Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Obvious Invaders and Overlooked Infauna : Unexpected Constituents of the Decapod Crustacean Fauna at Twin Cays , Belize

Decapod crustaceans in the vicinity of Carrie Bow Cay and Twin Cays, Belize, have been under study for more than 25 years. Large collections have been assembled, and new species have been discovered. The effort has included photographic documentation of coloration, yielding characters of value in identifi cation of problematic tropical taxa. Measurements of diversity have been markedly enhanced by extraction corer (yabby pump) sampling in shallow subtidal sediments, especially at Twin Cays. This technique revealed species, genera, and families of thalassinidean decapods not previously known from the region. Studies continue on the ecological roles of these burrowers, dominant bioturbators in seagrass beds where they produce conspicuous mounds of sediment and constitute a major infaunal biomass at Twin Cays. By contrast, familiar large reptant decapods typically dominate shallow rocky substrates. Within the past four years, however, the nonindigenous portunid crab Charybdis hellerii has extensively invaded large portions of hard substrates at Twin Cays. In 2007, it was found to dominate cavities under coral heads in survey areas along the northeastern and southwestern shorelines, possibly displacing populations of large Mithrax, Menippe, Callinectes, and Panulirus previously found there in abundance.
Initial intercomparison of ozone and nitrogen dioxide number density profiles retrieved by the ACE‐FTS and GOMOS occultation experiments

The ozone and nitrogen dioxide vertical number density profiles measured by the solar occultation Fourier transform spectrometer ACE‐FTS and the UV‐Vis stellar occultation instrument GOMOS are intercompared for 370 quasi‐coincident observations. A good agreement is found for ozone, mostly better than 10% between 15 and 45 km. Also, there is no evidence for a systematic altitude registration error in the ACE‐FTS profiles. A considerable ACE‐FTS negative bias (50–100%) is found however for the nitrogen dioxide data that cannot be explained by the use of a local photochemical model.
OpenNMT: Neural Machine Translation Toolkit

OpenNMT is an open-source toolkit for neural machine translation (NMT). The system prioritizes efficiency, modularity, and extensibility with the goal of supporting NMT research into model architectures, feature representations, and source modalities, while maintaining competitive performance and reasonable training requirements. The toolkit consists of modeling and translation support, as well as detailed pedagogical documentation about the underlying techniques. OpenNMT has been used in several production MT systems, modified for numerous research papers, and is implemented across several deep learning frameworks.
DeepAlignment: Unsupervised Ontology Matching with Refined Word Vectors

Ontologies compartmentalize types and relations in a target domain and provide the semantic backbone needed for a plethora of practical applications. Very often different ontologies are developed independently for the same domain. Such “parallel” ontologies raise the need for a process that will establish alignments between their entities in order to unify and extend the existing knowledge. In this work, we present a novel entity alignment method which we dub DeepAlignment. DeepAlignment refines pre-trained word vectors aiming at deriving ontological entity descriptions which are tailored to the ontology matching task. The absence of explicit information relevant to the ontology matching task during the refinement process makes DeepAlignment completely unsupervised. We empirically evaluate our method using standard ontology matching benchmarks. We present significant performance improvements over the current state-of-the-art, demonstrating the advantages that representation learning techniques bring to ontology matching.
Persistent sodium current modulates axonal excitability in CA1 pyramidal neurons

Axonal excitability is an important determinant for the accuracy, direction, and velocity of neuronal signaling. The mechanisms underlying spike generation in the axonal initial segment and transmitter release from presynaptic terminals have been intensely studied and revealed a role for several specific ionic conductances, including the persistent sodium current (INaP). Recent evidence indicates that action potentials can also be generated at remote locations along the axonal fiber, giving rise to ectopic action potentials during physiological states (e.g., fast network oscillations) or in pathological situations (e.g., following demyelination). Here, we investigated how ectopic axonal excitability of mouse hippocampal CA1 pyramidal neurons is regulated by INaP. Recordings of field potentials and intracellular voltage in brain slices revealed that electrically evoked antidromic spikes were readily suppressed by two different blockers of INaP, riluzole and phenytoin. The effect was mediated by a reduction of the probability of ectopic spike generation while latency was unaffected. Interestingly, the contribution of INaP to excitability was much more pronounced in axonal branches heading toward the entorhinal cortex compared with the opposite fiber direction toward fimbria. Thus, excitability of distal CA1 pyramidal cell axons is affected by persistent sodium currents in a direction‐selective manner. This mechanism may be of importance for ectopic spike generation in oscillating network states as well as in pathological situations.
Study on body composition and its correlation with obesity

Abstract Rare reports can be found about sex- and age-specific body composition survey among Chinese population. The aim of this study is to explore the change of body composition with aging in Chinese males and females respectively. The present cross-sectional study was carried out in Central South University Xiangya School of Medicine Affiliate Haikou Hospital, on a random sample consisting of 5121 participants. Inbody720 body composition analyzer was used to detect the human body composition. Data collection was based on the assessment of anthropometric body composition measurements done with the help of bioelectric impedance. And the data were analyzed with SPSS19.0. We selected 5121 participants, 3276 males and 1845 females. A significant trend (P < 0.05) for all anthropometric indices was observed with age for both genders. Body fat in men and women were 18.33 kg and 19.82 kg, respectively. Body fat percentage in men and women were 25.74% and 34.01%, respectively. Visceral fat area in men and women were 91.98 cm2 and 77 cm2, respectively And, with the increase of age, body fat, body fat percentages and visceral fat area also increased, both in men and in women. Meanwhile, with the increase of BMI, the body fat, body fat percentages, and visceral fat area also increased, both in men and in women. Significant trends were observed for body fat, body fat percentages and visceral fat area for both genders with age and both genders with BMI. Focusing on obesity-related lifestyle and prevent weight gain.
Morphological Development of the Isthmus of Kuttanad Duck (Anas Platyrhynchos Domesticus) During Postnatal Period

The morphology and postnatal development of isthmus region of the oviduct in the Kuttanad duck was studied using 78 ducklings from day-old to 24 weeks in 13 different age groups. Isthmus was not differentiated grossly from the magnum and uterus up to 10 th week of age in Kuttanad duck. Differentiation of the isthmus region occurred at the same time as that of more cranial segments of the oviduct, that is, at 12 th week of age. Isthmus showed a small diameter when compared to the magnum, since the time of its differentiation at 12 th week to 24 th week of age. A spurt in growth of magnum occurred between 18 to 20 weeks of age, when egg laying started in these birds. In differentiated oviduct, similar to magnum, the weight, length and width of the isthmus region showed highly significant positive correlation with the age and weight and length of oviduct but no significant correlation with the body weight. The present study thus indicated presence of a longer isthmus region in native Kuttanad ducks similar to that of Japanese quail and Nothura spotted quail which might explain thicker shell membranes in these birds.
Medium-Chain Fatty Acids, Beta-Hydroxybutyric Acid and Genetic Modulation of the Carnitine Shuttle Are Protective in a Drosophila Model of ALS Based on TDP-43

ALS patients exhibit dyslipidemia, hypermetabolism and weight loss; in addition, cellular energetics deficits have been detected prior to denervation. Although evidence that metabolism is altered in ALS is compelling, the mechanisms underlying metabolic dysregulation and the contribution of altered metabolic pathways to disease remain poorly understood. Here we use a Drosophila model of ALS based on TDP-43 that recapitulates hallmark features of the disease including locomotor dysfunction and reduced lifespan. We performed a global, unbiased metabolomic profiling of larvae expressing TDP-43 (wild-type, TDPWT or disease-associated mutant, TDPG298S) and identified several lipid metabolism associated alterations. Among these, we found a significant increase in carnitine conjugated long-chain fatty acids and a significant decrease in carnitine, acetyl-carnitine and beta-hydroxybutyrate, a ketone precursor. Taken together these data suggest a deficit in the function of the carnitine shuttle and reduced lipid beta oxidation. To test this possibility we used a combined genetic and dietary approach in Drosophila. Our findings indicate that components of the carnitine shuttle are misexpressed in the context of TDP-43 proteinopathy and that genetic modulation of CPT1 or CPT2 expression, two core components of the carnitine shuttle, mitigates TDP-43 dependent locomotor dysfunction, in a variant dependent manner. In addition, feeding medium-chain fatty acids or beta-hydroxybutyrate improves locomotor function, consistent with the notion that bypassing the carnitine shuttle deficit is neuroprotective. Taken together, our findings highlight the potential contribution of the carnitine shuttle and lipid beta oxidation in ALS and suggest strategies for therapeutic intervention based on restoring lipid metabolism in motor neurons.
Functional Dissociation of the Posterior and Anterior Insula in Moral Disgust

The insula is thought to be involved in disgust. However, the roles of the posterior insula (PI) and anterior insula (AI) in moral disgust have not been clearly dissociated in previous studies. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging study, the participants evaluated the degree of disgust using sentences related to mild moral violations with different types of behavioral agents (mother and stranger). The activation of the PI in response to the stranger agent was significantly higher than that in response to the mother agent. In contrast, the activation of the AI in response to the mother agent was significantly higher than that in response to the stranger agent. These data suggest a clear functional dissociation between the PI and AI in which the PI is more involved in the primary level of moral disgust than is the AI, and the AI is more involved in the secondary level of moral disgust than is the PI. Our results provide key evidence for understanding the principle of embodied cognition and particularly demonstrate that high-level moral disgust is built on more basic disgust via a mental construction approach through a process of embodied schemata.
Nucleoside analogs to manage sequence divergence in nucleic acid amplification and SNP detection

Abstract Described here are the synthesis, enzymology and some applications of a purine nucleoside analog (H) designed to have two tautomeric forms, one complementary to thymidine (T), the other complementary to cytidine (C). The performance of H is compared by various metrics to performances of other ‘biversal’ analogs that similarly rely on tautomerism to complement both pyrimidines. These include (i) the thermodynamic stability of duplexes that pair these biversals with various standard nucleotides, (ii) the ability of the biversals to support polymerase chain reaction (PCR), (iii) the ability of primers containing biversals to equally amplify targets having polymorphisms in the primer binding site, and (iv) the ability of ligation-based assays to exploit the biversals to detect medically relevant single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in sequences flanked by medically irrelevant polymorphisms. One advantage of H over the widely used inosine ‘universal base’ and ‘mixed sequence’ probes is seen in ligation-based assays to detect SNPs. The need to detect medically relevant SNPs within ambiguous sequences is especially important when probing RNA viruses, which rapidly mutate to create drug resistance, but also suffer neutral drift, the second obstructing simple methods to detect the first. Thus, H is being developed to detect variants of viruses that are rapidly mutating.
A molecular perspective for global modeling of upper atmospheric NH3 from freezing clouds

Significance The retentions of gases upon freezing of water from available studies are conflicting. Using molecular dynamic simulations, we have revealed that the retention efficiency of NH3 upon freezing cloud is close to 0 rather than 1 during deep convection. Our results further provide theoretical framework to explain the first-ever satellite-observed high concentration of NH3 in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (UTLS). As NH3 emission continues to increase, this study calls upon the emergent need to assess the role of NH3 in UTLS chemistry especially in the deep convective regions. Methodologically, the molecular dynamics simulation is demonstrated as a tool for improving parameterization of interactions between trace gases and cloud (including ice) particles in global atmospheric models. Ammonia plays a key role in the neutralization of atmospheric acids such as sulfate and nitrates. A few in situ observations have supported the theory that gas-phase NH3 concentrations should decrease sharply with altitude and be extremely low in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (UTLS). This theory, however, seems inconsistent with recent satellite measurements and is also not supported by the aircraft data showing highly or fully neutralized sulfate aerosol particles by ammonium in the UTLS in many parts of the world. Here we reveal the contributions of deep convective clouds to NH3 in the UTLS by using integrated cross-scale modeling, which includes molecular dynamic simulations, a global chemistry transport model, and satellite and aircraft measurements. We show that the NH3 dissolved in liquid cloud droplets is prone to being released into the UTLS upon freezing during deep convection. Because NH3 emission is not regulated in most countries and its future increase is likely persistent from agricultural growth and the warmer climate, the effect of NH3 on composition and phase of aerosol particles in the UTLS can be significant, which in turn can affect cirrus cloud formation, radiation, and the budgets of NOx and O3.
Multi-modality feature selection with adaptive similarity learning for classification of Alzheimer's disease

With the increasing amounts of high-dimensional heterogeneous data to be processed, multi-modality feature selection has become an important research direction in medical image analysis. Traditional methods usually depict the data structure using fixed and predefined similarity matrix for each modality separately, without considering the potential relationship structure across different modalities. In this paper, we propose a novel multi-modality feature selection method, which performs feature selection and local similarity learning simultaneously. Specifically, a similarity matrix is learned by jointly considering different imaging modalities. And at the same time, feature selection is conducted by imposing sparse ¿2,1 norm constraint. The effectiveness of our proposed joint learning method can be well demonstrated by the experimental results on Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) dataset, which outperforms existing the state-of-the art multi modality approaches.
Seasonal variations in peel colour in relation to fruit development of grapefruit (Citrus paradisi Macf.)

The studies on seasonal variations in peel colour of grapefruit cv. Star Ruby were carried out in order to explain the relationship between fruit growth and colour development. The fruit diameter of the grapefruit increased from 90 days after fruit set to the maturity of fruit. The seasonal variation in fruit diameter was recorded 12.83% during fruit development. The increase in a* coordinate, which represented the gradual loss of greenness, continued until mid-November at 210 DAFS. Calorimetric coordinate b* values always remained positive and increased until the fruit maturity and showed yellow tinge. The hue angle values decreased continuously from start of sampling to the harvest of fruit with appearance of pinkish-yellow tone. Seasonal variation in the hue angle was recorded 26.80%. The negative correlation was observed between hue angle and the fruit development with the advancement of fruit maturity. However, studies have reported positive correlation was recorded between colour space values (L*, a*, b* and C*) with fruit development. The maximum seasonal variation was noted in colour parameter a* (CV = 189.99%) and minimum seasonal variation was noted in L* (CV = 9.42%).
Visual Speech Perception Cues Constrain Patterns of Articulatory Variation and Sound Change

What are the factors that contribute to (or inhibit) diachronic sound change? While acoustically motivated sound changes are well-documented, research on the articulatory and audiovisual-perceptual aspects of sound change is limited. This paper investigates the interaction of articulatory variation and audiovisual speech perception in the Northern Cities Vowel Shift (NCVS), a pattern of sound change observed in the Great Lakes region of the United States. We focus specifically on the maintenance of the contrast between the vowels /ɑ/ and /ɔ/, both of which are fronted as a result of the NCVS. We present results from two experiments designed to test how the NCVS is produced and perceived. In the first experiment, we present data from an articulatory and acoustic analysis of the production of fronted /ɑ/ and /ɔ/. We find that some speakers distinguish /ɔ/ from /ɑ/ with a combination of both tongue position and lip rounding, while others do so using either tongue position or lip rounding alone. For speakers who distinguish /ɔ/ from /ɑ/ along only one articulatory dimension, /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ are acoustically more similar than for speakers who produce multiple articulatory distinctions. While all three groups of speakers maintain some degree of acoustic contrast between the vowels, the question is raised as to whether these articulatory strategies differ in their perceptibility. In the perception experiment, we test the hypothesis that visual speech cues play a role in maintaining contrast between the two sounds. The results of this experiment suggest that articulatory configurations in which /ɔ/ is produced with unround lips are perceptually weaker than those in which /ɔ/ is produced with rounding, even though these configurations result in acoustically similar output. We argue that these findings have implications for theories of sound change and variation in at least two respects: (1) visual cues can shape phonological systems through misperception-based sound change, and (2) phonological systems may be optimized not only for auditory but also for visual perceptibility.
Corporate governance effects on social responsibility disclosures

This study uses stakeholder theory to explore how corporate governance [CG] characteristics influence corporate social responsibility disclosure [CSRD] in the context of a global financial crisis [GFC]. Empirical data are drawn from Portugal, a country strongly affected by the GFC. Portuguese companies are characterized by high ownership concentration. The largest shareholder is often the CEO and Board Chair (a phenomenon known as CEO duality). We analyse the association between CSRD (measured by a 40-item disclosure index) and CG variables (board size, CEO duality, board independence, ownership concentration and presence of an audit committee or CSR committee) for 48 of the 51 listed companies in Portugal. The control variables are company size and industry type. We find that CSRD is affected positively by board size, CEO duality, company size and industry type. This accords with suggestions implicit in stakeholder theory that a larger board will represent a broader diversity of stakeholders and will promote better monitoring, more assertive stakeholder management, greater transparency, and increased levels of CSRD. Larger companies and companies close-to-consumers are associated with high levels of CSRD, ostensibly because they are more visible and subject to greater societal monitoring during a period of financial crisis. We reveal that in a country characterized by high ownership concentration, CEO duality has a positive effect on CSRD.
Intelligent approaches for prognosticating post-operative life expectancy in the lung cancer patients

The aim of this research is to evaluate the performance of two feature selection methods on seven different machine learning methods applied over thoracic surgery data. Feature selection is a crucial pre-processing step in determining factors responsible for post-operative life expectancy in the patients suffering with lung cancer. Postoperative life expectancy complications are the most common fatality following major types of thoracic surgery. In particular, we want to examine the underlying health factors of patients that could potentially be a powerful predictor for deaths which are surgically related. Seven machine learning methods namely Naïve Bayes, Linear SVM, MLP, RBF Network, SMO, KNN and CART are employed for analyzing the performance of feature selection methods. Maximum accuracy of 85.11% was obtained with correlation-based feature selection in comparison with consistency-based feature selection which was 84.89 %.