Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Energy‐based top‐down and bottom‐up relationships between fish community energy demand or production and phytoplankton across lakes at a continental scale

Fish community feeding and production rates may differ between lakes despite similar fish biomass levels because of differences in size structure and local temperature. Therefore, across‐lake comparisons of the strength and direction of top‐down and bottom‐up fish–phytoplankton relationships should consider these factors. We used the metabolic theory of ecology to calculate size‐ and temperature‐corrected community energy demand (CEDom) and community production (CP) of omnivorous fishes in 227 European lakes from major habitat types (MHTs) of polar freshwaters, temperate floodplain rivers and wetlands, and temperate coastal rivers. We related CEDom with total phosphorus (TP)‐corrected chlorophyll a (Chl a) concentrations to evaluate a potential top‐down directed trophic cascade from fish to phytoplankton. Furthermore, we related Chl a with CP to demonstrate potential bottom‐up effects of phytoplankton on fish. For both analyses, we added the CED of piscivorous fishes (CEDpi) as a predictor to account for potential predation effects on the omnivorous fish community. CEDom was weakly positively related with TP‐corrected Chl a, but the strength of the relationship differed between MHTs. In contrast, CP was consistently positively related with Chl a in the entire dataset. CEDpi did not contribute to top‐down or bottom‐up relationships. The application of metabolic variables characterizing fish community feeding and production rates makes these results robust because the approach accounted for the usually neglected effects of fish size and temperature in across‐lake comparisons. Our results suggest that bottom‐up effects from phytoplankton on fish secondary production in lakes are substantially stronger than top‐down effects from fish on phytoplankton biomass.
Leukotriene B4 licenses inflammasome activation to enhance skin host defense

Significance Production of IL-1β is an essential component of the inflammatory response and host defense. IL-1β secretion is dependent on the activation of an intracellular platform termed inflammasome. The initial inflammatory signals that drive inflammasome activation remains elusive. Here, we show that the bioactive lipid leukotriene B4 enhances both transcriptional and posttranscriptional programs that activate the inflammasome in vivo and in vitro. We identified critical signaling programs required for inflammasome assembly, IL-1β secretion, and its consequences in skin host defense. Our data also suggest that the prevention of LTB4 actions might be an important therapeutic strategy to prevent IL-1β–dependent inflammatory diseases by inhibiting both first and second signals necessary for inflammasome activation. The initial production of inflammatory mediators dictates host defense as well as tissue injury. Inflammasome activation is a constituent of the inflammatory response by recognizing pathogen and host-derived products and eliciting the production of IL-1β and IL-18 in addition to inducing a type of inflammatory cell death termed “pyroptosis. ” Leukotriene B4 (LTB4) is a lipid mediator produced quickly (seconds to minutes) by phagocytes and induces chemotaxis, increases cytokine/chemokine production, and enhances antimicrobial effector functions. Whether LTB4 directly activates the inflammasome remains to be determined. Our data show that endogenously produced LTB4 is required for the expression of pro-IL-1β and enhances inflammasome assembly in vivo and in vitro. Furthermore, LTB4-mediated Bruton’s tyrosine kinase (BTK) activation is required for inflammasome assembly in vivo as well for IL-1β–enhanced skin host defense. Together, these data unveil a new role for LTB4 in enhancing the expression and assembly of inflammasome components and suggest that while blocking LTB4 actions could be a promising therapeutic strategy to prevent inflammasome-mediated diseases, exogenous LTB4 can be used as an adjuvant to boost inflammasome-dependent host defense.
The Role of Episodic Specificity in Future Thinking and Emotion Regulation in Young and Older Adults

Much research in the past decade has highlighted the importance of episodic simulation, the construction of a detailed representation of a possible personal future experience. Episodic simulation can be highly adaptive because it allows people to imagine different ways in which the future might play out without having to engage in actual behavior, which is beneficial across a variety of contexts, including problem solving and emotion regulation. The current dissertation aims to examine not only the mechanisms that support various types of episodic future simulation, but also the functions that future thinking may serve. Paper 1 (Jing, Madore, & Schacter, 2016) examines the impact of an episodic specificity induction (ESI), a brief training in recollecting details of a recent experience, on two positive simulation tasks: means-end problem solving (MEPS) and episodic reappraisal. We demonstrate that the ESI, relative to a control condition, boosts the steps and details people generate to solve or reframe a series of personally worrisome future problems. Further, this boost in details was linked to subsequent improvements in emotional well-being towards the target events. Paper 2 (Jing, Madore, & Schacter, 2017) also aims to investigate the impact of the ESI on emotional well-being using a novel alternative event generation task in young adults. Results show that the ESI increased the number of alternative positive outcomes that participants generated to a series of anticipated negative events, and that the boost in alternative outcomes was related to subsequent decreases in the perceived plausibility and negativity of the original events. Paper 3 (Jing, Madore, & Schacter, 2019) examined the effect of detailed problem solving on subsequent emotion regulation in older adults in two ways.
The role of the anterior intraparietal sulcus and the lateral occipital cortex in fingertip force scaling and weight perception during object lifting

Skillful object lifting relies on scaling fingertip forces according to the object’s weight. When no visual cues about weight are available, force planning relies on recent lifting experience. Recently, we showed that previously lifted objects also affect weight estimation, as objects are perceived to be lighter when lifted after heavy objects compared to light ones. Here, we investigated the underlying neural mechanisms mediating these effects. We asked participants to lift objects and estimate their weight. Simultaneously, we applied transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) during the dynamic loading or static holding phase. Two subject groups received TMS of either the anterior intraparietal sulcus (aIPS) or lateral occipital area (LO), known to be important nodes in object grasping and perception. We hypothesized that TMS-induced disruption of aIPS and LO would alter force scaling and weight perception. Contrary to our hypothesis, we did not find effects of aIPS or LO stimulation on force planning or weight estimation caused by previous lifting experience. However, we found that TMS of both areas increased grip forces, but only when applied during dynamic loading, and decreased weight estimation, but only when applied during static holding, suggesting time-specific effects. Interestingly, our results also indicate that TMS over LO, but not aIPS, affected load force scaling specifically for heavy objects, which further indicates that planning of load and grip forces might be controlled differently. These findings provide new insights on the interactions between brain networks mediating action and perception during object manipulation. NEW & NOTEWORTHY This article provides new insights into the neural mechanisms underlying object lifting and perception. Using transcranial magnetic stimulation during object lifting, we show that effects of previous experience on force scaling and weight perception are not mediated by the anterior intraparietal sulcus nor the lateral occipital cortex (LO). In contrast, we highlight a unique role for LO in load force scaling, suggesting different brain processes for grip and load force scaling in object manipulation.
P3: Privacy-Preserving Scheme Against Poisoning Attacks in Mobile-Edge Computing

Mobile-edge computing (MEC) has emerged to enable users to offload their location data into the MEC server, and at the same time, the MEC server executes the location-aware data processing to compute the statistical results about these collected locations. However, malicious users may deliberately generate poisoning locations and send these poisoning locations to the MEC server, aiming to poison the statistical results learned by the MEC server and even the other users’ location privacy. Existing work concerning privacy preservation in MEC has not studied such poisoning attacks in MEC. Another line of somehow related work focused on poisoning attacks in a different scenario—adversarial machine learning. However, MEC exhibits different features with the machine learning settings, and thus, the privacy preservation against poisoning attacks in MEC faces significantly new challenges. To address the problem, we propose the privacy-preserving scheme, i.e., privacy-preserving scheme against poisoning (P3), that utilizes the feature learning model to infer the social relationships among users from their location data and then constructs the inferred social graph. Thereafter, it searches the optimal map between the inferred social graph and the social graph from social networks to identify the poisoning locations. Experiments on two real-world data sets, two baseline works, and two kinds of poisoning attacks have demonstrated the privacy preservation against the poisoning attacks in MEC P3 provides.
Working memory load and its impact on space-based and motion-based stimulus-response correspondence (SRC) effects

ABSTRACT If spatial stimulus-response correspondence (SRC) effect results from automatic processes, cognitive load should not affect this effect. However, if spatial SRC effect is based on the interference of cognitive codes, cognitive load should influence it. Furthermore, the motion-based SRC effect should be affected by the cognitive load, as this SRC effect is related to the cognitive codes interference. In this study, participants performed combined tasks for space-based and motion-based SRC effects without working memory load (WML), or under spatial and verbal WML to see if cognitive load affects both SRC effects or just one. Results demonstrated that space-based SRC remained intact from WML, while the motion-based SRC was influenced by WML, although only in limited degree. This supports the notion that automatic processes underlie space-based SRC effect, whereas the motion-based SRC effect is related to cognitive codes interference, but the latter requires further investigation.
A new fatigue protocol to assess postural sway in collegiate female athletes

ABSTRACT Background: Core stability, i.e. the ability to control the position and motion of the body’s core has been proposed to be an important factor involved in postural sway. Muscle fatigue may adversely affect the function of core muscles. Although many studies have investigated effects of core muscle fatigue on balance, mostly non-standard fatigue protocols have been used which can potentially call into question the validity of their results. Purpose: This paper contributes to the existing literature by developing a standard functional core fatigue protocol (FCFP) to functionally induce fatigue in all core muscles, and to examine its effects on postural sway in collegiate female athletes. Method: The endurance of core muscles and postural sway was assessed in sixty female collegiate athletes using the Pressure Biofeedback Unit (PBU) and the Force Distribution Measurement-Small multifunction force-measuring plate, respectively. The confidence interval was set at 95% (p < 0.05). Results: A significant decrease in endurance of core muscles was found in the experimental group after their participation in the FCFP (p < 0.001). Also, the displacement of the centre of pressure in both ‘path length’ and ‘area’ as indices of postural sway significantly increased compared to the related pre-fatigue values (p < 0.001). Conclusion: The designed FCFP can induce fatigue in core muscles efficiently and has significant negative effects on postural sway in collegiate female athletes.
A Laser-Forwarded Coherent Transceiver in 45-nm SOI CMOS Using Monolithic Microring Resonators

For the silicon photonic links to meet the target bit error rate (BER), the laser source must output enough optical power to overcome the optical channel loss and limited receiver sensitivity. Combined with poor wall-plug efficiency, this optical power requirement makes the electrical power consumed by the laser source a significant portion of the link energy cost. This article proposes a laser-forwarded coherent link that greatly reduces the required laser optical power by averaging optical path loss between the main and forwarded paths and by improving the receiver sensitivity using a homodyne coherent detector. The link performance analysis reveals that the laser forwarded link improves the laser power budget by ≈6–8 dB compared with a conventional intensity-modulation/direct detection link using typical photonic link components. To demonstrate the laser forwarded link, a microring resonator phase modulator, a balanced detector, and a 3-dB coupler are integrated with CMOS circuits in a GFUS 45-nm SOI process. The transmit driver and the receiver consume 40 and 450 fJ/bit, respectively. Aided by ≈8-dB boost from laser forwarding and the coherent detection gain, the receiver achieves −15.6-dBm optical modulation amplitude sensitivity. The link operates at 10 Gb/s with BER < 10−9 and electrical energy efficiency of 2.3 pJ/bit.
Directed Evolution of an FeII-Dependent Halogenase for Asymmetric C(sp3)–H Chlorination

By using structure-guided directed evolution, the substrate scope of the FeII and α-ketoglutarate dependent halogenase Wi-WelO15 from Westiella intricata HT-29-1 was engineered to enable chemo-, regio-, and diastereoselective chlorination of unactivated C(sp3)–H bonds using NaCl as chlorine source. While FeII dependent enzymes are often oxygen sensitive, variants of this halogenase could be screened in lysates under aerobic conditions. The developed biocatalysts offer a route to mild, late-stage chlorination on milligram scale of non-natural hapalindoles containing a ketone instead of an isonitrile functionality, thereby unlocking them for preparative biocatalysis.
Large Genetic Intraspecific Diversity of Autochthonous Lactic Acid Bacteria and Yeasts Isolated from PDO Tuscan Bread Sourdough

The diverse metabolites, positively affecting the nutritional, organoleptic and technological traits of leavened baked goods, are produced by different sourdough lactic acid bacteria (LAB) and yeast strains, as the result of their genetic intraspecific diversity. Therefore, the molecular and functional strain-level characterization of sourdough microbiota is crucial to valorize traditional or origin protected baked end-products, develop innovative starter cultures and design functional cereal-based foods. To this aim, the genetic intraspecific diversity of 96 Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis, 65 Kazachstania humilis and three Saccharomyces cerevisiae characterizing Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) Tuscan bread sourdough, was investigated, using P4, P7 and M13 random amplified polymorphic DNA-polymerase chain reaction (RAPD-PCR), (GTG)5 repetitive element sequence-based (rep)-PCR and inter-delta region analyses, respectively. Regarding LAB, the combination of P4, P7 and M13 RAPD-PCR analyses revealed a huge degree of intraspecific variability, discriminating 43 biotypes out of 96 isolates of L. sanfranciscensis. (GTG)5 rep-PCR showed a discriminatory index of 0.95, grouping the 65 K. humilis isolated from PDO Tuscan bread sourdough in 9 biotypes. The high polymorphism among both LAB and yeast isolates of PDO Tuscan bread sourdough outlines a highly complex microbial community structure, whose relative composition and specific physiological characteristics could be responsible for the peculiar organoleptic, rheological, nutritional and potentially nutraceutical features of PDO Tuscan bread.
Small Grains as Winter Pasture in the Southern Great Plains of the United States

Small-grain cereals are widely adapted and used as annual cool-season pastures in the Southern Great Plains (SGP) of the United States, where livestock and forage production are the largest contributors to agricultural income. The advantage of growing small grains in the region is evident due to the widespread adoption and flexibility of production for grain only, forage only, or both grain and forage (i.e., dual purpose). Farmers in the SGP often prefer the use of small grains for dual purpose mainly because of alternative income options from livestock and/or grain, ensuring stable income especially when product prices fluctuate with market demands. Small-grain forage is exceptionally important during autumn, winter, and early spring when forage availability from other sources is low. By providing nutritionally high-quality forage, small grains minimize the need for protein and energy supplements. Besides being used for winter pasture, small grains also serve as cool-season cover crops. While small grains offer different advantages in the integrated crop-livestock system in the region, farming management practices can play an important role to maximize the benefit. The objectives of this chapter are to summarize the significance of small grains as winter pasture and highlight the production status of each small-grain species in the SGP of the United States.
An Analysis of Prospective Teachers’ Mathematical Reasoning on Number Concepts

This paper presents and discusses the results of a case study that was carried out to understand the mathematical reasoning of 73 second-year student teachers at a university in Zambia. The paper also demonstrates why it is important to develop the reasoning abilities of mathematics student teachers during their initial training programs. The questionnaire items presented to student teachers required them to justify the validity of selected algebraic statements and arguments on odd and even numbers. Factors that influenced participants’ modes of argumentation were also identified, clearly highlighting their implications for mathematics teacher education. Findings of the study revealed that 70% of the participants gave explanations that were aligned to an empirical or inductive mode of argumentation while 7% used the analytical or deductive argumentation mode. The rest of the participants gave explanations that did not reflect valid mathematical justification of the given algebraic statements and arguments. These results clearly indicate that only the minority of participants exhibited an adequate understanding of representing odd and even numbers in general form. Analysing and developing prospective teachers’ mathematical reasoning abilities are necessary to anticipate how they would practice when they are professionally qualified.
Motivational Factors of Smoking among the Students: A Survey of Kohat University

The main objective of the study was to identify the motivational factors of smoking amongst the students of Kohat University. All the students of Kohat University comprised the sample of the study. A sample of 300 male students was selected through random sampling. The data were collected through a close-ended questionnaire, which consisted seven items related to students’ smoking status and those motivational factors that carried the habit of smoking. The update data were collected from the respondents and interpreted using logistic regression model. It was concluded that the availability of cigarettes in the open market made the students to smoke, as there was no restriction on them regarding the use of cigarettes. Students were not properly aware about the harmful effects of smoking and smoke as a symbol of elite class.
Virtual electrodes generated by focused penta‐polar current stimulation for neuromodulation

Virtual electrodes in neuromodulation can provide more delicate stimulation patterns with a limited number of physical electrodes in a confined area. Many researchers successfully verified the effectiveness of virtual electrodes in clinical trials, using current steering, which modulates electric fields produced by multi-polar stimulation. Still, it is questioned how these virtual electrodes are really generated in an electrolyte, especially in two dimensions. In order to answer this question, this work analyses the virtual electrode generation by comparing finite element analysis and in vitro evaluation of penta-polar stimulation. Penta-polar stimulation was realised using custom-designed integrated circuits and electrodes with an individual diameter of 450 μm and a centre-to-centre spacing of 800 μm. The customised test setup of electric field measurement estimated (i) the focused electric fields by the penta-polar stimulation and (ii) the optimum distance from the electrodes, at which virtual electrodes were most effectively generated. Compared with mono-polar stimulation, the penta-polar stimulation showed 0.594 and 0.545 times smaller electric field distribution areas, respectively, at a distance from the electrodes of 100 μm. Furthermore, the virtual electrodes showed the best performance at a distance from the electrodes of 150 μm, while the distance varied from 13 to 250 μm.
Literature Review on the Diabetic Retinopathy in Retinal Images

Diabetes is one of the most harmful disease of our age and that’s because of the fast and unhealthy pace of our lives. Numbers are still rising and the number of people getting diabetes is increasing around the world, one of the most recognizable side effects of Diabetes is Diabetic Retinopathy that might lead to total loss of sight in the diabetic patients and that’s if it is not detected and medicated early, for the importance of early detection of this disease there is a great effort in the literature to early detect Diabetic Retinopathy, a literature review is introduced in this report to cover the different aspects of retinopathy and its detection methods. In this review we try to cover a great part of the literature and our review based on two parts: the first part about the detection of the lesions of the Diabetic Retinopathy including hemorrhages, microaneurysm and exudates. The second part is about the measuring of different severity level of diabetic retinopathy and its detection and classification systems.
Sparse Modeling in Geotechnical Engineering

Estimation and prediction problems in geotechnical engineering belong to the class of inverse problems. Many different approaches to analyze these problems have been reported in the literature. In recent years, the use of machine learning has become increasingly common in many research fields because of the rapid increase of computational capacity and advances in algorithms. In particular, the methodology for solving inverse problems known as “sparse modeling” has been receiving considerable attention. Sparse modeling is a statistical method which exploits specific features/structures in data based on solution sparsity, and has a great potential for application to geotechnical problems. This paper demonstrates the potential of sparse modeling for solving geotechnical engineering problems by means of two practical examples: a crossborehole tomography, and a stratigraphic soil profiling based on cone penetration test.