Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Robust evidence for bisexual orientation among men

Significance There has long been skepticism among both scientists and laypersons that male bisexual orientation exists. Skeptics have claimed that men who self-identify as bisexual are actually homosexual or heterosexual. (The existence of female bisexuality has been less controversial.) This controversy can be resolved using objective, genital responses of men to male and female erotic stimuli. We combined nearly all available data (from eight previous American, British, and Canadian studies) to form a dataset of more than 500 men, much larger than any previous individual study, and conducted rigorous statistical tests. Results provided compelling evidence that bisexual-identified men tend to show bisexual genital and subjective arousal patterns. Male sexual orientation is expressed on a continuum rather than dichotomously. The question whether some men have a bisexual orientation—that is, whether they are substantially sexually aroused and attracted to both sexes—has remained controversial among both scientists and laypersons. Skeptics believe that male sexual orientation can only be homosexual or heterosexual, and that bisexual identification reflects nonsexual concerns, such as a desire to deemphasize homosexuality. Although most bisexual-identified men report that they are attracted to both men and women, self-report data cannot refute these claims. Patterns of physiological (genital) arousal to male and female erotic stimuli can provide compelling evidence for male sexual orientation. (In contrast, most women provide similar physiological responses to male and female stimuli.) We investigated whether men who self-report bisexual feelings tend to produce bisexual arousal patterns. Prior studies of this issue have been small, used potentially invalid statistical tests, and produced inconsistent findings. We combined nearly all previously published data (from eight previous studies in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada), yielding a sample of 474 to 588 men (depending on analysis). All participants were cisgender males. Highly robust results showed that bisexual-identified men’s genital and subjective arousal patterns were more bisexual than were those who identified as exclusively heterosexual or homosexual. These findings support the view that male sexual orientation contains a range, from heterosexuality, to bisexuality, to homosexuality.
Crop production on duplex soils: an introduction

Duplex or texture-contrast soils occur over about 60% of the agricultural areas of south-west Western Australia. Annual crops of wheat, barley, oats, and lupins predominate on these soils, grown in rotation with annual pastures. The climate is characterised by cool, wet winters and hot, dry summers. Crop production is restricted to the winter and spring and is limited by waterlogging in the wet winter months and by water shortage during grain filling in spring. Research on crop production on duplex soils has been undertaken for the past 8 years by a collaborative team from the CSIRO Dryland Crops andyoils Program and the Western Australian Department of Agriculture. This research has been focussed on 3 sites at which processes limiting crop production on duplex soils have been highlighted. This special issue was initiated to summarise that research and to put it in its regional and national perspective. Additionally, opportunity was taken to compare and contrast experiences both within Western Australia and throughout Australia, and to draw out management options for crop production on duplex soils.
An alphavirus-derived replicon RNA vaccine induces SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibody and T cell responses in mice and nonhuman primates

Replicating RNA vaccine delivered by lipid inorganic nanoparticles induces neutralizing antibody and T cells against SARS-CoV-2 in mice and macaques. A replicating RNA vaccine candidate to fight COVID-19 The COVID-19 pandemic caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 is having a major global public health impact necessitating the rapid development of an effective vaccine. Erasmus et al. report that a replicating RNA vaccine stabilized in a lipid inorganic nanoparticle (LION) formulation induced robust antibody responses after a single intramuscular immunization in mice and after a single intramuscular injection at five different sites in macaques. These antibodies neutralized SARS-CoV-2 at titers comparable to those reported in humans convalescing from COVID-19. Prime/boost vaccination of mice and macaques also induced T cell responses that could potentially contribute to protection. This RNA vaccine also induced robust immune responses in aged mice, suggesting the potential for protection in the elderly. These findings support further development of this COVID-19 vaccine candidate. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, caused by infection with the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), is having a deleterious impact on health services and the global economy, highlighting the urgent need for an effective vaccine. Such a vaccine would need to rapidly confer protection after one or two doses and would need to be manufactured using components suitable for scale up. Here, we developed an Alphavirus-derived replicon RNA vaccine candidate, repRNA-CoV2S, encoding the SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) protein. The RNA replicons were formulated with lipid inorganic nanoparticles (LIONs) that were designed to enhance vaccine stability, delivery, and immunogenicity. We show that a single intramuscular injection of the LION/repRNA-CoV2S vaccine in mice elicited robust production of anti–SARS-CoV-2 S protein IgG antibody isotypes indicative of a type 1 T helper cell response. A prime/boost regimen induced potent T cell responses in mice including antigen-specific responses in the lung and spleen. Prime-only immunization of aged (17 months old) mice induced smaller immune responses compared to young mice, but this difference was abrogated by booster immunization. In nonhuman primates, prime-only immunization in one intramuscular injection site or prime/boost immunizations in five intramuscular injection sites elicited modest T cell responses and robust antibody responses. The antibody responses persisted for at least 70 days and neutralized SARS-CoV-2 at titers comparable to those in human serum samples collected from individuals convalescing from COVID-19. These data support further development of LION/repRNA-CoV2S as a vaccine candidate for prophylactic protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Annual variability and trophic relations of the mesozooplankton community in the eutrophicated coastal area (Vranjic Basin, eastern Adriatic Sea)

Mesozooplankton was sampled during one year in the eutrophicated Vranjic Basin and the influence of environmental variables on its abundance and distribution was analysed. Parallel microzooplankton samples were collected in order to assess trophic relationships within the zooplankton community. Total mesozooplankton abundances were high, exceeding 2×104 ind m−3 in the warmer part of the year, but the biodiversity was low. The annual variability of this assemblage was mostly influenced by temperature. Copepods were dominant among net plankton groups, while ciliates dominated the protozoan community. The key species of the copepod community were Acartia clausi, Oithona nana and Euterpina acutifrons, occurring simultaneously throughout the year. High abundances of small copepod Oithona nana were determined in both meso- and microzooplankton samples, and comparisons of the catches from 125 μm net and 5-l Niskin bottles revealed no significant differences between them. Significant correlation determined between Acartia clausi and oligotrich ciliates indicates predator–prey relationship and the importance of the ciliate community in the energy transfer through the trophic web of this area.
Estimate Information Fusion Weight of WSNs Nodes Based on Truth Discovery Optimization Method Among Conflicting Sources of Data

In practical wireless sensor networks (WSNs)-based applications, often only a few nodes are active while most of the others are activated occasionally due to limited resource of the WSNs. Thus most sensors only provide a few observations and only a few sensors make many observations, which often cause long-tail issue to undermine information fusion performance. So we present a confidence-aware information fusion scheme named CAIF to solve such a problem. In particular, we first make a quantitative study on the long-tail data phenomenon and the relationship between node-target distance and node sensing capability, which can provide a guideline to improve node weight estimation error caused by long-tail data. Then, we propose a truth discovery-based method in WSNs via incorporating node-target distance into the truth discovery optimization solution framework to infer the sensor node’s fusion weight. In order to adapt to the distribution characteristic of the WSNs, we propose a distributed implementation to estimate the sensor nodes’ weights via confidence level and node-target distance to further improve the fusion performance. Besides, the iterative process shown in CAIF converges to a stationary point of the optimization problem and its time complexity is linear with respect to the total number of observations. Finally, we conduct extensive experiments on real data to validate and evaluate CAIF. The experimental results demonstrate the superior performance of our method over existing solutions in terms of root-mean-square error and accuracy.
Malaria Parasitaemia among patients attending General Hospital Minna, North Central Nigeria

Malaria is one of the most widespread parasitic infections globally and is a major cause of mortality, particularly in regions of high malaria endemicity. This study was carried out to investigate the prevalence of malaria infection and parasitaemia among patients attending General Hospital, Minna, North Central Nigeria. A total of one thousand and seventy-one (1,071) individuals within the study area were enrolled for the study from the month of June, 2016 to May, 2017. Malaria parasitaemia was carried out using thick and thin blood films. Parasites counts were reported per 800 white blood cells. The ages of the individuals recruited for the study ranged from 0 to 51years of age. Out of the 1,071 (100%) blood samples collected, 741 (69.19%) were positive for malaria parasitaemia of which 74 (9.99%), 134 (18.08%), 176 (23.75%) and 357 (48.18%) individuals scored malaria parasite densities of +++, ++, + and scanty had parasites in their blood stream respectively. Statistically, there was a significant difference (P 0.05) between the degree of malaria parasitaemia in relation to gender (sex). The high prevalence of malaria parasitaemia among patients attending General Hospital, Minna, North Central Nigeria highlights the need for more efforts to be targeted at controlling malaria among individuals as this will ultimately lead to a reduction in the incidence of malaria in Minna and Nigeria at large.
Preload on draft gear in freight trains

Adjusting draft gear preloads requires minimum or no structural changes to the existing coupler systems. Better or optimal preloads are more promising to be implemented than modifying other parameters such as wedge angles and spring stiffness. This paper presents a method to model draft gear preloads and investigates the numerical step-size requirements for the simulations of draft gear preloads. The implications of preloads on the draft gear impact performance, longitudinal train dynamics performance and coupler fatigue damage were also investigated. The results show that step sizes of less than 2.5 and 0.2 ms (with the fourth Runge–Kutta solver) are recommended to simulate preloads during the simulations of longitudinal train dynamics and wagon impacts, respectively. Wagon impact simulations indicate that the increase of draft gear preloads can noticeably decrease the maximum draft gear deflection during wagon impacts. Longitudinal train dynamics simulations for a distributed power train with 214 vehicles on a 320 km long track were conducted. The longitudinal train dynamics simulations indicate that, when the preload is increased from 0 to 100 kN, the difference of maximum vehicle accelerations is insignificant. When the draft gear preload is further increased to 200 or 300 kN, maximum vehicle accelerations are evidently increased. Draft gear preloads do not noticeably influence the maximum tensile coupler forces. However, preloads have evident implications for maximum compressive coupler forces, especially for the second half of the train. Coupler fatigue damage calculations show that the sum of coupler fatigue damage evidently decreases with the increase of draft gear preload. The damage for the zero preload case is 8.7 times than that of the 300 kN preload case.
Diets enriched with cereal brans or inulin modulate protein kinase C activity and isozyme expression in rat colonic mucosa

The role of dietary fibres in colon carcinogenesis is controversial. To elucidate the mechanisms by which different dietary fibre sources may affect colonic tumour development, we studied the effects of diets enriched with cereal brans or inulin on protein kinase C (PKC) activity and isozyme expression in rat colon. Male Wistar rats (twelve per group) were fed one of the following AIN-93G-based diets () for 4 weeks: a non-fibre high-fat diet or one of the four high-fat diets supplemented with either rye, oat or wheat bran or inulin at 100 g/kg diet. The fat concentration (20 g/100 g) and fatty acid composition of the non-fibre high-fat diet was designed to approximate that in a typical Western-type diet. In the proximal colon, rats fed the inulin diet had a significantly higher membrane PKC activity and a higher membrane PKC δ level than rats fed the non-fibre diet (P<0·05). In the distal colon, rats fed the inulin and oat bran diets had a higher total PKC activity and a higher membrane PKC β2 level than rats fed the wheat-bran diet. Rats in the non-fibre and wheat-bran groups had the lowest concentrations of luminal diacylglycerol. In conclusion, feeding of wheat bran resulted in low distal PKC activity and expression of PKC β2, a PKC isozyme related to colonic cell proliferation and increased susceptibility for colon carcinogenesis, which may explain in part the protective effect of wheat bran against tumour development in a number of experimental colon cancer studies. The increase in PKC activity and PKC β2 expression by feeding inulin may be a drawback of inulin as a functional food.
Early Performance of Hospital Value-based Purchasing Program in Medicare

Supplemental Digital Content is available in the text. Background: Under the Affordable Care Act, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has greatly expanded inpatient fee-for-value programs including the Hospital Value-based Purchasing (HVBP) program. Existing evidence from the HVBP program is mixed. There is a need for a systematic review of the HVBP program to inform discussions on how to improve the program’s effectiveness. Objective: To review and summarize studies that evaluated the HVBP program’s impact on clinical processes, patient satisfaction, costs and outcomes, or assessed hospital characteristics associated with performance on the program. Design: We searched the MEDLINE/PubMed, Scopus, ProQuest database for literature published between January 2013 and July 2019 using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis guidelines. Results: Of 988 studies reviewed, 33 studies that met the selection criteria were included. A small group of studies (n=7) evaluated the impact of the HVBP program, and no impact on processes or patient outcomes was reported. None of the included studies evaluated the effect of HVBP program on health care costs. Other studies (n=28) evaluated the hospital characteristics associated with HVBP performance, suggesting that safety-net hospitals reportedly performed worse on several quality and cost measures. Other hospital characteristics’ associations with performance were unclear. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that the current HVBP does not lead to meaningful improvements in quality of care or patient outcomes and may negatively affect safety-net hospitals. More rigorous and comprehensive adjustment is needed for more valid hospital comparisons.
WOOD MOUSE APODEMUS SYLVATICUS WINTER FOOD SUPPLY: DENSITY, CONDITION, BREEDING, AND PARASITES

We determined the individual and population responses to food availability of wood mice Apodemus sylvaticus wintering in small forest woodlots by means of a food addition experiment. The allocation of the extra provided energy to the maintenance of body condition and reproduction was expected to vary between sexes due to their different energy investment in reproduction and to the different indirect costs of reproduction associated with different hormone-mediated susceptibilities to parasite infections. There were no effects of food supplementation on the density of adult males or on the overall density of mice. However, adult females were marginally more abundant and the sex ratio was more balanced in supplemented woodlots. Body condition (as estimated by body mass, body mass relative to body size, and amount of fat reserves), did not differ among treatments for either adult males or females. The prevalence and intensity of endoparasites of short life cycle (oxyurid nematodes) were lower in food-suppleme.
Thermal evolution of life history and heat tolerance during range expansions toward warmer and cooler regions.

Species' range edges are expanding to both warmer and cooler regions. Yet, no studies directly compared the changes in range-limiting traits within the same species during both types of range expansions. To increase our mechanistic understanding of range expansions it is crucial to disentangle the contributions of plastic and genetic changes in these traits. The aim of this study was to test for plastic and evolutionary changes in heat tolerance, life history and behaviour, and compare these during range expansions toward warmer and cooler regions. Using laboratory experiments we reconstructed the thermal performance curves (TPCurves) of larval life history (survival, growth and development rates) and larval heat tolerance (CTmax) across two recent range expansions from the core populations in southern France toward a warmer (southeastern Spain) and a cooler (northwestern Spain) region in Europe by the damselfly Ischnura elegans. First-generation larvae from field-collected mothers were reared across a range of temperatures (16 - 28 °C) in incubators. The range expansion to the warmer region was associated with the evolution of a greater ability to cope with high temperatures (increased mean and thermal plasticity of CTmax), faster development and partly a faster growth indicating a higher time constraints caused by a shorter time frame available for larval development associated with a transition to a greater voltinism. Our results thereby support the emerging pattern that plasticity in heat tolerance alone is inadequate to adapt to new thermal regimes. The range expansion to the cooler region was associated with faster growth indicating countergradient variation without a change in CTmax. The evolution of a faster growth rate during both range expansions could be explained by a greater digestive efficiency rather than an increased food intake. Our results highlight that range expansions to warmer and cooler regions can result in similar evolutionary changes in the TPCurves for life history, and no opposite changes in heat tolerance.
Head Teachers’ Administrative Skills and Curriculum Management in Universal Secondary Education Schools in Kiruhura District, Uganda

The study investigated head teachers’ administrative skills and curriculum management in Universal Secondary Education (USE) Schools in Kiruhura District of Uganda. The objectives were to identify the head teachers’ administrative skills in managing curriculum, to establish the challenges faced by USE school head teachers in curriculum management, and to find the relationship between head teachers’ administrative skills and curriculum management. The study employed a cross sectional survey research design. Data was collected using a questionnaire and interview guides administered to head teachers of USE schools and respondents from the Kiruhura district education officer’s office. Microsoft office excel and word were used to generate frequencies and tables for easy interpretation and presentation of the data. The research findings revealed that the highest administrative skills used by head teachers in USE schools was involving teachers in curriculum activities which was rated at 90% by the respondents, whereas absenteeism at 26.8% for both teachers and students was the biggest challenge faced by secondary schools head teachers. Finally, the respondents indicated that there was a relationship between administrative skills and curriculum, rated at 91% yes response. The study recommends that stake holders establish monthly workshops aimed at improving head teachers administrative skills in order to attain an improved curriculum management in USE schools.
Law Search as Prediction

The process of searching for relevant legal materials is fundamental to legal reasoning. However, despite its enormous practical and theoretical importance, law search has been given inadequate attention by scholars. In this article, we define the problem of law search, examine its normative and empirical dimensions, and investigate one particularly promising computationally based approach. We implement a model of law search based on a notion of search space and search strategies and apply that model to the corpus of U.S. Supreme Court opinions. We test the success of the model against both citation information and hand-coded legal relevance determinations.
The metamorphosis of Symposiocladius lignicola (Kieffer) n.gen., n.comb., a wood-mining Chironomidae (Diptera)

The female and larva are described and the male and pupa redescribed for Orthocladius lignicola Kieffer. A lectotype is designated for a pupa belonging to the syntypic series. O. tryoni Soponis, 1977 is synonymized with O. lignicola. A new genus, Symposiocladius, is erected for the species, and a systematic placement close to Orthocladius, Synorthcladius and Stackelbergina is postulated. The larval habit of mining in submerged wood is discussed in relation to a brief review of previous records.
Morphology, Performance and Fitness

Synopsis. Selection can be measured in natural populations by the changes it causes in the means, variances and covariances of phenotypic characters. Furthermore the force of selection can be measured in conventional statistical terms that also play a key role in theoreticai equations for evolutionary change. The problem of measuring selection on morphological traits is simplified by breaking the task into two parts: measurement of the effects of morphological variation on performance and measurement of the effects of performance on fitness. The first part can be pursued in the laboratory but the second part is best accomplished in the field. The approach is illustrated with a hypothetical analysis of selection acting on the complex trophic morphology of snakes.