Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
NON‐SPECIFICITY OF SYMBOTIC INFECTION IN ORCHID MYCORRHIZA

Summary Symbiosis tests carried out between orchids from several geographical localities and thirty-two Rhizoctonias isolated from orchids, non-orchid hosts and soils of worldwide distribution, showed no evidence of any species-to-species relationship between orchid and fungus. Dactylorhiza purpurella established a symbiotic relationship with most fungi tested while Coeloglossum wide, Goodyera repens and Cymbidium canaliculatum, although less frequently symbiotic, established compatible infections with many isolates. Among orchids with photo-synthetic protocorms, Epidendrum radicans was compatible with several fungi but three other species of Epidendrum together with Spathoglottis plicata and a Laeliocattleya cultivar were symbiotic only with Tulasnella calospora and certain Ceratobasidium isolates. Tulasnella calospora may be a universal orchid symbiont. Ceratobasidium cornigerum and Thanatephorus orchidicola commonly occur as root endophytes but are doubtfully symbiotic with most orchids. T. cucumeris is frequently symbiotic with Dactylorhiza purpurella but less commonly so with other orchids tested.
Atrial fibrillation ablation in heart failure patients: improved systolic function after cryoballoon pulmonary vein isolation

Atrial fibrillation (AF) and heart failure (HF) are the most common cardiac diseases and often coexist leading to increased mortality and morbidity compared with AF patients without HF. As shown previously, AF ablation using radio frequency (RF) in HF patients leads to a reduction of AF burden, an increase of left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) and consequently to reduced hospitalization and mortality. Previous AF ablation studies on HF patients have been liberal about additional targets beyond pulmonary vein isolation (PVI). Thus, the aim of this study was to assess systematically the impact of a straightforward PVI‐only strategy on LVEF, NYHA functional class, and cardiovascular hospitalization rate in HF patients.
Aggregation‐induced integrated stress response rejuvenates culture‐expanded human mesenchymal stem cells

Protein homeostasis is critical for cellular function, as loss of homeostasis is attributed to aging and the accumulation of unwanted proteins. Human mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have shown promising therapeutic potential due to their impressive abilities to secrete inflammatory modulators, angiogenic, and regenerative cytokines. However, there exists the problem of human MSC expansion with compromised therapeutic quality. Duringin vitro expansion, human MSCs are plated on stiff plastics and undergo culture adaptation, which results in aberrant proliferation, shifts in metabolism, and decreased autophagic activity. It has previously been shown that three‐dimensional (3D) aggregation can reverse some of these alterations by heightening autophagy and recovering the metabolic state back to a naïve phenotype. To further understand the proteostasis in human MSC culture, this study investigated the effects of 3D aggregation on the human MSC proteome to determine the specific pathways altered by aggregation. The 3D aggregates and 2D cultures of human MSCs derived from bone marrow (bMSC) and adipose tissue (ASC) were analyzed along with differentiated human dermal fibroblasts (FB). The proteomics analysis showed the elevated eukaryotic initiation factor 2 pathway and the upregulated activity of the integrated stress response (ISR) in 3D aggregates. Specific protein quantification further determined that bMSC and ASC responded to ISR, while FB did not. 3D aggregation significantly increased the ischemic survival of bMSCs and ASCs. Perturbation of ISR with small molecules salubrinal and GSK2606414 resulted in differential responses of bMSC, ASC, and FB. This study indicates that aggregation‐based preconditioning culture holds the potential for improving the therapeutic efficacy of expanded human MSCs via the establishment of ISR and homeostasis.
Multi-Cell Compositional LSTM for NER Domain Adaptation

Cross-domain NER is a challenging yet practical problem. Entity mentions can be highly different across domains. However, the correlations between entity types can be relatively more stable across domains. We investigate a multi-cell compositional LSTM structure for multi-task learning, modeling each entity type using a separate cell state. With the help of entity typed units, cross-domain knowledge transfer can be made in an entity type level. Theoretically, the resulting distinct feature distributions for each entity type make it more powerful for cross-domain transfer. Empirically, experiments on four few-shot and zero-shot datasets show our method significantly outperforms a series of multi-task learning methods and achieves the best results.
GIVING-UP DENSITIES AND HABITAT PREFERENCES OF EUROPEAN STARLINGS AND AMERICAN ROBINS

Abstract In a field experiment, we measured the giving-up densities and activity of co-occurring American Robins (Turdus migratorius) and European Starlings (Sturnus vulgaris). Across six distances from cover, both species had lower giving-up densities near cover (safe) than away (risky). In terms of activity, both species were more active near than away from cover. Preference for cover was more pronounced for robins. Both species foraged more in the morning than in the afternoon. This pattern was more pronounced for starlings. Relative to the background environment (mowed grass), robins favored the food patches more than starlings. For starlings and robins, respectively, it took 72.6 m2 and 382.3 m2 of background environment to generate the same feeding activity in a 1-m2 food patch filled with 210 mealworms (Tenebrio molitor). The greater degree of herbivory by starlings may explain the robins' greater affinity for food patches (invertebrates only) relative to the background environment (both invertebrates and plants). Densidades de Abandono y Preferencias de Hábitat de Turdus migratorius y Sturnus vulgaris Resumen. En un experimento de campo, medimos las densidades de abandono (i.e., “giving-up densities”) y la actividad de individuos simpátricos de Turdus migratorius y Sturnus vulgaris. A través de seis distancias a sitios cubiertos, ambas especies presentaron menores densidades de abandono cerca de sitios cubiertos (seguros) que lejos de éstos (riesgosos). En términos de actividad, ambas especies fueron más activas cerca que lejos de sitios cubiertos. La preferencia por sitios cubiertos fue más pronunciada en T. migratorius. Ambas especies forrajearon más en la mañana que en la tarde, siendo este patrón más pronunciado en S. vulgaris. Con relación al ambiente de fondo (pasto cortado), T. migratorius prefirió los parches de alimento más que S. vulgaris. Generar la misma actividad de alimentación en un parche de 1 m2 con 210 gusanos de la harina (Tenebrio molitor), tomó 72.6 m2 de ambiente de fondo para T. migratorius y 382.3 m2 para S. vulgaris. El más alto grado de herbivoría de S. vulgaris podría explicar la mayor afinidad de T. migratorius hacia parches de alimento (sólo invertebrados) con relación al ambiente de fondo (invertebrados y plantas).
A Prioritization Model for Suicidality Risk Assessment

We reframe suicide risk assessment from social media as a ranking problem whose goal is maximizing detection of severely at-risk individuals given the time available. Building on measures developed for resource-bounded document retrieval, we introduce a well founded evaluation paradigm, and demonstrate using an expert-annotated test collection that meaningful improvements over plausible cascade model baselines can be achieved using an approach that jointly ranks individuals and their social media posts.
Simple, Interpretable and Stable Method for Detecting Words with Usage Change across Corpora

The problem of comparing two bodies of text and searching for words that differ in their usage between them arises often in digital humanities and computational social science. This is commonly approached by training word embeddings on each corpus, aligning the vector spaces, and looking for words whose cosine distance in the aligned space is large. However, these methods often require extensive filtering of the vocabulary to perform well, and - as we show in this work - result in unstable, and hence less reliable, results. We propose an alternative approach that does not use vector space alignment, and instead considers the neighbors of each word. The method is simple, interpretable and stable. We demonstrate its effectiveness in 9 different setups, considering different corpus splitting criteria (age, gender and profession of tweet authors, time of tweet) and different languages (English, French and Hebrew).
Antimicrobial Activity of Essential Oils Against Five Strains of Propionibacterium acnes

The present study was conducted to evaluate the in vitro antibacterial activities of 22 essential oils from Thai medicinal plants against 5 strains of Propionibacterium acnes (P. acnes). Antibacterial activity of essential oils was investigated using disc diffusion and agar dilution methods. The results showed that 19 oils could inhibit the growth of P. acnes. According to the inhibition zone, kaffir lime leaf (Citrus hystrix DC.), lemongrass oil (Cymbopogon citratus (DC.) Stapf), clove oil (Syzygium aromaticum (L.) Merr. & Perry) and michelia oil (Michelia alba DC.) had the strongest antibacterial activity. The results form the agar dilution method showed the same trend in which lemongrass oil and citronella oil showed the lowest minimum inhibitory concentration against 5 strains bacteria at 0.125% v/v. Therefore, these two essential oils are an interesting source for further study and possibly as an alternative acne treatment. ©All right reserved.
Probing for Referential Information in Language Models

Language models keep track of complex information about the preceding context – including, e.g., syntactic relations in a sentence. We investigate whether they also capture information beneficial for resolving pronominal anaphora in English. We analyze two state of the art models with LSTM and Transformer architectures, via probe tasks and analysis on a coreference annotated corpus. The Transformer outperforms the LSTM in all analyses. Our results suggest that language models are more successful at learning grammatical constraints than they are at learning truly referential information, in the sense of capturing the fact that we use language to refer to entities in the world. However, we find traces of the latter aspect, too.
Cut-off value of FEV1/FEV6 to determine airflow limitation using handheld spirometry in subjects with risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Background/Aims Postbronchodilator forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1)/forced vital capacity (FVC) less than 0.7 using spirometry is the golden standard to diagnose airf low limitation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Recently, measuring FEV6 has been suggested as an alternative to measure FVC. Studies about the cut-off value for FEV1/FEV6 to diagnose airflow limitation have shown variable results, with values between 0.7 and 0.8. The purpose of this study was to determine the best cut-off value of FEV1/FEV6 to detect airflow limitation using handheld spirometry. Methods We recruited subjects over 40 years of age with smoking history over 10 pack-years. Participants underwent measurements with both handheld spirometry and conventional spirometry. We calculated the sensitivity and specificity of the value of FEV1/FEV6 using receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis to obtain the diagnostic accuracy of handheld spirometry to detect airflow limitation. Results A total of 290 subjects were enrolled. Their mean age and smoking amount were 63.1 years and 31.6 pack-years, respectively. According to our ROC curve analysis, when FEV1/FEV6 ratio was 73%, sensitivity and specificity were the maximum and the area under the ROC curve was 0.93, showing an excellent diagnostic accuracy. Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value were 86.7%, 89.7%, 88.0%, and 88.5%, respectively. Participants with FEV1/FEV6 ≤ 73% had lower FEV1 predicted value compared to those with FEV1/FEV6 > 73% (65.4% vs. 86.5%, p < 0.001). Conclusions In summary, we demonstrate that the value of 73% in FEV1/FEV6 using handheld spirometry has the best sensitivity and specificity to detect airflow limitation in subjects with risk of COPD.
Query Graph Generation for Answering Multi-hop Complex Questions from Knowledge Bases

Previous work on answering complex questions from knowledge bases usually separately addresses two types of complexity: questions with constraints and questions with multiple hops of relations. In this paper, we handle both types of complexity at the same time. Motivated by the observation that early incorporation of constraints into query graphs can more effectively prune the search space, we propose a modified staged query graph generation method with more flexible ways to generate query graphs. Our experiments clearly show that our method achieves the state of the art on three benchmark KBQA datasets.
Evaluation of Inflammation by Cytokine Production Following Combined Exposure to Ultraviolet and Radiofrequency Radiation of Mobile Phones on 3D Reconstructed Human Skin In Vitro

The absorption of exposure to radiofrequency (RF) emitted by wireless devices leads to a high specific absorption rate in the skin. Ultraviolet (UV) radiation can induce several damages to the skin. The aim of this study was to examine whether combined, consecutive exposure to solar UV radiation and 1950 MHz RF exposure of third generation (3G) mobile system have any effect on inflammation processes in the skin. Under in vitro experiments, the inflammation process was examined by cytokines (IL-1α, IL-6, and IL-8) and MMP-1 enzyme secretion on 3D full thickness human skin model. The RF exposure was applied before or after UV irradiation, in order to study either the possible cooperative or protective effects of exposure to RF and UV. We did not find changes in cytokines due to exposure to RF alone. The RF exposure did not enhance the effects of UV radiation. There was a statistically not-significant decrease in cytokines when the skin tissues were pre-exposed to RF before being exposed to 4 standard erythemal dose (SED) UV compared to UV exposure alone. We found that RF exposure reduced the previously UV-treated MMP-1 enzyme concentration. This study might support the evaluation of the effects on the skin exposed to microwave radiation of 5G mobile technology.
Characterizing New Wintering Sites for Monarch Butterfly Colonies in Sierra Nevada, Mexico

Every year, Danaus plexippus (Linnaeus, 1758) travels to hibernate in oyamel fir forests located between the limits of the states of Michoacán and Mexico in Mexico. Climate change and anthropogenic actions are diminishing oyamel fir forests in Mexico, putting pressure on the habitats of monarch butterflies. In the last decade, new colonies outside their usual range have been predicted through modeling and reported by the National Commission on Protected Areas of Mexico. The objectives of the study were to recover information on the historical and new hibernation sites, reported or modeled, from different literature sources. We also aimed to perform a bioclimatic and forest biometric characterization of new monarch butterfly colonies located in Sierra Nevada in Mexico to provide information to aid in conservation strategies for the monarch butterfly population. We conducted field trips to georeference the colonies at sites located in the Atlautla municipality in Mexico State. Climatic, topographic, and forest biometric variables were used to characterize the sites physically. It was found that the butterfly’s roosts occurred at a higher elevation than those recorded by other sources. The locations where the monarch’s colonies were established, in the east of Mexico State, provide information relevant to defining and developing policies for their conservation.
Effects of Chemical Modifications on the Thermoresponsive Behavior of a PDMAEA-b-PNIPAM-b-POEGA Triblock Terpolymer

In this work, the synthesis, selective chemical modifications, and self-assembly behavior in aqueous media of a novel poly(2-(dimethylamino)ethyl acrylate)20-b-poly(N-isopropylacrylamide)11-b-poly(oligo ethylene glycol methyl ether acrylate)18 (PDMAEA20-b-PNIPAM11-b-POEGA18) dual-responsive (pH and temperature) and triply hydrophilic amino-based triblock terpolymer are reported. The amine functional triblock terpolymer was synthesized by sequential reversible addition fragmentation chain transfer polymerization (RAFT) polymerization and molecularly characterized by size exclusion chromatography (SEC) and 1H-NMR spectroscopy that evidenced the success of the three-step polymerization scheme. The tertiary amine pendant groups of the PDMAEA block were chemically modified in order to produce the Q1PDMAEA20-b-PNIPAM11-b-POEGA18 as well as the Q6PDMAEA20-b-PNIPAM11-b-POEGA18 quaternized triblock terpolymers (Q1 and Q6 prefixes show the number of carbon atoms (C1 and C6) attached on the PDMAEA groups) using methyl iodide (CH3I) and 1-iodohexane (C6H13I) as the quaternizing agents and the SPDMAEA20-b-PNIPAM11-b-POEGA18 sulfobetainized triblock terpolymer using 1,3 propanesultone (C3H6O3S) as the sulfobetainization agent. The self-assembly properties of the triblock terpolymers in aqueous solutions upon varying temperature and solution pH were studied by light scattering and fluorescence spectroscopy experiments. The novel triblock terpolymers self-assemble into nanosized aggregates upon solution temperature rise above the nominal lower critical solution temperature (LCST) of the temperature-responsive PNIPAM block. The remarkable stimuli-responsive self-assembly behavior of the novel triblock terpolymers in aqueous media make them interesting candidates for biomedical applications in the fields of drug and gene delivery.
Tumor Tissue-Specific Biomarkers of Colorectal Cancer by Anatomic Location and Stage

The progress in the discovery and validation of metabolite biomarkers for the detection of colorectal cancer (CRC) has been hampered by the lack of reproducibility between study cohorts. The majority of discovery-phase biomarker studies have used patient blood samples to identify disease-related metabolites, but this pre-validation phase is confounded by non-specific disease influences on the metabolome. We therefore propose that metabolite biomarker discovery would have greater success and higher reproducibility for CRC if the discovery phase was conducted in tumor tissues, to find metabolites that have higher specificity to the metabolic consequences of the disease, that are then validated in blood samples. This would thereby eliminate any non-tumor and/or body response effects to the disease. In this study, we performed comprehensive untargeted metabolomics analyses on normal (adjacent) colon and tumor tissues from CRC patients, revealing tumor tissue-specific biomarkers (n = 39/group). We identified 28 highly discriminatory tumor tissue metabolite biomarkers of CRC by orthogonal partial least-squares discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA) and univariate analyses (VIP > 1.5, p < 0.05). A stepwise selection procedure was used to identify nine metabolites that were the most predictive of CRC with areas under the curve (AUCs) of >0.96, using various models. We further identified five biomarkers that were specific to the anatomic location of tumors in the colon (n = 236). The combination of these five metabolites (S-adenosyl-L-homocysteine, formylmethionine, fucose 1-phosphate, lactate, and phenylalanine) demonstrated high differentiative capability for left- and right-sided colon cancers at stage I by internal cross-validation (AUC = 0.804, 95% confidence interval, CI 0.670–0.940). This study thus revealed nine discriminatory biomarkers of CRC that are now poised for external validation in a future independent cohort of samples. We also discovered a discrete metabolic signature to determine the anatomic location of the tumor at the earliest stage, thus potentially providing clinicians a means to identify individuals that could be triaged for additional screening regimens.
Direct Visualization of Horizontal Gene Transfer by Transformation in Live Pneumococcal Cells Using Microfluidics

Natural genetic transformation is a programmed mechanism of horizontal gene transfer in bacteria. It requires the development of competence, a specialized physiological state during which proteins involved in DNA uptake and chromosomal integration are produced. In Streptococcus pneumoniae, competence is transient. It is controlled by a secreted peptide pheromone, the competence-stimulating peptide (CSP) that triggers the sequential transcription of two sets of genes termed early and late competence genes, respectively. Here, we used a microfluidic system with fluorescence microscopy to monitor pneumococcal competence development and transformation, in live cells at the single cell level. We present the conditions to grow this microaerophilic bacterium under continuous flow, with a similar doubling time as in batch liquid culture. We show that perfusion of CSP in the microfluidic chamber results in the same reduction of the growth rate of individual cells as observed in competent pneumococcal cultures. We also describe newly designed fluorescent reporters to distinguish the expression of competence genes with temporally distinct expression profiles. Finally, we exploit the microfluidic technology to inject both CSP and transforming DNA in the microfluidic channels and perform near real time-tracking of transformation in live cells. We show that this approach is well suited to investigating the onset of pneumococcal competence together with the appearance and the fate of transformants in individual cells.
Pain Bloc-R Alleviates Unresolved, Non-Pathological Aches and Discomfort in Healthy Adults—A Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled, Crossover Study

The lack of effective treatment for chronic discomfort without negative side effects highlights the need for alternative treatments. Pain Bloc-R is a natural health product composed of vitamins B6, B12, D, white willow bark extract, Angelica root extract, acetyl L-carnitine HCl, caffeine, L-theanine, Benfotiamine, and L-tetrahydropalmatine. The objective of this study was to compare the effects of Pain Bloc-R, acetaminophen, and placebo on unresolved aches and discomfort as assessed by the brief pain inventory (BPI) and modified Cornell musculoskeletal discomfort questionnaires. This randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study consisted of three 7-day periods with Pain Bloc-R, acetaminophen, or placebo, each separated by a 7-day washout. Twenty-seven healthy adults (ages 22–63 years) were randomized to receive the three interventions in different sequences. The BPI “pain at its worst” scores were significantly lower when participants took Pain Bloc-R than when they took acetaminophen (21.8% vs. 9.8% decrease, p = 0.026) after seven days of supplementation. Pain Bloc-R achieved a significant improvement in the “pain at its least” score, significantly decreased the interference of discomfort in walking, and significantly decreased musculoskeletal discomfort total scores (34%, p = 0.040) after seven days. In a post hoc subgroup analysis based on age and gender, male participants ≤45 years taking Pain Bloc-R reported significant reductions in pain severity and pain interference vs. acetaminophen. Pain Bloc-R performed as well as acetaminophen in managing unresolved non-pathological pain in otherwise healthy individuals.