Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Adaptive management of pest resistance by Helicoverpa species (Noctuidae) in Australia to the Cry2Ab Bt toxin in Bollgard II® cotton

In Australia, monitoring Helicoverpa species for resistance to the Cry2Ab toxin in second generation Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) cotton has precisely fulfilled its intended function: to warn of increases in resistance frequencies that may lead to field failures of the technology. Prior to the widespread adoption of two‐gene Bt cotton, the frequency of Cry2Ab resistance alleles was at least 0.001 in H. armigera and H. punctigera. In the 5 years hence, there has been a significant and apparently exponential increase in the frequency of alleles conferring Cry2Ab resistance in field populations of H. punctigera. Herein we review the history of deploying and managing resistance to Bt cotton in Australia, outline the characteristics of the isolated resistance that likely impact on resistance evolution, and use a simple model to predict likely imminent resistance frequencies. We then discuss potential strategies to mitigate further increases in resistance frequencies, until the release of a third generation product. These include mandating larger structured refuges, applying insecticide to crops late in the season, and restricting the area of Bollgard II® cotton. The area planted to Bt‐crops is anticipated to continue to rise worldwide; therefore the strategies being considered in Australia are likely to relate to other situations.
IGF-I and End-to-Side Nerve Repair: A Dose-Response Study

End-to-side nerve repair allows for target-muscle reinnervation, with simultaneous preservation of donor-nerve function. Local administration of insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I) has been shown to increase the rate of axon regeneration in crush-injured and freeze-injured rat sciatic nerve. The purpose of the current project was to determine the effects of IGF-I in a rat model of end-to-side nerve repair. The left musculocutaneous nerve of 18 adult male Sprague-Dawley rats was fully transected to induce biceps-muscle paralysis. The distal stump of the musculocutaneous nerve was then coapted by end-to-side neurorrhaphy through a perineurial window to the ipsilateral median nerve. All animals were randomly assigned to three groups: Group A received 100 microg/ml IGF-I; Group B received 50 microg/ml IGF-I; and control Group C received 10 mM acetic acid vehicle solution. Infusions were regulated by the Alzet model 2004 mini-osmotic pump, with an attached catheter directed at the coaptation site. Weekly postoperative behavioral evaluations revealed significantly increased functional return over control in both experimental groups as early as 3 weeks. After 28 days, histology evaluations revealed statistically significantly higher musculocutaneous nerve axon counts and myelin thickness/axon diameter ratios in both experimental groups vs. controls. The three groups were not significantly different in motor endplate counts of the biceps muscle. Groups A and B were not significantly different in all parameters tested. This study suggests that local infusion of IGF-I may expedite the functional recovery of a paralyzed muscle, by increasing the rate of axon regeneration through an end-to-side nerve graft.
Biosynthesis of Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids in the Oleaginous Marine Diatom Fistulifera sp. Strain JPCC DA0580

Studies of polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) biosynthesis in microalgae are of great importance for many reasons, including the production of biofuel and variable omega 3-long chain PUFAs. The elucidation of the PUFA biosynthesis pathway is necessary for bioengineering to increase or decrease PUFA content in certain microalgae. In this study, we identified the PUFA synthesis pathway in the oleaginous marine diatom, Fistulifera sp. strain JPCC DA0580, a promising candidate for biodiesel production. The data revealed not only the presence of the desaturases and elongases involved in eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) synthesis, but also the unexpected localization of ω3-desaturase expression in the chloroplast. This suggests that this microalga might perform the final step of EPA synthesis in the chloroplast and not in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) like other diatoms. The detailed fatty acid profile suggests that the EPA was synthesized only through the ω6-pathway in this strain, which was also different from other diatoms. Finally, the transcriptome analysis demonstrated an overall down-regulation of desaturases and elongases over incubation time. These genetic features might explain the decrease of PUFA percentage over incubation time in this strain. The important insights into metabolite synthesis acquired here will be useful for future metabolic engineering to control PUFA content in this diatom.
Le poids des contraintes physiques dans le développement des atolls : l'exemple de l'archipel des Maldives (Océan Indien)

Les contraintes physiques sont fortes dans le monde des atolls et induisent des couts de developpement eleves. L'essor du tourisme international haut de gamme permet de mettre en œuvre le processus de developpement, mais au prix d'importantes degradations environnementales. Les responsables politiques de petits Etats insulaires comme celui des Maldives, sont confrontes a des situations difficiles a gerer.
A survey of methods for recovering quadrics in triangle meshes

In a variety of practical situations such as reverse engineering of boundary representation from depth maps of scanned objects, range data analysis, model-based recognition and algebraic surface design, there is a need to recover the shape of visible surfaces of a dense 3D point set. In particular, it is desirable to identify and fit simple surfaces of known type wherever these are in reasonable agreement with the data. We are interested in the class of quadric surfaces, that is, algebraic surfaces of degree 2, instances of which are the sphere, the cylinder and the cone. A comprehensive survey of the recent work in each subtask pertaining to the extraction of quadric surfaces from triangulations is presented.
The effects of fatness and fat distribution on respiratory functions

Background: Inverse relationships between respiratory function and indices of obesity and fat distribution have been reported, but it remains unclear which measure of obesity shows the strongest relationship with lung function. Aim: The study assessed the effect of fatness and fat distribution on respiratory function. Subjects and methods: A sample of 423 males and 509 females aged 40–50 years were examined in the Silesian Centre for Preventive Medicine, DOLMED, in Wrocław in 1995. The strength of influence of height, body mass index (BMI), wait-to-hip ratio (WHR) and abdominal and subscapular skinfolds upon forced vital capacity (FVC) and forced expiratory volume in a 1-s expiration (FEV1) was assessed by multiple regression analysis. Results: In males, FVC was strongly positively associated with height and BMI, but negatively associated with subscapular and abdominal skinfolds, WHR, and smoking. FEV1 showed a positive relationship with height, BMI and WHR. In females, both FVC and FEV1 showed significant positive associations with height, negative ones with subscapular skinfold, and no association with either WHR or abdominal skinfold. In males, respiratory function is affected to a similar extent by fat in the abdominal region and by fatness of the chest. In females, fatness of the thorax has the strongest relationship with respiratory function. Conclusion: Fatness tends to impair respiratory function in both sexes but these effects show a different pattern in males and females. In males, respiratory functions are significantly, and to a similar extant, affected by fatness in the abdominal region, both subcutaneous and visceral, and by fatness on the chest. In females, it is primarily subcutaneous fat on the upper thorax that affects respiratory functions, while visceral and subcutaneous abdominal fatness play little or no role.
Media distribution in a pervasive computing environment

Distribution of media in the fast growing world of digital stored content and multimedia supporting devices with connectivity, calls for a new media distribution architecture. The user should be provided with the experience of having an overview of his full media collection, regardless of the time, the place, and the connectivity. The architecture presented in this paper, fulfils these needs and can cooperate furthermore with non-compliant devices.
Context-Dependent Translation Selection Using Convolutional Neural Network

We propose a novel method for translation selection in statistical machine translation, in which a convolutional neural network is employed to judge the similarity between a phrase pair in two languages. The specifically designed convolutional architecture encodes not only the semantic similarity of the translation pair, but also the context containing the phrase in the source language. Therefore, our approach is able to capture context-dependent semantic similarities of translation pairs. We adopt a curriculum learning strategy to train the model: we classify the training examples into easy, medium, and difficult categories, and gradually build the ability of representing phrase and sentence level context by using training examples from easy to difficult. Experimental results show that our approach significantly outperforms the baseline system by up to 1.4 BLEU points.
Intercontinental influence of NO[subscript x] and CO emissions on particulate matter air quality

23 Anthropogenic emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx ≡ NO + NO2) and carbon monoxide (CO) 24 affect particulate matter (PM) air quality on an intercontinental scale by changing background 25 concentrations of oxidants (OH, ozone, H2O2) and thus increasing the oxidation rate of sulfur 26 dioxide (SO2) to sulfate and NOx to nitrate. We conduct sensitivity simulations with the GEOS27 Chem chemical transport model and find that these intercontinental influences of NOx and CO 28 emissions on PM can be greater than those from SO2 emissions (a direct PM precursor). The 29 intercontinental impact of oxidant precursors is greatest in receptor regions with high domestic 30 SO2, NOx, and ammonia emissions and hence already high levels of PM. US NOx and CO 31 emissions increase annual mean PM in northern Europe and eastern China by up to 0.25 μg m -3 . 32 The increase in Europe is mostly as sulfate, whereas in China it is mostly as nitrate. East Asian 33 NOx and CO emissions have a weaker intercontinental influence (~0.2 μg m -3 in northern Europe, 34 ~ 0.1 μg m -3 in the eastern US). These intercontinental effects of NOx and CO emissions on PM 35 depend in a complex way on the chemical environment of receptor regions. Intercomparison of 36 results from different models would be of great interest. 37 38
βIV-spectrin regulates sodium channel clustering through ankyrin-G at axon initial segments and nodes of Ranvier

β-Spectrin and ankyrin are major components of the membrane cytoskeleton. We have generated mice carrying a null mutation in the βIV-spectrin gene using gene trapping in embryonic stem cells. Mice homozygous for the mutation exhibit tremors and contraction of hindlimbs. βIV-spectrin expression is mostly restricted to neurons, where it colocalizes with and binds to ankyrin-G at axon initial segments (AISs) and nodes of Ranvier (NR). In βIV-spectrin–null neurons, neither ankyrin-G nor voltage-gated sodium channels (VGSC) are correctly clustered at these sites, suggesting that impaired action potential caused by mislocalization of VGSC leads to the phenotype. Conversely, in ankyrin-G–null neurons, βIV-spectrin is not localized to these sites. These results indicate that βIV-spectrin and ankyrin-G mutually stabilize the membrane protein cluster and the linked membrane cytoskeleton at AIS and NR.
Comparative oncology: what dogs and other species can teach us about humans with cancer

Over 1.66 million humans (approx. 500/100 000 population rate) and over 4.2 million dogs (approx. 5300/100 000 population rate) are diagnosed with cancer annually in the USA. The interdisciplinary field of comparative oncology offers a unique and strong opportunity to learn more about universal cancer risk and development through epidemiology, genetic and genomic investigations. Working across species, researchers from human and veterinary medicine can combine scientific findings to understand more quickly the origins of cancer and translate these findings to novel therapies to benefit both human and animals. This review begins with the genetic origins of canines and their advantage in cancer research. We next focus on recent findings in comparative oncology related to inherited, or genetic, risk for tumour development. We then detail the somatic, or genomic, changes within tumours and the similarities between species. The shared cancers between humans and dogs that we discuss include sarcoma (osteosarcoma, soft tissue sarcoma, histiocytic sarcoma, hemangiosarcoma), haematological malignancies (lymphoma, leukaemia), bladder cancer, intracranial neoplasms (meningioma, glioma) and melanoma. Tumour risk in other animal species is also briefly discussed. As the field of genomics advances, we predict that comparative oncology will continue to benefit both humans and the animals that live among us.
Spatial vision of the achromat: spatial frequency and orientation‐specific adaptation.

1. The psychophysical technique of selective adaptation to stationary sine‐wave gratings of varying spatial frequency and orientation was used to investigate the central processing of spatial information in the visual system of the complete achromat. 2. For adapting spatial frequencies of 1 and 2 cycles/deg, the spatial frequency and orientation selectivity of contrast threshold elevation is similar for achromatic and trichromatic vision. 3. For adapting frequencies below 1 cycle/deg, the achromat shows threshold elevations of normal magnitude with symmetrical spatial frequency and orientation tuning for adapting frequencies as low as 0.09 cycles/deg with 'bandwidth' estimates similar to those found at high frequencies in the trichromat. Below 0.66 cycles/deg no after‐effect could be obtained in the trichromat, and the frequency tuning at 0.66 cycles/deg was skewed towards higher frequencies. 4. The interocular transfer of low‐frequency adaptation in the achromat was 50%, which is the same value obtained at higher frequencies. 5. The time course of the decay of low spatial frequency adaptation in the achromat was similar to that found at higher frequencies. 6. Control experiments show no low‐frequency adaptation in peripheral vision or in central vision in the dark‐adapted trichromat indicating that low spatial frequency adaptation cannot be elicited through the rod system of the trichromat. 7. It is proposed that the observed range shift of adaptable spatial frequency mechanisms in the achromat's visual cortex is the result of an arrest at an early stage of sensory development. The visual cortex of the achromat is comparable, with respect to spatial processing, to that of the young, visually normal human infant.
A Distributed SDN Control Plane for Consistent Policy Updates

Software-defined networking (SDN) is a novel paradigm that out-sources the control of packet-forwarding switches to a set of software controllers. The most fundamental task of these controllers is the correct implementation of the \emph{network policy}, i.e., the intended network behavior. In essence, such a policy specifies the rules by which packets must be forwarded across the network. This paper studies a distributed SDN control plane that enables \emph{concurrent} and \emph{robust} policy implementation. We introduce a formal model describing the interaction between the data plane and a distributed control plane (consisting of a collection of fault-prone controllers). Then we formulate the problem of \emph{consistent} composition of concurrent network policy updates (short: the \emph{CPC Problem}). To anticipate scenarios in which some conflicting policy updates must be rejected, we enable the composition via a natural \emph{transactional} interface with all-or-nothing semantics. We show that the ability of an $f$-resilient distributed control plane to process concurrent policy updates depends on the tag complexity, i. e. , the number of policy labels (a.k.a. \emph{tags}) available to the controllers, and describe a CPC protocol with optimal tag complexity $f+2$.
Prevention of the Crankshaft Phenomenon

Factors favoring development of the crankshaft phenomenon after posterior spinal fusion include immaturity and large residual deformity. Eight patients at high risk to develop the crankshaft phenomenon underwent periapical anterior growth arrest and fusion before posterior instrumentation and fusion. With follow-up to skeletal maturity, 0% developed crankshaft phenomenon. Anterior growth arrest and fusion before a posterior procedure is recommended in scoliosis patients at high risk to develop the crankshaft phenomenon.
Differential expression of synapsins I and II among rat retinal synapses

The synapsins are a family of synaptic vesicle-associated phosphoproteins thought to regulate the availability of vesicles for neurotransmitter release. In order to assess variability of synapsin isoform expression, we compared the localization of synapsins Ia, Ib, IIa, and IIb in the inner plexiform layer of the rat retina. Double labeling in conjunction with confocal fluorescence and electron microscopy allowed imaging of synapsin I and II immunoreactivity within single presynaptic terminals. No qualitative differences were observed between expression of the a and b isoforms of synapsin I in individual terminals; likewise, the a and b isoforms of synapsin II were identically distributed. In contrast, marked differences were seen upon comparison of synapsin I and synapsin II expression in single terminals. Our results indicate the existence of three classes of presumed amacrine cell synaptic terminals: synapsin I+/synapsin II-, synapsin I-/synapsin II+, and synapsin I+/synapsin II+. Each class of synapse has a different distribution among five IPL sublayers, suggesting that they represent different subpopulations of amacrine cells. Double labeling with an antibody to choline acetyltransferase indicates that synapsin I-/II+ terminals may be those of cholinergic amacrine cells. Furthermore, all synapsin II+ terminals appear to be distinct from those expressing the GABA synthetic enzyme glutamic acid decarboxylase. The observed variations in synapsin content suggest the existence of presynaptic terminal heterogeneity that is not apparent from conventional morphological studies.
mTOR signaling regulates the processing of pre-rRNA in human cells

Signaling through the mammalian target of rapamycin, complex 1 (mTORC1), positively regulates the transcription of ribosomal RNA (rRNA) and the synthesis of ribosomal proteins, thereby promoting the complex process of ribosome biogenesis. The major rRNAs are transcribed as a single precursor, which must be processed to create the 5.8S, 18S and 28S rRNAs. We used a new non-radioactive labeling approach to study the effects of rapamycin, an inhibitor of mTORC1, on rRNA synthesis. Rapamycin not only impaired synthesis of new 18S, 28S or 5S rRNA but also induced their decay. This prompted us to examine the effects of rapamycin on rRNA processing. We show that rapamycin also interferes with the processing events that generate 18S and 28S rRNA. rRNA transcription and processing occur in regions of the nucleus known as nucleoli. We find that the mTORC1 components raptor and mTOR are both present in nucleoli, where they may regulate rRNA maturation events. While rapamycin has no effect on overall nucleolar morphology or its proteome, it does induce loss of mTOR and raptor from them. These data show that mTORC1 is located in nucleoli where it acts to regulate events involved in ribosome biogenesis including the maturation of rRNA molecules.
A systematic approach to static access control

The Java Security Architecture includes a dynamic mechanism for enforcing access control checks, the so-called stack inspection process. While the architecture has several appealing features, access control checks are all implemented via dynamic method calls. This is a highly nondeclarative form of specification that is hard to read, and that leads to additional run-time overhead. This article develops type systems that can statically guarantee the success of these checks. Our systems allow security properties of programs to be clearly expressed within the types themselves, which thus serve as static declarations of the security policy. We develop these systems using a systematic methodology: we show that the security-passing style translation, proposed by Wallach et al. [2000] as a dynamic implementation technique, also gives rise to static security-aware type systems, by composition with conventional type systems. To define the latter, we use the general HM(X) framework, and easily construct several constraint- and unification-based type systems.
New targeted therapies for relapsed pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia

ABSTRACT Introduction: The improvement in outcomes for children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is one of the greatest success stories of modern oncology however the prognosis for patients who relapse remains dismal. Recent discoveries by high resolution genomic technologies have characterized the biology of relapsed leukemia, most notably pathways leading to the drug resistant phenotype. These observations open the possibility of targeting such pathways to prevent and/or treat relapse. Likewise, early experiences with new immunotherapeutic approaches have shown great promise. Areas covered: We performed a literature search on PubMed and recent meeting abstracts using the keywords below. We focused on the biology and clonal evolution of relapsed disease highlighting potential new targets of therapy. We further summarized the results of early trials of the three most prominent immunotherapy agents currently under investigation. Expert commentary: Discovery of targetable pathways that lead to drug resistance and recent breakthroughs in immunotherapy show great promise towards treating this aggressive disease. The best way to treat relapse, however, is to prevent it which makes incorporation of these new approaches into frontline therapy the best approach. Challenges remain to balance efficacy with toxicity and to prevent the emergence of resistant subclones which is why combining these newer agents with conventional chemotherapy will likely become standard of care.
Pathology-MRI Correlation of Hepatocarcinogenesis: Recent Update

Understanding the important alterations during hepatocarcinogenesis as well as the characteristic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and histopathological features will be helpful for managing patients with chronic liver disease and hepatocellular carcinoma. Recent advances in MRI techniques, such as fat/iron quantification, diffusion-weighted images, and gadoxetic acid-enhanced MRI, have greatly enhanced our understanding of hepatocarcinogenesis.
N‐terminomics and proteogenomics, getting off to a good start

Proteogenomics consists of the annotation or reannotation of protein‐coding nucleic acid sequences based on the empirical observation of their gene products. While functional annotation of predicted genes is increasingly feasible given the multiplicity of genomes available for many branches of the tree of life, the accurate annotation of the translational start sites is still a point of contention. Extensive coverage of the proteome, including specifically the N‐termini, is now possible, thanks to next‐generation mass spectrometers able to record data from thousands of proteins at once. Efforts to increase the peptide coverage of protein sequences and to detect low abundance proteins are important to make proteomic and proteogenomic studies more comprehensive. In this review, we present the panoply of N‐terminus‐oriented strategies that have been developed over the last decade.