Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hellberg Stepping . stone gene flow in the solitary coral Balanophyllia elegans : equilibrium and nonequilibrium at different spatial scales

Limited dispersal should result in genetic differences between populations proportional to geographic distances of separation. This association between gene flow and distance can be disrupted by (1) continuing genetic exchange among distant populations, (2) historical changes in gene flow, and (3) physical barriers or corridors to dispersal. The movements of larvae are thought to determine dispersal capability in benthic marine invertebrates. The solitary scleractinian Balanophyllia elegans Verrill possesses crawling larvae capable of only limited dispersal. Paradoxically, however, inferred levels of gene flow between pairs of localities spread over much of the 4000 km range of B. elegans exhibited a weaker relationship with geographical separation than that expected for a linear array of populations in which all genetic exchange takes place between adjacent populations. In this paper, I examined the pattern of gene flow (inferred from the frequencies of eight polymorphic allozyme loci) in B. elegans at a smaller (1 to 50 km) spatial scale to determine (1) whether gene flow at this spatial scale conformed to the expectations of the stepping-stone model, and (2) whether continuing long-distance gene flow or historical changes in gene flow were responsible for the weak relationship between gene flow and distance observed previously at the rangewide spatial scale. Between May and August 1992, I collected 75 adults from each of 18 localities along the coast of Communicated by M.F. Strathmann, Friday Harbor M.E. Hellberg Center for Population Biology and Department of Zoology University of California at Davis, Davis, California 95616, USA Present address: Center for Marine Biotechnology and Biomedicine Scripps Institution of Oceanography University of California at San Diego La Jolla, California 92093-0202, USA Sonoma County, California, USA. These populations of B. elegans were significantly subdivided both among localities separated by 1 to 50km (Fcr =0.053, SE = 0.0075) and among patches separated by 4 to 8 m (Fpc = 0.026, SE = 0.0023). The observed slope and correlation (r 2 = 0.54) between inferred levels of gene flow and the geographic distance at the 1 to 50 km spatial scale conformed to equilibrium expectations (obtained by simulation) for a linear stepping-stone model, although those from the rangewide spatial scale did not. This implies that the mechanisms conferring patterns of inferred genetic differentiation between localities in B. elegans differ fundamentally with spatial scale. At a scale of 1 to 50 km, continuing gene flow and drift have equilibrated and the process of isolation-bydistance may facilitate local adaptive change. At a broader spatial scale, historical changes in gene flow, perhaps affected by late Pleistocene climatic fluctuations, disrupt the equilibration of gene flow and genetic drift, so that genetic differentiation may not increase continuously with separation between populations.
Time-Variant Travel Time Distributions and Reliability Metrics and Their Utility in Reliability Assessments

Several metrics of reliability have been recommended for use. These metrics may need to be calculated at relatively fine levels of aggregation of travel time data when used for advanced management strategies and transportation system modeling and analysis. This study investigates the variation of travel time distributions by time of day at fine temporal aggregation levels, the sensitivity of various reliability metrics to these variations, the effect of the aggregation level choices on the calculated metrics, and the amount of data required to estimate stable values of the reliability metrics. The investigation is made for a facility that has general purpose lanes and high-occupancy-toll lanes. The results show that the parameters of travel time distributions vary during the peak period, reflecting the effects of traffic congestion, traffic flow dynamics, and how much nonrecurrent factors, such as incidents, contribute to the unreliability of travel time on the investigated facility. Trends of variations are observed when reliability metrics are used to assess reliability as the congestion level changes during the peak period. The results also show that examining combinations of time-variant static distribution parameters and reliability metrics of the general purpose and high-occupancy-toll lanes can provide valuable information that cannot be obtained when the analysis is performed at higher aggregation levels. The study results suggest using at least one year of data to obtain stable values of reliability metrics.
An Objective Evaluation Method for Rehabilitation Exergames

The aim of this work is to objectively evaluate the performance of patients using a virtual rehabilitation system called MIRA. MIRA is a software platform which converts conventional therapeutic exercises into games, enabling the user to practice the given exercise by playing a game. The system includes a motion sensor to track and capture user's movements. Our assessment of the performance quality is based on the recorded trajectories of the human skeleton joints. We employ two different machine learning approaches, dynamic time warping (DTW) and hidden Markov modeling (HMM), both widely used for gesture recognition, to compare the user's performance with that of a reference as ground truth.
IDENTIFYING THE TICKS OF BIVALVE SHELL CLOCKS: SEASONAL GROWTH IN RELATION TO TEMPERATURE AND FOOD SUPPLY

ABSTRACT Sclerochronology uses shell growth lines or bands for the construction of environmental time-series and the measurement of organism growth, but more study is needed to constrain the triggers of the dark cessation bands observed in many bivalve groups. We constructed a database of direct observations of modern growth seasonality across the class Bivalvia and compared the occurrence of seasonal growth bands to environmental data including latitude, temperature, and chlorophyll-a concentration. Bivalves with cold-season (winter) cessations are more common towards the poles, with logistic regression showing that temperature, followed by latitude of occurrence, displays the strongest relationship with occurrence of winter cessation. Remotely sensed and directly measured chlorophyll-a concentration show no significant relationship. Summer cessations are sparse and only weakly associated with environmental controls but are concentrated at the subtropical latitudes among temperate bivalves at their equatorial extremes. The rarity of summer cessations can be explained by the limited annual ranges of temperature in the tropics, combined with the exponential relationship of metabolic rate to temperature leading to a narrow window between normal functioning and mortality at high temperatures. This data suggests that, unless annual temperatures have low variability like in equatorial or polar regions, the season of growth cessation across bivalves is primarily a function of temperature tolerance through restriction of scope for growth. At most latitudes, growth bands can be interpreted as being primarily triggered by temperature stress, rather than seasonal starvation.
An Optimization Parameter for Seriation of Noisy Data

A square symmetric matrix is a Robinson similarity matrix if entries in its rows and columns are non-decreasing when moving towards the diagonal. A Robinson similarity matrix can be viewed as the affinity matrix between objects arranged in linear order, where objects closer together have higher affinity. We define a new parameter, $\Gamma_\max$, which measures how badly a given matrix fails to be Robinson similarity. Namely, a matrix is Robinson similarity precisely when its $\Gamma_\max$ attains zero, and a matrix with small $\Gamma_\max$ is close (in the normalized $\ell^1$-norm) to a Robinson similarity matrix. Moreover, both $\Gamma_\max$ and the Robinson similarity approximation can be computed in polynomial time. Thus, our parameter recognizes Robinson similarity matrices which are perturbed by noise, and can therefore be a useful tool in the problem of seriation of noisy data.
Biochemical Characterization of Insecticide Resistance in Insect Pests of Vegetables and Predatory Ladybird Beetles

Insecticide resistance and the underlying resistance mechanisms were studied in seven species of insect vegetable pests (aphids Aphis gossypii, Myzus persicae, Aphis cracciuora, Toxoptera citricidus and Lipaphis erysirni; diamond-back-moth Plutella xylostella; leafminer Liriomyza huidobrensis) and two predatory ladybird beetles (Coccinella sexrnaculatus and Thea cincta). Insects, collected from the Central Province, Sri Lanka were subjected to bioassays with malathion, chlorpyrifos, propoxur and permethrin by topical application and LC,, and LC,, values were obtained. M. persicae, P. xylostella and L. huidobrensis had high resistance to all the insecticides tested with the exception of M. persicae to propoxur. The aphid T. citricidus was the least tolerant pest to all four insecticides tested. Compared to the pest species, the ladybird beetle C. sexmaculatus had a moderate level of insecticide tolerance whereas T. cincta was more susceptible. DDT resistance, as determined by a discriminating concentration, was highest in P. xylostella and least in L. huidobrensis. Biochemical analysis of insect metabolic enzymes showed that elevation of esterases was the major resistance mechanism in aphids and P. xylostella. Highest esterase activity was present in M. persicae. Native polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis resolved elevated esterase isoenzymes in all species except in T. citricidus and T. cincta. Malathion carboxylesterase activity was found in P. xylostella, M. persicae, and L. huidobrensis. Higher glutathione S-transferase activities of P. xylostella and L. erysirni were correlated with their higher DDT resistance. Increased mono-oxygenase titres occurred in A. gossypii, M. persicae and T. citricidus. Insecticide inhibition of the organophosphate and carbamate target site acetylcholinesterases indicated that target site insensitivity is a major mechanism in L. huidobrensis.
Temperature dependence of the speciation of water in rhyolitic melts and glasses

The concentrations of molecular water and hydroxyl groups in rhyolitic glasses and melts depend on temperature as well as total water content. Increasing temperature results in an increase in the proportion ofwater dissolved as hydroxyl goups at a constant total water content. The temperature dependence of water speciation has been determined experimentally and can be described in thermodynamic terms by using a regular-solution formulation for the interactions between water molecules, hydroxyl groups, and oxygens in the rhyolitic glass or melt. This formulation is also consistent with calorimetric data on hydrous haplogranitic glasses. The temperature dependence of water speciation in rhyolitic glasses can be used as the basis of a geothermometer for hydrous volcanic glasses. Obsidians from pyroclastic deposits from the ca. I 340 e.o. eruption of the Mono Craters, California, yield temperatures of about 600 "C. These chips may represent samples of the cool glassy margins and roofs of feeder dikes for this eruption. Glass inclusions in quartz phenocrysts from the Plinian deposit of the Bishop Tuffyield temperatures of -30G-600 "C; inclusions in quartz phenocrysts from the Mono Lobe ash-flow deposit of the Bishop Tuff yielded temperatures of -200-300 "C. These temperatures are interpreted as closure temperatures and suggest hat the initially hotter ash-flow deposit cooled more slowly than the Plinian deposit.
Quantitative Estimation of Lopinavir and Ritonavir in Tablets by RP-HPLC Method

A reversed phase high-performance liquid chromatographic method was developed and validated for the quantitative determination of two antiviral drugs viz. lopinavir and ritonavir. Chromatography was carried out by gradient technique on a reversed-phase C18 Column, Phenomenex (250 x 4.6 mm, 5 μ) with mobile phase mixture of Buffer: Acetonitrile (45:55 v/v) was used as a mobile phase and the pH was adjusted into 4.5 by using with O-phosphoric acid, at a flow rate of 1.2 ml/min. The UV range was detected at 240 nm for lopinavir and ritonavir respectively. The different analytical performance parameters such as linearity, precision, accuracy, specificity, limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantification (LOQ) were determined according to International Conference on Harmonization ICH Q2B guidelines. The linearity of the calibration curves for each analyte in the desired concentration range is good (r2 >0.9). The recovery of the method was between 102.1% and 100.1% for lopinavir and ritonavir respectively. Hence the proposed method is highly sensitive, precise and accurate and it successfully applied for the reliable quantification of API content in the commercial formulations of lopinavir and ritonavir.
Investigations into the Molecular and Physiological Factors Influencing Low Temperature Breakdown in Stonefruit

Cold storage is essential for the successful distribution of stonefruit to distant markets; however most cultivars suffer chilling injury (CI), commonly referred to as low temperature breakdown (LTB). LTB is a significant problem for industry and the genetic factors responsible for its onset are not understood. Treatment of stonefruit with the ethylene antagonist, 1-methylcyclopropene (1-MCP) before cold storage has been shown to differentially affect the development of CI in peaches and plums. 1-MCP treatment increases the incidence of LTB in peaches but reduces it in plums (Fernandez-Trujillo and Artes, 1997; Fan et al., 2002). These observations were confirmed and preliminary research into the effects of 1-MCP and cold storage on gene expression is reported herein.
Relation of radio‐quiet quasars to galaxy clusters at z < 0.3

We investigate whether radio-quiet quasars (RQQs) with z < 0.3 (and predominantly of low luminosity) are located preferentially in specific regions with respect to the centres and boundaries of neighbouring galaxy clusters. This way of characterizing the environment of RQQs differs from previous studies, which relied on the galaxy excess statistics within small radii around the quasars. For the detection of galaxy clusters we use a robust, semiparametric method based on a maximum likelihood estimate applied to Voronoi tessellation and enhanced by a colour-cut approach, allowing boundary determination and redshift estimates. We find that most of the RQQs reside within 3 h -1 Mpc of the centre of a galaxy cluster with comparable redshift and that none of them lies in the core itself. About 20 per cent of the investigated quasars reside between two galaxy clusters, which are possibly at an early stage of merger. Consequently, we suggest that quasars found in rich environments are associated with cluster mergers whereas those found in poorer environments are associated with infall towards a cluster. The information on larger scales provided by our analysis thus allows a clearer interpretation of the diverse environments that have for many years been reported in the literature for smaller scales. We discuss our findings in the context of existing quasar formation models and suggest that at least two formation mechanisms coexist. Additionally, we confirm, using multiple data sets, that low-redshift quasars follow a narrow channel of width ∼10 h -1 Mpc around the large-scale structure (LSS) traced by galaxy clusters, in agreement with the first report of this effect by Sochting, Clowes & Campusano. Such a result, if it applies to quasars at higher redshifts, has the potential to explain the clustering of quasars on scales <10 h -1 Mpc found initially by Shanks et al. The association of the LSS in clusters with the spatial distribution of quasars is not reproduced by samples of narrow emission-line galaxies (NELGs), indicating that the occurrence of NELGs does not require the same environmental conditions as that of quasars.
Dependency Parsing using Prosody Markers from a Parallel Text

This paper describes a method to automatically generate dependency trees for ancient Greek sentences by exploiting prosodic annotation in a Hebrew parallel text. The head selection accuracy of the resulting trees, at close to 80%, is significantly higher than what standard statistical parsers might be expected to produce, for a resource-poor language such as ancient Greek. Our evaluation suggests that prosodic markers can be reliable indicators of syntactic structures.
Role of the Mouse Pygopus 2 Gene and Wnt Signaling in Normal and Malignant Development of Mammary Glands and Hair Follicles

Abstract : The development of mammary gland is governed by multiple genetic pathways although how these pathways are regulated and how they interact with each other is not yet fully understood. Previous studies have implicated the involvement of the canonical Wnt signaling pathway which includes several key components that act together to activate other genes that are directly involved in controlling cell division or differentiation in both normal and abnormal mammary gland development. The timing and overall activity of the pathway is key as its disruption leads to aberrant mammary development and its over stimulation leads to breast cancer. We proposed genetic experiments to examine the role of a novel component of the Wnt pathway in mammary gland development and tumorigenesis. Specifically we proposed to target genetic manipulations to a subset of the mammary epithelial cells that have stem cell characteristics. The mutant mice generated in this study should provide novel animal models to study the ontogeny and progression of mammary tumors. Furthermore results from our studies should provide some insight into the role of epithelial stem cells in normal and diseased development. Finally our studies might implicate possible drug target for treating breast cancer in the future.
Analysis of epigenetic chromatin modification during mitosis in rice

DNA methylation and histone modification are two important types of epigenetic modification. In this study, we analyzed the dynamic changes and chromosomal localizations of four different epigenetic modifications, DNA 5-MeC, H3K4me3, H3K9me2, and H3S10Ph, during mitosis in rice. The results showed that signals from DNA 5-MeC and H3K4me3 were distributed in the heterochromatin and euchromatin regions respectively, but no obvious signals from H3K9me2 were detected. There were no significant changes noticed in these three modification patterns at different phases during mitosis. However, the H3S10Ph, which was mainly distributed in the centromeric regions, showed dynamic changes during mitosis that occurred mainly at prophase and anaphase but not at interphase and telophase.
Lysimetric Evaluation of Simplified Surface Energy Balance Approach in the Texas High Plains

Numerous energy balance (EB) algorithms have been developed to make use of remote sensing data to estimate evapotranspiration (ET) regionally. However, most EB models are complex to use and efforts are being made to simplify procedures mainly through the scaling of reference ET. The Simplified Surface Energy Balance (SSEB) is one such method. This approach has never been evaluated using measured ET data. In this study, the SSEB approach was applied to fourteen Landsat TM images covering a major portion of the Southern High Plains that were acquired during 2006 and 2007 cropping seasons. Performance of the SSEB was evaluated by comparing estimated ET with measured daily ET from four large monolithic lysimeters at the USDA-ARS Conservation and Production Research Laboratory, Bushland, Texas. Statistical evaluation of results indicated that the SSEB accounted for 84% of the variability in the measured ET values with a slope and intercept of 0.75 and 1.1 mm d-1, respectively. Considering the minimal amount of ancillary data required and excellent performance in predicting daily ET, the SSEB approach is a promising tool for mapping ET in the semiarid Texas High Plains and in other parts of the world with similar hydro-climatic conditions.
Some remarks on self-dual locally compact Abelian groups

The main results of this paper are the construction of some new selfdual locally compact Abelian groups and the proof of a structure theorem for a certain class of such groups. The construction is based on an investigation of when the extension of a compact Abelian group by its dual yields a self-dual group. It turns out that such extensions can be described algebraically ; the structure theorem follows from an analysis of the algebraic description.
ANTIOXIDATIVE AND ANTIMICROBIAL ACTIVITIES OF CORN STEEP LIQUOR ANTI-DIABETIC HERB EXTRACTS

Traditionally, Corn-steep fermenting liquor (CSL) has been used to prepare infusion for the management of chronic diseases, especially diabetes mellitus. Antioxidants and antimicrobials have gained attention in this regard due to the role of free radicals and infections in the etiology and complication of the disease. The present study investigated the antioxidant and antimicrobial properties of CSL extracts of Citrullus colocynthis (CC), Curculigo pilosa (CP) and Gladiolus psittacinus (GP). DPPH scavenging activity, Hydrogen peroxide scavenging activity, Iron chelating activity, total reducing power, total flavonoids and total phenolics were determined using standard methods while antimicrobial activity against Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Bacillus subtilis, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Salmonella typhi and Klebisiellae pneumonae was determined using agar well diffusion method. CP gave the highest total phenolic content (86.84mg GAE/g extract) while the total flavonoid content of GP was the highest (55.95mg QUE/g extract) in comparison with other extracts. The IC50 values based on Iron chelating (72μg/ml), DPPH (174μg/ml) for CP and Hydrogen peroxide (95μg/ml) for GP were lower, indicating good antioxidant potential. Also, CP exhibited the highest reducing power in a concentration dependent manner. CC inhibited S. aureus (12mm), E. coli (14mm), S. typhi (14mm) and K. pneumonae (14mm) while CP inhibited S. aureus (12mm), S typhi (12mm) and K. pneumonae (14mm). GP only inhibited S. aureus (12mm) and K. pneumonae (12mm). All the extracts were inactive against B. subtilis. The results of this study showed that CSL extracts of CC, CP and GP possess antioxidant and antimicrobial properties thereby justifying their use in folk medicine for the management of diabetes mellitus.
Electric vehicles and low-voltage grid: impact of uncontrolled demand side response

The authors are looking at the impact of electric vehicles (EV) charging from low-voltage (LV) networks. Based on the data obtained from two different pilot projects: (i) Mini-E trial where EV users were incentivised to charge during the night; (ii) My Electric Avenue trial, where there were no similar incentives, authors want to quantify the impact of EV charging, presuming that the number of home-charging EV users will increase significantly in the near future. By assuming that the current load at individual household level is known or inferred, simulations are performed to estimate the future load. The authors look at different percentages of EV uptake and model clustered scenarios, where the social networking effect is imposed – users adopt an EV with a higher probability if their neighbour already has one. Simulations demonstrate that incentivising night-time charging can create large new peaks during the night, which could have negative effects on LV networks. On the other hand, simulations based on the data with no incentives shows that naturally occurring diversity in charging behaviour does not automatically result in comparable network stress at the same penetrations.