Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A New Copepod With Transformed Body Plan and Unique Phylogenetic Position Parasitic in the Acorn Worm Ptychodera flava

Symbiotic copepods compose one-third of the known copepod species and are associated with a wide range of animal groups. Two parasitic copepods endoparasitic in acorn worms (Hemichordata), Ive balanoglossi and Ubius hilli, collected in the Mediterranean Sea and Australian waters, respectively, were described a century ago. Here we report a new parasitic copepod species, Ive ptychoderae sp. nov., found in Ptychodera flava, a widespread acorn worm in the Indo-Pacific Ocean and an emerging organism for developmental and evolutionary studies. The female of I. ptychoderae is characterized by having a reduced maxilliped and five pairs of annular swellings along the body that are morphologically similar but distinguishable from those in the two previously described parasitic copepods in acorn worms. Phylogenetic analysis based on the 18S rDNA sequence shows that I. ptychoderae may belong to Poecilostomatoida but represent a new family, which we name Iveidae fam. nov. Ive ptychoderae is commonly found in the acorn worm population with an average prevalence of 42% during the collecting period. The infection of the parasite induces the formation of cysts and causes localized lesions of the host tissues, suggesting that it may have negative effects on its host. Interestingly, most cysts contain a single female with one or multiple male copepods, suggesting that their sex determination may be controlled by environmental conditions. The relationships between the parasitic copepods and acorn worms thus provide a platform for understanding physiological and ecological influences and coevolution between parasites and hosts.
Connecting the Dots: Multivariate Time Series Forecasting with Graph Neural Networks

Modeling multivariate time series has long been a subject that has attracted researchers from a diverse range of fields including economics, finance, and traffic. A basic assumption behind multivariate time series forecasting is that its variables depend on one another but, upon looking closely, it is fair to say that existing methods fail to fully exploit latent spatial dependencies between pairs of variables. In recent years, meanwhile, graph neural networks (GNNs) have shown high capability in handling relational dependencies. GNNs require well-defined graph structures for information propagation which means they cannot be applied directly for multivariate time series where the dependencies are not known in advance. In this paper, we propose a general graph neural network framework designed specifically for multivariate time series data. Our approach automatically extracts the uni-directed relations among variables through a graph learning module, into which external knowledge like variable attributes can be easily integrated. A novel mix-hop propagation layer and a dilated inception layer are further proposed to capture the spatial and temporal dependencies within the time series. The graph learning, graph convolution, and temporal convolution modules are jointly learned in an end-to-end framework. Experimental results show that our proposed model outperforms the state-of-the-art baseline methods on 3 of 4 benchmark datasets and achieves on-par performance with other approaches on two traffic datasets which provide extra structural information.
An Intervention to Support HIV Preexposure Prophylaxis Adherence in HIV-Serodiscordant Couples in Uganda

Background:Daily preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is an effective HIV prevention strategy, but adherence is required for maximum benefit. To date, there are no empirically supported PrEP adherence interventions. This article describes the process of developing a PrEP adherence intervention and presents results on its impact on adherence. Methods:The Partners PrEP Study was a placebo-controlled efficacy trial of daily oral tenofovir and emtricitabine/tenofovir PrEP among uninfected members of HIV-serodiscordant couples. An ancillary adherence study was conducted at 3 study sites in Uganda. Participants with <80% adherence as measured by unannounced pill count received an additional adherence counseling intervention based on Lifesteps, an evidence-based HIV treatment adherence intervention, based on principles of cognitive–behavioral theory. Findings:Of the 1147 HIV-seronegative participants enrolled in the ancillary adherence study, 168 (14.6%) triggered the adherence intervention. Of participants triggering the intervention, 62% were men; median age was 32.5 years. The median number of adherence counseling sessions was 10. Mean adherence during the month before the intervention was 75.7% and increased significantly to 84.1% in the month after the first intervention session (P < 0.001). The most frequently endorsed adherence barriers at session 1 were travel and forgetting. Interpretation:A PrEP adherence intervention was feasible in a clinical trial of PrEP in Uganda and PrEP adherence increased after the intervention. Future research should identify PrEP users with low adherence for enhanced adherence counseling and determine optimal implementation strategies for interventions to maximize PrEP effectiveness.
Financial Development and the Sensitivity of Stock Markets to External In fl uences 1

We investigate how the relative contribution of external factors to stock price movements varies with the degree of financial development. We find that financial development makes stock markets more susceptible to external influences (both financial and macroeconomic). Interestingly, this effect is present even after having accounted for capital controls and international trade effects. JEL Classifications: F4, G1, O1
Storehouses and Systems At Persepolis

The Achaemenid financial administration at Persepolis controlled a network of commodity storehouses. This paper demonstrates how the Fortification Tablets from this location reveal the method of operation of the storehouses and the functions of the responsible officials. There were two main branches of the administration, a regional one of storehouses where the commodity tax was collected, and a super-imposed flexible system of work-groups and animal management under the control of apportioners. The key to understanding the procedures adopted is a comprehensive analysis of seal use on the tablets.
Decentralized privacy-aware collaborative filtering of smart spammers in a telecommunication network

Smart spammers and telemarketers circumvent the standalone spam detection systems by making low rate spam-ming activity to a large number of recipients distributed across many telecommunication operators. The collaboration among multiple telecommunication operators (OPs) will allow operators to get rid of unwanted callers at the early stage of their spamming activity. The challenge in the design of collaborative spam detection system is that OPs are not willing to share certain information about behaviour of their users/customers because of privacy concerns. Ideally, operators agree to share certain aggregated statistical information if collaboration process ensures complete privacy protection of users and their network data. To address this challenge and convince OPs for the collaboration, this paper proposes a decentralized reputation aggregation protocol that enables OPs to take part in a collaboration process without use of a trusted third party centralized system and without developing a predefined trust relationship with other OPs. To this extent, the collaboration among operators is achieved through the exchange of cryptographic reputation scores among OPs thus fully protects relationship network and reputation scores of users even in the presence of colluders. We evaluate the performance of proposed protocol over the simulated data consisting of five collaborators. Experimental results revealed that proposed approach outperforms standalone systems in terms of true positive rate and false positive rate.
Vision-Based Control of a Knuckle Boom Crane With Online Cable Length Estimation

A vision-based controller for a knuckle boom crane is presented. The controller is used to control the motion of the crane tip, and at the same time, compensate for payload oscillations. The oscillations of the payload are measured with three cameras that are fixed to the crane king, and are used to track two spherical markers fixed to the payload cable. Based on color and size information, each camera identifies the image points corresponding to the markers. The payload angles are then determined using linear triangulation of the image points. An extended Kalman filter is used for the estimation of payload angles and angular velocity. The length of the payload cable is also estimated using the least-squares technique with projection. The crane is controlled by a linear cascade controller where the inner control loop is designed to damp out the pendulum oscillation, and the crane tip is controlled by the outer loop. The control variable of the controller is the commanded crane tip acceleration, which is converted to a velocity command using a velocity loop. The performance of the control system is studied experimentally using a scaled laboratory version of a knuckle boom crane.
MAT‐CAP: a novel medication assessment tool to explore adherence to clinical practice guidelines in community‐acquired pneumonia

Community‐acquired pneumonia (CAP) is a disease with high morbidity and mortality. Adherence to clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) in treatment of CAP is associated with favourable outcome. We aimed to develop and validate a medication assessment tool (MAT) to explore adherence to CPG recommendations in patients with CAP admitted to a Norwegian hospital. The tool is named MAT‐CAP.
Sexing Goat Embryos by PCR Amplification of X- and Y- chromosome Specific Sequence of the Amelogenin Gene

The objective of this study was to develop a simplified, efficient, and accurate protocol for sexing goat embryos. Based on the amelogenin gene located on the conservation region of X- and Y- chromosomes, a pair of primers was utilized and the system of PCR was established to amplify a 262 bp fragment from the X- chromosome in female goats, and a 262 bp fragment from X- chromosome and 202 bp fragment from the Y- chromosome in male goats, respectively. The accuracy and specificity of the primers were assessed using DNA template extracted from goat whole blood sample of known sex. 100% (10/10) concordance was obtained by using the PCR assay. Fifty-one biopsied embryos were transferred into 25 recipient goats on the same day that the embryos were collected and sex of the kid was confirmed after parturition. Eighteen kids of predicted sex were born. The biopsied samples from 51 goat embryos were amplified with 100% efficiency and 94.7% accuracy. In conclusion, our results indicated that PCR sexing protocols based on the amelogenin gene is highly reliable and suitable for sex determination of goats.
*-Jordan-type maps on C *-algebras

Abstract Let and be two -algebras with identities and respectively, and P 1 and nontrivial symmetric projections in . In this paper we study the characterization of multiplicative -Jordan-type maps. In particular, if is a factor von Neumann algebra then every bijective unital multiplicative -Jordan-type maps are -ring isomorphisms.
LMI Approach to Stability Analysis of Cohen-Grossberg Neural Networks with p-Laplace Diffusion

The nonlinear -Laplace diffusion () was considered in the Cohen-Grossberg neural network (CGNN), and a new linear matrix inequalities (LMI) criterion is obtained, which ensures the equilibrium of CGNN is stochastically exponentially stable. Note that, if , -Laplace diffusion is just the conventional Laplace diffusion in many previous literatures. And it is worth mentioning that even if , the new criterion improves some recent ones due to computational efficiency. In addition, the resulting criterion has advantages over some previous ones in that both the impulsive assumption and diffusion simulation are more natural than those of some recent literatures.
Magnetic fields from multiplicative chaos

An analytical model for fully developed three-dimensional incompressible turbulence was recently proposed in the hydrodynamics community, based on the concept of multiplicative chaos. It consists of a random field represented by means of a stochastic integral, which, with only a few parameters, shares many properties with experimental and numerical turbulence, including in particular energy transfer through scales (the cascade) and intermittency (non-Gaussianity) which is most conveniently controlled with a single parameter. Here, we propose three models extending this approach to MHD turbulence. Our formulae provide physically motivated 3D models of a turbulent velocity field and magnetic field coupled together. Besides its theoretical value, this work is meant to provide a tool for observers: a dozen of physically meaningful free parameters enter the description, which is useful to characterize astrophysical data.
SVM Based System for classification of Microcalcifications in Digital Mammograms

This paper presents a SVM based computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system for the characterization of clustered microcalcifications in digitized mammograms. First, the region of interest (ROI) in mammogram is enhanced using morphological enhancement (MORPHEN) method. Second, pixels in potential microcalcification regions are segmented out by using edge detection and morphological operations. Third, features based on shape, texture and statistical properties are extracted from each region. Finally, these features are fed to a SVM based classifier for identifying the clusters as either benign or malignant. The SVM with RBF kernel gave Az=0.9803 with 97% accuracy and the SVM with polynomial kernel gave Az=0.9541 with 95% accuracy
Histological correlation of diffusion tensor imaging metrics in experimental spinal cord injury

Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) has the potential to provide important information about the integrity of white matter tracts in injured spinal cord tissue. It is thought that DTI‐based transverse diffusivity (λt) reflects the state of myelin, whereas longitudinal diffusivity (λl) reflects axonal integrity. However, this has not been established in spinal cord injury (SCI). Therefore, we performed quantitative histologic analysis on 4‐ and 8‐week post‐SCI rodent spinal cords that had received a moderately severe injury at the T7 level and correlated the histology with λt and λl measured in vivo. Using antibodies specific to myelin and axonal process (i.e., neurofilament), the percent area of expression was determined in the dorsal, ventral, and lateral white matter from both rostral and caudal regions away from the epicenter of the injury site. The results suggest a positive correlation between λt and demyelination in many but not all regions. However, these studies failed to establish a correlation between λl and axonal damage. These results suggest that caution must be exercised in interpreting the DTI metrics in terms of tissue pathology in SCI. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Fusion of forward-looking infrared camera and down-looking ground penetrating radar for buried target detection

In this paper, we propose a system to detect buried disk-shaped landmines from ground penetrating radar (GPR) and forward-looking long wave infrared (FL-LWIR) data. The data is collected from a test area of 500m2, which was prepared at the IPA Defence, Ankara, Turkey. This test area was divided into four lanes, each of size 25m length by 4m width and 1m depth. Each lane was first carefully cleaned of stones and clutter and then filled with different soil types, namely fine-medium sand, course sand, sandy silt loam and loam mix. In all lanes, various clutter objects and landmines were buried at different depths and at 1meter intervals. In the proposed approach, IR data is used as a pre-screener. Then possible target regions are further analyzed using the GPR data. IR data processing is done in three steps such as preprocessing, target detection, and postprocessing. In the pre-processing stage, bilateral noise reduction filtering is performed. The target detection stage finds circular targets by a radial transformation algorithm. The proposed approach is compared with the RX algorithm used widely for anomaly detection. The suspicious regions are further analyzed using Histogram of Oriented Gradient (HOG) features that are extracted from GPR images and classified by SVM. The same approach can also be applied in a parallel way where the results are combined using decision level fusion. The results of the proposed approach are given on different scenarios including different weather temperature and depth of buried targets.
Dynamic modeling and control of the main metabolism in Lactic Acid Bacteria

Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) are widely used in industrial manufacture of fermented foods, such as cheese and buttermilk and regarded as cell factories for production of pharmaceutical and food products. Lactococcus lactis, due to its small genome size and simple metabolism, has been considered a model organism for strain design strategies and metabolic engineering. These strain design strategies are applied for production of compounds such as acetoin and 2,3-butanediol. Acetoin is used as additives in food industries and cigarette industries while 2,3-butanediol is extensively being used in manufacture of printing inks, perfumes, plasticizers, foods, and pharmaceuticals. Such strain design strategies have mainly focused on rerouting pyruvate metabolism to produce fermentation end products. These compounds, other than the main product of metabolism, are refereed as secondary metabolites and are often produced in insignificant amounts compared to primary metabolites. The strain design strategies implement the over production of these secondary metabolites compared to the primary metabolite. Biological network modeling, a fundamental aspect of systems biology, provides a platform to conduct in silico experiments with biotechnological and biomedical applications. These models are advantageous in the field of metabolic engineering to design mutant strains with capability of producing biotechnologically relevant products. With a fully detailed kinetic model, time-course simulations, response to different input can be predicted and system controllers can be designed. For L. lactis, the dynamic models for the central carbon metabolism have already been constructed. However, these models lack our compound of interest and need to be extended. Here, provided the interaction map of pathway under study and kinetic parameters, a dynamic model that describes the glycolytic pathway in L. lactis is constructed using convenience kinetics. This model is now improved and extended by estimating the parameters using in vivo Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) data fitting. Sensitivity analysis was performed in the reconstructed model for acetoin and butanediol production which suggests that down expressing the enzyme levels for lactate dehydrogenase, phosphofructokinase, pyruvate dehydrogenase causes increased acetoin and 2,3butanediol production. In addition to these enzyme levels, down expressing enzyme levels for acetoin transportase and alcohol dehydrogenase accounts for enhanced production of
Offtake Feedforward Compensation for Irrigation Channels With Distributed Control

In distant-downstream control of an irrigation network, there exists a tradeoff between the local performance requirement of regulating the water level in each pool to a given set point and the global performance requirement of attenuating the amplification of flows over gates in the upstream direction. Such a tradeoff is well managed by a distributed control that inherits the interconnection structure of the irrigation network. In addition, for each subsystem, to decrease the water-level deviation from its set point in response to large offtakes, the knowledge of the offtakes can be fed forward. This brief explores a systematic approach to the offtake feedforward compensation.
Long-term response of cultured rat parathyroid glands to calcium and calcitriol: the effect of cryopreservation.

AIM This study aimed to investigate the longest period in which parathyroid glands cultured in vitro maintained their viability and functionality in order to study the response of the glands to factors that exert their main action in the long term (1-7 days). METHODS Rat parathyroid glands from 104 Wistar rats were used. Cell viability was measured by flow cytometry for 7 days. Parathyroid tissue functionality was determined by parathyroid hormone (PTH) secretion in basal conditions and in the response of the glands to calcium and calcitriol. Calcium sensing receptor (CaR) synthesis was determined measuring protein levels by immunohistochemistry. Parathyroid glands were cryopreserved to study them in the same way as fresh tissue. RESULTS Intact parathyroid glands maintained their cell viability >80% until the 6th day in culture, while the functional capacity was limited to 4 days: PTH release was stable for 4 days, whilst from the 5th day onwards, PTH secretion reduced to undetectable levels. Parathyroid glands responded accurately when calcium was reduced in the culture medium; a mean increase >50% in PTH secretion was observed. No differences were observed in CaR levels before and after the culture period. PTH synthesis and secretion inhibition was observed when the parathyroid glands were cultured with calcitriol; this inhibition achieved 90% after 4 days in culture. Cryopreserved parathyroid glands maintained their viability, but partially lost their functionality, as they were unable to respond to calcium. CONCLUSIONS Intact parathyroid glands cultured in vitro maintained their functionality and their capacity to respond to their effectors for longer periods than in previously developed studies. It seems that part of this capacity is lost after cryopreservation. Nevertheless, this long-term culture model can be useful to study the response of the parathyroid glands.