Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Climate reconstruction for the Entre‐Douro‐e‐Minho region (NW Portugal) between AD 1626 and AD 1820: synthesis of viticulture data and foraminiferal evidence

This work presents two novel climate‐related time series for the northwest of Portugal. The first is an AD 1626–1820 triennial‐resolved wine production series, based on the Benedictine accounts from six monasteries of the Entre‐Douro‐e‐Minho (EDM) region. The second, an AD 1654–2010 benthic foraminiferal record from the Caminha salt marsh, located in the lower estuary of the Minho River. The series were analysed together for the common period to outline how both palaeoclimatic proxies respond to the most likely natural environmental drivers of temporal variability, solar forcing included. Singular spectral analysis revealed a common significant multidecadal periodicity agreeing with recognized long‐term changes in solar activity, i.e. the Lower Gleissberg cycle (50–80 years). The application of wavelet analysis allowed the detection of high coherence at this time scale (centred at c. 64 years) between marsh foraminifera and both total solar irradiance and the North Atlantic Oscillation index. This relationship persists throughout the c. AD 1730–1875 period. The continuous wavelet transform results for wine production were inconclusive. As the time‐span analysed is recognized as one of high socio‐economic and political distress, the main human‐driven impacts on wine production, particularly in the two periods of greatly reduced solar activity – the Maunder and Dalton Minima – are reviewed in the light of the available historical records. In addition to a documented climate‐related agricultural crisis in Portugal, damage and losses to wine production may have been triggered by several local and international conflicts in which the country was involved. But to what extent the two influences contributed to the wine production variations observed in the EDM region during both periods remains an open question.
Cyclin-Dependent Kinase 5 in the Ventral Tegmental Area Regulates Depression-Related Behaviors

Dopamine neurons in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) govern reward and motivation and dysregulated dopaminergic transmission may account for anhedonia and other symptoms of depression. Cyclin-dependent kinase 5 (Cdk5) is a proline-directed serine/threonine kinase that regulates a broad range of brain functions through phosphorylation of a myriad of substrates, including tyrosine hydroxylase (TH), the rate-limiting enzyme for dopamine synthesis. We investigated whether and how Cdk5 activity in VTA dopamine neurons regulated depression-related behaviors in mice. Using the Cre/LoxP system to selectively delete Cdk5 in the VTA or in midbrain dopamine neurons in Cdk5loxP/loxP mice, we showed that Cdk5 loss of function in the VTA induced anxiety- and depressive-like behaviors that were associated with decreases in TH phosphorylation at Ser31 and Ser40 in the VTA and dopamine release in its target region, the nucleus accumbens. The decreased phosphorylation of TH at Ser31 was a direct effect of Cdk5 deletion, whereas decreased phosphorylation of TH at Ser40 was likely caused by impaired cAMP/protein kinase A (PKA) signaling, because Cdk5 deletion decreased cAMP and phosphorylated cAMP response element-binding protein (p-CREB) levels in the VTA. Using Designer Receptors Exclusively Activated by Designer Drugs (DREADD) technology, we showed that selectively increasing cAMP levels in VTA dopamine neurons increased phosphorylation of TH at Ser40 and CREB at Ser133 and reversed behavioral deficits induced by Cdk5 deletion. The results suggest that Cdk5 in the VTA regulates cAMP/PKA signaling, dopaminergic neurotransmission, and depression-related behaviors.
The effect of smallholder livestock production on income of farm households in Northern Ghana

This paper investigates the effect of smallholder livestock production on income among farm households in northern Ghana. Questionnaires were administered to 300 household heads and ordinary least squares estimation technique was applied to the dataset. The dependent variable was income and measured by total annual income received from farm and non-farm activities by household heads. The independent variable of interest was tropical livestock unit measured by flock size. We also included farm size, household size, gender, age, educational level, distance to market, dependency ratio and access to formal credit as control variables. We found that smallholder livestock production and farm size increase income whilst distance to market and dependency ratio reduce income. Based on evidence of the positive relationship between livestock pro-duction and household income in this paper, it is recommended that policies to promote smallholder livestock production should be embarked upon to increase income. This is likely to improve livelihood and reduce poverty among the poor rural folks in the northern regions of Ghana.
Applicative bidirectional programming with lenses

A bidirectional transformation is a pair of mappings between source and view data objects, one in each direction. When the view is modified, the source is updated accordingly with respect to some laws. One way to reduce the development and maintenance effort of bidirectional transformations is to have specialized languages in which the resulting programs are bidirectional by construction---giving rise to the paradigm of bidirectional programming. In this paper, we develop a framework for applicative-style and higher-order bidirectional programming, in which we can write bidirectional transformations as unidirectional programs in standard functional languages, opening up access to the bundle of language features previously only available to conventional unidirectional languages. Our framework essentially bridges two very different approaches of bidirectional programming, namely the lens framework and Voigtländer's semantic bidirectionalization, creating a new programming style that is able to bag benefits from both.
Efficient Maximum Appearance Search for Large-Scale Object Detection

In recent years, efficiency of large-scale object detection has arisen as an important topic due to the exponential growth in the size of benchmark object detection datasets. Most current object detection methods focus on improving accuracy of large-scale object detection with efficiency being an afterthought. In this paper, we present the Efficient Maximum Appearance Search (EMAS) model which is an order of magnitude faster than the existing state-of-the-art large-scale object detection approaches, while maintaining comparable accuracy. Our EMAS model consists of representing an image as an ensemble of densely sampled feature points with the proposed Point wise Fisher Vector encoding method, so that the learnt discriminative scoring function can be applied locally. Consequently, the object detection problem is transformed into searching an image sub-area for maximum local appearance probability, thereby making EMAS an order of magnitude faster than the traditional detection methods. In addition, the proposed model is also suitable for incorporating global context at a negligible extra computational cost. EMAS can also incorporate fusion of multiple features, which greatly improves its performance in detecting multiple object categories. Our experiments show that the proposed algorithm can perform detection of 1000 object classes in less than one minute per image on the Image Net ILSVRC2012 dataset and for 107 object classes in less than 5 seconds per image for the SUN09 dataset using a single CPU.
Ubiquitin Ligases of the N-End Rule Pathway: Assessment of Mutations in UBR1 That Cause the Johanson-Blizzard Syndrome

Background Johanson-Blizzard syndrome (JBS; OMIM 243800) is an autosomal recessive disorder that includes congenital exocrine pancreatic insufficiency, facial dysmorphism with the characteristic nasal wing hypoplasia, multiple malformations, and frequent mental retardation. Our previous work has shown that JBS is caused by mutations in human UBR1, which encodes one of the E3 ubiquitin ligases of the N-end rule pathway. The N-end rule relates the regulation of the in vivo half-life of a protein to the identity of its N-terminal residue. One class of degradation signals (degrons) recognized by UBR1 are destabilizing N-terminal residues of protein substrates. Methodology/Principal Findings Most JBS-causing alterations of UBR1 are nonsense, frameshift or splice-site mutations that abolish UBR1 activity. We report here missense mutations of human UBR1 in patients with milder variants of JBS. These single-residue changes, including a previously reported missense mutation, involve positions in the RING-H2 and UBR domains of UBR1 that are conserved among eukaryotes. Taking advantage of this conservation, we constructed alleles of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae UBR1 that were counterparts of missense JBS-UBR1 alleles. Among these yeast Ubr1 mutants, one of them (H160R) was inactive in yeast-based activity assays, the other one (Q1224E) had a detectable but weak activity, and the third one (V146L) exhibited a decreased but significant activity, in agreement with manifestations of JBS in the corresponding JBS patients. Conclusions/Significance These results, made possible by modeling defects of a human ubiquitin ligase in its yeast counterpart, verified and confirmed the relevance of specific missense UBR1 alleles to JBS, and suggested that a residual activity of a missense allele is causally associated with milder variants of JBS.
The color browser: a content driven linear video browsing tool

The proliferation of multimedia information sources and the availability of large capacity consumer storage devices, raise the need to present video in compact forms so that users can effectively access interesting parts to watch. Aiming at an implementation in consumer electronics products and targeting to non-IT-expert users, an innovative user-friendly tool for video browsing and retrieval has been developed. The color browser enhances conventional slide-bars by embodying information about the video content in its colored background. It exploits low level features, like the dominant colors or the volume of the sound-track, automatically extracted from the digital video streams to allow intuitive access and content-driven navigation through unstructured video sequences.
Modeling of the heat transfer process in an air heat pump fanless evaporator

This paper analyses the mixed convection process in a fanless evaporator of an air heat pump. The text of the paper shows the authors’ experimental studies results of the temperature distribution and the local values of heat transfer coefficients on the outer surface of vertical tubes with longitudinal fins for the case of mixed convection and fins of a specific shape of their cross-section (prismatic, wavy fins). The experimental studies include the air velocities wa=2,3 m/s and the temperature differences between air and the refrigerant inside the heat exchanger tubes which is ΔT=24-40K. The results obtained were used for verification of CFD modeling of the heat transfer process for the discussed case of heat transfer and the geometry of the finned surface. The numerical analysis was performed for: the temperature distribution along the fin height, the tube perimeter and height, the distribution of local heat transfer coefficients on the finned tube perimeter and along its height. The simulated calculations were used to verify the method of determination of fin efficiency.
Cerebrovascular Reserve in Patients With Carotid Occlusive Disease Assessed by Stable Xenon-Enhanced CT Cerebral Blood Flow and Transcranial Doppler

Background and Purpose— Cerebrovascular reserve (CVR) by both transcranial Doppler ultrasonography (TCD) and quantitative cerebral blood flow (CBF) can identify subgroups of patients at increased risk for stroke. A direct comparison of CVR measurements obtained with both technologies in patients with cerebrovascular occlusive disease is lacking. Methods— CVRs before and after acetazolamide administration (1 g IV) were measured by TCD insonation of the middle cerebral artery (MCA) and CBF obtained with stable xenon CT (Xe/CT) in 38 patients with carotid occlusive disease. Sensitivity/specificity calculations were based on 2 Xe/CT MCA values: an average over 4 levels and the level with the lowest percent change in CBF. Compromised CVR was defined as no reactivity or a decrease in reactivity. Results— Using the analysis of the systolic TCD, we found that velocity changes compared with the average Xe/CT MCA CVR showed a sensitivity of 33%, specificity of 90.6%, positive predictive value of 54.5%, and negative predictive value of 80%. The sensitivity of TCD compared with the lowest Xe/CT CBF CVR was 35.5%, specificity and positive predictive values were 100%, and negative predictive value was 66.7%. The index of validity was between 72% and 76%. Conclusions— TCD is much less sensitive than Xe/CT CBF in identifying patients with compromised CVR. This may be a result of the inability of TCD to identify patients with compromised reserves when their MCA blood flow comes from collateral sources. The lack of correlation between TCD and Xe/CT CBF for identifying patients with compromised CVR should be considered when stroke risk assessments are made by TCD.
Neuroprotection by Tosyl-Polyamine Derivatives through the Inhibition of Ionotropic Glutamate Receptors

Tosyl-polyamine derivatives such as N-{4-[4-(guanidinobutylamino)-butylamino]butyl}-4-methylbenzenesulfonamide trihydrochroride (TsHSPMG) have been found to strongly inhibit macroscopic currents through heteromeric N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) receptors (NR1/NR2A, NR1/NR2B) and Ca2+-permeable α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid (homomeric glutamate receptor 1) receptors expressed in Xenopus laevis oocytes on voltage-clamp recording. In the present study, it was found that the inhibition of NMDA receptor activity induced by tosyl-polyamine derivatives was voltage-dependent. Some mutations located in the intracellular region of the channel pore, such as NR1 E621Q and NR2B W607L, reduced the inhibition by tosyl-polyamine derivatives, suggesting that tosyl-polyamine derivatives penetrate deeply into the channel pore of NMDA receptors. The neuroprotective effects of tosyl-polyamine derivatives against cell injury caused by NMDA were investigated in cultured rat hippocampal neurons. Addition of 1 μM TsHSPMG to medium ablated the neurotoxicity induced by NMDA, and a similar effect was observed with 30 μM memantine. The neuroprotective effects of tosyl-polyamine derivatives on NMDA-induced seizures in mice were also assayed. Intracerebroventricular or intravenous injection of TsHSPMG (0.1 or 0.5 mg/kg) decreased the seizures induced by intraperitoneal injection of NMDA in mice. These findings indicate that tosyl-polyamine derivatives exhibit neuroprotective effects not only in primary cultured neurons but also in mice.
D Shape Reconstruction from Autostereograms and Stereo

We study the problem of shape reconstruction from stereo images based on a weighted area minimization process of a depth function. As a simple example we present an efficient shape reconstruction from computer generated autostereograms. A minimal surface area based correlation is applied to accurately reconstruct the surface structure embedded first in one autostereogram image and next in two or more stereo images. The minimal area approach proved itself as a useful geometric measure in recent reconstruction and enhancement applications in computer vision and image processing. Here we develop a simplified version for the O. Faugeras and R. Keriven (1998, IEEE Trans. Image Process. 7, 336–344) stereo reconstruction model and apply a weighted area measure as part of a solution to the correspondence extraction in the shape from stereo and the shape from autostereogram problems. The proposed schemes are computationally efficient and yield accurate 3D reconstructions for smooth as well as nonsmooth surfaces. C © 2002 Elsevier Science (USA)
Dealing with Difficult Instances of Object Rearrangement

—Rearranging multiple objects is a critical skill for robots so that they can effectively deal with clutter in human spaces. This is a challenging problem as it involves combinatorially large, continuous C-spaces involving multiple movable bodies and complex kinematic constraints. This work initially revisits an existing search-based approach, which solves monotone challenges, i.e., when objects need to be grasped only once so as to be rearranged. The ﬁrst contribution is the extension of this technique to a method that addresses many non-monotone challenges. The second contribution is the use of either the monotone or of the new non-monotone method as a local planner in the context of a higher-level task planner that searches the space of object placements and which provides stronger guarantees. The paper aims to emphasize the beneﬁt of using more powerful motion primitives in the context of task planning for object rearrangement than an individual pick-and-place. Experiments in simulation using a model of a Baxter robot arm show the capability of solving difﬁcult instances of rearrangement problems and evaluate the methods in terms of success ratio, running time, scalability and path quality.
Brain-computer interface design for asynchronous control applications: improvements to the LF-ASD asynchronous brain switch

The low-frequency asynchronous switch design (LF-ASD) was introduced as a direct brain-computer interface (BCI) technology for asynchronous control applications. The LF-ASD operates as an asynchronous brain switch (ABS) which is activated only when a user intends control and maintains an inactive state output when the user is not meaning to control the device (i.e., they may be idle, thinking about a problem, or performing some other action). Results from LF-ASD evaluations have shown promise, although the reported error rates are too high for most practical applications. This paper presents the evaluation of four new LF-ASD designs with data collected from individuals with high-level spinal cord injuries and able-bodied subjects. These new designs incorporated electroencephalographic energy normalization and feature space dimensionality reduction. The error characteristics of the new ABS designs were significantly better than the LF-ASD design with true positive rate increases of approximately 33% for false positive rates in the range of 1%-2%. The results demonstrate that the dimensionality of the LF-ASD feature space can be reduced without performance degradation. The results also confirm previous findings that spinal cord-injured subjects can operate ABS designs to the same ability as able-bodied subjects.
A Social-Ecological Analysis of Urban Tree Vulnerability for Publicly Owned Trees in a Residential Neighborhood

The urban forest is a valuable ecosystem service provider, yet cities are frequently degraded environments with a myriad of stressors and disturbances affecting trees. Vulnerability science is increasingly used to explore issues of sustainability in complex social-ecological systems, and can be a useful approach for assessing urban forests. The purpose of this study was to identify and explore drivers of urban forest vulnerability in a residential neighborhood. Based on a recently published framework of urban forest vulnerability, a series of indicators of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity that describe the built environment, urban forest structure, and human population, respectively, were assessed for 806 trees in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Tree mortality, condition, and diameter growth rates were then assessed using an existing 2007/2008 inventory. A bivariate analysis was first conducted to test for significant relationships of vulnerability indicators with mortality, condition, and growth. A multivariate analysis was then conducted using multiple linear regression for the continuous condition and growth variables and a multilayer perceptron neural network for the binary mortality variable. Commercial land uses and commercial buildings adjacent to trees consistently explained higher mortality rates and poor tree conditions. However, at finer spatial scales it is important to differentiate between different causes and correlates of urban forest decline within commercial land uses. Tree species, size, and condition were also important indicators of vulnerability. Understanding the causes of urban forest change and decline are essential for developing planning strategies to reduce long-term system vulnerability.
An Objection-Based Collaborative Spectrum Sensing for Cognitive Radio Networks

Cognitive radio transmission relies on awareness of the instantaneous spectrum utilization. Such awareness can be gained by the spectrum sensing process. To this end, collaborative spectrum sensing (CSS) is preferred as it yields more reliable results than individual sensing. However, CSS requires collaboration among all the cognitive users (CUs), which leads to a high energy consumption. This letter provides a new energy-efficient CSS scheme. The proposed scheme implies that only a CU will broadcast its local decision among the whole network. All the other CUs that have a different local decision will object to the fusion center, whereas the CUs that agree with the announced decision will stay silent. Accordingly, the fusion center will be informed of all the local decisions of the CUs and will make a global decision. An analytical study on how to select the broadcasting CU such that energy efficiency is maximized is provided. Simulation and analytic results explore the energy efficiency gain compared to the literature.
A location-aided power-aware routing protocol in mobile ad hoc networks

In multi-hop wireless ad-hop networks, designing energy-efficient routing protocols is critical since nodes are power-constrained. However, it is also an inherently hard problem due to two important factors: First, the nodes may be mobile, demanding the energy-efficient routing protocol to be fully distributed and adaptive to the current states of nodes; Second, the wireless links may be uni-directional due to asymmetric power configurations of adjacent nodes. In this paper, we propose a location-aided power-aware routing protocol that dynamically makes local routing decisions so that a near-optimal power-efficient end-to-end route is formed for forwarding data packets. The protocol is fully distributed such that only location information of neighboring nodes are exploited in each routing node. Through rigorous theoretical analysis for our distributed protocol based on greedy algorithms, we are able to derive critical global properties with respect to end-to-end energy-efficient routes. Finally, preliminary simulation results are presented to verify the performance of our protocol.
Effect of coupling on the epidemic threshold in interconnected complex networks: A spectral analysis

In epidemic spreading models, if the infection strength is higher than a certain critical value - which we define as the epidemic threshold - then the epidemic spreads through the population. For a single arbitrary graph representing the contact network of the population under consideration, the epidemic threshold turns out to be equal to the inverse of the spectral radius of the contact graph. However, in a real world scenario, it is not possible to isolate a population completely: there is always some interconnection with another network, which partially overlaps with the contact network. In this paper, we study the spreading process of a susceptible-infected-susceptible (SIS) epidemic model in an interconnected network of two generic graphs with generic interconnection and different epidemic-related parameters. Using bifurcation theory and spectral graph theory, we find the epidemic threshold of one network as a function of the infection strength of the other coupled network and adjacency matrices of each graph and their interconnection, and provide a quantitative measure to distinguish weak and strong interconnection topology. These results have implications for the broad field of epidemic modeling and control.