Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The relationship between carotenoid type and skin color in the ornamental red zebra cichlid Maylandia estherae.

This study examined the effects the dietary carotenoids astaxanthin, lutein, and Spirulina had in the skin color on red zebra cichlids (Maylandia estherae Konings 1995). We found that skin color was dependent on pigment type and concentration. Astaxanthin in the diet increased the red-orange color in the skin of the red zebra cichlid while Spirulina intake increased the orange and yellow tones. Lutein imparted a light-yellow tint. The results suggest that carotenoids may play an important role in animal color polymorphism and speciation, which may help explain different empirical and theoretical perspectives on color diversity in fish. Appropriate use of a wide variety of carotenoids in the diet can bring large economic benefits to farmers as fishes with an assortment of coloration are a priority for fish enthusiasts.
SimulSpeech: End-to-End Simultaneous Speech to Text Translation

In this work, we develop SimulSpeech, an end-to-end simultaneous speech to text translation system which translates speech in source language to text in target language concurrently. SimulSpeech consists of a speech encoder, a speech segmenter and a text decoder, where 1) the segmenter builds upon the encoder and leverages a connectionist temporal classification (CTC) loss to split the input streaming speech in real time, 2) the encoder-decoder attention adopts a wait-k strategy for simultaneous translation. SimulSpeech is more challenging than previous cascaded systems (with simultaneous automatic speech recognition (ASR) and simultaneous neural machine translation (NMT)). We introduce two novel knowledge distillation methods to ensure the performance: 1) Attention-level knowledge distillation transfers the knowledge from the multiplication of the attention matrices of simultaneous NMT and ASR models to help the training of the attention mechanism in SimulSpeech; 2) Data-level knowledge distillation transfers the knowledge from the full-sentence NMT model and also reduces the complexity of data distribution to help on the optimization of SimulSpeech. Experiments on MuST-C English-Spanish and English-German spoken language translation datasets show that SimulSpeech achieves reasonable BLEU scores and lower delay compared to full-sentence end-to-end speech to text translation (without simultaneous translation), and better performance than the two-stage cascaded simultaneous translation model in terms of BLEU scores and translation delay.
In Vitro Effects of Ginseng and the Seed of Zizyphus jujuba var. spinosa on Gut Microbiota of Rats with Spleen Deficiency

Ginseng and the seed of Zizyphus jujuba var. spinosa, which are traditional Chinese medicinal materials, were often used in ancient Chinese recipes as a pair of medicines. They can replenish the primordial qi and tonify the spleen. This study investigated the effects of ginseng and the seed of Zizyphus jujuba var. spinosa (GS) extract on gut microbiota diversity in rats with spleen deficiency syndrome (SDS). A total of 52 compounds (including 16 flavonoids, 35 saponins, and 1 alkaloid) were identified and analyzed from the GS extract by UPLC‐Q‐Orbitrap‐MS/MS. The GS extract significantly increased the relative abundance of Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes in rats with SDS but decreased that of Proteobacteria and Actinobacteria. At the genus level, the GS extract significantly increased the relative abundance of Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium in rats with SDS but decreased that of Streptococcus, Escherichia‐Shigella, Veillonella, and Enterococcus. In addition, the GS extract influenced glucose and amino acid metabolism. In summary, the results showed that the GS extract changed the structure and diversity of gut microbiota in rats with SDS and balanced the metabolic process.
A NEW SPECIMEN OF TANYSTROPHEUS (REPTILIA PROTOROSAURIA) FROM THE MIDDLE TRIASSIC OF SWITZERLAND AND THE ECOLOGY OF THE GENUS

A new specimen of the protorosaurian diapsid reptile Tanystropheus is described. The specimen was collected at the Valle Serrata locality (Switzerland) and is of Ladinian (Middle Triassic) age. Its study elucidates some issues regarding the anatomy of Tanystropheus to be addressed, and allow to suggest hypotheses about its mode of life. In particular, the specimen is the first one in which the skin and other soft tissues can be described. In particular, wide patches of black phosphatic material, filled with small carbonate spherules are preserved, as it occurs in corpses lying in stagnant water due to decomposition of consistent amount of proteins. This suggests that a huge mass of flesh was present in the caudal part of the body, shifting posteriorly the center of mass of the animal and helping in balancing the weight of the neck even if raised off horizontal plane and out of water. In addition, no evidence of caudal autotomy is present in Tanystropheus and the structure of the tail and of the limbs are consistent with a shoreline habitat rather than with a fully aquatic mode of life.
Rationale and design of the EMPYREAN study

A sodium glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitor was recently found to reduce heart failure hospitalization in the EMPA‐REG OUTCOME trial. We have hypothesized that autonomic nerve activity may be modulated by SGLT2 inhibition. The current study aims to investigate the impact of empagliflozin on sympathetic and parasympathetic nerve activity in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus.
Reply to Dutheil et al.

X Jacob Frandsen, Nina Pistoljevic, Julia Prats Quesada, X Francisco José Amaro-Gahete, Steen Larsen, Flemming Dela, and Jørn W. Helge Xlab, Center for Healthy Aging, Department of Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Health, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark; Clinical Research Centre, Medical University of Bialystok, Bialystok, Poland; Department of Geriatrics, Bispebjerg University Hospital, Copenhagen, Denmark; and Department of Physiology, University of Granada, Granada, Spain
Records

In 2001, the Indian Sociological Society (ISS) and the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) jointly set up an endowment fund in memory of the late Professor M.N. Srinivas. This fund is constituted of the following: (a) donation of accumulated royalties on the five volumes of Social Structure and Change (New Delhi: Sage Publication) by its editors – A.M. Shah, B.S. Baviskar, and E.A. Ramaswamy – to ISS, amounting to Rs 165,800; (b) a grant of Rs 200,000 by ICSSR to ISS, and (c) royalties on the above five volumes to be donated by the editors to ISS from year to year in future. The income from the fund was stipulated to be used every year for two main purposes: (i) to arrange for a distinguished sociologist or social anthropologist to deliver the Professor M.N. Srinivas Memorial Lecture, and (ii) to award a young sociologist or social anthropologist the Professor M.N. Srinivas Memorial Prize for publishing the best sociological or social anthropological paper in any of the social science journals or edited volumes in English in India. To start with, the honorarium for the lecture and the prize was Rs 10,000 and Rs 1,000 respectively. In 2003, the prize money was increased to Rs 2,000.
Post-vaccination anti-HBs testing among healthcare workers: More economical than post-exposure management for Hepatitis B

Objective: to compare the direct cost, from the perspective of the Unified Health System, of assessing the post-vaccination serological status with post-exposure management for hepatitis B among health care workers exposed to biological material. Method: cross-sectional study and cost-related, based on accident data recorded in the System of Information on Disease Notification between 2006 and 2016, where three post-exposure and one pre-exposure management scenarios were evaluated: A) accidents among vaccinated workers with positive and negative serological status tests for hepatitis B, exposed to known and unknown source-person; B) handling unvaccinated workers exposed to a known and unknown source-person; C) managing vaccinated workers and unknown serological status for hepatitis B and D) cost of the pre-exposure post-vaccination test. Accidents were assessed and the direct cost was calculated using the decision tree model. Results: scenarios where workers did not have protective titles after vaccination or were unaware of the serological status and were exposed to a positive or unknown source-person for hepatitis B. Conclusion: the direct cost of hepatitis B prophylaxis, including confirmation of serological status after vaccination would be more economical for the health system.
Decellularized skeletal muscles display neurotrophic effects in three‐dimensional organotypic cultures

Skeletal muscle decellularization allows the generation of natural scaffolds that retain the extracellular matrix (ECM) mechanical integrity, biological activity, and three‐dimensional (3D) architecture of the native tissue. Recent reports showed that in vivo implantation of decellularized muscles supports muscle regeneration in volumetric muscle loss models, including nervous system and neuromuscular junctional homing. Since the nervous system plays pivotal roles during skeletal muscle regeneration and in tissue homeostasis, support of reinnervation is a crucial aspect to be considered. However, the effect of decellularized muscles on reinnervation and on neuronal axon growth has been poorly investigated. Here, we characterized residual protein composition of decellularized muscles by mass spectrometry and we show that scaffolds preserve structural proteins of the ECM of both skeletal muscle and peripheral nervous system. To investigate whether decellularized scaffolds could per se attract neural axons, organotypic sections of spinal cord were cultured three dimensionally in vitro, in presence or in absence of decellularized muscles. We found that neural axons extended from the spinal cord are attracted by the decellularized muscles and penetrate inside the scaffolds upon 3D coculture. These results demonstrate that decellularized scaffolds possess intrinsic neurotrophic properties, supporting their potential use for the treatment of clinical cases where extensive functional regeneration of the muscle is required.
Bovine leptospirosis in south Marmara region of Turkey: A serological survey

SUMMARY Serum samples obtained from 922 apparently healthy and unvaccinated cattle were used to determine the serological prevalence of bovine leptospiral infections in south Marmara region of Turkey. The sera were screened for the presence of leptospiral antibodies using four serovars of Leptospira interrogans (hardjo, grippotyphosa, pomona, and icterohaemorrhagiae) in the microscopic agglutination test (MAT) at 1/100 dilution. Thirty-one (3.4%) of the cattle examined had leptospiral antibody titres of 1/100 or higher to one or more of the test antigens. The prevalence rates of antibodies to individual serovars were hardjo (2.8%), grippotyphosa (0.4%), and pomona (0.2%). Moreover, the seroprevalence of hardjo infection increased with the age of animals. In conclusion, serovar hardjo infections were determined to be more common leptospiral infections in cattle in south Marmara region of Turkey.
Implementation of improvement cycle in health records of mobile emergency prehospital care.

OBJECTIVE to evaluate the effect of the implementation of a quality improvement cycle in the completion of occurrence forms of a Mobile Emergency Service. METHODS this is a time series, quantitative, quasi-experimental study without control group, with three quality assessments in which was used an improvement cycle for adequacy of health records in Mobile Emergency Service Patos. RESULTS in 100% of the seven criteria, there was improvement between evaluations. Noncompliance with criteria reduced from 95 cases in the first evaluation to eight cases in the third evaluation. CONCLUSIONS the representation of joint results between the three evaluations highlighted progressive improvement in the compliance with each criterion.
Prolonged maternal investment in northern bottlenose whales alters our understanding of beaked whale reproductive life history

Nursing and weaning periods are poorly understood in cetaceans due to the difficulty of assessing underwater behaviour in the wild. However, the onset and completion of weaning are critical turning points for individual development and survival, with implications for a species’ life history including reproductive potential. δ15N and δ13C deposited in odontocete teeth annuli provide a lifetime record of diet, offering an opportunity to investigate variation and trends in fundamental biology. While available reproductive parameters for beaked whales have largely been inferred from single records of stranded or hunted animals and extrapolated across species, here we examine the weaning strategy and nursing duration in northern bottlenose whales (Hyperoodon ampullatus) by measuring stable isotopes deposited in dentine growth layer groups (GLGs). Using a collection of H. ampullatus teeth taken from whales killed during the whaling era (N = 48) and from two stranded specimens, we compared ontogenetic variation of δ15N and δ13C found in annual GLGs across all individuals, by sex and by region. We detected age-based trends in both δ15N and δ13C that are consistent across regions and males and females, and indicate that nursing is prolonged and weaning does not conclude until whales are 3–4 years old, substantially later than previous estimates of 1 year. Incorporating a prolonged period of maternal care into H. ampullatus life history significantly reduces their reproductive potential, with broad implications for models of beaked whale life history, energetics and the species’ recovery from whaling.
Differences among basic biological parameters in a population of chokka squid Loligo vulgaris reynaudii (Cephalopoda: Loliginidae) sampled by three methods

A large, discrete aggregation of squid was sampled at short intervals by means of jigging, midwater trawling and purse-seining. Differences among basic biological parameters of the population (e.g. length frequency) indicate that jigging is a more selective, and therefore biased, method of sampling than midwater trawling or purse-seining. This has important consequences for stock assessments that take commercial catches into account. The selectivity curve indicates that squid of mantle lengths (ML) 28–33 cm are over-represented (in terms of the situation in the population) in fisheries conducted by jigging and that squid 34 cm ML are under-represented if purse-seine results are considered to be representative of the population.
Landscape Models to Predict the Influence of Forest Structure on Tassel-Eared Squirrel Populations

Abstract The tassel-eared squirrel (Sciurus aberti) is often used as an indicator species in southwestern ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) forests. Because of more than a century of fire suppression, grazing, and timber harvest, these forests have become increasingly prone to catastrophic wildfire, resulting in pressure to implement large-scale treatments to reduce fire threat and restore ecosystem function. However, such treatments could have dramatic effects on tassel-eared squirrels and other wildlife. Because of emerging plans for thinning southwestern forests to reduce fire threat, we undertook a modeling effort to produce spatial data to examine the results of proposed management actions on squirrel habitat. We used squirrel density and recruitment data from 9 study areas located in the Flagstaff region of northern Arizona, USA, linked with spatial data on forest structure developed from remote-sensing imagery. We used a multiscale approach to analyze relationships between forest structure and squirrel density and recruitment. We then used an information-theoretic approach to identify the most parsimonious models for both squirrel density and recruitment. The most strongly supported models of squirrel density included local-scale basal area and >60% canopy cover at the 65-ha spatial scale. For squirrel recruitment, 4 different models that included both local-scale basal area (m2/ha) and variations of canopy cover over extents of approximately 160–305 ha were strongly supported. Using the most parsimonious models, we created spatial data layers representing both squirrel density and recruitment across an 800,000-ha landscape in northern Arizona. Our approach resulted in spatially explicit models that can be used in efforts to predict the effects of forest management on squirrel populations.
The Noncanonical Pathway for In Vivo Nitric Oxide Generation: The Nitrate-Nitrite-Nitric Oxide Pathway

In contrast to nitric oxide, which has well established and important roles in the regulation of blood flow and thrombosis, neurotransmission, the normal functioning of the genitourinary system, and the inflammation response and host defense, its oxidized metabolites nitrite and nitrate have, until recently, been considered to be relatively inactive. However, this view has been radically revised over the past decade and more. Much evidence has now accumulated demonstrating that nitrite serves as a storage form of nitric oxide, releasing nitric oxide preferentially under acidic and/or hypoxic conditions but also occurring under physiologic conditions: a phenomenon that is catalyzed by a number of distinct mammalian nitrite reductases. Importantly, preclinical studies demonstrate that reduction of nitrite to nitric oxide results in a number of beneficial effects, including vasodilatation of blood vessels and lowering of blood pressure, as well as cytoprotective effects that limit the extent of damage caused by an ischemia/reperfusion insult, with this latter issue having been translated more recently to the clinical setting. In addition, research has demonstrated that the other main metabolite of the oxidation of nitric oxide (i.e., nitrate) can also be sequentially reduced through processing in vivo to nitrite and then nitrite to nitric oxide to exert a range of beneficial effects—most notably lowering of blood pressure, a phenomenon that has also been confirmed recently to be an effective method for blood pressure lowering in patients with hypertension. This review will provide a detailed description of the pathways involved in the bioactivation of both nitrate and nitrite in vivo, their functional effects in preclinical models, and their mechanisms of action, as well as a discussion of translational exploration of this pathway in diverse disease states characterized by deficiencies in bioavailable nitric oxide. Significance Statement The past 15 years has seen a major revision in our understanding of the pathways for nitric oxide synthesis in the body with the discovery of the noncanonical pathway for nitric oxide generation known as the nitrate-nitrite-nitric oxide pathway. This review describes the molecular components of this pathway, its role in physiology, potential therapeutics of targeting this pathway, and their impact in experimental models, as well as the clinical translation (past and future) and potential side effects.
Protein dephosphorylation mediates salicylic acid‐induced expression of PR‐1 genes in tobacco

Several lines of evidence suggest that salicylic acid (SA) is an endogenous signal for the activation of several plant defense responses, including the expression of genes encoding pathogenesis-related (PR) proteins such as the acidic PR-1 proteins. During recent years, studies have suggested that interaction of SA with catalase and ascorbate peroxidase leads to two signals in tobacco - elevated H2O2 levels and lipid peroxides. However, to date, relatively little is known about the molecular and biochemical mechanisms that mediate transduction beyond these signals or through other SA-effector proteins. Using protein kinase and phosphatase inhibitors, this study demonstrates that PR-1 gene induction can be mediated by dephosphorylation of serine/threonine residue(s) of two or more unidentified phosphoproteins. The protein phosphatase inhibitors, okadaic acid and calyculin A blocked SA-mediated induction of PR-1 genes, implying the involvement of a phosphoprotein downstream of SA. The protein kinase inhibitors K-252a and staurosporine induced PR-1 gene expression. PR-1 gene induction by K-252a was suppressed by okadaic acid. Surprisingly, this induction was also suppressed in NahG transgenic tobacco plants which convert SA to catechol. Moreover, K-252a stimulated production of SA and its glucoside, suggesting that another phosphoprotein acts upstream of SA. Taken together, these results suggest that there are two (or more) phosphoproteins which function in the same signal transduction pathway leading to PR-1 gene induction. The SA-inducible acidic PR-2 genes were similarly affected by the inhibitors, while the genes for actin and phenylalanine ammonia lyase were not.
Clinical outcomes among unresectable, locally advanced, and metastatic cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma patients treated with systemic therapy

Prior studies of conventional chemotherapy or epidermal growth factor receptor inhibitors for advanced (ie, locally advanced cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma [laCSCC] or metastatic [mCSCC]) cutaneous squamous cell cancer enrolled ≤ 40 patients. This retrospective, observational study assessed real‐world treatment patterns and clinical outcomes in patients with unresectable laCSCC or mCSCC using electronic health records of patients who initiated first‐line (1L) systemic treatment from 1 January 2008 to 31 December 2015, with follow‐up to 30 September 2017. The median duration of follow‐up from 1L treatment was 10.1 months (range 0.03‐67.6 months). Duration of therapy (DOT) and overall survival (OS) were assessed using Kaplan‐Meier analysis. Response rate was calculated as the proportion of patients who achieved physician‐assessed‐response. Eighty‐two patients were identified (17 laCSCC and 65 mCSCC). Median age at 1L treatment initiation was 75 years; 85% were male, 88% had an Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status of 1, and 84% had received radiotherapy. The most common 1L regimens were carboplatin + paclitaxel (27%) and cetuximab monotherapy (24%). The median 1L DOT was 4.1 months for laCSCC and 2.3 months for mCSCC. The physician‐assessed response rate for 1L therapy was 17.6% for laCSCC, and 18.5% for mCSCC. The median OS from 1L treatment initiation was 16.2 months for laCSCC, and 15.3 months for mCSCC. Only 24 patients (29%) received second‐line therapy. This is the largest retrospective data set regarding patients with advanced CSCC treated with anticancer systemic therapy prior to approval of the anti‐programmed cell death‐1 antibody, cemiplimab. Efficacy was low in both laCSCC and mCSCC. These data provide historic benchmarks for outcomes in patients with advanced CSCC prior to Food and Drug Administration approval of cemiplimab‐rwlc.
The systematics of the Hemiptera

The Order Hemiptera comprises four main clades: Sternorrhyncha, Auchenorrhyncha, Coleorrhyncha and Heteroptera. In this article the main phylogenetic hypotheses for Hemiptera and its subgroups are reviewed. Important references regarding catalogs and identification aids are provided for the major groups, making emphasis in recent online tools.