Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sublethal larval exposure to imidacloprid impacts adult behaviour in Drosophila melanogaster

Pesticides are now chronically found in numerous ecosystems incurring widespread toxic effects on multiple organisms. For insects, the larvae are very exposed to pesticide pollution and the acute effect of insecticides on larvae has been characterized in a range of species. However, the carry‐on effects in adults of sublethal exposure occurring in larvae are not well characterized. Here, we use a collection of strains of Drosophila melanogaster differing in their larval resistance to a commonly used insecticide, imidacloprid, and we test the effect of larval exposure on behavioural traits at the adult stage. Focusing on locomotor activity and on courtship and mating behaviour, we observed a significant carry‐on effect of imidacloprid exposure. The heritability of activity traits measured in flies exposed to imidacloprid was higher than measured in controls and in these, courtship traits were genetically less correlated from mating success. Altogether, we did not observe a significant effect of the larval insecticide resistance status on adult behavioural traits, suggesting that selection for resistance in larvae does not involve repeatable behavioural changes in adults. This lack of correlation between larval resistance and adult behaviour also suggests that resistance at the larval stage does not necessarily result in increased behavioural resilience at a later life stage. These findings imply that selection for resistance in larvae as well as for behavioural resilience to sublethal exposure in adult will combine and impose a greater evolutionary constraint. Our conclusions further substantiate the need to encompass multiple trait measures and life stages in toxicological assays to properly assess the environmental impact of pesticides.
Interactive effects of salinity and inundation on native Spartina foliosa, invasive S. densiflora, and their hybrid from San Francisco Estuary, California.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Sea Level Rise (SLR) associated with climate change is intensifying permanent submersion and salinity in salt marshes. In this scenario, hybridization between native and invasive species may result in hybrids having greater tolerance of abiotic stress factors than their parents. Thus, understanding the responses of native and invasive halophytes and their hybrids to interacting physiological stresses imposed by SLR is key to native species conservation. We analyzed how salinity, inundation depth, and their interaction impact the functional traits of native and invasive cordgrass species and their hybrid (Genus Spartina; Poaceae). METHODS In a mesocosm experiment, we evaluated interactive stress effects of three inundation depths (4.5, 35.5 and 55 cm) and four aqueous salinities (0.5, 10, 20 and 40 ppt) on 27 functional traits of native Spartina foliosa, invasive S. densiflora and their hybrid S. densiflora x S. foliosa from San Francisco Estuary. KEY RESULTS The combined effect of salinity and inundation led to synergetic effects in leaf biochemical stress indicators. S. foliosa behaved as a stress-tolerant species, with high leaf Na exudation rate and glycinebetaine concentrations that also increased with stress. S. foliosa was less sensitive to salinity than S. densiflora and the hybrid but was highly growth-limited in response to increased inundation and salinity. S. densiflora was fast-growing in low stress conditions and tolerated moderate interactive stresses. The hybrid produced more biomass, rhizome reserves, and tillers than its parents, even under the most stressful conditions. Transgressivity improved the hybrid's capacity to deal with flooding stress more so than its response to increasing salinity. CONCLUSIONS Based on our observations, we predict that established populations of both native and invasive cordgrasses will experience reduced vegetative and sexual fitness in response to SLR. In particular, the combined effects of high salinity and deep inundation may decrease floret production in S. densiflora, a key trait for the spread of its invasive populations. In contrast, the hybrid likely will be able to sustain its invasiveness with under SLR based on its ability to maintain growth and biomass production under stressful conditions.
Short sleep duration following hospital evaluation for acute coronary syndrome is associated with increased risk of 6-month readmission.

OBJECTIVE Hospital readmission following acute coronary syndrome (ACS) is associated with worsened patient outcomes and financial burden. Short sleep duration is a risk factor for cardiovascular events, and may therefore represent a behavioral factor that increases risk of adverse post-hospitalization outcomes. This study examined whether short sleep duration in the month after hospital evaluation for ACS is associated with 6-month all-cause emergency department (ED) and hospital readmission. METHODS The current analyses entail a secondary analysis of a larger prospective observational cohort study. Sleep duration during the month following hospital evaluation for ACS was assessed subjectively and dichotomized as short (<6 hours) or not short (≥6 hours). A Cox proportional hazards model was used to assess the association between short sleep duration during the month following ACS hospital evaluation and 6-month all-cause ED/hospital readmission. RESULTS A total of 576 participants with complete data were included in analyses. Approximately 34% of participants reported short sleep duration during the month following ACS evaluation. Short sleep duration was significantly associated with 6-month all-cause ED/hospital readmission (HR=2.03; 95% CI: 1.12-3.66) in the model adjusted for age, sex, race/ethnicity, clinical severity, cardiac and renal markers, depression, acute stress, and including a sleep duration x ACS status interaction. CONCLUSIONS Short sleep duration following ACS hospital evaluation is prevalent, and is associated with increased risk of all-cause readmission within 6 months of discharge. Current findings suggest that short sleep duration is an important modifiable behavioral factor to consider following hospital evaluation for ACS.
Three-Dimensional Super-Resolution Imaging Using a Row–Column Array

A 3-D super-resolution (SR) pipeline based on data from a row–column (RC) array is presented. The 3-MHz RC array contains 62 rows and 62 columns with a half wavelength pitch. A synthetic aperture (SA) pulse inversion sequence with 32 positive and 32 negative row emissions is used for acquiring volumetric data using the SARUS research ultrasound scanner. Data received on the 62 columns are beamformed on a GPU for a maximum volume rate of 156 Hz when the pulse repetition frequency is 10 kHz. Simulated and 3-D printed point and flow microphantoms are used for investigating the approach. The flow microphantom contains a 100-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu \text{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> radius tube injected with the contrast agent SonoVue. The 3-D processing pipeline uses the volumetric envelope data to find the bubble’s positions from their interpolated maximum signal and yields a high resolution in all three coordinates. For the point microphantom, the standard deviation on the position is (20.7, 19.8, 9.1) <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${\mu }\text{m}~(x,y,z)$ </tex-math></inline-formula>. The precision estimated for the flow phantom is below <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$23~\mu \text{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> in all three coordinates, making it possible to locate structures on the order of a capillary in all three dimensions. The RC imaging sequence’s point spread function has a size of 0.58 <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula> 1.05 <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula> 0.31 mm<sup>3</sup> (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$1.17\lambda \times 2.12\lambda \times 0.63\lambda $ </tex-math></inline-formula>), so the possible volume resolution is 28900 times smaller than for SA RC B-mode imaging.
Implications of Gene Inheritance Patterns on the Heterosis of Abdominal Fat Deposition in Chickens

Heterosis, a phenomenon characterized by the superior performance of hybrid individuals relative to their parents, has been widely utilized in livestock and crop breeding, while the underlying genetic basis remains elusive in chickens. Here, we performed a reciprocal crossing experiment with broiler and layer chickens and conducted RNA sequencing on liver tissues for reciprocal crosses and their parental lines to identify inheritance patterns of gene expression. Our results showed that heterosis of the abdominal fat percentage was 69.28%–154.71% in reciprocal crosses. Over-dominant genes of reciprocal crosses were significantly enriched in three biological pathways, namely, butanoate metabolism, the synthesis and degradation of ketone bodies, and valine, leucine, and isoleucine degradation. Among these shared over-dominant genes, we found that a lipid-related gene, HMGCL, was enriched in these pathways. Furthermore, we validated this gene as over-dominant using qRT-PCR. Although no shared significant pathway was detected in the high-parent dominant genes of reciprocal crosses, high-parent dominant gene expression was the major gene inheritance pattern in reciprocal crosses and we could not exclude the effect of high-parent dominant genes. These findings suggest that non-additive genes play important roles in the heterosis of important traits in chickens and have important implications regarding our understanding of heterosis.
Alcohol myopia and the distracting effects of hair in face recognition

Background: According to alcohol myopia theory, alcohol reduces cognitive resources and restricts the drinker’s attention to only the more prominent aspects of a visual scene. As human hairstyles are often salient and serve as important facial recognition cues, we consider whether alcohol restricts attention to this region of faces upon initial viewing. Aims: Participants with higher breath alcohol concentrations just prior to encoding a series of unfamiliar faces were expected to be poorer than more sober counterparts at recognising the internal but not external features of those faces at test. Methods: Drinkers in a nearby bar (n=76) were breathalysed and then shown a sequence of 21 full face photos. After a filled five-minute retention interval they completed a facial recognition task requiring them to identify the full, internal or external region of each of these among a sequence of 21 previously unseen (part or whole) faces. Results: As predicted, higher breath concentrations were associated with poorer discrimination of internal but not external face regions. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that alcohol restricts unfamiliar face encoding by narrowing the scope of attention to the exterior region of unfamiliar faces. This has important implications for drunk eyewitness accuracy, though further investigation is needed to see if the effect is mediated by gender, hair length and face feature distinctiveness.
Biochemical and Molecular Characterization of Glycerol Dehydrogenase from Klebsiella pneumoniae

Glycerol dehydrogenase (GlyDH) catalyzes the oxidation of glycerol to dihydroxyacetone (DHA), which is the first step in the glycerol metabolism pathway. GlyDH has attracted great interest for its potential industrial applications, since DHA is a precursor for the synthesis of many commercially valuable chemicals and various drugs. In this study, GlyDH from Klebsiella pneumoniae (KpGlyDH) was overexpressed in E. coli and purified to homogeneity for biochemical and molecular characterization. KpGlyDH exhibits an exclusive preference for NAD+ over NADP+. The enzymatic activity of KpGlyDH is maximal at pH 8.6 and pH 10.0. Of the three common polyol substrates, KpGlyDH showed the highest kcat/Km value for glycerol, which is three times higher than for racemic 2,3-butanediol and 32 times higher than for ethylene glycol. The kcat value for glycerol oxidation is notably high at 87.1 ± 11.3 sec-1. KpGlyDH was shown to exist in an equilibrium between two different oligomeric states, octamer and hexadecamer, by size-exclusion chromatography analysis. KpGlyDH is structurally thermostable, with a Tm of 83.4°C, in thermal denaturation experiment using circular dichroism spectroscopy. The biochemical and biophysical characteristics of KpGlyDH revealed in this study should provide the basis for future research on its glycerol metabolism and possible use in industrial applications.
The State of Animal-Assisted Interventions: Addressing the Contemporary Issues That Will Shape the Future

As the worldwide popularity of animal-assisted interventions (AAIs) increases, the field is quickly approaching a paradigm shift, adjusting its image to incorporate more evidence-based research and aligning its purpose for advancing a new future. Contemporary critical issues that confront the field today include, but are not limited, to research, animal welfare, practice guidelines, and public policy. This article will provide an overview of the history of AAI and the major milestones that the field has undergone. The current state of AAI research will be scrutinized, and the areas that warrant further study will be recommended. Special attention will be given to the current state of animal welfare in AAI, the research that has been done in the area, and practice guidelines that safeguard animal wellbeing. This article will then discuss how evidence-based research and animal welfare guidelines inform the development of comprehensive professional standards and influence changes in public policy regarding AAI. The authors’ perceptions for the field’s future trajectory will be presented, which will include solutions to move the field in the direction that best advances the human-animal bond in research, practice, and public perception.
Implicit Density Projection for Volume Conserving Liquids

We propose a novel implicit density projection approach for hybrid Eulerian/Lagrangian methods like FLIP and APIC to enforce volume conservation of incompressible liquids. Our approach is able to robustly recover from highly degenerate configurations and incorporates volume-conserving boundary handling. A problem of the standard divergence-free pressure solver is that it only has a differential view on density changes. Numerical volume errors, which occur due to large time steps and the limited accuracy of pressure projections, are invisible to the solver and cannot be corrected. Moreover, these errors accumulate over time and can lead to drastic volume changes, especially in long-running simulations or interactive scenarios. Therefore, we introduce a novel method that enforces constant density throughout the fluid. The density itself is tracked via the particles of the hybrid Eulerian/Lagrangian simulation algorithm. To achieve constant density, we use the continuous mass conservation law to derive a pressure Poisson equation which also takes density deviations into account. It can be discretized with standard approaches and easily implemented into existing code by extending the regular pressure solver. Our method enables us to relax the strict time step and solver accuracy requirements of a regular solver, leading to significantly higher performance. Moreover, our approach is able to push fluid particles out of solid obstacles without losing volume and generates more uniform particle distributions, which makes frequent particle resampling unnecessary. We compare the proposed method to standard FLIP and APIC and to previous volume correction approaches in several simulations and demonstrate significant improvements in terms of incompressibility, visual realism, and computational performance.
Effect of Auditory Feedback on Tactile Intensity Perception in a Touchscreen Application

This article presents the effect of auditory feedback on tactile intensity perception, which may be of interest to haptic or audiotactile interaction engineers. An experimental setup consisted of a touchscreen, an electrodynamic shaker, and a closed-back headphone for a subject to interact with the touchscreen and to feel audiotactile feedback. In the experiment, participants were asked to judge perceived tactile intensity, using the magnitude estimation method, in the absence and presence of simultaneous auditory feedback. All data collected from the subjects were analyzed statistically, and then the effect of auditory feedback was investigated focusing on the following aspects: whether the presence of auditory feedback changes perceived tactile intensity, whether the frequency component of auditory feedback affects tactile intensity perception, and whether the coincidence of tactile and auditory frequencies influences on tactile intensity perception. Besides, changes in Stevens's exponent were analyzed to discuss how tactile intensity perception varies due to the auditory feedback. Finally, an equal intensity contour, in the domain of sensation level and frequency of tactile stimulation, was drawn. It can be applied to adjust the level of tactile stimuli for haptic feedback designers to provide a constant perceived tactile intensity considering the presence of auditory feedback.
Nanostructured Perovskite Solar Cells

Over the past decade, lead halide perovskites have emerged as one of the leading photovoltaic materials due to their long carrier lifetimes, high absorption coefficients, high tolerance to defects, and facile processing methods. With a bandgap of ~1.6 eV, lead halide perovskite solar cells have achieved power conversion efficiencies in excess of 25%. Despite this, poor material stability along with lead contamination remains a significant barrier to commercialization. Recently, low-dimensional perovskites, where at least one of the structural dimensions is measured on the nanoscale, have demonstrated significantly higher stabilities, and although their power conversion efficiencies are slightly lower, these materials also open up the possibility of quantum-confinement effects such as carrier multiplication. Furthermore, both bulk perovskites and low-dimensional perovskites have been demonstrated to form hybrids with silicon nanocrystals, where numerous device architectures can be exploited to improve efficiency. In this review, we provide an overview of perovskite solar cells, and report the current progress in nanoscale perovskites, such as low-dimensional perovskites, perovskite quantum dots, and perovskite-nanocrystal hybrid solar cells.
Vehicle Logo Recognition Based on Enhanced Matching for Small Objects, Constrained Region and SSFPD Network

Vehicle Logo Recognition (VLR) is an important part of vehicle behavior analysis and can provide supplementary information for vehicle identification, which is an essential research topic in robotic systems. However, the inaccurate extraction of vehicle logo candidate regions will affect the accuracy of logo recognition. Additionally, the existing methods have low recognition rate for most small vehicle logos and poor performance under complicated environments. A VLR method based on enhanced matching, constrained region extraction and SSFPD network is proposed in this paper to solve the aforementioned problems. A constrained region extraction method based on segmentation of the car head and car tail is proposed to accurately extract the candidate region of logo. An enhanced matching method is proposed to improve the detection performance of small objects, which augment each of training images by copy-pasting small objects many times in the unconstrained region. A single deep neural network based on a reduced ResNeXt model and Feature Pyramid Networks is proposed in this paper, which is named as Single Shot Feature Pyramid Detector (SSFPD). The SSFPD uses the reduced ResNeXt to improve classification performance of the network and retain more detailed information for small-sized vehicle logo detection. Additionally, it uses the Feature Pyramid Networks module to bring in more semantic context information to build several high-level semantic feature maps, which effectively improves recognition performance. Extensive evaluations have been made on self-collected and public vehicle logo datasets. The proposed method achieved 93.79% accuracy on the Common Vehicle Logos Dataset and 99.52% accuracy on another public dataset, respectively, outperforming the existing methods.
Chikungunya Virus-Encoded nsP2, E2, and E1 Strongly Antagonizes the Interferon β Signaling Pathway.

Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) is a single-stranded positive-sense RNA virus, belonging to the genus alphavirus of the Togaviridae family. It causes multiple symptoms, including headache, fever, severe joint and muscle pain, and arthralgia. Since CHIKV was first isolated in Tanzania in 1952, there have been multiple outbreaks of CHIKV. However, its pathogenesis and mechanisms of viral immune evasion have been poorly understood. In addition, exact roles of individual CHIKV genes on the host innate immune response remain largely unknown. To investigate if CHIKV-encoded genes modulate the type I interferon (IFN) response, each and every CHIKV gene was screened for their effects on the induction of the IFN-β promoter. Here we report that CHIKV nsP2, E2 and E1 strongly suppressed activation of the IFN-β promoter induced by the MDA5/RIG-I receptor signaling pathway, suggesting that nsP2, E2, and E1 are the major antagonists against induction of IFN-β. Delineation of underlying mechanisms of CHIKV-mediated inhibition of the IFN-b pathway may help develop virus-specific therapeutics and vaccines.
University of Birmingham International ring trial of a high resolution targeted metabolomics and lipidomics platform for serum and plasma analysis

A challenge facing metabolomics in the analysis of large human cohorts is the cross-laboratory comparability of quantitative metabolomics measurements. In this study, 14 laboratories analyzed various blood specimens using a common experimental protocol provided with Biocrates AbsoluteIDQ p400HR kit, to quantify up to 408 metabolites. The specimens included human plasma and serum from male and female donors, mouse and rat plasma as well as NIST SRM 1950 reference plasma. The metabolite classes covered range from polar (e.g. amino acids and biogenic amines), to nonpolar (e.g. diacyland triacyl-glycerols), and span 11 common metabolite classes. The manuscript describes a strict system suitability testing (SST) criteria used to evaluate each laboratory’s readiness to perform the assay, and provides the SST Skyline documents for public dissemination. The study found approximately 250 metabolites were routinely quantified in the sample types tested, using Orbitrap instruments. Inter-laboratory variance for the NIST SRM-1950 has a median of 10% for amino acids, 24% for biogenic amines, 38% for acylcarnitines, 25% for glycerolipids, 23% for glycerophospholipids, 16% for cholesteryl esters, 15% for sphingolipids, and 9% for hexoses. Comparing to consensus values for NIST SRM-1950, nearly 80% of comparable analytes demonstrated bias of <50% from the reference value. The findings of this study result in recommendations of best practices for system suitability, quality control, and calibration. We demonstrate that with appropriate controls, high-resolution metabolomics can provide accurate results with good precision across laboratories, and the p400HR therefore is a reliable approach for generating consistent and comparable metabolomics data.