Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
High-frequency monitoring of the genetic diversity and the potential toxicity of a Microcystis aeruginosa bloom in a French shallow lake.

During cyanobacterial blooms, processes influencing the population dynamics of blooming species remain partially unexplained. To provide new information, we performed a high-frequency monitoring – every 2 days at six sampling points – of a Microcystis aeruginosa population blooming in a shallow lake. At each sampling date, there was no spatial heterogeneity in the ITS genotypic composition of the population and in the proportion of potentially microcystin- producing (mcyB+) cells, whereas high variations were recorded in cell abundances. In contrast, when looking at the temporal evolution of these parameters, the ITS genotypic composition of the population and in a lesser extent the percentage of mcyB+ cells displayed high variations during the growth phase of the bloom, but not during the plateau phase or the subsequent decline. This suggests that during the development of the bloom, there was no directional selection leading to the dominance of a restricted number of genotypes and that a balancing selection process permitted the maintenance of a high genetic diversity in the Microcystis population. Finally, no relationship was found between these variations occurring in the Microcystis population and those recorded for several environmental parameters, suggesting that many factors and processes interacting together might be involved in these variations.
Synthesis and Characterization of Reduced Graphene Oxide from Fiber of Borassus Flabelifer by Activation Method

Reduced Graphene Oxide (RGO) has been successfully synthesized by calcination process at 4000C for 4 hours followed by activation with NaOH 1 M. Carbonization is the last process with variations in heating at 6500C, 7500C, 8500C, and 9500C for 1 hour (heating rate 100C / minute). DSC-TGA data shows that there is advanced decomposition at high temperatures, this is confirmed by SEM data which shows the amount of porosity which is getting higher with a size that decreases with temperature. XRD data shows phase differences at low temperatures with a trend of higher levels of crystallinity at high temperatures. Raman spectroscopy data showed an ID / IG ratio of 2.607 and 1.007 on Borassus Flabelifer L with carbonization at 6500C and 9500C respectively. The ID / IG value which is getting closer to 1 indicates that the carbon available in Borassus Flabelifer L has undergone phase changes such as Graphene with a little Oxide commonly called RGO
The Decompositions of Cost Variation

In this paper a number of meaningful and empirically implementable decom- positions of the cost variation (in difference and ratio form) are developed. The components distinguished are price level change, technical efficiency change, allocative efficiency change, technological change, scale of activity change, and price structure change. Given data from a (balanced) panel of produc- tion units, all the necessary ingredients for the computation of the various decompositions can be obtained by using linear programming techniques. An application is provided.
Integrating Highlights for More Complete Sports Video Summarization

he multimedia community needs an effective management scheme for handling the increasing amount of sports videos from TV broadcasts. One of the most important requirements in managing video is compressing its long sequence into a more compact representation through a summarization process. Researchers have proposed many techniques to take full advantage of the fact that sports videos have typical and predictable temporal structures, recurrent events, consistent features, and a fixed number of camera views.1 To date, most summarization techniques have focused on one type of sports video by detecting specific highlights (or key events) using
Adult c‐Kit(+) progenitor cells are necessary for maintenance and regeneration of olfactory neurons

The olfactory epithelium houses chemosensory neurons, which transmit odor information from the nose to the brain. In adult mammals, the olfactory epithelium is a uniquely robust neuroproliferative zone, with the ability to replenish its neuronal and non‐neuronal populations due to the presence of germinal basal cells. The stem and progenitor cells of these germinal layers, and their regulatory mechanisms, remain incompletely defined. Here we show that progenitor cells expressing c‐Kit, a receptor tyrosine kinase marking stem cells in a variety of embryonic tissues, are required for maintenance of the adult neuroepithelium. Mouse genetic fate‐mapping analyses show that embryonically, a c‐Kit(+) population contributes to olfactory neurogenesis. In adults under conditions of normal turnover, there is relatively sparse c‐Kit(+) progenitor cell (ckPC) activity. However, after experimentally induced neuroepithelial injury, ckPCs are activated such that they reconstitute the neuronal population. There are also occasional non‐neuronal cells found to arise from ckPCs. Moreover, the selective depletion of the ckPC population, utilizing temporally controlled targeted diphtheria toxin A expression, results in failure of neurogenesis after experimental injury. Analysis of this model indicates that most ckPCs reside among the globose basal cell populations and act downstream of horizontal basal cells, which can serve as stem cells. Identification of the requirement for olfactory c‐Kit–expressing progenitors in olfactory maintenance provides new insight into the mechanisms involved in adult olfactory neurogenesis. Additionally, we define an important and previously unrecognized site of adult c‐Kit activity. J. Comp. Neurol. 523:15–31, 2015. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Assembly of Infectious Herpes Simplex Virus Type 1 Virions in the Absence of Full-Length VP22

ABSTRACT VP22, the 301-amino-acid phosphoprotein product of the herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) UL49 gene, is incorporated into the tegument during virus assembly. We previously showed that highly modified forms of VP22 are restricted to infected cell nuclei (L. E. Pomeranz and J. A. Blaho, J. Virol. 73:6769–6781, 1999). VP22 packaged into infectious virions appears undermodified, and nuclear- and virion-associated forms are easily differentiated by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (J. A. Blaho, C. Mitchell, and B. Roizman, J. Biol. Chem. 269:17401–17410, 1994). As VP22 packaging-associated undermodification is unique among HSV-1 tegument proteins, we sought to determine the role of VP22 during viral replication. We now show the following. (i) VP22 modification occurs in the absence of other viral factors in cell lines which stably express its gene. (ii) RF177, a recombinant HSV-1 strain generated for this study, synthesizes only the amino-terminal 212 amino acids of VP22 (Δ212). (iii) Δ212 localizes to the nucleus and incorporates into virions during RF177 infection of Vero cells. Thus, the carboxy-terminal region is not required for nuclear localization of VP22. (iv) RF177 synthesizes the tegument proteins VP13/14, VP16, and VHS (virus host shutoff) and incorporates them into infectious virions as efficiently as wild-type virus. However, (v) the loss of VP22 in RF177 virus particles is compensated for by a redistribution of minor virion components. (vi) Mature RF177 virions are identical to wild-type particles based on electron microscopic analyses. (vii) Single-step growth kinetics of RF177 in Vero cells are essentially identical to those of wild-type virus. (viii) RF177 plaque size is reduced by nearly 40% compared to wild-type virus. Based on these results, we conclude that VP22 is not required for tegument formation, virion assembly/maturation, or productive HSV-1 replication, while the presence of full-length VP22 in the tegument is needed for efficient virus spread in Vero cell monolayers.
Climate Policy in European Union Politics

The fight against climate change has become a major area of action for the European Union (EU), both at the European and the international level. EU climate policy has gained importance since the 1990s and is today the most politicized issue on the EU’s environmental agenda. The EU is often considered a frontrunner—even a leader—in the adoption of climate policies internally and the promotion of such policies externally. Internally, the EU has developed the world’s most advanced and comprehensive regulatory frameworks, encompassing both EU-wide policies and targets to be achieved by the member states. The actual EU policy instruments fall into two categories: whereas emissions in certain industrial sectors are reduced through a carbon market and a “cap-and-trade” system (the Emissions Trading Scheme), emissions from non-ETS sectors are addressed through domestic policies by member states. These measures have led to a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in the EU, but they will not suffice to achieve the EU’s long-term goals, which requires a major overhaul of some of the basic premises of the EU’s policies in sectors such as energy production and consumption, transport, agriculture, and industry. Externally, the EU has been advocating ambitious and legally binding international climate agreements. Desiring to “lead by example”, the EU has been an influential global climate player at important international climate conferences such as those held in Kyoto (1997), Marrakesh (2001), and Paris (2015), but its diplomacy failed at the Copenhagen conference (2009).
Two Nested Constant‐Elasticity‐of‐Substitution Models of Recreational Participation and Site Choice: An ‘Alternatives’ Model and an ‘Expenditures’ Model

Two demand modelsof recreational participation and s ite choice are developed: an alternatives model and an expenditures model. Both assume maximization of utility over the year, so allow for diminishing marginal utility. They do not impose the restrictive assumption that where one goes on a trip isindependent of where one plansto go on other occas ions . Es timation iswith a nes ted constant-elasticity-of-substitution preference ordering: it is relatively easy to estimate because of global regularity, it allowss itesto be complements , and it hasthe potential to be locally flexible. The application is to Atlantic salmon fishing.
The orbitofrontal cortex regulates outcome‐based decision‐making via the lateral striatum

The orbitofrontal cortex (oPFC) sends substantial projections to the ventrolateral striatum and aspects of the nucleus accumbens that are, functionally, poorly understood. This is despite probable cortico‐striatal involvement in multiple diseases such as addiction and obsessive‐compulsive disorder. Here we surgically disconnected the oPFC from the ventrolateral striatum using unilateral asymmetric lesions in mice and classified instrumental decision‐making strategies. Mice with symmetric lesions that spared one oPFC–striatal network served as controls. As a complementary approach, we selectively knocked down Brain‐derived neurotrophic factor (Bdnf) bilaterally in the oPFC and ascertained behavioral and neurobiological consequences within the downstream striatum. oPFC–striatal disconnection and oPFC Bdnf knockdown blocked sensitivity to outcome‐predictive relationships in both food‐reinforced and cocaine‐associated settings. Bdnf knockdown simultaneously regulated striatal BDNF expression, and striatal c‐Fos predicted sensitivity to action–outcome associative contingencies. Previous evidence strongly implicates the dorsolateral striatum in stimulus–response habit formation. Our findings thus provide novel evidence for functional compartmentalisation within the lateral striatum, with the dorsal compartment subserving classical stimulus–response habit systems and a ventral compartment coordinating outcome‐based decision‐making via oPFC interactions. This compartmentalisation may apply to both ‘natural’, as in the case of food‐reinforced behavior, and ‘pathological’, as in the case of cocaine‐seeking, contexts.
Implementation of an interactive pattern mining framework on electronic health record datasets

Large collections of electronic patient records contain a broad range of clinical information highly relevant for data analysis. However, they are maintained primarily for patient administration, and automated methods are required to extract valuable knowledge for predictive, preventive, personalized and participatory medicine. Sequential pattern mining is a fundamental task in data mining which can be used to find statistically relevant, non-trivial temporal dependencies of events such as disease comorbidities. This works objective is to use this mining technique to identify disease associations based on ICD-9-CM codes data of the entire Taiwanese population obtained from Taiwan’s National Health Insurance Research Database. This thesis reports the development and implementation of the Disease Pattern Miner – a pattern mining framework in a medical domain. The framework was designed as a Web application which can be used to run several state-of-the-art sequence mining algorithms on electronic health records, collect and filter the results to reduce the number of patterns to a meaningful size, and visualize the disease associations as an interactive model in a specific population group. This may be crucial to discover new disease associations and offer novel insights to explain disease pathogenesis. A structured evaluation of the data and models are required before medical data-scientist may use this application as a tool for further research to get a better understanding of disease comorbidities.
Varicella-Zoster Virus IE 4 Protein Interacts with SR Proteins and Exports mRNAs through the TAP / NXF 1 Pathway

Available data suggest that the Varicella-Zoster virus (VZV) IE4 protein acts as an important regulator on VZV and cellular genes expression and could exert its functions at post-transcriptional level. However, the molecular mechanisms supported by this protein are not yet fully characterized. In the present study, we have attempted to clarify this IE4-mediated gene regulation and identify some cellular partners of IE4. By yeast two-hybrid and immunoprecipitation analysis, we showed that IE4 interacts with three shuttling SR proteins, namely ASF/SF2, 9G8 and SRp20. We positioned the binding domain in the IE4 RbRc region and we showed that these interactions are not bridged by RNA. We demonstrated also that IE4 strongly interacts with the main SR protein kinase, SRPK1, and is phosphorylated in in vitro kinase assay on residue Ser-136 contained in the Rb domain. By Northwestern analysis, we showed that IE4 is able to bind RNA through its arginine-rich region and in immunoprecipitation experiments the presence of RNA stabilizes complexes containing IE4 and the cellular export factors TAP/NXF1 and Aly/REF since the interactions are RNase-sensitive. Finally, we determined that IE4 influences the export of reporter mRNAs and clearly showed, by TAP/NXF1 knockdown, that VZV infection requires the TAP/NXF1 export pathway to express some viral transcripts. We thus highlighted a new example of viral mRNA export factor and proposed a model of IE4-mediated viral mRNAs export. Citation: Ote I, Lebrun M, Vandevenne P, Bontems S, Medina-Palazon C, et al. (2009) Varicella-Zoster Virus IE4 Protein Interacts with SR Proteins and Exports mRNAs through the TAP/NXF1 Pathway. PLoS ONE 4(11): e7882. doi:10.1371/journal.pone. 0007882 Editor: Juan Valcarcel, Centre de Regulació Genòmica, Spain Received August 26, 2009; Accepted October 22, 2009; Published November 18, 2009 Copyright: ! 2009 Ote et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: This work was supported by grants from the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS, Brussels, Belgium), the Communaute francaise (Brussels, Belgium), the Leon Fredericq Foundation (University of Liege, Belgium) and the IAP6/18 program from the Belgian Science Policy (University of Liege, Belgium). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. * E-mail: csadzot@ulg.ac. be.
Specific targeting and noninvasive imaging of breast cancer stem cells using single-walled carbon nanotubes as novel multimodality nanoprobes.

BACKGROUND The limitation of current breast cancer treatments was elucidated by the presence of cancer stem cells (CSCs) that play essential role in cancer initiation, progression, resistance, recurrence and metastasis. Materials & methods: Biocompatible multimodality single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) nanoprobes were developed. The biodistribution and preferential homing of CD44 antibody-conjugated SWCNTs toward the tumor site were monitored using MRI, single-photon emission computed tomography and near-infrared fluorescence imaging noninvasive imaging modalities. RESULTS Quantification of SWCNTs by sensitively measuring iron content in sorted CSC populations using inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry confirmed the enhanced selective targeting of anti-CD44 SWCNT and immunohistochemistry analyses revealed enhanced colocalization with areas rich in CD44 receptors. DISCUSSION & CONCLUSION This preclinical study provided encouraging results for efficient targeting of breast CSCs and perspectives for further clinical studies to confirm the efficacy and safety of the designed nanocarriers.
Innate Immune Evasion Mediated by Flaviviridae Non-Structural Proteins

Flaviviridae-caused diseases are a critical, emerging public health problem worldwide. Flaviviridae infections usually cause severe, acute or chronic diseases, such as liver damage and liver cancer resulting from a hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection and high fever and shock caused by yellow fever. Many researchers worldwide are investigating the mechanisms by which Flaviviridae cause severe diseases. Flaviviridae can interfere with the host’s innate immunity to achieve their purpose of proliferation. For instance, dengue virus (DENV) NS2A, NS2B3, NS4A, NS4B and NS5; HCV NS2, NS3, NS3/4A, NS4B and NS5A; and West Nile virus (WNV) NS1 and NS4B proteins are involved in immune evasion. This review discusses the interplay between viral non-structural Flaviviridae proteins and relevant host proteins, which leads to the suppression of the host’s innate antiviral immunity.
Accelerated AES implementations via generalized instruction set extensions

Efficient implementation of block ciphers is critical towards achieving both high security and high-speed processing. Numerous block ciphers, including the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), have been proposed and implemented, using a wide and varied range of functional operations. Existing microprocessor architectures do not provide this broad range of support. However, the advent of intellectual property (IP) processor cores presents the opportunity to augment existing datapaths with instruction set extensions to add acceleration modules in the form of new instructions. We will present a general purpose instruction set extension to a 32-bit SPARC V8 compatible processor core that accelerates the performance of Galois Field fixed field constant multiplication, a core element of the AES algorithm. This extension will be shown to accelerate AES encryption versus pure software implementations at a small hardware cost. This matches the improvement demonstrated in previously proposed AES-specific instruction set extensions while maintaining a generalized implementation format capable of supporting other algorithms that use Galois Field fixed field constant multiplication.
The Drosophila suppressor of sable protein binds to RNA and associates with a subset of polytene chromosome bands

Mutations of the Drosophila melanogaster suppressor of sable [su(s)] gene, which encodes a 150-kDa nuclear protein [Su(s)], increase the accumulation of specific transcripts in a manner that is not well understood but that appears to involve pre-mRNA processing. Here, we report biochemical analysis of purified, recombinant Su(s) [rSu(s)] expressed in baculovirus and in Escherichia coli as maltose binding protein (MBP) fusions and immunocytochemical analysis of endogenous Su(s). This work has shown that purified, baculovirus-expressed rSu(s) binds to RNA in vitro with a high affinity and limited specificity. Systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment was used to identify preferred RNA targets of rSu(s), and a large proportion of RNAs isolated contain a full or partial match to the consensus sequence UCAGUAGUCU, which was confirmed to be a high-affinity rSu(s) binding site. An MBP-Su(s) fusion protein containing the N-terminal third of Su(s) binds RNAs containing this sequence with a higher specificity than full-length, baculovirus-expressed rSu(s). The consensus sequence resembles both a cryptic 5' splice site and a sequence that is found near the 5' end of some Drosophila transcripts. Immunolocalization studies showed that endogenous Su(s) is distributed in a reticulated pattern in Drosophila embryo and salivary gland nuclei. In salivary gland cells, Su(s) is found both in the nucleoplasm and in association with a subset of polytene chromosome bands. Considering these and previous results, we propose two models to explain how su(s) mutations affect nuclear pre-mRNA processing.
Colorization for Anime Sketches with Cycle Consistent Adversarial Network

Coloring animation sketches has always been a complex and interesting task, but as the sketch is the first part of animation creation that neither presents gray value nor presents semantic information, the lack of real animation sketches is the biggest difficulty in current model training. It is also usually expensive to collect such data. In recent years, some methods based on generative adversarial networks (GANs) have achieved great success. They can generate colorized anime illustration on given sketches. Many existing sketch coloring tools are based on this supervised learning method, but the marking of data is particularly important for supervised learning, and much time is spent on the marking of data. To address these challenges, we propose a novel approach for unsupervised learning based on U-net and periodic consistent confrontation. Specifically, we combine the periodic consistent antagonism framework with the U-net structure and residual network, enabling us to robustly train a deep network to make the resulting images more natural and realistic. We also adopted some special data generation methods, so that our model can not only color anime sketches but also extract line drafts from colored pictures. By comparing the mainstream models of supervised learning, we show that the image processed by the proposed method can achieve a similar effect.