an input activity distribution yielded reconstructed images that could not be distinguished from clinical images. These findings were confirmed by simulated highly realistic 131I SPECT and 18F-FDG PET images from patient data. In conclusion, we demonstrated that 131I SPECT and 18F-FDG PET images indistinguishable from real scans can be simulated using activity maps with spatial resolution higher than that used in routine clinical applications.
Spatial and temporal variability of N 2 O emissions in a subtropical forest catchment in China

Abstract. Subtropical forests in southern China have received chronically large amounts of atmogenic nitrogen (N), causing N saturation. Recent studies suggest that a significant proportion of the N input is returned to the atmosphere, in part as nitrous oxide (N2O). We measured N2O emission fluxes by closed chamber technique throughout two years in a Masson pine-dominated headwater catchment with acrisols (pH ~ 4) at Tieshanping (Chongqing, SW China) and assessed the spatial and temporal variability in two landscape elements typical for this region: a mesic forested hillslope (HS) and a hydrologically connected, terraced groundwater discharge zone (GDZ) in the valley bottom. High emission rates of up to 1800 μg N2O-N m−2 h−1 were recorded on the HS shortly after rain storms during monsoonal summer, whereas emission fluxes during the dry winter season were generally low. Overall, N2O emission was lower in GDZ than on HS, rendering the mesic HS the dominant source of N2O in this landscape. Temporal variability of N2O emissions on HS was largely explained by soil temperature (ST) and moisture, pointing at denitrification as a major process for N removal and N2O production. The concentration of nitrate (NO3−) in pore water on HS was high even in the rainy season, apparently never limiting denitrification and N2O production. The concentration of NO3− decreased along the terraced GDZ, indicating efficient N removal, but with moderate N2O-N loss. The extrapolated annual N2O fluxes from soils on HS (0.54 and 0.43 g N2O-N m−2 yr−1 for a year with a wet and a dry summer, respectively) are among the highest N2O fluxes reported from subtropical forests so far. Annual N2O-N emissions amounted to 8–10% of the annual atmogenic N deposition, suggesting that forests on acid soils in southern China are an important, hitherto overlooked component of the anthropogenic N2O budget.
Direction-Sensitive Codes for Observed Head Turns in Human Superior Temporal Sulcus

Humans and other primates are adept at using the direction of another's gaze or head turn to infer where that individual is attending. Research in macaque neurophysiology suggests that anterior superior temporal sulcus (STS) contains a direction-sensitive code for such social attention cues. By contrast, most human functional Magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies report that posterior STS is responsive to social attention cues. It is unclear whether this functional discrepancy is caused by a species difference or by experimental design differences. Furthermore, social attention cues are dynamic in naturalistic social interaction, but most studies to date have been restricted to static displays. In order to address these issues, we used multivariate pattern analysis of fMRI data to test whether response patterns in human right STS distinguish between leftward and rightward dynamic head turns. Such head turn discrimination was observed in right anterior STS/superior temporal gyrus (STG). Response patterns in this region were also significantly more discriminable for head turn direction than for rotation direction in physically matched ellipsoid control stimuli. Our findings suggest a role for right anterior STS/STG in coding the direction of motion in dynamic social attention cues.
Doc1 mediates the activity of the anaphase‐promoting complex by contributing to substrate recognition

The anaphase‐promoting complex (APC) is a multisubunit E3 ubiquitin ligase that targets specific cell cycle‐related proteins for degradation, regulating progression from metaphase to anaphase and exit from mitosis. The APC is regulated by binding of the coactivator proteins Cdc20p and Cdh1p, and by phosphorylation. We have developed a purification strategy that allowed us to purify the budding yeast APC to near homogeneity and identify two novel APC‐associated proteins, Swm1p and Mnd2p. Using an in vitro ubiquitylation system and a native gel binding assay, we have characterized the properties of wild‐type and mutant APC. We show that both the D and KEN boxes contribute to substrate recognition and that coactivator is required for substrate binding. APC lacking Apc9p or Doc1p/Apc10 have impaired E3 ligase activities. However, whereas Apc9p is required for structural stability and the incorporation of Cdc27p into the APC complex, Doc1p/Apc10 plays a specific role in substrate recognition by APC–coactivator complexes. These results imply that Doc1p/Apc10 may play a role to regulate the binding of specific substrates, similar to that of the coactivators.
Deleting Secret Data with Public Verifiability

Existing software-based data erasure programs can be summarized as following the same one-bit-return protocol: the deletion program performs data erasure and returns either success or failure. However, such a one-bit-return protocol turns the data deletion system into a black box-the user has to trust the outcome but cannot easily verify it. This is especially problematic when the deletion program is encapsulated within a Trusted Platform Module (TPM), and the user has no access to the code inside. In this paper, we present a cryptographic solution that aims to make the data deletion process more transparent and verifiable. In contrast to the conventional black/white assumptions about TPM (i.e., either completely trust or distrust), we introduce a third assumption that sits in between: namely, “trust-but-verify”. Our solution enables a user to verify the correct implementation of two important operations inside a TPM without accessing its source code: i.e., the correct encryption of data and the faithful deletion of the key. Finally, we present a proof-of-concept implementation of the SSE system on a resource-constrained Java card to demonstrate its practical feasibility. To our knowledge, this is the first systematic solution to the secure data deletion problem based on a “trust-but-verify” paradigm, together with a concrete prototype implementation.
RESPONSE PROPERTIES OF THE HUMAN FUSIFORM FACE AREA

We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to study the response properties of the human fusiform face area (FFA: Kanwisher, McDermott, & Chun, 1997) to a variety of face-like stimuli in order to clarify the functional role of this region. FFA responses were found to be (1) equally strong for cat, cartoon and human faces despite very different image properties, (2) equally strong for entire human faces and faces with eyes occluded but weaker for eyes shown alone, (3) equal for front and profile views of human heads, but declining in strength as faces rotated away from view, and (4) weakest for nonface objects and houses. These results indicate that generalisation of the FFA response across very different face types cannot be explained in terms of a specific response to a salient facial feature such as the eyes or a more general response to heads. Instead, the FFA appears to be optimally tuned to the broad category of faces.
A discrete uniformization theorem for polyhedral surfaces

A discrete conformality for polyhedral metrics on surfaces is introduced in this paper which gen-eralizes earlier work on the subject. It is shown that each polyhedral metric on a surface is discrete conformal to a constant curvature polyhedral metric which is unique up to scaling. Furthermore, the constant curvature metric can be found using a discrete Yamabe ﬂow with surgery.
Parallel algorithms for reducing derivation time of distinguishing experiments for nondeterministic finite state machines

Abstract Many approaches have been proposed for deriving tests from finite state machine (FSM) specifications with respect to some established coverage criteria. A fundamental core problem in FSM-based testing relates to the derivation of input sequences that can distinguish states of an FSM specification, aka distinguishing sequences. A major effort in the construction of these sequences is based on the derivation of a successors search-tree labeled by sets of pairs of states of the given machine. We aim at reducing the time associated with such constructions through the use of state-of-the-art parallel technologies. Namely, we propose a parallel algorithm that we implement and evaluate on multicore CPUs and on many-core GPUs. We evaluate two alternative GPU implementations that use the CUDA and Thrust software platforms and a network of workstations based solution. The latter sports a workload partitioning based on Divisible Load Theory. A rigorous set of experiments highlights the differences of the proposed implementations in terms of execution time and speedup. We aim at reducing the time associated with the construction of the successors of all state pairs of a given non-deterministic finite state machine. We propose a parallel algorithm that we implement and evaluate on multicore CPUs and on many-core GPUs. We evaluate two alternative GPU implementations that use the CUDA and Thrust software platforms. Additionally, we propose and evaluate a Network of Workstations solution based on Divisible Load Theory. A rigorous set of experiments highlights the differences of the proposed implementations in terms of execution time and speedup.
Immature Coconut Water: A Renal Protective Agent in Wistar Rats

The abundance of polyunsaturated fatty acids and the presence of cytochrome P450 makes the kidney an organ particularly vulnerable to reactive oxygen species (ROS) attack [1-3]. The concentration of ROS reaches its peak <1-6 hours, depending on exposure and concentration or dose [4-8]. Carbon tetrachloride toxicity is dependent on the excessive production of the trichloromethyl radical (CCl3) [9]. Early studies showed that free radicals, such as trichloromethyl (CCl3) and oxygen-centered lipid radicals (LO or LOO, or both), are generated during CCl4 metabolism by hepatic cellular cytochrome P450 [10].
Investigation the using possibilities of some mineral-bound organic composites as thermal insulation material in rural buildings

Using possibilities of some mineral-bound organic composites as thermal insulationmaterial in rural buildings was investigated in this research. For this purpose, using rice husk (RH) and ground sunflower stem (SS) as the main material and cement andgypsum as mineral-binding materials, series I and series II samples with the volumetric mixing ratio of 1/3, 1/6 and 1/9 were produced. Thermal conductivity of cement-bound samples of serials-Ib3 and Ic3 were found to be 0.062 and 0.065 W/mK, respectively, whereas thermal conductivity of gypsum-bound sample as of serials-IIb2, IIc2, IIb3 and IIc3 were obtained as 0.063, 0.065, 0.054 and 0.057 W/mK, respectively. Measurement and test results carried out on the samples showed that,serials-Ib3 and Ic3 among the cement-bound samples; serials-IIb2, IIc2, IIb3 and IIc3 among the gypsum-bound samples may be used as thermal insulation materials in rural buildings. Use of these organic wastes in this way could be an economic alternative to common destruction method of burning, harmful to the environment. Key words: Thermal insulation, insulation materials, organic composites, rural buildings.
Association between Precipitation and Diarrheal Disease in Mozambique

Diarrheal diseases are a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in Africa. Although research documents the magnitude and pattern of diarrheal diseases are associated with weather in particular locations, there is limited quantification of this association in sub-Saharan Africa and no studies conducted in Mozambique. Our study aimed to determine whether variation in diarrheal disease was associated with precipitation in Mozambique. In secondary analyses we investigated the associations between temperature and diarrheal disease. We obtained weekly time series data for weather and diarrheal disease aggregated at the administrative district level for 1997–2014. Weather data include modeled estimates of precipitation and temperature. Diarrheal disease counts are confirmed clinical episodes reported to the Mozambique Ministry of Health (n = 7,315,738). We estimated the association between disease counts and precipitation, defined as the number of wet days (precipitation > 1 mm) per week, for the entire country and for Mozambique’s four regions. We conducted time series regression analyses using an unconstrained distributed lag Poisson model adjusted for time, maximum temperature, and district. Temperature was similarly estimated with adjusted covariates. Using a four-week lag, chosen a priori, precipitation was associated with diarrheal disease. One additional wet day per week was associated with a 1.86% (95% CI: 1.05–2.67%), 1.37% (95% CI: 0.70–2.04%), 2.09% (95% CI: 1.01–3.18%), and 0.63% (95% CI: 0.11–1.14%) increase in diarrheal disease in Mozambique’s northern, central, southern, and coastal regions, respectively. Our study indicates a strong association between diarrheal disease and precipitation. Diarrheal disease prevention efforts should target areas forecast to experience increased rainfall. The burden of diarrheal disease may increase with increased precipitation associated with climate change, unless additional health system interventions are undertaken.
Effects of wastewater quality on Henna (Lawsonia inermis L.) germination and seedling growth: a case study, Tunisia

Water resources scarcity led countries like Tunisia to adopt a policy of water economy by increasing the use of treated wastewater in agricultural irrigation. In this context, we studied the effects of raw and secondary treated urban and industrial waste waters and fresh waters (distilled and well waters used as control) on the germination and seedling growth of Lawsonia inermis. The seeds were used untreated or pretreated with 0.5% H2SO4, concentrated H2SO4 and soaked in distilled water prior to germination. Germination was conducted at 25°C during 7 days under conditions of dark and light. Germination rate, moisture content, root and shoot lengths were measured in different experimental conditions crossing seed pre-treatment, water quality and incubation condition. The R software was used to perform three classification factors ANOVA, Pearson correlation analysis and multiple linear regression analysis. Results showed that the best germination performance was obtained when the seeds were pretreated by 0.5% H2SO4, watered by treated urban wastewater and exposed to light. Treated urban wastewater had a best contribution to germination rate considered model than fresh water and the other wastewaters types tested. So at the stage of early growth treated urban wastewater could be considered as potent water for Lawsonia inermis irrigation.