Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Diameter growth performance of tree functional groups in Puerto Rican secondary tropical forests

Aim of study: Understanding the factors that control tree growth in successional stands is particularly important for quantifying the carbon sequestration potential and timber yield of secondary tropical forests. Understanding the factors that control tree growth in successional stands is particularly important for quantifying the carbon sequestration potential and timber yield of secondary tropical forests. Yet, the high species diversity of mixed tropical forests, including many uncommon species, hinders the development of species-specific diameter growth models. Area of study: In these analyses, we grouped 82 species from secondary forests distributed across 93 permanent plots on the island of Puerto Rico. Material and Methods: Species were classified according to regeneration strategy and adult height into six functional groups. This classification allowed us to develop a robust diameter growth model using growth data collected from 1980-1990. We used mixed linear model regression to analyze tree diameter growth as a function of individual tree characteristics, stand structure, functional group and site factors. Main results: The proportion of variance in diameter growth explained by the model was 15.1%, ranging from 7.9 to 21.7%. Diameter at breast height, stem density and functional group were the most important predictors of tree growth in Puerto Rican secondary forest. Site factors such as soil and topography failed to predict diameter growth.
Crossmodal Session Rating of Perceived Exertion Response at Low and Moderate Intensities

Green, JM, Laurent, CM, Bacon, NT, ONeal, EK, Davis, JK, and Bishop, PA. Cross-modal session rating of perceived exertion response at low and moderate intensities. J Strength Cond Res 25(6): 1598-1604, 2011—Session rating of perceived exertion (SRPE) permits global effort estimations after an exercise bout and has shown promise for evaluating training load. However, factors mediating SRPE are not well understood. The purpose of this study was to compare SRPE between cycling and treadmill exercise at low and moderate intensities. In a counterbalanced order, male subjects (n = 7) completed a o2max trial on a cycle ergometer and a motor-driven treadmill. Then, participants completed trials at 50 and 75% mode-specific o2max on a cycle ergometer (BK75, BK50) and a treadmill (TM75, TM50) to achieve ∼400-kcal energy expenditure per trial. Acute RPE (i.e., during exercise) at 5 minutes, midway, and test termination were recorded with SRPE (20-minutes postexercise) expressed as overall (SRPEO), legs (SRPEL), and breathing also recorded were heart rate (HR) and change in rectal temperature (ΔTrec). Significance was accepted at p ≤ 0.05. Repeated-measures analysis of variance revealed significantly greater SRPE for higher intensities within each mode. Crossmodal comparisons also show a higher SRPE at moderate (75% o2max) intensities [SRPEO] = BK75: 7.6 ± 1.0, TM75: 6.9 ± 1.3) vs. lower (50% o2max) intensities (BK50: 4.6 ± 1.4, TM50: 4.6 ± 1.1). Within modes, SRPE corresponded well with ΔTrec and HR. Acute RPE was linked with intensity and drifted upward across time. Results indicated that overall and differentiated SRPEs are magnified with exercise intensity with the corresponding disruption in internal environment potentially mediating subjective responses. From a practical application standpoint, SRPE provides a subjective assessment for immediate evaluation of daily training. Results indicate that, when using SRPE to monitor training, consideration should be given to responses across differing exercise modes.
Spatial Variability Mapping of Crop Residue Using Hyperion (EO-1) Hyperspectral Data

Soil management practices that maintain crop residue cover and reduce tillage improve soil structure, increase organic matter content in the soil, positively influence water infiltration, evaporation and soil temperature, and play an important role in fixing CO2 in the soil. Consequently, good residue management practices on agricultural land have many positive impacts on soil quality, crop production quality and decrease the rate of soil erosion. Several studies have been undertaken to develop and test methods to derive information on crop residue cover and soil tillage using empirical and semi-empirical methods in combination with remote sensing data. However, these methods are generally not sufficiently rigorous and accurate for characterizing the spatial variability of crop residue cover in agricultural fields. The goal of this research is to investigate the potential of hyperspectral Hyperion (Earth Observing-1, EO-1) data and constrained linear spectral mixture analysis (CLSMA) for percent crop residue cover estimation and mapping. Hyperion data were acquired together with ground-reference measurements for validation purposes at the beginning of the agricultural season (prior to spring crop planting) in Saskatchewan (Canada). At this time, only bare soil and crop residue were present with no crop cover development. In order to extract the crop residue fraction, the images were preprocessed, and then unmixed considering the entire spectral range (427 nm–2355 nm) and the pure spectra (endmember). The results showed that the correlation between ground-reference measurements and extracted fractions from the Hyperion data using CLMSA showed that the model was overall a very good predictor for crop residue percent cover (index of agreement (D) of 0.94, coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.73 and root mean square error (RMSE) of 8.7%) and soil percent cover (D of 0.91, R2 of 0.68 and RMSE of 10.3%). This performance of Hyperion is mainly due to the spectral band characteristics, especially the availability of contiguous narrow bands in the short-wave infrared (SWIR) region, which is sensitive to the residue (lignin and cellulose absorption features).
The role of flies in the transmission of eye disease in Egypt.

Summary Two species of flies, M. d. vicina and M. sorbens, collected from the faces of Egyptian village children from August, 1955, through June, 1956, were studied for types of internal and external bacterial flora. Enteric bacteria were found in every pool of flies, and organisms associated with respiratory infections, conjunctivitis, and pyogenic infections were frequently isolated. Although seasonal variation in total numbers of bacteria was not observed, organisms of the Micrococcus group were isolated more often than other organisms, and indicated some seasonal variation in prevalence, which was not entirely explainable on the basis of relative fly prevalence. The beta-hemolytic staphylococci and streptococci were isolated most frequently during August, while the nonhemolytic and alpha-hemolytic micrococci were found most often during April, May and June. The corynebacteria were isolated most frequently during May and June. Bacterial types similar to those isolated from flies were obtained from both normal and diseased eyes of Egyptian children. The organisms most commonly isolated from either eyes or flies were the hemolytic micrococci, several of which produced ophthalmia in experimentally infected rabbits.
Response properties of horizontal cells in the isolated retina of wild- type and pearl mutant mice

Intracellular recordings were made from axon bearing horizontal cells in isolated retinas (with retinal pigment epithelium removed) of normal and pearl mutant mice superfused with mammalian Ringer's solution. Cells were injected with Lucifer yellow and identified by their morphology and their response wave-forms. On impalement, we measured a dark, resting voltage of 25–35 mV. All cells had similar spectral sensitivities that were consistent with the CIE scotopic relative spectral luminosity function. For stimuli of high irradiance, two types of responses could be distinguished, based on their waveform at stimulus offset. One consisted of a rapid and wavelength-dependent repolarization followed by a small, slow hyperpolarization. The other consisted of a large, long-lived, and wavelength-independent after- hyperpolarization. The former were recorded from the somatic end and the latter from the axon terminal arborization. The spatial distribution of sensitivity was measured in over 100 locations within the receptive field using small stimuli. The area within which sensitivity of the soma was within 0.1 log unit of the maximal sensitivity was larger than that of the soma dendritic field, but the sizes were nearly equal for the terminal arborization. No secondary maximum of sensitivity was noted over the dendritic field of the unimpaled part of the cell. For the terminal arborization, the half- saturating irradiance for diffuse 502 nm stimuli was about 180 photons micron-2 sec-1, about one-tenth that for the soma. These values are in good agreement with those for cat and rabbit. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
A Mutation in secY That Causes Enhanced SecA Insertion and Impaired Late Functions in Protein Translocation

ABSTRACT A cold-sensitive secY mutant (secY125) with an amino acid substitution in the first periplasmic domain causes in vivo retardation of protein export. Inverted membrane vesicles prepared from this mutant were as active as the wild-type membrane vesicles in translocation of a minute amount of radioactive preprotein. The mutant membrane also allowed enhanced insertion of SecA, and this SecA insertion was dependent on the SecD and SecF functions. These and other observations suggested that the early events in translocation, such as SecA-dependent insertion of the signal sequence region, is actually enhanced by the SecY125 alteration. In contrast, since the mutant membrane vesicles had decreased capacity to translocate chemical quantity of pro-OmpA and since they were readily inactivated by pretreatment of the vesicles under the conditions in which a pro-OmpA translocation intermediate once accumulated, the late translocation functions appear to be impaired. We conclude that this periplasmicsecY mutation causes unbalanced early and late functions in translocation, compromising the translocase's ability to catalyze multiple rounds of reactions.
Fungal Assemblages in Different Habitats in an Erman’s Birch Forest

Recent meta-analyses of fungal diversity using deeply sequenced marker genes suggest that most fungal taxa are locally distributed. However, little is known about the extent of overlap and niche partitions in total fungal communities or functional guilds within distinct habitats on a local forest scale. Here, we compared fungal communities in endosphere (leaf interior), phyllosphere (leaf interior and associated surface area) and soil samples from an Erman’s birch forest in Changbai Mountain, China. Community structures were significantly differentiated in terms of habitat, with soil having the highest fungal richness and phylogenetic diversity. Endophytic and phyllosphere fungi of Betula ermanii were more phylogenetically clustered compared with the corresponding soil fungi, indicating the ability of that host plants to filter and select their fungal partners. Furthermore, the majority of soil fungal taxa were soil specialists, while the dominant endosphere and phyllosphere taxa were aboveground generalists, with soil and plant foliage only sharing <8.2% fungal taxa. Most of the fungal taxa could be assigned to different functional guilds; however, the assigned guilds showed significant habitat specificity with variation in relative abundance. Collectively, the fungal assemblages in this Erman’s birch forest were strictly niche specialized and constrained by weak migration among habitats. The findings suggest that phylogenetic relatedness and functional guilds’ assignment can effectively interpret the certain ecological processes.
Distributed consensus in resilient networks

In this paper, we investigate the necessary and sufficient conditions on the network for non-faulty nodes to reach consensus using only local information in the presence of structured Byzantine (StrBYZ) faulty agents. After presenting a new fault model classification, we carry out the analysis not only on the original network but also on the expanded network built on copies of faulty nodes. It is shown that non-faulty nodes achieve consensus without using any fault tolerant algorithm if and only if they are in the same layer with at least one in-neighbor. The theoretical results are also illustrated with numerical results.
Among‐tree variability and feedback effects result in different growth responses to climate change at the upper treeline in the Swiss Alps

Abstract Upper treeline ecotones are important life form boundaries and particularly sensitive to a warming climate. Changes in growth conditions at these ecotones have wide‐ranging implications for the provision of ecosystem services in densely populated mountain regions like the European Alps. We quantify climate effects on short‐ and long‐term tree growth responses, focusing on among‐tree variability and potential feedback effects. Although among‐tree variability is thought to be substantial, it has not been considered systematically yet in studies on growth–climate relationships. We compiled tree‐ring data including almost 600 trees of major treeline species (Larix decidua, Picea abies, Pinus cembra, and Pinus mugo) from three climate regions of the Swiss Alps. We further acquired tree size distribution data using unmanned aerial vehicles. To account for among‐tree variability, we employed information‐theoretic model selections based on linear mixed‐effects models (LMMs) with flexible choice of monthly temperature effects on growth. We isolated long‐term trends in ring‐width indices (RWI) in interaction with elevation. The LMMs revealed substantial amounts of previously unquantified among‐tree variability, indicating different strategies of single trees regarding when and to what extent to invest assimilates into growth. Furthermore, the LMMs indicated strongly positive temperature effects on growth during short summer periods across all species, and significant contributions of fall (L. decidua) and current year's spring (L. decidua, P. abies). In the longer term, all species showed consistently positive RWI trends at highest elevations, but different patterns with decreasing elevation. L. decidua exhibited even negative RWI trends compared to the highest treeline sites, whereas P. abies, P. cembra, and P. mugo showed steeper or flatter trends with decreasing elevation. This does not only reflect effects of ameliorated climate conditions on tree growth over time, but also reveals first signs of long‐suspected negative and positive feedback of climate change on stand dynamics at treeline.
Edge detection from polarimetric SAR images using polarimetric whitening filter

A new edge detector for polarimetric SAR images based on polarimetric whitening filter aiming at making better use of polarimetric information is proposed. The relativity between different polarization channels including the phase difference and correlation efficient is better utilized in the new algorithm. Therefore, the missing rate is reduced, the continuity of detected edges is enhanced, and the false edge rate is decreased. Experimental results using simulated and real polarimetric SAR data both revealed that the polarimetric information in the SAR data is better utilized in the new algorithm, and the performance for edge detection is better than the typical multichannel ratio of averages algorithms.
Protein expression profiling identifies maspin and stathmin as potential biomarkers of adenoid cystic carcinoma of the salivary glands

Adenoid cystic carcinoma (ACC) is one of the most common malignant tumors of the salivary glands. It tends to grow slowly but is associated with a poor prognosis compared to other malignant salivary gland tumors. To identify specific markers of ACC, we examined protein expression profiling in ACC xenograft and normal salivary glands (NSG) using fluorescent 2‐dimensional differential in‐gel electrophoresis (2‐D‐DIGE), an emerging technique for comparative proteomics, that improves the reproducibility and reliability of differential protein expression analysis between the samples. To identify the proteins, matrix‐assisted laser desorption/ionization time‐of‐flight peptide mass fingerprinting was carried out. Using these strategies, we detected 4 upregulated proteins and 5 downregulated proteins in ACC xenograft. Maspin and stathmin were selected for further analyses. Western blotting and immunohistochemical staining showed a higher expression of these proteins in ACC xenograft and clinical ACC tissue compared to NSG. Furthermore, Expression of these proteins was correlated with the histologic grading of ACC (n = 10). Therefore, our data indicate that maspin and stathmin may be not only useful biomarkers of ACC but also markers of biologic behavior in this tumor. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Large scale speech-to-text translation with out-of-domain corpora using better context-based models and domain adaptation

In this paper, we described the process of building a large-scale speech-to-text pipeline. Two target domains, daily conversations and travel-related conversations between two agents, for the English-German language pair (both directions) are examined. The SMT component is built from out-of-domain but freely-available bilingual and monolingual data. We make use of most of the known available resources to examine the effects of unrestricted data and large scale models. A naive baseline delivers solid results in terms of MT-quality. Extending the baseline with context-based translation model features like operations sequence models, higher-order class-based language models, and additional web-scale word-based language models leads to a system that significantly outperforms the baseline. Domain adaption is performed by separately weighting the influence of the out-of-domain subcorpora. This is explored for translation models and language models yielding significant improvements in both cases. Automatic and manual evaluation results are provided for raw MT-quality and ASR+MT-quality.
Application of Hydrologic Metrics to Quantify Stream Health in Small- Scale Urban Environments

Numerous studies have been conducted to assess the impacts of urbanization on stream geomorphology and ecology. Recent research has shown benthic macroinvertebrates to be good indicators of stream health. Furthermore, significant correlations have been shown to exist be- tween these benthic indicators and certain hydrologic metrics in receiving streams. These studies have used stream gage data and/or computer models to study such relationships but the scale of the watersheds has been large; typically greater than two square miles. This study examines the appli- cation of such research to a small-scale urban environment in Fort Collins, Colorado. The study uses benthic data collected approximately 10 years ago and stream flow measurements from the City's flood early warning system. These data provide an opportunity to determine if the findings in other research can be applied to relatively small urban streams. Such trends could help guide development and stream rehabilitation efforts in the City to minimize future impacts of urbaniza- tion on these streams and provide guidance in prioritizing stream reaches for rehabilitation. How- ever, the use of such small scale real data in an ever-changing urban environment makes the appli- cation of hypothetical trends more difficult. Stream alteration, data limitations, and annual runoff variations present additional challenges for developing relationships between stream health and hy- drology that are seen to exist in larger watersheds.
The Molecular Basis of Conformational Instability of the Ecdysone Receptor DNA Binding Domain Studied by In Silico and In Vitro Experiments

The heterodimer of the ecdysone receptor (EcR) and ultraspiracle (Usp), members of the nuclear receptors superfamily, regulates gene expression associated with molting and metamorphosis in insects. The DNA binding domains (DBDs) of the Usp and EcR play an important role in their DNA-dependent heterodimerization. Analysis of the crystal structure of the UspDBD/EcRDBD heterocomplex from Drosophila melanogaster on the hsp27 gene response element, suggested an appreciable similarity between both DBDs. However, the chemical denaturation experiments showed a categorically lower stability for the EcRDBD in contrast to the UspDBD. The aim of our study was an elucidation of the molecular basis of this intriguing instability. Toward this end, we mapped the EcRDBD amino acid sequence positions which have an impact on the stability of the EcRDBD. The computational protein design and in vitro analyses of the EcRDBD mutants indicate that non-conserved residues within the α-helix 2, forming the EcRDBD hydrophobic core, represent a specific structural element that contributes to instability. In particular, the L58 appears to be a key residue which differentiates the hydrophobic cores of UspDBD and EcRDBD and is the main reason for the low stability of the EcRDBD. Our results might serve as a benchmark for further studies of the intricate nature of the EcR molecule.
Difficulties in Caring for a Patient With Cancer at the End of Life at Home and Complicated Grief

The present study aimed to investigate difficulties in caring for a patient with cancer at the end of life at home and to examine relationships between difficulties with care and complicated grief. The 45 bereaved family members completed the Family Difficulty Scale (FDS) and the Inventory of Complicated Grief (ICG). The FDS score for “Patient’s pain and condition” was the highest, followed by “Caregivers did not want home care” and “No support from others. ” There was a significant relationship between FDS and ICG scores. These results suggest that the condition of the patient, the view of the caregiver on home care, and the absence of other support are important factors contributing to difficulties of family caregivers, and that these difficulties may lead to complicated grief.
Low-copy nuclear gene and McGISH resolves polyploid history of Eleusine coracana and morphological character evolution in Eleusine

Eleusine coracana (L.) Gaertn. (finger millet) is the third most important cereal crop in semiarid regions of the world, but the degree of relatedness of finger millet with other species in the genus is unverified. The study of morphological character evolution in Eleusine Gaertn. has lagged behind due to lack of relevant research. Polyploidy history of finger millet was analyzed using waxy sequences together with multicolor genomic in situ hybridization (McGISH). In the waxy phylogenetic tree, sequences of 2 homoeologous loci were isolated from 3 tetraploids: Eleusine coracana, E. africana Kenn. -O'Byrne, and E. kigeziensis S.M. Phillips. The 3 species grouped with E. indica (L.) Gaertn. and E. tristachya (Lam.) Lam. in the W-A1 clade (A-type sequences). The W-B1 and W-B2 clades (B-type sequences) were composed of the E. africana-E. coracana and the E. jaegeri Pilg. -E. kigeziensis subclades, respectively. Eleusine indica probes produced stronger signals of relative intensities across A-genome chromosomes of finger millet than did the E. tristachya probes. The waxy phylogenetic tree and McGISH evidence support E. indica and E. tristachya (or its extinct sister or ancestor) as the primary and secondary A-genome parents for finger millet, respectively. The most likely scenario is that the B-genome donor is extinct. Five morphological characters were found to be homoplasious by optimization on waxy gene tree.