Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Forest fire and climate change in western North America: insights from sediment charcoal records

Millennial-scale records of forest fire provide important baseline information for ecosystem management, especially in regions with too few recent fires to describe the historical range of variability. Charcoal records from lake sediments and soil profiles are well suited for reconstructing the incidence of past fire and its relationship to changing climate and vegetation. We highlight several records from western North America and their relevance in reconstructing historical forest dynamics, fire-climate relationships, and feedbacks between vegetation and fire under climate change. Climatic effects on fire regimes are evident in many regions, but comparisons of paleo-fire records sometimes show a lack of synchrony, indicating that local factors substantially affect fire occurrence, even over long periods. Furthermore, the specific impacts of vegetation change on fire regimes differ among regions with different vegetation histories. By documenting the effects on fire patterns of major changes in climate and vegetation, paleo-fire records can be used to test the mechanistic models required for the prediction of future variations in fire.
Epstein-Barr virus as a possible etiologic agent in primary central nervous system lymphoma in immunocompetent individuals.

BACKGROUND Primary central nervous system lymphoma (PCNSL) occurs in both immunocompetent and immunosuppressed individuals. The role of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) has been implicated in immunosuppressed individuals but its role is not established in immunocompetent individuals. AIMS To study the possible role of EBV in PCNSL in immunocompetent individuals. SETTING AND DESIGN Retrospective study. MATERIALS AND METHODS Thirty patients with PCNSL were studied immunohistochemically with antibodies to CD45, CD20, CD3 and EBV latent membrane protein-1 (EBV LMP-1). In situ hybridization was done in 19 patients where enough tissue was available using a specific oligonucleotide probe for EBV-Early RNA (EBER). RESULTS All the patients were immunocompetent and mean age was 41.6 years. Histologically they were diffuse large cell lymphoma: 25 (83.3%) were B cell, 1(3.3%) was T cell and 4 (13.3%) were unclassified. EBV LMP-1 showed variable membrane and cytoplasmic positivity in 24 (80%) patients. In situ hybridization for EBER was negative in all the 19 patients studied. CONCLUSION In this region of the world probably EBV has no etiologic role in PCNSL in immunocompetent individuals.
Stathmin reveals dissociable roles of the basolateral amygdala in parental and social behaviors

Innate parental behaviors and adult social interactions are essential for survival of the individual along with the species as a whole. Because these behaviors require threat assessment of the environment, it is plausible that they are regulated by the amygdala-associated neural circuitry of fear. However, the amygdala is not a single anatomic and functional unit, and nuclei of the amygdala have multiple inter- and intra-connections. This poses a question as to the exact role of different amygdala nuclei in these behaviors and the mechanisms involved. The basolateral complex of the amygdala nuclei (BLA) is particularly interesting in this regard: although the BLA role in forming memories for learned fear is established, the BLA role in innate behaviors is not well understood. We recently demonstrated that mice without an inhibitor of microtubules, stathmin, a gene enriched in BLA-associated circuitry, have deficiency in innate and learned fear. Here we show that the deficiency in fear processing in stathmin−/− females leads to improper threat assessment, which in turn affects innate parental care and adult social interactions. Profound deficiency is observed in maternal behavior of stathmin−/− females: they lack motivation for retrieving pups and are unable to choose a safe location for nest-building. Remarkably, stathmin−/− females have an enhancement in social interactions. BLA lesions in WT mice produce similar effects in maternal and social behaviors, confirming vital BLA participation. The findings implicate stathmin as the critical molecular component linking the BLA-associated neural circuitry with innate parental behaviors and adult social interactions.
Psychiatric disorders in a U.S. urban community: 1975-1976.

The authors point out that new findings in psychiatric genetics and psychopharmacology support the heterogeneity of psychiatric disorders. They present data on the current rates of specific psychiatric disorders, using a recently developed diagnostic technique in a survey conducted in New Haven, Conn. , during 1975-1976. The survey showed that depressive disorders are the most common diagnoses.
Balancing font sizes for flexibility in automated document layout

This paper presents an improved approach for automatically laying out content onto a document page, where the number and size of the items are unknown in advance. Our solution leverages earlier results from Oliveira (2008) wherein layouts are modeled by a guillotine partitioning of the page. The benefit of such method is its efficiency and ability to place as many items on a page as desired. In our model, items have flexible representations and texts may freely change their font sizes to fit a particular area of the page. As a consequence, the optimization goal is to find a layout that produces the least noticeable difference between font sizes, in order to obtain the most aesthetically pleasing layout. Finding the best areas for text requires knowledge of how typesetting engines actually render text for a particular setting. As such, we also model the behavior of the TeX typesetting engine when computing the height to be occupied by a text block as a function of the font size, text length and line width. An analytical approximation for text placement is then presented, refined by using curve fitting over TeX-generated data. As a practical result, the resulting layouts for a newspaper generation application are also presented. Finally, we discuss these results and directions for further research.
How Fast Was Wild Wheat Domesticated?

Prehistoric cultivation of wild wheat in the Fertile Crescent led to the selection of mutants with indehiscent (nonshattering) ears, which evolved into modern domestic wheat. Previous estimates suggested that this transformation was rapid, but our analyses of archaeological plant remains demonstrate that indehiscent domesticates were slow to appear, emerging ~9500 years before the present, and that dehiscent (shattering) forms were still common in cultivated fields ~7500 years before the present. Slow domestication implies that after cultivation began, wild cereals may have remained unchanged for a long period, supporting claims that agriculture originated in the Near East ~10,500 years before the present.
In vitro reconstitution of exocytosis from plasma membrane and isolated secretory vesicles

We describe the reconstitution of exocytotic function through recombination of purified cortical secretory vesicles (CVs) and plasma membrane from sea urchin eggs. CVs were dislodged from a cell surface complex preparation by gentle homogenization in an isotonic dissociation buffer, and purified by differential centrifugation. CV- free plasma membrane fragments were obtained by mechanically dislodging CVs from cortical lawn (CL) preparations with a jet of CL isolation buffer. This procedure produced a "plasma membrane lawn" preparation, consisting of plasma membrane fragments attached via their vitelline layer (an extracellular glycocalyx) to a polylysine-coated microscope slide. When freshly prepared CVs were incubated with plasma membrane lawns, CVs reassociated with the cytoplasmic face of the plasma membrane, forming an exocytotically competent, reconstituted cortical lawn (RL). Exocytosis in RLs was monitored by phase-contrast microscopy, and quantitated with a sensitive microphotometric assay. Half-maximal exocytosis in RLs occurred at 18.5 microM free Ca2+; half- maximal exocytosis in control lawns occurred at 5.7 microM free Ca2+. Greater than 90% of the purified CVs that were not attached to a plasma membrane lawn remained intact when bathed in a buffer containing millimolar Ca2+. This result excluded the possibility that Ca2+- triggered CV lysis was responsible for our observations, and confirmed that the association of CVs with the plasma membrane was required for exocytosis in RLs. Evidence that the Ca2+-stimulated release of CV contents in CLs and RLs is the in vitro equivalent of exocytosis was obtained with an immunofluorescence-based vectorial transport assay, using an antiserum directed against a CV content protein: stimulation of RLs or partially CV-depleted CLs with Ca2+ resulted in fusion of the CV and plasma membranes, and the vectorial transport of CV contents from the cytoplasmic to the extracytoplasmic face of the egg plasma membrane.
Slot-loaded compact HMSIW triangular antenna

In this paper, a compact half-mode substrate integrated waveguide (HMSIW) based equilateral triangular antenna with a narrow, rectangular slot is designed at the centre frequency of 4.41 GHz. Initially, a WLAN U-NII Mid Band HMSIW equilateral triangular antenna is designed at 5.28 GHz centre frequency. Two sides of the triangular antenna resembles perfect electrical conductor (PEC) wall after the placement of arrays of metallic vias while the third side with no metallic vias resembles a perfect magnetic conductor (PMC) wall. The HMSIW triangular antenna exhibits a gain of 5.7 dBi. The antenna now miniaturized with the inclusion of a rectangular slot near its PMC wall causes a shift in its resonant frequency from 5.28 GHz to 4.41 GHz. The compact antenna produces a gain of 2.3 dBi. The antenna prototypes are fabricated on Arlon AD270 substrate and the antenna parameters are measured and compared with the simulated ones. A close agreement is observed between simulated and measured results.
The Role of Nucleotide Excision by Reverse Transcriptase in HIV Drug Resistance

Nucleoside reverse transcriptase (RT) inhibitors of HIV block viral replication through the ability of HIV RT to incorporate chain-terminating nucleotide analogs during viral DNA synthesis. Once incorporated, the chain-terminating residue must be removed before DNA synthesis can continue. Removal can be accomplished by the excision activity of HIV RT, which catalyzes the transfer of the 3′-terminal residue on the blocked DNA chain to an acceptor substrate, probably ATP in most infected cells. Mutations of RT that enhance excision activity are the most common cause of resistance to 3′-azido-3′-deoxythymidine (AZT) and exhibit low-level cross-resistance to most other nucleoside RT inhibitors. The resistance to AZT is suppressed by a number of additional mutations in RT, most of which were identified because they conferred resistance to other RT inhibitors. Here we review current understanding of the biochemical mechanisms responsible for increased or decreased excision activity due to these mutations.
FPGA Implementation of a Reed-Solomon CODEC for OTN G.709 Standard with Reduced Decoder Area

The Reed-Solomon error correction code is widely used in digital telecommunication systems, including satellite communications and data recording systems such as CD and DVD. This article presents an implementation for the encoder and the decoder of optical communication systems, according to the ITU-T G.709 standard. It presents an approach that multiplexes the traditional decoder blocks. The implementation promotes an expressive area reduction in an FPGA. It also presents the circuit implementation in a Virtex 5 FPGA, using software Xilinx ISE 10.1 tools.
Inhibition of H3K27me3 Histone Demethylase Activity Prevents the Proliferative Regeneration of Zebrafish Lateral Line Neuromasts

The H3K27 demethylases are involved in a variety of biological processes, including cell differentiation, proliferation, and cell death by regulating transcriptional activity. However, the function of H3K27 demethylation in the field of hearing research is poorly understood. Here, we investigated the role of H3K27me3 histone demethylase activity in hair cell regeneration using an in vivo animal model. Our data showed that pharmacologic inhibition of H3K27 demethylase activity with the specific small-molecule inhibitor GSK-J4 decreased the number of regenerated hair cells in response to neomycin damage. Furthermore, inhibition of H3K27me3 histone demethylase activity dramatically suppressed cell proliferation and activated caspase-3 levels in the regenerating neuromasts of the zebrafish lateral line. GSK-J4 administration also increased the expression of p21 and p27 in neuromast cells and inhibited the ERK signaling pathway. Collectively, our findings indicate that H3K27me3 demethylation is a key epigenetic regulator in the process of hair cell regeneration in zebrafish and suggest that H3K27me3 histone demethylase activity might be a novel therapeutic target for the treatment of hearing loss.
HIV/Hepatitis C Virus−Coinfected Virologic Responders to Pegylated Interferon and Ribavirin Therapy More Frequently Incur Interferon-Related Adverse Events Than Nonresponders Do

Background:This study aimed to assess the relationship between interferon (IFN)-related adverse effects and Hepatitis C virus (HCV) virologic response in HIV/HCV-coinfected individuals treated with pegylated interferon and ribavirin. Methods:We conducted 2 prospective, open-label trials treating HIV/HCV-coinfected individuals with pegylated interferon alpha-2b or alpha-2a and ribavirin for 48 weeks. Safety laboratories, HCV RNA, psychiatric, and ophthalmologic evaluations were performed at baseline and monthly until week 72. Results:Responders were defined as those with HCV RNA decline of ≥2-log drop from baseline and nonresponders were those who did not. Remarkably, of the 27 patients (50%) who developed psychiatric toxicities, 26 patients were responders, although only 1 of 14 virologic nonresponders experienced psychiatric toxicity. Other adverse effects, such as anemia and ophthalmologic toxicities, were also more frequent in responders compared with nonresponders. Decline in CD4+ T-cell counts strongly correlated with HCV viral decline. Conclusions:Our study demonstrates coupling of antiviral effect and occurrence of adverse events in HIV/HCV-coinfected patients. These patients with IFN-related adverse effects need a multidisciplinary treatment approach, hence, they are more likely to achieve sustained virologic response. Future studies are needed to evaluate the factors that predict the development of IFN-α-dependent adverse events before therapy.
Effects of Spatial Heterogeneity of Microenvironment on Plant Biodiversity in the Southeastern Missouri Ozarks

Abstract In this paper we examine how the spatial heterogeneity of microclimate, topography, and vegetation influences plant species richness in the Southeastern Missouri Ozarks and how the results from this study related to the species richness-habitat heterogeneity hypothesis. We measured air temperature, soil temperature (5cm in depth), soil surface temperature, and soil moisture every 10 m along a 4250 m transect using mobile and permanent weather stations during the growing season, June to September 1996. We used 1 × 1 m plot to record ground flora (up to 2 m above ground) information, such as height and coverage, by species every 10 m along the transect. Topographic condition, litter depth, rock coverage, canopy coverage, and landscape patch type were also recorded at each plot. Elevation at each plot was measured using a submeter-resolution global positioning system (GPS). We find that the heterogeneity of topography, vegetation, and microclimate is strongly correlated with plant species richness (R2=0.99), but the relationships are highly scale dependent. Most variables are highly correlated with plant species richness from 1500 to 2000 m scale. Contrary to the prediction of habitat heterogeneity theory, we find that the heterogeneity of slope and aspect is negatively correlated with plant species richness. The heterogeneity of elevation is weakly correlated with plant species richness. However, the heterogeneity of patch type, canopy coverage, and ground flora coverage is highly and positively correlated with plant species richness at most spatial scales examined. Plant species richness can be accurately predicted by the heterogeneity of microclimate. At 2000 m scale, spatial heterogeneity of microclimate can explain 98% of the total variation in plant species richness.
Pituitary Adenylate Cyclase-Activating Polypeptide and Its Receptors: 20 Years after the Discovery

Pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating polypeptide (PACAP) is a 38-amino acid C-terminally α-amidated peptide that was first isolated 20 years ago from an ovine hypothalamic extract on the basis of its ability to stimulate cAMP formation in anterior pituitary cells (Miyata et al., 1989. PACAP belongs to the vasoactive intestinal polypeptide (VIP)-secretin-growth hormone-releasing hormone-glucagon superfamily. The sequence of PACAP has been remarkably well conserved during evolution from protochordates to mammals, suggesting that PACAP is involved in the regulation of important biological functions. PACAP is widely distributed in the brain and peripheral organs, notably in the endocrine pancreas, gonads, respiratory and urogenital tracts. Characterization of the PACAP precursor has revealed the existence of a PACAP-related peptide, the activity of which remains unknown. Two types of PACAP binding sites have been characterized: type I binding sites exhibit a high affinity for PACAP and a much lower affinity for VIP, whereas type II binding sites have similar affinity for PACAP and VIP. Molecular cloning of PACAP receptors has shown the existence of three distinct receptor subtypes: the PACAP-specific PAC1-R, which is coupled to several transduction systems, and the PACAP/VIP-indifferent VPAC1-R and VPAC2-R, which are primarily coupled to adenylyl cyclase. PAC1-Rs are particularly abundant in the brain, the pituitary and the adrenal gland, whereas VPAC receptors are expressed mainly in lung, liver, and testis. The development of transgenic animal models and specific PACAP receptor ligands has strongly contributed to deciphering the various actions of PACAP. Consistent with the wide distribution of PACAP and its receptors, the peptide has now been shown to exert a large array of pharmacological effects and biological functions. The present report reviews the current knowledge concerning the pleiotropic actions of PACAP and discusses its possible use for future therapeutic applications.
Performance Analysis of Rateless Codes in an ALOHA Wireless Ad Hoc Network

In this paper, we study the performance of rateless error correction codes in a wireless ad hoc network (WANET). The salient features of a WANET are Rayleigh fading, constant power transmission, pure ALOHA as the channel access protocol, and the nodes being modeled by a homogeneous space-time Poisson point process. For such a WANET, this paper quantifies the rate density (RD) and the dynamic variations of the packet transmission time by deriving an upper bound on the CCDF of the packet transmission time. The performance of rateless codes is compared with two benchmarks, i.e., the ergodic RD (ERD) and the RD of fixed-rate codes. The proposed rateless coding scheme does not require time diversity as each packet is transmitted within a single coherence time. Yet, it is shown that the RD can be up to 76% and 50% of the ERD in noise- and interference-limited regimes, respectively. Thus, the presented network nearly achieves the ERD while requiring significantly shorter delays. This paper shows that a low-complexity Gaussian receiver with a nearest neighbor decoder has almost the performance of an ideal matched receiver. We also show that power control in the form of channel thresholding leads to a 72% gain in the RD relative to a constant power transmission.
Influenza in the Eastern Mediterranean Region: identifying the unknowns for detection and control of epidemic and pandemic threats.

Acute respiratory illnesses and influenza-like illnesses (ILI) are a significant cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Data from developed countries reveal that seasonal influenza can affect up to 15% of the population presenting with upper respiratory tract infections and may result in up to 500 000 deaths worldwide annually. Despite their public health importance, little was known about the aetiology of these illnesses in the countries of the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR).
Segmentation of Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia Using C-Y Color Space

Medical image analysis process usually starts with segmentation step, which aims to separate different objects in the image scene. This is achieved by mainly dividing the image into two parts, the region of interest (ROI) and the background. Segmentation of acute lymphoblastic leukemia blood cell (ALL) based on microscope color image is one of the important step in the recognition process. This paper proposed a technique which aims to segment the color image of acute leukemia by transforming the RGB color space to C-Y color space . in the C-Y color space, the luminance component is used to segment (ALL) . The proposed algorithm runs on 100 microscopic ALL images and the experimental result shows that the proposed system can provide a good segmentation of ALL from its complicated background and shows that the segmentation accuracy of the proposed technique is 98.38% compared to the result of the manual segmentation method by expert.
Betalains: properties, sources, applications, and stability ? a review.

Summary Consumers are increasingly avoiding foods containing synthetic colourants, which lead food industries to replace them by natural pigments, such as carotenoids, betalains, anthocyanins and carminic acid. Betalains are water-soluble nitrogen-containing pigments, composed of two structural groups: the red-violet betacyanins and the yellow-orange betaxanthins. This review synthesises the published literature on basic chemistry of betalains, their sources and chemical stability. Moreover, several works are mentioned which have demonstrated the potent antioxidant activity of betalains, which has been associated with protection against degenerative diseases.
Evaluation of Three Commercial Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assays for Diagnosis of Chagas’ Disease

ABSTRACT Chagas’ disease is a common cause of morbidity in Latin American countries. In Brazil, naturally occurring transmission of its etiologic agent, Trypanosoma cruzi, has been almost completely abolished through effective control programs aimed at the triatomid insect vector. Thus, transfusion of blood from infected donors has become the major route for contracting Chagas’ disease due to the socioeconomically motivated migration of residents from areas where the disease is endemic to the larger urban centers. Therefore, the employment of screening tests is mandatory for all blood banks throughout the country. We compared the diagnostic performances of three commercially available screening assays used in routine testing in Brazilian blood banks: the Abbott Chagas antibody enzyme immunoassay (Abbott Laboratórios do Brasil, São Paulo), the BIOELISACRUZI kit (Biolab-Mérieux, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), and the BIOZIMA Chagas kit (Polychaco S.A.I.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina). The evaluation was performed with sera obtained from chagasic patients and healthy residents of four different areas in Brazil where Chagas’ disease is either endemic or emergent and where clinical manifestations of the disease and circulating parasite strains vary. The results obtained with each kit were compared to matched in-house enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and immunofluorescence assay data obtained for each sample. Depending on the area under investigation, the three commercial kits produced specificity values between 93.3 and 100.0%, sensitivity values between 97.7 and 100%, and accuracies ranging from 93.6 to 100.0%.