Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Parapatric Distribution of the Lizards Plestiodon (Formerly Eumeces) latiscutatus and P. japonicus (Reptilia: Scincidae) Around the Izu Peninsula, Central Japan, and Its Biogeographic Implications

Abstract The scincid lizard Plestiodon latiscutatus is found in the Izu Islands and Izu Peninsula of central Japan, whereas P. japonicus, a close relative, is found over the entire main island group of Japan, except the Izu Peninsula. The precise area of occupancy of these species was surveyed around the Izu Peninsula. Species identification was made through comparison of mitochondrial DNA partial sequences of specimens from the Izu Peninsula with those from the other regions, since morphological differences between these species have not yet been characterized. This study determined that these species are deeply diverged from each other in mitochondrial DNA sequence, and that the ranges of these species overlap only in a narrow zone. The results imply that gene flow between these species, if any, is restricted to a low level, without physical barriers. The boundary between the geographic ranges of these species was established as occurring along the lower Fuji River, Mt. Fuji, and the Sakawa River. This region is concordant with that of the old sea that is assumed to have separated the Izu Peninsula from other parts of the Japanese main island group until the middle Pleistocene. This pattern suggests that P. latiscutatus and P. japonicus were differentiated allopatrically before the connection of land areas of the Izu Peninsula and Honshu, the main island of Japan, and come into secondary contact through this connection. Thus, the species boundary is likely to have been maintained in situ, without physical barriers, since the secondary contact in the middle Pleistocene.
Potential protective effect of honey against paracetamol-induced hepatotoxicity.

BACKGROUND Paracetamol overdose causes severe hepatotoxicity that leads to liver failure in both humans and experimental animals. The present study investigates the protective effect of honey against paracetamol-induced hepatotoxicity in Wistar albino rats. We have used silymarin as a standard reference hepatoprotective drug. METHODS Hepatoprotective activity was assessed by measuring biochemical parameters such as the liver function enzymes, serum alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and serum aspartate aminotransferase (AST). Equally, comparative effects of honey on oxidative stress biomarkers such as malondialdyhyde (MDA), reduced glutathione (GSH) and glutathione peroxidase (GPx) were also evaluated in the rat liver homogenates. We estimated the effect of honey on serum levels and hepatic content of interleukin-1beta (IL-1β) because the initial event in paracetamol-induced hepatotoxicity has been shown to be a toxic-metabolic injury that leads to hepatocyte death, activation of the innate immune response and upregulation of inflammatory cytokines. RESULTS Paracetamol caused marked liver damage as noted by significant increased activities of serum AST and ALT as well as the level of Il-1β. Paracetamol also resulted in a significant decrease in liver GSH content and GPx activity which paralleled an increase in Il-1β and MDA levels. Pretreatment with honey and silymarin prior to the administration of paracetamol significantly prevented the increase in the serum levels of hepatic enzyme markers, and reduced both oxidative stress and inflammatory cytokines. Histopathological evaluation of the livers also revealed that honey reduced the incidence of paracetamol-induced liver lesions. CONCLUSION Honey can be used as an effective hepatoprotective agent against paracetamol-induced liver damage.
Making Service Granularity Right: An Assistant Approach Based on Business Process Analysis

Service Oriented Computing (SOC) nowadays has been widely accepted as an effective paradigm to information system design both by the academia and by the industry. The term refers to the size of a service. As more and more services are available, making service granularity right gets more and more important. Although it has become a consensus that services should be coarse grained, the process is too tactical to operate in real world. In this paper, we propose an assistant approach to make the services granularity right by analyzing business processes that code very rich knowledge about business operations and that have existed long before the emergence of SOC. With our approach, the key services within an enterprise can also be revealed. A case study in this paper demonstrates these features.
The TerraSAR-L basic product tree

The TerraSAR-L system, currently being designed in a Phase B definition study, provides ESA with its most powerful radar-imaging programme to date. The platform is optimized for and built around the 11 mtimes2.9 m active phased array antenna of the L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (L-SAR). The L-SAR features, on top of standard Stripmap and ScanSAR operations, full polarimetric capabilities, repeat-pass ScanSAR interferometry and a Wave Mode. Specification of the L-SAR has been guided by a careful analysis of the product requirements resulting in a robust baseline design with considerable margins. Besides, a major contribution to applications in areas of climate change and oceanography, the TerraSAR-L design responds specifically to requirements from interferometric applications. One key element of the TerraSAR-L operations strategy is a long-term systematic and repetitive acquisition scenario to ensure consistent data archives and to maximize the scientific and commercial exploitation of this SAR system. The other important factor is a systematic processing of all acquired data to Single-look Slant-range Complex (SSC) products to facilitate higher level product generation and services based on these products. This paper describes the TerraSAR-L basic product tree and explains the rationale behind. The nominal TerraSAR-L imaging modes are introduced and their performance characteristics are described. The generation concept of multi-look detected products based consistently on complex products - generated either at an intermediate stage during ground segment processing or serving as input product into a stand-alone tool - is introduced. A modular SAR processor design using the same complex product generation algorithms as far as possible independent of the underlying imaging mode is addressed
Impact of Outpatient Antibiotic Use on Carriage of Ampicillin-Resistant Escherichia coli

ABSTRACT Studies about the relationship between antibiotic consumption and carriage of antibiotic-resistant Escherichia coli in individual patients have yielded conflicting results. The goal of this study was to identify individual- and household-level factors associated with carriage of ampicillin (AMP)-resistant E. coli during consumption of a course of oral antibiotics. We enrolled outpatients and their families in a prospective household study of AMP-resistant or AMP-susceptible E. coli carriage. Two kinds of index patients were identified. Group 1 consisted of outpatients who were being initiated on a new antibiotic course at the time of a clinic visit, and group 2 consisted of outpatients not starting antibiotics. Each participant was asked to submit three stool swab samples (at baseline, week 1, and week 4) and to complete a questionnaire. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing was performed on each phenotypically distinct E. coli colony. The study included 149 group 1 households (total, 570 participants) and 38 group 2 households (total, 131 participants). AMP-resistant E. coli was recovered from 29% of stool samples. Observed associations with antibiotic exposure varied by drug class. Penicillins, which were the most frequently prescribed drug class, were associated with a modest increase in AMP-resistant E. coli carriage and a modest decrease in AMP-susceptible E. coli carriage. Neither change by itself was statistically significant. Macrolides were associated with reduced carriage of both AMP-resistant E. coli and AMP-susceptible E. coli (P < 0.05). Both AMP-resistant and AMP-susceptible E. coli demonstrated household clustering (P < 0.001). In summary, the overall effect of antibiotics on individual risk of carriage of AMP-resistant E. coli was small. However, even a modest alteration of the competitive balance between AMP-resistant and AMP-susceptible E. coli may promote population spread of resistant E. coli. Examining changes in both resistant and susceptible organisms in antibiotic-treated individuals and their close contacts improves understanding of antibiotic selection pressure.
Protein motif searching through similar enriched Parikh vector identification

Biological researches have shown that some protein regions sharing similar functions or structures have inversed-ordered or highly dispersed sequence similarities and some intra-sequence similarities such as palindrome repeats also play important roles in protein folding. The current protein analysis tools cannot detect these "nontraditional" similarities. Although some tools can be modified for searching intra-sequence inversed or forward ordered similarities, their maximally optimal path processes will miss many suboptimal biologically meaningful similarities. The similar enriched Parikh vector searching (SRPVS) algorithm searches similarities by separating the subsequence composition and order information. The SRPVS first breaks sequences into groups of predefined-sized subsequences, each represented by an enriched Parikh vector (RPV); then similar RPV pairs (SRPV) are searched in each nonoverlapping RPV pair based on various order restrictions - forward, inversed, or shuffled. In this study, SRPVS has been applied to the protein ligand motif finding and the intra-sequence protein inversed repeats finding.
Can Moringa oleifera Be Used as a Protein Supplement for Ruminants

The possibility of using Moringa oleifera as a ruminant protein supplement was investigated by comparison between nutritive and anti-nutritive value of its different morphological parts with that of conventionally used Leucaena leucocephala leaf meal (LL). Parameters determined were chemical composition, rumen degradable protein (RDP), acid detergent insoluble protein (ADIP), pepsin soluble protein (PESP), non-protein nitrogen (NPN) total soluble protein (TSP) and protein potentially digested in the intestine (PDI). Total phenols (TP) and total extractable tannins (TET) were also evaluated as anti-nutritive factors. In vitro gas production characteristics were measured and organic matter digestibility (OMD) was estimated basing on 24 h-gas production. Crude protein content ranged from 265-308 g/kg DM in M. oleifera leaves (MOL) and seed cake (MOC) respectively. Leucaena leucocephala and Moringa oleifera soft twigs and leaves (MOLSTL) had CP content of 236 and 195 g/kg DM while Moringa oleifera soft twigs alone (MOST) and Moringa oleifera bucks (MOB) had 160, 114 and 69.3 g/kg DM respectively. RDP was highest in (MOC) (181 g/kg DM) followed by (MOL) (177 g/kg DM) and was lowest in MOB (40 g/kg DM). The proportion of the protein that was not available to the animal (ADIP) was (p<0.05) higher in MOL and MOC (72 and 73 g/kg DM) respectively and lowest in LL (29 g/kg DM). The PDI was high in LL (74 g/kg DM) followed by MOC (55 g/kg DM) then MOL (16 g/kg DM). PESP was highest (p<0.05) in MOC followed by MOL then LL (273, 200 and 163 g/kg DM respectively). MOC exhibited highest NPN content (116 g/kg DM) and was lowest in MOB (18 g/kg DM) (p<0.05). Highly (p<0.05) TSP was observed in MOC and MOL (308 and 265 g/kg DM respectively) followed by LL (236 g/kg DM). MOL had negligible TET (20 g/kg DM) when compared with about 70 g/kg DM in LL. Highly (p<0.05) b and a+b values were observed for MOLSTL (602 and 691 g/kg DM respectively) followed by MOL (490 and 538 g/kg DM). Highest c value was observed in MOSTL followed by MOC and MOL (0.064, 0.056 and 0.053 rate/hour) respectively. OMD was highest (p<0.05) for MOSTL followed by MOC and then MOL (579, 579 and 562 g/kg DM respectively). LL exhibited lower (p<0.05) OMD (467 g/kg DM). It was concluded from this study that the high crude protein content in MOL and MOLST could be well utilized by ruminant animals and increase animal performance however, high proportion of unavailable protein to the lower gut of animals and high rumen degradable protein due to negligible tannin content render it a relatively poor protein supplement for ruminants. MOC can be a best alternative protein supplement to leaves and leaves and soft twigs for ruminants.
ISFETs in CMOS and Emergent Trends in Instrumentation: A Review

Over the past decade, ion-sensitive field-effect transistors (ISFETs) have played a major role in enabling the fabrication of fully integrated CMOS-based chemical sensing systems. This has allowed several new application areas, with the most promising being the fields of ion imaging and full genome sequencing. This paper reviews the new trends in front-end topologies toward the design of ISFET sensing arrays in CMOS for these new applications. More than a decade after the review of the ISFET by Bergveld which summarized the state of the art in terms of device and early readout circuity, we describe the evolution in terms of device macromodel and identify the main sensor challenges for current designers. We analyze the techniques that have been reported for both ISFET instrumentation and compensation, and conclude that topologies are focusing on device adaptation for offset and drift cancellation, as opposed to system compensation which are often not as robust. Guidelines are provided to build a tailored CMOS ISFET array, emphasizing that the needs in terms of applications are the keys to selecting the right pixel architecture. Over the next few years, the race for the largest and densest array is likely to be put on hold to allow the research to focus on new pixel topologies, ultimately leading to the development of reliable and scalable arrays. A wide range of new applications are expected to motivate this paper for at least another decade.
Education and the course of cognitive decline in Alzheimer disease

Objective: To test the hypothesis that higher level of education is related to more rapid cognitive decline in Alzheimer disease (AD). Methods: Participants are older persons with clinically diagnosed AD recruited from health care facilities in the Chicago area. At 6-month intervals for up to 4 years, they underwent uniform structured clinical evaluations that included administration of nine cognitive performance tests from which a composite measure of global cognition was derived. Analyses are based on 494 persons with follow-up data (89.3% of those eligible). In mixed models that allowed for linear and nonlinear decline, the authors first accounted for the effects of age on cognition and then tested the relation of education to rate of cognitive decline. Results: Global cognitive decline had linear and nonlinear components, resulting in a gradually accelerating course of decline. Age was related to linear but not nonlinear decline, with more rapid decline observed in younger compared with older persons. Higher educational level was related to more rapid global cognitive decline, as hypothesized, with education related to the nonlinear but not the linear component of decline. Conclusion: Higher educational attainment is associated with a slightly accelerated rate of cognitive decline in Alzheimer disease.
Latent human traits in the language of social media: An open-vocabulary approach

Over the past century, personality theory and research has successfully identified core sets of characteristics that consistently describe and explain fundamental differences in the way people think, feel and behave. Such characteristics were derived through theory, dictionary analyses, and survey research using explicit self-reports. The availability of social media data spanning millions of users now makes it possible to automatically derive characteristics from behavioral data—language use—at large scale. Taking advantage of linguistic information available through Facebook, we study the process of inferring a new set of potential human traits based on unprompted language use. We subject these new traits to a comprehensive set of evaluations and compare them with a popular five factor model of personality. We find that our language-based trait construct is often more generalizable in that it often predicts non-questionnaire-based outcomes better than questionnaire-based traits (e.g. entities someone likes, income and intelligence quotient), while the factors remain nearly as stable as traditional factors. Our approach suggests a value in new constructs of personality derived from everyday human language use.
A proportional-fair power allocation scheme for fair and efficient multiuser OFDM systems

In this paper we investigate adaptive resource allocation schemes in multiuser OFDM systems for fair share of resources and efficient operation. We employ the CDF-based scheduling (CS) algorithm for the subcarrier allocation, taking advantage of its distinctive feature of analyzability and multiuser diversity. Noting that conventional power allocation schemes do not exhibit efficient and fair operations in heterogeneous user channel environments, we present a new algorithm called proportional-fair power allocation (PFPA). This algorithm is designed to allocate transmission power in such a way that the resulting relative throughput-increment is identical for all subcarriers. The PFPA algorithm is shown to be equivalent to the power allocation of the asymptotically optimal algorithm which exhibits the largest achievable region in the asymptotic case. Numerical results reveal that the combined CS-PFPA algorithm improves the overall system capacity in terms of time-average throughput and provides efficient estimation of user performance. Further, the CS-PFPA algorithm can meet each user's requirements using a minimum amount of resources, so it renders an efficient and fair means for resource allocation in multiuser OFDM systems.
The properties and applications of peak-to-peak time interval error metrics

The paper presents the Maximum Time Interval Error (MTIE) function analysis based on the general features of MTIE function. It is proposed to extend the pick-to-pick functions family, particularly the relative metrics. The relationship of the new metrics that are proposed for networks with packet switching and MTIE is clarified. The general features of pick-to-pick functions are observed in the context of their possible applications in modern telecommunications. The results have been confirmed by computer simulation and measurement.
Evaluation of a possibilistic classification approach for Arabic texts disambiguation (Evaluation d’une approche de classification possibiliste pour la désambiguïsation des textes arabes) [in French]

Morphological disambiguation of Arabic words consists in identifying their appropriate morphological analysis. In this paper, we present three models of morphological disambiguation of non-vocalized Arabic texts based on possibilistic classification. This approach deals with imprecise training and testing datasets, as we learn from untagged texts. We experiment our approach on two corpora i
Cellular uptake and anticancer activity of carboxylated gallium corroles

Significance Corroles are macrocyclic molecules related to porphyrins that exhibit intense light absorptions in the visible region. They also are very bright emitters, with luminescence quantum yields over 50% in some cases. Importantly, we have discovered that two corroles functionalized with carboxylate groups at different ring locations exhibit anticancer activity superior to cisplatin. Although the synthetic route to direct carboxylation of the tetrapyrrolic framework requires the use of phosgene, installing aminocaproate on the fluorophenyl ring by nucleophilic aromatic substitution uses mild conditions with biocompatible reagents, requiring only simple purification and providing ready access to structurally complex corroles. Carboxylated corroles are very rapidly taken up by cells, with an order of magnitude gain in dark cytotoxicity likely owing to greater cell permeability. We report derivatives of gallium(III) tris(pentafluorophenyl)corrole, 1 [Ga(tpfc)], with either sulfonic (2) or carboxylic acids (3, 4) as macrocyclic ring substituents: the aminocaproate derivative, 3 [Ga(ACtpfc)], demonstrated high cytotoxic activity against all NCI60 cell lines derived from nine tumor types and confirmed very high toxicity against melanoma cells, specifically the LOX IMVI and SK-MEL-28 cell lines. The toxicities of 1, 2, 3, and 4 [Ga(3-ctpfc)] toward prostate (DU-145), melanoma (SK-MEL-28), breast (MDA-MB-231), and ovarian (OVCAR-3) cancer cells revealed a dependence on the ring substituent: IC50 values ranged from 4.8 to >200 µM; and they correlated with the rates of uptake, extent of intracellular accumulation, and lipophilicity. Carboxylated corroles 3 and 4, which exhibited about 10-fold lower IC50 values (<20 µM) relative to previous analogs against all four cancer cell lines, displayed high efficacy (Emax = 0). Confocal fluorescence imaging revealed facile uptake of functionalized gallium corroles by all human cancer cells that followed the order: 4 >> 3 > 2 >> 1 (intracellular accumulation of gallium corroles was fastest in melanoma cells). We conclude that carboxylated gallium corroles are promising chemotherapeutics with the advantage that they also can be used for tumor imaging.
Rituximab and its therapeutic potential in catastrophic antiphospolipid syndrome

The catastrophic antiphospholipid syndrome (CAPS) is characterized by thrombosis in more than three organs or systems developing over a short period of time. Despite conventional treatment with a combination of anticoagulation plus corticosteroids plus plasma exchange, and/or intravenous immunoglobulin, mortality remains high and some patients suffer from recurrent CAPS episodes. In selected patients, new therapies such as rituximab may be a treatment option. In this review, the rationale for using rituximab in CAPS is discussed.
A Self-Sustaining Integrated CMOS Regulator for Solar and HF RFID Energy Harvesting Systems

This paper presents a self-sustaining integrated regulator for ultralow power two-input energy harvesting systems. The energy sources include photovoltaic panels and high frequency radio-frequency identification tags. An input-powered charge pump utilizing dynamic charge transfer switches with tunable voltages at the bottom of the pumping capacitors is proposed. No external pulse signal is required. An output-powered digitally controlled dc-dc switching converter with a low-complexity oversampling analog-to-digital converter is also proposed to analyze the error signal between the dc-dc switching converter output and the reference voltage. In order to avoid limit-cycle oscillation, a digital sigma-delta modulator is adopted to increase the equivalent resolution of the digital pulsewidth modulator. The system is completely implemented and fully integrated in a standard 0.18-μm CMOS process with a die area of 2.1 mm2. The system output voltage is successfully regulated at 1 V and the measured maximum end-to-end conversion efficiency is ~57%, when the loading current is 65 μA.