Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fossil ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae): ancient diversity and the rise of modern lineages

The ant fossil record is summarized with special re ference to the earliest ants, first occurrences of modern lineages, and the utility of paleontological data in reconstructi ng evolutionary history. During the Cretaceous, from approximately 100 to 78 million years ago, only two species are d efinitively assignable to extant subfamilies – all putative crown group ants from this period are discussed. Among the earl iest ants known are unexpectedly diverse and highly social stemgroup lineages, however these stem ants do not pers ist into the Cenozoic. Following the Cretaceous-Pal eogene boundary, all well preserved ants are assignable to cro wn Formicidae; the appearance of crown ants in the fossil record is summarized at the subfamilial and generic level. Ge nerally, the taxonomic composition of Cenozoic ant f ossil communities mirrors Recent ecosystems with the "big four" s bfamilies Dolichoderinae, Formicinae, Myrmicinae, nd Ponerinae comprising most faunal abundance. As reviewed by ot her authors, ants increase in abundance dramaticall y from the Eocene through the Miocene. Proximate drivers relat ing to the "rise of the ants" are discussed, as the majority of this increase is due to a handful of highly dominant spe cies. In addition, instances of congruence and conf li t with molecularbased divergence estimates are noted, and distinct "ghost" lineages are interpreted. The ant fossil re co d is a valuable resource comparable to other groups with extensive fossil species: There are approximately as many des cribed fossil ant species as there are fossil dinosaurs. The inco rporation of paleontological data into neontologica l nquiries can only seek to improve the accuracy and scale of generated hypotheses.
Tracing the rise of malignant cell lines: Distribution, epidemiology and evolutionary interactions of two transmissible cancers in Tasmanian devils

Emerging infectious diseases are rising globally and understanding host‐pathogen interactions during the initial stages of disease emergence is essential for assessing potential evolutionary dynamics and designing novel management strategies. Tasmanian devils (Sarcophilus harrisii) are endangered due to a transmissible cancer—devil facial tumour disease (DFTD)—that since its emergence in the 1990s, has affected most populations throughout Tasmania. Recent studies suggest that devils are adapting to the DFTD epidemic and that disease‐induced extinction is unlikely. However, in 2014, a second and independently evolved transmissible cancer—devil facial tumour 2 (DFT2)—was discovered at the d’Entrecasteaux peninsula, in south‐east Tasmania, suggesting that the species is prone to transmissible cancers. To date, there is little information about the distribution, epidemiology and effects of DFT2 and its interaction with DFTD. Here, we use data from monitoring surveys and roadkills found within and adjacent to the d’Entrecasteaux peninsula to determine the distribution of both cancers and to compare their epidemiological patterns. Since 2012, a total of 51 DFTD tumours have been confirmed among 26 individuals inside the peninsula and its surroundings, while 40 DFT2 tumours have been confirmed among 23 individuals, and two individuals co‐infected with both tumours. All devils with DFT2 were found within the d’Entrecasteaux peninsula, suggesting that this new transmissible cancer is geographically confined to this area. We found significant differences in tumour bodily location in DFTD and DFT2, with non‐facial tumours more commonly found in DFT2. There was a significant sex bias in DFT2, with most cases reported in males, suggesting that since DFT2 originated from a male host, females might be less susceptible to this cancer. We discuss the implications of our results for understanding the epidemiological and evolutionary interactions of these two contemporary transmissible cancers and evaluating the effectiveness of potential management strategies.
A 1.8 GHz highly-tunable low-phase-noise CMOS VCO

A 1.8 GHz fully integrated Voltage Controlled Oscillator (VCO) is presented. Through inductor optimization, the phase noise is as low as -127.5 dBc/Hz at 600 kHz and -142.5 dBc/Hz at 3 MHz. A 28% wide tuning range is achieved with a 1.8 V power supply. The VCO exceeds the DCS-1800 phase noise requirements with at least 4 dB over the whole DCS-1800 frequency band. The VCO is implemented in a 2-metal layer, 0.25 /spl mu/m standard CMOS technology, using no external components nor additional processing steps.
Determination of effective factors on geographic distribution of the incidence of colorectal cancer in Tehran using geographically weighted Poisson regression model

Background: This study aimed to determine effective factors on geographic distribution of the Incidence of Colorectal Cancer (CRC) in Tehran, Iran using Geographically Weighted Poisson Regression Model. Methods: This ecological study was carried out at neighborhood level of Tehran in 2017-2018. Data for CRC incidence was extracted from the population-based cancer registry data of Iran. The socioeconomic variables, risk factors and health costs were extracted from the Urban HEART Study in Tehran. Geographically weighted Poisson regression model was used for determination of the association between these variables with CRC incidence. GWR 4, Stata 14 and ArcGIS 10.3 software systems were used for statistical analysis. Results: The total number of incident CRC cases were 2815 in Tehran from 2008 to 2011, of whom, 2491 cases were successfully geocoded to the neighborhood. The median IRR for local variables were : unemployed people over 15 year old (median IRR: 1.17), women aged 17 years or older with university education (median IRR: 1.17), women head of household (median IRR: 1.06), people without insurance coverage (median IRR: 1.10), households without daily consumption of milk (median IRR: 0.85), smoking households (median IRR: 1.07), household’s health expenditure (median IRR: 1.39), disease diagnosis costs (median IRR: 1.03), medicines costs of households (median IRR: 1.05), cost of the hospital (median IRR: 1.09), cost of medical visits (median IRR: 1.27). Conclusion: The spatial variability was observed for most socioeconomic variables, risk factors and health costs that had effects on CRC incidence in Tehran. Spatial variability is necessary when interpreting the results and utterly helpful for implementation of prevention programs.
Mating activity of Pyrrhocoris apterus (Heteroptera: Pyrrhocoridae) in nature

The mating behaviour of Pyrrhocoris apterus in the laboratory is well studied, but little is known about it under natural conditions. In natural populations in Central Europe, overwintered adults start copulating in March and continue until their death. Caged females, kept under natural conditions in the permanent presence of males, copulated repeatedly. Their mating activity increased sharply until early April, then very slowly until the end of June and then declined as the females die-off. Half of copulations were short (< 5 h) and only 9% were longer than 1 day. By contrast, in natural populations, mating activity (percentage of individuals involved in copula) reached its maximum in April and then decreased until early July, when the overwintered adults die. The decline in mating frequency (percentage of adults involved in copula) was associated with a decrease in the availability of receptive females towards the end of the mating period. For a female, repeated copulation is necessary because sperm is nearly depleted after insemination of 3-5 egg batches.
Design of confocal systems for spectral information coding

﻿Chromatisch-konfokale Systeme fokussieren die spektralen Kompenenten eines polychromatischen Signals auf unterschiedliche raumliche Positionen, an denen sie mit Hilfe von Blenden gefiltert werden. Auf diese Weise konnen Informationen einerseits in der Spektralverteilung eines optischen Signals gespeichert werden. Anderseits kann auch die Spektralverteilung eines polychromatischen Signals ermittelt werden. Chromatisch-konfokale Systeme werden haufig zur beruhrungslosen Abstandsmessung und fur die ortsaufgeloste Spektroskopie eingesetzt. In dieser Arbeit werden Designstrategien fur chromatisch-konfokale Systeme entwickelt. Ein Schwerpunkt liegt auf der systematischen Modellierung der Signalentstehung unter Berucksichtigung der physikalischen Eigenschaften des optischen Systems, der Abbildungsfehler und der Eigenschaften des Detektionssystems. Hierbei werden insbesondere auch inkoharente Lichtquellen und raumlich ausgedehnte Beleuchtungsgeometrien berucksichtigt. Schnelle numerische Implementationen dieser Modelle erlauben in allen Stadien des Designprozesses eine Vorhersage des spektralen Filterverhaltens. Das spektrale Filterverhalten wird als primares Bewertungskriterium fur die Leistungsfahigkeit des optischen Systems verwendet und wird zur Ableitung effektiver Designstrategien herangezogen. Die Designstrategien umfassen sowohl die Entwicklung von Startsystemen als auch den nachfolgenden Optimierungsprozess, bei dem monochromatische Abbildungsfehler berucksichtigt werden. Der Fokus liegt hierbei insbesondere auf der nachtraglichen Korrektur der Abbildungsfehler wahrend der Signalverabeitung und auf ihrer automatischen Kompensation durch bestimmte Systemanordnungen. In Kombination mit den neu entwickelten Signalerzeugungsmodellen ermoglicht dieser Ansatz die Entwicklung optimierter, kompakter und gunstiger Sensorsysteme, die auf die Anforderungen des jeweiligen Anwendungsgebietes zugeschnitten sind und auf kostengunstigen Lichtquellen wie Leuchtdioden basieren. Die vorgestellten Designstrategien werden fur die Entwicklung verschiedener Demonstrator- und kommerzieller Sensorsysteme eingesetzt.
Age-accelerated cognitive decline in asymptomatic adults with CSF β-amyloid

Objective Compare cognitive and hippocampal volume trajectories in asymptomatic middle-aged and older adults with positive CSF markers of β-amyloid (Aβ) or tau to adults without an Alzheimer disease (AD)-associated biomarker profile. Methods Three hundred ninety-two adults enrolled in a longitudinal cohort study (Wisconsin Registry for Alzheimer's Prevention or Wisconsin Alzheimer's Disease Research Center) completed a lumbar puncture and at least 2 biennial or annual neuropsychological evaluations. Cutoffs for Aβ42, total tau, and phosphorylated tau were developed via receiver operating characteristic curve analyses on a sample of 78 participants (38 dementia, 40 controls). These cutoffs were applied to a separate sample of 314 cognitively healthy adults (mean age at CSF collection = 61.5 years), and mixed-effects regression analyses tested linear and quadratic interactions of biomarker group × age at each visit on cognitive and hippocampal volume outcomes. Results Two hundred fifteen participants (69%) were biomarker negative (preclinical AD stage 0), 46 (15%) were Aβ+ only (preclinical AD stage 1), 25 (8%) were Aβ+ and tau+ (preclinical AD stage 2), and 28 (9%) were tau+ only. Both stage 1 and stage 2 groups exhibited greater rates of linear decline on story memory and processing speed measures, and nonlinear decline on list-learning and set-shifting measures compared to stage 0. The tau+ only group did not significantly differ from stage 0 in rates of cognitive decline. Conclusion In an asymptomatic at-risk cohort, elevated CSF Aβ (with or without elevated tau) was associated with greater rates of cognitive decline, with the specific pattern of decline varying across cognitive measures.
Psoriasis: Role of dietary management in diminution of its symptoms

Psoriasis is a common chronic skin disease mediated by T-cell with atypical proliferation of keratinocytes. The infl uence of environment and stress as a cause of psoriasis cannot be undermined. The recent research on diet in psoriasis as cause and cure has gained momentum with several studies correlating it with aetiology and pathogenesis of the disease. Various dietary intolerances have added to the cause and concern of the disease. The alcohol dependence of patients with psoriasis has led to its worsening. Trials on Gluten free diet (GFD) in psoriasis patients has established the reason for its avoidance in the diet, the association between celiac disease (CD) and psoriasis proba bly due to Th1 cytokines is highlighted but in absence of substantial literature cannot be established. Importance of several vitamins and their analogs has also been discussed with insight on vitamin D as a possible medicine in treatment of psoriasis. Likewise, the diet rich in eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) like fi sh oil was found to improve the clinical condition of patients. The signifi cance of antioxidants and antioxidant therapy to remove the toxic waste and its positive impact on patient with psoriasis has been established.
New approaches and tools for site-specific nutrient management with reference to potassium

Adoption of generalized fertilizer recommendations for potassium over larger areas ignoring the spatial nutrient variability among small agricultural holdings has resulted in falling productivity with extensive K mining from soils besides exhibiting K deficiency over larger areas. An approach for addressing all such concerns is site-specific nutrient management (SSNM), which takes into account spatial variations in potassium fertility status. SSNM has successfully been tried in India using different approaches and demonstrated a potential not only to increase crop yields and farmer profits, but also shown increasing evidences of environmental friendliness owing to its balanced and crop need-based nutrient application. Certain tools and approaches were developed to consolidate the complex and knowledge intensive SSNM information into simple delivery systems enabling farmers and their advisors rapidly implement this technology to ensure cost-effective field-specific guidelines for fertilizer recommendations. Tools involving information technology offers the opportunity to help small-scale farmers implement SSNM. In this approach, the farmer becomes the “sensor” for rapid, cost effective acquisition of locationspecific information, the tools/software (Nutrient Expert and Nutrient Manager) become the processors of this information, and the mobile phone becomes the vehicle for fast and effective transmission of the information to farmers. Moving ahead, GIS based fertility mapping assess variability in the distribution of native nutrients and other soil parameters limiting/building yield across a larger areas and thus aid in strategizing appropriate management of nutrients leading to better yield and environmental protection.
Interpretable Multimodality Embedding Of Cerebral Cortex Using Attention Graph Network For Identifying Bipolar Disorder

Bipolar Disorder (BP) is a mental disorder that affects 1 ∼ 2% of the population. Early diagnosis and targeted treatment can benefit from associated biological markers. The existing methods typically utilize biomarkers from anatomical MRI or functional BOLD imaging, but lack the ability of revealing the relationship between integrated modalities and disease. In this paper, we developed an Edge-weighted Graph Attention Network (EGAT) with Dense Hierarchical Pooling (DHP), to better understand the underlying roots of the disorder from the view of structure-function integration. For the input, the underlying graphs are constructed from functional connectivity matrices and the nodal features consist of both the anatomical features and the statistics of the connectivity. We investigated the potential benefits of using EGAT to classify BP vs. Healthy Control (HC). Compared with traditional machine learning classifiers, our proposed EGAT embedding increased improved 10 ∼ 20% in the accuracy and F1-score, compared with alternative classifiers. More specifically, by examining the attention map and gradient sensitivity of nodal features, we indicated that associated with the abnormality of anatomical geometric properties, multiple interactive patterns among Default Mode, Fronto-parietal and Cingulo-opercular networks contribute to identifying BP.
Early-Stage Ocular Hypertension Alters Retinal Ganglion Cell Synaptic Transmission in the Visual Thalamus

Axonopathy is a hallmark of many neurodegenerative diseases including glaucoma, where elevated intraocular pressure (ocular hypertension, OHT) stresses retinal ganglion cell (RGC) axons as they exit the eye and form the optic nerve. OHT causes early changes in the optic nerve such as axon atrophy, transport inhibition, and gliosis. Importantly, many of these changes appear to occur prior to irreversible neuronal loss, making them promising points for early diagnosis of glaucoma. It is unknown whether OHT has similarly early effects on the function of RGC output to the brain. To test this possibility, we elevated eye pressure in mice by anterior chamber injection of polystyrene microbeads. 5 weeks post-injection, bead-injected eyes showed a modest RGC loss in the peripheral retina, as evidenced by RBPMS antibody staining. Additionally, we observed reduced dendritic complexity and lower spontaneous spike rate of On-αRGCs, targeted for patch clamp recording and dye filling using a Opn4-cre reporter mouse line. To determine the influence of OHT on retinal projections to the brain, we expressed Channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2) in melanopsin-expressing retinal ganglion cells by crossing the Opn4-cre mouse line with a ChR2-reporter mouse line and recorded post-synaptic responses in thalamocortical relay neurons in the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus (dLGN) of the thalamus evoked by stimulation with 460 nm light. The use of a Opn4-cre reporter system allowed for expression of ChR2 in a narrow subset of RGCs responsible for image-forming vision in mice. Five weeks following OHT induction, paired pulse and high-frequency stimulus train experiments revealed that presynaptic vesicle release probability at retinogeniculate synapses was elevated. Additionally, miniature synaptic current frequency was slightly reduced in brain slices from OHT mice and proximal dendrites of post-synaptic dLGN relay neurons, assessed using a Sholl analysis, showed a reduced complexity. Strikingly, these changes occurred prior to major loss of RGCs labeled with the Opn4-Cre mouse, as indicated by immunofluorescence staining of ChR2-expressing retinal neurons. Thus, OHT leads to pre- and post-synaptic functional and structural changes at retinogeniculate synapses. Along with RGC dendritic remodeling and optic nerve transport changes, these retinogeniculate synaptic changes are among the earliest signs of glaucoma.
A Longitudinal Comparison of WISC-III and WISC-R Scores of Special Education Students.

This study investigated the performance of 166 special education students who had been administered the WISC-R and approximately 3 years later the WISC-III. The sample ranged in age from 6.0 to 16.6 years. The scores were analyzed using Pearson product moment correlation coefficients and t tests of the differences between means for related samples. The results indicated that there was a significant, positive correlation among global scales (p < .001). This finding suggests that the WISC-R and the WISC-III IQ scores measure similar abilities. Analysis of mean IQ score differences revealed significant differences in the WISC-R and the WISC-III IQ scores, with the WISC-III global scores being lower. Implications for the evaluation of students for special education are discussed, with special emphasis on the role and function of the psychologist practicing in the schools. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Specific Eph receptor-cytoplasmic effector signaling mediated by SAM–SAM domain interactions

The Eph receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK) family is the largest subfamily of RTKs playing critical roles in many developmental processes such as tissue patterning, neurogenesis and neuronal circuit formation, angiogenesis, etc. How the 14 Eph proteins, via their highly similar cytoplasmic domains, can transmit diverse and sometimes opposite cellular signals upon engaging ephrins is a major unresolved question. Here we systematically investigated the bindings of each SAM domain of Eph receptors to the SAM domains from SHIP2 and Odin, and uncover a highly specific SAM-SAM interaction-mediated cytoplasmic Eph-effector binding pattern. Comparative X-ray crystallographic studies of several SAM-SAM heterodimer complexes, together with biochemical and cell biology experiments, not only revealed the exquisite specificity code governing Eph/effector interactions but also allowed us to identify SAMD5 as a new Eph binding partner. Finally, these Eph/effector SAM heterodimer structures can explain numerous Eph SAM mutations identified in patients suffering from cancers and other diseases.
Information literacy in Nigerian universities trends, challenges and opportunities

Purpose The purpose of this study was to determine the information literacy trends, challenges and opportunities in Nigerian universities, With focus on its characteristics; content and adequacy for students’ information literacy development and lifelong learning. The effort to ensure that university students are empowered to acquire the competences needed for all round education and lifelong learning has been the primary focus of the university curriculum. University regulatory body in Nigeria emphasised the need to provide students with a study plan which provides them with capacity to locate information resources, access, evaluate and use them in legally acceptable manner. The programme is differently captioned with varying contents. With evolving approach to literacy, this study was designed to determine whether the programme has evolved from use of library education to information literacy or still at its traditional mode. Design/methodology/approach Descriptive survey research method was adopted for the study. The population consists of federal and state university libraries in Nigeria. The characteristics, content and adequacy of the programme as offered in Nigerian universities was the measure to determine the type of literacy. Questionnaire derived from literature and personal experience was designed to elicit information. A copy of the questionnaire was sent to each university that constituted the sample of the study by mail and telephone interviews were given to the heads of the sampled libraries. Findings It was discovered that majority of the universities studied were yet to consolidate the library literacy programme offered in their universities. Hence, the provision of information literacy content is yet to be realised in Nigerian universities. Practical implications There should be constant evaluation and monitoring of the programme by the regulatory bodies to ensure that the programme is reviewed at the appropriate time and that they also abide to the minimum standard. Originality/value For the effective implementation of programme to reflect the current development in research and information sourcing, retrieval and use; collaboration in content development as well as teaching between faculty and library; increasing or splitting the programme content to accommodate first year and higher level undergraduates, the regulatory bodies like Librarians’ Registration Council of Nigeria should ensure constant evaluation of the programme.