Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Foliar plasticity related to gradients of heat and drought stress across crown orientations in three Mediterranean Quercus species

Studies on plasticity at the level of a single individual plant provide indispensable information to predict leaf responses to climate change, because they allow better identification of the environmental factors that determine differences in leaf traits in the absence of genetic differences. Most of these studies have focused on the responses of leaf traits to variations in the light environment along vertical gradients, thus paying less attention to possible differences in the intensity of water stress among canopy orientations. In this paper, we analyzed the differences in leaf traits traditionally associated with changes in the intensity of water stress between east and west crown orientations in three Quercus species. The leaves facing west experienced similar solar radiation levels but higher maximum temperatures and lower daily minimum water potentials than those of the east orientation. In response to these differences, the leaves of the west orientation showed smaller size and less chlorophyll concentration, higher percentage of palisade tissue and higher density of stomata and trichomes. These responses would confirm the role of such traits in the tolerance to water stress and control of water losses by transpiration. For all traits, the species with the longest leaf life span exhibited the greatest plasticity between orientations. By contrast, no differences between canopy positions were observed for leaf thickness, leaf mass per unit area and venation patterns.
Delayed intraorbital infection after craniofacial bone surgery

Intraorbital infection shows a low incidence, but it might cause blindness or even death. This case is unusual in that its origin from a craniofacial bone fracture prior to infection of the maxillary sinus. A 33-year-old female patient was referred for right cheek swelling. When she visited the emergency room, we removed right cheek hematoma and bacterial examination was done. In the past, she had craniofacial bone surgical history due to a traffic accident 6 years ago. Next day, the swelling had remained with proptosis and pus was recognized in the conjunctiva. We planned an emergency operation and removed the pus which was already spread inside the orbit. And the evaluation for sinusitis was consulted to the otorhinolaryngology department simultaneously. There were Prevotella oralis and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus epidermidis bacterial infection in the intraorbital and sinus respectively. Afterwards, the vigorous dressing was done for over a month with intravenous antibiotics. Though the intraorbital infection was resolved, blindness and extraocular movement limitation were inevitable. In conclusion, close follow up of the maxillary sinus in facial bone fracture patients is important and aggressive treatment is needed when an infection is diagnosed.
Statistical Approaches in the Studies Assessing Associations between Human Milk Immune Composition and Allergic Diseases: A Scoping Review

A growing number of studies are focusing on the associations between human milk (HM) immunological composition and allergic diseases. This scoping review aims to identify statistical methods applied in the field and highlight pitfalls and unmet needs. A comprehensive literature search in MEDLINE and Embase retrieved 13,607 unique records. Following title/abstract screening, 29 studies met the selection criteria and were included in this review. We found that definitions of colostrum and mature milk varied across the studies. A total of 17 out of 29 (59%) studies collected samples longitudinally, but only 12% of these used serial (longitudinal) analyses. Multivariable analysis was used in 45% of the studies, but statistical approaches to modelling varied largely across the studies. Types of variables included as potential confounding factors differed considerably between models. Discrimination analysis was absent from all studies and only a single study reported classification measures. Outcomes of this scoping review highlight lack of standardization, both in data collection and handling, which remains one of the main challenges in the field. Improved standardization could be obtained by a consensus group of researchers and clinicians that could recommend appropriate methods to be applied in future prospective studies, as well as already existing datasets.
NANOPARTICLE BASED DELIVERY

Nanoparticle (NP) drug delivery for glioma is recently gaining attention due to the numerous advantages it possesses over conventional drug delivery systems. The bloodbrain barrier (BBB) which presents an immense challenge for the delivery of therapeutics by conventional methods has been shown to be permeable to certain NP drug delivery systems. These advancements have enabled the achievement of high enough drug concentration in the brain to show a therapeutic effect. Additionally, local enrichment, specific targeting, and controlled release kinetics of the encapsulated therapeutics provide significant advantages. The stability of these nanoparticles (NPs) and the ease with which their surfaces can be modified for targeted delivery are other hallmarks of these systems. Further, NPs have unique optical, electronic, chemical and structural properties which are quite distinct from the larger micro or macro particles. This review focuses on NPs as means to deliver therapeutics to brain tumors. Nanotherapy using magnetic NPs is currently in clinical trials whereas therapies using ZnO NPs, gold NPs, chlorotoxin conjugated NPs, and photosensitizer NPs are still in the pre-clinical phase. Also discussed is a novel niosome-chitosan drug delivery technique which we are currently evaluating in vitro in glioma cells. * E-mail: norma@usf.edu No part of this digital document may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted commercially in any form or by any means. The publisher has taken reasonable care in the preparation of this digital document, but makes no expressed or implied warranty of any kind and assumes no responsibility for any errors or omissions. No liability is assumed for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising out of information contained herein. This digital document is sold with the clear understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, medical or any other professional services. Eva Christabel Williams, Norma A. Alcantar and Marzenna Wiranowska 372
LOWER LIMB WALKING GAIT PROFILING USING MARKER-LESS MOTION CAPTURE TO ASSIST PHYSIOTHERAPY TREATMENT

Physiotherapy involves specialised therapist conducting mechanical force and movement onto human body in order to heal and avoid further physical injuries. Therapists rely on subjective estimation in order to measure the performance improvements after physiotherapy treatments. An automated method to analyse and measure improvement is needed to calculate improvements based on patients' walking gait. This method would require a gait profile database in order to be able to calculate patients' improvement after physiotherapy treatments. The aims of this research are to develop a framework for walking gait profiling using marker-less motion capture and assist physiotherapy evaluation by comparing walking gait to the profile that has been generated. The proposed system consists of four major phases which are: motion capturing; motion profiling; normal gait averaging; and gait profile comparison. The framework that has been developed in this research is shown and discussed in detail in this paper.
Running head: ERP EVIDENCE FOR UNDERSPECIFACTION Neurobiological evidence for voicing underspecification in English

Phonemes, as opposed to phonetic units, are only coded for those features and feature values that are necessary to express the minimal oppositional contrast in the lexicon. In addition, underspecification theory says that phonemes that have unmarked feature values are even more abstract in that the feature is omitted from the representation altogether. Eulitz and Lahiri (2004) invented a new way of testing this theory, by showing that certain asymmetries in the Mismatch Negativity response to phoneme contrasts are predicted by underspecification. We expand on this research by demonstrating underspecification-driven asymmetry in the MMN response to laryngeal feature contrasts in English. We also extend the logic of previous experimentation by predicting (and observing) a lack of asymmetry in the MMN if the experimental paradigm encourages formation of phonetic memory traces. This result further strengthens the view that phonemes are more sparsely represented than phonetic units.
Distinct mechanisms of Drosophila CRYPTOCHROME-mediated light-evoked membrane depolarization and in vivo clock resetting

Significance Phototransduction is relatively well characterized in the eyes and other external photoreceptors in animals for image-forming vision. Much less understood are phototransduction mechanisms in noneye photosensitive cells that include central brain neurons that mediate the detection of nonimage-forming light irradiance detection, which allows animals to reset circadian clock timing and modulate light-evoked arousal, phototaxis, and avoidance. Here we provide a detailed biophysical characterization of Drosophila CRYPTOCHROME (dCRY)-mediated phototransduction, including dCRY expressed in central brain neurons for light-evoked membrane electrical changes in depolarization and action potential firing frequency and behavioral responses to constant light. Drosophila CRYPTOCHROME (dCRY) mediates electrophysiological depolarization and circadian clock resetting in response to blue or ultraviolet (UV) light. These light-evoked biological responses operate at different timescales and possibly through different mechanisms. Whether electron transfer down a conserved chain of tryptophan residues underlies biological responses following dCRY light activation has been controversial. To examine these issues in in vivo and in ex vivo whole-brain preparations, we generated transgenic flies expressing tryptophan mutant dCRYs in the conserved electron transfer chain and then measured neuronal electrophysiological phototransduction and behavioral responses to light. Electrophysiological-evoked potential analysis shows that dCRY mediates UV and blue-light–evoked depolarizations that are long lasting, persisting for nearly a minute. Surprisingly, dCRY appears to mediate red-light–evoked depolarization in wild-type flies, absent in both cry-null flies, and following acute treatment with the flavin-specific inhibitor diphenyleneiodonium in wild-type flies. This suggests a previously unsuspected functional signaling role for a neutral semiquinone flavin state (FADH•) for dCRY. The W420 tryptophan residue located closest to the FAD-dCRY interaction site is critical for blue- and UV-light–evoked electrophysiological responses, while other tryptophan residues within electron transfer distance to W420 do not appear to be required for light-evoked electrophysiological responses. Mutation of the dCRY tryptophan residue W342, more distant from the FAD interaction site, mimics the cry-null behavioral light response to constant light exposure. These data indicate that light-evoked dCRY electrical depolarization and clock resetting are mediated by distinct mechanisms.
Hyperspectral Image Reconstruction Using Deep External and Internal Learning

To solve the low spatial and/or temporal resolution problem which the conventional hypelrspectral cameras often suffer from, coded snapshot hyperspectral imaging systems have attracted more attention recently. Recovering a hyperspectral image (HSI) from its corresponding coded image is an ill-posed inverse problem, and learning accurate prior of HSI is essential to solve this inverse problem. In this paper, we present an effective convolutional neural network (CNN) based method for coded HSI reconstruction, which learns the deep prior from the external dataset as well as the internal information of input coded image with spatial-spectral constraint. Our method can effectively exploit spatial-spectral correlation and sufficiently represent the variety nature of HSIs. Experimental results show our method outperforms the state-of-the-art methods under both comprehensive quantitative metrics and perceptive quality.
2 A ug 2 01 4 CHARACTERIZATION OF FINITE GROUP INVARIANT DISTRIBUTIONS

Invariance properties of probability distributions have long been an area of interest in statistics and probability. In particular, much has been written about the famous de Finetti’s theorem for infinitely exchangeable sequences and the Aldous-Hoover representation for infinitely exchangeable arrays. The key to both of these results is the existence of an infinite sequence or an infinite array. When this assumption fails, so do the aforementioned representation theorems. In this article we demonstrate this failure for the Aldous-Hoover representation and then develop a characterization theorem for the space of distributions that are invariant under a general finite group G. In particular, the results of Diaconis (1977) for finitely exchangeable sequences are a special case of our general result. We find sharp bounds on the total variation distance between distributions of finitely and infinitely partially exchangeable sequences and finitely and infinitely exchangeable arrays. Additionally we provide an example of the applicability of the theory for groups other than the symmetric group.
Naturally Drug-Loaded Chitin: Isolation and Applications

Naturally occurring three-dimensional (3D) biopolymer-based matrices that can be used in different biomedical applications are sustainable alternatives to various artificial 3D materials. For this purpose, chitin-based structures from marine sponges are very promising substitutes. Marine sponges from the order Verongiida (class Demospongiae) are typical examples of demosponges with well-developed chitinous skeletons. In particular, species belonging to the family Ianthellidae possess chitinous, flat, fan-like fibrous skeletons with a unique, microporous 3D architecture that makes them particularly interesting for applications. In this work, we focus our attention on the demosponge Ianthella flabelliformis (Linnaeus, 1759) for simultaneous extraction of both naturally occurring (“ready-to-use”) chitin scaffolds, and biologically active bromotyrosines which are recognized as potential antibiotic, antitumor, and marine antifouling substances. We show that selected bromotyrosines are located within pigmental cells which, however, are localized within chitinous skeletal fibers of I. flabelliformis. A two-step reaction provides two products: treatment with methanol extracts the bromotyrosine compounds bastadin 25 and araplysillin-I N20 sulfamate, and a subsequent treatment with acetic acid and sodium hydroxide exposes the 3D chitinous scaffold. This scaffold is a mesh-like structure, which retains its capillary network, and its use as a potential drug delivery biomaterial was examined for the first time. The results demonstrate that sponge-derived chitin scaffolds, impregnated with decamethoxine, effectively inhibit growth of the human pathogen Staphylococcus aureus in an agar diffusion assay.
Fundamental Toxicological Sciences

Trans fatty acids (TFAs) are risk factors for cardiovascular diseases and have been suggested to play roles in various metabolic diseases, including non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). The present study aimed to assess the influence of TFAs on the development of NASH lesions. Male Harlan Sprague Dawley rats were fed a choline-deficient, methionine-lowered, L-amino acid-defined (CDAA) diet with or without TFAs for two, four, and 13 weeks. The CDAA diet caused hepatic steatosis, macrophage infiltration, and fibrosis. Further, it increased serum activities of aspartate and alanine aminotransferase, and upregulated inflammationand fibrosis-related genes in the liver. TFAs enhanced or tended to enhance the serum ALT activity but did not affect other outcomes. In the present study using the CDAA rat model, NASH lesions were clearly induced; however, the effect of TFAs was minimal. In conclusion, TFAs may be a risk factor for NASH by enhancing hepatocellular injury. With the composition and amount used in the present study, TFAs did not affect hepatic steatosis, chronic inflammation, or fibrosis in rats fed with the CDAA diet. To assess the risk of TFAs for NASH, more comprehensive studies are warranted, using other compositions and/or amounts of TFAs.
A Loop-Mediated Isothermal Amplification Assay Targeting Neisseria gonorrhoeae penA-60.001

Ceftriaxone (CRO) is widely used as the first-line treatment for gonococcal infections. However, CRO-resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae strains carrying mosaic penA-60.001 have emerged recently and disseminated worldwide. To meet the urgent need to detect these strains, we report here a loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) assay system that targets N. gonorrhoeae penA-60.001. ABSTRACT Ceftriaxone (CRO) is widely used as the first-line treatment for gonococcal infections. However, CRO-resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae strains carrying mosaic penA-60.001 have emerged recently and disseminated worldwide. To meet the urgent need to detect these strains, we report here a loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) assay system that targets N. gonorrhoeae penA-60.001. This assay system can differentiate N. gonorrhoeae strains carrying mosaic penA-60.001 from strains carrying other penA alleles.
Attitudes and Personal Attributes Regarding Patient Receptivity towards the Participation of Medical Students in Gynecological Consultations: A Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract Objective To evaluate the association between the acceptance on the part of the patients and their reasons to consent to or refuse medical student attendance during gynecological outpatient care, considering the participants' demographic characteristics, consultation experience, and gender bias or lack thereof. Methods Face-to-face interviews with patients waiting for gynecological consultations that had been scheduled in advance at Hospital Universitário de Brasília. Contingency analyses were used to determine the levels of association among the patient variables. The accepted significance level was values of p < 0.05. Results We interviewed 469 patients. The comfort level with the presence of a student was strongly related to the number of students present during the consultation (Cramér V = 0.671). The inclination to grant consent (a series of reasons to consent to or refuse student attendance) was significantly related (p < 0.001) to the overall receptivity to student participation (ρ = 0.482), the positive appraisal of student-doctor demeanor in previous consultations (ρ = 0.253, N = 408), and to greater levels of schooling (ρ = 0.158). The patients' receptivity was significantly related (p < 0.001) to the lack of bias regarding the gender of the physician (Cramér V = 0.388), previous experience with students (Cramér V = 0.235) and awareness of the fact that they would be present (Cramér V = 0.217), older age (ρ = 0.136, p = 0.003), and multiparity (ρ = 0.102, p = 0.027). Conclusion Greater receptivity to student participation related significantly to five conditions in decreasing order of strength of association: lack of bias regarding the gender of the Ob-Gyn, previous experience with student involvement, awareness of the presence of students, older age, and multiparity. We also found that a more positive inclination to consent to student attendance correlated positively with a greater receptivity to student participation and to a suitable student-doctor demeanor.
Characterization of NCS1–InsP3R1 interaction and its functional significance

Inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate receptors (InsP3Rs) are endoplasmic reticulum–localized channels that mediate Ca2+ release from the endoplasmic reticulum into the cytoplasm. We previously reported that an EF-hand Ca2+-binding protein, neuronal calcium sensor 1 (NCS1), binds to the InsP3R and thereby increases channel open probability, an event associated with chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy. However, the exact NCS1-binding site on InsP3R remains unknown. Using protein docking, co-immunoprecipitation, and blocking peptides, we mapped the NCS1-binding site to residues 66–110 on the suppressor domain of InsP3R type 1 (InsP3R1). We also identified Leu-89, a residue in the hydrophobic pocket of NCS1, as being critical for facilitating the NCS1–InsP3R1 interaction. Overexpression of WT NCS1 in MDA-MB231 breast cancer cells increased Ca2+ signaling and survival, whereas overexpression of Leu-89 NCS1 variants decreased Ca2+ signaling and survival, further suggesting the importance of this residue in the NCS1–InsP3R1 interaction. In conclusion, we show that NCS1–InsP3R1 interaction enhances intracellular Ca2+ signaling in cells and can be modulated by altering or occluding the hydrophobic pocket of NCS1. This improved understanding of the NCS1–InsP3R1 interaction may facilitate the development of management strategies for diseases resulting from aberrant NCS1 expression.
A MODIFIED REPLICATOR EQUATION ON GRAPHS WITH TRIANGLES

Under the assumption of weak selection, and using a new closure method for the pair approximation technique, we build a modified replicator equation on infinitely large regular graphs, for birth-death updating. The closure method that we propose takes into account the probability of triangles in the graph. Using this new equation, we study how graph structure can affect cooperation in some games with two different strategies, namely the Prisoner’s Dilemma, the Snow-Drift Game and the Coordination Game.
A survey of Fusobacterium nucleatum genes modulated by host cell infection

Here, we report comprehensive transcriptomic profiles from Fusobacterium nucleatum under conditions that mimic the first stages of bacterial infection in a highly differentiated adenocarcinoma epithelial cell line. Our transcriptomic in vitro adenocarcinoma approach allows us to measure the expression dynamics and regulation of bacterial virulence and response factors in real time, and is a novel strategy for clarifying the role of F. nucleatum infection in colorectal cancer (CRC) progression. Our data show that: (i) infection alters metabolic and functional pathways in F. nucleatum , allowing the bacterium to adapt to the host-imposed milieu; (ii) infection also stimulates the expression of genes required to help induce and promote a hypoxic and inflammatory microenvironment in the host; and (iii) F. nucleatum invasion occurs by a haematogenous route of infection. Our study identifies novel gene targets from F. nucleatum that are activated during invasion and which may aid in determining how this species invades and promotes disease within the human gastrointestinal tract. These invasion-specific genes may be useful as biomarkers for CRC progression in a host and could also assist in the development of new diagnostic tools and treatments (such as vaccines or small molecule drug targets), which will be able to combat infection and inflammation in the host while circumventing the potential problem of F. nucleatum tolerization.