Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Root of the universal tree of life based on ancient aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase gene duplications.

Universal trees based on sequences of single gene homologs cannot be rooted. Iwabe et al. [Iwabe, N. , Kuma, K. -I. , Hasegawa, M. , Osawa, S. & Miyata, T. (1989) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 86, 9355-9359] circumvented this problem by using ancient gene duplications that predated the last common ancestor of all living things. Their separate, reciprocally rooted gene trees for elongation factors and ATPase subunits showed Bacteria (eubacteria) as branching first from the universal tree with Archaea (archaebacteria) and Eucarya (eukaryotes) as sister groups. Given its topical importance to evolutionary biology and concerns about the appropriateness of the ATPase data set, an evaluation of the universal tree root using other ancient gene duplications is essential. In this study, we derive a rooting for the universal tree using aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase genes, an extensive multigene family whose divergence likely preceded that of prokaryotes and eukaryotes. An approximately 1600-bp conserved region was sequenced from the isoleucyl-tRNA synthetases of several species representing deep evolutionary branches of eukaryotes (Nosema locustae), Bacteria (Aquifex pyrophilus and Thermotoga maritima) and Archaea (Pyrococcus furiosus and Sulfolobus acidocaldarius). In addition, a new valyl-tRNA synthetase was characterized from the protist Trichomonas vaginalis. Different phylogenetic methods were used to generate trees of isoleucyl-tRNA synthetases rooted by valyl- and leucyl-tRNA synthetases. All isoleucyl-tRNA synthetase trees showed Archaea and Eucarya as sister groups, providing strong confirmation for the universal tree rooting reported by Iwabe et al. As well, there was strong support for the monophyly (sensu Hennig) of Archaea. The valyl-tRNA synthetase gene from Tr. vaginalis clustered with other eukaryotic ValRS genes, which may have been transferred from the mitochondrial genome to the nuclear genome, suggesting that this amitochondrial trichomonad once harbored an endosymbiotic bacterium.
Effects of Two Weeks of Feed Restriction on Some Common Toxicologic Parameters in Sprague-Dawley Rats

This study was intended to identify changes caused by short-term reduced feed intake in rats such as may occur with unpalatable feed or other forms of anorexia. For 2 wk, groups of rats (10/sex/group) were fed ad libitum (control group) or given 75% (mildly restricted group), 50% (moderately restricted group), or 25% (severely restricted group) of the amount of feed eaten the day before by controls. The control group and mildly restricted group grew steadily, but the terminal body weights of the mildly restricted group (both males and females) were only about 80% of controls. The moderately restricted group did not grow during the first week but grew slightly during the second week (terminal body weights about 65% of control). The severely restricted group lost weight throughout the study (terminal weight about 40% of control). Restricted groups exhibited hemoconcentration directly related to the degree of feed restriction. White blood cell counts were reduced (principally due to lymphopenia) in severely restricted rats. Platelet counts were decreased in all restricted groups. Total serum protein concentration was reduced (decreased globulins) in all female restricted groups and in the severely restricted males. The severely restricted rats had increased serum bilirubin, electrolyte derangements, and (in females only) decreased cholesterol. Thymus and liver weights (absolute and relative) were decreased in the moderately and severely restricted groups. All the feed-restricted groups had an increased incidence of superficial gastric erosions. The mildly and moderately restricted groups had slightly decreased hematopoietic tissue in sternal bone marrow, while the severely restricted group had bone marrow necrosis, thymic atrophy, and mild testicular degeneration. Findings in the severely restricted group were distinct from those in the other groups on the basis of their severity and were considered adverse. Changes in the mildly and moderately restricted groups were considered adaptive and innocuous since feed restriction of this degree has historically been associated with increased longevity and decreased disease incidence in chronic studies.
Habitat specialization and adaptive phenotypic divergence of anuran populations

We tested for adaptive population structure in the frog Rana temporaria by rearing tadpoles from 23 populations in a common garden experiment, with and without larval dragonfly predators. The goal was to compare tadpole phenotypes with the habitats of their source ponds. The choice of traits and habitat variables was guided by prior information about phenotypic function. There were large differences among populations in life history, behaviour, morphological shape, and the predator‐induced plasticities in most of these. Body size and behaviour were correlated with predation risk in the source pond, in agreement with adaptive population divergence. Tadpoles from large sunny ponds were morphologically distinct from those inhabiting small woodland ponds, although here an adaptive explanation was unclear. There was no evidence that plasticity evolves in populations exposed to more variable environments. Much among‐population variation in phenotype and plasticity was not associated with habitat, perhaps reflecting rapid changes in wetland habitats.
Presente y futuro de la política familiar en España

En el presente articulo se analizan los tres grandes rasgos que caracterizan la politica familiar espanola en la actualidad, a saber: privatizacion, asistencializacion y fragmentacion, situandolos en el marco mas amplio de las grandes lineas de desarrollo de esta dimension de la politica social, sosteniendose la tesis de que se esta produciendo un cambio en la arena politica en direccion hacia una mayor sensibilidad hacia la necesidad de una reorientacion de la politica familiar actual. Este analisis se profundiza con un estudio de la compensacion publica de cargas familiares para distintos tipos de situaciones familiares desde el punto de vista, por un lado, de la comparacion internacional y, por otro, del riesgo de pobreza derivado de la presencia de cargas familiares. En el ultimo apartado se argumenta en favor de la necesidad de una reorientacion de la politica familiar.
Hearing in Pop/Rock Musicians: A Follow‐up Study

In 1976, the threshold hearing levels (HLs) of 83 Swedish and British pop/rock musicians were examined with pure tone audiometry. At that time we found 13% of the musicians with a hearing loss >20 dB HL at a high frequency pure tone average (3,4,6, and 8 Wz). The aim of the present investigation was to conduct an audiometric follow-up study of these musicians 16 years after the first examination. Fifty-three of the 83 pop/rock musicians were retested in 1991 to 1992. They also filled in a questionnaire concerning occupational noise activities, leisure noise activities, general health problems and subjective symptoms related to loud music exposure. The median pure tone audiogram was within 20 dB HL at all test frequencies. On an individual basis, 63% had normal high frequency pure tone average scores and another 15% had a very limited high frequency hearing loss (≥25 dB HL). It seems surprising that pophock musicians after performing for 26 years have such well-preserved hearing. There might be a protective effect by the generally positive attitude from the musicians toward their performance and their audience. Regarding the loud and more or less continuous sound levels over 86 dBA there might also be a protective effect from a continuous contraction of the stapedius muscle.
First Year University Students’ Use of Formulaic Sequences in Oral and Written Descriptions

The present article investigates the use of first year university students’ formulaic sequences in written and oral texts in an English as a foreign language context. The corpus of the study consists of eight descriptive texts—four written and four oral—which were composed of four students of English Pedagogy at a university in Santiago, Chile. The investigation is a case study where the corpora were analysed qualitatively. The results show that first-year students use similar formulaic sequences in written and oral texts and many of the expressions generally used in spoken discourse are used by students in written texts.
Dental caries recurrence following clinical treatment for severe early childhood caries.

PURPOSE To determine the relapse rate within one year for a cohort of children treated for severe early childhood caries (S-ECC). METHODS In an earlier report, we assessed the suppressive effect of 10 percent povidone-iodine and the elimination of active caries on salivary mutans streptococci (MS) populations in 77 children with S-ECC; 49 children returned for a 6-month recall exam that occurred 5 to 12 months post dental surgery. Relapse declaration required at least one caries lesion needing a restoration. Contrasts of relapse (R) and non-relapse (NR) to the covariates of gender, race, ethnicity, age, surfaces available for relapse (SAR), time to appointment, and baseline salivary mutans streptococci (MS) counts were statistically evaluated. RESULTS 19 children (39%) were declared R and 30 (61%) were NR. The 2 groups did not statistically differ on: gender, race, ethnicity, age, SAR, baseline salivary MS counts and time to recall appointment. Statistical analyses also showed the covariates had no significant effect on probability of relapse or time to relapse (P>0.05). CONCLUSIONS None of the covariates were related to R. The R rate (39%) observed is consistent with earlier reports. Novel approaches are needed to improve relapse prevention.
SOFAR: Large-Scale Association Network Learning

Many modern big data applications feature large scale in both numbers of responses and predictors. Better statistical efficiency and scientific insights can be enabled by understanding the large-scale response-predictor association network structures via layers of sparse latent factors ranked by importance. Yet sparsity and orthogonality have been two largely incompatible goals. To accommodate both features, in this paper, we suggest the method of sparse orthogonal factor regression (SOFAR) via the sparse singular value decomposition with orthogonality constrained optimization to learn the underlying association networks, with broad applications to both unsupervised and supervised learning tasks, such as biclustering with sparse singular value decomposition, sparse principal component analysis, sparse factor analysis, and spare vector autoregression analysis. Exploiting the framework of convexity-assisted nonconvex optimization, we derive nonasymptotic error bounds for the suggested procedure characterizing the theoretical advantages. The statistical guarantees are powered by an efficient SOFAR algorithm with convergence property. Both computational and theoretical advantages of our procedure are demonstrated with several simulations and real data examples.
Timing of the hepatic arterial phase at Gd‐EOB‐DTPA‐enhanced hepatic dynamic MRI: Comparison of the test‐injection and the fixed‐time delay method

To compare the fixed‐time‐ and the test‐injection method with respect to the image quality of hypervascular hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and the adequacy of timing of the hepatic arterial phase (HAP) in Gd‐EOB‐DTPA (EOB) enhanced MRI.
Scoring Recalls for L2 Readers of English in China: Pausal or Idea Units.

Written recall may be a powerful tool used to address reading deficiencies in China. With 180 students enrolled in a third-year English class at a large university in northeastern China, the present investigation studies the relationship between pausal and idea units used to codify written recalls, and it investigates whether the strength of the relationship between pausal and idea units depends on other variables, such as length of time spent studying English, the amount of leisure reading done in English, or the version of passage. Findings indicate a strong correlation between idea units and pausal units for written recalls. This correlation underscores prior findings by Bernhardt (1991), and it reveals that the strength of the relationship between pausal and idea units does not depend on the moderating variables examined. Results are discussed in light of prior research and a detailed discussion of future directions for experiments of this type is offered.
Chemistry and pharmacological effect of beta vulgaris: A systematic review

Beta vulgaris is a plant native to Mediterranean, the Atlantic coast of Europe, the Near East, and India belong to Amaranthaceae, Genus Beta, and Subfamily Betoideae. The aim of this study is to overview Chemistry and pharmacological effect of beta vulgaris . This review article was carried out by searching studies in PubMed, Medline, Web of Science, and IranMedex databases up to 2016.Among 89 found articles, 54 articles were included. The search terms were “Beta vulgaris”, “therapeutic”, and “pharmacological”, "Chemistry". Various studies have shown that Beta vulgaris possess anti-inflammatory effect, antioxidant Properties, anti-stress effect, anti-Anxiety and anti-depressive effect, anti-cancer, antihypertensive effect, hydrophobic properties, anti-sterility effects. The result of this study have found various constituents of Beta vulgaris exhibit a variety of therapeutic effects with little or no associated toxicity. These results are very encouraging and indicate this herb should be studied more extensively to confirm these results and reveal other potential therapeutic effects. Clinical trials using Beta vulgaris for a variety of conditions should also be conducted.
Effect of ammonium hexafluorosilicate on dentin tubule occlusion for the treatment of dentin hypersensitivity.

PURPOSE To evaluate the occluding ability of ammonium hexafluorosilicate (SiF). METHODS Dentin disks prepared from human extracted teeth were grouped as follows to prepare different situations of dentin hypersensitivity: (1) those sonicated for 20 minutes; (2) those treated with 0.5 mol/L EDTA for 2 minutes; (3) those treated with 6% citric acid for 2 minutes; (4) those treated with 50% citric acid for 2 minutes. Then, SiF or diamine silver fluoride (AgF) was applied to the dentin disks and the dentin tubule occlusion was observed with scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The percent of open tubules before and after SiF or AgF treatment were measured by NIH image using SEM photographs. Also, the dentin permeability was measured. RESULTS SEM micrographs demonstrated that the dentin tubules were completely occluded by the precipitate after SiF treatment. Also, the dentin permeability was reduced to 10.3%. In contrast, most of the dentin tubules remained open after AgF treatment. EDXA analysis showed that the precipitate in the dentin tubules that forms after SiF treatment contains Si, Ca and P, indicating a silica-calcium phosphate complex.
Autophagy is not required to sustain exercise and PRKAA1/AMPK activity but is important to prevent mitochondrial damage during physical activity

Physical activity has been recently documented to play a fundamental physiological role in the regulation of autophagy in several tissues. It has also been reported that autophagy is required for exercise itself and for training-induced adaptations in glucose homeostasis. These autophagy-mediated metabolic improvements are thought to be largely dependent on the activation of the metabolic sensor PRKAA1/AMPK. However, it is unknown whether these important benefits stem from systemic adaptations or are due solely to alterations in skeletal muscle metabolism. To address this we utilized inducible, muscle-specific, atg7 knockout mice that we have recently generated. Our findings indicate that acute inhibition of autophagy in skeletal muscle just prior to exercise does not have an impact on physical performance, PRKAA1 activation, or glucose homeostasis. However, we reveal that autophagy is critical for the preservation of mitochondrial function during damaging muscle contraction. This effect appears to be gender specific affecting primarily females. We also establish that basal oxidative stress plays a crucial role in mitochondrial maintenance during normal physical activity. Therefore, autophagy is an adaptive response to exercise that ensures effective mitochondrial quality control during damaging physical activity.
Ba11La4Br34: a new barium lanthanum bromide

The structure of the title compound, barium lanthanum bromide (11/4/34), can be derived from the fluorite structure. The asymmetric unit contains two Ba sites (one with site symmetry 4/m.), one La site (site symmetry 4.), one mixed-occupied Ba and La site (ratio 1:1, site symmetry m.) and six Br sites (one with site symmetry \=4., one with 2., one with m., the latter being disordered over two positions with a 0.86:0.14 ratio). The fundamental building units of the structure are edge-sharing polyhedral clusters made up of Ba and La bromide clusters interconnected to BaBr8 square prisms and BaBr10 groups.
Nodes and links jointed critical region identification based network vulnerability assessing

Large-scale regionally-correlated failures resulting from natural disasters or intentional attacks pose a great threat to the physical backbone networks, since the impact of large-scale failures can cause network nodes and links co-located in a large geographical area to fail. When the same intensity of threats occurs at different physical locations, the damage to the network performance varies greatly. In the network vulnerability assessment, the critical region is defined as the destructed area which would lead to the highest network disruption. Traditional critical region identification for network vulnerability assessment is only determined by nodes, without considering the failures of the links. To this end, this paper proposes a critical region identification method that joints nodes and links to find the critical region. We study this vulnerability assessment problem in two cases, the special case of the failure center constrained at a network node and the general one of that at an arbitrary location, and propose two algorithms for these two cases respectively. The simulation-based experiment on synthetic network is given with different criticality metrics. The simulation results verify the feasibility and effectiveness of our proposed critical region identification method in comparison to others.
Impaired endothelial function in epicardial coronary arteries after Kawasaki disease.

BACKGROUND Intimal lesions observed in the coronary arteries (CAs) of patients who have suffered episodes of Kawasaki disease (KD) raise concern about the premature development of arteriosclerosis. Accordingly, we investigated endothelial function in the epicardial and resistance CAs after KD during long-term observation. METHODS AND RESULTS We assessed the responses of left epicardial and resistance CAs to serial intracoronary infusions of acetylcholine (final concentrations, 0.1 and 1 micromol/L) and nitroglycerin in subjects by using quantitative angiography and a Doppler flow wire system. Three age-matched groups were evaluated: 8 control subjects (group 1), 10 KD patients with normal left CA from the onset (group 2), and 8 KD patients with a persistent or regressed aneurysm in the left anterior descending CA (LAD) (group 3). Acetylcholine (1 micromol/L) changed the LAD area to 114.0+/-2.6%, 72.7+/-3.9% (P<.05 versus group 1), and 88.9+/-4.3% (P<.05 versus groups 1 and 2) of baseline in groups 1, 2, and 3, respectively, with a similar degree of increased coronary blood flow in each group. Nitroglycerin increased the LAD area to 143.5+/-7.7%, 132.3+/-1.9%, and 120.8+/-5.6% (P<.05 versus group 1), respectively. CONCLUSIONS Results demonstrate a persistent endothelial dysfunction in the epicardial but not resistance CAs in patients after KD and enhanced stiffness of persistent or regressed aneurysms. The concern over early arteriosclerosis warrants the surveillance of KD patients from childhood to adulthood.
Staphylococcus aureus nasal carriage in rabbits.

Although nasal carriage has been described as a risk factor for Staphylococcus aureus infections in humans, little information exists in rabbits, where S. aureus is one of the most important pathogens responsible for a number of different types of infections. This study was designed to determine the extent of staphylococcal nasal carriage in Spanish farms with chronic staphylococcosis and to establish whether a relationship existed between nasal carriage and development of lesions. One hundred and sixteen rabbits with and without signs of staphylococcosis were obtained from six industrial rabbitries. Nasal swabs for microbiological assessments were obtained. Microbiological results showed that 56% of the animals carried S. aureus in their nasal cavities: 84.2% of the animals with staphylococcal-related lesions and 28.8% of the apparently healthy animals. Additionally, the S. aureus strains isolated from the nasal cavity and from the lesions, in 91.7% of animals, were clonally related. It is suggested that nasal carriage of S. aureus in rabbits can play an important role in the development of clinical infections.
Dose distributions in SBRT of lung tumors: Comparison between two different treatment planning algorithms and Monte-Carlo simulation including breathing motions

In stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) of lung tumors, dosimetric problems arise from: 1) the limited accuracy in the dose calculation algorithms in treatment planning systems, and 2) the motions with the respiration of the tumor during treatment. Longitudinal dose distributions have been calculated with Monte Carlo simulation (MC), a pencil beam algorithm (PB) and a collapsed cone algorithm (CC) for two spherical lung tumors (2 cm and 5 cm diameter) in lung tissue, in a phantom situation. Respiratory motions were included by a convolution method, which was validated. In the static situation, the PB significantly overestimates the dose, relative to MC, while the CC gives a relatively accurate estimate. Four different respiratory motion patterns were included in the dose calculation with the MC. A “narrowing” of the longitudinal dose profile of up to 20 mm (at about 90% dose level) is seen relative the static dose profile calculated with the PB.