Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of intermittent lighting schedules during the natural scotoperiod on T3-induced ascites in broiler chickens

The influence of an intermittent lighting programme during the 12h of the dark period on the incidence of ascites and on metabolic parameters of broiler chickens was examined. A group of 336 1-day-old male broiler chickens were randomly allocated to two open rooms At 5 days of age, an intermittent lighting schedule of 3h of dark alternating with 1h of light was introduced during the night in one room, while in the second room the schedule consisted of 23 h of light alternating with 1 h of dark. One-half of the birds in each room were fed a diet supplemented with 1.5ppm 3, 3', 5-triiodothyronine (T3), while the other half received a control diet. Mortality associated with ascites was significantly higher in birds fed the T 3 -supplemented diet, but was significantly lower in birds in the room receiving the intermittent lighting schedule. The intermittent lighting programme was also associated with a temporary reduction in growth rate, packed cell volume and plasma T3 concentrations, suggesting reduced oxygen utilization. However, final body weights were not significantly affected by the lighting programme. It was concluded that imposing 12 h of intermittent lighting during scotoperiod reduces the incidence of ascite mortality.
Une approche integree pour la gestion des ressources en eau faisant appel aux techniques floues et neuronales

Cette these vise a evaluer l'apport potentiel des techniques floues et neuronales dans le cadre de la gestion des systemes de stockage/transfert/distribution de l'eau et d'en proposer une structure integree de gestion a trois niveaux. Outre la proposition d'une structure integree de gestion des systemes de stockage, transfert et distribution de l'eau, cette these apporte une serie de contributions concernant non seulement la mise en uvre des techniques floues et neuronales : - la prevision de la demande a l'aide de regles floues dynamiques, - la modelisation neuronale des phenomenes de transfert dans les biefs, - la formulation a base de logique floue de criteres et de contraintes pour les problemes d'optimisation associes a la gestion de court ou de long terme, mais aussi concernant la mise en uvre de techniques plus classiques de la programmation mathematique et de la commande : - approche adaptative de la resolution de problemes d'optimisation dynamique en environnement incertain, - adaptation de la programmation dynamique a des problemes structures de grandes dimensions, - adaptation de l'algorithme du simplexe revise au cas de l'optimisation de systemes lineaires dynamiques contraints.
Efficient stairway detection and modeling for autonomous robot climbing

This paper presents an accurate and computationally efficient stairway detection algorithm, robust to measurement noise. While most similar methods depend heavily on detecting three-dimensional (3D) features, this work focuses on locating two-dimensional (2D) features embedded in 3D data. The main idea is: each stair is a sequence of lines with similar domain of definition, and the staircase is a sequence of such elements. To avoid unnecessary computations, an octree is used to down-sample the environment point-cloud data. The resulting centroids are stored in n arrays, each containing points with equal height. This effectively segments the 3D data into n 2D slices. The Hough transform is used to scan each array for lines. the remainder of the algorithm detects lines with the same domain of definition and determines if sequences that may correspond to stairways exist. If these sequences meet the required tolerances, then a staircase is detected. For each detected stairway a model that contains the width, height, depth, and amount of stairs is returned. The proposed algorithm is able to efficiently locate and model staircases on different poses and is robust to noise from the measured data, as indicated by the experimental results.
Relationship between Alpha-Tocopherol Content in the Different Lipoprotein Fractions in Term Pregnant Women and in Umbilical Cord Blood

Aims: To determine the concentration of vitamin E in normal maternal and umbilical cord blood pairs, and to study the relationship between vitamin E content in maternal lipoprotein fractions and umbilical cord blood. Methods: Fifty healthy pregnant women were recruited randomly at term and blood samples were drawn from the mothers at delivery and cord blood was obtained immediately postpartum. Vitamin E was determined by HPLC in plasma, in the different lipoprotein fractions and in the placenta. Plasma levels of triglycerides and cholesterol were also measured. Results: The concentration of vitamin E in umbilical cord plasma was 250 µg/dl, lower than in maternal plasma (1,460 µg/dl) (p < 0.001). A positive correlation was found between the vitamin E concentration in maternal plasma, LDL and VLDL and in the umbilical cord plasma. In contrast, no correlation was found between maternal HDL concentration and umbilical cord blood. Conclusion: These results show that the concentration of vitamin E in umbilical cord blood is lower than in maternal plasma. LDL and VLDL seem to be the main source of vitamin E for the fetus.
Mechanistic Analysis of Electroporation-Induced Cellular Uptake of Macromolecules

Pulsed electric field has been widely used as a nonviral gene delivery platform. The delivery efficiency can be improved through quantitative analysis of pore dynamics and intracellular transport of plasmid DNA. To this end, we investigated mechanisms of cellular uptake of macromolecules during electroporation. In the study, fluorescein isothiocyanate-labeled dextran (FD) with molecular weight of 4,000 (FD-4) or 2,000,000 (FD-2000) was added into suspensions of a murine mammary carcinoma cell (4T1) either before or at different time points (ie, 1, 2, or 10 sec) after the application of different pulsed electric fields (in high-voltage mode: 1.2–2.0 kV in amplitude, 99 μsec in duration, and 1–5 pulses; in low-voltage mode: 100–300 V in amplitude, 5–20 msec in duration, and 1–5 pulses). The intracellular concentrations of FD were quantified using a confocal microscopy technique. To understand transport mechanisms, a mathematical model was developed for numerical simulation of cellular uptake. We observed that the maximum intracellular concentration of FD-2000 was less than 3% of that in the pulsing medium. The intracellular concentrations increased linearly with pulse number and amplitude. In addition, the intracellular concentration of FD-2000 was ~ 40% lower than that of FD-4 under identical pulsing conditions. The numerical simulations predicted that the pores larger than FD-4 lasted <10 msec after the application of pulsed fields if the simulated concentrations were on the same order of magnitude as the experimental data. In addition, the simulation results indicated that diffusion was negligible for cellular uptake of FD molecules. Taken together, the data suggested that large pores induced in the membrane by pulsed electric fields disappeared rapidly after pulse application and convection was likely to be the dominant mode of transport for cellular uptake of uncharged macromolecules.
The diversity–disease relationship: evidence for and criticisms of the dilution effect

SUMMARY The dilution effect, that high host species diversity can reduce disease risk, has attracted much attention in the context of global biodiversity decline and increasing disease emergence. Recent studies have criticized the generality of the dilution effect and argued that it only occurs under certain circumstances. Nevertheless, evidence for the existence of a dilution effect was reported in about 80% of the studies that addressed the diversity–disease relationship, and a recent meta-analysis found that the dilution effect is widespread. We here review supporting and critical studies, point out the causes underlying the current disputes. The dilution is expected to be strong when the competent host species tend to remain when species diversity declines, characterized as a negative relationship between species’ reservoir competence and local extinction risk. We here conclude that most studies support a negative competence–extinction relationship. We then synthesize the current knowledge on how the diversity–disease relationship can be modified by particular species in community, by the scales of analyses, and by the disease risk measures. We also highlight the complex role of habitat fragmentation in the diversity–disease relationship from epidemiological, evolutionary and ecological perspectives, and construct a synthetic framework integrating these three perspectives. We suggest that future studies should test the diversity–disease relationship across different scales and consider the multiple effects of landscape fragmentation.
A fast numerical algorithm for related bessel function integrations

A new fast numerical algorithm for the double-order double-argument Hankel transformation is proposed in this article. Due to the fact of rapid oscillation and slow attenuation of the kernel function, it is difficult to compute numerically. The New Algorithm break up the infinite integral interval into two subintervals. For the infinite subinterval, the integral can be calculated by Fast Fourier Transformation (FFT) efficiently; For the other finite integral, there has two choice, the one is ordinary quadrature algorithm which is simple but no efficient enough, the other is to express the integral as a summation series of the Bessel function integral, and then the calculus can be done with more efficient manner.
Optimizing proliferation and characterization of multipotent stem cells from porcine adipose tissue

Porcine mesenchymal stem cells have been isolated previously from bone marrow but not from adipose tissue. In the present study a new cell‐culture method, using a low‐calcium medium supplemented with N‐acetyl‐L‐cysteine and L‐ascorbic acid 2‐phosphate (the PM2 medium) was developed to grow pASCs (porcine adipose‐tissue‐derived stem cells). The pASCs developed using the new medium showed a high growth rate and a high proliferation potential, as measured by a cumulative population doubling level (55) that was significantly higher than those reported for ASCs in the literature. These pASCs lacked gap‐junctional intercellular communication and were capable of differentiation into three mesodermal lineages (i.e. adipocytes, osteoblasts and chondrocytes) and an ectodermal lineage (i.e. neural cells). Surprisingly, osteogenic ability, but not adipogenesis, was found to increase dramatically with increasing passages. The high proliferative and differentiation potential of these pASCs should facilitate the development of a large‐animal model to study the use of ASCs in regenerative and reparative medicine.
Improved noise robustness by corrective and rival training

We show that discriminative training methods have the potential to improve noise robustness even for high resolution acoustic models trained on noisy data. To this end, we compare the performance of acoustic models trained on noisy data using maximum likelihood (ML), corrective (CT) and rival training (RT). Experiments are performed on a German and a Dutch continuous digit string recognition task, yielding improvements in the range of 12% to 35% relative.
Statistical Physics Models of Opinion Spread: Theory and Empirical Tests

We investigate a set of discrete-spin statistical physics models for opinion spread in social networks and explore how suitable they are for predicting real-world belief change on both the individual and group levels. Our studies center on the degree and rate of consensus formation in inhomogeneous models that take into account different individual preferences or set beliefs. We investigate the effects of different social interaction rules (voter, majority, and expert rule), a variety of both artificial and realistic social network structures, different distributions of initial information, dependence on clustering of intrinsic preferences, the effects of having only two choices vs.~multiple choices, and different weightings of social information input relative to intrinsic preferences. We find that the many combinations of model inputs results in a smaller, manageable set of consensus formation patterns. We then compare the predictions of these models to empirical social science studies, one done at MIT on 80~individuals living in a dorm during the 2008 presidential election season, and another conducted online by us with 94~participants during the 2016 presidential election primary season. We find that these relatively simple statistical physics-based models contain predictive value on both the individual and group levels. The results underscore the sensitivity of opinion spread to the underlying social network structure and the number of available belief options, and to a somewhat lesser (but still relevant) degree to the social interaction rules.
Problems in the current TNM staging of nonmelanoma skin cancer of the head and neck

Nonmelanoma skin cancer (NMSC) is the most common malignancy encountered in the white population, andmore than amillion new cases are expected annually in the United States alone. Overall, 75% arise in the head and neck region, approximately 80% are basal cell carcinoma (BCC) and 20% are squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) cases. Nearly half of the patients are over the age of 65 and 25% have multiple lesions. The incidence of SCC increases more rapidly with age and cumulative sun exposure than does that of BCC, is far more common in the older age group, and is more common in men than in women. The incidence of NMSC is increasing and age at initial presentation is decreasing. Other than sun exposure, host factors, medical syndromes, and environmental exposure were reported to be associated with increased incidence of NMSC. Countries with fair-skinned populations and excess sun exposure, such as Australia and Israel (ranking 1 and 2, respectively, in the incidence of skin cancer) are particularly prone to this type of neoplasia, reaching what was described as epidemic proportions. Skin cancer is usually noted early even if not necessarily recognized as such, and often a prolonged period of time elapses before a definite diagnosis is reached. The median delay between occurrence of initial symptoms and presentation is reported to be 3 years. Many of the patients with skin lesions tend to try different remedies, some of which may favorably affect or alter the appearance of the lesions to an extent, and this may lead to further delay. Although the majority of NMSCs occur in sunexposed skin and thus appear in readily observed areas, a significant number of patients present with advanced invasive disease, not infrequently accompanied by regional metastases. This may be due to a multitude of reasons: lack of awareness of the significance of local recurrence by either physician or patient, late detection of recurrent or residual disease, lack of adequate follow-up, failure to associate a neck or parotid mass with a skin lesion, an abundance of other skin lesions, the availability of fluorouracil cream treatment, and, of course, denial. Also, proximity to structures such as the eye or ear may generate reluctance to Correspondence to: Y. P. Talmi
An Inquiry into Yan Fu’s Translation Theory of Faithfulness, Expressiveness, and Elegance: The Beginning of China’s Modern Translation Theory

Abstract: The translation theory of “faithfulness, expressiveness, and elegance” put forward by master translator Yan Fu played an important role in linking the past with the future. The theory did not come directly from sutra translation theories. However, the “elegance” element of Yan Fu’s theory expanded the theoretical meaning of the style-emphasizing school of sutra translators. Yan Fu holds that translation is to convey the profound meaning of the original author’s lifework in another language, and its mission is cultural exchanges and the preservation of ideas. It is through conveying true meanings despite the process of transformation that translation can honor its mission. He quoted Confucius to lend weight to “elegance” that “messages conveyed in plain and unadorned language have no lasting value. ” “Faithfulness” and “expressiveness” together with “elegance” are interdependent and independent. They became the three gold words in translation theories, which increased the value of translation theories and shaped the basic structure of the modern translation system. Yan Fu’s translation of Evolution and Ethics is a perfect example of this style by which he is regarded as the first person to introduce modern ideas into China, to spread the idea of strengthening the nation and the military, and to write about the survival of the fittest and independence. Since then, translation theories in China have evolved in the constant dialectical relations between tradition and modernity. Theories such as “three lines,” “three resemblances,” “three beauties,” and “transmutation” have blossomed. Yan Fu struck a perfect balance between translation theory and practice. With his exemplary translated works of 1.7 million characters, he is held as a paragon for all times.
Targeting novel chemical and constitutive primed metabolites against Plectosphaerella cucumerina.

Priming is a physiological state for protection of plants against a broad range of pathogens, and is achieved through stimulation of the plant immune system. Various stimuli, such as beneficial microbes and chemical induction, activate defense priming. In the present study, we demonstrate that impairment of the high-affinity nitrate transporter 2.1 (encoded by NRT2.1) enables Arabidopsis to respond more quickly and strongly to Plectosphaerella cucumerina attack, leading to enhanced resistance. The Arabidopsis thaliana mutant lin1 (affected in NRT2.1) is a priming mutant that displays constitutive resistance to this necrotroph, with no associated developmental or growth costs. Chemically induced priming by β-aminobutyric acid treatment, the constitutive priming mutant ocp3 and the constitutive priming present in the lin1 mutant result in a common metabolic profile within the same plant-pathogen interactions. The defense priming significantly affects sugar metabolism, cell-wall remodeling and shikimic acid derivatives levels, and results in specific changes in the amino acid profile and three specific branches of Trp metabolism, particularly accumulation of indole acetic acid, indole-3-carboxaldehyde and camalexin, but not the indolic glucosinolates. Metabolomic analysis facilitated identification of three metabolites in the priming fingerprint: galacturonic acid, indole-3-carboxylic acid and hypoxanthine. Treatment of plants with the latter two metabolites by soil drenching induced resistance against P. cucumerina, demonstrating that these compounds are key components of defense priming against this necrotrophic fungus. Here we demonstrate that indole-3-carboxylic acid induces resistance by promoting papillae deposition and H2 O2 production, and that this is independent of PR1, VSP2 and PDF1.2 priming.
Detection of human papillomavirus DNA in prostate gland tissue by using the polymerase chain reaction amplification assay

Human papillomavirus (HPV) is associated with specific benign and malignant lesions of the epithelial and mucosal surfaces. Of the sexually transmitted types, HPV type 16 (HPV 16) and HPV 18 are commonly associated with severe dysplasia and carcinoma of the uterine cervix. In men, genital HPV infections which have been studied are manifest as external lesions usually involving types other than 16 and 18. The nature of HPV 16 and 18 infections in men has not been explored. Since the most common neoplasias of the male genital tract involve the prostate gland, we assayed benign hyperplastic and cancerous prostate tumors for the presence of HPV DNA, using type-specific primers in polymerase chain reaction amplifications. Normal prostatic tissue obtained at autopsy was included in the survey. Amplified sequences specific for HPV 16 were found in 14 of 15 benign prostatic hyperplasias and in all of four carcinomas tested. In contrast, HPV 18 was identified in only three benign hyperplasias, which also contained HPV 16 DNA. Four of five normal prostates demonstrated no HPV infection; one contained HPV 16 sequences. The presence of these oncogenic HPV types in prostate tissues suggests a reservoir for sexual transmission; a potential role for the virus in the etiology of prostatic neoplasia remains to be demonstrated.
The Therapeutic Effect of 2-Cyclohexylthio-AMP in Heart Failure

Aim: The aim of this study was to investigate the therapeutic effect of 2-cyclohexylthio-adenosine 5′-monophosphate (AMP) in mice with heart failure (HF). Methods: 2-Cyclohexylthio-AMP was dissolved in phosphate-buffered saline and infused in mice with ischemic HF after permanent left coronary [left anterior descending (LAD)] ligation and in calsequestrin (CSQ) mice with HF. Myocardial function ex vivo was determined in the working heart model. Cardiac function in vivo was assessed by echocardiography. Results: Injection of 2-cyclohexylthio-AMP induced a dose-dependent increase in +dP/dt, −dP/dt, and left ventricular developed pressure in normal wild-type mice and in CSQ mice with HF using the ex vivo working heart model. Spontaneous heart rate did not change after the injection of 2-cyclohexylthio-AMP. Compared with normal saline-treaded mice, chronic infusion of 2-cyclohexylthio-AMP in mice with ischemic HF after left coronary artery (LAD) ligation and in CSQ mice resulted in improved +dP/dt, −dP/dt, left ventricular developed pressure, and fractional shortening, restored the &bgr;-adrenergic response and decreased heart weight/body weight ratios. Conclusions: 2-Cyclohexylthio-AMP improved the cardiac contractile performance and rescued mice from HF. This salutary action may result from the reduction of myocardial hypertrophy and the restoration of the &bgr;-adrenergic response in both LAD ligation and CSQ mouse models of HF. The fact that this agent can increase contractile performance without heart rate increase should be desirable in HF therapy.
Cell Stem Cell Matters Arising Response Molecular Analyses of Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells and Embryonic Stem Cells

Recent work from our group and others has argued that human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) generated by the introduction of four viruses bearing reprogramming factors differ from human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) at the level of gene expression (Chin et al., 2009). Many of the differences seen were common across independent labs and, at least to some extent, are thought to be a result of residual expression of donor cell-specific genes (Chin et al., 2009; Ghosh et al., 2010; Marchetto et al., 2009). Two new reports reanalyze similar expression data sets as those used in Chin et al. (2009) and come to different conclusions (Newman and Cooper, 2010; Guenther et al., 2010). We compare various approaches to perform gene expression meta-analysis that all support our original conclusions and present new data to demonstrate that polycistronic delivery of the reprogramming factors and extended culture brings hiPSCs transcriptionally closer to hESCs.
Critical Review of Complex Plasma (Dusty Plasma) Diagnostics and Manipulation Techniques for the Fusion Community and Others

This paper surveys the present state of the art of diagnostics and removal techniques for particles suspended in plasma. Research on ldquodusty plasmasrdquo is necessary for ITER and fusion reactors of the future. The aim is to transfer the knowledge acquired in complex (dusty) plasma research and low temperature plasma community to the broad fusion community, which is being mobilized to understand/quantify this phenomenon and find solutions. The introductory style makes it accessible also to safety personnel and other interested readers with only basic knowledge of plasma. In the transfer from research to technology, we have tried to assess the applicability of the methods proposed, and we have identified further much needed R&D.