Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The emerging importance of noncoding RNAs in the insecticide tolerance, with special emphasis on Plutella xylostella (Lepidoptera: Plutellidae)

Recently generated high‐throughput sequencing data sets have shed light on the important regulatory roles of noncoding RNA (ncRNA) molecules in the development of higher organisms. Nowadays it is well‐known that regulatory ncRNAs can bind complementary RNA or DNA sequences and recruit chromatin remodelers to selectively modulate gene expression. Consequently, genome sequencing and transcriptomics technologies are now being used to reveal hidden associations among ncRNAs and distinct biological mechanisms. This is the case for the diamondback moth Plutella xylostella, a worldwide pest known to infest cruciferous crops and to display resistance to most insecticides, including Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) based biopesticides. In P. xylostella, it is thought that ncRNAs could play important roles in both development and insecticide resistance. This review will highlight recent insights into the roles of ncRNAs in P. xylostella and related lepidopterans, and will outline genetic engineering technologies which might be used to design efficient ncRNA‐based pest control strategies.
Adaptive Radar Detection of Dim Moving Targets in Presence of Range Migration

This letter addresses adaptive radar detection of dim moving targets. To circumvent range migration, the detection problem is formulated as a multiple hypothesis test and solved applying model order selection rules which allow to estimate the “position” of the target within the CPI and eventually detect it. The performance analysis shows that the newly proposed architectures can provide an accurate estimate of the target position along with improved detection performance with respect to existing competitors.
Unenhanced Respiratory-Gated Magnetic Resonance Angiography (MRA) of Renal Artery in Hypertensive Patients Using True Fast Imaging With Steady-State Precession Technique Compared With Contrast-Enhanced MRA

Objective This study was aimed to evaluate the accuracy of “True Fast Imaging with Steady-State Precession” (TrueFISP) MR angiography (MRA) for diagnosis of renal arterial stenosis (RAS) in hypertensive patients. Methods Twenty-two patients underwent both TrueFISP MRA and contrast-enhanced MRA (CE-MRA) on a 1.5-T MR imager. Volume of main renal arteries, length of maximal visible renal arteries, number of visualized branches, stenotic grade, and subjective quality were compared. Paired 2-tailed Student t test and Wilcoxon signed rank test were applied to evaluate the significance of these variables. Results Volume of main renal arteries, length of maximal visible renal arteries, and number of branches indicated no significant difference between the 2 techniques (P > 0.05). Stenotic degree of 10 RAS was greater on CE-MRA than on TrueFISP MRA. Qualitative scores from TrueFISP MRA were higher than those from CE-MRA (P < 0.05). Conclusions TrueFISP MRA is a reliable and accurate method for evaluating RAS.
Relationship Between Sleep and Symptoms of Tear Dysfunction in Singapore Malays and Indians.

Purpose The purpose of this study was to investigate the association between sleep (duration and quality) and symptoms of dry eye in Singapore Malay and Indian adults. Methods This was a prospective cross-sectional study. A total of 3303 subjects aged 40 years and above from two large population-based cohorts, the Singapore Malay Eye Study-2 (n = 1191, 2011-2013) and the Singapore Indian Eye Study-2 (n = 2112, 2013-2015), were included. The presence of symptoms of dry eye was defined as having at least one of six symptoms often or all the time. Sleep questionnaires included the Epworth Sleepiness Scale, Berlin Questionnaire, STOP-bang questionnaire, and Insomnia Severity Index. Poor sleep quality was defined as meeting the respective questionnaire thresholds. General health questionnaires (including sleep duration) and standardized ocular and systemic tests were also used. Results Of 3303 participants, 6.4% had excessive sleepiness, 20.5% had high risk for sleep apnea, 2.7% had clinical insomnia, and 7.8% had <5 hours of sleep. These sleep factors were associated with symptoms of dry eye. After adjusting for relevant demographic, medical, and social factors, the following were associated with higher odds of symptoms of dry eye: excessive sleepiness (Epworth Sleepiness Scale: odds ratio [OR] = 1.77 [1.15-2.71]), high risk of sleep apnea (Berlin Questionnaire: OR = 1.55 [1.17-2.07], STOP-Bang Questionnaire: OR = 2.66 [1.53-4.61]), clinical insomnia (Insomnia Severity Index: OR = 3.68 [2.17-6.26]) and <5 hours of sleep (OR = 1.73 [1.17-2.57], reference sleep duration 5-9 hours). Sleep apnea, insomnia, and sleep duration were each shown to be independently associated with symptoms of dry eye. Conclusion Short sleep duration and poor quality are both significantly and independently associated with symptoms of dry eye.
Proteome and allergenome of the European house dust mite Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus

The European house dust mite Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus is of significant medical importance as it is a major elicitor of allergic illnesses. In this analysis we have undertaken comprehensive bioinformatic and proteomic examination of Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus airmid, identified 12,530 predicted proteins and validated the expression of 4,002 proteins. Examination of homology between predicted proteins and allergens from other species revealed as much as 2.6% of the D. pteronyssinus airmid proteins may cause an allergenic response. Many of the potential allergens have evidence for expression (n = 259) and excretion (n = 161) making them interesting targets for future allergen studies. Comparative proteomic analysis of mite body and spent growth medium facilitated qualitative assessment of mite group allergen localisation. Protein extracts from house dust contain a substantial number of uncharacterised D. pteronyssinus proteins in addition to known and putative allergens. Novel D. pteronyssinus proteins were identified to be highly abundant both in house dust and laboratory cultures and included numerous carbohydrate active enzymes that may be involved in cuticle remodelling, bacteriophagy or mycophagy. These data may have clinical applications in the development of allergen-specific immunotherapy that mimic natural exposure. Using a phylogenomic approach utilising a supermatrix and supertree methodologies we also show that D. pteronyssinus is more closely related to Euroglyphus maynei than Dermatophagoides farinae.
Analysis of deletional hereditary persistence of fetal hemoglobin/δβ‐thalassemia and δ‐globin gene mutations in Southerwestern China

Deletional hereditary persistence of fetal hemoglobin (HPFH)/δβ‐thalassemia and δ‐thalassemia are rare inherited disorders which may complicate the diagnosis of β‐thalassemia. The aim of this study was to reveal the frequency of these two disorders in Southwestern China.
What are the Reasons for Differences in Job Satisfaction Across Europe? Individual, Compositional, and Institutional Explanations

This article looks at the determinants of job satisfaction in 27 European countries at both the individual and country level. Individual determinants include type of occupation, supervision responsibilities, working hours, and the assessment of various dimensions, such as intrinsic and extrinsic job characteristics. These factors already explain a large share of country-level variation which renders country differences in job satisfaction foremost the result of individual factors and the composition of the workforce. Notwithstanding this finding, some countries still have higher job satisfaction (country premium) whilst others have less job satisfaction (country penalty) once individual-level explanations are taken into account. To explain this, we considered the effects of country-level institutional factors, such as wage levels, extent of unionization, levels of unemployment and inequality, of which wage levels were the most important.
Characterization of baboon anti‐porcine IgG antibodies during acute vascular rejection of porcine kidney xenograft

In the pig‐to‐baboon model, the removal of anti‐porcine natural antibodies abrogates hyperacute vascular rejection (HAVR), but the xenograft then undergoes an acute vascular rejection (AVR) concomitantly to the appearance of newly formed anti‐porcine antibodies. The use of anti‐IgM monoclonal antibody (mAb) in baboons allowed to avoid HAVR of pig‐to‐baboon renal xenografts, but, at post‐operative day 6, AVR occurred because of a rapid return of anti‐porcine antibodies. The aim of this work was to characterize the anti‐porcine antibodies during AVR. Sera from anti‐IgM‐treated animals were assessed prior to the graft and at the time of AVR by enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) to determine anti‐porcine antibodies concentration as well as the IgG subtypes. The same sera were tested on confluent cultures of porcine aortic endothelial cells (PAECs) to assess (i) the cytolytic complement‐dependent activity and (ii) the E‐selectin expression. The K affinity of anti‐Gal IgG antibodies was measured by ELISA. Anti‐porcine (Gal and non‐Gal) IgG antibodies were tested on PAECs by flow cytometry to discriminate the presence of Gal epitopes from the recognition of other porcine epitopes. We found that both anti‐porcine IgM and IgG antibodies presented a significantly increased cytolytic activity and E‐selectin expression on PAECs during AVR. These characteristics are related to an important increase of the antibody (Ab) titer (especially anti‐galactosyl) and a switch to anti‐galactosyl IgG1 subclass production, whereas the K affinity remained unchanged. The deleterious effects of both IgM and IgG antibodies observed during AVR showed the crucial need for treatment controlling the cells producing anti‐porcine antibodies.
Dynamic covering for recommendation systems

In this paper, we identify a fundamental algorithmic problem that we term succinct dynamic covering (SDC), arising in many modern-day web applications, including ad-serving and online recommendation systems such as in eBay, Netflix, and Amazon. Roughly speaking, SDC applies two restrictions to the well-studied Max-Coverage problem [14]: Given an integer k, X={1,2,. ,n}and I={S_1,. ,S_m}, S_i subseteq X, find |J| subseteq I, such that |J| < k and (union_S_in_J S) is as large as possible. The two restrictions applied by SDC are: (1)Dynamic: At query-time, we are given a query Q subseteq X, and our goal is to find J such that Q bigcap (union_S_J S) is as large as possible; Space-constrained: We don't have enough space to store (and process) the entire input; specifically, we have o(mn), and maybe as little as O((m+n)polylog(mn))space. A solution to SDC maintains a small data structure, and uses this datastructure to answer most dynamic queries with high accuracy. We call such a scheme a Coverage Oracle. We present algorithms and complexity results for coverage oracles. We present deterministic and probabilistic near-tight upper and lower bounds on the approximation ratio of SDC as a function of the amount of space available to the oracle. Our lower bound results show that to obtain constant-factor approximations we need Omega(mn) space. Fortunately, our upper bounds present an explicit tradeoff between space and approximation ratio, allowing us to determine the amount of space needed to guarantee certain accuracy.
Chapter 16 Size Analysis of Algebraic Data Types

We present a size-aware type system for a first-order functional language with algebraic data types, where types are annotated with polynomials over size variables. We define how to generate typing rules for each data type, provided its user defined size function meets certain requirements. As an example, a program for balancing binary trees is type checked. The type system is shown to be sound with respect to the operational semantics in the class of shapely functions. Type checking is shown to be undecidable, however, decidability for a large subset of programs is guaranteed.
DETERMINATION OF PROPAGATION CONSTANTS AND MATERIAL DATA FROM WAVEGUIDE MEASUREMENTS

This paper presents an analysis with the aim of characterizing the electromagnetic properties of an arbitrary linear, bianisotropic material inside a metallic waveguide. The result is that if the number of propagating modes is the same inside and outside the material under test, it is possible to determine the propagation constants of the modes inside the material by using scattering data from two samples with different lengths. Some information can also be obtained on the cross-sectional shape of the modes, but it remains an open question if this information can be used to characterize the material. The method is illustrated by numerical examples, determining the complex permittivity for lossy isotropic and anisotropic materials.
Electromagnetic analysis for lightning propagation in lossy soil by using FDTD

When the lightning electromagnetic pulse (LEMP) injected into the loss soil by earth electrodes, due to the strong electric field carried by the lightning, the soil ionization may occur. The ionization phenomena will not only affect the distribution of the LEMP, but also affect the soil properties, such as conductivity. Based on finite difference time domain (FDTD) method, the non linear effects of soil ionization under different parameters of LEMP and the soil properties is investigated. Results show the distribution and attenuation of LEMP. The evolution of the soil properties is discussed also.
Freestanding Borophene and Its Hybrids

Borophene, an elemental metallic Dirac material is predicted to have unprecedented mechanical and electronic character. Need of substrate and ultrahigh vacuum conditions for deposition of borophene restricts its large‐scale applications and significantly hampers the advancement of research on borophene. Herein, a facile and large‐scale synthesis of freestanding atomic sheets of borophene through a novel liquid‐phase exfoliation and the reduction of borophene oxide is demonstrated. Electron microscopy confirms the presence of β12, X3, and their intermediate phases of borophene; X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and scanning tunneling microscopy, corroborated with density functional theory band structure calculations, validate the phase purity and the metallic nature. Borophene with excellent anchoring capabilities is used for sensing of light, gas, molecules, and strain. Hybrids of borophene as well as that of reduced borophene oxide with other 2D materials are synthesized, and the predicted superior performance in energy storage is explored. The specific capacity of borophene oxide is observed to be ≈4941 mAh g−1, which significantly exceeds that of existing 2D materials and their hybrids. These freestanding borophene materials and their hybrids will create a huge breakthrough in the field of 2D materials and could help to develop future generations of devices and emerging applications.
Human renal response to furosemide: Simultaneous oxygenation and perfusion measurements in cortex and medulla

Disturbances of renal medullary perfusion and metabolism have been implicated in the pathogenesis of kidney disease and hypertension. Furosemide, a loop diuretic, is widely used to prevent renal medullary hypoxia in acute kidney disease by uncoupling sodium metabolism, but its effects on medullary perfusion in humans are unknown. We performed quantitative imaging of both renal perfusion and oxygenation using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) before and during furosemide. Based on the literature, we hypothesized that furosemide would increase medullary oxygenation, decrease medullary perfusion, but cause minor changes (<10%) in renal artery flow (RAF).
A full CMOS voltage regulating circuit for bioimplantable applications

In this paper, we present the design of a voltage regulating circuit in a 0.18mum standard CMOS process. A full wave rectifier is designed to generate an unregulated dc voltage. A low drop out (LDO) series voltage regulator converts the unregulated voltage to a clean DC supply voltage. A new closed loop and very reliable power-on-reset circuit along with its design procedure is presented. The circuit is primarily for biomedical implants, but it is also suitable for other voltage regulator application
Association between dog ownership and type 2 diabetes in later life: the Helsinki birth cohort study

ABSTRACT Dog ownership has been reported to have beneficial effects on physical activity and emotional well-being, both known to reduce the risk for type 2 diabetes (T2D). The aim of this study was to evaluate the association between dog ownership during the whole life course and having T2D in later life. The study subjects consisted of 731 people (307 men and 424 women) from the Helsinki Birth Cohort Study. We assessed dog ownership with questionnaires, for every decade of life as well as current dog ownership. We investigated the associations between dog ownership and T2D with generalised estimating equation models and with generalised linear models. At a mean age of 71.0 (standard deviation [SD] 2.6) years, 13% of the participants had T2D. Dog ownership prior to the clinical examination was not associated with T2D (p ≥ 0.51). In men, but not in women, current dog owners had greater odds of having T2D compared with the non-owners when adjusted for age when clinically examined, socio-economic status, smoking, leisure-time physical activity, chronic diseases (OR = 3.32, 95% confidence interval 1.25–8.79, p = 0.016). In the age group of people around 70 years, dog ownership is not associated with reduced odds for developing T2D. Abbreviations: BMI: body mass index; CI: confidence interval; GEE: generalised estimating equation; HBCS: Helsinki Birth Cohort Study; KIHD: Kuopio Ischemic Heart Disease; LTPA: leisure-time physical activity; MET: metabolic equivalent of task; OGTT: oral glucose tolerance test; OR: Odds ratio; SD: standard deviation; SES: socio-economic status; T2D: type 2 diabetes
Estimation of component reliability from superposed renewal processes with masked cause of failure by means of latent variables

In a system, there are identical replaceable components working for a given task and a failed component is replaced by a functioning one in the corresponding position, which characterizes a repairable system. Assuming that a replaced component lifetime has the same lifetime distribution as the old one, a single component position can be represented by a renewal process and the multiple components positions for a single system form a superposed renewal process. When the interest consists in estimating the component lifetime distribution, there are a considerable amount of works that deal with estimation methods for this kind of problem. However, the information about the exact position of the replaced component is not available, that is, a masked cause of failure. In this work, we propose two methods, a Bayesian and a maximum likelihood function approaches, for estimating the failure time distribution of components in a repairable system with a masked cause of failure. As our proposed estimators consider latent variables, they yield better performance results compared to commonly used estimators from the literature. The proposed models are generic and straightforward for any probability distribution. Aside from point estimates, interval estimates are presented for both approaches. Using several simulations, the performances of the proposed methods are illustrated and their efficiency and applicability are shown based on the so-called cylinder problem.
Dimension transcendence and anomalous charge transport in magnets with moving multiple-
Q
 spin textures

Multiple-$Q$ spin textures, such as magnetic bubble and skyrmion lattices, can be driven into motion by external stimuli. The motion of spin textures affects the electronic states. Here we show that to describe correctly the electronic dynamics, the momentum space needs to be transcended to higher dimensions by including the ancillary dimensions associated with phason modes of the translational motion of the spin textures. The electronic states have non-trivial topology characterized by the first and second Chern numbers in the high dimensional hybrid momentum space. This gives rise to an anomalous electric charge transport due to the motion of spin textures. By deforming the spin textures, a nonlinear response associated with the second Chern number can be induced. The charge transport is derived from the semi-classical equation of motion of electrons that depends on the Berry curvature in the hybrid momentum space. Our results suggest that the motion of multiple-$Q$ spin textures has significant effects on the electronic dynamics and provides a new platform to explore high dimensional topological physics.
HSP70/HSF1 axis, regulated via a PI3K/AKT pathway, is a druggable target in chronic lymphocytic leukemia

Considering the role played by the heat shock protein of 70 kDa (HSP70) in cancer, we characterized this protein and its major regulator, the heat shock factor 1 (HSF1), in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). We found both HSP70 and HSF1 overexpressed in CLL patients, correlated to poor prognosis and abnormally localized in the nucleus of leukemic B cells. The two proteins were strictly correlated each other and their levels decreased consensually in those patients responding to in vivo therapeutic regimens. HSP70 and HSF1 inhibition was proved to be effective in inducing a dose‐dependent in vitro apoptosis of CLL B cells. Considering that HSF1 is finely regulated by kinases belonging to pathways triggered by rat sarcoma (RAS), we benefited from a previous proteomic study performed in CLL patients aiming to assess the activation/expression of key signaling proteins. We found that patients showing high levels of HSP70 also expressed high Akt‐Ser473, thus activating HSF1. Inhibition of PI3K, which activates AKT, reduced the expression of HSF1 and HSP70. By contrast, HSP70‐low patients displayed high activation of MEK1/2 and ERK1/2, known to negatively regulate HSF1. These data demonstrate that the HSP70 expression is regulated by the modulation of HSF1 activity through the activation of RAS‐regulated pathways and suggest the HSP70/HSF1 interplay as an interesting target for antileukemic therapies. Finally, inhibition of PI3K, that activates AKT, reduced the expression of HSF1 and HSP70.
Protecting mobile users from visual privacy attacks

An increasing number of people are using mobile devices in public places such as buses, trains, airports, coffee shops, and restaurants. Though the flexibility to work remotely using mobile devices make people more productive, this new working practice incurs un-authorized visual access of the mobile display by the bystanders, which we call visual privacy attack. Failing to prevent un-authorized people viewing sensitive information such as passwords, emails, and business information could lead to financial loss, public exposure, and embarrassment. In this paper, we propose a solution that captures the surrounding environment through user's mobile phone camera and determines whether any un-authorized person is obtaining visual access to the user's mobile screen. We develop an Android application, iAlert, that runs as a background process on a user's mobile device and alerts the user based on whether or not the displayed text on the screen is readable by bystanders.