Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Temperature-Mediated Differential Expression of Immune and Stress-Related Genes in Aedes aegypti Larvae

Abstract The mechanisms by which natural populations of vector mosquitoes cope with daily and seasonal fluctuations in temperature are poorly understood. We examined the effect of water temperature on expression of stress and immune-related genes in Aedes aegypti larvae. Aedes aegypti 3rd instars were exposed for 24 h to one of 7 constant temperatures (10°C, 15°C, 20°C, 25°C [control], 32°C, 36°C, or 40°C) and expression of antimicrobial peptides (cecropin, defensin), transferrin, and heat shock proteins (HSP70 and HSP83) quantified by real-time reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction. Cecropin, defensin, and transferrin were overexpressed at 36°C and underexpressed at 15°C and 32°C. HSP83 was overexpressed at 10°C and 40°C and underexpressed at 20°C, while HSP70 was underexpressed at 15°C, 32°C, and 36°C. These findings suggest that antimicrobial peptides can serve as biomarkers of thermal stress and that HSP83 may buffer mosquito larvae against extreme temperatures.
Minimizing communication latency in multirobot situation-aware patrolling

We consider the problem of computing patrolling strategies under communication constraints for a team of autonomous robots employed in repeated surveillance missions on a set of predefined locations. We assume the presence of a communication infrastructure providing only some regions of the environment with a communication link to a mission control center (MCC). We define the problem of computing a joint patrolling strategy that minimizes communication latencies, defined as the delays between inspecting some locations and reporting the outcome to the MCC. We provide and experimentally evaluate a MILP formulation and a heuristic method.
What knowledge and conceptions do Irish primary schoolteachers hold on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder?

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnosis rates have increased significantly in recent times. A teacher's role is crucial in determining if a child will be referred for an ADHD assessment. Teachers' opinions and observations are also required for and play a huge role in the actual assessment process. For this reason, their knowledge of ADHD is also an important part of this process. This research has measured, on a small scale, Irish primary schoolteacher's knowledge and conceptions about ADHD using the Knowledge of Attention Deficit Disorders Scale (KADDS) questionnaire. Ninety teachers participated in the research from 11 primary schools in County Clare. A quantitative method was utilised enabling the research to be comparable with other pieces of research using the same questionnaire. Data in relation to the teachers' professional background were also gathered in order to analyse significant differences based on a variety of factors. The results were analysed as prescribed in KADDS test manual using the statistical software package SPSS. This research shows that Irish primary schoolteachers are more knowledgeable in regards to ADHD symptoms and diagnosis than they are in the areas of associated features or treatments. It also shows that knowledge levels of Irish primary schoolteachers are higher than teachers in earlier research using the same questionnaire.
Software Quality Metrics for Geant4: An Initial Assessment

In the context of critical applications, such as shielding and radiation protection, ensuring the quality of simulation software they depend on is of utmost importance. The assessment of simulation software quality is important not only to determine its adoption in experimental applications, but also to guarantee reproducibility of outcome over time. In this study, we present initial results from an ongoing analysis of Geant4 code based on established software metrics. The analysis evaluates the current status of the code to quantify its characteristics with respect to documented quality standards; further assessments concern evolutions over a series of release distributions. We describe the selected metrics that quantify software attributes ranging from code complexity to maintainability, and highlight what metrics are most effective at evaluating radiation transport software quality. The quantitative assessment of the software is initially focused on a set of Geant4 packages, which play a key role in a wide range of experimental applications and are representative of different software development processes. We provide an interpretation of the data resulting from measurements on the selected Geant4 packages, and discuss methods to improve them. This work can be used as a baseline for evaluating correlations between software quality embedded in the Geant4 development process and simulation observables produced by Geant4-based applications. The result provide constructive guidance both to improve key software tools, such as Geant4, and to estimate their contribution in risk analyses concerning sensitive applications.
Near-Infrared Line Imaging of the Circumnuclear Starburst Ring in NGC 7771

We present high spatial resolution near-infrared broadband JHK images and, for the first time, Brγ 2.1661 μm and H2 1-0 S(1) 2.122 μm emission-line images of the circumnuclear star-forming ring (major axis diameter 7′′ = 2 kpc) in the starburst galaxy NGC 7771. These data are used to investigate the morphology and extinction of the starburst ring and to study its star-forming properties and history by comparing the observed quantities with an evolutionary population synthesis model. The clumpy morphology of NGC 7771 varies strongly with wavelength, as a result of the combination of extinction (for which we derive an average value of AV = 2.8), emission from hot dust and red supergiants, and several stellar generations in the ring. Also, the ellipticity and the position angle of the ring depend on the wavelength. The starburst ring in NGC 7771 exhibits small Brγ equivalent widths. Assuming a constant star formation model with Mu = 100 M☉ results in very long lifetimes of the star-forming regions (up to 1 Gyr), in disagreement with the clumpy near-infrared morphology and the observed radio spectral index of NGC 7771. This situation is only slightly remedied by assuming a reduced upper mass cutoff (Mu = 30 M☉), resulting in ages between 8 and 180 Myr. We prefer an instantaneous star formation model with Mu = 100 M☉, which can explain the derived Brγ equivalent widths if a single starburst occurred 6-7 Myr ago. The main excitation mechanism of the molecular gas, based on the observed S(1)/Brγ ratio, appears to be excitation by UV radiation from hot young stars. We derive M ≃ 1900 M☉ for the mass of the excited H2.
Techno-animism in Japan: Shinto Cosmograms, Actor-network Theory, and the Enabling Powers of Non-human Agencies

In a wide range of contemporary debates on Japanese cultures of technological practice, brief reference is often made to distinct Shinto legacies, as forming an animist substratum of indigenous spiritual beliefs and cosmological imaginations. Japan has been described as a land of Shinto-infused ‘techno-animism’: exhibiting a ‘polymorphous perversity’ that resolutely ignores boundaries between human, animal, spiritual and mechanical beings. In this article, we deploy instances of Japanese techno-animism as sites of theoretical experimentation on what Bruno Latour calls a symmetrical anthropology of nature-cultures. In staging a dialogue between actor-network theory and Japanese techno-animism, we show how Shinto cosmograms provide an enlivening and alternative diffraction device on several of the ontological motifs manifested in Latour’s work. In particular, by mobilizing the territory of a ‘new’ animism debate in anthropology – manifested in the work of Philippe Descola and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro – we attempt to infuse Latourian ‘multinaturalism’ with new, other-than-western analytical energy. Extending actor-network theory, we argue, Shinto cosmograms offer an interesting vantage point for interpreting the immanent, affective, enchanting and enabling powers of non-humans in contributing to collective life. By thus broadening the ‘cosmopolitical’ imagination beyond Latour’s own European-Catholic frame of reference, Shinto techno-animism offers up a wider reflection on contemporary entanglements of science, politics, ecology and cosmos. This reflection, we conclude, opens up a new intellectual territory, allowing us to trace techno-animist streams of thinking both ‘East’ and ‘West’, beyond the confines of the scientific naturalism indigenous to European thinking.
Access, adoption, and diffusion: understanding the long-term impacts of improved vegetable and fish technologies in Bangladesh

This paper assesses long-term impacts of early adoption of vegetable and polyculture fish production technologies on household and individual well-being in Bangladesh. In 1996–1997 and 2006–2007, a panel of households were surveyed in three sites where non-governmental organisations and extension programmes disseminated agricultural technologies. Using nearest-neighbour matching to construct a statistical comparison group, the authors find that long-term impacts differ across agricultural technology interventions and across outcomes. Long-term impacts on household-level consumption expenditures and asset accumulation are, in general, insignificant in the improved vegetables sites, but are positive and significant in the individually operated fish ponds sites. However, the impacts on individual nutrient intake, nutrient adequacy, and nutritional status do not follow the pattern of household-level impacts. Differences in long-term and short-term impacts arise from several causes: differences in dissemination and targeting mechanisms that may affect household-level adoption decisions; initial differences between comparison and treatment groups; divisibility and ease of dissemination of the technology; and intrahousehold allocation processes that determine the allocation of gains from the new technology among household members.
Why ageing stops: heterogeneity explains late-life mortality deceleration in nematodes

While ageing is commonly associated with exponential increase in mortality with age, mortality rates paradoxically decelerate late in life resulting in distinct mortality plateaus. Late-life mortality plateaus have been discovered in a broad variety of taxa, including humans, but their origin is hotly debated. One hypothesis argues that deceleration occurs because the individual probability of death stops increasing at very old ages, predicting the evolution of earlier onset of mortality plateaus under increased rate of extrinsic mortality. By contrast, heterogeneity theory suggests that mortality deceleration arises from individual differences in intrinsic lifelong robustness and predicts that variation in robustness between populations will result in differences in mortality deceleration. We used experimental evolution to directly test these predictions by independently manipulating extrinsic mortality rate (high or low) and mortality source (random death or condition-dependent) to create replicate populations of nematodes, Caenorhabditis remanei that differ in the strength of selection in late-life and in the level of lifelong robustness. Late-life mortality deceleration evolved in response to differences in mortality source when mortality rate was held constant, while there was no consistent response to differences in mortality rate. These results provide direct experimental support for the heterogeneity theory of late-life mortality deceleration.
Temporal Variations in the Usefulness of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index as a Predictor for Ixodes ricinus (Acari: Ixodidae) in a Borrelia lusitaniae Focus in Tuscany, Central Italy

Abstract Host-seeking ticks were collected during monthly dragging sessions from November 2004 through October 2006 in Tuscany, central Italy. Normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), which was calculated from Landsat ETM+ 7 remote sensing data recorded in August 2001, was significantly correlated with numbers of host-seeking immature Ixodes ricinus L. (Acari: Ixodidae) during periods of relatively low rainfall such as summer 2005 (Spearman’s ρ = 0.78, P < 0.001 for nymphs in July) and to a lower extent in spring–summer 2006. In spring 2005, when rainfall was relatively high, the correlation was weak and not statistically significant. Generalized estimating equations (GEEs), taking into account repeated sampling of the same dragging sites, were used to model the effects of NDVI and season on counts of host-seeking I. ricinus nymphs. Seasonal variations of the effect of NDVI yielded a significant NDVI-by-season interaction in the first year of the study (November 2004–October 2005), but not in the second year (November 2005–October 2006) when there was a 2.5-fold increase of the number of nymphs per 100-m dragging for every 0.1 unit increase in NDVI (95% confidence interval = 1.6, 3.0). Risk maps that were obtained based on GEE results confirmed that the predicted number of I. ricinus nymphs per 100 m was relatively homogeneous through the study area during the 2005 spring peak of activity. Conversely, in 2006, the predicted abundance of nymphs was greater in moist bottomland habitat (characterized by high NDVI) than in dry, typically Mediterranean, upland habitat.
Elevated GFAP Protein in Anterior Cingulate Cortical White Matter in Males With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Based on evidence of abnormalities in axon thickness and neuronal disorganization, autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is commonly considered to be a condition resulting from neuronal dysfunction. Yet, recent findings suggest that non‐neuronal cell types also contribute to ASD pathology. To investigate the role of glial cells in ASD, a combination of protein and gene expression analyses were used to determine levels of two glial markers, glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) and myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein (MOG), in the postmortem brain tissue from control and ASD donors. Levels of GFAP immunoreactivity (ir) were significantly elevated (P = 0.008) in anterior cingulate cortex (Brodmann area 24; BA24) white matter of ASD donors compared to control donors. In contrast, GFAP‐ir levels were similar in BA24 gray matter from ASD and control donors. MOG‐ir was also similar in both BA24 white and gray matter from ASD and control donors. In anterior prefrontal cortex (BA10), there were no significant differences in GFAP‐ir or MOG‐ir in either white or gray matter comparing ASD to control donors. Levels of expression of the genes GFAP and MOG also showed no differences between control and ASD donors in BA24 and BA10 white and gray matter. Collectively, these data imply that ASD is associated with an activation of white matter astrocytes in the anterior cingulate cortex as a result of a yet undefined cellular insult. Research is needed to investigate the molecular pathways that underlie this astrocyte reaction and such research may yield important clues regarding the etiology of ASD. Autism Res 2015, 8: 649–657. © 2015 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Uncalibrated monocular based simultaneous localization and mapping for indoor autonomous mobile robot navigation

This paper describes a an SLAM algorithm for the navigation for an indoor autonomous mobile robot. The main emphasis of this paper is on the ability of line extraction. A recognition method based on straight line extraction is proposed for extracting the key features on the office ceiling, in an effort to estimate the pose of mobile robot. Random Sample Consensus (RANSAC) paradigm is used to group the line segments. During the navigation, onboard odometry is used at the beginning stage to estimate the information of environment for visual reckoning, while lamps on the ceiling act as beacons for positioning to eliminate accumulation of errors after a long-term run. The data captured from infrared sensors is used for constructing a map. The proposed method scales well with respect to the size of the input image and the number and size of the shapes within the data. Moreover the algorithm is conceptually simple and easy to implement. Simulation and experimental results show that good recognition and localization can be achieved using the proposed method, allowing for the interested region correspondence matching and mapping between images from different sensors or the same sensor indifferent time phrase.
Autonomous Spectrum Balancing for Digital Subscriber Lines

The main performance bottleneck of modern digital subscriber line (DSL) networks is the crosstalk among different lines (i.e., users). By deploying dynamic spectrum management (DSM) techniques and reducing excess crosstalk among users, a network operator can dramatically increase the data rates and service reach of broadband access. However, current DSM algorithms suffer from either substantial suboptimality in typical deployment scenarios or prohibitively high complexity due to centralized computation. This paper develops, analyzes, and simulates a new suite of DSM algorithms for DSL interference-channel models called autonomous spectrum balancing (ASB). The ASB algorithms utilize the concept of a "reference line," which mimics a typical victim line in the interference channel. In ASB, each modem tries to minimize the harm it causes to the reference line under the constraint of achieving its own target data-rate. Since the reference line is based on the statistics of the entire network, rather than any specific knowledge of the binder a modem operates in, ASB can be implemented autonomously without the need for a centralized spectrum management center. ASB has a low complexity and simulations using a realistic simulator show that it achieves large performance gains over existing autonomous algorithms, coming close to the optimal rate region in some typical scenarios. Sufficient conditions for convergence of ASB are also proved.
Academic Expectations in Mothers of Preschool Children: A Psychometric Study of the Educational Attitude Scale

This study reports psychometric data on the Educational Attitude Scale, a new instrument designed to tap parental opinions about early academic, artistic, athletic, and social experiences. Mothers of 371 middle class prekindergarten children in 22 different schools completed the 32-item Likert-style survey. Mothers were highly similar in their views about the importance of social experiences, but differed widely in their opinions about early academic instruction for preschoolers. The scale proved to have excellent split-half and test-retest reliability. Correlational analysis and factor analysis supported the general domain structure along which the instrument was designed. Scores on the Educational Attitude Scale were significantly correlated with scores on a Developmental Expectations Card Sort. Highly significant differences were found in parent attitudes on the scale when schools were grouped into those High versus Low in academic emphasis by community reputation and observed classroom practices. Pare.
Interaction Maps of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae ESCRT-III Protein Snf7

ABSTRACT The Saccharomyces cerevisiae ESCRT-III protein Snf7 is part of an intricate interaction network at the endosomal membrane. Interaction maps of Snf7 were established by measuring the degree of binding of individual binding partners to putative binding motifs along the Snf7 sequence by glutathione S-transferase (GST) pulldown. For each interaction partner, distinct binding profiles were obtained. The following observations were made. The ESCRT-III subunits Vps20 and Vps24 showed a complementary binding pattern, suggesting a model for the series of events in the ESCRT-III functional cycle. Vps4 bound to individual Snf7 motifs but not to full-length Snf7. This suggests that Vps4 does not bind to the closed conformation of Snf7. We also demonstrate for the first time that the ALIX/Bro1 homologue Rim20 binds to the α6 helix of Snf7. Analysis of a Snf7 α6 deletion mutant showed that the α6 helix is crucial for binding of Bro1 and Rim20 in vivo and is indispensable for the multivesicular body (MVB)-sorting and Rim-signaling functions of Snf7. The Snf7Δα6 protein still appeared to be incorporated into ESCRT-III complexes at the endosomal membrane, but disassembly of the complex seemed to be defective. In summary, our study argues against the view that the ESCRT cycle is governed by single one-to-one interactions between individual components and emphasizes the network character of the ESCRT interactions.
IL-23–Independent Induction of IL-17 from γδT Cells and Innate Lymphoid Cells Promotes Experimental Intraocular Neovascularization

Choroidal neovascularization (CNV) is a characteristic of age-related macular degeneration. Genome-wide association studies have provided evidence that the immune system is involved in the pathogenesis of age-related macular degeneration; however, the role of inflammatory cytokines in CNV has not been established. In this study, we demonstrated that IL-17 had a strong potential for promoting neovascularization in a vascular endothelial growth factor–independent manner in laser-induced experimental CNV in mice. Infiltrated γδT cells and Thy-1+ innate lymphoid cells, but not Th17 cells, were the main sources of IL-17 in injured eyes. IL-23 was dispensable for IL-17 induction in the eye. Instead, we found that IL-1β and high-mobility group box 1 strongly promoted IL-17 expression by γδT cells. Suppression of IL-1β and high-mobility group box 1, as well as depletion of γδT cells, reduced IL-17 levels and ameliorated experimental CNV. Our findings suggest the existence of a novel inflammatory cytokine network that promotes neovascularization in the eye.
Evaluation of Operation RESET: An initiative for addressing child sexual abuse in Aboriginal communities

This paper presents a qualitative evaluation of Operation RESET: a multi-agency child protection strategy for remote Western Australian Aboriginal communities. RESET is a proactive engagement strategy involving a mobile multi-disciplinary specialist child abuse team comprising detectives and social workers. It is underpinned by the principles that preventing and responding to child sexual abuse must be a shared responsibility, address the underlying causes and contextual issues and enhance children's safety and well-being by empowering families and communities. The evaluation procedure consisted of in-depth interviews with 64 stakeholders of various backgrounds and affiliations who lived or worked in regions where RESET had been deployed for the past 18 months. Collectively, the interviews revealed strong support for Operation RESET's implementation and outcomes. Stakeholders highlighted four elements as being valuable components of the reform: the programme's proactive outreach approach, dedication to capacity building, holistic focus and the establishment of relationships that facilitated trust. These findings are discussed within the broader literature and suggestions for further research are offered.