Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cry1 Bt Susceptibilities of Fall Armyworm (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) Host Strains

Abstract The fall armyworm, Spodoptera frugiperda (Smith; Lepidoptera: Noctuidae), is a highly polyphagous, multivoltine pest of commercial crops including corn (Zea mays L.), cotton (Gossypium spp. L.), rice (Oryza sativa L.), and pasture grasses. Fall armyworm has become a growing concern in agricultural communities across the Americas as field populations in many locales have evolved resistance to several Cry1 toxins derived from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis Berliner (Bt). An often overlooked aspect of fall armyworm biology is the existence of two host strains, the ‘rice' and ‘corn’ strains. There has been little research devoted to the characterization of fall armyworm host strains, although there is evidence that the rice and corn-strains may differ in their tolerances to Bt toxins expressed by transgenic plants. In this study, diet-based bioassays were conducted to compare the susceptibilities of one rice-strain, two corn-strains, and one rice-corn hybrid population to Cry1Ab, Cry1Ac, and Cry1F protein. Results indicate that the corn-strains and hybrid populations are more tolerant to the Bt toxins, especially to Cry1F, than the rice-strain population. Results from this study, when combined with existing techniques for host strain identification, may aid in the development of regional insect resistance management programs for fall armyworm.
Working Memory Capacity and the Antisaccade Task: A Microanalytic–Macroanalytic Investigation of Individual Differences in Goal Activation and Maintenance

The association between working memory capacity (WMC) and the antisaccade task, which requires subjects to move their eyes and attention away from a strong visual cue, supports the claim that WMC is partially an attentional construct (Kane, Bleckley, Conway, & Engle, 2001; Unsworth, Schrock, & Engle, 2004). Specifically, the WMC-antisaccade relation suggests that WMC helps maintain and execute task goals despite interference from habitual actions. Related work has recently shown that mind wandering (McVay & Kane, 2009, 2012a, 2012b) and reaction time (RT) variability (Unsworth, 2015) are also related to WMC and they partially explain WMC’s prediction of cognitive abilities. Here, we tested whether mind-wandering propensity and intraindividual RT variation account for WMC’s associations with 2 antisaccade-cued choice RT tasks. In addition, we asked whether any influences of WMC, mind wandering, or intraindividual RT variation on antisaccade are moderated by (a) the temporal gap between fixation and the flashing location cue, and (b) whether targets switch sides on consecutive trials. Our quasi-experimental study reexamined a published dataset (Kane et al., 2016) comprising 472 subjects who completed 6 WMC tasks, 5 attentional tasks with mind-wandering probes, 5 tasks from which we measured intraindividual RT variation, and 2 antisaccade tasks with varying fixation-cue gap durations. The WMC-antisaccade association was not accounted for by mind wandering or intraindividual RT variation. WMC’s effects on antisaccade performance were greater with longer fixation-to-cue intervals, suggesting that goal activation processes—beyond the ability to control mind wandering and RT variability—are partially responsible for the WMC-antisaccade relation.
An intelligent system for taxi service: Analysis, prediction and visualization

The fast advancements in sensor data acquisition and vehicle telematics facilitate data collection from taxis and thus, enable building a system to monitor and analyze the citywide taxi service. In this paper, we present a novel and practical system for taxi service analytics and visualization. By utilizing both real time and historical taxi data, the system conducts the estimation on region based passenger wait time for taxi, where recurrent neural network (RNN) and deep learning algorithms are used to build a predictive model. The built RNN-based predictive model achieves 73.3% overall accuracy, which is signiﬁcantly higher than other classic models. Meanwhile, the system conducts the analytics on the taxi pickup hotspots and trip distributions. The experimental results show that around 97% trips are accurately identiﬁed and more than 200 hotspots in the city are successfully detected. Moreover, a novel three dimensional (3D) visualization together with the informative user interface is designed and implemented to ease the information access, and to help system users to understand the characteristics and gain insights of the taxi service.
Requirement for the Mitochondrial Pyruvate Carrier in Mammalian Development Revealed by a Hypomorphic Allelic Series

ABSTRACT Glucose and oxygen are two of the most important molecules transferred from mother to fetus during eutherian pregnancy, and the metabolic fates of these nutrients converge at the transport and metabolism of pyruvate in mitochondria. Pyruvate enters the mitochondrial matrix through the mitochondrial pyruvate carrier (MPC), a complex in the inner mitochondrial membrane that consists of two essential components, MPC1 and MPC2. Here, we define the requirement for mitochondrial pyruvate metabolism during development with a progressive allelic series of Mpc1 deficiency in mouse. Mpc1 deletion was homozygous lethal in midgestation, but Mpc1 hypomorphs and tissue-specific deletion of Mpc1 presented as early perinatal lethality. The allelic series demonstrated that graded suppression of MPC resulted in dose-dependent metabolic and transcriptional changes. Steady-state metabolomics analysis of brain and liver from Mpc1 hypomorphic embryos identified compensatory changes in amino acid and lipid metabolism. Flux assays in Mpc1-deficient embryonic fibroblasts also reflected these changes, including a dramatic increase in mitochondrial alanine utilization. The mitochondrial alanine transaminase GPT2 was found to be necessary and sufficient for increased alanine flux upon MPC inhibition. These data show that impaired mitochondrial pyruvate transport results in biosynthetic deficiencies that can be mitigated in part by alternative anaplerotic substrates in utero.
iTRAQ analysis of a mouse acute myocardial infarction model reveals that vitamin D binding protein promotes cardiomyocyte apoptosis after hypoxia

The proteome profile changes after acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and the roles played by important protein species remain poorly understood. Here, we constructed a mouse AMI model by ligating the left coronary artery of male C57B/6J mice to investigate the molecular changes after AMI on the protein level. Total proteins of the left ventricle were extracted and quantitatively analyzed by isobaric tags using relative and absolute quantitation (iTRAQ) technologies. The transcript and protein levels of important genes were further validated using quantitative polymerase chain reaction and western blot. An oxygen and glucose deprivation/reperfusion cell model was constructed using H9C2 cells to further validate the expression patterns and functions of important proteins after hypoxia. Seven hundred seventy-six proteins were identified as differentially abundant proteins after AMI, of which 406 were accumulated, and 370 were reduced. Gene ontology enrichment analysis showed that the most enriched molecular function category terms were binding, including calcium ion biding, GTP binding, actin binding and lipid binding. The expression levels of vitamin D binding protein (VDBP) and its related proteins were increased in both left ventricular tissue and H9C2 cells after ischemia-hypoxia. Overexpression of VDBP in H9C2 cells reduced vitamin D receptor and promoted the cell apoptosis rate after hypoxia. Our data provided new insights into proteome profile changes after AMI and indicated that VDBP could promote cardiomyocyte apoptosis after hypoxia.
Real-time display of computer generated half-tone perspective pictures

This papper deals with the problem of attaining real-time generation and display of half-tone perspective pictures. The FORTRAN IV program which produces the picture generation simplifies the input require of the user to obtain a given view of an object. Freedom in specifying both the orientation of the object and view point allows complete control over the perspective. The hidden line algorithm utilizes the order in which triangles enter from one scan line to the next and greatly reduce s the amount of scan line computations. With this algorithm, real-time picture generation becomes more of a possibility and real-time display a near-future reality.
High speed 2-D discrete wavelet transform using distributed arithmetic and kogge stone adder technique

Curtail the circuit complexity and improve the performance are proposed; Discrete Wavelet Transform is applied for the stationary and non-stationary signal, it is used to speech signal, audio and video signal etc. Distributed arithmetic (DA) is a general and effective technique to implement multiplierless filters and has been exploited in the past to implement the discrete wavelet transform as well. It's found that DA requires ROM and size of ROM increases exponentially as the increase in number of inputs, which highly increases the circuit complexity. Proposed techniques is based on high speed area efficient 2-D discrete wavelet transform (DWT) using 9/7 filter based modified Distributed Arithmetic (MDA) Technique and kogge stone adder. MDA technique is applied to low and high pass filter of the discrete wavelet transform. This technique consists of adder, shift register and free of multiplier. Design and result are implemented in Xilinx software and verified resistor transfer level (RTL) and waveform.
Improving the accuracy of complex activities recognition using accelerometer-embedded mobile phone classifiers

Using mobile phones for Human Activities Recognition (HAR) is very helpful in observing daily habit of the user and early detecting health diseases or accidents. Many studies have been published which have investigated the HAR with the help of mobile phones. However, these studies mainly focused on simple single locomotion activities. In real-world situations, human activities are often performed in complex manners. This study will investigate recognizing of complex activities with common classifiers those using in recognizing human activities. Data was collected about complex activities, then features were extract, finally the activities were classified. The experiment shows that the recognition accuracy of low level activities is higher than high level in all seven classifiers. Also it was noticed that the highest accuracy was got by IBK classifier (KNN). It got the highest accuracy in both positions, and in the three activity levels. Finally, the activities with armband position got more accuracy in all seven classifiers than in waist position. The study concluded that those classifiers are good to recognize low level activities (simple), but their performance reduces when the complexity of activities increase. So proper classifiers are needed to deal with the complex activities.
Imaging Atherosclerotic Plaque Inflammation via Folate Receptor Targeting Using a Novel 18F-Folate Radiotracer

Folate receptor β (FR-β) is overexpressed on activated, but not resting, macrophages involved in a variety of inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. A pivotal step in atherogenesis is the subendothelial accumulation of macrophages. In nascent lesions, they coordinate the scavenging of lipids and cellular debris to define the likelihood of plaque inflammation and eventually rupture. In this study, we determined the presence of FR-β-expressing macrophages in atherosclerotic lesions by the use of a fluorine-18-labeled folate-based radiotracer. Human endarterectomized specimens were used to measure gene expression levels of FR-β and CD68. Increased FR-β and CD68 levels were found in atherosclerotic plaques compared to normal artery walls by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction. Western blotting and immunohistochemistry demonstrated prominent FR-β protein levels in plaques. FR- β-positive cells colocalized with activated macrophages (CD68) in plaque tissue. Carotid sections incubated with 3′-aza-2′- [18F]fluorofolic acid displayed increased accumulation in atherosclerotic plaques through in vitro autoradiography. Specific binding of the radiotracer correlated with FR-β-expressing macrophages. These results demonstrate high FR-β expression in atherosclerotic lesions of human carotid tissue correlating with CD68-positive macrophages. Areas of high 3′-aza-2′-[18F]fluorofolic acid binding within the lesions represented FR-β-expressing macrophages. Selectively targeting FR-β-positive macrophages through folate-based radiopharmaceuticals may be useful for noninvasive imaging of plaque inflammation.
PEPFAR - 15 Years and Counting the Lives Saved.

PEPFAR — 15 Years and Counting the Lives Saved Launched in 2003, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief has had a major impact on the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Support for the program should continue, allowing it to serve as a model for the control and elimination of other devastating infectious diseases.
High bandwidth sensorless synchronisation strategies for current regulated grid connected converters

Distributed generation (DG) sources are commonly interfaced to the grid using a current regulated converter, which must be synchronized to the grid. Typically this is achieved using a phase locked loop (PLL), which must reject any harmonic distortion in the grid voltage. Conventionally this necessitates a PLL design with a low bandwidth, which then degrades the PLL's dynamic capability. In this paper an indirect or sensorless synchronization strategy is presented whereby the PLL is fed instead from the output of a stationary frame Proportional Resonant (PR) current regulator. It is shown that this structure allows for an arbitrary increase in the PLL bandwidth, with the harmonic disturbance rejection properties of the strategy further enhanced by using multiple harmonic resonators in the PR current regulator. Simulation results are presented to validate the theoretical development.
Using the Theory of Planned Behavior to predict HPV vaccination intentions of college men

ABSTRACT Objective: The purpose of this study was to test Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) constructs in predicting human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination behavioral intentions of vaccine-eligible college men. Participants: Participants were unvaccinated college men aged 18–26 years attending a large public university in the southeastern United States during Spring 2015. Methods: A nonexperimental, cross-sectional study design was employed. Instrumentation comprised a qualitative elicitation study, expert panel review, pilot test, test-retest, and internal consistency, construct validity, and predictive validity assessments using data collected from an online self-report questionnaire. Results: The sample consisted of 256 college men, and the final structural model exhibited acceptable fit of the data. Attitude toward the behavior (β = .169) and subjective norm (β = 0.667) were significant predictors of behavioral intention, accounting for 58% of its variance. Conclusions: Practitioners may utilize this instrument for the development and evaluation of TPB-based interventions to increase HPV vaccination intentions of undergraduate college men.
Soil Correlates and Mortality from Giraffe Skin Disease in Tanzania

Abstract Giraffe skin disease (GSD) is a disorder of undetermined etiology that causes lesions on the forelimbs of Masai giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis tippelskirchi) in Tanzania, East Africa. We examined soil correlates of prevalence of GSD from 951 giraffe in 14 sites in Tanzania, and estimated mortality using 3 yr of longitudinal mark–recapture data from 382 giraffe with and without GSD lesions, in Tarangire National Park (TNP). Spatial variation in GSD prevalence was best explained by soil fertility, measured as cation exchange capacity. We found no mortality effect of GSD on adult giraffe in TNP. Based on our findings, GSD is unlikely to warrant immediate veterinary intervention, but continued monitoring is recommended to ensure early detection if GSD-afflicted animals begin to show signs of increased mortality or other adverse effects.
Ecological Momentary Assessment in Physical Activity Research

Theories explaining why individuals participate in physical activity often do not take into account within-person variation or dynamic patterns of change. Time-intensive methods such as Ecological Momentary Assessment are more conducive to capturing time- and spatially-varying explanatory factors and intraindividual fluctuations than traditional methods and thus may yield new insights into the prediction and modeling of physical activity behavior.
Diagnosis of Cerebral Venous Thrombosis with Routine Magnetic Resonance: An Update

Magnetic resonance imaging and angiography is the technique of choice in the diagnosis and follow-up of cerebral venous thrombosis: Thrombosis appears as an absence of flow void on spin echo images and lack of signal in angiographic techniques. The thrombus signal intensity is different on T1 and T2 spin echo weighted images and evolves according to hemoglobin degradation. Recognition of pitfalls and artefacts related to the different magnetic resonance imaging techniques employed is essential to interpret dural venous sinus thrombosis. In this paper the imaging of 27 patients with cerebral venous thromboses is reviewed. We describe the type of signal abnormalities, the different types of clot- and flow-related artefacts, and the indirect signs of cerebral venous thrombosis.
Pharyngeal Cross-Sectional Area and Pharyngeal Compliance in Normal Males and Females

Obstructive sleep apnea syndrome is ascribed to pharyngeal dysfunction, but there are only a few reports about the normal morphological values in this anatomical region. We measured the pharyngeal cross-sectional area and the compliance (collapsibility), using the acoustic reflection technique with air breathing, in 181 healthy subjects (age 21–69 years). We assessed their sex-related differences, and the effects of age, body size and body postures on these parameters. The pharyngeal cross-sectional area, defined as the region from the fauces to the glottis, posturally changed with successive decreases in the sitting, left lateral decubitus and supine positions. The area was significantly greater in male than in female subjects in the sitting position (p < 0.01), but no difference was present in the recumbent positions. The pharyngeal cross-sectional area did not correlate with either age or body size. The specific pharyngeal compliance was greater in the males than in the females (p < 0.01) and increased with age only in the male subjects.
Revisiting Activation of and Mechanism of Resistance to Compound IQG-607 in Mycobacterium tuberculosis

ABSTRACT IQG-607 is a metal complex previously reported as a promising anti-tuberculosis (TB) drug against isoniazid (INH)-resistant strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Unexpectedly, we found that INH-resistant clinical isolates were resistant to IQG-607. Spontaneous mutants resistant to IQG-607 were subjected to whole-genome sequencing, and all sequenced colonies carried alterations in the katG gene. The katG(S315T) mutation was sufficient to confer resistance to IQG-607 in both MIC assays and inside macrophages. Moreover, overexpression of the InhA(S94A) protein caused IQG-607's resistance.
Dealing with the structured scene in visual odometry(VO): Incomplete SURF

In this paper we study the Visual Odometry (VO) in the structured environment. Harris, SURF, ORB, such feature extraction methods are often employed by current VO methods. They are good at corner detection, but, tend to fail in an environment full of structure lines. Here we focus on just one direction of the gradient, and modify the SURF method to make it fit in the specified scene, namely, the Incomplete SURF method. As it is supposed to run in a VO framework, the calculation of the transition matrix between frames has to be adjusted accordingly. We tried the proposed combined SURF and Incomplete SURF method in our self-established dataset (seldom corners, a lot of structure lines), and succeeded in estimating the transition matrix where pure SURF failed.
Sensitivity to Pigment-Dispersing Factor (PDF) Is Cell-Type Specific among PDF-Expressing Circadian Clock Neurons in the Madeira Cockroach

Transplantation studies have pinpointed the circadian clock of the Madeira cockroach to the accessory medulla (AME) of the brain’s optic lobes. The AME is innervated by approximately 240 adjacent neuropeptidergic neurons, including 12 pigment-dispersing factor (PDF)-expressing neurons anterior to the AME (aPDFMEs). Four of the aPDFMEs project contralaterally, controlling locomotor activity rhythms of the night-active cockroach. The present in vitro Ca2+ imaging analysis focuses on contralaterally projecting AME neurons and their responses to PDF, GABA, and acetylcholine (ACh). First, rhodamine-dextran backfills from the contralateral optic stalk identified contralaterally projecting AME neurons, which were then dispersed in primary cell cultures. After characterization of PDF, GABA, and ACh responses, PDF immunocytochemistry identified ipsilaterally and contralaterally projecting PDFMEs. All PDF-sensitive clock neurons, PDF-immunoreactive clock neurons, and the majority of ipsilaterally and contralaterally projecting cells were excited by ACh. GABA inhibited all PDF-expressing clock neurons, and about half of other ipsilaterally projecting and most contralaterally projecting clock neurons. For the first time, we identified PDF autoreceptors in PDF-secreting cockroach circadian pacemakers. The medium-sized aPDFMEs and all other contralaterally projecting PDF-sensitive clock cells were inhibited by PDF. The ipsilaterally remaining small PDF-sensitive clock cells were activated by PDF. Only the largest aPDFME did not express PDF autoreceptors. We hypothesize that opposing PDF signaling generates 2 different ensembles of clock cells with antiphasic activity, regulating and maintaining a constant phase relationship between rest and activity cycles of the night-active cockroach.
Empirical Exploring Word-Character Relationship for Chinese Sentence Representation

This article addresses the problem of learning compositional Chinese sentence representations, which represent the meaning of a sentence by composing the meanings of its constituent words. In contrast to English, a Chinese word is composed of characters, which contain rich semantic information. However, this information has not been fully exploited by existing methods. In this work, we introduce a novel, mixed character-word architecture to improve the Chinese sentence representations by utilizing rich semantic information of inner-word characters. We propose two novel strategies to reach this purpose. The first one is to use a mask gate on characters, learning the relation among characters in a word. The second one is to use a max-pooling operation on words to adaptively find the optimal mixture of the atomic and compositional word representations. Finally, the proposed architecture is applied to various sentence composition models, which achieves substantial performance gains over baseline models on sentence similarity task. To further verify the generalization ability of our model, we employ the learned sentence representations as features in sentence classification task, question classification task, and sentence entailment task. Results have shown that the proposed mixed character-word sentence representation models outperform both the character-based and word-based models.