Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Musical Aptitude and Foreign Language Learning Skills : Neural and Behavioural Evidence about Their Connections

Perceiving music and language seems to depend upon subtle and accurate auditory processing skills. Could music and language also share common neural resources? Possible interaction between music and speech memory systems has not been ruled out. On the contrary, there is increasing evidence pointing out the accuracy at perceiving phonetic contrasts in native or foreign language of subjects with musical aptitude or musical training. The main focus of this study was to examine the relationship between musical aptitude and linguistic abilities, especially in terms of second language pronunciation skills. We examined 10-12-year-old elementary school children’s ability to preattentively process musical features in music and speech stimuli. Sound processing accuracy was examined by means of event-related potential (ERP) recordings and behavioural measures. Those children with superior performance in foreign language production and musicality tests seem to show more pronounced sound-change-evoked activation in response to the music stimuli than subjects with less accurate linguistic skills. Our study provides further evidence for the claim that musical aptitude and linguistic skills are interconnected.
Comparison of mechanical properties of three orthodontic wires between levelled and unlevelled brackets: An in vitro study

Background: The objective of this study was to compare the mechanical properties of three orthodontic wires between levelled and unlevelled bracket using a three-point bending test. Methods: Three groups of ten Nickel titanium, Betatitanium and CuNiTi wire segments (0.017 × 0.025-in. diameter) were used. Two brackets were bonded to an acrylic jig with a 10-mm interbracket distance. Deflection test was done in two scenarios, one with aligned brackets and other with 2-mm horizontal displacement of the brackets to simulate malaligned teeth. Forces of loading and unloading of the wires during both tests were compared by an analysis of variance (ANOVA) tests. Results: The difference of LDR between levelled and unlevelled brackets during loading in NiTi wire was 0.1 N, Beta-titanium wire 0.2 N and CuNiTi wire was 1.5 N. The difference of LDR between levelled and unlevelled brackets during unloading in NiTi wire was 0.2 N, Betatitanium wire was 0.3 N and CuNiTi wire is 0.5 N. Conclusions: The study showed some significant differences in forces generated during loading and unloading among the three different types of wires tested. During both the scenarios only CuNiTi wire showed significant difference. Betatitanium wire exhibited highest force followed by NiTi and CuNiTi. Keywords: NiTi, Beta-titanium, CuNiTi wires, Three-point bending test, Load deflection rate (LDR), Newtons (N)
PROMISING ANTIFUNGAL EFFECT OF SOME FOLKLORIC MEDICINAL PLANTS COLLECTED FROM EL- HAMMAM HABITAT, EGYPT AGAINST DANGEROUS PATHOGENIC AND TOXINOGENIC FUNGI

Increasing evidence of fungicide-resistant toxinogenic and pathogenic fungal species is obvious. Looking for new possibilities of antifungal treatment or sources of antifungal substances is a major problem. Some medicinal plants exert strong antifungal properties and could be conveniently used as a promising alternative source for presently problematic antifungal treatment in many areas with respect to their natural origin. In this study, antifungal activities of Mesembryanthemum crystallinum (Aizoaceae); Blackiella aellen, Arthrocnemon glaucum and Atriplex halimus (Chenopodiaceae), Thymelaea hirsute (Thymelaeaceae), C a r d u u s g e tu lu s, Atractylis c a r d u u s and Ech i nop s spinosissimus (Compositae), Nicotiana glauca (Solanaceae), Alhagi maurorum (Fabaceae) species were investigated. The fungal effects of these plants were tested by agar tube dilution method using Fusarium solani, Fusarium oxysporum, Aspergillus flavus, Alternaria alternate, Rhizoctnia solani, Pythium ultimum, Bipolaris oryzae, Rhizopus, Chetomium and Mucor. For 10 plant species, the possibility of using them as natural fungicides was indicated. The extracts showed significant activity against most target fungal species. The most sensitive target funguses were the toxinogenic and human pathogenic species Fusarium solani and Bipolaris oryzae plant methanol and hexane extracts, respectively. The overall results provide promising base line information for the potential use of the crude extracts of tested plants in the treatment of fungal infections. An a t t e m p t has been made to highlight the promising plant species for further investigation as leads for new drug development.
Ambient noise tomography of the Pyrenees and the surrounding regions: inversion for a 3-D Vs model in the presence of a very heterogeneous crust

We thank all participants in the fieldwork, and the municipalities and landlords that hosted a PYROPE temporary station. We also acknowledge SISMOB, the French seismic mobile pool (a com- ponent of the RESIF Research Facility), for providing us with the seismological instrumentation for the temporary deployments. We used data from the FR and RD (RESIF), G (Geoscope) and CA (‘Institut Cartogr ` afic i Geol ` ogic de Catalunya’) permanent net- works. RESIF ( http://portal.resif.fr/ ) is a national Research Infras- tructure, recognized as such by the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research. RESIF is managed by the RESIF Con- sortium, composed of 18 Research Institutions and Universities in France. RESIF additionally supported by a public grant overseen by the French National Research Agency (ANR) as part of the «Investissements d’Avenir» program (reference: ANR-11-EQPX- 0040)andtheFrenchMinistryofEcology,SustainableDevelopment and Energy. The PYROPE experiment was supported by the French Research Agency “ANR blanc” program (project PYROPE, ANR-09-BLAN-0229). This is a contribution of the Team Consolider-Ingenio 2010 TOPO-IBERIA (CSD2006–00041). C
Of Renal Sympathetic Nerve Activity In Cisplatin-Induced Renal Failure Rats

Renal failure and renal injury are associated with an increase of pro-inflammatory peptides within the kidney, such as bradykinin which activates B2 receptors on renal afferent nerves. The aim of this study was to investigate whether bradykinin B2 receptor activation contributed to the low-pressure baroreceptor regulation of renal sympathetic nerve activity (RSNA) in a rat model of acute renal failure.
Information criteria and approximate Bayesian computing for agent-based modelling in ecology: New tools to infer on Individual-level processes

Agent- or individual-based models (ABMs) are computer simulation tools to represent complex systems where the unique autonomous individuals constituting the system interact, adapt or evolve. In ecology, ABMs have been applied to analyse the influence of individual variability, spatial interactions, development, behaviour, learning or genetic variability on group, population or community dynamics [1]. During the last 20 years, the approach of pattern-oriented modelling (POM) has been helping in making the use of ABMs more robust and reliable [2]. Two main elements of POM are a) ``inverse modelling'' to reduce parameter uncertainty and b) ``strong inferences'' to test how well alternative model versions changing in certain individual-level processes are at explaining multiple patterns observed at the population and/or community level. The latter has many parallels to model selection procedures in statistical modelling ( ``mutlimodel inference'' [3]). The inverse modelling borrows also concept and tools from statistics to fit unknown or uncertain parameters to real-world data. With the development of approximate Bayesian computing (ABC) in ecology [4] some propositions were made to use ABC in ABMs [5]. Bridging the two main elements of POM, an information criterion was proposed [6] that borrows concept of ABC such as Markov Chains Monte Carlo simulations without likelihood functions and multimodel inference in Bayesian context. This criterion (POMIC for pattern-oriented modelling information criterion) was applied in the original proposition paper to forest growth simulations to infer on individual tree growth function. Recently, it was applied to locust to infer on individual behaviour at hatching [7]. These kinds of cryptic processes (tree individual growth or animals' behaviour during first hours) can typically be analysed following few isolated individuals in natural or experimental conditions. However, in the context of inter-individual interactions, experimental designs to infer on how the interactions modify individual responses are hard, if not impossible to elaborate. Using population or group level data to fit ABMs and infer on the potential individual process with different ABMs version is then a way of overpassing these problems. However, the question of ABMs complexity (essential in statistical model selection procedures) needs to be addressed. The POMIC proposition includes a complexity measure and makes it therefore an interesting tool to infer on cryptic individual-level processes of complex systems.
Distributed cycle detection in large-scale sparse graphs

In this paper we present a distributed algorithm for detecting cycles in large-scale directed graphs, along with its correctness proof and analysis. The algorithm is then extended to find strong components in directed graphs. We indicate an application to detecting cycles in number theoretic functions such as the proper divisor function. Our prototype implementation of the cycle detection algorithm, when applied to the proper divisor function, detects all sociable groups of numbers (cycles in the proper divisor function) up to 107.
A study of trophic niche partitioning between larval populations of reproductively isolated whitefish (Coregonus sp.) ecotypes

The abundance, spatio-temporal distribution, and feeding of larvae were compared from two reproductively isolated dwarf and normal ecotypes of whitefish (Coregonus sp.) to test the hypothesis that larval ecotypes should reduce competition by using different resources. Contrary to a priori expectations, trophic niche partitioning between larval populations was much less pronounced than previously reported for the adult stages of fish ecotypes, presumably due to the lack of competition acting at this stage, and related to non-limiting food resources. Because this study was conducted in a single year and a single lake, we cannot however, strictly rule out the possibility that resource-based competition and resulting niche partitioning may occur at the larval stage in these species complexes. Nevertheless, this suggests for the first time, that resource-based selection at the larval stage may be relatively unimportant compared to that occurring at older life-history stages in driving the divergence and the development of reproductive isolation in sympatric fish ecotypes.
Explorer The MGB-2 Challenge : Arabic Multi-Device Broadcast Media

This paper describes the Arabic Multi-Genre Broadcast (MGB-2) Challenge for SLT-2016. Unlike last year’s English MGB Challenge, which focused on recognition of diverse TV genres, this year, the challenge has an emphasis on handling the diversity in dialect in Arabic speech. Audio data comes from 19 distinct programmes from the Aljazeera Arabic TV channel between March 2005 and December 2015. Programmes are split into three groups: conversations, interviews, and reports. A total of 1,200 hours have been released with lightly supervised transcriptions for the acoustic modelling. For language modelling, we made available over 110M words crawled from Aljazeera Arabic website Aljazeera.net for a 10 year duration 2000-2011. Two lexicons have been provided, one phoneme based and one grapheme based. Finally, two tasks were proposed for this year’s challenge: standard speech transcription, and word alignment. This paper describes the task data and evaluation process used in the MGB challenge, and summarises the results obtained.
Escape of spring frost and disease through phenological variations in oak populations along elevation gradients

The timing of tree flushing follows strong phenotypic and genetic clines across environmental gradients. It may be seen as an adaptive response to abiotic (escape of spring frost and maximizing growing season length) and biotic (escape of pest and disease) hazards. However, few studies have investigated jointly both types of hazards. We assessed exposure to both abiotic (spring frost) and biotic (powdery mildew) hazards within and between sessile oak populations along elevation gradients, during the flushing period in several years. For each population and phenological phenotype (early‐ vs. late‐flushing trees), we estimated safety margins, defined as the time period separating budburst from the hazard occurrence (spore emission, spring frost). We observed that powdery mildew phenology (initiation of spore release in spring) was less responsive to the elevation gradient than oak phenology (budburst) and that it was not correlated with tree phenology within populations. The spring frost and disease safety margins varied considerably between oak populations as a function of elevation and within populations in relation to tree phenological phenotype. For both hazards, safety margins decreased significantly with increasing elevation. The safety margin for spring frost was mostly positive (i.e. escape), whereas the safety margin for powdery mildew was mostly negative (i.e. exposure), leading to infection. The abiotic and biotic hazards interact in opposite directions with phenology, especially at low elevations (< 500 m) where early flushing enabled trees to escape disease while late flushing provided a higher safety margin against late frost. Synthesis. The observed patterns suggest that oak populations are better adapted to escape spring frost than pathogen exposure all along the elevation gradient. The combination of the biotic and abiotic selective pressures may have contributed to the maintenance of phenological diversity within low‐elevation tree populations. As tree and pathogen respond differently to environmental cues, climate change is likely to affect the phenological (a)synchrony between host and parasite, both within and between populations.
Individual aerosol particles from biomass burning in southern Africa: 1. Compositions and size distributions of carbonaceous particles

[1] Individual aerosol particles in smoke plumes from biomass fires and in regional hazes in southern Africa were studied using analytical transmission electron microscopy (TEM), which allowed detailed characterization of carbonaceous particle types in smoke and determination of changes in particle properties and concentrations during smoke aging. Based on composition, morphology, and microstructure, three distinct types of carbonaceous particles were present in the smoke: organic particles with inorganic (K-salt) inclusions, ‘‘tar ball’’ particles, and soot. The relative number concentrations of organic particles were largest in young smoke, whereas tar balls were dominant in a slightly aged (1 hour) smoke from a smoldering fire. Flaming fires emitted relatively more soot particles than smoldering fires, but soot was a minor constituent of all studied plumes. Further aging caused the accumulation of sulfate on organic and soot particles, as indicated by the large number of internally mixed organic/sulfate and soot/sulfate particles in the regional haze. Externally mixed ammonium sulfate particles dominated in the boundary layer hazes, whereas organic/sulfate particles were the most abundant type in the upper hazes. Apparently, elevated haze layers were more strongly affected by biomass smoke than those within the boundary layer. Based on size distributions and the observed patterns of internal mixing, we hypothesize that organic and soot particles are the cloudnucleating constituents of biomass smoke aerosols. Sea-salt particles dominated in the samples taken in stratus clouds over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Namibia, whereas a distinct haze layer above the clouds consisted of aged biomass smoke particles. INDEX TERMS: 0305 Atmospheric Composition and Structure: Aerosols and particles (0345, 4801); 0315 Atmospheric Composition and Structure: Biosphere/atmosphere interactions; 0345 Atmospheric Composition and Structure: Pollution—urban and regional (0305); 0365 Atmospheric Composition and Structure: Troposphere—composition and chemistry; KEYWORDS: biomass burning, carbonaceous aerosol, individual particles, TEM
Convictions Versus Conviction Rates: The Prosecutor's Choice

Is it better to move first, or second— to innovate, or to imitate? We look at this in a context with both asymmetric information and payoff externalities. Suppose two players, one with superior information about market quality, consider entering one of two new markets immediately or waiting until the last possible date. We show that the more accurate the informed player’s information, the more he wants to delay to keep his information private. The less-informed player also wants to delay, but in order to learn. The less accurate the informed player’s information, the more both players want to move first to foreclose a market. More accurate information can lead to inefficiency by increasing the players’ incentive to delay. Thus, a moderate delay cost can increase industry profits.
Chiral Maxwell’s Equations as Two Spinor System: Dirac and Majorana Neutrino

This work clarifies the relation between Maxwell, Dirac and Majorana neutrino equations presenting an original way to derive the Dirac and neutrino equation from the chiral electrodynamics leading, perhaps, to novel conception in the mass generation by electromagnetic fields. In the present article, it is shown that Maxwell equations can be written in the same form as the two components Dirac and neutrino equations, that is the vector representation of electromagnetic theory can be factorized into a pair of two-component spinor field equations. We propose a simple approach with the electric field E parallel to the magnetic field H. Our analysis is based on the chiral or Weyl form of the Maxwell equations in a chiral vacuum. This theory is a new quantum mechanics (QM) interpretation for Dirac and neutrino equation. The below research proves that the QM of particles represents the electrodynamics of the curvilinear closed chiral waves. Electromagnetic properties of neutrinos are discussed.
Signal Space Separation Method for a Biomagnetic Sensor Array Arranged on a Flat Plane for Magnetocardiographic Applications: A Computer Simulation Study

Although the signal space separation (SSS) method can successfully suppress interference/artifacts overlapped onto magnetoencephalography (MEG) signals, the method is considered inapplicable to data from nonhelmet-type sensor arrays, such as the flat sensor arrays typically used in magnetocardiographic (MCG) applications. This paper shows that the SSS method is still effective for data measured from a (nonhelmet-type) array of sensors arranged on a flat plane. By using computer simulations, it is shown that the optimum location of the origin can be determined by assessing the dependence of signal and noise gains of the SSS extractor on the origin location. The optimum values of the parameters LC and LD, which, respectively, indicate the truncation values of the multipole-order ℓ of the internal and external subspaces, are also determined by evaluating dependences of the signal, noise, and interference gains (i.e., the shield factor) on these parameters. The shield factor exceeds 104 for interferences originating from fairly distant sources. However, the shield factor drops to approximately 100 when calibration errors of 0.1% exist and to 30 when calibration errors of 1% exist. The shielding capability can be significantly improved using vector sensors, which measure the x, y, and z components of the magnetic field. With 1% calibration errors, a vector sensor array still maintains a shield factor of approximately 500. It is found that the SSS application to data from flat sensor arrays causes a distortion in the signal magnetic field, but it is shown that the distortion can be corrected by using an SSS-modified sensor lead field in the voxel space analysis.
Hospital-Based Quality Measures for Pediatric Mental Health Care

The results of development and field testing of 8 new quality measures used to assess delivery of pediatric mental health care in the hospital setting (ED and inpatient). BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Patients with a primary mental health condition account for nearly 10% of pediatric hospitalizations nationally, but little is known about the quality of care provided for them in hospital settings. Our objective was to develop and test medical record–based measures used to assess quality of pediatric mental health care in the emergency department (ED) and inpatient settings. METHODS: We drafted an evidence-based set of pediatric mental health care quality measures for the ED and inpatient settings. We used the modified Delphi method to prioritize measures; 2 ED and 6 inpatient measures were operationalized and field-tested in 2 community and 3 children’s hospitals. Eligible patients were 5 to 19 years old and diagnosed with psychosis, suicidality, or substance use from January 2012 to December 2013. We used bivariate and multivariate models to examine measure performance by patient characteristics and by hospital. RESULTS: Eight hundred and seventeen records were abstracted with primary diagnoses of suicidality (n = 446), psychosis (n = 321), and substance use (n = 50). Performance varied across measures. Among patients with suicidality, male patients (adjusted odds ratio: 0.27, P < .001) and African American patients (adjusted odds ratio: 0.31, P = .02) were less likely to have documentation of caregiver counseling on lethal means restriction. Among admitted suicidal patients, 27% had documentation of communication with an outside provider, with variation across hospitals (0%–38%; P < .001). There was low overall performance on screening for comorbid substance abuse in ED patients with psychosis (mean: 30.3). CONCLUSIONS: These new pediatric mental health care quality measures were used to identify sex and race disparities and substantial hospital variation. These measures may be useful for assessing and improving hospital-based pediatric mental health care quality.
Impact of Alcohol and Coffee Intake on the Risk of Advanced Liver Fibrosis: A Longitudinal Analysis in HIV-HCV Coinfected Patients (ANRS CO-13 HEPAVIH Cohort)

Background: Coffee intake has been shown to modulate both the effect of ethanol on serum GGT activities in some alcohol consumers and the risk of alcoholic cirrhosis in some patients with chronic diseases. This study aimed to analyze the impact of coffee intake and alcohol consumption on advanced liver fibrosis (ALF) in HIV-HCV co-infected patients. Methods: ANRS CO13-HEPAVIH is a French, nationwide, multicenter cohort of HIV-HCV-co-infected patients. Sociodemographic, behavioral, and clinical data including alcohol and coffee consumption were prospectively collected using annual self-administered questionnaires during five years of follow-up. Mixed logistic regression models were performed, relating coffee intake and alcohol consumption to ALF. Results: 1019 patients were included. At the last available visit, 5.8% reported high-risk alcohol consumption, 27.4% reported high coffee intake and 14.5% had ALF. Compared with patients with low coffee intake and high-risk alcohol consumption, patients with low coffee intake and low-risk alcohol consumption had a lower risk of ALF (aOR (95% CI) 0.24 (0.12–0.50)). In addition, patients with high coffee intake had a lower risk of ALF than the reference group (0.14 (0.03–0.64) in high-risk alcohol drinkers and 0.11 (0.05–0.25) in low-risk alcohol drinkers). Conclusions: High coffee intake was associated with a low risk of liver fibrosis even in HIV-HCV co-infected patients with high-risk alcohol consumption.