Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of Intermittent Exercise on Multiple-Choice Reaction Times of Soccer Players

The influence of intermittent exercise on a choice-response time task was investigated. Two groups of 8 male soccer players (M age = 20.9, SD = 2.0) participated. They spent 4.4 (SD = 1.3) weekly hours on soccer training and had been playing soccer for 13 (SD = 3.3) years. Multiple-choice reaction speed and response accuracy were measured four times. Between measurements, one group performed 8-min. blocks of intermittent exercise on a bicycle ergometer and one group rested. Analysis showed that reaction speed and response accuracy were not significantly different between the two groups. Furthermore, there were significant faster reaction times and a larger number of correct reactions through Block 2 in both the exercise and control group (p<.05), probably a result of learning processes and familiarization with the task procedures. Further research towards the specific influence of mode of exercise, intensity, work-rest ratio and duration of intermittent exercise, and the sensitivity of reaction time tasks will be necessary to clarify the relationship between intermittent exercise and cognitive performance.
Identification of nectar sources foraged by female mosquitoes in Canada

Abstract For many mosquito species, the females must obtain vertebrate blood to complete a gonotrophic cycle. These blood meals are frequently supplemented by feeding on sugary plant nectar, which sustains energy reserves needed for flight, mating, and overall fitness. Our understanding of mosquito nectar foraging behaviors is mostly limited to laboratory experiments and direct field observations, with little research into natural mosquito-host plant relationships done in North America. In this study, we collected nectar-fed female mosquitoes over a 2-year period in Manitoba, Canada, and amplified a fragment of the chloroplast rbcL gene to identify the plant species fed upon. We found that mosquitoes foraged from diverse plant families (e.g., grasses, trees, ornamentals, and legumes), but preferred certain species, most notably soybean and Kentucky blue grass. Moreover, there appeared to be some associations between plant feeding preferences and mosquito species, date of collection, landscape, and geographical region. Overall, this study implemented DNA barcoding to identify nectar sources forage by mosquitoes in the Canadian Prairies.
A top-down approach for the design of low-power microsensor nodes for wireless sensor network

This paper describes the modeling of a microsensor node dedicated to wireless sensor network applications. The definition of the different node modes is first introduced: wake-up, measure, processing, transmission, reception and sleep. Then, contrary to the literature, a complete sensor node energy model is derived and used to analyze node autonomy. This model allows to estimate the part of each element of the microsensor node in its overall power consumption. Using this simple model, the impact of application specifications and element characteristics into the average power consumption can be analyzed in order to guide designer towards the best choice of components.
The cyclic behavior of a cytoplasmic factor controlling nuclear membrane breakdown

The activity of a cytoplasmic factor (MPF), capable of inducing nuclear membrane breakdown (germinal vesicle breakdown) when injected into amphibian oocytes, has been studied during the course of early cleavage in amphibian embryos. Mature egg cytoplasm was found to contain high levels of this activity, but this was quickly lost after fertilization or artificial activation. MPF activity later reappeared in the egg cytoplasm and started to cycle with time. The peak of embryonic MPF activity during each cycle coincided with the time the embryonic nuclei were entering the G2-M transition, i.e., mitosis. However, in colchicine-arrested embryos, this activity remained at an elevated level and no longer oscillated. The timing of the appearance and disappearance of this activity appeared to be under the control of the cytoplasm because such behavior was still observed in enucleated eggs. Continued protein synthesis in the embryo was required for the reappearance, but not for the disappearance, of this activity. MPF, previously thought to be restricted to oocyte maturation, may play a more general role in controlling nuclear membrane breakdown during mitosis as well as meiosis.
The role of Teashirt in proximal leg development in Drosophila: ectopic Teashirt expression reveals different cell behaviours in ventral and dorsal domains.

Localised transcription factors specify the identity of developmental domains. Here we analyse the function of the Teashirt zinc finger protein, which is expressed in the proximal domain of the Drosophila leg. By ectopic expression of a teashirt transgene we show that Teashirt contributes to the differences in cell-cell adhesion between proximal and distal leg cells. Whereas clones of cells expressing the teashirt transgene survive in the endogenous Teashirt domain, most cells expressing Teashirt in an ectopic distal position are lost from the epithelium. In clones which were recovered in the distal domain, different effects were seen dependent on position with respect to the dorsal-ventral axis. In the ventral region, where Wingless is signalling, surviving clones express Teashirt and cause abnormalities in the adult leg. Contrarily, lateral and dorsal clones generally do not accumulate Teashirt and have no effect on patterning. One exception to the differential dorsal-ventral effects occurs at the boundary between Teashirt-expressing and -nonexpressing cells. Both ectopic and hypomorphic loss of teashirt affects patterning at all positions at the boundary, suggesting that Teashirt plays a crucial role in boundary formation. The results are discussed with respect to the roles of transcriptional and posttranscriptional mechanisms in proximal-distal axis patterning of the Drosophila legs.
Nonlinear atmospheric teleconnections

Neural network models are used to reveal the nonlinear winter atmospheric teleconnection patterns associated with the El Niño‐Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and with the Arctic Oscillation (AO) over the N. Hemisphere. The nonlinear teleconnections (for surface air temperature, precipitation, sea level pressure and 500 hPa geopotential height) are found to relate quadratically to the ENSO and AO indices. Relative to linear teleconnections, nonlinear teleconections appear to propagate perturbations farther, into regions where classical linear teleconnections are insignificant.
Why Chromosome Palindromes?

We look at sex-limited chromosome (Y or W) evolution with particular emphasis on the importance of palindromes. Y chromosome palindromes consist of inverted duplicates that allow for local recombination in an otherwise nonrecombining chromosome. Since palindromes enable intrachromosomal gene conversion that can help eliminate deleterious mutations, they are often highlighted as mechanisms to protect against Y degeneration. However, the adaptive significance of recombination resides in its ability to decouple the evolutionary fates of linked mutations, leading to both a decrease in degeneration rate and an increase in adaptation rate. Our paper emphasizes the latter, that palindromes may exist to accelerate adaptation by increasing the potential targets and fixation rates of incoming beneficial mutations. This hypothesis helps reconcile two enigmatic features of the “palindromes as protectors” view: (1) genes that are not located in palindromes have been retained under purifying selection for tens of millions of years, and (2) under models that only consider deleterious mutations, gene conversion benefits duplicate gene maintenance but not initial fixation. We conclude by looking at ways to test the hypothesis that palindromes enhance the rate of adaptive evolution of Y-linked genes and whether this effect can be extended to palindromes on other chromosomes.
Inflammatory Oxidative Aging: A New Theory of Aging

Aging, such as demographic problem in the world due to conditions well recognized as declining fertility rates, the significant reduction in mortality in the early stages of life and decreased mortality of adult people [1]. When we focus our attention to the aging of the individual and the species causes not seem to be well defined and appear to be multiple and interrelated. At the level biological aging is associated with the accumulation of molecular and cellular damage that, over time, cause the decrease, gradually (although with great variability from one individual to another) reserves physiological and functional capacity, increasing the risk of disease and death [2,3].
Understanding community-led resilience: the Jakarta floods experience

Disasters contribute to the complexity of urban problems such as water and sanitation, waste management and infrastructure damage. For some countries illegal settlements, slum areas, urbanisation, internal migration and employment dislocation exacerbate these problems. A common urban disaster that occurs in many Asian and Pacific countries is flooding, especially during the rainy season. Floods in Jakarta affect vulnerable communities situated on the riverbank of the Ciliwung River. Temporary shelters have been used in response, but they have not answered the needs of these communities. While many studies argue that socio-economic factors are significant contributors to community resilience, this study found that cultural and historical connections, 'connecting to place', was a significant factor that helps people survive and adapt. As such, relocating communities to safer locations is not always the answer and may contribute to other problems. This study supports designs for temporary shelters and facilities following flood disasters through community-led design processes that meet the needs of communities without disconnection from place, temporarily or permanently.
Oxidative DNA damage in mild cognitive impairment and late-stage Alzheimer's disease

Increasing evidence supports a role for oxidative DNA damage in aging and several neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer's disease (AD). Attack of DNA by reactive oxygen species (ROS), particularly hydroxyl radicals, can lead to strand breaks, DNA–DNA and DNA–protein cross-linking, and formation of at least 20 modified bases adducts. In addition, α,β-unsaturated aldehydic by-products of lipid peroxidation including 4-hydroxynonenal and acrolein can interact with DNA bases leading to the formation of bulky exocyclic adducts. Modification of DNA bases by direct interaction with ROS or aldehydes can lead to mutations and altered protein synthesis. Several studies of DNA base adducts in late-stage AD (LAD) brain show elevations of 8-hydroxyguanine (8-OHG), 8-hydroxyadenine (8-OHA), 5-hydroxycytosine (5-OHC), and 5-hydroxyuracil, a chemical degradation product of cytosine, in both nuclear and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) isolated from vulnerable regions of LAD brain compared to age-matched normal control subjects. Previous studies also show elevations of acrolein/guanine adducts in the hippocampus of LAD subjects compared to age-matched controls. In addition, studies of base excision repair show a decline in repair of 8-OHG in vulnerable regions of LAD brain. Our recent studies show elevated 8-OHG, 8-OHA, and 5,6-diamino-5-formamidopyrimidine in both nuclear and mtDNA isolated from vulnerable brain regions in amnestic mild cognitive impairment, the earliest clinical manifestation of AD, suggesting that oxidative DNA damage is an early event in AD and is not merely a secondary phenomenon.
Ultrasound-coupled semi-supervised nonnegative matrix factorisation for speech enhancement

We present an extension to an existing speech enhancement technique, whereby the incorporation of easily obtained Doppler-based ultrasound data, obtained from frequency shifts caused by a talker's mouth movements, is shown to improve speech enhancement results. Noisy speech mixtures were enhanced using semi-supervised nonnegative matrix factorisation (NMF). Ultrasound data recorded alongside the speech is transformed into the spectral domain and used additionally to audio in the mixture to be separated. Speech components are learned from a training set, whilst noise components are estimated from the mixture signal. We show that the ultrasound data can improve source-to-distortion ratios for the enhanced speech, relative to both the non-ultrasound NMF case and an established Wiener filter-based speech enhancement method.
Self Constructing Neural Network Robot Controller based on On-line Task Performance Feedback

A novel methodology to create a powerful controller for robots that minimises the design effort is presented. We show that using the feedback from the robot itself, the system can learn from experience. A method is presented where the interpretation of the sensory feedback is integrated in the creation of the controller, which is achieved by growing a spiking neural network system. The feedback is extracted from a performance measuring function provided at the task definition stage, which takes into consideration the robot actions without the need for external or manual analysis.
Gadolinium(III) Chelates as MRI Contrast Agents: Structure, Dynamics, and Applications.

A. Water Exchange 2326 B. Proton Exchange 2327 C. Electronic Relaxation 2327 D. Relaxivity 2331 E. Outerand Second-Sphere Relaxivity 2334 F. Methods of Improving Relaxivity 2336 V. Macromolecular Conjugates 2336 A. Introduction 2336 B. General Conjugation Methods 2336 C. Synthetic Linear Polymers 2336 D. Synthetic Dendrimer-Based Agents 2338 E. Naturally Occurring Polymers (Proteins, Polysaccharides, and Nucleic Acids) 2339
K-hop centrality metric for identifying influential spreaders in dynamic large-scale social networks

Identifying the most influential spreaders in social networks has many practical applications. The existing methods for the purpose are either too time-consuming for dynamic large-scale networks, such as betweenness centrality, closeness centrality, eigenvector centrality and Katz centrality, or do not consider the network topology, such as degree centrality. To design an effective method to identify the most influential nodes in a network, we propose a novel metric, k-hop centrality which is a generalization of degree centrality. The k-hop index is the summation of the number n(i) of nodes within k-hop distance from the node in question, attenuated by 1/αi, for 1 ≤ i ≤ k (α is the average degree of nodes in the network). It is calculated in a localized manner and is complexity-scalable by adjusting the value of k, thus suitable for dynamically changing, large social networks. We adopt the Susceptible Infected Recovered (SIR) model to evaluate the performance of k-hop centrality over four real datasets of complex networks, and experimental results show that our method outperforms state-of-the-art methods in this field in terms of both infection ratios (spreading influence) and computational complexity. Our work sheds some light on designing efficient spreading strategies for complex networks.
Lightfield Completion Ima Preprint Series # 1957

A light field is a 4D function representing radiance as a function of ray position and direction in 3D space. In this paper we describe a method for recovering gaps in light fields of scenes that contain significant occluders. In these situations, although a large fraction of the scene may be blocked in any one view, most scene points are visible in at least some views. As a consequence , although too much information is missing to employ 2D completion methods that operate within a single view, it may be possible to recover the lost information by completion in 4D-the full dimensionality of the light field. The proposed light field completion method has three main steps: Registration, initial estimation, and high dimensional texture synthesis and/or inpainting. At the registration stage, the set of images are shifted and re-projected so that the corresponding pixels from different images are aligned in the reconstructed light field. Following this, the estimation step uses a naive technique to fill-in parts of gaps using the available information from the multiple images. This serves as the initial condition for the next and last step, where the missing information is recovered via high dimensional texture synthesis and/or inpainting. These two steps of initial condition and completion are iterated. The algorithm is illustrated with real examples.
Postembryonic developmental roles of the Arabidopsis KEULE gene

Cytokinesis in plant cells begins with the fusion of vesicles that transport cell wall materials at the center of the cell division plane, where the cell plate forms and expands radially until it fuses with the parental cell wall at the preprophase band. Vesicle fusion is facilitated by trans-SNARE complexes, with assistance from Sec1/Munc18 (SM) proteins. The SNARE protein KNOLLE and the SM protein KEULE are required for membrane fusion at the cell plate. Due to the crucial function of KEULE, all Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) keule mutants identified to date are seedling lethal. Here, we identified the Arabidopsis serrata4-1 (sea4-1) and sea4-2 mutants, which carry recessive, hypomorphic alleles of KEULE. Homozygous sea4-1 and sea4-2 plants are viable and fertile but exhibit smaller rosettes and fewer leaves at bolting than the wild type. Their leaves are serrated, small, and undulated, with a complex venation pattern, develop necrotic patches, and undergo premature senescence. We established a likely relationship between these phenotypes and their defects in cytokinesis through reduced cell wall integrity and increased unfolded protein response. These findings shed light on the roles of KEULE in postembryonic development, particularly in the patterning of rosette leaves and leaf margins.
Contradictory behavioral effects of neuronal perturbations on behavioral responses to linearly polarized light in freely walking Drosophila

Many insects can use the polarization of the skylight as a navigational cue. As shown previously, freely walking Drosophila orient along the e-vector of linearly polarized UV light presented both dorsally and ventrally. We are interested in the neuronal mechanisms leading to this behavior, and specifically how the central complex and its inputs are involved. We investigated the behavior of flies exposed to linearly polarized near-UV light (400 nm) presented dorsally. Flies walked freely in a circular, flat arena surrounded by a heat barrier. Using the GAL4-UAS genetic system, we drove the expression of the potassium inward rectifier KIR2.1 to perturb each of several different neuron types of the polarization vision pathway. Perturbing EPG compass neurons in the central complex slightly weakened average alignment and increased its variability. On the other hand, when two different GAL4 lines driving expression in the ER4m ring neurons, identified by connectomics as the major polarization inputs to the fly central complex, were perturbed, the alignment strength increased. A similar effect was observed when the inputs to ER4m, the TuBua neurons, were perturbed. We did not predict EPG and ER4m perturbations to cause opposite effects. Further investigation would be required to understand the physiological mechanisms of these contradictory behavioral effects.
A matter of food and substrain: obesogenic diets induce differential severity of cardiac remodeling and diastolic dysfunction in C57Bl/6J and C57Bl/6N substrains

The prevalence of metabolic syndrome in cardiac diseases such as heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) prompts the scientific community to investigate its adverse effects on cardiac function and remodeling and its associated mechanisms. However, the choice of a preclinical model of obesity-induced cardiac remodeling has proven more challenging with inconsistencies often found in very similar mouse models. Here, we invesgated the implication of both genetic background of mouse substrains as well as diet composition to identify a suitable model of diet-induced cardiac alterations. C57Bl/6J and C57Bl/6N male mice were subjected to distinct obesogenic diets consisting of high-fat and moderate-sucrose content (HF-S) or High-Sucrose and moderate lipid content (F-HS) versus matching control diets. 5-month dietary intervention with obesogenic diets induced weight gain, adipocyte hypertrophy and increased visceral and subcutaneous fat mass in both substrains. Obese mice showed similar impairment of glucose disposition and insulin tolerance among genotypes, both strains developing insulin resistance within two months. However, echocardiographic follow-up and histological analysis confirmed that HF-S diet increases cardiac hypertrophy, interstitial fibrosis as well as le atrial area in the C57Bl/6J strain only. On the contrary C57Bl/6N exhibit cardiac eccentric remodeling under control diets, possibly owing to a genetic mutation in the myosin light chain kinase 3 (Mylk3) gene, specific to this substrain, which was not further enhanced under obesogenic diets. Altogether, the present results highlight the importance of carefully selecting the suitable mouse strain and diets to model diet-induced cardiac remodeling. In this regard, C57Bl/6J mice develop significant cardiac remodeling in response to HF-S, and seem a suitable model for cardiometabolic disease.
Deep learning based genomic breeding of pest-resistant grapevine

Crop pests have profoundly deleterious effects on crop yield and food security. However, conventional pest control depends heavily on the utilization of insecticides, which develops strong pesticide resistance and concerns of food safety. Crop and their wild relatives display diverse levels of pest resistance, indicating the feasibility for breeding of pest-resistant crop varieties. In this study, we integrate deep learning (DL)/machine learning (ML) algorithms, plant phenomics and whole genome sequencing (WGS) data to conduct genomic selection (GS) of pest-resistance in grapevine. We employ deep convolutional neural networks (DCNN) to accurately calculate the severity of damage by pests on grape leaves, which achieves a classification accuracy of 95.3% (Visual Geometry Group 16, VGG16, for binary trait) and a correlation coefficient of 0.94 in regression analysis (DCNN with Pest Damage Score, DCNN-PDS, for continuous trait). We apply DL models to predict and integrate phenotype (both binary and continuous) along with WGS data from 231 grape accessions, conducting Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS). This analysis detects a total of 69 QTLs, encompassing 139 candidate genes involved in pathways associated with pest resistance, including jasmonic acid (JA), salicylic acid (SA), ethylene, and other related pathways. Furthermore, through the combination with transcriptome data, we identify specific pest-resistant genes, such as ACA12 and CRK3, which play distinct roles in resisting herbivore attacks. Machine learning-based GS demonstrates a high accuracy (95.7%) and a strong correlation (0.90) in predicting the leaf area damaged by pests as binary and continuous traits in grapevine, respectively. In general, our study highlights the power of DL/ML in plant phenomics and GS, facilitating genomic breeding of pest-resistant grapevine.