Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The comparison of dynamic postural control and muscle activity in time domain in athletes with and without chronic ankle instability

Introduction: The objectives of this study were to compare muscle activation time and dynamic postural variables in athletes with and without chronic ankle instability during jump-landing, followed by a choice reaction time task which was provided by the visual stimulus. Methods: Nineteen athletes [11 healthy athletes and 8 athletes with chronic ankle instability (CAI)] participated in this cross-sectional study. After informing them about the procedure and goals of the study, they started jump-landing protocol in response to the visual stimulus. Muscle activation time and dynamic postural control data were taken using an electromyographic (EMG) machine and force plate, respectively. Results: The results of the two-way repeated measurement analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed that there were significant differences in athletes with and without CAI for medial/lateral stability index (MLSI; tested leg effect: p=0.006); the pre-motor time of the gastroc-soleus, peroneus longus, and peroneus brevis (interaction effects of the tested leg and the tested group: p=0.001, p=0.015 and p=0.006, respectively) and the pre-motor time of the tibialis anterior (tested group effect: p=0.036). Conclusion: More attention should be on the muscle activation time because changes in this parameter may be one of the preliminary risk factors for instability, although cohort studies are required to prove it. A more challenging task with more sensitivity for differentiating between stable and unstable ankle is needed. Level of evidence: IIIb.
Sprinter: A Model for the Analysis of New Frequently Purchased Consumer Products

A model-based information system is presented which is designed to analyze test-market results, to assist decision-making for a new frequently purchased consumer product, and to serve as an adaptive control mechanism during national introduction. The model, called SPRINTER (Specifications of PRofits from INTER-dependencies) is based on the behavioral process of the diffusion of innovation and can be used normatively in an interactive search mode to find the best marketing strategy for a new product. The input is obtained from test-market data analyzed by statistics and combined with subjective judgments. A GO, ON, or NO decision is made on the basis of the estimated profit and risk produced by the best marketing strategy. An application of this model to a real product is reported, this application using an on-line computer program that allows man-system communication.
Epoxidation and hydroxlation of rubber seed oil: one-pot multi-step reactions

Epoxidized and hydroxylated rubber seed oils were prepared by peroxyformic acid generated in situ by reacting formic acid and hydrogen peroxide with RSO, a renewable resource. The structural and physico-chemical properties of RSO have been determined. The fatty acid composition showed a high content of polyunsaturated fatty acids. The modified products were characterized with regard to their structure and properties. The findings of this study revealed that both hydroxylated and epoxidized RSO can be prepared by one-pot multi-step reactions.
HOW TO BE SWEET? EXTRAFLORAL NECTAR ALLOCATION BY GOSSYPIUM HIRSUTUM FITS OPTIMAL DEFENSE THEORY PREDICTIONS

Plants employ nectar for two distinct functions. Floral nectar has traditionally been viewed in the context of pollination. Extrafloral nectar on the other hand, can act as an indirect defense, allowing the plant to recruit predators and parasitoids. Whereas this makes for a clear-cut categorization, in reality the functions may not be so discrete. Extrafloral nectar may serve a role in pollination, while floral nectar can be utilized by predators and parasitoids and thus can contribute to plant defense. Here we use the optimal defense theory to generate predictions with respect to allocation patterns of defensive nectar. These predictions are then tested using novel data on the production patterns of bracteal and foliar nectar in cotton, Gossypium hirsutum. Bracteal nectar production shows a distinct peak on the day of anthesis, followed by a prolonged secretion during fruit maturation. This suggests that bracteal nectaries function in pollination as well as defense. Constitutive nectar production at the bracteal nectaries exceeds foliar nectar secretion by a factor of between 80 and 110. Whereas nectar production at foliar nectaries is induced following herbivore damage to leaves, bracteal nectar production is not induced in response to fruit damage and even decreases when the fruiting structure is subjected to herbivory. This shows that both an inducible and a constitutive variant of an indirect defense can occur within one plant species. This pattern of nectar allocation fits the optimal defense theory, which predicts high levels of constitutive defenses in valuable tissues such as fruits and induced defenses in less valuable tissues such as leaves. This result lends support to the interpretation that indirect defense has been a selective force in the evolution of bracteal nectaries. Although optimal defense theory has described direct defense allocation solely in terms of probability of attack and value of the plant structure, we argue that herbivore accessibility is an additional factor shaping the allocation of indirect defenses.
Potential for Persistence of Genes Escaped from Canola: Germination Cues in Crop, Wild, and Crop-Wild Hybrid Brassica rapa

Seeds of two wild populations, a crop type (canola) and reciprocal crop-wild hybrids of Brassica rapa were exposed to a factorial combination of light, nutrient and stratification treatments in a growth chamber study to test differences in germination responses to environmental cues. The effects of seed density and nutrient treatment on germination were tested in a separate study. Germination of each type differed in response to treatment combinations. Canola had higher levels of germination than the wild populations. Hybrid germination more closely resembled that of the maternal parent than that of the reciprocal hybrid or paternal parent. Seeds from agricultural and non-agricultural wild populations differed in germination responses to treatments (.)
Reasons for using YouTube in the language classroom including practical usage examples

Tokyo Denki University yorksensei@gmail.com Recent statistical data regarding YouTube reveals two important factors that may be utilized by language teachers. This paper initially outlines several theoretical considerations for the use of video in such contexts before developing an argument regarding the value of this data and appeal of YouTube in language learning contexts. Following this, the paper gives an overview of the exploitable statistical data on YouTube, which is presented with a focus on the possible motivational, affective and cognitive influences implied. Subsequently, the second half of the paper is dedicated to introducing practical YouTube-based activities that teachers may use or modify to suit their individual teaching contexts.
Changes in Proline Content Accompanying the Uptake of Zinc and Copper by Lemna minor

Abstract Lemna minor L. grown in Hoagland solution containing zinc (10 ppm) or copper (5 ppm) for 4 d accumulated high levels of these metals. Zinc and Cu accumulation in the test plants was accompanied by a specific pattern of change in proline content. The latter showed a steep rise during early stages (peak at 12-24 h) followed by a gradual decline until 96 h of treatment. In a dose-response study, lower metal concentrations induced a sharp rise in proline level with a maximum value at 5 ppm, which declined when the concentration was further enhanced. There was a correspondence between the level of proline and total free amino acids in metal treated plants. The possibility of proline involvement in tolerance mechanisms to heavy metals has been discussed.
Overexpression of PKCε sensitizes LNCaP human prostate cancer cells to induction of apoptosis by bryostatin 1

Phorbol 12‐myristate 13‐acetate (PMA)‐induced apoptosis of androgen sensitive LNCaP human prostate cancer cells is a well known phenomenon that involves prolonged translocation of multiple protein kinase C (PKC) isozymes to nonnuclear membranes. We have shown recently that PMA‐induced death of C4‐2 cells, androgen hypersensitive derivatives of LNCaP cells, requires both PKCδ and a redundant pathway that includes PKCs α and ε. In contrast, it has been reported that overexpression of murine PKCε in LNCaP cells renders those cells resistant to PMA‐induced death, as well as androgen insensitive. Here we report that inducible or constitutive overexpression of human PKCε does not alter the sensitivity of LNCaP cells to either PMA or androgen, nor does it alter expression of caveolin‐1 or phosphorylated Rb, reported effects of overexpression of murine PKCε. Moreover, overexpression of very high amounts of PKCε sensitized LNCaP cells to induction of apoptosis by bryostatin 1, a non tumor‐promoting activator and down‐regulator of PKC isozymes that blocks PMA‐induced apoptosis of parental LNCaP cells, mimicked our previous results with overexpression of PKCα in LNCaP cells. Given reports that overexpression of PKCε is frequent in human prostate tumors, our results may have important implications for a potential prostate cancer therapy. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
The conifers (Pinophyta).

Conifers (Pinophyta) are woody trees or shrubs with simple leaves, simple pollen cones, and compound or reduced ovulate cones. Despite their dominance in many terrestrial landscapes, the 670 species of extant conifers make up less than 0.3% of the species diversity of modern land plants. The fossil record of conifers, which extends to the Carboniferous, indicates that a much greater diversity is now extinct. Conifers occur on six of the seven continents and include both widely distributed, dominant species that form vast forests and narrow endemics. They rank as the largest, tallest, and longest living non-clonal terrestrial organisms on the Earth. Pinus is the largest extant genus with approximately 20 species distributed throughout the Northern Hemisphere. It is rivaled in diversity in the Southern Hemisphere and the tropics by Podocarpus, with approximately 105 species. Genetic diversity is often high in conifers, promoted by large population size, outcrossing reproductive systems, high mutation rates, and long distance dispersal of pollen and sometimes seeds. Estimates of ages and mutation rates in the group are expected to improve greatly as conceptual advances related to fossil interpretation converge with the enormous quantities of new sequence data being generated by genetic and phylogenetic studies of living species. Contrasting patterns of organellar and nuclear inheritance
Summary of Almost 20 Years of Storm Overflight Electric Field, Conductivity, Flash Rates, and Electric Current Statistics

We determined total conduction currents and flash rates for around 900 high-altitude aircraft overflights of electrified clouds over 17 years. The overflights include a wide geographical sample of storms over land and ocean, with and without lightning, and with positive (i.e., upward-directed) and negative current. Peak electric field, with lightning transients removed, ranged from -1.0 kV m(sup -1) to 16. kV m(sup -1), with mean (median) of 0.9 kV m(sup -1) (0.29 kV m(sup -1)). Total conductivity at flight altitude ranged from 0.6 pS m(sup -1) to 3.6 pS m(sup -1), with mean and median of 2.2 pS m(sup -1). Peak current densities ranged from -2.0 nA m(sup -2) to 33.0 nA m(sup -2) with mean (median) of 1.9 nA m(sup -2) (0.6 nA m(sup -2)). Total upward current flow from storms in our dataset ranged from -1.3 to 9.4 A. The mean current for storms with lightning is 1.6 A over ocean and 1.0 A over land. The mean current for electrified shower clouds (i.e. electrified storms without lightning) is 0.39 A for ocean and 0.13 A for land. About 78% (43%) of the land (ocean) storms have detectable lightning. Land storms have 2.8 times the mean flash rate as ocean storms (2.2 versus 0.8 flashes min(sup -1), respectively). Approximately 7% of the overflights had negative current. The mean and median currents for positive (negative) polarity storms are 1.0 and 0.35 A (-0.30 and -0.26 A). We found no regional or latitudinal-based patterns in our storm currents, nor support for simple scaling laws between cloud top height and lightning flash rate.
Backreaction: directions of progress

Homogeneous and isotropic cosmological models with ordinary matter and gravity predict slower expansion and shorter distances than observed. It is possible that this failure is due the known breakdown of homogeneity and isotropy related to structure formation, rather than new fundamental physics. We review this backreaction conjecture, concentrating on topics on which there has been progress as well as open issues.
Systematic review of predictors of infant care competence among women with postpartum depression

Postpartum depression (PPD) is a serious illness that affects mothers worldwide. The symptoms of PPD such as low mood and fatigue undermine the quality of mothers’ interactions with their children, likely explaining the less than optimal development of children of mothers with PPD. In this way, PPD reduces mothers’ Infant Care Competence (ICC), that is, mothers’ perceived and performed infant caregiving ability. ICC is similar to other concepts such as maternal competence; however, ICC is specific in its focus on a mother’s perceptions of her infant care abilities. Knowledge of predictors of ICC in the context of PPD would inform interventions for mothers with PPD to increase maternal caregiving quality, preventing negative long-term effects on children’s development. Thus, an integrative systematic review was completed to determine predictors of ICC (both performed and perceived abilities) in the context of PPD. Six electronic databases were searched (MEDLINE, PubMed, PsycINFO, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature [CINAHL], SocINDEX, and the Cochrane Library) for relevant studies that met search criteria. Twenty-one eligible articles were obtained. Results revealed variables that explained ICC in the context of maternal PPD including: depression severity and timing of depressive symptoms, social support, maternal adversities, infant characteristics, as well as demographic variables such as education and income. Overall, this review provides insight into common explanatory variables of ICC that could be used to target interventions in the postpartum period to promote maternal caregiving abilities, and ultimately children’s development and health in the context of PPD.
Push the Barrier: Discrete Event Protocol Emulation

The protocol evaluation is an integral part of network protocol design. From the perspective of experimental design, discrete event simulations constitute a middle ground between analytical protocol evaluation and testbeds. They allow precise control of otherwise external influences while supporting more detailed protocol models than analytical evaluations. Compared to testbeds, a major restriction is that existing protocols require a separate implementation in the discrete event model. Creating this implementation model may cause differences between the protocol’s simulator-based model and the native implementation, invalidating simulation results. We propose a novel architecture to evaluate unmodified, binary protocol implementations in the state-of-the-art discrete event simulators by utilizing the operating system’s system call barrier. Notably, our approach does not affect discrete simulation properties, such as repeatability, and it does not require the native protocol implementation’s source code. The evaluation results using existing network protocols show the feasibility of our approach in combination with the ns-3 simulator core. We show that our approach more closely resembles realistic protocol performance when compared to simulator-based protocol models. Moreover, our approach performs better than existing solutions for more realistic protocol simulations.
Understanding Natural Language Commands for Robotic Navigation and Mobile Manipulation

This paper describes a new model for understanding natural language commands given to autonomous systems that perform navigation and mobile manipulation in semi-structured environments. Previous approaches have used models with fixed structure to infer the likelihood of a sequence of actions given the environment and the command. In contrast, our framework, called Generalized Grounding Graphs, dynamically instantiates a probabilistic graphical model for a particular natural language command according to the command's hierarchical and compositional semantic structure. Our system performs inference in the model to successfully find and execute plans corresponding to natural language commands such as "Put the tire pallet on the truck. " The model is trained using a corpus of commands collected using crowdsourcing. We pair each command with robot actions and use the corpus to learn the parameters of the model. We evaluate the robot's performance by inferring plans from natural language commands, executing each plan in a realistic robot simulator, and asking users to evaluate the system's performance. We demonstrate that our system can successfully follow many natural language commands from the corpus.
Effect of Caffeine Intake on Visual and Cognitive Functions

Introduction: In this paper, the effect of caffeine intake on the efficiency of the visual and cognitive processing measured through the assessment of the cognitive ERP components (i.e. P100 and P300), is studied and analyzed. This study is conducted through the measurement of amplitudes and latencies of P100 at Oz and P300 at Pz and Cz, respectively before and after caffeine intake. Method: Data is collected using 128 channel EEG machine from 8 subjects (4 males and 4 females) aged between 21 and 24 with normal vision and no known neurophysiological impairments. Subjects are assessed using oddball paradigm experiment. The subjects are asked not to take any caffeine related drink during day time from morning till 6 PM. The ERP signals are measured early morning and late afternoon at 5:30 PM before caffeine intake, using aforementioned arrangement. At 6 PM the subjects are stimulated with 60 mg of caffeine. The ERP signals are measured after 15 minutes of stimulation. Results: The results show a decrease in amplitude and increase in latency for P300 due to mental and physical fatigue over the day. Results for the amplitude variation over morning and afternoon measurements (before caffeine intake) for different subjects are shown in Figure 1. After caffeine stimulation, results show increase in amplitude and decrease in latency in general. Figure 2 shows the increase in amplitude of P300 at Cz for the different subjects. Conclusion: The experimental results show that caffeine improves cognitive performance by increasing alertness and attention and reducing fatigue.
Population genetic structure in green dragon (Arisaema dracontium, Araceae)

The clonal perennial herb, Arisaema dracontium (L.) Schott. , is considered "vulnerable" in Canada but is more abundant in the adjacent northeastern United States. In Canada, sexual reproduction may be limited since the species is self-incompatible, and populations at the edge of a species' range may contain limited genetic diversity. We compared genetic variation in nine enzymes systems, sampled at 19 populations across eastern North America. Based on chromosome counts and interpretable banding patterns, A. dracontium is tetraploid over most of its range (2n = 56). However, plants in Florida were diploid, lacked 10 out of a total of 19 interpretable alleles, had distinct allelic frequencies, and clustered a large distance from the other populations. Some plants from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, were also diploid, but all allozyme samples were tetraploid. Most genetic variation occurred within populations; only 29% of variation was between populations. Individuals in two adjacent, otherwise isolated Ontario pop.
Effects of light, temperature and water stress on germination of Artemisia sphaerocephala

Summary Artemisia sphaerocephala is widely used for vegetation rehabilitation, but its germination is very low after air seeding of achenes. We explored effects of light, temperature and water stress on germination. Results show that both final percent germination and germination rate were increased by temperature increment, with the highest values occurring at 15: 25°C (night: day) in dark and 20: 30°C under light. Light inhibited germination, especially at lower alternating temperatures (5: 15°C and 10: 20°C). The alternating temperature window for germination was slightly narrower under light than in dark, and germination was slower under light than in dark across the temperature range. Achenes incubated in the dark and at constant temperatures had over 80% germination at 10 to 25°C, with an optimum at 20°C. Under dark and 25μmol m-2 s-1 light flux density at 10: 20°C, final percent germination was over 94%, but if the light flux density was increased to 100 and 400 μmol m-2 s-1, final percent germination was significantly lower (64% and 38% respectively). However, achenes could keep their germination capacity for a long time (over 50 days) and germinate well after going back to the dark. Germination was also lower under water stress and few achenes germinated at -1.4 MPa. This was more pronounced at high and low temperatures. Given these findings and the prevailing climatic characteristics, the most suitable time for air seeding of achenes may be mid-May.
Changes in Kiwifruit Cell Wall Ultrastructure and Cell Packing During Postharvest Ripening

Light, scanning electron, and transmission electron micrographs of ripening kiwifruit were compared at different stages of softening. The three tissues of the fruit, outer pericarp, inner pericarp, and core, differed in packing and cell size. Morphometric studies indicated that the volume of intercellular air spaces increased as the fruit softened. Cell walls swelled in the outer pericarp carlier than in the core and in both tissues well before the climacteric. Except for plasmodesmatal regions, staining of cell wall material markedly declined or was lost in ripe fruit. Middle lamella breakdown was evident in samples taken from both ripe fruit and fruit just prior to ripeness, and electron-dense bodies accumulated between the plasmalemma and cell wall. The results support studies on changes in chemical composition and indicate that kiwifruit cell walls undergo ultrastructural changes during ripening similar to other fruit. However, the extent of cell wall swelling, loss of stainability, and timing of the changes differs.