Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
DCC functions as an accelerator of thalamocortical axonal growth downstream of spontaneous thalamic activity

Controlling the axon growth rate is fundamental when establishing brain connections. Using the thalamocortical system as a model, we previously showed that spontaneous calcium activity influences the growth rate of thalamocortical axons by regulating the transcription of Robo1 through an NF‐κB‐binding site in its promoter. Robo1 acts as a brake on the growth of thalamocortical axons in vivo. Here, we have identified the Netrin‐1 receptor DCC as an accelerator for thalamic axon growth. Dcc transcription is regulated by spontaneous calcium activity in thalamocortical neurons and activating DCC signaling restores normal axon growth in electrically silenced neurons. Moreover, we identified an AP‐1‐binding site in the Dcc promoter that is crucial for the activity‐dependent regulation of this gene. In summary, we have identified the Dcc gene as a novel downstream target of spontaneous calcium activity involved in axon growth. Together with our previous data, we demonstrate a mechanism to control axon growth that relies on the activity‐dependent regulation of two functionally opposed receptors, Robo1 and DCC. These two proteins establish a tight and efficient means to regulate activity‐guided axon growth in order to correctly establish neuronal connections during development.
Human Lung Epithelial Cells Contain Mycobacterium tuberculosis in a Late Endosomal Vacuole and Are Efficiently Recognized by CD8+ T Cells

Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) is transmitted via inhalation of aerosolized particles. While alveolar macrophages are thought to play a central role in the acquisition and control of this infection, Mtb also has ample opportunity to interact with the airway epithelium. In this regard, we have recently shown that the upper airways are enriched with a population of non-classical, MR1-restricted, Mtb-reactive CD8+ T cells (MAIT cells). Additionally, we have demonstrated that Mtb-infected epithelial cells lining the upper airways are capable of stimulating IFNγ production by MAIT cells. In this study, we demonstrate that airway epithelial cells efficiently stimulate IFNγ release by MAIT cells as well as HLA-B45 and HLA-E restricted T cell clones. Characterization of the intracellular localization of Mtb in epithelial cells indicates that the vacuole occupied by Mtb in epithelial cells is distinct from DC in that it acquires Rab7 molecules and does not retain markers of early endosomes such as Rab5. The Mtb vacuole is also heterogeneous as there is a varying degree of association with Lamp1 and HLA-I. Although the Mtb vacuole shares markers associated with the late endosome, it does not acidify, and the bacteria are able to replicate within the cell. This work demonstrates that Mtb infected lung epithelial cells are surprisingly efficient at stimulating IFNγ release by CD8+ T cells.
A new Central European species of the Daphnia curvirostris complex, Daphnia hrbaceki sp. nov. (Cladocera, Anomopoda, Daphniidae)

Although systematics of the cladoceran genus Daphnia (Cladocera: Daphniidae) has been intensively investigated for decades using both morphological and genetic approaches, new lineages are being discovered on all continents, including in well-studied regions. Among Holarctic daphnids, Daphnia curvirostris Eylmann, 1887 held an interesting position, sharing some morphological characters of both the D. pulex and D. longispina groups. Recently, additional species of the D. curvirostris complex have been discovered in the Eastern Palaearctic. Here, we describe a new species in this complex from Central Europe, D. hrbaceki sp. nov. It was discovered in small, newly created fishless pools in the Czech Republic, and an additional sample of apparently the same taxon was collected in 1951 in Slovakia. D. hrbaceki is the closest yet known relative of D. curvirostris, but remains genetically divergent from all members of the complex (based on the sequences of three mitochondrial genes: 12S, COI, and ND2). In general, adult females of this species are morphologically very similar to D. curvirostris. Unlike the latter species, D. hrbaceki may develop a specific hump-shaped dorsal outline of the carapace, presumably an inducible defence against invertebrate predators. Juveniles of the new species occasionally form neckteeth, which may also be retained in adult individuals. The species also shows substantial variation in the size of spines in the middle pecten of the postabdominal claw, similarly as in the Japanese member of the species complex, D. tanakai Ishida, Kotov & Taylor, 2006. This variable character of spine size in the postabdominal middle pecten (a transition from the pulex to the longispina group character), as well as a bent and heavily setulated terminal seta on the male 2nd endopodite (considered as the pulex group character), are typical for the new species. D. hrbaceki also differs from D. curvirostris as well as other members of the complex in the ephippial surface ultrastructure. Our study demonstrates the utility of such ultrastructural characters in Daphnia taxonomical studies.
A QUANTITATIVE EXPLANATION OF THE OBSERVED POPULATION OF MILKY WAY SATELLITE GALAXIES

We revisit the well known discrepancy between the observed number of Milky Way (MW) dwarf satellite companions and the predicted population of cold dark matter (CDM) subhalos, in light of the dozen new low-luminosity satellites found in imaging data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and our recent calibration of the SDSS satellite detection efficiency, which implies a total satellite population far larger than these dozen discoveries. We combine a detailed dynamical model for the CDM subhalo population with simple, physically motivated prescriptions for assigning a stellar content to each subhalo, then apply observational selection effects and compare to the current observational census. Reconciling the observed satellite population with CDM predictions still requires strong mass-dependent suppression of star formation in low-mass subhalos: models in which the stellar mass is a constant fraction F*(Ωb/Ωm) of the subhalo mass Msat at the time it becomes a satellite fail for any choice of F*. However, previously advocated models that invoke suppression of gas accretion after reionization in halos with circular velocity Vcirc ⩽ Vcrit ≈ 35 km s−1 can reproduce the observed satellite counts for −15 ⩽ MV ⩽ 0. Successful models require F* ≈ 10−3 in halos with Vcirc>Vcrit and strong suppression of star formation before reionization in halos with Vcirc ≲ 10 km s−1; models without pre-reionization suppression predict far too many satellites with −5 ⩽ MV ⩽ 0. In this successful model, the dominant fraction of stars formed after reionization at all luminosities. Models that match the satellite luminosity distribution also match the observed heliocentric radius distribution, and they reproduce the observed characteristic stellar velocity dispersion σ* ≈ 5–10 km s−1 of the SDSS dwarfs given the observed sizes (∼50–200 pc) of their stellar distributions. The model satellites have M(<300 pc) ∼ 107 M☉ as observed even though their present-day total halo masses span more than two orders of magnitude; the constancy of central masses mainly reflects the profiles of CDM halos. Our modeling shows that natural physical mechanisms acting within the CDM framework can quantitatively explain the properties of the MW satellite population as it is presently known, thus providing a convincing solution to the “missing satellite” problem.
Maternal Vitamin D Status and Adverse Birth Outcomes in Children from Rural Western Kenya

Maternal plasma 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) status and its association with pregnancy outcomes in malaria holoendemic regions of sub-Saharan Africa is poorly defined. We examined this association and any potential interaction with malaria and helminth infections in an ongoing pregnancy cohort study in Kenya. The association of maternal plasma 25(OH)D status with pregnancy outcomes and infant anthropometric measurements at birth was determined in a subset of women (n = 63). Binomial and linear regression analyses were used to examine associations between maternal plasma 25(OH)D and adverse pregnancy outcomes. Fifty-one percent of the women had insufficient (<75 nmol/L) and 21% had deficient (<50 nmol/L) plasma 25(OH)D concentration at enrollment. At birth, 74.4% of the infants had insufficient and 30% had deficient plasma 25(OH)D concentrations, measured in cord blood. Multivariate analysis controlling for maternal age and body mass index (BMI) at enrollment and gestational age at delivery found that deficient plasma 25(OH)D levels were associated with a four-fold higher risk of stunting in neonates (p = 0.04). These findings add to the existing literature about vitamin D and its association with linear growth in resource-limited settings, though randomized clinical trials are needed to establish causation.
The Collaboration Process in American Professional Development Schools

Professional development schools(PDSs), which arose in the 1980s, have become a significant trend in teacher education reform in America. One of the most key aspects in the formation and development of the PDS is the collaboration between the school and the university. This study identifies the characteristics and problems of the collaboration process in American PDSs.
Challenges for aging Holocaust survivors and their children: The impact of early trauma on aging

ABSTRACT Is the impact of early trauma continually present or does the negative psychological impact disappear when survivors are younger and then reappear as they age? In Transcending Trauma Project interviews survivors noted the impact of the Holocaust was always present but some stated that it increased as they aged. A small number of children of survivors interviewed observed a dependence upon defense mechanisms to cope with aging which differed from the survivors’ identification of using active and family coping strategies during the war and postwar years. Though children who experienced positive parent-child relationships mentioned the negative coping strategies, they also spoke positively of the impact of their parents in their own lives and expressed empathy for their parents. In the families where tensions existed between the survivors and their children, the children did not express empathy for their aging parents. Several studies supported the importance of family relationships in the aging process. This secondary analysis study further explored the impact of the Holocaust in aging survivors and the views of some children of survivors on aging.
An automated cell detection algorithm for lensfree shadow imaging platform

Here we propose an automated cell detection and counting algorithm for lens-free shadow imaging platform. This approach is based on the adaptive thresholding algorithm. The spatial variation of the threshold values is determined by the moving window technique. The shadow images of the Red Blood Cells(RBCs) are well detected and specified by the algorithm. The cell counting results from the algorithm for different concentration of blood cells are verified with the established cell counting results.
Using Linear Discriminant Analysis to Fuse Bimodal Biometrics Traits in Complex Space

In this work, we propose a simple and efficient approach to using linear discriminant analysis (LDA) to fuse the traits of bimodal biometrics in complex space. The proposed approach consists of two phases, the phase of obtaining transform axes (the first phase) and the phase of feature calculation (the second phase). The first phase calculates transform axes using a linear discriminant analysis (LDA) scheme on each of the two traits of bimodal biometrics, respectively. The second phase combines the two kinds of transform axes to new transform axes in the form of complex vectors and denotes each sample by a complex vector. The proposed approach extracts features from the sample by projecting the complex vector to denote the sample of bimodal biometrics onto the complex transform axes. The proposed approach is able to convert more information of the sample than a conventional and direct feature level fusion approach. The results of extensive experiments show that the proposed approach can obtain a higher accuracy than previously complex-vector or matrix based feature extraction approaches.
Feedback Error Learning Controller for Functional Electrical Stimulation Assistance in a Hybrid Robotic System for Reaching Rehabilitation

Hybrid robotic systems represent a novel research field, where functional electrical stimulation (FES) is combined with a robotic device for rehabilitation of motor impairment. Under this approach, the design of robust FES controllers still remains an open challenge. In this work, we aimed at developing a learning FES controller to assist in the performance of reaching movements in a simple hybrid robotic system setting. We implemented a Feedback Error Learning (FEL) control strategy consisting of a feedback PID controller and a feedforward controller based on a neural network. A passive exoskeleton complemented the FES controller by compensating the effects of gravity. We carried out experiments with healthy subjects to validate the performance of the system. Results show that the FEL control strategy is able to adjust the FES intensity to track the desired trajectory accurately without the need of a previous mathematical model.
An Estimate of the Age Distribution of Terrestrial Planets in the Universe: Quantifying Metallicity as a Selection Effect

Abstract Planets such as the Earth cannot form unless elements heavier than helium are available. These heavy elements, or “metals”, were not produced in the Big Bang. They result from fusion inside stars and have been gradually building up over the lifetime of the Universe. Recent observations indicate that the presence of giant extrasolar planets at small distances from their host stars is strongly correlated with high metallicity of the host stars. The presence of these close-orbiting giants is incompatible with the existence of Earth-like planets. Thus, there may be a Goldilocks selection effect: with too little metallicity, Earths are unable to form for lack of material; with too much metallicity, giant planets destroy Earths. Here I quantify these effects and obtain the probability, as a function of metallicity, for a stellar system to harbor an Earth-like planet. I combine this probability with current estimates of the star formation rate and of the gradual buildup of metals in the Universe to obtain an estimate of the age distribution of Earth-like planets in the Universe. The analysis done here indicates that three-quarters of the Earth-like planets in the Universe are older than the Earth and that their average age is 1.8±0.9 billion years older than the Earth. If life forms readily on Earth-like planets—as suggested by the rapid appearance of life on Earth—this analysis gives us an age distribution for life on such planets and a rare clue about how we compare to other life which may inhabit the Universe.
Class III Bimaxillary Orthognathic Surgery and Sleep Disordered Breathing Outcomes

Results: Seventy-eight subjects in the BOS group responded (29.8% response rate) and 24 subjects in the control group responded (13.7% response rate). Compared to the control group, the surgery group was significantly older, had longer follow-up times, and had more Caucasians. There was no significant difference between the surgery and orthodontic-only groups in their responses to the Berlin Questionnaire or the FOSQ-10. According to the Berlin Questionnaire, 9.0% of the surgery group were at high risk for OSA, while 16.7% of the orthodontic-only group were at high risk. The median total FOSQ-10 score for the surgery group and the orthodontic-only group was 18.3 and 18.1, respectively. The surgery group had a significantly lower ESS score of 6.3 compared to the orthodontic-only group score of 6.9. These findings compared favorably with scores for healthy individuals.
Theory & practice of group counseling

Part I: BASIC ELEMENTS OF GROUP PROCESS: AN OVERVIEW. 1. Introduction to Group Work. 2. Group Leadership. 3. Ethical and Professional Issues in Group Practice. 4. Early Stages in the Development of a Group. 5. Later Stages in the Development of a Group. Part II: THEORETICAL APPROACHES TO GROUP COUNSELING. 6. The Psychoanalytic Approach to Groups. 7. Adlerian Group Counseling. 8. Psychodrama in Groups. 9. The Existential Approach to Groups. 10. The Person-Centered Approach to Groups. 11. Gestalt Therapy in Groups. 12. Transactional Analysis in Groups. 13. Cognitive Behavioral Approaches in Groups. 14. Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy in Groups. 15. Choice Theory/Reality Therapy in Groups. 16. Solution-Focused Brief Therapy and Motivational Interviewing in Groups. Part III: INTEGRATION AND APPLICATION. 17. Comparisons, Contrasts, and Integration. 18. The Evolution of a Group: An Integrative Perspective.
An approach to allow safety requirements to be efficiently decomposed , traced , and validated

ARP 4754A and ARP 4761 are international standards for the avionics domains. ARP 4761 provides a guidance for the safety assessment process, while the ARP 4754A prescribes close interactions between the safety assessment process and system development process in order to capture safety requirements imposed on the design. According to the ARP 4754A, the safety requirements should be carefully traced and validated. A phase of the safety assessment process is the FHA (Functional Hazard Analysis) and the high-level safety requirements are derived. ARP 4754A indicates that the safety requirements obtained from the FHA phase should be allocated and validated, but the standard only indicates " What " should be done, but not " How " to do it. Hence, when developing an avionic system, an ad-hoc method must be provided to allocate and validate the safety requirements. Thesis work is focused on providing a systematic approach to allow safety managers jointly with designers to decompose, allocate and validate the safety requirements. Furthermore, the proposed approach is aligned with the ARP 4754A and DOORS tool, including how to decompose and validate the safety requirements in the system development process. This way will reduce the necessity to provide an ad-hoc method each avionic systems, and overcome the lacking methodology. Finally, a safety-critical system developed by SAAB is used as case study to validate the proposed approach. 3 Acknowledgements First of all, I would like to thank my family, which they gave me the big opportunity to study abroad and to have this wonderful experience. I am most grateful to Kristina Forsberg, to give me a great opportunity to do the thesis work in SAAB AB. Which I had a wonderful experience in the company, and I met nice " colleagues ". I would like to thank my supervisor, Barbara Gallina, for her patience and support during the entire thesis period. I would like to thank my examiner, Kristina Lundqvist. Without her, I never had the opportunity to know the safety-critical systems engineering field and interest in it. more for a great time that we spent together during my stay in Västerås.
Short Tree, Long Tree, Right Tree, Wrong Tree: New Acquisition Bias Corrections for Inferring SNP Phylogenies

Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are useful markers for phylogenetic studies owing in part to their ubiquity throughout the genome and ease of collection. Restriction site associated DNA sequencing (RADseq) methods are becoming increasingly popular for SNP data collection, but an assessment of the best practises for using these data in phylogenetics is lacking. We use computer simulations, and new double digest RADseq (ddRADseq) data for the lizard family Phrynosomatidae, to investigate the accuracy of RAD loci for phylogenetic inference. We compare the two primary ways RAD loci are used during phylogenetic analysis, including the analysis of full sequences (i.e., SNPs together with invariant sites), or the analysis of SNPs on their own after excluding invariant sites. We find that using full sequences rather than just SNPs is preferable from the perspectives of branch length and topological accuracy, but not of computational time. We introduce two new acquisition bias corrections for dealing with alignments composed exclusively of SNPs, a conditional likelihood method and a reconstituted DNA approach. The conditional likelihood method conditions on the presence of variable characters only (the number of invariant sites that are unsampled but known to exist is not considered), while the reconstituted DNA approach requires the user to specify the exact number of unsampled invariant sites prior to the analysis. Under simulation, branch length biases increase with the amount of missing data for both acquisition bias correction methods, but branch length accuracy is much improved in the reconstituted DNA approach compared to the conditional likelihood approach. Phylogenetic analyses of the empirical data using concatenation or a coalescent-based species tree approach provide strong support for many of the accepted relationships among phrynosomatid lizards, suggesting that RAD loci contain useful phylogenetic signal across a range of divergence times despite the presence of missing data. Phylogenetic analysis of RAD loci requires careful attention to model assumptions, especially if downstream analyses depend on branch lengths.
Plateau characteristics

Plateau characteristics are a special type of characteristics whose probability depends on the key and can have only 2 values. For a (usually small) subset of the keys it has a non-zero probability and for all other keys its probability is zero. In this paper we prove that for a large group of ciphers, including the AES, all two-round characteristics are plateau characteristics. For the AES and other ciphers with a similar structure we show that the vast majority of characteristics over 4 or more rounds are plateau characteristics. In the case of the AES, for most keys there are two-round characteristics with fixed-key probability equal to 32/2 while the Maximum Expected Differential Probability (MEDP) of two-round differentials is at most 13.25/2 .
A Cross-Cultural/National Study of Canadian, Chinese, and Japanese University Students' Leisure Satisfaction and Subjective Well-Being

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to examine whether Canadian, Chinese, and Japanese university students' leisure satisfaction affected their subjective well-being (SWB) and, if so, how this process was similar and different cross-culturally/nationally. A series of stepwise multiple regressions indicated that, in general, satisfying leisure significantly and positively impacted SWB across all three cultures, but there were also differences between (a) Canada and both China and Japan in terms of aesthetic leisure satisfaction and (b) China and Japan in terms of psychological and physiological leisure satisfaction. Overall, our results suggest that while satisfying leisure significantly, positively, and substantively impacts SWB in both Western and East Asian cultural contexts, culture frequently influences which specific elements are pertinent. This cross-cultural/national study has important theoretical and practical implications for the currently Western-centric leisure literature and for the understanding of the different roles leisure plays in enhancing SWB across cultures, respectively.