Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Direct Exposure of Cortisol Does Not Modulate the Expression of Immune-Related Genes on Tissue Explants of Mucosal Surfaces in Rainbow Trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) Nor in Gilthead Sea Bream (Sparus aurata)

The stress response in fish is characterized by the activation of the HPI axis resulting in the release of cortisol. Previous studies in rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) and gilthead sea bream (Sparus aurata) have shown that an acute stressor modulates the expression of immune- and stress-related genes in mucosal-associated lymphoid tissues (MALTs), particularly in the skin (SALT), gills (GIALT), and gut (GALT). However, there are no antecedents on whether the modulation on the mucosal transcriptomic profile is coordinated through the local presence of cortisol in the mucosal tissue surface. Thus, the aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of cortisol upon the modulation of a set of immune- (il-1β, il-6, tnf-α, and cox-2) and stress-related (hsp70, gr1) genes. For this purpose, tissue explants cultures were incubated with cortisol (100 ng/100 mg tissue) for 2-, 4-, and 24 h and the gene expression profile was evaluated at each time-point by real-time PCR. No differences were found in the gene expression between cortisol-incubated tissue explants and mock-incubated tissues in any of the time-points tested for both species. These results suggest that the quick modulation of the gene expression during the first 24 h after the exposure to stressor challenge reported in previous studies, is probably coordinated and mediated through a systemic-dependent mechanism but not through a peripheral/local response on mucosal tissue surfaces.
Novel Cesium Resistance Mechanism of Alkaliphilic Bacterium Isolated From Jumping Spider Ground Extract

The radionuclide isotopes (134Cs and 137Cs) of Cesium (Cs), an alkali metal, are attracting attention as major causes of radioactive contamination. Although Cs+ is harmful to the growth of plants and bacteria, alkaliphilic bacterium Microbacterium sp. TS-1, isolated from a jumping spider, showed growth even in the presence of 1.2 M CsCl. The maximum concentration of Cs+ that microorganisms can withstand has been reported to be 700 mM till date, suggesting that the strain TS-1 is resistant to a high concentration of Cs ions. Multiple reports of cesium ion-resistant bacteria have been reported, but the detailed mechanism has not yet been elucidated. We obtained Cs ion-sensitive mutants and their revertant mutants from strain TS-1 and identified a Cs ion resistance-related gene, MTS1_00475, by performing SNP analysis of the whole-genome sequence data. When exposed to more than 200 mM Cs+ concentration, the intracellular Cs+ concentration was constantly lowered by MTS1_00475, which encodes the novel low-affinity Cs+/H+ antiporter. This study is the first to clarify the mechanism of cesium resistance in unexplained cesium-resistant microorganisms. By clarifying the new cesium resistance mechanism, it can be expected to be used as a bioremediation tool for treating radioactive Cs+ contaminated water.
Local Insect Availability Partly Explains Geographical Differences in Floral Visitor Assemblages of Arum maculatum L. (Araceae)

Geographical variation in abundance and composition of pollinator assemblages may result in variable selection pressures among plant populations and drive plant diversification. However, there is limited knowledge on whether differences in local visitor and pollinator assemblages are the result of site-specific strategies of plants to interact with their pollinators and/or merely reflect the pollinator availability at a given locality. To address this question, we compared locally available insect communities obtained by light-trapping with assemblages of floral visitors in populations of Arum maculatum (Araceae) from north vs. south of the Alps. We further investigated whether and how the abundance of different visitors affects plants’ female reproductive success and examined the pollen loads of abundant visitors. Local insect availability explained inter-regional differences in total visitor abundance, but only partly the composition of visitor assemblages. Northern populations predominantly attracted females of Psychoda phalaenoides (Psychodidae, Diptera), reflecting the high availability of this moth fly in this region. More generalized visitor assemblages, including other psychodid and non-psychodid groups, were observed in the south, where the availability of P. phalaenoides/Psychodidae was limited. Fruit set was higher in the north than in the south but correlated positively in both regions with the abundance of total visitors and psychodids; in the north, however, this relationship disappeared when visitor abundances were too high. High pollen loads were recorded on both psychodids and other Diptera. We demonstrate for the first time that the quantitative assessment of floral visitor assemblages in relation to locally available insect communities is helpful to understand patterns of geographical variation in plant–pollinator interactions. This combined approach revealed that geographical differences in floral visitors of A. maculatum are only partly shaped by the local insect availability. Potential other factors that may contribute to the geographical pattern of visitor assemblages include the region-specific attractiveness of this plant species to flower visitors and the population-specific behavior of pollinators.
Reduced NK Cell Cytotoxicity by Papillomatosis-Derived TGF-β Contributing to Low-Risk HPV Persistence in JORRP Patients

The role of natural killer (NK) cells in juvenile-onset recurrent respiratory papillomatosis (JORRP) patients remains elusive. In this study, we find increased NK cell percentage, particularly CD11b-CD27- (DN) subsets in peripheral blood of JORRP patients and associated with disease activity. RNA sequencing shows a downregulated “natural killer cell-mediated cytotoxicity” feature in JORRP tumors. We also find impaired cytotoxic capacity and lower expression of NK cell-activating receptors including NKp30 and NKp46. Higher transforming growth factor-beta 1 (TGF-β1) is found both in plasma and tumor tissues of JORRP, and anti-TGF-β1 antibody could restore NK cell cytolytic activity and upregulate NKp30 and NKG2D expression. Also, we find a significantly higher Chemokine receptor type 6 (CXCR6) on NK cells in tumors compared with that in peripheral blood. Finally, RT-PCR analysis show that both HPV6-E6-E7 and HPV11-E6-E7 overexpression leads to higher TGFB1 expression compared with control SNU-1076 cell line, and higher CXCR6 expression is detected on NK coculture with HPV11-E6-E7-overexpressing cells. In conclusion, we demonstrate that TGF-β1 by papillomatosis leads to decreased NK cell cytotoxicity through downregulating NK cell-activating receptors in JORRP patients.
Role of Semaphorins in Ischemic Stroke

Ischemic stroke is one of the major causes of neurological morbidity and mortality in the world. Although the management of ischemic stroke has been improved significantly, it still imposes a huge burden on the health and property. The integrity of the neurovascular unit (NVU) is closely related with the prognosis of ischemic stroke. Growing evidence has shown that semaphorins, a family of axon guidance cues, play a pivotal role in multiple pathophysiological processes in NVU after ischemia, such as regulating the immune system, angiogenesis, and neuroprotection. Modulating the NVU function via semaphorin signaling has a potential to develop a novel therapeutic strategy for ischemic stroke. We, therefore, review recent progresses on the role of semphorin family members in neurons, glial cells and vasculature after ischemic stroke.
Strategic Interactions in Environmental Regulation: Evidence From Spatial Effects Across Chinese Cities

Developing countries are notorious for their enforcement gap in environmental regulation. Despite policymakers and scholars focusing on this phenomenon in China, there is little literature to explore the cause for its prevalence. This paper aims to explain this occurrence from the perspective of strategic interactions among the local governments in China based on the yardstick competition theory. Employing spatial panel data models, we use a panel dataset of Chinese cities to investigate strategic interactions in environmental regulation and identify their possible sources. The results depict a confirmative picture of strategic interactions in environmental regulation among Chinese cities, suggesting that the cities tend to imitate their neighbours and implement looser environmental regulation in response to the decreasing stringency in neighbouring cities. This transmission effect demonstrates the prevalence of incomplete implementation of environmental regulation. Moreover, the imitative actions vary across Chinese cities, as they are observed in eastern and western cities but not in central cities. In addition, the imitative actions are significantly weaker when environmental governance gains a higher degree of salience, indicating that green performance appraisals reduce strategic interactions among local governments. Finally, strategic interactions are found to originate from the fiscal decentralization system, and are strengthened by the turnover of the municipal party secretary or a younger one.
Neural Circuits Underlying Social Fear in Rodents: An Integrative Computational Model

Social avoidance in rodents arises from a complex interplay between the prefrontal cortex and subcortical structures, such as the ventromedial hypothalamus and the dorsal periaqueductal gray matter. Experimental studies are revealing the contribution of these areas, but an integrative view and model of how they interact to produce adaptive behavior are still lacking. Here, we present a computational model of social avoidance, proposing a set of integrated hypotheses on the possible macro organization of the brain system underlying this phenomenon. The model is validated by accounting for several different empirical findings and produces predictions to be tested in future experiments.
The “Second Hit” of Repair in a Rabbit Model of Chronic Rotator Cuff Tear

The rabbit supraspinatus is a useful translational model for rotator cuff (RC) repair because it recapitulates muscle atrophy and fat accumulation observed in humans after a chronic tear (the “first hit”). However, a timeline of RC tissue response after repair, especially with regard to recent evidence of muscle degeneration and lack of regeneration, is currently unavailable. Thus, the purpose of this study was to characterize the progression of muscle and fat changes over time after the repair of a chronic RC tear in the rabbit model. Two rounds of experiments were conducted in 2017–2018 and 2019–2020 with N = 18 and 16 skeletally mature New Zealand White rabbits, respectively. Animals underwent left supraspinatus tenotomy with repair 8 weeks later. The unoperated right shoulder served as control. The rabbits were sacrificed at 1-, 2-, 4-, and 8-weeks post-repair for histological and biochemical analysis. Atrophy, measured by fiber cross-sectional area and muscle mass, was greatest around 2 weeks after repair. Active muscle degeneration peaked at the same time, involving 8% of slide areas. There was no significant regeneration at any timepoint. Fat accumulation and fibrosis were significantly increased across all time points compared to contralateral. Statement of Clinical Significance: These results demonstrate model reproducibility and a “second hit” phenomenon of repair-induced muscle atrophy and degeneration which partially recovers after a short time, while increased fat and fibrosis persist.
A Conceptual Model for Agile Practices Adoption

The software development industry has been adopting agile methods and practices instead of traditional software development methods because they are more flexible and can bring benefits such as handling requirements changes, productivity gains, frequent releases and business strategy focus. This work proposes a model for agile process data representation to show the relationships between agile components (principles, methods, practices, techniques, roles and work products) to allow organizations to define the strategy of agile practices adoption to achieve their business goals. Through competency questions the model has been validated using Scrum method data as the initial dataset. Future work includes the addition of more agile methods to the model repository and the validation of organization tailored methods using the model.
The Vibration Analysis of Micro-chip for the Specific Heart Rates Population Detection with a Mechanical Robotic Manipulator

This paper presents a system design of mechanical robotic manipulator with its own sensor end effectors. For the end effectors, they would be fixed with a fabricated micro-nano sensor. This system's application is to detect specific heart rates of various population by executing a robotic arm action to measure people's radial signals. So the paper includes the mechanical modeling of the robotic manipulator, the design of sensor surface, the material vibration analysis, and the vibration signal process.
Erosional Narrowing after Dam Removal: Theory and Numerical Model

Experiments carried out in a flume at St. Anthony Falls Laboratory, University of Minnesota have shown an interesting phenomenon that we refer to as erosional narrowing. This occurs immediately after the sudden removal of a dam that is filled with sediment. A channel incises into the deposit after failure of the leading front of the sediment deposit. In the early stages of incision this channel may become significantly narrower as it undergoes degradation. Both incision and narrowing propagate upstream on a relatively short time. In the long term however, the depositional contribution from the side slopes eventually balances and then surpasses erosional narrowing, so the channel widens toward some new equilibrium state with a lower streamwise slope. This picture is at variance with the general belief that the incisional channel widens from the very beginning. A simplified 1-D model of the phenomenon is developed and implemented numerically; in it the time evolution of channel width depends on the streamwise gradient of sediment transport and fluvial erosion of the channel banks (sidewalls).
Dynamic Environment Mapping for Autonomous Thermal Soaring

This paper describes a map-based, high-level control algorithm for autonomous thermal soaring. The algorithm combines ideas from occupancy grid maps and value iteration algorithms used in the robotics and machine learning communities. Estimates of the specic energy rate throughout the ight domain are built from three sub-function components. The rst component is used to drive exploration when no favorable energy regions are known. A short-term memory component synthesizes recent sensor measurements to map the energy available in the neighborhood of the UAV and enables the detection of and centering in moving thermals. The nal component uses a history of previous atmospheric energy measurements to identify patterns in the ight domain and allow the vehicle to return to locations that consistently form thermals. Seven variations on the high-level control algorithm are tested using a six degree of freedom simulation and compared to bounding cases where the controller either has perfect knowledge of the thermal eld or has no thermal sensing ability and ies a large diameter circle. The objective of interest is to maximize the aircraft’s average energy state over a one hour simulation. Due to the stochastic nature of the thermal model, 100 trials are run for each variation of control algorithm. Simulations indicate that on average the best performing autonomous thermal soaring controller achieves 62% of the possible improvement in the objective. For each algorithm there are large variations in the performance achieved due to the stochastic nature of the thermal elds.
Time and Energy Measurement Electronics for Silicon Drift Detector Aimed for X-ray Pulsar Navigation

A readout electronic with high time and energy resolution performance is designed for the SDD (Silicon Drift Detector) signals readout, which is aimed for X-ray pulsar based navigation (XNAV). For time measurement, the input signal is fed into a fast shaping and Constant Fraction Discrimination (CFD) circuit, and then be digitalized by a Time-to-Digital Converter (TDC) implemented in an Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), which is designed with a bin size of 2.5 ns. For energy measurement, a slow shaping and analog peak detection circuit is employed to acquire the energy information of input signals, which is then digitalized by a 14-bit Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC). Both the time and energy measurement results are buffered and packaged in FPGA and then transmitted to Data Processing (DP) system. Test results indicate that the time resolution is about 3 ns, while the FWHM (Full Width at Half Maximum) of energy spectrum is better than 160 eV @ 5.9 keV, with the energy dynamic range from 1 keV to 10 keV. Meanwhile, the linearity test shows that the residual is less than 1.5% with different coming photons.
Trends in fibre optic technology for telecommunications

EngineerIT September 2007 47 The driving force behind the use of fibre optics is the large and rapidly increasing commercial and consumer demand for telecommunication capacity (e.g. because of internet access), with fibre optic technology capable of providing the required large and scalable information carrying capacity (larger than both copper wire and wireless connections). This paper will provide some brief background on fibre optics, also touching on some differences between optical fibre used for illumination applications, and optical fibre used in telecommunications and in LANs. The rest of the paper will focus on the trends in fibre optic technology and the implications of these trends for measurement traceability.
Optical fiber based ultrashort pulse multispectral nonlinear optical microscopy

Optical Fiber Based Ultrashort Pulse Multispectral Nonlinear Optical Microscopy. (December 2008) Adam M. Larson, B.S., University of Rochester Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. Alvin T. Yeh Nonlinear optical microscopy (NLOM) utilizing femtosecond laser pulses is well suited for imaging living tissues. This work reports on the design and development of an optical fiber based multispectral NLOM developed around a laser generating broadband sub-10-fs pulses. An all-mirror dispersion-compensation setup is used to correct for quadratic and cubic phase distortions induced within the NLOM. Mouse tail tendon was used to characterize sub-10-fs pulses by interferometric autocorrelation. This is an effective method for characterizing dispersion from the optical system, immersion medium, and wet biological sample. The generation of very short autocorrelations demonstrates the ability to compensate for phase distortions within the imaging system and efficient second-harmonic upconversion of the ultrashort pulse spectrum within collagen. Reconstruction of ultrashort pulses at the focal plane of the objective allows the excitation of multiple fluorescent probes simultaneously. Multiple fluorescent probe excitation and spectral discrimination is demonstrated using mixtures of fluorescent dye solutions and an in-vitro angiogenesis model containing human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC’s) expressing multiple fluorescent proteins. Sub-10-fs pulses can be propagated through polarization-maintaining single mode fiber (PMF) for use in NLOM. We demonstrate delivery of near transform-limited, 1 nJ pulses from a Ti:Al2O3 oscillator via PMF to the NLOM focal plane while maintaining 120 nm of bandwidth. Negative group delay dispersion (GDD) introduced to pre-compensate normal dispersion of the optical fiber and microscope optics ensured linear pulse propagation through the PMF. Nonlinear excitation of multiple fluorophores simultaneously and polarization
A Water Quality Evaluation of Integrated Mangrove Aquaculture System for Water Treatment in Super-Intensive White Leg Shrimp Pond

White leg shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) is known as a prime aquacultural commodity in Indonesia. However, the rapid growth of shrimp farming has resulted in widespread destruction of coastal ecosystems, including mangrove swamps. Intensification of shrimp culture has led to many other environmental problems. Integration of mangroves into aquaculture systems (IMAS) should be considered as a way to preserve the mangrove ecosystem as well as sustainability of the aquaculture business by treating the influent and effluent water. This study aimed to assess the benefits of integrating mangroves into shrimp aquaculture, in terms of water quality. The results showed that temperature, dissolved oxygen (DO), and nitrite levels in the water significantly differed between sample sites. PCA analysis indicates that total organic matter (TOM), nitrates, nitrites, and ammonia were the principal factors in the overall water quality of the ponds. The highest pollution index was found in the super-intensive shrimp ponds (‘moderately polluted’), while the other sites, including the mangrove area, were categorized as ‘lightly polluted’. These findings suggest that the presence of mangroves may improve the quality of aquaculture wastewater, but the pollution index may still not reach the ‘good’ category. It is therefore recommended that a wastewater treatment plant be installed to support the integrated aquaculture system.
EMPATHY AND VICARIOUSNESS OF AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORIES IN THE CHINESE SAMPLE

There is empirical evidence suggesting that autobiographical memories of similar experiences evoke empathy [1, 6]. The positive correlation between trait empathy and phenomenology of autobiographical memories was also demonstrated [9]. We assumed that not all autobiographical memories are relevant to empathic feeling. The most promising candidate for scaffolding impact onto empathy, in our point of view, is a specific type of memories – vicarious memories. 96 Chinese participants filled out an Interpersonal Reactivity Index questionnaire and drew their lifelines of the most important events from their childhood in correlation in the timeline. Lifelines were analyzed in regard to the proportion of other-focused and vicarious memories and their emotional valence. The study suggests that the significant predictor of empathy is the distinctive type of childhood memories with specific level of vicariousness. The main focus in these autobiographical memories is shifted to the other person who is active toward the participant.