Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Synergistic Degradation of Pyrethroids by the Quorum Sensing-Regulated Carboxylesterase of Bacillus subtilis BSF01

The well-studied quorum sensing (QS) mechanism has established a complex knowledge system of how microorganisms behave collectively in natural ecosystems, which contributes to bridging the gap between the ecological functions of microbial communities and the molecular mechanisms of cell-to-cell communication. In particular, the ability of agrochemical degradation has been one most attractive potential of functional bacteria, but the interaction and mutual effects of intracellular degradation and intraspecific behavior remained unclear. In this study, we establish a connection between QS regulation and biodegradation by harnessing the previously isolated Bacillus subtilis BSF01 as a template which degrades various pyrethroids. First, we characterize the genetic and transcriptional basis of comA-involved QS system in B. subtilis BSF01 since the ComQXPA circuit coordinates group behaviors in B. subtilis isolates. Second, the genetic and transcriptional details of pyrethroid-degrading carboxylesterase CesB are defined, and its catalytic capacity is evaluated under different conditions. More importantly, we adopt DNA pull-down and yeast one-hybrid techniques to reveal that the enzymatic degradation of pyrethroids is initiated through QS signal regulator ComA binding to carboxylesterase gene cesB, highlighting the synergistic effect of QS regulation and pyrethroid degradation in B. subtilis BSF01. Taken together, the elucidated mechanism provides novel details on the intercellular response of functional bacteria against xenobiotic exposure, which opens up possibilities to facilitate the in-situ contaminant bioremediation via combining the QS-mediated strategies.
The benefits of transfers in crowdsourced pickup-and-delivery systems

Rapid urban growth, the increasing importance of e-commerce and high consumer service expectations have given rise to new and innovative models for freight delivery within urban environments. Crowdsourced solutions – where drivers are not employed by a carrier but occasionally offer their services through on-line platforms and are contracted as required by carriers – are receiving growing attention from industry. We consider a crowdsourced system where drivers express their availability to perform delivery tasks for a given period of time and the platform communicates a schedule with requests to serve. We investigate the potential benefits of introducing transfers to support driver activities. At transfer locations, drivers can drop off packages for pick up by other drivers at a later time. We frame the problem as a Multi-Depot Pickup and Delivery Problem with Time Windows and Transfers, and propose an Adaptive Large Neighborhood Search algorithm that effectively identifies beneficial transfer opportunities and synchronizes driver operations. Computational experiments indicate that introducing transfer options can significantly reduce system-wide travel distance as well as the number of drivers required to serve a given set of requests, especially when drivers have short availability and requests have high service requirements.
Privacy-Preserving Cloud Auditing for Multiple Users Scheme With Authorization and Traceability

With the widespread application of cloud storage, users could obtain many conveniences such as low-price data remote storage and flexible data sharing. Considering cloud service provider (CSP) is not full-trusted, lots of cloud auditing schemes are proposed to ensure the shared data security and integrity. However, existing cloud auditing schemes have some security risks, such as user identity disclosure, denial of service attack and single-manager abuse of power. To solve the above issues, we use certificateless signature technology to construct a privacy-preserving cloud auditing scheme for multiple users with authorization and traceability in this paper. Unlike the traditional schemes, our scheme realizes user identity anonymity without group signature and ring signature techniques, which guarantees the tag is compact. Meanwhile, our scheme supports that at least $d$ managers could trace the identity of malicious user collaboratively, which avoids the abuse of single-manager power and provides non-frameability. Furthermore, we introduce an identity authentication process between the third-party auditor (TPA) and the CSP to prevent the denial of service attack. That is, our scheme could solve the problem that anyone can challenge the CSP for the proofs, which averts network congestion and waste of cloud resources. In terms of function, the proposed scheme also supports efficient user revocation from a group. Certificateless cryptography ensures that our scheme does not involve certificate management burden and the key escrow problem. The security analysis shows that our scheme is provably secure against two types of adversaries in the environment of certificateless cryptography. The performance analysis demonstrates that our scheme is efficient
Calcium binding protein Ncs1 is calcineurin-regulated in Cryptococcus neoformans and essential for cell division and virulence

Intracellular calcium (Ca2+) is crucial for signal transduction in Cryptococcus neoformans, the major cause of fatal fungal meningitis. The calcineurin pathway is the only Ca2+-requiring signalling cascade implicated in cryptococcal stress adaptation and virulence, with Ca2+-binding mediated by the EF-hand domains of the Ca2+ sensor protein calmodulin. In this study, we identified the cryptococcal ortholog of neuronal calcium sensor-1 (Ncs1) as a member of the EF-hand superfamily. We demonstrated that Ncs1 has a role in Ca2+ homeostasis under stress and non-stress conditions, as the ncs1Δ mutant is sensitive to a high Ca2+ concentration and has an elevated basal Ca2+ level that correlates with increased expression of the Ca2+ transporter genes, CCH1 and MID1. Furthermore, NCS1 expression is induced by Ca2+, with the Ncs1 protein adopting a punctate subcellular distribution. We also demonstrate that, in contrast to Saccharomyces cerevisiae, NCS1 expression in C. neoformans is regulated by the calcineurin pathway via the transcription factor Crz1, as NCS1 expression is reduced by FK506 treatment and CRZ1 deletion. Moreover, the ncs1Δ mutant shares a high temperature and high Ca2+ sensitivity phenotype with the calcineurin and calmodulin mutants (cna1Δ and cam1Δ) and the NCS1 promoter contains two calcineurin/Crz1-dependent response elements (CDRE1). Ncs1-deficency coincided with reduced growth, characterized by delayed bud emergence and aberrant cell division, and hypovirulence in a mouse infection model. In summary, our data shows that Ncs1 plays distinct roles in Ca2+ sensing in C. neoformans despite widespread functional conservation of Ncs1 and other regulators of Ca2+ homeostasis. Importance Cryptococcus neoformans is the major cause of fungal meningitis in HIV infected patients. Several studies have highlighted the important contribution of Ca2+ signalling and homeostasis to the virulence of C. neoformans. Here, we identify the cryptococcal ortholog of neuronal calcium sensor-1 (Ncs1) and demonstrate its role in Ca2+ homeostasis, bud emergence, cell cycle progression and virulence. We also show that Ncs1 function is regulated by the calcineurin/Crz1 signalling cascade. Our work provides evidence of a link between Ca2+ homeostasis and cell cycle progression in C. neoformans.
A Junctionless Accumulation Mode NC-FinFET Gate Underlap Design for Improved Stability and Self-Heating Reduction

A novel metal ferroelectric insulator semiconductor (MFIS) -type junctionless accumulation mode (JAM) negative capacitance (NC)-FinFET with reduced self-heating is proposed for the low-power Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications at 7-nm technology node. Using 3-D TCAD simulations, we have varied the gate to source/drain junction overlap length, which shows that increased junction overlap offers reduced gate-induced drain leakage (GIDL) in NC-FinFET. We then show that the proposed JAM NC-FinFET provides superior ON -state current (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${I}_{\text{ON}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>) to OFF -state current (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${I}_{\text{OFF}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>) ratio with and without the self-heating effect (SHE). It also gives stable peak transconductance (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${g}_{\text {m}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>) with and without SHE consideration due to reduced lattice temperature (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${T}_{\text {I}} = 321$ </tex-math></inline-formula> K). A better capacitance matching due to the presence of depletion capacitance (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${C}_{\text {dep}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>) is also observed, thereby resulting in low-hysteresis NC-FinFET design. The impact of gate metal work function variation on the hysteresis behavior of NC and JAM-NC-FinFET is also reported in this article. Furthermore, we show that the proposed JAM-NC-FinFET offers superior transconductance generation factor (TGF) in comparison with conventional NC-FinFET in the subthreshold region, making it a potential candidate for low-power applications.
Population dynamics and natural enemies of aphids on winter wheat in Peshawar, Pakistan.

Studies on population dynamics of aphids on wheat varieties Bakhtawar, Saleem 2000, Uqab and Pir Sabaque-85 and their natural enemies were carried out at Malakandher Research Farm, Peshawar. Aphid infestation started during the last week of December, remained low during January with a peak in the 1 st week of March. Comparatively higher population of aphids and their natural enemies was observed on variety Pir Sabaque-85. Two species of coccinellids and two of hymenopterous parasitoids appeared in the mid February whereas Syrphid fly and Chrysoperla were observed during 1 st week of March. The peak population density of coocinellids was observed in the 4 th week of March, Syrphid fly in 3 rd week of March, Chrysoperla in the 2 nd week of April and hymenopterous parasitoids in the 3 rd week of March. Variety Pir Sabaque-85 appeared to harbour higher number of natural enemies
Moved to Action: Motivation, Participation, and Inequality in American Politics

Part of the difficulty in mitigating gender issues lies in the complexity that scholars face when connecting social, cultural, and historical specificity to universal global structures and processes. This collection of essays examines the dialectics between gender and violence specifically in reference to the globalizing social, political, and economic forces of the last twenty years. Through an emphasis on intersectionality and interdisciplinarity, the collection aims to bridge the particular with the universal by revealing the inherent connections between global processes and violence against women. The preface by Charlotte Bunch, and the introduction by Sanja Bahun-Radunović and V.G. Julie Rajan highlight the advancements made in both policy and research regarding violence against women, but emphasize the challenges that remain in both identifying the particulars of violence and their relation to broader social processes. The remaining four parts of the collection take up the major components of this issue. In Part I, ‘‘Revealing the Gaps,’’ essays on indigenous voices in Nicaragua and Kenya, faith-rights feminists in Malaysia, and the effects of micro-credit in India reveal how existing theory is limited in its ability to address fully the issue of violence against women, and encourage feminists to reach beyond the confines of gender theory. Part II, ‘‘Enclosures and Exposures,’’ examines the role of gender and violence in postconflict spaces. In particular, Svetlana Slapšak’s piece on the former Yugoslavia is useful in understanding how conflict affects representations of women. In Part III, ‘‘Bordered Subjectivities, Global Connections,’’ misogyny, trafficking, and race are explored through the context of spatial marginalization and political borders in the United States, Europe, and South Korea. Lastly, Part IV, ‘‘Aesthetics and Gendered Transformations,’’ discusses the potential for artistic representations simultaneously to bring attention to violence against women and change perspectives on the feminine. This collection of essays negotiates issues of gender diversity and universality, and is a useful resource for anyone interested in understanding how the forces of globalization and the discourses of gender and violence are mutually constituted.
Stem Parrots (Aves, Halcyornithidae) from the Green River Formation and a Combined Phylogeny of Pan-Psittaciformes

Abstract A new species of stem parrot is reported from the early Eocene Fossil Butte Member of the Green River Formation. Well-preserved specimens including a complete skeleton and referred partial postcranial skeleton reveal new osteological details of the clade Halcyornithidae and expand the known diversity of the Green River avifauna. Cyrilavis colburnorum n. sp. shares key morphologies with the smaller Green River halcyornithid Cyrilavis olsoni. A combined phylogenetic analysis of Pan-Psittaciformes using 101 morphological characters and sequence data from three genes (RAG-1, Z-chromosomal spindlin and cytochrome b) supports the placement of 1) Halcyornithidae, 2) a small clade uniting the Messel fossil taxon Psittacopes lepidus and an unnamed London Clay species, and 3) Quercypsittidae on branches successively closer to the crown clade Psittaciformes. Analysis of the morphological dataset alone yields a similar strict consensus tree with slightly less resolution (one additional branch collapsed). Relationships within the crown clade agree well with recent hypotheses in supporting a basal divergence between the New Zealand Nestoridae and all other extant parrots, and a second major divergence between Cacatuidae and Psittacidae. When fossils are taken into account, many previously proposed synapomorphies of extant parrots are instead optimized as synapomorphies of more inclusive groups including both stem fossil taxa and living taxa. Fossil evidence is consistent with a more recent origin of crown clade Psittaciformes than predicted from divergence dating analyses, and supports environmental shifts and dispersal as key drivers in parrot biogeography.
Learning Dynamic Spatio-Temporal Relations for Human Activity Recognition

Human activity, which usually consists of several actions (sub-activities), generally covers interactions among persons and/or objects. In particular, human actions involve certain spatial and temporal relationships, are the components of more complicated activity, and evolve dynamically over time. Therefore, the description of a single human action and the modeling of the evolution of successive human actions are two major issues in human activity recognition. In this paper, we develop a method for human activity recognition that tackles these two issues. In the proposed method, an activity is divided into several successive actions represented by spatio–temporal patterns, and the evolution of these actions are captured by a sequential model. A refined comprehensive spatio–temporal graph is utilized to represent a single action, which is a qualitative representation of a human action incorporating both the spatial and temporal relations of the participant objects. Next, a discrete hidden Markov model is applied to model the evolution of action sequences. Moreover, a fully automatic partition method is proposed to divide a long-term human activity video into several human actions based on variational objects and qualitative spatial relations. Finally, a hierarchical decomposition of the human body is introduced to obtain a discriminative representation for a single action. Experimental results on the Cornell Activity Dataset demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed approach, which will enable long videos of human activity to be better recognized.
High Resolution Viewscape Modeling Evaluated Through Immersive Virtual Environments

Visual characteristics of urban environments influence human perception and behavior, including choices for living, recreation and modes of transportation. Although geospatial visualizations hold great potential to better inform urban planning and design, computational methods are lacking to realistically measure and model urban and parkland viewscapes at sufficiently fine-scale resolution. In this study, we develop and evaluate an integrative approach to measuring and modeling fine-scale viewscape characteristics of a mixed-use urban environment, a city park. Our viewscape approach improves the integration of geospatial and perception elicitation techniques by combining high-resolution lidar-based digital surface models, visual obstruction, and photorealistic immersive virtual environments (IVEs). We assessed the realism of our viewscape models by comparing metrics of viewscape composition and configuration to human subject evaluations of IVEs across multiple landscape settings. We found strongly significant correlations between viewscape metrics and participants’ perceptions of viewscape openness and naturalness, and moderately strong correlations with landscape complexity. These results suggest that lidar-enhanced viewscape models can adequately represent visual characteristics of fine-scale urban environments. Findings also indicate the existence of relationships between human perception and landscape pattern. Our approach allows urban planners and designers to model and virtually evaluate high-resolution viewscapes of urban parks and natural landscapes with fine-scale details never before demonstrated.
Correlation between Body Mass Index and Lipid Profile in a Diabetic population of Central Nepal

Background: Diabetes is an important public health problem as global prevalence of diabetes has nearly doubled reflecting an increase in risk factors like overweight or obesity and dyslipidemia. Both obesity and dyslipidemia share a common pathogenesis associated with “insulin resistance”. Thus the aim of this study is to find out correlation between BMI and lipid profile in type 2 diabetics. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 136 type 2 diabetes patients visiting the Diabetes Clinic of College of Medical Sciences, Bharatpur, Nepal during Jan-Dec 2017 and who went through lipid profile testing. The informations were taken from hospital records. To find the significant association between categorical variables chi-square test was used. P-value less than 0.05 were considered as statistically significant. To find the association between continuous variables correlation was used. Results: Out of 136 diabetic patients 77.2% of patients were either overweight or obese. 92.6% of patients had dyslipidemia. Among which 58.1% had high TG levels, 56.6% had high LDL levels, 34.6% had high TC levels and 44.9% had low HDL levels. The overall mean ± SD of age was 54.54±12.03 years and of BMI was 28.54±4.57. Positive correlation was seen between BMI with LDL levels and negative correlation with HDL levels. The correlation with other lipid profile parameters were negative. These correlations were found to be statistically not significant. But statistically significant association was seen between gender with weight, total cholesterol and HDL levels. Conclusions: Obesity and dyslipidemia were highly prevalent. As BMI increases LDL levels increases and HDL levels decreases. Also increased weight and abnormal lipid levels of total cholesterol and HDL were found significantly higher among females than males. Keywords: body mass index; lipid profile; type 2 diabetes; HDL; LDL.
Stoichiometric and growth responses of a freshwater filamentous green alga to varying nutrient supplies: slow and steady wins the race

Summary We examined how the nutrient stoichiometry of the filamentous green alga, Mougeotia sp. , is affected by the relative availability of dissolved nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P). Using a bioassay experiment, we grew Mougeotia in medium having a range of dissolved N and P concentrations and N:P ratios (0.62 to 411 by mol). After growing Mougeotia in an environmental chamber for 17 days, we measured its carbon (C), N and P content (% of dry mass), molar C:N:P ratios, mass-specific growth rate (MSGR, day−1), chlorophyll a concentration (Chl, μg L−1) and carbon:chlorophyll a (C:Chl) ratios. Due largely to variation in cellular %N and %P, Mougeotia C:N:P ratios varied considerably at the end of the experiment, with C:N ratios ranging from 6 to 41, C:P ratios ranging from 85 to 999 and N:P ratios ranging from 4 to 118. We found Mougeotia to be weakly homeostatic with respect to N:P content, with non-homeostatic tendencies found for N content and P content. Despite the wide range of N and P concentrations in the medium at the start of the experiment, Mougeotia MSGR was relatively invariant. Nevertheless, high C:Chl ratios observed for N- and P-limited Mougeotia largely matched those expected for algae experiencing nutrient-limited growth. We further compared our experimental results with stoichiometric data for Mougeotia collected from the Kawartha Lakes in southern Ontario. The high C:P and N:P ratios found in field samples matched those of laboratory Mougeotia experiencing intense and sustained P limitation and are suggestive of severe P limitation of Mougeotia in Kawartha Lakes throughout the summer. The slow growth rates and flexible stoichiometry of this alga would enable it to continue growing even during periods of acute nutrient stress. Hence, future management and control of this nuisance alga may prove difficult if it is unlikely to respond strongly to reductions in external P loading and lower water column P concentrations.
Synergistic epistasis between loci affecting fitness: evidence in plants and fungi.

Summary Information on the nature of epistasis between alleles aecting fitness is hardly available, but relevant for, among other issues, our understanding of the evolution of sex and recombination. Evidence of synergistic epistasis between deleterious mutations is support for the Mutational Deterministic hypothesis of the evolution of sex, while finding antagonistic epistasis between beneficial alleles would support the Environmental Deterministic hypotheses. Both types of epistasis are expected to cause negatively skewed fitness distributions of full-sib ospring from a sexual cross. Here, we have studied the form of the distribution of a variety of quantitative characters related to fitness by searching the literature. The fitness traits encountered include the mycelial growth rate in fungi, and earliness, resistance against pathogens, seed number, and pollen fitness in plants. Fitness-related traits in plants show almost exclusively negative skewness, while the results for fungal species are more ambiguous. Possible sources of negative skewness other than epistasis, such as recessiveness of deleterious alleles or a negatively skewed error variance, were tested and found to be unimportant. We argue that these results suggest the existence of synergistic epistasis between deleterious alleles or antagonistic epistasis between beneficial alleles in plants, which is general support for the currently popular hypotheses of sex and recombination, but does not distinguish between them.