Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Simulation of Stomatal Conductance and Water Use Efficiency of Tomato Leaves Exposed to Different Irrigation Regimes and Air CO2 Concentrations by a Modified “Ball-Berry” Model

Stomatal conductance (gs) and water use efficiency (WUE) of tomato leaves exposed to different irrigation regimes and at ambient CO2 (a[CO2], 400 ppm) and elevated CO2 (e[CO2], 800 ppm) environments were simulated using the “Ball-Berry” model (BB-model). Data obtained from a preliminary experiment (Exp. I) was used for model parameterization, where measurements of leaf gas exchange of potted tomatoes were done during progressive soil drying for 5 days. The measured photosynthetic rate (Pn) was used as an input for the model. Considering the effect of soil water deficits on gs, an equation modifying the slope (m) based on the mean soil water potential (Ψs) in the whole root zone was introduced. Compared to the original BB-model, the modified model showed greater predictability for both gs and WUE of tomato leaves at each [CO2] growth environment. The models were further validated with data obtained from an independent experiment (Exp. II) where plants were subjected to three irrigation regimes: full irrigation (FI), deficit irrigation (DI), and alternative partial root-zone irrigation (PRI) for 40 days at both a[CO2] and e[CO2] environment. The simulation results indicated that gs was independently acclimated to e[CO2] from Pn. The modified BB-model performed better in estimating gs and WUE, especially for PRI strategy at both [CO2] environments. A greater WUE could be seen in plants grown under e[CO2] associated with PRI regime. Conclusively, the modified BB-model was capable of predicting gs and WUE of tomato leaves in various irrigation regimes at both a[CO2] and e[CO2] environments. This study could provide valuable information for better predicting plant WUE adapted to the future water-limited and CO2 enriched environment.
State of the Art in Power Line Communications: From the Applications to the Medium

In recent decades, power line communication (PLC) has attracted considerable attention from the research community and industry, as well as from regulatory and standardization bodies. In this paper, we provide an overview of both narrowband and broadband systems, covering potential applications, regulatory and standardization efforts, and recent research advancements in channel characterization, physical layer performance, medium access, and higher layer specifications and evaluations. We also identify the areas of current and further study that will enable the continued success of PLC technology.
Microstructure analysis and solid unit cell modeling of three dimensionally six-directional braided composites

A new solid unit cell model is developed based on the microstructure analysis of three-dimensional (3D) six-directional braided composite (6DBC) produced by four-step 1 × 1 procedures in this research. First, the volume control method is applied to analyze the spatial movement traces of yarns. Then the microstructure configuration and squeezing condition of yarns is analyzed in detail by the mathematical modeling. The relationships between the microstructure parameters of unit cell and the braiding process parameters are derived. The parametrical solid unit cell model for modeling the microstructure of 6DBC is established. Finally, the main microstructure parameters of specimens are calculated to validate the effectiveness of the model. The predicted results agree well with the available experimental data. In addition, the squeezing conditions of the braiding yarns and the axial yarns are analyzed in detail, respectively. The variations of the key microstructure parameters with the braiding angle are discussed. Results indicate that the parametrical unit cell model has provided a better understanding of the relationship between the microstructure and the braiding process parameters for 3D 6DBC.
Energy and nutrient density of foods in relation to their carbon footprint.

BACKGROUND A carbon footprint is the sum of greenhouse gas emissions (GHGEs) associated with food production, processing, transporting, and retailing. OBJECTIVE We examined the relation between the energy and nutrient content of foods and associated GHGEs as expressed as g CO2 equivalents. DESIGN GHGE values, which were calculated and provided by a French supermarket chain, were merged with the Composition Nutritionnelle des Aliments (French food-composition table) nutrient-composition data for 483 foods and beverages from the French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety. Foods were aggregated into 34 food categories and 5 major food groups as follows: meat and meat products, milk and dairy products, frozen and processed fruit and vegetables, grains, and sweets. Energy density was expressed as kcal/100 g. Nutrient density was determined by using 2 alternative nutrient-density scores, each based on the sum of the percentage of daily values for 6 or 15 nutrients, respectively. The energy and nutrient densities of foods were linked to log-transformed GHGE values expressed per 100 g or 100 kcal. RESULTS Grains and sweets had lowest GHGEs (per 100 g and 100 kcal) but had high energy density and a low nutrient content. The more-nutrient-dense animal products, including meat and dairy, had higher GHGE values per 100 g but much lower values per 100 kcal. In general, a higher nutrient density of foods was associated with higher GHGEs per 100 kcal, although the slopes of fitted lines varied for meat and dairy compared with fats and sweets. CONCLUSIONS Considerations of the environmental impact of foods need to be linked to concerns about nutrient density and health. The point at which the higher carbon footprint of some nutrient-dense foods is offset by their higher nutritional value is a priority area for additional research.
Towards network containment in malware analysis systems

This paper focuses on the containment and control of the network interaction generated by malware samples in dynamic analysis environments. A currently unsolved problem consists in the existing dependency between the execution of a malware sample and a number of external hosts (e.g. C&C servers). This dependency affects the repeatability of the analysis, since the state of these external hosts influences the malware execution but it is outside the control of the sandbox. This problem is also important from a containment point of view, because the network traffic generated by a malware sample is potentially of malicious nature and, therefore, it should not be allowed to reach external targets. The approach proposed in this paper addresses the repeatability and the containment of malware execution by exploring the use of protocol learning techniques for the emulation of the external network environment required by malware samples. We show that protocol learning techniques, if properly used and configured, can be successfully used to handle the network interaction required by malware. We present our solution, Mozzie, and show its ability to autonomously learn the network interaction associated to recent malware samples without requiring a-priori knowledge of the protocol characteristics. Therefore, our system can be used for the contained and repeatable analysis of unknown samples that rely on custom protocols for their communication with external hosts.
Are interstitial lung abnormalities associated with COPD? A nested case–control study

Purpose In this study, we tested the association between COPD and interstitial lung abnormality (ILA), notably in relation to the presence of computed tomography (CT) signs of lung fibrosis. Patients and methods COPD cases were selected from participants undergoing lung cancer screening (Multicentric Italian Lung Detection trial) for airflow obstruction (n=311/2,303, 13.5%) and 146 consecutive patients with clinical COPD. In all, 457 COPD cases were selected and classified according to the stages of Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease. A nested matching (case:control = 1:2) according to age, sex, and smoking history was operated between each COPD case and two control subjects from Multicentric Italian Lung Detection trial without airflow obstruction. Low-dose CT scans of COPD cases and controls were reviewed for the presence of ILA, which were classified into definite or indeterminate according to the presence of signs of lung fibrosis. Results The frequency of definite ILA was similar between COPD cases and controls (P=0.2), independent of the presence of signs of lung fibrosis (P=0.07). Combined definite and indeterminate ILA was homogeneously distributed across Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease stages (P=0.6). Definite ILA was directly associated with current smoker status (odds ratio [OR] 4.05, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 2.2–7.4) and increasing pack-years (OR 1.01, 95% CI: 1–1.02). Subjects with any fibrotic ILA were more likely to be older (OR 1.17, 95% CI: 1.10–1.25) and male (OR 8.58, 95% CI: 1.58–68.9). Conclusion There was no association between COPD and definite ILA. However, low-dose CT signs of lung fibrosis were also observed in COPD, and their clinical relevance is yet to be determined.
Current developments in the use of transcatheter aortic valve implantation in high-risk patients

License. The full terms of the License are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/. Non-commercial uses of the work are permitted without any further permission from Dove Medical Press Limited, provided the work is properly attributed. Permissions beyond the scope of the License are administered by Dove Medical Press Limited. Information on how to request permission may be found at: http://www.dovepress. com/permissions.php Research Reports in Clinical Cardiology 2014:5 259–277 Research Reports in Clinical Cardiology Dovepress
Prevalence of the metabolic syndrome in Chinese adolescents

Since national figures on the occurrence of metabolic syndrome among Chinese adolescents are lacking, this study aims to estimate its prevalence and distribution among Chinese youngsters. The 2002 China National Nutrition and Health Survey is a nationally representative cross-sectional study. Applying the criteria for US adolescents, we estimated the prevalence of metabolic syndrome among 2761 adolescents aged 15 to 19 years. The prevalence of metabolic syndrome among Chinese adolescents overall was 3·7 % (10 % in US adolescents). It was 35·2 %, 23·4 % and 2·3 % among adolescents who were overweight (BMI ≥ 95th percentile), at risk of overweight (BMI between 85th and 95th percentile) and normal weight (BMI below the 85th percentile), respectively. Urban boys had the highest rate (5·8 %) compared with girls and rural youngsters. Among adolescents who had a BMI ≥ 85th percentile and one or two parent(s) with metabolic syndrome, the prevalence was 46·4 %. A total of 96 % of overweight adolescents had at least one and 74·1 % overweight adolescents had at least two abnormalities of metabolic syndrome. Based on these figures, it is estimated that more than three million Chinese adolescents have metabolic syndrome. Both overweight and metabolic syndrome prevalence among adolescents are still relatively low in China, but the prevalence of metabolic syndrome among Chinese overweight adolescents is similar to those living in the USA.
Textual and Informational Characteristics of Health-Related Social Media Content: A Study of Drug Review Forums

There is a proliferation of health-related social media sites where people post information about their diseases and treatments. These sites can be mined for information about users‘ experience with these diseases and treatments. This paper reports the results of an initial study of the informational content and linguistic characteristics of postings on drug review sites—with an emphasis on the opinions and sentiments expressed. This paper reports our initial analysis of the informational and linguistic characteristics of user postings on drug-review discussion forums. We investigate on knowledge they contain and information that can be extracted from them. We harvested postings from three websites carrying different kinds of user-generated reviews. We analyzed the corpus to identify the most-reviewed drugs, the vocabulary used, focusing on opinion words, and textual characteristics such as length of postings, sentence length and proportion of the various parts-of-speech. We performed semantic tagging with concepts from the UMLS metathesaurus and analyzed the distribution of medical concepts in the corpus. Our results indicate that the corpus covers a large variety of drugs. Drugs related to depression, anxiety, weight loss, and pain relief are most frequently reviewed. Although the linguistic quality of the text is lower than in scientific writing, the medical content is very rich. Opinion mining can be performed on the corpus since it contains many opinion terms.
Effects of Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction on Anxiety & Depression in Primary Care Patients

The objective of this study was to examine effects of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) on the ability to decrease anxiety and depression and increase mindfulness compared to cognitive-behavioral stress management (CBSM). Thirty-five subjects were recruited from a community healthcare center and took part in MBSR (n = 21) and CBSM (n =14) groups. There were no initial differences between MBSR and CBSM subjects on demographics including age, gender, education, and income. MBSR was an 8-week course using meditation, gentle yoga, and body scanning exercises to increase mindfulness. CBSM was an 8-week course using cognitive and behavioral techniques to change thinking and reduce distress. Anxiety, depression, and mindfulness were assessed before and after each group. An analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was used to examine initial group differences between MBSR and CBSM and between Latinos and Non-Latino Whites (NLWs). Effect sizes and paired t-tests were used to examine changes in pre to post measures within groups and ethnicities. Correlational analyses were used to examine changes in anxiety, depression, and mindfulness, as well as changes in mindfulness subscales. Chi-square analyses examined dropout rates between Latino and NLW subjects. Results showed no significant differences in depression and anxiety when comparing MBSR and CBSM groups, but effect sizes showed significant reductions in anxiety and depression and increases in mindfulness. MBSR also showed significant reductions in all three variables, while CBSM showed reductions in anxiety depression, but no changes in mindfulness. NLWs showed reductions in both anxiety and depression, while Latinos decreased only in depression. NLWs showed large effects on all variables, while Latinos showed small increases in mindfulness, medium reductions in anxiety, and large reductions in depression. There were significant correlations between reductions in anxiety and increases in mindfulness and between reductions in depression and increases in mindfulness. There were no significant differences in attrition between groups or ethnicities. Future research should compare cognitive-behavioral and mindfulness-based interventions in a large sample. Research may also benefit from studying the mechanisms involved in mindfulness instead of focusing on group differences.
Common object representations for visual recognition and production

What is the relationship between recognizing objects and drawing objects? We examine the possibility that both functions are supported by a common internal representation. First, we show that a model of ventral visual cortex only optimized to recognize objects in photographs generalizes to drawings of objects, suggesting that the capacity for visual abstraction is rooted in the functional architecture of the visual system. Next, we tested whether practice drawing objects might alter how those and other objects are represented. On each trial, participants sketched an object. The model then guessed the identity of the sketched object, providing realtime feedback. We found that repeatedly sketched objects were better recognized after training, while sketches of unpracticed but similar objects worsened. These results show that visual production can reshape the representational space for objects: by differentiating trained objects and merging other nearby objects in the space.
A Unified Framework for Application Integration - an Ontology-driven Service-oriented Approach

Today, enterprise integration (EI) is still facing many problems and the crucial one is the semantic heterogeneity. This problem is not correctly addressed by today's EI solutions that focus mainly on the technical and syntactical integration. Addressing the semantic aspect will promote EI by providing it more consistency and robustness. Some efforts are suggested to solve the semantic problem at different level, but they are still not mature. This article will propose an approach that combines both ontologies and web services in order to address this hard integration problem.
A very simple, re-executable neuroimaging publication

Reproducible research is a key element of the scientific process. Re-executability of neuroimaging workflows that lead to the conclusions arrived at in the literature has not yet been sufficiently addressed and adopted by the neuroimaging community. In this paper, we document a set of procedures, which include supplemental additions to a manuscript, that unambiguously define the data, workflow, execution environment and results of a neuroimaging analysis, in order to generate a verifiable re-executable publication. Re-executability provides a starting point for examination of the generalizability and reproducibility of a given finding.
Evaluating the Word Sense Disambiguation Accuracy with Three Different Sense Inventories

Comparing performances of word sense disambiguation systems is a very difficult evaluation task when different sense inventories are used and, even more difficult when the sense distinctions are not of the same granularity. The paper substantiates this statement by briefly presenting a system for word sense disambiguation (WSD) based on parallel corpora. The method relies on word alignment, word clustering and is supported by a lexical ontology made of aligned wordnets for the languages in the corpora. The wordnets are aligned to the Princeton Wordnet, according to the principles established by EuroWordNet. The evaluation of the WSD system was performed on the same data, using three different granularity sense inventories.
Fluctuations in lemming populations in north Yukon, Canada, 2007―2010

We estimated population density of brown lemmings (Lemmus sibiricus (Kerr, 1792)), Greenland collared lemmings (Dicrostonyx groenlandicus (Traill, 1823)), and tundra voles (Microtus oeconomus (Pallas, 1776)) on Herschel Island from 2007 to 2010 by mark–recapture on three live-trapping areas. Limited data were also available from Komakuk Beach on the north Yukon coast. In contrast to most previous studies, brown and collared lemmings were partly out of phase. Brown lemmings on Herschel reached peak density in 2007–2008 and were low in 2009–2010, while collared lemmings were at peak density in 2007–2008 and again in 2010. Large adult male body size was characteristic of peak populations. Brown lemmings increased dramatically in the peak summer of 2008 and collared lemmings increased rapidly when winter breeding under the snow was successful in 2009–2010. By contrast, at Komakuk Beach, we could see no clear signs of fluctuations in these three species. Winter snow conditions may be too severe for population .
An Ecotype of Neorickettsia risticii Causing Potomac Horse Fever in Canada

ABSTRACT Neorickettsia (formerly Ehrlichia) risticii is an obligatory intracellular bacterium of digenetic trematodes. When a horse accidentally ingests aquatic insects containing encysted trematodes infected with N. risticii, the bacterium is transmitted from trematodes to horse cells and causes an acute and often fatal disease called Potomac horse fever (PHF). Since the discovery of N. risticii in the United States in 1984, using immunofluorescence and PCR assays, PHF has been increasingly recognized throughout North America and South America. However, so far, there exist only a few stable N. risticii culture isolates, all of which are from horses within the United States, and the strain diversity and environmental spreading and distribution of pathogenic N. risticii strains remain poorly understood. This paper reports the isolation of N. risticii from the blood of a horse with acute PHF in Ontario, Canada. Intracellular N. risticii colonies were detected in P388D1 cells after 47 days of culturing and 8 days after the addition of rapamycin. Molecular phylogenetic analysis based on amino acid sequences of major surface proteins P51 and Ssa1 showed that this isolate is distinct from any previously sequenced strains but closely related to midwestern U.S. strains. This is the first Canadian strain cultured, and a new method was developed to reactivate dormant N. risticii to improve culture isolation. IMPORTANCE Neorickettsia risticii is an environmental bacterium that lives inside flukes that are parasitic to aquatic snails, insects, and bats. When a horse accidentally ingests insects harboring flukes infected with N. risticii, the bacterium is transmitted to the horse and causes an acute and often fatal disease called Potomac horse fever. Although the disease has been increasingly recognized throughout North and South America, N. risticii has not been cultured outside the United States. This paper reports the first Canadian strain cultured and a new method to effectively culture isolate N. risticii from the horse blood sample. Molecular analysis showed that the genotype of this Canadian strain is distinct from previously sequenced strains but closely related to midwestern U.S. strains. Culture isolation of N. risticii strains would confirm the geographic presence of pathogenic N. risticii, help elucidate N. risticii strain diversity and environmental spreading and distribution, and improve diagnosis and development of vaccines for this dreadful disease.
Mechanical Properties of Granular Gun Propellant

An electronic universal test machine and a home-made compression strength tester were used to measure the axial and radial mechanical properties of granular gun propellant.The effect of axial and radical compression on the mechanical properties of gun propellant was discussed.Results show that with the increment of axial loading speed,the elastic modulus increases and compression strength decreases,and the initial crack occurs parallel to the axis at the area contract with pressure head when the propellant bears radial compression.According to axial compression test under fixed load,the axial compression viscoelastic model of gun propellant is established and constitutive equation is obtained ase(t)= σ 9 779 +σ/2250(1-e-t/10.82)+σ/1297727t with the correlation coefficient of 0.99.