Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Organization of the superior olivary complex in the guinea pig: II. Patterns of projection from the periolivary nuclei to the inferior colliculus

The superior olivary complex is a major source of auditory projections to the inferior colliculus. Although the projections from the medial and lateral superior olivary nuclei have been well characterized, projections from the surrounding periolivary nuclei have received relatively little attention. In the guinea pig, cytoarchitectonic criteria can be used to distinguish 11 periolivary nuclei that can be divided into four groups. These are: (1) a lateral group that comprises the anterolateral and posteroventral periolivary nuclei and the lateral nucleus of the trapezoid body; (2) a dorsal group that comprises the dorsal and dorsolateral periolivary nuclei; (3) a ventral group that comprises the rostral, ventromedial, and anteroventral periolivary nuclei and the ventral nucleus of the trapezoid body; and (4) a medial group that comprises the superior paraolivary nucleus and the medial nucleus of the trapezoid body.
Reassessing the Link between Women’s Premarital Cohabitation and Marital Quality

Using data from 2,898 women from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-1979, we employ a novel method to examine two perspectives, social selection and the experience of cohabitation, commonly used to explain the negative relationship outcomes cohabiting women report. Results reveal cohabitation is negatively related to marital happiness and communication and positively related to conflict. As in previous research, selection mechanisms appear to increase the odds of cohabitation while decreasing marital happiness. A closer examination of the problem also reveals a negative effect of the experience of cohabitation. This paper’s primary contributions are the ability to model selection and experience in the same model and evidence of a robust effect of cohabitation on marital quality. These results underscore the complex pathways between union formation, family structure and marital outcomes.
Effect of rhizobacteria on arsenic uptake by macrophyte Eichhornia crassipes (Mart.) Solms

ABSTRACT Wastewater flowing in streams and nallahs across India carries several trace metals, including metalloid arsenic (As), which are considered serious environmental contaminants due to their toxicity, and recalcitrant nature. In this study, we determined the phytoremediation of As by Eichhornia crassipes (Mart.) Solms either alone or in association with plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria. Pseudomonas and Azotobacter inoculation to E. crassipes resulted in enhanced As removal compared to uninoculated control. Co-inoculation with a consortium of Pseudomonas, Azotobacter, Azospirillum, Actinomyces, and Bacillus resulted in a higher As (p < 0.05) phytoaccumulation efficiency. P. aeruginosa strain jogii was found particularly effective in augmenting As removal by E. crassipes. Our findings indicate that the synergistic association of E. crassipes and various rhizobacteria is an effective strategy to enhance removal of As and thus may be utilized as an efficient biological alternative for the removal of this metalloid from wastewaters.
Fault Detection in a Microphone Array by Intercorrelation of Features in Voice Activity Detection

Voice-based interaction generates a lot of interest for natural human-robot interaction. Auditory information from microphones is an essential clue for a robot's attention to a person. Fault detection of microphones is required in order to improve the reliability of the voice-based human-robot interaction. This paper proposes a new approach for real-time fault detection in a microphone array in conversation without a calibration signal and a known sound source position by the intercorrelation of features in voice activity detection. The approach is successfully applied to a six-microphone system, and experimental results show an average fault detection of 97.6%.
Appetitive behavior, compulsivity, and neurochemistry in Prader-Willi syndrome.

Advances in genetic research have led to an increased understanding of genotype-phenotype relationships. Excessive eating and weight gain characteristic of Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) have been the understandable focus of much of the research. The intense preoccupation with food, lack of satiation, and incessant food seeking are among the most striking features of PWS. It has become increasingly clear that the behavioral phenotype of PWS also includes symptoms similar to obsessive compulsive disorder, which in all probability interact with the incessant hunger and lack of satiation to engender the intense preoccupation and food seeking behavior that is characteristic of this disorder. Several lines of evidence suggest that genetic material on chromosome 15 may alter synthesis, release, metabolism, binding, intrinsic activity, or reuptake of specific neurotransmitters, or alter the receptor numbers and/or distribution involved in modulating feeding. Among the likely candidates are GABAnergic, serotonergic, and neuropeptidergic mechanisms. This review summarizes what is known about the appetitive behavior and compulsivity in PWS and discusses the possible mechanisms underlying these behaviors. MRDD Research Reviews 2000;6:125-130.
Immunotoxicity Testing in Non-Rodent Species

Evaluation of the immunotoxicity potential of some pharmaceuticals, including immunomodulatory chemicals and biologics, cannot be limited to testing in rodents. Thus, immune function tests have also been applied in studies with non-human primates and more recently dogs that assess various components of the immune system. These assays include TDAR responses with various immunogens, lymphocyte phenotyping, natural-killer cell activity, delayed-type hypersensitivity, and macrophage function assays. Approaches for incorporating immune function testing in non-rodent species, results from these tests, their interpretation and limitations with respect to drug safety assessment will be reviewed.
Phylogenetic Analysis of Polyketide Synthase I Domains from Soil Metagenomic Libraries Allows Selection of Promising Clones

ABSTRACT The metagenomic approach provides direct access to diverse unexplored genomes, especially from uncultivated bacteria in a given environment. This diversity can conceal many new biosynthetic pathways. Type I polyketide synthases (PKSI) are modular enzymes involved in the biosynthesis of many natural products of industrial interest. Among the PKSI domains, the ketosynthase domain (KS) was used to screen a large soil metagenomic library containing more than 100,000 clones to detect those containing PKS genes. Over 60,000 clones were screened, and 139 clones containing KS domains were detected. A 700-bp fragment of the KS domain was sequenced for 40 of 139 randomly chosen clones. None of the 40 protein sequences were identical to those found in public databases, and nucleic sequences were not redundant. Phylogenetic analyses were performed on the protein sequences of three metagenomic clones to select the clones which one can predict to produce new compounds. Two PKS-positive clones do not belong to any of the 23 published PKSI included in the analysis, encouraging further analyses on these two clones identified by the selection process.
Evaluation of methods for detecting recombination from DNA sequences: Computer simulations

Recombination is a key evolutionary process that shapes the architecture of genomes and the genetic structure of populations. Although many statistical methods are available for the detection of recombination from DNA sequences, their absolute and relative performance is still unknown. Here we evaluated the performance of 14 different recombination detection algorithms. We used the coalescent with recombination to simulate DNA sequences with different levels of recombination, genetic diversity, and rate variation among sites. Recombination detection methods were applied to these data sets, and whether they detected or not recombination was recorded. Different recombination methods showed distinct performance depending on the amount of recombination, genetic diversity, and rate variation among sites. The model of nucleotide substitution under which the data were generated did not seem to have a significant effect. Most methods increase power with more sequence divergence. In general, recombination detection methods seem to capture the presence of recombination, but they are not very powerful. Methods that use substitution patterns or incompatibility among sites were more powerful than methods based on phylogenetic incongruence. Most methods do not seem to infer more false positives than expected by chance. Especially depending on the amount of diversity in the data, different methods could be used to attain maximum power while minimizing false positives. Results shown here will provide some guidance in the selection of the most appropriate method/s for the analysis of the particular data at hand.
Effects of dopamine and bromocriptine on colonic motility in dog

1 The effects of intravenous infusions of dopamine (0.1 to 1 mg kg−1 h−1) and bromocriptine (10 to 40 μg kg−1 h−1) on colonic motility were investigated in fasted dogs fitted with permanent strain gauges on the ascending, transverse and descending colon. 2 Infused at rates of 0.5 and 1 mg kg−1 h−1 during 1 h, dopamine immediately stimulated the motility of the descending colon; after a delay of 40 to 60 min this effect was balanced by an inhibition of the motility of the ascending and transverse colon. Bromocriptine infused intravenously at doses of 10 to 40 μg kg−1 h−1 stimulated the motility of the whole colon but these effects were limited to the duration of the infusion (60 min). 3 Both propranolol (0.5 mg kg−1) and tolazoline (2 mg kg−1) failed to block the effects of dopamine and bromocriptine whereas phentolamine (0.1 mg kg−1) and prazosin (0.2 mg kg−1) partially reduced the inhibitory effects of dopamine on the proximal colon. Haloperidol at doses higher than 0.2 mg kg−1 and domperidone blocked the bromocriptine‐induced stimulation of colonic motility which was unaffected by previous treatment with α‐ and β‐adrenoceptor blocking agents. 4 These results suggest that in the dog, dopamine and bromocriptine stimulate colonic motility through specific dopamine receptors. However, they suggest that the inhibitory effects of dopamine on the proximal colon which are blocked by dopamine antagonists are also partially due to an effect on α1‐adrenoceptors.
Amylin is a novel neuropeptide with potential maternal functions in the rat

Amylin, a 37‐aa pancreatic peptide, was found to be expressed in the preoptic area of mother rats in our recent microarray study. Here, we report a marked increase in amylin expression around parturition and show that amylin mRNA level remains elevated as long as the pups are not removed from the dams. Amylin expression is also induced in maternally behaving (sensitized) nonlactating but not in nonsensitized nulliparous females or in females that did not become maternal despite the sensitization procedure. Immunohistochemistry verified the increased amylin peptide expression in maternally behaving rats and demonstrated the same expression pattern of amylin as in situ hybridization histochemistry. Ovariectomy had no effect on the activation of amylin neurons, suggesting sexual steroid‐independent mechanisms. In subsequent functional experiments, mothers were separated from their pups for 22 h. On return of the pups, neuronal activation was found in the mother's preoptic area, with a distribution pattern similar to amylin‐expressing neurons. Subsequent double labeling revealed that 86‐93% of amylin neurons were activated by pup exposure. The results implicate amylin in the control of maternal adaptations, possibly exerting its actions on maternal behaviors via amylin receptors present in brain regions to which preoptic neurons project. —Szabó, E. R. , Cservenák, M. , Dobolyi, A. Amylin is a novel neuropeptide with potential maternal functions in the rat. FASEB J. 26, 272–281 (2012). www.fasebj. org
Essays on Management of fiscal resources in developing and emerging countries

An unprecedented financial and economic crisis irrupted in the US in 2007, and has rapidly grown and spread to many countries around the world. The financial instrument has been widely used: in a context of financial contagion, governments have initially reacted by adopting measures to revive the economy, and then, secondly, facing mounting debt, implemented economic stabilization policies. The goal of this thesis is to highlight the importance of specific features both at regional and national level in the public decision making to stimulate economic growth. The thesis analyses the relationship between GDP and unemployment, as well as the effects of fiscal stimuli. In the first part, Okun’s law is examined at regional level in three emerging Central and Eastern European countries. In the second part, the emphasis is given to the concept of fiscal multiplier and its policy implications. In the third part, fiscal multipliers are assessed in emerging countries, particularly those of the Mediterranean and the Central and Eastern Europe regions. The thesis makes use of time series and panel econometrics methods.
Postprandial alterations in whole-blood DNA methylation are mediated by changes in white blood cell composition.

BACKGROUND DNA methylation is an essential nuclear process associated with genomic functions such as transcription factor binding and the regulation of gene expression. DNA methylation patterns can also serve as potential biomarkers for disease progression and response to therapy. However, the full dynamics of DNA methylation across daily physiologic events have not been fully elucidated. OBJECTIVE We sought to study how ingesting a standardized meal acutely affects peripheral blood DNA methylation. DESIGN We performed an observational study in healthy men (n = 26) on DNA methylation and gene expression in whole blood before and 160 min after the ingestion of a standardized meal. Cytosine-phosphate-guanine (CpG) methylation was assayed on the HumanMethylation450k microarray, and gene expression was measured with the Human Gene 2.1 ST Array. RESULTS Differential methylation after food intake was detected in 13% of the analyzed probes (63,207 CpG probes) at a 5% false discovery rate (FDR). This effect was driven by changes in leukocyte fractions as estimated from comparisons against methylation datasets generated from sorted leukocytes. When methylation values were adjusted for estimated leukocyte fractions, 541 probes were observed to be altered in the postprandial state (5% FDR). CONCLUSIONS Apparent alterations in DNA methylation 160 min after meal ingestion mainly reflect changes in the estimated leukocyte population in whole blood. These results have major methodologic implications for genome-wide methylation studies because they highlight the strong underlying effects of changes in leukocyte fractions on CpG methylation patterns as well as the potential importance of meal-standardized sampling procedures for future investigations when alterations in white blood cell fractions are unavailable. This trial was registered at clinicaltrials.gov as LSF008786.
Recent advances in insect olfaction, specifically regarding the morphology and sensory physiology of antennal sensilla of the female sphinx moth Manduca sexta

The antennal flagellum of female Manduca sexta bears eight sensillum types: two trichoid, two basiconic, one auriculate, two coeloconic, and one styliform complex sensilla. The first type of trichoid sensillum averages 34 μm in length and is innervated by two sensory cells. The second type averages 26 μm in length and is innervated by either one or three sensory cells. The first type of basiconic sensillum averages 22 μm in length, while the second type averages 15 μm in length. Both types are innervated by three bipolar sensory cells. The auriculate sensillum averages 4 μm in length and is innervated by two bipolar sensory cells. The coeloconic type‐A and type‐B both average 2 μm in length. The former type is innervated by five bipolar sensory cells, while the latter type, by three bipolar sensory cells. The styliform complex sensillum occurs singly on each annulus and averages 38–40 μm in length. It is formed by several contiguous sensilla. Each unit is innervated by three bipolar sensory cells. A total of 2,216 sensilla were found on a single annulus (annulus 21) of the flagellum. Electrophysiological responses from type‐A trichoid sensilla to a large panel of volatile odorants revealed three different subsets of olfactory receptor cells (ORCs). Two subsets responded strongly to only a narrow range of odorants, while the third responded strongly to a broad range of odorants. Anterograde labeling of ORCs from type‐A trichoid sensilla revealed that their axons projected mainly to two large female glomeruli of the antennal lobe. Microsc. Res. Tech. 55:307–329, 2001. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
VirtusCap: Capability-Based Access Control for Unikernels

A recent direction in cloud computing is toward massive consolidation of resources by using lightweight virtual machines (VMs) called unikernels. Unikernels are specialized VMs that eliminate the operating system layer and provide a small footprint, minimal attack surface, and near-instant boot times. However, managing the privileges of thousands of unikernels hosted in Xen hypervisor and authoring complex Mandatory Access Control (MAC) policies using Xen Security Module (XSM)-Flask or sHype is often difficult and error prone for cloud administrators. XSM-Flask and sHype access control mechanisms have not reached wide adoption since their configuration and policies are complex and contain hundreds of subjects and objects for a single VM. Thus, we require an access control mechanism that is flexible, simple, integrated with unikernels and is efficient in order to regulate access to a large number of unikernels. In this paper, we present VirtusCap: a novel multi-layer access control architecture and mechanism that integrates capabilities with unikernels. Our approach employs capabilities to limit privileges of unikernels. Hence, our approach embodies the Principle of Least Privilege (POLP) to create unikernels that have only the privileges they need to accomplish their task. Performance evaluations show that up to request rate of 7000 (req/sec) our prototype's response time is identical to XSM-Flask.
Good Anthropology, Bad History: The Cultural Turn in Studying War

To wage war, become an anthropologist. Lose the fascination with Clausewitz, and embrace culture as the way to understand conflict. Or so argue a number of strategists, historians, and officers on both sides of the Atlantic. From the academy to the Pentagon, fresh attention is being focused on the value of knowing the enemy. Those who take this view assume that different ways of life produce different ways of war. They see today’s global war on terrorism as a clash of profoundly different cultures, between American-led forces on one side, and jihadist warriors or tribal warlords on the other. To make sense of recent military failures, they have turned back to cultural knowledge of the adversary. This also often influences their reading of history. They project the same themes back into the past. Today’s military confrontation of “the West vs. the rest,” they argue, replays ancient differences between strategic cultures. This new anthropology has good intentions. It aims to foster greater cultural awareness and sophistication among militaries and governments. And cultural agility is surely important. It matters at every level—strategic, operational, and tactical. It matters particularly at a time of volatile occupations of foreign soil, where soldiers are being asked to act as police officers, nation- builders, and peace brokers. And today’s Iraq war demonstrates the costs of misunderstanding the enemy strategically. America was misguided by its narrow conception of war and victory. It assumed that its opponents shared the view that hostilities ended when Iraq’s field army was defeated. It neglected post-invasion strategy as a second-order administrative task separate to war and refused for too long to admit the existence of an insurgency. For his part, Saddam Hussein wrongly calcu
The Medical Science DMZ

Objective We describe use cases and an institutional reference architecture for maintaining high-capacity, data-intensive network flows (e.g., 10, 40, 100 Gbps+) in a scientific, medical context while still adhering to security and privacy laws and regulations. Materials and Methods High-end networking, packet filter firewalls, network intrusion detection systems. Results We describe a “Medical Science DMZ” concept as an option for secure, high-volume transport of large, sensitive data sets between research institutions over national research networks. Discussion The exponentially increasing amounts of “omics” data, the rapid increase of high-quality imaging, and other rapidly growing clinical data sets have resulted in the rise of biomedical research “big data. ” The storage, analysis, and network resources required to process these data and integrate them into patient diagnoses and treatments have grown to scales that strain the capabilities of academic health centers. Some data are not generated locally and cannot be sustained locally, and shared data repositories such as those provided by the National Library of Medicine, the National Cancer Institute, and international partners such as the European Bioinformatics Institute are rapidly growing. The ability to store and compute using these data must therefore be addressed by a combination of local, national, and industry resources that exchange large data sets. Maintaining data-intensive flows that comply with HIPAA and other regulations presents a new challenge for biomedical research. Recognizing this, we describe a strategy that marries performance and security by borrowing from and redefining the concept of a “Science DMZ”—a framework that is used in physical sciences and engineering research to manage high-capacity data flows. Conclusion By implementing a Medical Science DMZ architecture, biomedical researchers can leverage the scale provided by high-performance computer and cloud storage facilities and national high-speed research networks while preserving privacy and meeting regulatory requirements.
SIV: a structural integrity verification approach of cloud components with enhanced privacy

: Private data leakage is a threat to current integrity veriﬁcation schemes of cloud components. To address this issue, this work proposes a privacy-enhancing Structural Integrity Veriﬁcation (SIV) approach. It is made up of three processes: proof organization, proof transformation, and integrity judgement. By introducing a Merkle tree technique, the integrity of a constituent part of a cloud component on a node is represented by a root value. The value is then masked to cipher texts in proof transformation. With the masked proofs, a structural feature is extracted and validated in an integrity judgement by a third-party veriﬁcation provider. The integrity of the cloud component is visually displayed in the output result matrix. If there are abnormities, the corrupted constituent parts can be located. Integrity is veriﬁed through the encrypted masked proofs. All raw proofs containing sensitive information stay on their original nodes, thus minimizing the attack surface of the proof data, and eliminating the risk of leaking private data at the source. Although some computations are added, the experimental results show that the time overhead is within acceptable bounds.