Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Intracellular transport and pathways of carbon flow in plants with crassulacean acid metabolism.

The massive daily reciprocal transfer of carbon between acids and carbohydrates that is unique to crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM) involves extensive and regulated transport of metabolites between chloroplasts, vacuoles, the cytosol and mitochondria. In this review of the CAM pathways of carbon flow and intracellular transport, we highlight what is known and what has been postulated. For three of the four CAM pathway variants currently known (malic enzyme- or PEP carboxykinase-type decarboxylase, and starch- or soluble sugar-type carbohydrate storage), the mechanisms of intracellular transport are still hypothetical and have yet to be demonstrated experimentally. Even in malic enzyme starch-storing species such as Kalanchoë daigremontiana Hamet et Perr. and Mesembryanthemum crystallinum L. , the best-described variants of plants with the second-most common mode of photosynthetic carbon metabolism known, no tonoplast or mitochondrial transporter has been functionally described at a molecular level.
On Proximity and Structural Role-based Embeddings in Networks

Structural roles define sets of structurally similar nodes that are more similar to nodes inside the set than outside, whereas communities define sets of nodes with more connections inside the set than outside. Roles based on structural similarity and communities based on proximity are fundamentally different but important complementary notions. Recently, the notion of structural roles has become increasingly important and has gained a lot of attention due to the proliferation of work on learning representations (node/edge embeddings) from graphs that preserve the notion of roles. Unfortunately, recent work has sometimes confused the notion of structural roles and communities (based on proximity) leading to misleading or incorrect claims about the capabilities of network embedding methods. As such, this article seeks to clarify the misconceptions and key differences between structural roles and communities, and formalize the general mechanisms (e.g., random walks and feature diffusion) that give rise to community- or role-based structural embeddings. We theoretically prove that embedding methods based on these mechanisms result in either community- or role-based structural embeddings. These mechanisms are typically easy to identify and can help researchers quickly determine whether a method preserves community- or role-based embeddings. Furthermore, they also serve as a basis for developing new and improved methods for community- or role-based structural embeddings. Finally, we analyze and discuss applications and data characteristics where community- or role-based embeddings are most appropriate.
Capturing the differences in perceiving service quality of metro passengers of Madrid

Transit service quality can be measured by using passengers’ perceptions about the services, through the well-known Customer Satisfaction Surveys. Defining and measuring transit service quality is still quite complex because service quality depends on several different aspects characterizing the service. The aim of this work is to verify the suitability of a particular and not common kind of survey performed for assessing the service quality levels of the metro system of Madrid (Spain), and characterized by the subdivision of a list of service attributes among sub-samples of users, in order to save time and fatigue in compiling the questionnaire. For achieving our objective, we calibrated Ordered Probit models from which we obtained the coefficients associated to each service attribute representing the importance of each aspect on the overall satisfaction; then, we made some comparisons among the models that were useful to establish the suitability of the survey.
FOOD, FEEDING HABITS AND TERRITORY OF THE ROCK PIPIT ANTHUS SPINOLETTA.

Summary. 1 This paper describes the food and ecology of a few Rock Pipits, mainly in Cornwall in winter. 2 Rock Pipits prefer exposed to sheltered coasts. Their average density in favourable habitats was ca. 8 pairs per mile of coast. 3 Rock Pipits fed chiefly on the shore in winter and just inland in summer. 4 Rock Pipits fed more intently in mid-winter than in spring and autumn; and, at any one season, most intently when food was scarce. Also, they fed more intently in the afternoon than in the morning in mid-winter (correlated with the long winter nights), and vice versa in spring and autumn. Whenever food was scarce they fed hard all day. 5 There were four common littoral foods in winter:the periwinkle Littorina neritoides, chironomid midge larvae, dipteran larvae (Coelopa spp.), and isopods (Idotea spp.). Amphipod hoppers (Talitridae) were sometimes an important food in late summer. The availability of these foods and the predation of the Rock Pipit upon them are described; rates of feeding and defaecation were measured. 6 The total food consumption of one Rock Pipit was estimated for a number of days in December, 1950 and 1951. The dry weight of food eaten daily averaged ca. 26 gms. when periwinkles, and ca. 12-5 gms. when chironomid larvae were the main food. The dry weights of organic material consumed daily were ca. 6 gms. (calorific value 30 Calories) in December 1950 and ca. 4 gms. in December 1951. When periwinkles were the main food the bird digested only 40% of the organic intake; hence its energy intake was ca. 12 Cals. daily. These results are compared with similar data for three other bird species. 7 No other bird species seriously competed with the Rock Pipit for food. 8 Intra- and inter-specific fighting (chiefly for food), and the Rock Pipit's response to predators are described. 9 Rock Pipits are intensely territorial; they defend individual territories in winter. The possible functions of territory are discussed:winter territories are primarily concerned with food. 10 Conclusions: (i) since winter territories were just, but only just, big enough to provide sufficient food, their size was probably determined by their food resources; (ii) since Rock Pipits were sometimes apparently short of food and competed for it in winter, food shortage could limit their density.
Breaking Secure Pairing of Bluetooth Low Energy Using Downgrade Attacks

To defeat security threats such as man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) 4.2 and 5.x introduced a Secure Connections Only (SCO) mode, under which a BLE device can only accept secure pairing such as Passkey Entry and Numeric Comparison from an initiator, e.g., an Android mobile. However, the BLE specification does not require the SCO mode for the initiator, and does not specify how the BLE programming framework should implement this mode. In this paper we show that the BLE programming framework of the initiator must properly handle SCO initiation, status management, error handling, and bond management; otherwise severe flaws can be exploited to perform downgrade attacks, forcing the BLE pairing protocols to run in an insecure mode without user’s awareness. To validate our findings, we have tested 18 popular BLE commercial products with 5 Android phones. Our experimental results proved that MITM attacks (caused by downgrading) are possible to all these products. More importantly, due to such system flaws from the BLE programming framework, all BLE apps in Android are subject to our downgrade attacks. To defend against our attacks, we have built a prototype for the SCO mode on Android 8 atop Android Open Source Project (AOSP). Finally, in addition to Android, we also find all major OSes including iOS, macOS, Windows, and Linux do not support the SCO mode properly. We have reported the identified BLE pairing vulnerabilities to Bluetooth Special Interest Group, Google, Apple, Texas Instruments, and Microsoft.
Assessing the oncolytic potential of rotavirus on mouse myeloma cell line Sp2/0-Ag14

Abstract Introduction: Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States, surpassed only by cardiovascular disease. However, cancer has now overtaken cardiovascular disease as the main cause of death in 12 countries in Western Europe. The burden of cancer is posing a major challenge to health care systems worldwide and demanding improvements in methods for cancer prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. Alternative and complementary strategies for orthodox surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy need to be developed. Objective: To determine the oncolytic potential of tumor cell-adapted rotavirus in terms of their ability to infect and lysate murine myeloma Sp2/0-Ag14 cells. Materials and methods: We inoculated rotaviruses Wt1-5, WWM, TRUYO, ECwt-O, and WTEW in Sp2/0-Ag14 cells and we examined their infectious effects by immunocytochemistry, immunofluorescence, flow cytometry, and DNA fragmentation assays. Results: Rotavirus infection involved the participation of some heat shock proteins, of protein disulfide isomerase (PDI), and integrin β3. We detected the accumulation of viral antigens within the virus-inoculated cells and in the culture medium in all the rotavirus isolates examined. The rotavirus-induced cell death mechanism in Sp2/0-Ag14 cells involved changes in cell membrane permeability, chromatin condensation, and DNA fragmentation, which were compatible with cytotoxicity and apoptosis. Conclusions: The ability of the rotavirus isolates Wt1-5, WWM, TRUYO, ECwt-O, and WTEW to infect and cause cell death of Sp2/0-Ag14 cells through mechanisms that are compatible with virus-induced apoptosis makes them potential candidates as oncolytic agents.
2 Development of the Prion Concept

The prion concept developed in the aftermath of many unsuccessful attempts to decipher the nature of the scrapie agent (Prusiner 1998). In some respects, the early development of the prion concept mirrors the story of DNA (Avery et al. 1944; Stanley 1970; McCarty 1985). Prior to the acceptance of DNA as the genetic material (Hershey and Chase 1952; Watson and Crick 1953), many scientists asserted that the DNA preparations were contaminated with protein, the true genetic material (Mirsky and Pollister 1946). For more than half a century, many biologists had thought that genes were made of protein and that proteins were reproduced as replicas of themselves (Haurowitz 1950; Stanley 1935). The prejudices of these scientists were similar in some ways to those of investigators who have disputed the prion concept. However, the scientists who attacked the hypothesis that genes are composed of DNA had no well-proven alternative; they had only a set of feelings derived from poorly substantiated data sets that genes are made of protein. In contrast, those who attacked the hypothesis that the prion is composed only of protein had more than 30 years of cumulative evidence showing that genetic information in all organisms on our planet is encoded in DNA. Studies of viruses and eventually viroids extended this concept to these small infectious pathogens (Diener 1979) and showed that genes could also be composed of RNA (Fraenkel-Conrat and Williams 1955; Gierer and Schramm 1956). It is with this background that investigators working on scrapie began to unravel.
Foreign body giant cells in the foreign body reaction to implanted biomaterials, a systematic review

Foreign body giant cells (FBGC) are important cells in the foreign body response (FBR), as they are known to be able to degenerate biomaterials, by oxidation, hydrolysis and MMP secretion. It remains difficult to discriminate between FBGC and other giant cells such as osteoclasts, therefore several established markers will be discussed. Also several targets for the inhibition of FBGC will be discussed as this migth prove to become clinically relevant in order to suppress biomaterial degeneration by FBGC. The reaction of FBGC to several different biomaterials will be discussed as well as there are no reviews discussing this elaborately. Also the comparison of FBGC to mononuclear macrophages was made. The review concludes that FBGC formation varies between different species of animals, different biomaterials, different compositions of the same biomaterial, different surfaces of the biomaterial, as well as different sites of implantation of the biomaterial. Contreversial results have been found with regard to differences between FBGC and mononuclear macrophages with regard to phagocytosis and the secretion of degerative enzymes. However in gerenal mononuclear macrophages seem to display phagocytosis whereas FBGC are found to surround the biomaterial. FBGC were found to be able to secrete degenerative enzymes, cytokines, chemokines, ECM, and angiogenic mediators.
Lower back pain at workplace: prevalence and risk factors

Objective — analysis of lower back pain (LBP) prevalence and risk factors for its development in employees with different conditions at their workplace, depending on their age, length of service, occupational factors, and physical activity. Material and Methods — As a result of a simultaneous cross-sectional study, 3300 employees with different conditions at their workplace were examined. To study the relationships between LBP prevalence and risk factors, we used the results of employees’ survey and physical examination, along with the data on their physical activity and working conditions. Results — The workplace posture was the most common production-related risk factor for developing LBP. The second most common risk factor was the weight of the load being lifted and carried, followed by general vibration at a workplace. The least significant factor was a bending motion. According to our data, LBP prevalence in all observation groups was increasing with both age and length of employment. Over 50% of those working in hazardous conditions at the age of 50 yo and higher had LBP. Low physical activity at a workplace led to a statistically significant increase in the chances of LBP emergence. Conclusion — In employees without exposure to harmful risk factors in the form of physical exertion and general vibration, the prevalence of LBP was significantly lower than in workers in harmful working conditions. The combined effect of static and dynamic physical activities at a workplace had a more pronounced negative impact on workers’ health. Low physical activity was a significant risk factor for LBP development.
The Development of the French Version of the Psychological Sense of School Membership (PSSM) Questionnaire: An Analysis of its Structure, Properties and Potential for Research with at-risk Students

Introduction. As it plays an important role in students' adjustment, and positively impacts their motivation and academic success, school belonging seems to be a pivotal determinant of the overall quality of a school experience. However, measuring such a belonging and estimating its contribution to the overall quality of school adjustment remain a challenge for the scientific community. Method. Thus, the French version of the Psychological Sense of School Membership (PSSM) questionnaire was tested to determine its latent structure, validity, and capacity to predict dropout among at-risk students. In Study 1, the French version of the PSSM scale was thoroughly analyzed for validity while performing exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and multigroup confirmatory factor analysis on self-reported data provided by a sample of high school students. In study 2, answers of a particular sample of at-risk students were carefully analyzed with ANOVAS to determine the potential of the PSSM to predict high school dropout. Results. The exploratory factor analysis and the confirmatory factor analysis revealed four predominant dimensions: (1) teacher-student relationships; (2) peers' relationships; (3) sense of acceptance; and (4) sense of attachment, while the multigroup confirmatory factor analysis revealed the PSSM to be partially invariant with regards to the gender of the participants. In Study 2, we found that the PSSM can be used as a tool to help identify students who are at risk of dropping out of school. Conclusion. Strategies to develop students' school belonging are discussed.
Analysing data with repeated observations on each experimental unit

Summary Split-plot (or split-block) analyses are commonly applied to experimental results where several successive observations of the same variable have been recorded on each experimental unit. The assumptions required for such analyses receive scant attention and it often seems unlikely that these assumptions would be satisfied in experimental situations. Five sets of results are presented to support this proposition. An alternative analytical approach is suggested in which contrasts over time are analysed; such a method is always valid, computationally simple, and readily interpretable, and may also be used to gauge the validity of the split-plot analysis.
The Impact of Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) on Awareness of Reading Strategies

The purpose of the current study was to examine the impact of Rapid Visual Presentation (RSVP) technology on English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners' awareness of reading strategies. Sixtysix EFL students participated in the study and received instructions for boosting their reading via Reading Trainer Application for twelve weeks. Their entry-level of reading strategies awareness was assessed by Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory (MARSI-R) prior to and after the study. At the outset, a modest number of participants felt slightly tension the grounds that they had scarcely been exposed to any language learning applications on smartphones. The result of the study attested that the participants' reading strategies awareness generally improved after the experiment. Further analysis postulated that the awareness of all three categories of MARSI-R, that is, global reading strategies (GRS), support reading strategies (SRS), and problem-solving strategies (PSS) were significantly enhanced after the intervention. To assess the magnitude of the intervention's effect, the effect sizes were calculated, and the values of the eta squared indicated a substantial effect for improving MARSI-R in general (eta squared=0.42> 0.14). It was also revealed that the effect sizes for categories of MARSI-R were 0.35 for GRS, 0.13 for PSS and 0.43 for SRS respectively, suggesting a more substantial effect for the intervention to improve SRS at the end of the experiment.
Fibrosis and Inflammatory Markers and Long-Term Risk of Peripheral Artery Disease

Supplemental Digital Content is available in the text. Objective: Inflammatory markers, such as hs-CRP (high-sensitivity C-reactive protein), have been reported to be related to peripheral artery disease (PAD). Galectin-3, a biomarker of fibrosis, has been linked to vascular remodeling and atherogenesis. However, its prospective association with incident PAD is unknown; as is the influence of inflammation on the association between galectin-3 and PAD. Approach and Results: In 9851 Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study participants free of PAD at baseline (1996–1998), we quantified the association of galactin-3 and hs-CRP with incident PAD (hospitalizations with PAD diagnosis [International Classification of Diseases-Ninth Revision: 440.2–440.4] or leg revascularization [eg, International Classification of Diseases-Ninth Revision: 38.18]) as well as its severe form, critical limb ischemia (PAD cases with resting pain, ulcer, gangrene, or leg amputation) using Cox models. Over a median follow-up of 17.4 years, there were 316 cases of PAD including 119 critical limb ischemia cases. Log-transformed galectin-3 was associated with incident PAD (adjusted hazard ratio, 1.17 [1.05–1.31] per 1 SD increment) and critical limb ischemia (1.25 [1.05–1.49] per 1 SD increment). The association was slightly attenuated after further adjusting for hs-CRP (1.14 [1.02–1.27] and 1.22 [1.02–1.45], respectively). Log-transformed hs-CRP demonstrated robust associations with PAD and critical limb ischemia even after adjusting for galectin-3 (adjusted hazard ratio per 1 SD increment 1.34 [1.18–1.52] and 1.34 [1.09–1.65], respectively). The addition of galectin-3 and hs-CRP to traditional atherosclerotic predictors (C statistic of the base model 0.843 [0.815–0.871]) improved the risk prediction of PAD (ΔC statistics, 0.011 [0.002–0.020]). Conclusions: Galectin-3 and hs-CRP were independently associated with incident PAD in the general population, supporting the involvement of fibrosis and inflammation in the pathophysiology of PAD.
Evidence of Direct, Indirect, and Interactive Effects

Behavioral genetic research has revealed that biogenic factors play a role in the development of antisocial behaviors. Much of this research has also explicated the way in which the environment and genes may combine to create different phenotypes. The authors draw heavily from this literature and use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to examine genetic and environmental effects on adolescent delinquent involvement. The results of the multivariate models reveal that genetic factors have a direct effect on youthful misconduct. Most important, however, is that genetic factors interact with delinquent peers and with low self-control to predict variation in delinquency. Analysis of the Add Health data also provide evidence suggesting that there is a shared genetic pathway to delinquent involvement, to antisocial peer group formation, and to the development of low self-control.
River Food Chains Lead to Riparian Bats and Birds in Two Mid‐Order Rivers

River regulation can modify natural flow regimes with deleterious effects on aquatic communities. While the effects of flow manipulation on the physical environment and populations and assemblages of aquatic organisms have been described thoroughly, how and to what extent river regulation influences ecosystem processes like food web architecture is less studied. Emergent aquatic insect prey can provide an important food resource to riparian consumers like birds and bats with concomitant consequences for nutrient cycling through aquatic–terrestrial food webs, thus potentially increasing the spatial influence of river regulation into the riparian zone and beyond. We used naturally abundant stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen to compare food web architecture (trophic position and reliance on an aquatic nutritional pathway) leading to birds and bats between a regulated river, the Tuolumne River downstream of Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, and an adjacent unregulated river, the Merced River, located in Yosemite National Park on the west slope of the Sierra Nevada, California, USA. We found that both birds and bats derived >50% of their nutrition from food webs originating in photosynthesis by algae. In addition, birds and bats occupied a similar trophic position to predatory fish in other systems. Both birds and bats seemed to rely more strongly on an aquatic nutritional pathway during the dryer year of our study period, underscoring the potential importance of emergent aquatic prey as a water subsidy in dry systems and in dry years. In the Tuolumne River, reservoir managers strive to simulate characteristics of the natural flow regime, including seasonal scouring flows and prolonged floodplain inundation. Although we found no conclusive evidence of an effect of river regulation on food web responses, our study suggests that nutrient cycling through aquatic–terrestrial food webs expands the potential influence of river regulation to organisms and ecosystems typically characterized as terrestrial.