Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Three types of gas hydrate reservoirs in the Gulf of Mexico identified in LWD data

High quality logging-while-drilling (LWD) well logs were acquired in seven wells drilled during the Gulf of Mexico Gas Hydrate Joint Industry Project Leg II in the spring of 2009. These data help to identify three distinct types of gas hydrate reservoirs: isotropic reservoirs in sands, vertical fractured reservoirs in shale, and horizontally layered reservoirs in silty shale. In general, most gas hydratebearing sand reservoirs exhibit isotropic elastic velocities and formation resistivities, and gas hydrate saturations estimated from the P-wave velocity agree well with those from the resistivity. However, in highly gas hydrate-saturated sands, resistivity-derived gas hydrate-saturation estimates appear to be systematically higher by about 5% over those estimated by P-wave velocity, possibly because of the uncertainty associated with the consolidation state of gas hydrate-bearing sands. Small quantities of gas hydrate were observed in vertical fractures in shale. These occurrences are characterized by high formation resistivities with P-wave velocities close to those of water-saturated sediment. Because the formation factor varies significantly with respect to the gas hydrate saturation for vertical fractures at low saturations, an isotropic analysis of formation factor highly overestimates the gas hydrate saturation. Small quantities of gas hydrate in horizontal layers in shale are characterized by moderate increase in P-wave velocities and formation resistivities and either measurement can be used to estimate gas hydrate saturations.
The Relationship between a High Carbohydrate Diet and Oral Glucose Tolerance Test in Pregnancy

Abstract Objective The aim of this study is to examine the impact of carbohydrate ratios in the diet consumed one day prior to the 75-g oral glucose screening test on both the screening test values and the diagnosis of gestational diabetes mellitus in the unselective pregnant population. Material-Method 83 pregnant women who were under observation in the antenatal clinic of our hospital and underwent glucose tolerance tests were included in the study. The patients were given training by a dietitian to keep nutrition records of the day prior to glucose loading during their previous visits before any glucose loading. A carbohydrate intake of 40–60% was considered as the normal range in terms of the percentage of carbohydrates in the diet. A carbohydrate percentage above 60% was considered to be a high carbohydrate intake. The carbohydrate percentages in their diet over the past 24 hours was compared with the effect on the glucose tolerance test. Results Out of the 83 pregnant women included in the study, 40 of them had a high carbohydrate diet (HCD) prior to the oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT), and the average carbohydrate percentage of this diet was found to be 62%. The remaining 43 patients had an average carbohydrate percentage of 49% and belonged to the group that had a normal carbohydrate diet (NCD). Out of the 83 pregnant women, 33 of them were at high risk for gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM). In the high-risk patient group, 16 patients had an NCD intake, while 17 patients had a HCD intake. It was determined that a high carbohydrate diet had no significant effect on fasting, first-hour, and second-hour glucose levels, as well as the diagnosis of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), in both the unselective population and the high-risk patient population. Conclusion In our study, we concluded that the high carbohydrate ratios in the diets of pregnant women one day prior did not affect the OGTT results or the GDM ratios. This indicates that there is no need for a preparatory diet prior to the OGTT in women with normal dietary habits.
A new approach to a powered knee prosthesis: Layering powered assistance onto strictly passive prosthesis behavior

Abstract This article describes a novel approach to the control of a powered knee prosthesis where the control system provides passive behavior for most activities and then provides powered assistance only for those activities that require them. The control approach presented here is based on the categorization of knee joint function during activities into four behaviors: resistive stance behavior, active stance behavior, ballistic swing, and non-ballistic swing. The approach is further premised on the assumption that healthy non-perturbed swing-phase is characterized by a ballistic swing motion, and therefore, a replacement of that function should be similarly ballistic. The control system utilizes a six-state finite-state machine, where each state provides different constitutive behaviors (concomitant with the four aforementioned knee behaviors) which are appropriate for a range of activities. Transitions between states and torque control within states is controlled by user motion, such that the control system provides, to the extent possible, knee torque behavior as a reaction to user motion, including for powered behaviors. The control system is demonstrated on a novel device that provides a sufficiently low impedance to enable a strictly passive ballistic swing-phase, while also providing sufficiently high torque to offer powered stance-phase knee-extension during activities such as step-over stair ascent. Experiments employing the knee and control system on an individual with transfemoral amputation are presented that compare the functionality of the power-supplemented nominally passive system with that of a conventional passive microprocessor-controlled knee prosthesis.
Exploring the Efficacy of Explainable Deep Learning in Identifying Neuromarkers for Precise Prediction of Epilepsy and Causal Connectivity Analysis

Causal connectivity among the brain regions have been recently exploited information for discriminating epileptiforms to detect epileptic seizures. Published investigations to detect ictal, interictal, preictal EEG reported existence of long-range correlations of excitations within a functionally connected brain region and shifting of focus of excitations from one region to another region and increase or decrease of intensity in certain frequency-bands, which can be quantified using suitable measure of Granger causality (GC). Deep neural networks obviated explicit preprocessing and feature extraction. The proposed work employs temporal dilated convolutional network to estimate causal connectivity relations among brain-regions in various frequency-bands in distributed manner. It implicitly learns varying autoregressive-lag-orders using stacked layers and covers long range relationships using exponential update of layer-wise dilation-factor. Model training with several parameter-combinations were conducted over 10 subjects. The proposed model outperformed the existing approaches and baseline model in terms of accuracy, sensitivity, and false positive rate. Class-wise dominating features were obtained using statistical significance analysis followed by family wise error rate correction using Benjamini-Hochberg method.
A Natural History of the New World: The Ecology and Evolution of Plants in the Americas

The paleoecological history of the Americas is as complex as the region is broad: stretching from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego, the New World features some of the most extraordinary vegetation on the planet. But until now it has lacked a complete natural history. Alan Graham remedies that with "A Natural History of the New World". With plants as his scientific muse, Graham traces the evolution of ecosystems, beginning in the Late Cretaceous period (about 100 million years ago) and ending in the present, charting their responses to changes in geology and climate. By highlighting plant communities' roles in the environmental history of the Americas, Graham offers an overdue balance to natural histories that focus exclusively on animals. Plants are important in evolution's splendid drama. Not only are they conspicuous and conveniently stationary components of the Earth's ecosystems, but their extensive fossil record allows for a thorough reconstruction of the planet's paleoenvironments. What's more, plants provide oxygen, function as food and fuel, and provide habitat and shelter; in short, theirs is a history that can speak to many other areas of evolution. "A Natural History of the New World" is an ambitious and unprecedented synthesis written by one of the world's leading scholars of botany and geology.
An investigation into the influx of Indigenous 'visitors' to Darwin's Long Grass from remote NT communities : phase 2 : being undesirable : law, health and life in Darwin's Long Grass

The rate of Aboriginal homelessness in the Northern Territory and Darwin is staggering when compared with the rest of Australia. Living rough is categorised as primary homelessness by the Australian Government and is locally referred to as ‘staying in the Long Grass’. Previous research has highlighted that living in the Long Grass is likely to have an adverse effect on health, wellbeing and life quality as individuals attempt to survive from day to day in an inhospitable urban environment. In Darwin, the primary homeless rate rapidly increased immediately following the announcement of the federal government’s Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER) in Aboriginal Territory communities in June, 2007. While unintentional, the NTER policy became a structural driver of Aboriginal homelessness and internal displacement in Darwin; contrary to the goals articulated in other key national policies that attempt to address homelessness and Aboriginal disadvantage. Subsequently, the importance of monitoring homelessness and its broader social implications in Darwin has been highlighted, enabling a meaningful and timely contribution to policy development and service delivery concerning this population. This present study is a response to this need. This study asked the question, ‘What do Aboriginal people staying in Darwin’s Long Grass require to attain an acceptable level of health and life quality and to be law abiding citizens? ’ The views and experiences of 550 participants were explored through three stages of fieldwork. The first stage explored the lived experience of 122 Aboriginal people staying in the Long Grass. Using the Australian Aboriginal Version of the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire, a second stage examined the level of exposure to trauma events and trauma symptoms experienced by 60 Aboriginal people in this population. The third stage gained an insight into the views of 368 non-Indigenous members of mainstream Darwin society about people staying in the Long Grass.
Beyond Stereotypes

Red tape is a significant management challenge, and this article seeks to understand how some managers are able to better cope with it. The authors find that managers with positive work attitudes cope better with personnel constraints as compared to those who have less positive work attitudes. The findings cast doubt on stereotypes depicting public managers as being engaged in aggressive red tape production or slothful permitting of red tape. The authors conclude by suggesting that future research should steer away from relegating study of red tape to the realm of negative stereotypes. Instead, managerial and organizational responses to red tape should be studied as part of the normal.
The Change and Variability of Snow Cover in Kraków in a 100-Year Observation Series

Abstract This article presents the results of research on the changes and variability of snow cover in Kraków in the 100-year period 1921/22–2020/21 and in its two sub-periods covering the years of the slow and rapid territorial, urban and industrial development of Kraków (respectively, 1921/22–1960/61 and 1961/62–2020/21). The long-term variability of the number of days with snow cover, the maximum depth of the snow layer, the dates of the beginning and end of snow cover duration in the winter season, the potential snow cover duration and the index of snow cover stability were analysed. The directions of changes in the snow cover in the last 100 winter seasons in Kraków correspond to the global changes in air temperature presented in the latest IPCC reports: until the end of the 1950s there were no significant trends, or only small trends were observed, whereas from the beginning of the 1960s faster changes in the snow cover duration and maximum seasonal snow depth have been visible. In the last 60 years (1961/62–2020/21), the impact of global changes in Kraków has been joined by the impact of territorial, demographic and industrial development of the city, causing significant negative trends in snow cover with relative values of less than −9% · 10 years−1, both in the case of snow cover duration and its maximum depth in the winter season; these changes are statistically significant. Throughout the whole 100-year period (1921/22–2020/21) and in its second part (1961/62–2020/21), a decrease in snow cover stability has also been observed.
Reward actively engages both implicit and explicit components in dual force field adaptation

Motor learning occurs through multiple mechanisms, including unsupervised, supervised (error-based) and reinforcement (reward-based) learning. Although studies have shown that reward leads to an overall better motor adaptation, the specific processes by which reward influences adaptation are still unclear. Here, we examine how the presence of reward affects dual-adaptation to novel dynamics, and distinguish its influence on implicit and explicit learning. Participants adapted to two opposing force fields in an adaptation/de-adaptation/error-clamp paradigm, where five levels of reward (a score and a digital face) were provided as participants reduced their lateral error. Both reward and control (no reward provided) groups simultaneously adapted to both opposing force fields, exhibiting a similar final level of adaptation, which was primarily implicit. Triple-rate models fit to the adaptation process found higher learning rates in the fast and slow processes, and a slightly increased fast retention rate for the reward group. While differences in the slow learning rate were only driven by implicit learning, the large difference in the fast learning rate was mainly explicit. Overall, we confirm previous work showing that reward increases learning rates, extending this to dual-adaptation experiments, and demonstrating that reward influences both implicit and explicit adaptation. Specifically, we show that reward acts primarily explicitly on the fast learning rate and implicitly on the slow learning rates. New and Noteworthy Here we show that rewarding participants’ performance during dual force field adaptation primarily affects the initial rate of learning and the early timescales of adaptation, with little effect on the final adaptation level. However, reward affects both explicit and implicit components of adaptation. While the learning rate of the slow process is increased implicitly, the fast learning and retention rates are increased through both implicit components and the use of explicit strategies.
Flexible regulation of representations on a drifting manifold enables long-term stable complex neuroprosthetic control

The nervous system needs to balance the stability of neural representations with plasticity. It is unclear what is the representational stability of simple actions, particularly those that are well-rehearsed in humans, and how it changes in new contexts. Using an electrocorticography brain-computer interface (BCI), we found that the mesoscale manifold and relative representational distances for a repertoire of simple imagined movements were remarkably stable. Interestingly, however, the manifold’s absolute location demonstrated day-to-day drift. Strikingly, representational statistics, especially variance, could be flexibly regulated to increase discernability during BCI control without somatotopic changes. Discernability strengthened with practice and was specific to the BCI, demonstrating remarkable contextual specificity. Accounting for drift, and leveraging the flexibility of representations, allowed neuroprosthetic control of a robotic arm and hand for over 7 months without recalibration. Our study offers insight into how electrocorticography can both track representational statistics across long periods and allow long-term complex neuroprosthetic control.
Artemisitene protected against murine schistosomiasis japonica through anti-parasite activity and immune regulation

Schistosoma japonicum (Sj) infection induced liver granulomatous inflammation and fibrosis. As an active artemisinin analog, the implication of artemisitene (ATT) in schistosomiasis were unclear. Herein, we found that ATT significantly reduced the count of total adult worms and eggs, and increased the count of single males, injured the tegument in the surface of Sj adult worms & gynecophoral canal of males. The transcription of 98 genes in females and 48 genes in males were significantly changed, and these genes were closely related to cellular anatomical entity through gene ontology analysis. So, ATT might possess anti-parasite activity. Meanwhile, ATT treatment significantly lowered the level of glutamic oxaloacetic transaminase (AST) and glutamic pyruvic transaminase (ALT) in sera, the size of mesenteric lymph node, and granuloma, the collagen area and α-SMA expression level in the liver. Liver transcriptome and multi-cytokines analysis indicated its immune regulation effect. Flow cytometry verified that the count of eosinophils in the liver were significantly increased, while the frequency of neutrophils, M1/M2 and Th1/Th2 index were significantly decreased. Therefore, we provided strong evidence that ATT has therapeutic potential through Sj clearance and anti-liver disease. Tegument development injury and immune regulation including type 2 immunity enhancement might be the mechanisms. Author summary Currently, there were still 290 million people worldwide who were infected by Schistosoma, and the treatment for schistosomiasis relies majorly on the use of a single drug-praziquantel. In this study, we described for the first time that artemisinin-derived artemisitene (ATT), chemically remarkably different from praziquantel, possessed the therapeutic effects on murine schistosomiasis japonica. ATT displayed both anti-Schistsosoma japonicum and anti-liver inflammation & liver fibrosis effect. Through RNA-seq and scanning electronic microscope of adult female & male worms from hepatoportal veins with or without ATT treatment, we found that the mechanisms of ATT’s anti-parasites could be through injuring tegument development and then interrupting adult worms’ especially adult female worms’ clearance by immune cells such as eosinophils. Moreover, through RNA-seq of liver total RNA, ELISA of multi-cytokines in liver lysates and flow cytometry analysis of liver single cells, we found that the anti-liver diseases’ efficacy of ATT was associated with immune regulation especially type 2 immunity enhancement. Therefore, ATT possessed the therapeutic potential against schistosomiasis japonica and further researches were necessary for its future clinical use.
Unveiling the Role of Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress Pathways in Canine Demodicosis

Canine demodicosis is a prevalent skin disease caused by overpopulation of a commensal species of Demodex mite, yet its precise cause remains unknown. Research suggests that T cell exhaustion, increased immunosuppressive cytokines, induction of regulatory T cells, and increased expression of immune checkpoint inhibitors may contribute to its pathogenesis. This study aimed to gain a deeper understanding of the molecular changes occurring in canine demodicosis using mass spectrometry and pathway enrichment analysis. The results indicate that endoplasmic reticulum stress is promoting canine demodicosis through regulation of three linked signalling pathways: eIF2, mTOR, and eIF4 and p70S6K. These pathways are involved in the modulation of Toll-like receptors, most notably TLR2, and have been shown to play a role in the pathogenesis of skin diseases in both dogs and humans. Moreover, these pathways are also implicated in the promotion of immunosuppressive M2 phenotype macrophages. Immunohistochemical analysis, utilizing common markers of dendritic cells and macrophages, verified the presence of M2 macrophages in canine demodicosis. The proteomic analysis also identified immunological disease, organismal injury and abnormalities, and inflammatory response as the most significant underlying diseases and disorders associated with canine demodicosis. This study demonstrates that Demodex mites, through ER stress, unfolded protein response and M2 macrophages contribute to an immunosuppressive microenvironment thereby assisting in their proliferation.
Cellular Immunotherapy in Mice Prevents Maternal Hypertension and Restores Anti-Inflammatory Cytokine Balance in Maternal and Fetal Tissues

Preeclampsia is the leading cause of maternal-fetal morbidity world-wide. The concept that persistent feto-placental intolerance is important in the pathogenesis of preeclampsia (PreE) has been demonstrated by our lab and others. Arginine vasopressin (AVP) infusion during pregnancy induces cardiovascular, renal, and T helper (Th) cell alterations in mice consistent with human PreE. In addition to their conventional immuno-stimulatory role, dendritic cells (DCs) also play a vital role in immune tolerance. In contrast to conventional DCs, regulatory DCs (DCregs) express low levels of co-stimulatory markers, produce anti-inflammatory cytokines, induce T regulatory (Treg) cells, and promote tolerance. In mice, DCregs prevent pro-inflammatory responses and induce antigen-specific tolerance. Given these known functions of DCregs, we hypothesize that DCregs will prevent the development of AVP-induced PreE in mice. C57BL/6J females were infused with AVP (24 ng/hour) or saline throughout gestation via osmotic minipump. Bone marrow derived DCregs were injected into AVP-infused dams at the time of pump implantation or on gestational day (GD) 7. Blood pressure was taken throughout pregnancy. Maternal urine protein and TH-associated cytokines in maternal and fetal tissues were measured on GD 18. Treatment with DCregs effectively prevented the elevation of maternal blood pressure, proteinuria, and fetal growth restriction that was observed in AVP-infused dams. Furthermore, we noted a reduction in pro-inflammatory TH-associated cytokines IFNγ and IL-17, while anti-inflammatory cytokines IL-4, IL-10, and TGFβ showed an increase following DCreg treatment. These outcomes provide strong evidence supporting the potential of DCregs as a valuable therapeutic approach in addressing PreE.
Single-nucleus transcriptomic analyses reveal microglial activation underlying cerebellar degeneration in Ataxia Telangiectasia

While ATM loss-of-function has long been identified as the genetic cause of Ataxia Telangiectasia (AT), how this genetic mutation leads to selective and progressive cerebellar degeneration of Purkinje and granule cells remains unknown. We performed single-nucleus RNA-sequencing of the human cerebellum and prefrontal cortex from individuals with AT and matched unaffected controls to identify AT-associated transcriptomic changes in a cell-type-and brain-region-specific manner. We provide the largest single-nucleus transcriptomic atlas of the adult human cerebellum to-date (126,356 nuclei), identify upregulation of apoptotic and ER stress pathways in Purkinje and granule neurons, and uncover strong downregulation of calcium ion homeostasis genes in Purkinje neurons. Our analysis reveals prominent inflammation of microglia in AT cerebellum with transcriptional signatures similar to aging and neurodegenerative microglia, and suggests that microglia activation precedes Purkinje and granule neuron death in disease progression. Our data implicates a novel role of microglial activation underlying cerebellar degeneration in AT.