Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Investigating Turkey Enteric Picornavirus and Its Association with Enteric Disease in Poults

SUMMARY Previous research into the viral community in the poultry gastrointestinal tract has revealed a number of novel and partially described enteric viruses. It is evident that the poultry gut viral community remains minimally characterized and incompletely understood. Investigations into the microbiome of the poultry gut have provided some insight into the geographical distribution and the rapidly evolving taxonomy of the avian enteric picornaviruses. The present investigation was undertaken to produce a comparative metagenomic analysis of the gut virome from a healthy turkey flock versus a flock placed in the field. This investigation revealed a number of enteric picornavirus sequences that were present in the commercial birds in the field that were completely absent in the healthy flock. A novel molecular diagnostic assay was used to track the shedding of field strains of turkey enteric picornavirus in commercial poults inoculated with picornavirus-positive intestinal homogenates prepared from turkeys that were experiencing moderate enteric disease. The propagation of this novel enteric picornavirus in commercial poults resulted in significant reduction in weight gain, and suggests that this common inhabitant of the turkey gut may result in performance problems or enteric disease in the field. RESUMEN Investigaciones sobre picornavirus entéricos de los pavos y su asociación con enfermedad entérica en pavipollos. Las investigaciones anteriores acerca de la comunidad viral en el tracto gastrointestinal de las aves comerciales han revelado una serie de virus entéricos nuevos y parcialmente descritos. Es evidente que la comunidad viral en el intestino de las aves comerciales permanece mínimamente caracterizada y no se comprende completamente. Las investigaciones sobre el microbioma del intestino de las aves comerciales han proporcionado alguna información sobre la distribución geográfica y la taxonomía que está evolucionando rápidamente de los picornavirus entéricos aviares. Se llevó a cabo la presente investigación para producir un análisis comparativo de la metagenómica del viroma intestinal de una parvada sana contra una parvada colocada en el campo. Esta investigación reveló una serie de secuencias de picornavirus entéricos que estaban presentes en las aves comerciales en el campo y que estaban completamente ausentes en la parvada sana. Un nuevo ensayo de diagnóstico molecular se utiliza para seguir la diseminación de cepas de campo de picornavirus entéricos en pavipollos comerciales inoculados con homogeneizados intestinales positivos a la presencia de picornavirus preparados a partir de pavos que estaban experimentando enfermedades entéricas moderadas. La propagación de estos nuevos picornavirus entéricos en pavipollos comerciales resultó en una reducción significativa en la ganancia de peso y sugiere que este habitante común del intestino del pavo puede dar lugar a problemas de rendimiento o enfermedad entérica en el campo.
Plant ionome diagnosis using sound balances: case study with mango (Mangifera Indica)

Plant ionomes and soil nutrients are commonly diagnosed in agronomy using concentration and nutrient ratio ranges. However, both diagnoses are biased by redundancy of information, subcompositional incoherence and non-normal distribution inherent to compositional data, potentially leading to conflicting results and wrong inferences. Our objective was to present an unbiased statistical approach of plant nutrient diagnosis using a balance concept and mango (Mangifera indica) as test crop. We collected foliar samples at flowering stage in 175 mango orchards. The ionomes comprised 11 nutrients (S, N, P, K, Ca, Mg, B, Cu, Zn, Mn, Fe). Traditional multivariate methods were found to be biased. Ionomes were thus represented by unbiased balances computed as isometric log ratios (ilr). Soil fertility attributes (pH and bioavailable nutrients) were transformed into balances to conduct discriminant analysis. The orchards differed more from genotype than soil nutrient signatures. A customized receiver operating characteristic (ROC) iterative procedure was developed to classify tissue ionomes between balanced/misbalanced and high/low-yielders. The ROC partitioning procedure showed that the critical Mahalanobis distance of 4.08 separating balanced from imbalanced specimens about yield cut-off of 128.5 kg fruit tree−1 proved to be a fairly informative test (area under curve = 0.84–0.92). The [P | N,S] and [Mn | Cu,Zn] balances were found to be potential sources of misbalance in the less productive orchards, and should thus be further investigated in field experiments. We propose using a coherent pan balance diagnostic method with median ilr values of top yielders centered at fulcrums of a mobile and the critical Mahalanobis distance as a guide for global nutrient balance. Nutrient concentrations in weighing pans assisted appreciating nutrients as relative shortage, adequacy or excess in balances.
Sustainable Development of Slow Fashion Businesses: Customer Value Approach

As an alternative to the prevalent fast fashion model, slow fashion has emerged as a way of enhancing sustainability in the fashion industry, yet how slow fashion can enhance profitability is still largely unknown. Based on a customer value creation framework, this study empirically tested a structural model that specified the slow fashion attributes that contribute to creating perceived customer value, which subsequently increases a consumer’s intention to buy and pay a price premium for slow fashion products. An analysis of 221 U.S. consumer data revealed that delivering exclusive product value is significantly critical in creating customer value for slow fashion, and customer value, in turn, positively affects consumers’ purchase intentions. Further analysis also revealed that different slow fashion attributes distinctively affect customer value. This provides potential strategies on which slow fashion businesses can focus to secure an economically sustainable business model, thereby continuously improving environmental and social sustainability with the slow fashion ideal.
Minimum incidence of primary cervical dystonia in a multiethnic health care population

Background: The two existing estimates of the incidence of primary cervical dystonia were based on observations in relatively ethnically homogeneous populations of European descent. Objective: To estimate the minimum incidence of primary cervical dystonia in the multiethnic membership of a health maintenance organization in Northern California. Methods: Using a combination of electronic medical records followed by medical chart reviews, we identified incident cases of cervical dystonia first diagnosed between 1997 and 1999. Results: We identified 66 incident cases of cervical dystonia from 8.2 million person-years of observation. The minimum estimate of the incidence of cervical dystonia in this population is 0.80 per 100,000 person-years. Ethnicity-specific incidence rates were calculated for individuals over age 30. Incidence was higher in white individuals (1.23 per 100,000 person-years) than in persons of other races (0.15 per 100,000 person-years, p < 0.0001). The minimum estimated incidence was 2.5 times higher in women than in men (1.14 vs 0.45 per 100,000 person-years, p = 0.0005). The average age at diagnosis was higher in women (56 years) than in men (45 years, p = 0.0004). There was no significant difference in reported symptom duration prior to diagnosis between women and men (3.9 vs 5.3 years). Conclusion: The estimated incidence of diagnosed cervical dystonia among white individuals in this Northern Californian population is similar to previous estimates in more ethnically homogeneous populations of largely European descent. The incidence in other races, including Hispanic, Asian, and black appears to be significantly lower. The incidence is also higher in women than in men.
Hepatic hemosiderosis in non‐human primates: Quantification of liver iron using different field strengths

Using a non‐human primate model of idiopathic hemochro‐matosis, hemosiderin‐induced T2 shortening of the liver was assessed at nine different field strengths over a range of 0.05 to 1.5 Tesla. The 1/T2 values increased linearly with field strength, with all specimens having approximately the same zero‐field intercept. The slope of the field increase, termed “field‐dependent T2 proton relaxation enhancement (PRE)”, appeared to be proportional to the chemically determined tissue iron content, viz. 10.8 s−1T−1(mg Fe/g wet tissue)−1. The correlation between iron content and field‐dependent T2 PRE (r = 0.94) was better than the correlation between iron content and 1/T2 values obtained at single field strengths. For livers containing ± 2 mg Fe/g wet weight, biexponential T2 relaxation behavior emerged at higher field strengths, with the short T2 component (intracellular water) exhibiting a linear dependence of 1/T2 on field, while T2 of the long component (extracellular/sinusoidal water) was nearly field‐independent. After maceration of the specimens, all T2 relaxation curves became monoexponential, including those for high iron content at high field strengths. The present data suggest that the use of double‐field MR imaging to assess the field‐dependent T2 PRE has potential for specific quantification of (liver) tissue iron stores.
Hot and Diffuse Clouds near the Galactic Center Probed by Metastable H3+

Using an absorption line from the metastable (J, K) = (3, 3) level of H together with other lines of H and CO observed along several sight lines, we have discovered a vast amount of high-temperature (T ~ 250 K) and low-density (n ~ 100 cm-3) gas with a large velocity dispersion in the central molecular zone (CMZ) of the Galaxy, i.e., within 200 pc of the center. Approximately three-fourths of the H along the line of sight to the brightest source we observed, the Quintuplet object GCS 3-2, is inferred to be in the CMZ, with the remaining H located in intervening spiral arms. About half of the H in the CMZ has velocities near ~-100 km s-1, indicating that it is associated with the 180 pc radius expanding molecular ring, which approximately forms the outer boundary of the CMZ. The other half, with velocities of ~-50 and ~0 km s-1, is probably closer to the center. CO is not very abundant in these clouds. Hot and diffuse gas in which the (3, 3) level is populated was not detected toward several dense clouds and diffuse clouds in the Galactic disk where large column densities of colder H have been reported previously. Thus, the newly discovered environment appears to be unique to the CMZ. The large observed H column densities in the CMZ suggest an ionization rate much higher than in the diffuse interstellar medium in the Galactic disk. Our finding that the H in the CMZ is almost entirely in diffuse clouds indicates that the reported volume filling factor (f ≥ 0.1) for n ≥ 104 cm-3 clouds in the CMZ is an overestimate by at least an order of magnitude.
Mining actionable combined patterns of high utility and frequency

In recent years, the importance of identifying actionable patterns has become increasingly recognized so that decision-support actions can be inspired by the resultant patterns. A typical shift is on identifying high utility rather than highly frequent patterns. Accordingly, High Utility Itemset (HUI) Mining methods have become quite popular as well as faster and more reliable than before. However, the current research focus has been on improving the efficiency while the coupling relationships between items are ignored. It is important to study item and itemset couplings inbuilt in the data. For example, the utility of one itemset might be lower than user-specified threshold until one additional itemset takes part in; and vice versa, an item's utility might be high until another one joins in. In this way, even though some absolutely high utility itemsets can be discovered, sometimes it is easily to find out that quite a lot of redundant itemsets sharing the same item are mined (e.g., if the utility of a diamond is high enough, all its supersets are proved to be HUIs). Such itemsets are not actionable, and sellers cannot make higher profit if marketing strategies are created on top of such findings. To this end, here we introduce a new framework for mining actionable high utility association rules, called Combined Utility-Association Rules (CUAR), which aims to find high utility and strong association of itemset combinations incorporating item/itemset relations. The algorithm is proved to be efficient per experimental outcomes on both real and synthetic datasets.
Variational Multigrid for Fast 3D Interpretation of Image Sequences

We propose a variational multigrid method for fast 3D interpretation of image sequences, in which a dense depth map and 3D motion are directly recovered from spatio-temporal change of intensity images without prior matching and estimation. In this paper, we adopt the multigrid methods to efficiently reduce the computational complexity of the variational method, and suggest a new variational formulation to reliably perform the 3D interpretation. We show the efficiency and effectiveness of our method through experimental results with synthetic and real images
Cortical Asymmetries during Hand Laterality Task Vary with Hand Laterality: A fMRI Study in 295 Participants

The aim of this study was to characterize, using fMRI, the functional asymmetries of hand laterality task (HLT) in a sample of 295 participants balanced for handedness. During HLT, participants have to decide whether the displayed picture of a hand represent a right or a left hand. Pictures of hands’ back view were presented for 150 ms in the right or left hemifield. At the whole hemisphere level, we evidenced that the laterality of the hand and of the hemifield in which the picture was displayed combined their effects on the hemispheric asymmetry in an additive way. We then identified a set of 17 functional homotopic regions of interest (hROIs) including premotor, motor, somatosensory and parietal regions, whose activity and asymmetry varied with the laterality of the presented hands. When the laterality of a right hand had to be evaluated, these areas showed stronger leftward asymmetry, the hROI located in the primary motor area showing a significant larger effect than all other hROIs. In addition a subset of six parietal regions involved in visuo-motor integration together with two postcentral areas showed a variation in asymmetry with hemifield of presentation. Finally, while handedness had no effect at the hemispheric level, two regions located in the parietal operculum and intraparietal sulcus exhibited larger leftward asymmetry with right handedness independently of the hand of presentation. The present results extend those of previous works in showing a shift of asymmetries during HLT according to the hand presented in sensorimotor areas including primary motor cortex. This shift was not affected by manual preference. They also demonstrate that the coordination of visual information and handedness identification of hands relied on the coexistence of contralateral motor and visual representations in the superior parietal lobe and the postcentral gyrus.
Generating topological map from occupancy grid-map using virtual door detection

This paper proposes a method for a cleaning robot to generate a topological map from an occupancy grid-map. Virtual door is defined as the candidates of real door, and the virtual doors are detected as edges of the topological map by extracting corner features from the occupancy grid-map; using this method, an initial topological map is generated, which consists of nodes and edges. The final topological map is generated using a genetic algorithm to merge the nodes and reduce the edges. As a result, the generated topological map consists of nodes divided by virtual doors and edges located in real doors. The proposed methods provide a topological map for the user interaction and the cleaning robot, and the topological map can be used to plan more efficient motion including room-to-room path planning and covering each room.
Performance Guarantees for Flow-Mapping Parallel Packet Switch

Flow-mapping parallel packet switch (FM-PPS) is the class of parallel packet switch adopting flow-level load-balancing algorithms. It dispatches packets of a micro-flow into an unchanged parallel switch, thus natively guarantees intra-flow packet orders. Due to the heavy tail of flow size distribution, it is concerned that FM-PPS may suffer from unpredictable performance which prevents it from real deployments. Motivated to clarify this issue, in this paper, we present an effective analytical model on FM-PPS and carry out intensive performance analysis. We find that under current Internet traffic patterns, both statistical packet delay and backlog bounds can be guaranteed if only several stability conditions are met. We further validate that a FM-PPS with OC-768c line rate is able to provide such guarantees under state-of-the-art RAM technology. A practical flow-mapping algorithm, namely constrained output round robin (CORR), is also proposed, which is designed to conform to these stability conditions, hence holds the delay and backlog bound.
The Taiwan orogen has formed since the late Miocene by oblique collision between the Luzon Volcanic Arc on the Philippine Sea

[1] The Taiwan orogen has formed since the late Miocene by oblique collision between the Luzon Volcanic Arc on the Philippine Sea Plate, and the Eurasian continental margin. This oblique collision has produced an orogen that decreases in age from north to south, and permits study of the temporal evolution of an arc-continent collision. These factors make Taiwan a favorable location to study the process of arc-continent collision. The first long-period magnetotelluric (MT) measurements were recorded in Taiwan as part of the Taiwan Integrated Geodynamics Research (TAIGER) project in 2006–7. Measurements were made at 82 sites on three transects across south, central and north Taiwan, that span the breadth of the orogen and cross all major tectonic boundaries. Robust, remote reference processing of the MT time series data resulted in high-quality soundings that were modeled in both 2 and 3-dimensions. These MT models support predictions of lithospheric deformation (i.e., thick-skinned tectonics) beneath the Central Ranges in south and central Taiwan, but are inconsistent with predictions of orogen-scale thin-skinned models. The MT resistivity model for northern Taiwan is consistent with dewatering of the subducting Philippine slab, and with deformation described by the subducting-indenter tectonic model. Modeling the TAIGER MT data has definitively shown that conductive, and seismically active crustal structures, exist to 30+ km beneath the orogen. These conductive regions, interpreted as interconnected fluid, map pervasive zones of collisional deformation that are lithospheric in scale.
Investigating a two-component model of solid fuel organic aerosol in London: processes, PM 1 contributions, and seasonality

Abstract. Solid fuel emissions, including those from biomass burning, are increasing in urban areas across the European Union due to rising energy costs and government incentives to use renewable energy sources for heating. In order to help protect human health as well as to improve air quality and pollution abatement strategies, the sources of combustion aerosols, their contributions, and the processes they undergo need to be better understood. A high-resolution time-of-flight aerosol mass spectrometer (HR-ToF-AMS) was therefore deployed at an urban background site between January and February 2012 to investigate solid fuel organic aerosols (SFOA) in London. The variability of SFOA was examined and the factors governing the split between the two SFOA factors derived from Positive Matrix Factorisation (PMF) were assessed. The concentrations of both factors were found to increase during the night and during cold periods, consistent with domestic space heating activities. The split between the two factors is likely governed predominantly by differences in burn conditions where SFOA1 best represents more efficient burns and SFOA2 best represents less efficient burns. The differences in efficiency may be due to burner types or burn phase, for example. Different fuel types and levels of atmospheric processing also likely contribute to the two factors. As the mass spectral profile of SFOA is highly variable, the findings from this study may have implications for improving future source apportionment and factorisation analyses. During the winter, SFOA was found to contribute 38% to the total non-refractory submicron organic aerosol (OA) mass, with similar contributions from both SFOA factors (20% from SFOA1 and 18% from SFOA2). A similar contribution of SFOA was derived for the same period from a compact time-of-flight AMS (cToF-AMS), which measured for a full calendar year at the same site. The seasonality of SFOA was investigated using the year-long data set where concentrations were greatest in the autumn and winter. During the summer, SFOA contributed 11% to the organic fraction, where emissions resulted from different anthropogenic activities such as barbecues and domestic garden wood burning. The significant contribution of SFOA to total organic mass throughout the year suggests that the negative effects on health and air quality, as well as climate, are not just confined to winter as exposure to these aerosols and the associated black carbon can also occur during the summer, which may have significant implications for air-quality policies and mitigation strategies.
Establishment and characterization of a noradrenergic adrenal chromaffin cell line, tsAM5NE, immortalized with the temperature‐sensitive SV40 T‐antigen

We established a clonal adrenal medullary cell line, named tsAM5NE, from transgenic mice harbouring the temperature‐sensitive Simian virus 40 large T‐antigen gene, under the control of the tyrosine hydroxylase promoter. tsAM5NE cells conditionally grew at a permissive temperature of 33°C and exhibited the noradrenergic chromaffin cell phenotype. To understand the characteristics of tsAM5NE cells, we first examined the responsiveness of the cells to ligands of the GDNF (glial cell line‐derived neurotrophic factor) family. tsAM5NE cells proliferated at the permissive temperature of 33°C in response to either GDNF or neurturin, but not artemin or persephin. At the non‐permissive temperature of 39°C, GDNF or neurturin caused tsAM5NE cells to differentiate into neuron‐like cells; however, the differentiated cells died in a time‐dependent manner. Interestingly, LIF (leukaemia inhibitory factor) did not affect the GDNF‐mediated cell proliferation at 33°C, but promoted the survival and differentiation of GDNF‐treated cells at 39°C. In the presence of GDNF plus LIF, the morphological change induced by the temperature shift was associated with up‐regulated expression of neuronal markers, indicating that the cells had indeed undergone neuronal differentiation. Thus, we demonstrated that tsAM5NE cells had the capacity to terminally differentiate into neuron‐like cells in response to GDNF plus LIF when the oncogene was inactivated by the temperature shift. Thus, this cell line provides a useful model system for studying the mechanisms regulating neuronal differentiation.