Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Within plant interspecific competition does not limit the highly invasive thrips , Frankliniella occidentalis in Florida

1. Species invasions are often linked to reductions in biodiversity, and competitive superiority is often cited as the main reason for the success of an invasive species. Although invaded ecosystems are often examined, few have studied areas in which an invasive species has failed to successfully invade. 2. The western flower thrips, Frankliniella occidentalis (Pergande) (Thysanoptera: Thripidae), is a damaging pest and tospovirus vector that has invaded most of the world, and competitive superiority is considered one of the main reasons for this species’ success. 3. However, a recent study demonstrated that competition between larval F. occidentalis and a native thrips species may be limiting F. occidentalis abundance in much of the eastern United States. Frankliniella occidentalis also has a limited abundance in central and southern Florida, which is dominated by the endemic F. bispinosa (Morgan). The potential for interspecific competition to limit F. occidentalis abundance in Florida was assessed. 4. The effects of competition between F. occidentalis and F. bispinosa on adult reproduction on a common host (Capsicum annuum L.) were quantified, using a response surface experimental design and a combination of linear and non-linear competition models. 5. Evidence of symmetric competition between these thrips species was found, but contrary to expectations, F. occidentalis reproduced more in dense interspecific populations than F. bispinosa. These results suggest that, unlike most of the eastern US, interspecific competition is not important in limiting F. occidentalis abundance in central and southern Florida.
UvA-DARE ( Digital Academic Repository ) In vivo imaging of Nematostella vectensis embryogenesis and late development using fluorescent probes

Background: Cnidarians are the closest living relatives to bilaterians and have been instrumental to studying the evolution of bilaterian properties. The cnidarian model, Nematostella vectensis, is a unique system in which embryology and regeneration are both studied, making it an ideal candidate to develop in vivo imaging techniques. Live imaging is the most direct way for quantitative and qualitative assessment of biological phenomena. Actin and tubulin are cytoskeletal proteins universally important for regulating many embryological processes but so far studies in Nematostella primarily focused on the localization of these proteins in fixed embryos. Results: We used fluorescent probes expressed in vivo to investigate the dynamics of Nematostella development. Lifeact-mTurquoise2, a fluorescent cyan F-actin probe, can be visualized within microvilli along the cellular surface throughout embryonic development and is stable for two months after injection. Co-expression of Lifeact-mTurquoise2 with End-Binding protein1 (EB1) fused to mVenus or tdTomato-NLS allows for the visualization of cell-cycle properties in real time. Utilizing fluorescent probes in vivo helped to identify a concentrated ‘flash’ of Lifeact-mTurquoise2 around the nucleus, immediately prior to cytokinesis in developing embryos. Moreover, Lifeact-mTurquoise2 expression in adult animals allowed the identification of various cell types as well as cellular boundaries. Conclusion: The methods developed in this manuscript provide an alternative protocol to investigate Nematostella development through in vivo cellular analysis. This study is the first to utilize the highly photo-stable florescent protein mTurquoise2 as a marker for live imaging. Finally, we present a clear methodology for the visualization of minute temporal events during cnidarian development.
Information synthesis across scales in atmospheric state estimation: Theory and numerical experiments

Title of dissertation: INFORMATION SYNTHESIS ACROSS SCALES IN ATMOSPHERIC STATE ESTIMATION: THEORY AND NUMERICAL EXPERIMENTS Matthew Kretschmer, Doctor of Philosophy, 2015 Dissertation directed by: Professor Edward Ott Department of Physics This thesis studies the benefits of simultaneously considering system information from different sources when performing ensemble data assimilation. In particular, in Chapter 2 we consider ensemble data assimilation using both a global dynamical model and climatological forecast error information, and, in Chapters 3 and 4, using both a global dynamical model and at least one higher-resolution limited-area dynamical model. Focus is given to applying data assimilation for atmospheric state estimation. Introductory material on ensemble forecasting is given in Chapter 1. In Chapter 2, I first investigate how the forecast background-error climatology can be used to help improve state estimates, and subsequent forecasts initialized from those state estimates. “Climatological perturbations” derived from an estimate of the background-error covariance matrix are added to the dynamic ensemble that has been forecasted from the previous analysis time, enlarging the space of possible analysis increments. Numerical experiments on a one-dimensional toy model test this method and illustrate that climatologically augmenting the dynamical forecast ensemble during the analysis has a positive impact on state estimation and forecast accuracy. Chapter 3 studies data assimilation that considers state information from various spatial scales. In practice, it is common for regional-scale weather forecasts to be created using limited-area atmospheric models which have relatively high spatial resolution. Limited-area model forecasts require lateral boundary conditions, which often come from a lower resolution forecast model (with different model physics) defined over a larger, often global, domain. Here I describe how data assimilation may be performed on a composite forecast state containing information from all available forecast models, and show results from numerical experiments that detail the benefits of this approach. Chapter 4 of this thesis explores forecast model bias, which is the result of uncertain, unknown or incorrect model physics. I adapt a strategy for correcting forecast model bias to use when performing data assimilation using the composite state method described in Chapter 3. In numerical experiments, I test this bias correction strategy for differently biased global and limited-area models, and observe that analysis and forecast accuracy is dramatically improved when compared to forecasts made without bias correction. INFORMATION SYNTHESIS ACROSS SCALES IN ATMOSPHERIC STATE ESTIMATION: THEORY AND NUMERICAL EXPERIMENTS
Subnational variations and convergence / divergence processes in demographic components *

Demographic theories frequently imply regional convergence in both fertility and mortality indicators. Despite the assumptions that demographic rates across regions would converge, there has been no evidence of this fact. This paper discusses the hypothesis of convergence and divergence in mortality and fertility with special focus on subnational levels in Latin American countries. These countries are extremely unequal in many dimensions, which are likely to be related to demographic variables. This paper also discusses the indicators used to measure mortality and fertility and the metrics of disparity to assess convergence and divergence processes, presenting a study case for Brazil. Results show that the mortality and fertility changes at subnational levels in Brazil do not follow a unidirectional and linear course, but rather present a process of convergence and divergence. * Paper presented at the “VII Congreso de la Asociación Latinoamericana de Población e XX Encontro Nacional de Estudos Populacionais” in Foz do Iguaçu /PR – Brasil, from 10/17/2016 a 10/22/2016 † Researcher at the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) and Ph.D. candidate in Demography at University of California, Berkeley.
The Extraction of Feature Lines on 3D Models: A Survey

Feature lines are perceptually important features on 3D models, and have extensive applications such as mesh simplification, re-gridding, shape analysis, non-photorealistic rendering and surface smoothing, etc. This paper gives a comprehensive survey on this field, which has not been summarized before. According to whether feature lines are associated with the line of sight, feature lines can be classified into two categories: view-dependent curves and view-independent curves. Besides, view-independent curves can be further classified according to the type of 3D models, and view-dependent curves can be classified according to the property of feature lines. A complete classified method of feature lines on 3D models is proposed in this paper, and the challenges for feature extraction are also discussed briefly.
Reversing Stimulus Timing in Visual Conditioning Leads to Memories with Opposite Valence in Drosophila

Animals need to associate different environmental stimuli with each other regardless of whether they temporally overlap or not. Drosophila melanogaster displays olfactory trace conditioning, where an odor is followed by electric shock reinforcement after a temporal gap, leading to conditioned odor avoidance. Reversing the stimulus timing in olfactory conditioning results in the reversal of memory valence such that an odor that follows shock is later on approached (i.e. relief conditioning). Here, we explored the effects of stimulus timing on memory in another sensory modality, using a visual conditioning paradigm. We found that flies form visual memories of opposite valence depending on stimulus timing and can associate a visual stimulus with reinforcement despite being presented with a temporal gap. These results suggest that associative memories with non-overlapping stimuli and the effect of stimulus timing on memory valence are shared across sensory modalities.
Software process enactment in Oikos

Despite much research work in progress to model the different facets of software process enactment from different approaches, there are no models yet generally recognized as adequate, and there is need for more experimentation. We describe the Oikos environment and its coordination language ESP: they provide an infrastructure in which experiments may be performed and evaluated. Oikos predefines a number of services offering basic facilities, like access to data bases, workspaces, user interfaces etc. Services are customizable, in a declarative way that matches naturally the way ESP defines and controls the software process. ESP allows to define services, to structure them in a dynamic hierarchy, and to coordinate them according to the blackboard paradigm. The concepts of environment and of software process and their interplay are naturally characterized in Oikos, in terms of sets of services and of the hierarchy. In the paper, an example taken from a real project (the specification of a small language and the implementation of its compiler) shows how Oikos and ESP are effective for software process enactment. As it is, ESP embeds Prolog as its sequential component, and combines it smoothly to the blackboard approach to deal with concurrency and distribution. Anyway, most of the concepts used to model and enact software processes are largely independent of logic programming.
Noun Paraphrasing Based on a Variety of Contexts

We paraphrase nouns along the contexts of sentence input on the basis of a variety of contexts obtained from a large-scale corpus. The proposed method only uses the number of types of context, not word frequency or co- occurrence frequency features. This method is based on the notion that paraphrase candidates appear more commonly with target words in the same context. The results of our experi- ment demonstrate that the approach can pro- duce more appropriate paraphrases than ap- proaches based on co-occurrence frequency and pointwise mutual information.
Global and Personal App Networks: Characterizing Social Relations among Mobile Apps

With the flourish of mobile computing, mobile Apps dominate the daily lives of users. Focusing on the social relations among Apps, this paper makes an empirical study on constructing the Global App Network (GAN) in terms of three types of inter-App relations (i.e., intent-based, semantics correlation based, and similarity-based ones), recovering Personal App Network (PAN) in terms of App usage log of each user, and exploring the characteristics of GAN and PAN. The study is based on two real-world datasets: the first one includes thousands of Apps collected from a real-world Android App store, and the second one contains 2-month App usage logs of 40 volunteers. Several interesting phenomena are observed from the study, such as (1) a large portion of implicit inter-App relations that are welcome by massive users are actually ignored by App developers, (2) some explicit relations proactively designed by App developers are actually not frequently used by users, (3) although there is a certain commonness among PANs of different users, each PAN shows a significant personalized pattern which delineates the individualized behaviors of a user. These conclusions are of significance to bi-directional App recommendations, i.e., to recommend neglected inter-App relations to App developers, and, to recommend common and popular inter-App relations to users.
The use and abuse of history

medical men. The editors are, however, commendably cautious as to the possible existence and viability of a philosophy ofmedicine as an independent enterprise akin to the philosophy of science, which is an established discipline like the philosophy of biology. They do believe, nevertheless, that common ground exists between physicians and philosophers, and that, as Temkin has suggested, there is room for a consideration of medical logic, medical ethics, and medical metaphysics. But as well as a philosophy of medicine there is need for a philosophy in medicine: a critical analysis of basic concepts and presuppositions in medicine, and of its significance and limitations. This book deals with some of these and discusses models of explanation and systems of value in the biomedical sciences. Although most of the papers should be read by historians of medicine, those of greatest interest to them will be Lester King's, 'Some basic explanations of disease: an historian's viewpoint', Chester Bums', 'Diseases versus healths: some legacies in the philosophies of modem medical science', and Engelhardt's, 'The concepts of health and disease', all ofwhich are excellent contributions. Toulmin on 'Concepts offunction and mechanism in medicine and medical science', given as a tribute to Claude Bernard, is also outstanding. The Round-Table Discussion is likewise profitable to historians. In fact they should all possess a copy of this book, although the price will probably be the usual deterrent. The symposiasts concur that the philosophy ofand in medicine are legitimate topics ofstudy, for as Dr. E. D. Pellegrino concludes: ". Indeed without the engagement and the conjunction of medicine and philosophy, no viable or understandable image of man can be synthesized for our times. And, the absence of such a synthesis is a major deficit in contemporary culture. " (p.234). We can look forward to further volumes in this series, which are planned to encompass the analysis of philosophical problems pertinent to medicine, and we can congratulate the editors, the contributors and the publishers for what they have achieved so far.
NeMa: Fast Graph Search with Label Similarity

It is increasingly common to find real-life data represented as networks of labeled, heterogeneous entities. To query these networks, one often needs to identify the matches of a given query graph in a (typically large) network modeled as a target graph. Due to noise and the lack of fixed schema in the target graph, the query graph can substantially differ from its matches in the target graph in both structure and node labels, thus bringing challenges to the graph querying tasks. In this paper, we propose NeMa (Network Match), a neighborhood-based subgraph matching technique for querying real-life networks. (1) To measure the quality of the match, we propose a novel subgraph matching cost metric that aggregates the costs of matching individual nodes, and unifies both structure and node label similarities. (2) Based on the metric, we formulate the minimum cost subgraph matching problem. Given a query graph and a target graph, the problem is to identify the (top-k) matches of the query graph with minimum costs in the target graph. We show that the problem is NP-hard, and also hard to approximate. (3) We propose a heuristic algorithm for solving the problem based on an inference model. In addition, we propose optimization techniques to improve the efficiency of our method. (4) We empirically verify that NeMa is both effective and efficient compared to the keyword search and various state-of-the-art graph querying techniques.
Nicotine administration in the cholinergic basal forebrain increases alcohol consumption in C57BL/6J mice.

BACKGROUND Alcohol and nicotine are the most commonly abused drugs. The frequent co-morbidity of alcohol and nicotine addiction has led to the hypothesis that they may act via a common substrate: the nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) especially α4β2 and α7 subtypes, the most prevalent nAChRs in the brain. Compelling evidence suggests that alcohol enhances the function of α4β2 subtype. The FDA approved smoking cessation drug, varenicline ("Chantix"), a partial agonist of α4β2 nAChR subtype, reduces alcohol self-administration and alcohol craving in humans and rodents. The cholinergic basal forebrain (BF) controls various functions including arousal, attention, and cognition, and there is a predominance of α4β2 and α7 subtypes. We have shown that the BF has an important role in mediating the effects of alcohol and local infusion of nicotine in the BF activates nucleus accumbens. Does BF have any role in mediating the effect of nicotine on alcohol consumption? This study was designed to address this question. METHODS Under standard surgical procedure, C57BL/6J mice were stereotaxically implanted with bilateral stainless steel guide cannula above the BF. Following post operative recovery and habituation, the animals were exposed to the "drinking-in-the-dark" paradigm whereby alcohol (20%) was presented for 2 hours daily for 3 days. On the fourth day, nicotine or artificial cerebrospinal fluid (ACSF) was microinjected bilaterally in the BF. After 1 hour, mice were exposed to alcohol and allowed to self-administer for 4 hours. The effect of BF nicotine infusion on sucrose consumption was also examined. On completion, mice were euthanized, brain removed and processed to localize the BF injection sites. RESULTS As compared with the ACSF, bilateral nicotine injections into the BF significantly (p < 0.05; n = 5/group) increased alcohol consumption. Sucrose consumption remained unaffected. CONCLUSIONS Based on our results, we believe that the BF may have an important role in nicotine-alcohol co-use.
Is the Dodd-Frank Act Destroying What is Left of U.S. Thrifts?

I examine data from 1992 to 2015 to assess the Dodd-Frank Act’s impact on the performance of U.S. depository institutions, thrifts in particular. Ceteris paribus, the average FDIC-regulated institution experienced a decline in profitability as measured by pre-tax return on assets (ROA) following the Act’s passage, but the decline was concentrated among commercial banks. Small thrifts increased pre-tax profitability, after controlling for other factors including weak economic growth. Depository institution loan quality improved after Dodd-Frank, less so for small thrifts but more so for large thrifts. Efficiency ratios, which regulatory costs affect, increased, more for thrifts than banks.
Clinical and Experimental Gastroenterology Dovepress Serum Magnesium Concentrations in Patients Receiving Sodium Picosulfate and Magnesium Citrate Bowel Preparation: an Assessment of Renal Function and Electrocardiographic Conduction

Background: We performed a post hoc analysis of two clinical trials to assess whether sodium picosulfate and magnesium (Mg 2+) citrate (Prepopik ® [P/MC]), a dual-action bowel preparation for colonoscopy, has an impact on serum Mg 2+ levels and cardiac electrophysiology. Although rare, hypermagnesemia has been reported in patients consuming Mg 2+-containing cathartics, especially patients who are elderly and have renal impairment. active-control, multicenter, pivotal studies that investigated split-dose/day-before P/MC. Serum Mg 2+ and creatinine clearance (CrCl) were measured at screening, on the day of colonoscopy, and 24–48 hours, 7 days, and 4 weeks after colonoscopy; electrocardiograms also were obtained at these time points. Results: In total, 304 patients received split-dose P/MC and 294 patients received day-before P/MC. Only 10% of the patients had serum Mg 2+ above the upper limit of normal (1.05 mmol/L) on the day of colonoscopy. There was a slight inverse correlation between CrCl and Mg 2+ levels on the day of colonoscopy; however, even at the lowest CrCl, serum Mg 2+ remained below clinically significant levels of 2.0 mmol/L. Increases in serum Mg 2+ were transient, with levels returning to baseline within 24–48 hours, regardless of renal function. No patients with elevated Mg 2+ experienced a corrected QT (QTc) interval . 500 milliseconds or a QTc interval increase of $60 milliseconds from baseline. P/MC had no impact on PR or QRS interval. Conclusion: P/MC produces little impact on serum Mg 2+ levels with no clinically significant effect on cardiac conduction in patients, including those with mild-to-moderate renal impairment.
European Conference on Information Systems ( ECIS ) 5-2-2012 INTERORGANIZATIONAL SYSTEM AMBIDEXTERITY CAPABILITY AND ITS ROLE IN THE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY-PERFORMANCE RELATIONSHIP

In this paper, we investigate the notion of organizational ambidexterity in using interorganizational system (IOS) in supply chain context. IOS ambidexterity is defined as a firm’s capability of simultaneously pursuing exploratory and exploitative use of IOS. In order to understand the implication of IOS ambidexterity in IT resource-constrained firms, this paper draws on theories in resource-based view and organizational ambidexterity literature. Based on data collected from 375 firms and PLS analysis, this work empirically confirms that a firm capable of using IOS in a more ambidextrous way tends to experience greater performance improvement and that different types of IT resources exhibit differing influence patterns on IOS ambidexterity and performance. An additional analysis is performed to understand the moderating role of IT resources in the IOS ambidexterityperformance linkage.
The Impact of Oil Prices on East and Southeast Asian Economies: Evidence from financial markets

Oil prices have been volatile. To investigate how oil price swings affect Asian economies, this paper examines how they affect industry and aggregate stock returns. Economic theory implies that there is a strong link between a sector's stock return and its economic activity. Evidence presented here indicates that sectors such as electricity, airlines, and industrial transportation are helped by oil price falls, and that sectors such as oil and gas production and exploration are harmed. The findings also reveal that many industries within each country are impacted by oil prices. The paper concludes by offering several suggestions to help Asian economies weather the effects of oil price changes.