Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Causes of Live Strandings of Northern Elephant Seals ( Mirounga angustirostris ) and Pacific Harbor Seals ( Phoca vitulina ) Along the Central California Coast, 1992-2001

Between January 1992 and December 2001 a total of 1,277 northern elephant seals (Mirounga angustirostris) and 940 Pacific harbor seals (Phoca vitulina) were stranded live along the central California coast. By examining medical records for each of the stranded seals, the primary cause of stranding and the secondary factors contributing to stranding were determined. The majority (88.3%) of animals were young born that year. The most common causes of live strandings for elephant seals included malnutrition (56.6%), Otostrongylus circumlitus infection (12.1%), and northern elephant seal skin disease (9.8%). The most common causes of strandings for harbor seals were malnutrition (51.8%), respiratory disease (9.6%), and trauma (8.0%). Common secondary factors for strandings for both elephant and harbor seals included human interaction, trauma, and ocular disease. For both species of phocid, the highest prevalence of O. circumlitus infection occurred in 1992 and 1993, years of a moderate El Niño-Southern Oscillation event. Phocine herpesvirus-1 infection was a common primary and secondary factor in harbor seal strandings, and the highest prevalence occurred between 1994 and 1998. Human interference in stranding events increased in the past ten years and is most commonly reported on beaches near heavily populated areas.
Extending DerSimonian and Laird's methodology to perform multivariate random effects meta‐analyses

Multivariate meta‐analysis is increasingly used in medical statistics. In the univariate setting, the non‐iterative method proposed by DerSimonian and Laird is a simple and now standard way of performing random effects meta‐analyses. We propose a natural and easily implemented multivariate extension of this procedure which is accessible to applied researchers and provides a much less computationally intensive alternative to existing methods. In a simulation study, the proposed procedure performs similarly in almost all ways to the more established iterative restricted maximum likelihood approach. The method is applied to some real data sets and an extension to multivariate meta‐regression is described. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Katul Temporal variability in 13 C of respired CO 2 in a pine and a hardwood forest subject to similar climatic conditions

Temporal variability in the C of foliage (δCF), soil (δ CS) and ecosystem (δ CR) respired CO2 was contrasted between a 17.2-m tall evenly aged loblolly pine forest and a 35-m tall unevenly aged mature second growth mixed broadleaf deciduous forest in North Carolina, USA, over a 2-year period. The two forests are located at the Duke Forest within a kilometer of each other and are subject to identical climate and have similar soil types. The δCF, collected just prior to dawn, was primarily controlled by the time-lagged vapor pressure deficit (VPD) in both stands; it was used for calculating the ratio of intercellular to ambient CO2 (Ci/Ca). A remarkable similarity was observed in the relationship between Ci/Ca and time-lagged VPD in these two forests despite large differences in hydraulic characteristics. This similarity emerged as a result of physiological adjustments that compensated for differences in plant hydraulic characteristics, as predicted by a recently proposed equilibrium hypothesis, and has implications to ecophysiological models. We found that in the broadleaf forest, the δC of forest floor CO2 efflux dominated the δ CR, while in the younger pine forest, the δC of foliage respired CO2 dominated δ CR. This dependence resulted in a more variable δCR in the pine forest when compared to the broadleaf forest due to the larger photosynthetic contribution. Given the sensitivity of the atmospheric inversion models to δCR, the results demonstrate that these models could be improved by accounting for stand characteristics, in addition to previously recognized effects of moisture availability, when estimating δCR.
Regionalization with dynamically constrained agglomerative clustering and partitioning (REDCAP)

Regionalization is to divide a large set of spatial objects into a number of spatially contiguous regions while optimizing an objective function, which is normally a homogeneity (or heterogeneity) measure of the derived regions. This research proposes and evaluates a family of six hierarchical regionalization methods. The six methods are based on three agglomerative clustering approaches, including the single linkage, average linkage (ALK), and the complete linkage (CLK), each of which is constrained with spatial contiguity in two different ways (i.e. the first‐order constraining and the full‐order constraining). It is discovered that both the Full‐Order‐CLK and the Full‐Order‐ALK methods significantly outperform existing methods across four quality evaluations: the total heterogeneity, region size balance, internal variation, and the preservation of data distribution. Moreover, the proposed algorithms are efficient and can find the solution in O(n 2log n) time. With such data scalability, for the first time it is possible to effectively regionalize large data sets that have 10 000 or more spatial objects. A detailed comparison and evaluation of the six methods are carried out with the 2004 US presidential election data.
In Vivo Bipartite Interaction Between the Hsp40 Sis1 and Hsp70 in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

The essential Hsp40, Sis1, is a J-protein cochaperone for the Ssa class of Hsp70's of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Sis1 is required for the maintenance of the prion [RNQ+], as Sis1 lacking its 55-amino-acid glycine-rich region (G/F) does not maintain [RNQ+]. We report that overexpression of Sis1ΔG/F in an otherwise wild-type strain had a negative effect on both cell growth and [RNQ+] maintenance, while overexpression of wild-type Sis1 did not. Overexpression of the related Hsp40 Ydj1 lacking its G/F region did not cause inhibition of growth, indicating that this dominant effect of Sis1ΔG/F is not a characteristic shared by all Hsp40's. Analysis of small deletions within the SIS1 G/F region indicated that the observed dominant effects were caused by the absence of sequences known to be important for Sis1's unique cellular functions. These inhibitory effects of Sis1ΔG/F were obviated by alterations in the N-terminal J-domain of Sis1 that affect interaction with Ssa's ATPase domain. In addition, a genetic screen designed to isolate additional mutations that relieved these inhibitory effects identified two residues in Sis1's carboxy-terminal domain. These alterations disrupted the interaction of Sis1 with the 10-kD carboxy-terminal regulatory domain of Ssa1, indicating that Sis1 has a bipartite interaction with Ssa in vivo.
Understanding Cross-cultural Differences in Leisure and Recreation Attitude

Abstract This paper deals with cross-cultural characteristics for understanding leisure and recreation attitude. Results from this study suggest that the two cultural traits differ with regard to specific attitudes. In this perspective, western management philosophies governing outdoor recreation resources and experiences should be broadened to embrace a wider range of users and their cultural values, preferences, and behaviors
Association of EGFR gene polymorphism in head and neck cancer patients with tobacco and alcohol consuming habits

Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP’s) in the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) play a crucial role in head and neck cancer (HNC) disease progression and targeted therapies. Hence the present study aims to identify the mutations in EGFR gene (exon 20) in HNC considering their exposure to tobacco and alcohol habits. Mutational analysis was carried out by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) followed by single stranded confirmatory polymorphism (SSCP) techniques on the study group comprising of 129 HNC cases and 150 healthy volunteers. Four different SNP’s (R776H, G779G, Q787Q, and L798H) were observed with the overall mutation rate of 75.19% in HNC cases and 46% in controls. Q787Q was found to be more prevalent (p , 0.05) and its genotypes GG, GA, and AA were 24.80%, 61.24%, and 13.95%. The study concluded that EGFR was found to be a polymorphic gene associated with HNC disease, and these SNPs were also prevalent in healthy volunteers with tobacco and alcohol habits.
Performance Evaluations of Document-Oriented Databases Using GPU and Cache Structure

Document-oriented databases are popular databases, in which users can store their documents in a schema-less manner and perform search queries for them. They have been widely used for web applications that process a large collection of documents because of their high scalability and rich functions. One of major functions of document-oriented databases is a string search that requires a high computational cost for a large collection of documents, because its computational complexity increases as the documents increase. In document-oriented databases, a database index is typically used for improving text search queries. However, the index cannot always be used for text search queries, such as a regular expression match search. To accelerate such queries by using GPUs, in this paper, we propose a GPU-friendly cache structure, called DDB Cache (Document-oriented DataBase Cache), which is extracted from a document-oriented database. By using GPU and DDB Cache, we can improve a performance of text search queries without relying on the database indexes. We implemented DDB Cache for MongoDB. Experimental results using GeForce GTX 980 show that our approach improves the performance of regular expression search queries by up to 101x compared to the original document-oriented database.
Syllable lattices as a basis for a children's speech reading tracker

In this paper we present an algorithm that makes use of information contained in syllable lattices to significantly reduce the classification error rate of a children’s speech reading tracker. The task is to verify whether each word in a reference string was actually spoken. A syllable graph is generated from the reference word string to represent acceptable pronunciation alternatives. A syllable based continuous speech recognizer is used to generate a syllable lattice. The best alignment between the reference graph and the syllable lattice is determined using a dynamic programming algorithm. The speech vectors that are aligned with each syllable are used as features for Support Vector Machine classifiers that accept or reject each syllable in the aligned path. Experimental results over three children’s speech corpora show that this algorithm can substantially reduce the classification error rate over the standard word based tracker and over a simple best-path syllable based tracker. Index Terms: speech recognition, children’s speech, reading tracker, token passing, SVM.
GABA Protects Human Islet Cells Against the Deleterious Effects of Immunosuppressive Drugs and Exerts Immunoinhibitory Effects Alone

Background We recently found that &ggr;-aminobutyric acid (GABA) protects mouse islet &bgr; cells. It prevented autoimmune type 1 diabetes in mice, induced islet &bgr;-cell regeneration, and exerted immunoinhibitory effects. However, it is not known whether GABA would be equally active on human islet and immune cells. Methods In vitro culture of human islets and immune cells with or without GABA and immunosuppressive drugs. In vitro analysis of apoptosis, proliferation, nuclear factor (NF)-&kgr;B activation, calcium signaling, and insulin secretion. Results GABA reduced human islet cell apoptosis in culture, such that the yield of live cells was approximately tripled after 1 week, and it stimulated insulin secretion. It protected against the deleterious effects of rapamycin, tacrolimus, and mycophenolate mofetil. In human immune cells, GABA had inhibitory effects similar to mouse cells, such as suppressed anti-CD3–stimulated T-cell proliferation, in a GABA type A receptor–dependent fashion. The immunosuppressive mechanisms have been unclear, but we found that GABA blocked calcium influx, which is a key activation signal. GABA also suppressed NF-&kgr;B activation in both human islet cells and immune cells. We found that it could be combined with rapamycin to increase its suppressive effects. Conclusions GABA improved human islet cell survival and had suppressive effects on human immune cells. It inhibited canonical NF-&kgr;B activation in both islet and immune cells. This is important because activation of this pathway is detrimental to islet cells and likely promotes damaging autoimmunity and alloreactivity against transplanted islets. These findings suggest that GABA might find applications in clinical islet transplantation.
An analytic hierarchy process for school quality and inspection: Model development and application

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop an analytic hierarchy planning-based framework to establish criteria weights and to develop a school performance system commonly called school inspections. Design/methodology/approach – The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) model uses pairwise comparisons and a measurement scale to generate the weights for the criteria. The validity of the approach is confirmed by comparing the outputs of school inspection and the outputs of the model in a sample of schools. Findings – The framework proposed enables school management to address several issues pertaining to its competitive advantage with other schools, the two most important being establishing its performance ranking in the marketplace and identifying the service elements that most require improvement. This study develops a cohesive approach to identify which quality attributes or dimensions require attention. Research limitations/implications – For school inspections, the data collection and computational p.