Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
REDUCED ESCAPE RESPONSES AND MORPHOLOGICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL ANTIPREDATORY ADAPTATIONS RELATED TO ESCAPE IN LIZARDS

Observers of wildlife on oceanic islands where natural predators and human beings have been scarce or absent for long intervals often have reported that wariness is greatly reduced or absent. Although this phenomenon is widely accepted and is undoubtedly real in some cases, it has rarely been the subject of scientific investigation quantitatively comparing differences in escape behavior between populations exposed to differing longterm levels of predation risk. Here we review evidence regarding effects of island occupation and predation risk on several aspects of escape behavior, refuge use, and other aspects of antipredatory defense, with emphasis on lizards. Limited data on mammals suggest that flight initiation distance and vigilance may decrease on isolated islands where predation pressure is relaxed. Bird studies indicate that on islands with low predation pressure flocking may be reduced and morphological changes leading to flightlessness have evolved frequently, limiting escape ability. More data are available for lizards than any other taxon. In several lizard clades, flight initiation distance and other aspects of escape and refuge use have decreased on islands having low predation pressure. In some lizards restoration of predation pressure has been shown to bring about rapid increases in wariness and changes in habitat selection and morphology that facilitate escape. In Balearic lizards exposure to relaxed predation is associated with decline in the ease of tail autotomy and distance and intensity of tail movements. Because most of such studies have made one or a few islandmainland comparisons or comparisons between populations on pairs of islands, sample sizes are too small to assess significance comparatively in most studies. Metanalyses involving independent comparisons across studies show that findings among studies are consistent and significant reduction of antipredatory defense in association with reduction of predation pressure. Islands and Evolution (2010). Pérez-Mellado, V. and Ramon, Ma. M. (eds.) Institut Menorquí d’Estudis. Recerca, 19: 231-253 ISLAND TAMENESS: REDUCED ESCAPE RESPONSES AND MORPHOLOGICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL ANTIPREDATORY ADAPTATIONS RELATED TO ESCAPE IN LIZARDS WILLIAM E. COOPER, JR.1 VALENTÍN PÉREZ-MELLADO2 1 Department of Biology, Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, Fort Wayne, IN 46805, USA, cooperw@ipfw.edu 2 Departamento de Biologia Animal, Universidad de Salamanca, 37071 Salamanca, Spain, valentin@usal.es
Occupational Exposure to Pesticides in Tobacco Fields: The Integrated Evaluation of Nutritional Intake and Susceptibility on Genomic and Epigenetic Instability

Pesticides used at tobacco fields are associated with genomic instability, which is proposed to be sensitive to nutritional intake and may also induce epigenetic changes. We evaluated the effect of dietary intake and genetic susceptibility polymorphisms in MTHFR (rs1801133) and TERT (rs2736100) genes on genomic and epigenetic instability in tobacco farmers. Farmers, when compared to a nonexposed group, showed increased levels of different parameters of DNA damage (micronuclei, nucleoplasmic bridges, and nuclear buds), evaluated by cytokinesis-block micronucleus cytome assay. Telomere length (TL) measured by quantitative PCR was shorter in exposed individuals. Global DNA methylation was significantly decreased in tobacco farmers. The exposed group had lower dietary intake of fiber, but an increase in cholesterol; vitamins such as B6, B12, and C; β-carotene; and α-retinol. Several trace and ultratrace elements were found higher in farmers than in nonfarmers. The MTHFR CT/TT genotype influenced nucleoplasmic bridges, nuclear buds, and TL in the exposed group, whereas TERT GT/TT only affected micronucleus frequency. We observed a positive correlation of TL and lipids and an inverse correlation of TL and fibers. The present data suggest an important role of dietary intake and subjects' genetic susceptibility to xenobiotics-induced damages and epigenetic alterations in tobacco farmers occupationally exposed to mixtures of pesticides.
Impact of Bradykinin Generation During Thrombolysis in Ischemic Stroke

Ischemic stroke is one of the leading causes of death and disability worldwide. Current medical management in the acute phase is based on the activation of the fibrinolytic cascade by intravenous injection of a plasminogen activator (such as tissue-type plasminogen activator, tPA) that promotes restauration of the cerebral blood flow and improves stroke outcome. Unfortunately, the use of tPA is associated with deleterious effects such as hemorrhagic transformation, symptomatic brain edema, and angioedema, which limit the efficacy of this therapeutic strategy. Preclinical and clinical evidence suggests that intravenous thrombolysis generates large amounts of bradykinin, a peptide with potent pro-inflammatory, and pro-edematous effects. This tPA-triggered generation of bradykinin could participate in the deleterious effects of thrombolysis and is a potential target to improve neurological outcome in tPA-treated patients. The present review aims at summarizing current evidence linking thrombolysis, bradykinin generation, and neurovascular damage.
Economic-Robust Transmission Opportunity Auction for D2D Communications in Cognitive Mesh Assisted Cellular Networks

Device-to-device (D2D) communications can potentially alleviate cellular network congestion by utilizing local available links, and have attracted intensive attention recently. Cognitive radio (CR) allows users to opportunistically access unused licensed spectrums. It thus serves as a great candidate technology for D2D communications, but has not been widely employed in cellular networks due to hardware development limitations. In this paper, we propose a new architecture, called cognitive mesh assisted cellular network (CMCN), in which several secondary service providers (SSPs) deploy CR routers to facilitate D2D communications among wireless users. To address the competition among the SSPs, we further construct a secondary spectrum auction market. Although a few works have studied spectrum auctions, most of them are designed for single-hop communications, and it is usually not clear whom a winning user communicates with. Uncertain spectrum availability is not considered in previous schemes either. In this paper, we propose a transmission opportunity auction scheme, called TOA, which can address these problems. Extensive simulations are conducted to validate the efficiency of the CMCN architecture and that of the TOA scheme.
Deep Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation: Improved Coil Design and Assessment of the Induced Fields Using MIDA Model

Stimulation of deep brain structures by transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a method for activating deep neurons in the brain and can be beneficial for the treatment of psychiatric and neurological disorders. To numerically investigate the possibility for deeper brain stimulation (electric fields reaching the hippocampus, the nucleus accumbens, and the cerebellum), combined TMS coils using the double-cone coil with the Halo coil (HDA) were modeled and investigated. Numerical simulations were performed using MIDA: a new multimodal imaging-based detailed anatomical model of the human head and neck. The 3D distributions of magnetic flux density and electric field were calculated. The percentage of volume of each tissue that is exposed to electric field amplitude equal or greater than 50% of the maximum amplitude of E in the cortex for each coil was calculated to quantify the electric field spread (V50). Results show that only the HDA coil can spread electric fields to the hippocampus, the nucleus accumbens, and the cerebellum with V50 equal to 0.04%, 1.21%, and 6.2%, respectively.
Chemotaxonomy of Mycotoxigenic Small-Spored Alternaria Fungi – Do Multitoxin Mixtures Act as an Indicator for Species Differentiation?

Necrotrophic as well as saprophytic small-spored Alternaria (A.) species are annually responsible for major losses of agricultural products, such as cereal crops, associated with the contamination of food and feedstuff with potential health-endangering Alternaria toxins. Knowledge of the metabolic capabilities of different species-groups to form mycotoxins is of importance for a reliable risk assessment. 93 Alternaria strains belonging to the four species groups Alternaria tenuissima, A. arborescens, A. alternata, and A. infectoria were isolated from winter wheat kernels harvested from fields in Germany and Russia and incubated under equal conditions. Chemical analysis by means of an HPLC-MS/MS multi-Alternaria-toxin-method showed that 95% of all strains were able to form at least one of the targeted 17 non-host specific Alternaria toxins. Simultaneous production of up to 15 (modified) Alternaria toxins by members of the A. tenuissima, A. arborescens, A. alternata species-groups and up to seven toxins by A. infectoria strains was demonstrated. Overall tenuazonic acid was the most extensively formed mycotoxin followed by alternariol and alternariol mono methylether, whereas altertoxin I was the most frequently detected toxin. Sulfoconjugated modifications of alternariol, alternariol mono methylether, altenuisol and altenuene were frequently determined. Unknown perylene quinone derivatives were additionally detected. Strains of the species-group A. infectoria could be segregated from strains of the other three species-groups due to significantly lower toxin levels and the specific production of infectopyrone. Apart from infectopyrone, alterperylenol was also frequently produced by 95% of the A. infectoria strains. Neither by the concentration nor by the composition of the targeted Alternaria toxins a differentiation between the species-groups A. alternata, A. tenuissima and A. arborescens was possible.
Optimum Phase Shift in the Self-Oscillating Loop for Piezoelectric-Transformer-Based Power Converters

A new method is implemented in designing of self-oscillating loop for driving piezoelectric transformers (PT). The implemented method is based on combining both analog and digital control systems. Digitally controlled time delay through the self-oscillating loop results in very precise frequency control and ensures optimum operation of the PT in terms of gain and efficiency. Time delay is implemented digitally for the first time through a 16-b digital-to-analog converter in the self-oscillating loop. The new design of the delay circuit provides 45-ps time resolution, enabling fine-grained control of phase in the self-oscillating loop. This allows the control loop to dynamically follow frequency changes of the transformer in each resonant cycle. Ultimately, by selecting the optimum phase shift, maximum efficiency under the load and temperature condition is achievable.
Assessment of the usability of an immersive virtual supermarket for the cognitive rehabilitation of elderly patients: A pilot study on young adults

In recent years, the use of virtual reality in rehabilitation has become a topic of growing interest, and many studies showed that virtual environments could represent a promising solution to enhance the cognitive rehabilitation of older patients affected by Mild Cognitive Impairment. This work presents an immersive environment representing a supermarket, developed with the aim of training cognitive capabilities in elderlies showing first symptoms of cognitive decline. The immersive environment — the Virtual Supermarket — has been validated on a sample of healthy subjects; the usability of the system was investigated in order to highlight potential issues that needed to be improved before conducting trials on a frail population. The contributions of sense of presence, cybersickness and enjoyment, as well as spontaneous users' comments, were also taken into account. The results, obtained through both self-reports and objective performance measurements, showed a very good usability of the system. Nonetheless, the clearness of the products and the interaction modalities should be improved before starting a trial with elderly patients.
Reconfigurable Multilevel Inverter With Fault-Tolerant Ability

The cascaded H-bridge multilevel inverter (CMI) is one of the most popular converters, especially in renewabale energy applications. Beyond offering some significant benefits, this inverter suffers from the drawback of employing great number of components which reduces the reliability of the inverter. Thus, designing a scheme to enhance reliability in this kind of inverter is of crucial importance. In this paper, a fault-tolerant structure for the cascaded H-bridge multilevel inverter is designed. Failure rates of the switches and diodes are calculated. Then, by using the Markov method, reliability and mean time to failure (MTTF) of the mentioned inverter, before and after employing the suggested scheme, are evaluated. In order to prove proper performance of the suggested scheme, a laboratory built prototype is employed. The results show that employing the suggested scheme significantly enhances reliability and MTTF of the inverter.
Historical biogeography of the lacertid lizard Mesalina in North Africa and the Middle East

We explored the phylogenetic relationships of species of Mesalina, using one nuclear and two mitochondrial loci. This genus of lacertid lizards is widely distributed in North Africa and the Middle East and our goal was to develop a scenario capable of explaining the current distribution and evolutionary patterns within the genus in the context of the wider historical biogeography of the region.
Magnetodielectric Nanocomposite Polymer-Based Dual-Band Flexible Antenna for Wearable Applications

One of the major challenges in wireless communication technologies is the antenna design. In this paper, a wideband flexible antenna made by covering a Kapton substrate with a flexible magnetodielectric polymer-based nanocomposite layer is proposed. This novel magnetodielectric polymer-based nanocomposite relies on carbon-coated cobalt (CCo) and is coated with a conjugated polymer, polyaniline (PANI). The nanocomposite (PANI/CCo) fabrication, whose morphology was studied via scanning electron microscopy, demonstrates a relative permeability, a dielectric permittivity, and a conductivity of 5.5, 4.3, and 7500 S/m, respectively. In this paper, two frequency bands are of interest [1.8–2.45 GHz (personal communication service and wireless local area network) and 5.15–5.825 GHz (wireless networks)]. The functioning of the antenna in free space and on body is numerically and experimentally investigated. The average specific absorption rate is also discussed. Thanks to its performance this magnetodielectric nanocomposite polymer (PANI/CCo) antenna has been found to be a good candidate for wearable applications where complex bending situations are encountered.
Ring-Down Technique Using Fiber-Based Linear Cavity for Remote Sensing

This article presents a fiber cavity ring-down (CRD) technique using a linear cavity configuration for remote sensing. The proposed scheme is based on a single fiber coupler of 99:1 and two thin-film mirrors located at the end of the fiber arms. The use of an optical time-domain reflectometer as both input and output sources allows interrogation of the output signal in reflection. Remote sensing is demonstrated in a maximum fiber length of 10 km. A proof-of-concept for strain sensing is demonstrated. As a proof-of-concept, a fiber Bragg grating was used inside the cavity, acting as both a mirror and a strain sensor. This linear CRD scheme allows the use of different types of fiber mirrors, which can also be used as sensor elements, thus featuring remote sensing in a compact and simple configuration.
Emotional categorization: individual emotional differences and laterality effects in healthy and persons with multiple sclerosis

A study examining affective information processing in persons with Multiple Sclerosis and healthy adults was carried out. It was hypothesized that individual characteristics could modulate participants’ emotional categorization and reaction times for categorization decisions. For example, individuals with negative valenced emotional profile (e.g. anxious) should choose negative emotional alternatives faster and more frequently. Participants consisted of two different populations: 80 right-handed healthy French-speakers, and 40 right-handed French- speakers with multiple sclerosis. The results showed a positive correlation between high- level of negative emotional sensibility and emotional categorization (decision and decision speed) for affective information presented on the right-side of the screen. For all participants there were more frequent emotional choices and faster decisions for left-side presented emotional alternatives. It seems individuals’ emotional differences in general and in MS populations modulate hemispheric asymmetry of processing emotional judgments.
The usefulness of mesocosms for ecotoxicity testing with lacertid lizards

Mesocosms (i.e., outdoor, man-made representations of natural ecosystems) have seldom been used to study the impact of contaminants on terrestrial ecosystems. However, mesocosms can be a useful tool to provide a link between field and labo- ratory studies. We exposed juvenile lacertid lizards for a period of over one year to pesticides (herbicides and insecticides) in mesocosm enclosures with the intention of validating field observations obtained in a previous study that examined the effects of corn pesticides in Podarcis bocagei . Our treatments replicated field conditions and consisted of a control, an herbicides only treatment (alachlor, terbuthylazine, meso- trione and glyphosate) and an herbicides and insecticide treatment (including chlor - pyrifos). We used a multi-biomarker approach that examined parameters at an indi- vidual and sub-individual level, including growth, locomotor performance, standard metabolic rate, biomarkers of oxidative stress, esterases and liver histopathologies. Although mortality over the course of the exposures was high (over 60%), surviving individuals prospered relatively well in the mesocosms and displayed a broad range of natural behaviours. The low numbers of replicate animals compromised many of the statistical comparisons, but in general, surviving lizards exposed to pesticides in mesocosm enclosures for over one year, thrived, and displayed few effects of pesticide exposure. Despite the difficulties, this work acts as an important stepping-stone for future ecotoxicology studies using lizards.
Relationship Between Emotional Intelligence and Health Behaviours among University Students: The Predictive and Moderating Role of Gender

This study investigated the role of gender as a potential predictor of health behaviour and potential moderator of the relationship between emotional intelligence and health behaviour. This cross-sectional study included 1214 students (597 males and 617 females). Data were collected using the Schutte Self-Report Inventory and the Health Behaviour Checklist. Stepwise multiple regression analysis was executed with the components of health behaviour as the dependent variables to examine the predictive value of the emotional intelligence indicators as the independent variables. Gender predicted all categories of health behaviours. Only one indicator of emotional intelligence, appraisal, predicted the Accident Control and Traffic Risk Taking categories. The emotional intelligence indicator of social skills emerged only as a predictor of Wellness Maintenance and Enhancement in university students. Gender moderates the relationship between all emotional intelligence indicators and health behaviour components except the relationship between Appraisal and Substance Risk Taking and the relationship between Utilization and traffic risk taking.
Neural Correlates of Feedback Processing in Visuo-Tactile Crossmodal Paired-Associate Learning

Previous studies have examined the neural correlates for crossmodal paired-associate (PA) memory and the temporal dynamics of its formation. However, the neural dynamics for feedback processing of crossmodal PA learning remain unclear. To examine this process, we recorded event-related scalp electrical potentials for PA learning of unimodal visual-visual pairs and crossmodal visual-tactile pairs when participants performed unimodal and crossmodal tasks. We examined event-related potentials (ERPs) after the onset of feedback in the tasks for three effects: feedback type (positive feedback vs. negative feedback), learning (as the learning progressed) and the task modality (crossmodal vs. unimodal). The results were as follows: (1) feedback type: the amplitude of P300 decreased with incorrect trials and the P400/N400 complex was only present in incorrect trials; (2) learning: progressive positive voltage shifts in frontal recording sites and negative voltage shifts in central and posterior recording sites were identified as learning proceeded; and (3) task modality: compared with the unimodal PA learning task, positive voltage shifts in frontal sites and negative voltage shifts in posterior sites were found in the crossmodal PA learning task. To sum up, these results shed light on cortical excitability related to feedback processing of crossmodal PA learning.
PointSIFT: A SIFT-like Network Module for 3D Point Cloud Semantic Segmentation

Recently, 3D understanding research sheds light on extracting features from point cloud directly, which requires effective shape pattern description of point clouds. Inspired by the outstanding 2D shape descriptor SIFT, we design a module called PointSIFT that encodes information of different orientations and is adaptive to scale of shape. Specifically, an orientation-encoding unit is designed to describe eight crucial orientations, and multi-scale representation is achieved by stacking several orientation-encoding units. PointSIFT module can be integrated into various PointNet-based architecture to improve the representation ability. Extensive experiments show our PointSIFT-based framework outperforms state-of-the-art method on standard benchmark datasets. The code and trained model will be published accompanied by this paper.
The Pathology of Type II Modic Changes: Fat Deposition or Osteosclerosis? A Study Using CT Scan

Study Design A retrospective cross-sectional study of type II Modic changes (MCs). Objective To evaluate the CT values of type II MCs and determine their relationship with disc degeneration. Methods 124 type II MCs from 66 patients' MRI and CT were included and analyzed. Disc degeneration adjacent to MCs was evaluated based on Pfirrmann classification. CT values of bone marrow area and endplate from MC regions, adjacent non-MC regions, and L1 vertebra were measured. CT value changes (ΔCT value) were defined as MCs' CT value minus non-MCs'. According to the types of variables, paired t-test, signed-rank test, two-way ANOVA, and Friedman test were used. Results The CT value of MCs was significantly higher than that of non-MCs at both bone marrow area and endplate (P<0.0001, resp.). Good consistency was found between non-MCs and L1 vertebra in the CT value of bone marrow area and endplate (P=0.2129, P=0.2272, resp.), suggesting the control group was valid. Adjacent to type II MCs, there were 8 (6.4%) discs with grade III degeneration, 58 (46.8%) with grade IV, and 58 (46.8%) with grade V. The ΔCT value of grade V disc degeneration was larger than that of grade IV at the endplate (P=0.0150). Conclusions Osteosclerosis may exist in type II MCs. The more severe the degeneration of the adjacent disc, the greater the degree of osteosclerosis.