Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Detecting an increase in an Endangered huemul Hippocamelus bisulcus population following removal of cattle and cessation of poaching in coastal Patagonia, Chile

Abstract The conservation of threatened species poses many challenges but through cooperation and pooling of resources, individuals and organizations can work together to achieve better results. Here we describe our experience, working through a governmental and private alliance, studying one of the most threatened mammals in the Southern Cone. The huemul deer Hippocamelus bisulcus, one of two members of the Hippocamelus genus of South America, is endemic to Argentina and Chile and currently inhabits only a small fraction of its former range. Little is known about the huemul because it generally lives in remote areas with a harsh climate and rugged terrain. Using drive counts and fixed width transects over 5 consecutive years (2004–2008) we estimated density and abundance, and examined population changes and social structure, in three coastal huemul populations in the area of the Témpanos and Bernardo fjords of Bernardo O'Higgins National Park, Chile. Our results suggest that synergistic conservation actions, such as cattle removal and poaching control, can lead to the recovery of threatened huemul. The baseline information obtained from our surveys and the lessons learned through this governmental and private alliance will be useful for future monitoring of the huemul in the Patagonian fjords of Chile.
Regulation of Mammary Lactogenic Differentiation by Singleminded-2s

Regulation of Mammary Lactogenic Differentiation by Singleminded-2s. (May 2009) Elizabeth Ann Wellberg, B.S., Texas A&M University Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. Weston W. Porter Sim2s is a basic helix-loop-helix Per-Arnt-Sim (bHLH-PAS) transcription factor. In Drosophila, the Sim2 homolog, sim, is necessary for cell fate determination during central nervous system (CNS) development. In mammals, both Sim2 isoforms are involved in development of various tissues, including muscle, cartilage, and mammary gland. Loss-of-function studies revealed a role for Sim2s in specifying epithelial cell fate during mammary development and inhibiting growth and invasion of aggressive breast cancer cells. This study determined the role of Sim2s in mammary epithelial cell differentiation. Our hypothesis is that Sim2s is sufficient to promote lactogenic differentiation in vivo, characterized by expression of lactation-specific genes. Two models were used to test this hypothesis: (1) a transgenic mouse, expressing Sim2s under control of the MMTV-LTR, and (2) the mouse mammary epithelial cell line HC11. Together, these models allow analysis of the effect of Sim2s on global mammary gland differentiation and the mechanism through which it accomplishes this in a relatively homogenous population of cells. We determined that precocious expression of Sim2s in vivo is associated with upregulation of a subset of milk protein genes in nulliparous females. During early
The mineral consumption and weight gain of grazing steers fed mineral supplements with different sodium contents and physical forms

Thirty crossbred two-year-old steers, kept on pasture of Braquiaria decumbens, were used in two different experiments of 90 days each. In the first experiment, the steers were randomly assigned in five groups of six steers each to verify the influence of different percentages of sodium chloride (SC) in mineral mix (MM) containing essential macro and microelements (A - 100% SC; B - 80% SC/20% MM; C - 60% SC/40% MM; D - 40% SC/ 60 MM and E - 20% SCl/80 MM) on the consumption of the mineral supplement and the weight gain. In the second experiment, the same steers were reassigned to three groups of 10 animals each to study the effect of mineral salt (40% SC/60% MM) offered loose, partially blocked or as a hard block on the mineral consumption and weight gain. Steers fed supplement D had the highest intake followed by groups B and C; lowest intake was verified in group E. All mineral supplements but E were fed adequately to meet the Na requirement (6.3g/head/d) for a 350kg growing steer. Higher average daily gain was verified in steers of groups D and C than those of group E. The highest mineral intake was observed in steers fed loose mineral (60g/head/d) followed by partially block (45g/d); the lowest consumption occurred in the steers fed hard block mineral (27g/d). The coefficient of variation of supplement intake increased as mineral hardness increased. The higher the mineral intake, in the second experiment, the greater the average daily gain. Grazing steers should be offered mineral supplements with 40% and 60% of NaCl changed weekly in order to avoid the hardening of its contents.
Otosclerosis: association of COLIA1 Sp1 binding site polymorphism in Alexandria, Egypt

Abstract Background: Otosclerosis is a common form of hearing loss characterized by abnormal bone remodeling in the otic capsule. It is a complex genetic disease, caused by a combination of genetic and environmental factors. COL1A1 gene is one of the most important candidate genes in otosclerosis. A strong association has been described between otosclerosis and single nucleotide polymorphism in Sp1 binding site of the first intron of the COL1A1 gene. Objective: Investigate the association between the G/T polymorphism at Sp1 binding site in the COL1A1 first intron and otosclerosis. Methods: Polymerase chain reaction-based restriction enzyme analysis was applied to determine the polymorphic distribution of the Sp1 site in 160 patients with otosclerosis and 100 control subjects. Results: This study showed a significant association between otosclerosis and the COL1A1 first intron Sp1 site. The T allele was 0.33 in the patients with otosclerosis and 0.18 in controls. This indicates a significant association between T allele and otosclerosis in Egyptian patients (p <0.0001). Conclusion: The association of CL1A1 Sp1 binding site polymorphism with the risk of otosclerosis in an Egyptian population has been confirmed.
Predicción por redes neuronales artificiales de la calidad fisicoquímica de vinagre de melaza de caña por efecto de tiempo-temperatura de alimentación a evaporador-destilador flash

It was predicted via Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) important physicochemical characteristics of molasses vinegar: pH, density, total acidity, ethanol, total aldehydes and furfural, obtained by flash evaporation operations and flash distillation clarification. Alcoholic and acetic fermented molasses were fed to a flash evaporator at four temperatures (61, 66, 71 and 76 ° C) and in three times (25, 35 and 45 min). The prediction was made with two networks: ANN and ANN-A-B, both with good performance. The ANN-A was of the feedforward (FF) type with Backpropagation (BP) training algorithms and set of Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) weights adjustment, topology: 6 inputs (operations data of flash evaporation-distillation), 7 linear outputs (physicochemical characteristics), 9 tangent sigmoidal neurons in 1 hidden layer, 0.5 moment coefficient, 0.01 learning rate, 0.0001 error goal and 20 training stages. The ANN-A showed better performance than a statistical model of first order. The ANN-B also FF, BP and LM algorithms, topology: 2 inputs (data from flash evaporation), 7 linear outputs (physical and chemical characteristics), 84 logarithm sigmoid neurons in 1 hidden layer, 0.5 moment coefficient, 0.01 learning rate, 0.0001 error goal and 300 training stages. The ANN-B showed the same predictive capacity as a statistical model of the first-order with interaction of terms.
Analysis of differentiation of mouse hemopoietic stem cells in culture by sequential replating of paired progenitors

Blast cell colonies seen in cultures of spleen cells from 5- fluorouracil-treated mice provide a highly enriched population of primitive hemopoietic progenitors. Our recent studies of the differentiation potentials of the paired daughter cells of these progenitors showed different patterns of differentiation in the colonies produced by the separated daughter cells. In this study, we carried out sequential micromanipulation of paired progenitors followed by cytologic examinations of the colonies derived from these progenitors. Of the total 94 evaluable cultures, consisting of three or more colonies, 52 consisted of macrophage colonies and one consisted of megakaryocyte colonies. In the remaining 41 cultures, diverse combinations of colonies revealing heterogeneous compositions of cell lineages were identified. Presumptive genealogic trees of the differentiation of hemopoietic progenitors constructed for the latter group of cultures suggested that monopotent progenitors may be derived from pluripotent progenitors in two ways: (1) directly during one cell division of pluripotent cells or (2) as a result of progressive lineage restriction during successive division of the pluripotent progenitors. The results also suggested that some of the oligopotent progenitors are capable of limited self-renewal.
Corn germ with pericarp in relation to whole corn: nutrient contents, food and protein efficiency, and protein digestibility-corrected amino acid score

A fracao germen com pericarpo (farelo) e produzida no processamento do grao de milho, sendo usada para extracao de oleo e alimentacao animal. O estudo avaliou a qualidade nutricional e proteica desta fracao em relacao ao milho. Foi determinada a composicao centesimal, conteudo em minerais e perfil de aminoacidos da fracao germen com pericarpo e do milho. Foi conduzido um experimento (4 semanas) com 36 ratos Wistar machos recem-desmamados, e foram formuladas tres dietas contendo 10% de proteina (referencia, germen com 15% de lipidios e caseina com 15% de lipidios), duas dietas com 6% de proteina (milho e caseina), e uma dieta aproteica. Foram constatados maiores teores de proteinas, lipidios, fibra alimentar (27,8 g.100g-1), cinzas, minerais (Fe e Zn - aproximadamente 5 mg. 100g-1) e lisina (57,2 mg.g-1 proteina) no germen em relacao ao milho. O germen apresentou proteina de boa qualidade (Relative Protein Efficiency Ratio-RPER = 80%; Protein Digestibility-Corrected Amino Acid Score-PDCAAS = 86%), superior a do milho (RPER = 49%; PDCAAS = 60%). A fracao germen com pericarpo e rica em fibra alimentar e e fonte de proteina de boa qualidade e de ferro e zinco, sendo indicado seu uso como materia-prima nutritiva em produtos alimenticios para consumo humano.
Factors Associated With Head Trauma Among Professional Mixed Martial Arts Athletes.

Background: Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is an enigma that has become synonymous with combat sports over the past few decades. Mixed martial arts (MMA) is a combat sport that is growing in popularity world-wide. The objective of this study is to determine the factors associated with head trauma among MMA athletes. Methods: Logistic regression analyses using SPSS 20 was employed to model putative covariates against the dichotomous outcomes of unconsciousness (for the full dataset) and diagnosed concussion (for the enriched subset of fighters who were rendered unconscious). Results: Increasing age, black or African-American ethnicity, shorter rest periods between fights, increasing numbers of significant clinch strikes landed, significant distance body strikes landed and power strikes landed to the body at distance are all factors associated with being diagnosed with a concussion among the fighters rendered unconscious. Conclusion: If bolstered by confirming laboratory and clinical evidence, policies should be developed for implementation by MMA governing bodies to help reduce incidences of head trauma and concussion, built around fighters’ demographic and behavioural characteristics. In particular, enforcing a mandatory rest period between fights and placing an upper limit on fighters’ age are ideas worth exploring. Keywords: Chronic traumatic encephalopathy | head trauma | mixed martial arts | combat sport Contexte: Au cours des dernieres decennies, l’encephalopathie traumatique chronique (ETC) est devenu une enigme synonyme avec les sports de combat. Arts martiaux mixtes (AMM) est un sport de combat qui se developpe de facon exponentielle dans le monde entier . L'objectif de cette etude est de determiner les facteurs associes a un traumatisme crânien chez les athletes de AMM. Methodologie: Analyse de regression logistique utilisant SPSS 2.0 sera utilise pour modeliser les covariables contre deux differents resultats dichotomiques. Resultats: L'âge, l'origine ethnique, les periodes de repos entre les bagarres, et plusieurs frappe au corps a distance ou dans le “clinch” sont tous les facteurs associes au fait d'etre diagnostiques avec une ETC parmi les combattants qui ont ete rendu inconscient. Conclusion: Les regulations doivent etre mises en oeuvre par toutes les administrations qui permettent le MMA pour proteger les combattants a tous les niveaux de la concurrence basee sur les resultats de la presente etude.
Phylogeographic analysis of the genus Ulva (Ulvales, Chlorophyta), including bloom sample in Qingdao, China

In June 2008, news agencies worldwide reported a ‘green tide’ phenomenon that was threatening the upcoming Olympic sailing events in Qingdao, China. This was caused by the green macroalgal genus Ulva. Previous work showed that the species involved in this phenomenon belongs to a complex of tubular species called the LPP complex clade (i.e. including the species U. linza Linnaeus, U. prolifera O.F. Muller and U. procera (K. Ahlner) Hayden et al.). To understand the relationship between the bloom formed in open water and the attached populations of Ulva found on the shorelines surrounding Qingdao, we performed some phylogenetic analyses based on the Internal Transcribed Spacer (ITS) region of the nuclear rDNA, on a larger set of samples. Due to a lack of resolution of this marker at the intraspecific level, we performed some new analyses based on the spacer region between tandemly repeated 5S rDNA. Samples were divided into two groups: the U. linza group, which includes unbranched foliose thalli collected from marine environment; and the U. prolifera group, which includes unbranched folious and well-branched tubular thalli from both seas (including Qingdao samples) and rivers. The bloom samples and a part of the attached samples had identical sequences for the 5S rDNA spacer region. ML tree and statistical parsimony network (SPN) tree indicated that they were closely related with populations from the Sea of Japan. Other attached samples of the Qingdao area possessed identical sequence to samples widely distributed on the Pacific coast of Japan, from Okinawa to the Kanto area.
Cytofluorometric detection of B cell clonal excess: a new approach to the diagnosis of B cell lymphoma

A sensitive cytofluorometric technique, the “kappa-lambda test,” permits detection of small numbers of monoclonal B lymphocytes (clonal excess). Such a method might represent a new diagnostic tool for diagnosis of non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas, potentially providing definitive evidence of lymphomatous involvement in cases equivocal by standard immunologic methods. To determine the significance of detecting B cell clonal excess in lymphoid tissues, we applied the kappa-lambda test to cell suspensions from 60 consecutive specimens suspected to involvement by malignant lymphoma. Results were correlated with the pathologic diagnosis and with standard cell marker studies in each case. B cell clonal excess was observed in 24 of the 25 cases of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma of B cell origin, including a single case involving early detection of recurrence. None of the remaining cases, including benign reactive hyperplasia, T cell lymphoma, and Hodgkin’s disease, showed evidence of B cell clonal excess. Selective examination of cell subpopulations was also achieved using this cytofluorometric method. We conclude that the detection of B cell clonal excess by the kappa-lambda test represents a new approach to the diagnosis of B cell lymphoma, which provides certain advantages over more standard methods of cell marker analysis.
Photodynamic action of the cationic dye tetrakis(N-ethylpyridinium-4-yl)porphyrin tetratosylate on Escherichia coli cell envelope

The rising prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria stimulates the development of alternative antibacterial therapeutics [1]. Photodynamic antimicrobial chemotherapy (PACT) represents a promising alternative to the use of antibiotics and antiseptics for a selective combat against resistant bacteria, particularly for the treatment of localized infections [2–4]. PACT relies on a photosensitising compound, light and oxygen in order to gener-ate phototoxic products, such as singlet oxygen and free radicals, which result in the eradication of target cells. The technique has been shown to be effective against multi-drug resistant strains and currently is gaining increased acceptance [3]. Reactive oxy-gen species react with almost every cellular component. The multiplicity of targets makes it difficult for the cells to develop resistance, and this is one of the advantages of PACT [2]. One of present directions in PACT development is a search for new photosensitisers with improved photobactericidal properties. There is a considerable current interest in the application of new generation photosensitisers based on various molecules con-taining a tetrapyrrole unit [5, 6]. Photosensitisation with differ-ent tetrapyrrole compounds has been shown to be efficient for the killing of cancerous and bacterial cells [5, 7]. We have previously reported that cationic photosensi-tiser tetrakis(N-ethylpyridinium-4-yl)porphyrin tetratosylate (TN-Et-PyP) expresses a strong photobactericidal action against certain Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria [8]. In the present study, in order to obtain information on the mechanism by which TN-Et-PyP induces photokilling of
Density-dependence can be revealed by modelling the variance in the stock–recruitment process: an application to flatfish

Recruitment success in marine species is mostly driven by the high and variable mortality of first life stages, and the relationships between stock and recruitment are then largely dominated by residual variability. We show that analysing the residual variability may provide insights on the density-dependence process occurring during the recruitment. Following the seminal formulation of Minto et al. (Survival variability and population density in fish populations. Nature, 2008), we show that when recruitment is considered as a sequence of a pelagic stage with stochastic density-independent mortality followed by a second stage with stochastic density-dependent mortality, then the variability of the recruitment rate per spawning biomass (RPSB) should be a decreasing function of the spawning biomass. Using stock– recruit data of 148 stocks from the RAM legacy database, we provide a test of this hypothesis by showing that the variability of RPSB is lower for fish species with the higher concentration during juvenile stages. Second, a hierarchical Bayesian model (HBM) is built to derive a meta-analysis of stock– recruit data for 39 flatfish stocks, characterized by a high concentration of juveniles in coastal nursery habitats. Results of the HBM show that the variance of the RPSB decreases with the spawning biomass for almost all stocks, thus providing strong evidence of density-dependence during the recruitment process. Finally, we attempt to relate patterns in recruitment variance to relevant life-history traits of flatfish species.
POPULATION DIFFERENTIATION IN G MATRIX STRUCTURE DUE TO NATURAL SELECTION IN RANA TEMPORARIA

Abstract The additive genetic variance‐covariance matrix (G) is a concept central to discussions about evolutionary change over time in a suite of traits. However, at the moment we do not know how fast G itself changes as a consequence of selection or how sensitive it is to environmental influences. We investigated possible evolutionary divergence and environmental influences on G using data from a factorial common‐garden experiment where common frog (Rana temporaria) tadpoles from two divergent populations were exposed to three different environmental treatments. G‐matrices were estimated using an animal model approach applied to data from a NCII breeding design. Matrix comparisons using both Flury and multivariate analysis of variance methods revealed significant differences in G matrices both between populations and between treatments within populations, the former being generally larger than the latter. Comparison of levels of population differentiation in trait means using QST indices with that observed in microsatellite markers (FST) revealed that the former values generally exceeded the neutral expectation set by FST. Hence, the results suggest that intraspecific divergence in G matrix structure has occurred mainly due to natural selection.
Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring with an Attention-based Deep Neural Network

Energy disaggregation, also referred to as a Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring (NILM), is the task of using an aggregate energy signal, for example coming from a whole-home power monitor, to make inferences about the different individual loads of the system. In this paper, we present a novel approach based on the encoder-decoder deep learning framework with an attention mechanism for solving NILM. The attention mechanism is inspired by the temporal attention mechanism that has been recently applied to get state-of-the-art results in neural machine translation, text summarization and speech recognition. The experiments have been conducted on two publicly available datasets AMPds and UK-DALE in seen and unseen conditions. The results show that our proposed deep neural network outperforms the state-of-the-art Denoising Auto-Encoder (DAE) proposed initially by Kelly and Knottenbely (2015) and its extended and improved architecture by Bonfigli et al. (2018), in all the addressed experimental conditions. We also show that modeling attention translates into the ability to correctly detect the state change of each appliance, that is of extreme interest in the field of energy disaggregation.
Beyond classical Hamilton's Rule. State distribution asymmetry and the dynamics of altruism

Most of the formalizations of the Inclusive Fitness and Kin Selection concepts contain two highly simplifying assumptions (which actually complicate the problem): first, is that the models are described in terms of "fitness", an abstract parameter vaguely related to the population growth rate or expected reproductive success. The second is that they ignore the division between Donors and Receivers of altruism and the distribution of those roles in the population. In this paper the Inclusive Fitness and Kin Selection approaches will be expressed by explicit demographic parameters describing the probability of death during focal interaction when cooperative trait can be exhibited. In addition, new framework will take into account the distribution of the roles of Donor or the Receiver in the population. This description will be used for the derivation of the population growth model describing the competition between Cooperative and Noncooperative strategies. The obtained approach will be sufficient for description of the cases when the roles are independently drawn during each interaction. However, we can imagine situations when survival and the change of the role are not correlated (such as food support for the infected individual, which keeps him alive, but cannot cure). To cover those cases, new model is extended to the case with explicit dynamics of the role distributions among carriers of different strategies, driven by some general mechanisms. In effect it is shown that even in the case when fluxes between roles are driven by selectively neutral mechanisms (acting in the same way on all strategies), the differences in the mortalities in the focal interaction will lead to different distributions of roles for different strategies. This leads to more complex rules for cooperation than the classical Hamilton's rule.