Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evolution of body size in Galapagos marine iguanas

Body size is one of the most important traits of organisms and allows predictions of an individual's morphology, physiology, behaviour and life history. However, explaining the evolution of complex traits such as body size is difficult because a plethora of other traits influence body size. Here I review what we know about the evolution of body size in a group of island reptiles and try to generalize about the mechanisms that shape body size. Galapagos marine iguanas occupy all 13 larger islands in this Pacific archipelago and have maximum island body weights between 900 and 12 000 g. The distribution of body sizes does not match mitochondrial clades, indicating that body size evolves independently of genetic relatedness. Marine iguanas lack intra- and inter-specific food competition and predators are not size-specific, discounting these factors as selective agents influencing body size. Instead I hypothesize that body size reflects the trade-offs between sexual and natural selection. We found that sexual selection continuously favours larger body sizes. Large males establish display territories and some gain over-proportional reproductive success in the iguanas' mating aggregations. Females select males based on size and activity and are thus responsible for the observed mating skew. However, large individuals are strongly selected against during El Niño-related famines when dietary algae disappear from the intertidal foraging areas. We showed that differences in algae sward (‘pasture’) heights and thermal constraints on large size are causally responsible for differences in maximum body size among populations. I hypothesize that body size in many animal species reflects a trade-off between foraging constraints and sexual selection and suggest that future research could focus on physiological and genetic mechanisms determining body size in wild animals. Furthermore, evolutionary stable body size distributions within populations should be analysed to better understand selection pressures on individual body size.
A spot segmentation method of low contrast and strong noise based on NSCT and 2D histogram

Spot segmentation is an important section of detecting coal level of coal bin in computer vision. When it is difficult to proceed, analyze and locate the spot position for the image obtained under the condition of low contrast and strong noise. This paper aim at achieving spot segmentation in complex underground, a novel spot segmentation method based on nonsubsampled contourlet transform (NSCT) and 2D histogram is proposed. First, the original image is decomposed into different scales and directional subbands by using NSCT. Then, the coefficients are adjusted by adopting differently adaptive transform functions to different subbands and by adopting differently adaptive threshold and spot-sensitive factor. Last, the extraordinary segmentation effects are achieved by 2D histogram threshold segmentation method through the spatial correlation of gray level and the flexibility as well as efficiency of the threshold searching of multi-resolution threshold segmentation method. Simulating results indicate that this method can efficiently implement spot segmentation, better keep spot structure and preserve spot textures and details.
The structure and connections of the developing inferior olivary nucleus of the rhesus monkey (Macaca mulatta)

Structural and morphological changes were examined in the inferior olivary complex of 25 rhesus monkeys that were 60 days gestation to three months after parturition. At different ages, one‐half brain stem was sectioned sagittaly, and when possible the symmetrical half was sectioned in either the coronal or the horizontal plane. Serial sections were stained by the silver reduction method of Stotler ('51).
CHEMICAL EXPOSURE GUIDELINES FOR DEPLOYED MILITARY PERSONNEL

In light of the absence of guidelines and standards applicable to deployed military personnel, the U.S. Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine (USACHPPM) has completed Technical Guide 230A, Short-term Chemical Exposure Guidelines for Deployed Military Personnel. This guide provides estimated concentration levels associated with various types of effects for short-term exposures from 1 hour up to 2 weeks. A second TG (TG230B, Long-term Chemical Exposure Guidelines for Deployed Military Personnel) is being developed to address potentially longer deployment related exposures (i.e. greater than 2 weeks up to 1 year). This article focuses on TG230A which describes varying severity levels and health effects associated with short-term chemical exposures in a format consistent with the existing doctrinal military risk management paradigm. It is a consolidated reference tool for trained military medical staff to evaluate different chemical hazards, and will ensure more expedient risk management decisions during deployments. The TG also establishes the standard reference for pre- and post-deployment evaluations and risk management decisions, including determinations of resource requirements and equipment specifications.
Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience Computational Neuroscience Methods Article

measurement at time t, z(t), is approximated by a linear sum of basis vectors ψ 1 , ψ 2 ,…called " principal components " , i.e., z() () (). t t t 1 2 = + + α α 1 2 ψ ψ The principal components ψ i are selected such that they maximize an objective function defi ned as the power of the associated time course of the coeffi cients α i (t). Moreover, the n components with maximal power provide the best linear approximation of the data using n components in a well-defi ned mathematical sense. For neuroscientifi c measurements, which are typically redundant, a small number of components suffi ce for approximating the data, and the dimensionality can be dramatically reduced. While highly successful in dimensionality reduction, PCA often performs poorly in terms of separating the signal from the noise. It is rarely the case that a particular principal component can be associated solely with the signal, and it is much more common that the principal components are " non-interpretable " and refl ect useless mixtures of signal and noise. As a result, PCA is often disregarded as a rigorous method for data analysis. We observe that both the success of PCA in dimensionality reduction and its failure in separating the signal from the noise follow from the PCA objective function. While maximizing the power guarantees an optimal low dimensional representation, this objective function is completely " blind " to the fact that data combines a signal, which is of interest , and a noise, which should be suppressed. Moreover, the PCA construction is ignorant to the fact that the data constitutes a mul-tidimensional time-series, in which the samples, i.e., measurements at different points in time, are correlated. In this contribution we propose an algorithm suitable for the analysis of multichannel measurements. We refer to the algorithm as " temporally structured components analysis " (TSCA). The algorithm adheres to the PCA framework by seeking components with high power. However, in order to avoid the mixing of the signal and the noise, it seeks components that maximize the power originating from the signal while minimizing power arising from the noise. The main challenge here is to tell apart the signal from the noise.
[Umbilical cord plasma endothelin 1 and cyclic guanosine concentrations monophosphate at delivery in pregnancy complicated by diabetes mellitus].

OBJECTIVES The aim of the study was to assess the relationship between maternal and umbilical cord plasma concentrations of endothelin 1 (ET-1) and cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP) in women with diabetes mellitus (DM). MATERIAL AND METHODS The study was performed on 19 neonates of women with pregestational DM, 23 neonates of women with gestational diabetes (GDM), and 18 neonates of healthy uncomplicated pregnancies. RESULTS We found that umbilical and maternal ET-1 and cGMP concentrations in pregestational DM or GDM women were not changed in comparison with the controls. In women without DM, positive correlations between maternal (r=0.64; p<0.005) and umbilical cord plasma (r=0.60; p<0.009) ET-1 and cGMP concentrations were found. However in pregnancies complicated by pregestational DM or GDM such associations were not observed. CONCLUSIONS Umbilical and maternal plasma concentrations of ET-1 and cGMP in pregnant women with pregestational diabetes as well as gestational diabetes were not changed in comparison with the non-diabetic women. In women without DM maternal and umbilical cord plasma ET-1 and cGMP concentrations showed positive correlations. In pregnancies complicated by pregestational DM or GDM maternal and umbilical cord plasma ET-1 and cGMP concentrations were not interdependent.
Axillary dissection vs no axillary dissection in women with invasive breast cancer and sentinel node metastasis: a randomized clinical trial.

CONTEXT Sentinel lymph node dissection (SLND) accurately identifies nodal metastasis of early breast cancer, but it is not clear whether further nodal dissection affects survival. OBJECTIVE To determine the effects of complete axillary lymph node dissection (ALND) on survival of patients with sentinel lymph node (SLN) metastasis of breast cancer. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PATIENTS The American College of Surgeons Oncology Group Z0011 trial, a phase 3 noninferiority trial conducted at 115 sites and enrolling patients from May 1999 to December 2004. Patients were women with clinical T1-T2 invasive breast cancer, no palpable adenopathy, and 1 to 2 SLNs containing metastases identified by frozen section, touch preparation, or hematoxylin-eosin staining on permanent section. Targeted enrollment was 1900 women with final analysis after 500 deaths, but the trial closed early because mortality rate was lower than expected. INTERVENTIONS All patients underwent lumpectomy and tangential whole-breast irradiation. Those with SLN metastases identified by SLND were randomized to undergo ALND or no further axillary treatment. Those randomized to ALND underwent dissection of 10 or more nodes. Systemic therapy was at the discretion of the treating physician. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Overall survival was the primary end point, with a noninferiority margin of a 1-sided hazard ratio of less than 1.3 indicating that SLND alone is noninferior to ALND. Disease-free survival was a secondary end point. RESULTS Clinical and tumor characteristics were similar between 445 patients randomized to ALND and 446 randomized to SLND alone. However, the median number of nodes removed was 17 with ALND and 2 with SLND alone. At a median follow-up of 6.3 years (last follow-up, March 4, 2010), 5-year overall survival was 91.8% (95% confidence interval [CI], 89.1%-94.5%) with ALND and 92.5% (95% CI, 90.0%-95.1%) with SLND alone; 5-year disease-free survival was 82.2% (95% CI, 78.3%-86.3%) with ALND and 83.9% (95% CI, 80.2%-87.9%) with SLND alone. The hazard ratio for treatment-related overall survival was 0.79 (90% CI, 0.56-1.11) without adjustment and 0.87 (90% CI, 0.62-1.23) after adjusting for age and adjuvant therapy. CONCLUSION Among patients with limited SLN metastatic breast cancer treated with breast conservation and systemic therapy, the use of SLND alone compared with ALND did not result in inferior survival. TRIAL REGISTRATION clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT00003855.
Contribution of Eukaryotic-Type Serine/Threonine Kinase to Stress Response and Virulence of Streptococcus suis

Streptococcus suis serotype 2 (SS2) is an important swine and human pathogen responsible for septicemia and meningitis. The bacterial homologues of eukaryotic-type serine/threonine kinases (ESTKs) have been reported to play critical roles in various cellular processes. To investigate the role of STK in SS2, an isogenic stk mutant strain (Δstk) and a complemented strain (CΔstk) were constructed. The Δstk showed a significant decrease in adherence to HEp-2 cells, compared with the wild-type strain, and a reduced survival ratio in whole blood. In addition, the Δstk exhibited a notable reduced tolerance of environmental stresses including high temperature, acidic pH, oxidative stress, and high osmolarity. More importantly, the Δstk was attenuated in both the CD1 mouse and piglet models of infection. The results of quantitative reverse transcription-PCR (qRT-PCR) analysis indicated that the expressions of a few genes involving in adherence, stress response and virulence were clearly decreased in the Δstk mutant strain. Our data suggest that SsSTK is required for virulence and stress response in SS2.
≃ synth On Compositional Supervisor Synthesis for Discrete Event Systems

Over the past decades, human dependability on technical devices has rapidly increased. Many activities of such devices can be described by sequences of events, where the occurrence of an event causes the system to go from one state to another. This is elegantly modeled by automata. Systems that are modeled in this way are referred to as discrete event systems. Many of these systems appear in settings that are safety critical, and small failures may result in huge financial and/or human losses. Having a control function is one way to guarantee system correctness. Supervisory control theory, proposed by Ramadge and Wonham, provides a general framework to automatically calculate control functions for discrete event systems. Given a model of the system, the plant, to be controlled, and a specification of the desired behaviour, it is possible to automatically compute, i.e. synthesise, a supervisor that ensures that the specification is satisfied. Usually, systems are modular and consist of several components interacting with each other. Calculating a supervisor for such a system in the standard way involves constructing the complete model of the considered system which may lead to the inherent complexity problem known as the state-space explosion problem. This problem occurs when composition of the components results in a model with a huge number of states, as the number of states grows exponentially with the number of components. This problem makes it intractable to examine the states of a system due to lack of memory and time. This thesis uses a compositional approach to alleviate the state-space explosion problem. A compositional approach exploits the modular structure of a system to reduce the size of the model of the system. The thesis mainly focuses on developing the methodology for abstracting a system in a way that the final synthesis result is the same as it would have been for the nonabstracted system. The algorithms have been implemented in the discrete event system software tool Supremica and have been applied to compute modular supervisors for several large industrial models.
Energy gap bowing and refractive index spectrum of AlInN and AlGaInN

High-quality polycrystalline AlInN films are deposited by low-temperature magnetron reactive sputtering. The energy band gap is measured across the entire compositional range and strong band gap bowing is observed. Within the transparency wavelength region, the effect of AlInN composition on the refractive index spectrum is strongest at shorter wavelength. Taking these measurements into account, non-linear interpolation formulas are employed to predict band gap and refractive index of quaternary AlGaInN for arbitrary compositions.
Identifying Obstructive Sleep Apnea by Exploiting Fine-Grained BCG Features Based on Event Phase Segmentation

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is regarded as one of the most common sleep-related breathing disorders, which causes various diseases and affects people's daily life severely. Up to now, massive efforts have been devoted to identifying OSA events during sleep based on different signals (e.g., PSG, ECG, nasal airflow and EMG, etc.). However, there still are more or less shortcomings in current studies. In this paper, we propose a novel framework to improve the performance of identifying OSA events. Particularly, the key idea of our framework is to divide each potential event segment (i.e., a data segment that may or may not contain an OSA event) into different phases, from which we further extract fine-grained features to characterize respiratory pattern comprehensively. Concretely, we first automatically locate potential event segments from raw ballistocardiography (BCG) data by identifying arousals. Afterwards, each potential event segment is divided into three phases (i.e., Apnea Phase, Respiratory Effort Phase and Arousal Phase) by an adaptive threshold-based division algorithm. Based on these phases, we further extract and select efficient features that can characterize respiratory pattern from different aspects. Finally, these potential event segments are classified into OSA events or non-OSA events using BP neural network. Experimental results based on a real BCG dataset that contains 3,790 OSA events and 2,556 non-OSA events show that our framework outperforms the baselines and the precision, recall and AUC reach 94.6%, 93.1%, and 0.951, respectively.
The Gut-enriched Krüppel-like Factor (Krüppel-like Factor 4) Mediates the Transactivating Effect of p53 on the p21 WAF1/Cip1 Promoter*

An important mechanism by which the tumor suppressor p53 maintains genomic stability is to induce cell cycle arrest through activation of the cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor p21 WAF1/Cip1 gene. We show that the gene encoding the gut-enriched Krüppel-like factor (GKLF, KLF4) is concurrently induced with p21 WAF1/Cip1 during serum deprivation and DNA damage elicited by methyl methanesulfonate. The increases in expression of both Gklf and p21 WAF1/Cip1 due to DNA damage are dependent on p53. Moreover, during the first 30 min of methyl methanesulfonate treatment, the rise in Gklf mRNA level precedes that in p21 WAF1/Cip1 , suggesting that GKLF may be involved in the induction of p21 WAF1/Cip1 . Indeed, GKLF activates p21 WAF1/Cip1 through a specific Sp1-likecis-element in the p21 WAF1/Cip1 proximal promoter. The same element is also required by p53 to activate the p21 WAF1/Cip1 promoter, although p53 does not bind to it. Potential mechanisms by which p53 activates the p21 WAF1/Cip1 promoter include a physical interaction between p53 and GKLF and the transcriptional induction of Gklf by p53. Consequently, the two transactivators cause a synergistic induction of the p21 WAF1/Cip1 promoter activity. The physiological relevance of GKLF in mediating p53-dependent induction of p21 WAF1/Cip1 is demonstrated by the ability of antisenseGklf oligonucleotides to block the production of p21 WAF1/Cip1 in response to p53 activation. These findings suggest that GKLF is an essential mediator of p53 in the transcriptional induction of p21 WAF1/Cip1 and may be part of a novel pathway by which cellular responses to stress are modulated.
Augmenting the reality with 3D sound sources

Augmented reality (AR) is not only a new type of computer entertainment, but it can also be used for serious applications. Because the user is directly involved in the virtual world, enhanced reality can be more engaging than traditional computer work. Especially for a better sound impression, AR could be a solution for many problems. The sound component is still missing in current AR applications, which combine live video and computer graphics to produce real-time visual effects.
The corpus callosum modulates spindle‐burst activity within homotopic regions of somatosensory cortex in newborn rats

The corpus callosum, a major interhemispheric fiber tract, mediates communication between homotopic regions within the primary somatosensory cortex (S1). Recently, in 1‐ to 6‐day‐old rats, brief bursts of oscillatory activity – called spindle‐bursts (SBs) – were described in cortical somatosensory areas following sensory feedback from sleep‐related myoclonic twitches or specific peripheral stimulation. To determine whether interhemispheric communication via the corpus callosum modulates the expression of SBs during this early period of development, we investigated the spontaneous expression of SBs in unanesthetized 1‐ to 6‐day‐old rats as well as SBs evoked by plantar surface stimulation of the forepaw. We hypothesized that surgically disrupting transcallosal communication (i.e. with callosotomy) or unilateral pharmacological manipulation of S1 activity (e.g. by blocking muscarinic receptors) would alter S1 activity in one or both hemispheres. First, callosotomy doubled the rate of spontaneous, twitch‐related SBs in left and right S1s by reducing the interval between successive SBs. Second, unilateral infusion into the left S1 of the muscarinic receptor antagonist, scopolamine, inhibited SBs in response to right forepaw stimulation; importantly, SBs were now disinhibited in the right S1 to right forepaw stimulation, thus ‘unmasking’ an ipsilateral representation. Subsequent callosotomy reinstated contralateral SB responses in the left S1. Finally, tactile and proprioceptive stimulation produced dissociable neurophysiological S1 responses; specifically, SBs were produced in response to proprioceptive, but not tactile, stimulation. We conclude that the corpus callosum modulates functionally inhibitory interactions between homotopic regions in left and right S1s during the early developmental period when organized neurophysiological activity is first detected in the neocortex.
Synthesizing Switching Controllers for Hybrid Systems by Continuous Invariant Generation

We extend a template-based approach for synthesizing switching controllers for semi-algebraic hybrid systems, in which all expressions are polynomials. This is achieved by combining a QE (quantifier elimination)-based method for generating continuous invariants with a qualitative approach for predefining templates. Our synthesis method is relatively complete with regard to a given family of predefined templates. Using qualitative analysis, we discuss heuristics to reduce the numbers of parameters appearing in the templates. To avoid too much human interaction in choosing templates as well as the high computational complexity caused by QE, we further investigate applications of the SOS (sum-of-squares) relaxation approach and the template polyhedra approach in continuous invariant generation, which are both well supported by efficient numerical solvers.
Ectodomain shedding of TβRIII is required for TβRIII-mediated suppression of TGF-β signaling and breast cancer migration and invasion

The type III transforming growth factor β (TGF-β) receptor (TβRIII), also known as betaglycan, is the most abundantly expressed TGF-β receptor. TβRIII suppresses breast cancer progression by inhibiting migration, invasion, metastasis, and angiogenesis. TβRIII binds TGF-β ligands, with membrane-bound TβRIII presenting ligand to enhance TGF-β signaling. However, TβRIII can also undergo ectodomain shedding, releasing soluble TβRIII, which binds and sequesters ligand to inhibit downstream signaling. To investigate the relative contributions of soluble and membrane-bound TβRIII on TGF-β signaling and breast cancer biology, we defined TβRIII mutants with impaired (ΔShed-TβRIII) or enhanced ectodomain shedding (SS-TβRIII). Inhibiting ectodomain shedding of TβRIII increased TGF-β responsiveness and abrogated TβRIII's ability to inhibit breast cancer cell migration and invasion. Conversely, expressing SS-TβRIII, which increased soluble TβRIII production, decreased TGF-β signaling and increased TβRIII-mediated inhibition of breast cancer cell migration and invasion. Of importance, SS-TβRIII-mediated increases in soluble TβRIII production also reduced breast cancer metastasis in vivo. Taken together, these studies suggest that the ratio of soluble TβRIII to membrane-bound TβRIII is an important determinant for regulation of TβRIII- and TGF-β-mediated signaling and biology.