Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pandemic A(H1N1) 2009 influenza: review of the Southern Hemisphere experience

SUMMARY We sought to systematically review the published literature describing the epidemiological aspects of the first wave of pandemic A(H1N1) 2009 influenza in the Southern Hemisphere. Fifteen studies were included in this review, originating from South America, Australia or New Zealand, and Africa. Across the different studies, 16·8–45·3% of the laboratory-confirmed cases were admitted to hospital, and 7·5–26·0% of these cases were admitted to intensive care units (ICUs). The fatality rate was 0·5–1·5% for laboratory-confirmed cases in 6/8 studies reporting specific relevant data, and 14·3–22·2% for cases admitted to ICUs in 5/7 studies, respectively. In 4/5 studies the majority of laboratory-confirmed cases were observed in young and middle-aged adults, the percentage of older adults increased the higher the level of healthcare the cases received (e.g. laboratory confirmation, hospitalization or ICU admission) or for fatal cases. Many of the cases had no prior comorbidity, including conditions identified as risk factors for seasonal influenza. Pregnant women represented 7·4–9·1% and 7·1–9·1% of unselected laboratory-confirmed cases and of those admitted to ICUs, respectively. Obesity and morbid obesity were more commonly reported as the level of healthcare increased.
A Memory Efficient Algorithm for Structural Alignment of RNAs with Embedded Simple Pseudoknots

In this paper, we consider the problem of structural alignment of a target RNA sequence of length n and a query RNA sequence of length m with known secondary structure that may contain embedded simple pseduoknots. The best known algorithm for solving this problem (Dost et al. [13]) runs in O(mn4) time with space complexity of O(mn3), which requires too much memory making it infeasible for comparing ncRNAs (non-coding RNAs) with length several hundreds or more. We propose a memory efficient algorithm to solve the same problem. We reduce the space complexity to O(mn2 + n3) while maintaining the same time complexity of Dost et al.’s algorithm. Experimental reslts show that our algorithm is feasible for comparing ncRNAs of length more than 500. Availability: The source code of our program is available upon request.
The Evolution and Fossil History of Sensory Perception in Amniote Vertebrates

Sensory perception is of crucial importance for animals to interact with their biotic and abiotic environment. In amniotes, the clade including modern mammals (Synapsida), modern reptiles (Reptilia), and their fossil relatives, the evolution of sensory perception took place in a stepwise manner after amniotes appeared in the Carboniferous. Fossil evidence suggests that Paleozoic taxa had only a limited amount of sensory capacities relative to later forms, with the majority of more sophisticated types of sensing evolving during the Triassic and Jurassic. Alongside the evolution of improved sensory capacities, various types of social communication evolved across different groups. At present there is no definitive evidence for a relationship between sensory evolution and species diversification. It cannot be excluded, however, that selection for improved sensing was partially triggered by biotic interactions, e.g., in the context of niche competition, whereas ecospace expansion, especially during the Mesozoic, might also have played an important role.
Thermal equation of state of lower‐mantle ferropericlase across the spin crossover

The thermal equation of state of ferropericlase [(Mg0.75Fe0.25)O] has been investigated by synchrotron X‐ray diffraction up to 140 GPa and 2000 K in a laser‐heated diamond anvil cell. Based on results at high pressure‐temperature conditions, the derived phase diagram shows that the spin crossover widens at elevated temperatures. Along the lower‐mantle geotherm, the spin crossover occurs between 1700 km and 2700 km depth. Compared to the high‐spin state, thermoelastic modeling of the data shows a ∼1.2% increase in density, a factor of two increase in thermal expansion coefficient over a range of 1000 km, and a maximum decrease of 37% and 13% in bulk modulus and bulk sound velocity, respectively, at ∼2180 km depth across the spin crossover. These anomalous behaviors in the thermoelastic properties of ferropericlase across the spin crossover must be taken into account in order to understand the seismic signatures and geodynamics of the lower mantle.
SYSTEMIC MASTOCYTOSIS AND PRIMARY THROMBOCYTHAEMIA

In a recent issue of this Journal Horny et a1 (1990) have published an interesting review on generalized mastocytosis and its association with myeloproliferative disorders. We would like to add a case of systemic mastocytosis associated with primary thrombocythaemia to those in their review. The patient, a 65-year-old woman. presented in November 1989 with confluent maculopapular lesions. She complained of itching, abdominal and joint pain. Clinical examination revealed widespread maculopapular skin lesions and a 2 cm spleen. A skin biopsy confirmed the diagnosis of urticaria pigmentosa. She was then sent to us for evaluation because of thrombocythaemia. In April 1990 her WBC was 6.2 x lOy/1, haemoglobin concentration 14.5 g/dl and platelet count 1 3 73 x 1 Oy/l. Serum levels of ALAT, GGT. LDH and IgM were moderately raised (83. 6 6 and 350 IU/I, and 0.6 g/l respectively). Bone X-rays showed a diffuse osteopenia with a collapsed D7. A bone marrow biopsy showed an increased cellularity with elevated number of megakaryocytes and decreased fat content. Focal aggregates of toluidine-bluepositive mastocytes were prominent. Electron microscopy confirmed the presence of dysplastic megakaryocytes and mastocytes. The karyotype was normal. Platelet aggregation could not be induced with ADP and was normal in response to other agents. A diagnosis of systemic mastocytosis and essential thrombocythaemia was made. She was treated with antihistaminics and hydroxyurea with improvement in the clinical symptoms and a return to normal of the platelet count and the liver enzymes. She remains well and on treatment 1 year after presentation. The association seen in this patient of systemic mastocytosis with thrombocytosis has been rarely reported in the published series (reviewed by Horny et al, 1990). skin inolvement being less frequent in mastocytosis when a myeloproliferative disorder is present. Moreover bone marrow examination showed a type 2 pattern as described by Horny et a1 (1 985), which is seldom associated with urticaria pigmentosa. As Travis eta1 ( 1988b) point out. prognosis may be difficult to predict when two infrequent disorders such as these occur in the same patient, and it may be determined by the haematological disease rather than the mastocytosis.
Genetics of human neural tube defects

Neural tube defects (NTDs) are common, severe congenital malformations whose causation involves multiple genes and environmental factors. Although more than 200 genes are known to cause NTDs in mice, there has been rather limited progress in delineating the molecular basis underlying most human NTDs. Numerous genetic studies have been carried out to investigate candidate genes in cohorts of patients, with particular reference to those that participate in folate one-carbon metabolism. Although the homocysteine remethylation gene MTHFR has emerged as a risk factor in some human populations, few other consistent findings have resulted from this approach. Similarly, attention focused on the human homologues of mouse NTD genes has contributed only limited positive findings to date, although an emerging association between genes of the non-canonical Wnt (planar cell polarity) pathway and NTDs provides candidates for future studies. Priorities for the next phase of this research include: (i) larger studies that are sufficiently powered to detect significant associations with relatively minor risk factors; (ii) analysis of multiple candidate genes in groups of well-genotyped individuals to detect possible gene–gene interactions; (iii) use of high throughput genomic technology to evaluate the role of copy number variants and to detect ‘private’ and regulatory mutations, neither of which have been studied to date; (iv) detailed analysis of patient samples stratified by phenotype to enable, for example, hypothesis-driven testing of candidates genes in groups of NTDs with specific defects of folate metabolism, or in groups of fetuses with well-defined phenotypes such as craniorachischisis.
On Traffic Engineering with Segment Routing in SDN based WANs

Segment routing is an emerging technology to simplify traffic engineering implementation in WANs. It expresses an end-to-end logical path as a sequence of segments, each of which is represented by a middlepoint. In this paper, we arguably conduct the first systematic study of traffic engineering with segment routing in SDN based WANs. We first provide a theoretical characterization of the problem. We show that for general segment routing, where flows can take any path that goes through a middlepoint, the resulting traffic engineering is NP-hard. We then consider segment routing with shortest paths only, and prove that the traffic engineering problem can now be solved in (weakly) polynomial time when the number of middlepoints per path is fixed and not part of the input. Our results thus explain, for the first time, the underlying reason why existing work only focuses on segment routing with shortest paths. In the second part of the paper, we study practical traffic engineering using shortest path based segment routing. We note that existing methods work by taking each node as a candidate middlepoint. This requires solving a large-scale linear program which is prohibitively slow. We thus propose to select just a few important nodes as middlepoints for all traffic. We use node centrality concepts from graph theory, notably group shortest path centrality, for middlepoint selection. Our performance evaluation using realistic topologies and traffic traces shows that a small percentage of the most central nodes can achieve good results with orders of magnitude lower runtime.
Role of the Thyroid Gland in the Development and Maintenance of Spontaneous Hypertension in Rats

We studied the vascular mechanisms involved in the prevention of the development of hypertension following thyroidectomy. Ablation of the thyroid gland of 4-week-old spontaneously hypertensive (SH) rats inhibited the development of hypertension and reduced the sensitivity of aortic strips to the vasoconstrictors phenylephrine, norepinephrine, and potassium chloride and the vasodilator isoproterenol. Daily injections of a replacement dose of L-thyroxine caused a complete recurrence of hypertension in these rats. This was accompanied by complete recovery of the aortic sensitivity to the vasoconstrictors and isoproterenol. In 10-week-old SH rats thyroidectomy prevented a further increase of blood pressure but did not reverse the hypertension. Here, the aortic sensitivity to vasoactive substances also was reduced but to a lesser extent than in the SH rats thyroidec tomized at 4 weeks of age. Hypertension was not obviously associated with hyperfunction of the thyroid gland. Furthermore, we found that at 4 weeks of age, during the prehypertensive period, SH rats have a significantly lower (42%) serum thyroxine level than age-matched normotensive Kyoto Wistar, American Wistar, and Sprague-Dawley rats. However, at 6 and 9 weeks, the serum thyroxine levels of SH rats are similar to those of the normotensive rats. In conclusion, we propose that the reduced sensitivity to endogenous vasoconstrictors in arteries of SH rats following juvenile ablation of the thyroid gland may prevent the development of hypertension in these rats. Moreover, the low serum thyroxine level in SH rats during the prehypertensive period may explain why young SH rats do not develop hypertension before 6 weeks of age.
Description Logic Programs: A Practical Choice For the Modelling of Ontologies

Knowledge representation using ontologies constitutes the heart of semantic technologies. Despite successful standardization eorts by the W3C, however, there are still numerous dierent ontology representation languages being used, and interoperability between them is in general not given. The problem is aggrevated by the fact that current standards lay foundations only and are well-known to be insucient for the modelling of finer details. Thus, a plethora of extensions of the basic languages is being proposed, rendering the picture of ontology representation languages to be chaotic, to say the least. While semantic technologies start to become applicable and are being applied in adjacent areas of research and in research projects with industrial participation, and can soon be expected to become an integral part of industrial applications, the practitioner is faced with the dicult task of choosing his basic ontology representation paradigm. We will argue that the OWL subset known as Description Logic Programs constitutes a very reasonable choice.
Diurnal and Exercise-Related Variability of Haemoglobin and Reticulocytes in Athletes

Haemoglobin (Hb) and Reticulocytes (Ret) are measured as indirect markers of doping in athletes. We studied the diurnal variation, the impact of exercise, fluid intake and ambient temperature in athletes on these parameters. Hourly venous blood samples were obtained from 36 male athletes of different disciplines (endurance (END) and non-endurance (NON-END)) over 12 h during a typical training day. Seven inactive subjects served as controls (CON). Hb and Ret were determined. A mixed model procedure was used to analyse the data. At baseline, Hb was similar for all groups, END showed lower Ret than NON-END and CON. Exercise showed a significant impact on Hb (+0.46 g/dl, p<0.001), the effect disappeared approximately 2 h after exercise. Hb decreased over the day by approximately 0.55 g/dl (p<0.01). There was no relevant effect on Ret. Fluid intake and ambient temperature had no significant effect. Hb shows significant diurnal- and exercise related variations. In an anti-doping context, most of these variations are in favour of the athlete. Blood samples taken after exercise might therefore provide reliable results and thus be used for the longitudinal monitoring of athletes if a timeframe for the re-equilibration of vascular volumes is respected.
Siebenrockiella leytensis (Taylor 1920) – Palawan Forest Turtle, Philippine Forest Turtle

066.1 Conservation Biology of Freshwater Turtles and Tortoises: A Compilation Project of the IUCN/SSC Tortoise and Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group A.G. J. Rhodin, P.C. H. Pritchard, P.P. van Dijk, R.A. Saumure, K.A. Buhlmann, J.B. Iverson, and R.A. Mittermeier, Eds. Chelonian Research Monographs (ISSN 1088-7105) No. 5, doi:10.3854/crm.5. 066.leytensis. v1.2012 © 2012 by Chelonian Research Foundation • Published 29 December 2012
In situ temperature measurement of a notebook computer - a case study in health and usage monitoring of electronics

Reliability prediction methods do not generally account for the actual life cycle environment of electronic products, which covers their environmental, operating and usage conditions. Considering thermal loads, thermal management strategies still focus on a design for continuous operation that is often determined based on an accumulation of worst-case assumptions. Health monitoring is a method of assessing the reliability of a product in its actual application conditions. A case study in health and usage monitoring of electronic products is presented for a commercial notebook computer. Internal temperatures were dynamically monitored in situ and statistically analyzed during all phases of the life cycle, including usage, storage, and transportation. The effects of power cycles, usage history, CPU computing resources usage, and external thermal environment on peak transient thermal loads were characterized. Such monitored life cycle temperature data could be applied in a life consumption monitoring methodology, to provide damage estimation and remaining life prediction due to specific failure mechanisms influenced by temperature. These findings could contribute to the design of more sustainable, least-energy consumption thermal management solutions.
Baroreceptor Reflexes and Autoregulation of Cerebral Blood Flow in the Dog

Cerebral venous outflow was measured in anesthetized dogs at the confluence of the sagittal and straight sinuses, with the lateral sinuses occluded. Denervation of the carotid bifurcation increased systemic arterial pressure (+25.8; SE±7.7 mm Hg) and decreased cerebral vascular conductance (−0.018; SE±0.005 ml/min · mm Hg); stimulation of the carotid sinus nerve decreased systemic arterial pressure and increased cerebral vascular conductance. Graded constrictions of the common carotid arteries induced transient responses of the cerebral blood flow that were characteristic of an autoregulatory process. Plots of the steady-state pressures and flows during the decreases of perfusion pressure were concave toward the pressure axis, were similar before and after denervation of the carotid bifurcation, and were indicative of autoregulation. We conclude that pressoreceptors in the carotid bifurcation or other pressoreceptors in systemic vessels upstream from the carotid bifurcation are not necessary for the control of the “tone” of the cerebral vasculature or in the mechanism of the autoregulation of cerebral blood flow.
Teredo: Tunneling IPv6 over UDP through Network Address Translations (NATs)

We propose here a service that enables nodes located behind one or more IPv4 Network Address Translations (NATs) to obtain IPv6 connectivity by tunneling packets over UDP; we call this the Teredo service. Running the service requires the help of "Teredo servers" and "Teredo relays". The Teredo servers are stateless, and only have to manage a small fraction of the traffic between Teredo clients; the Teredo relays act as IPv6 routers between the Teredo service and the "native" IPv6 Internet. The relays can also provide interoperability with hosts using other transition mechanisms such as "6to4". [STANDARDS-TRACK]
Delay-Dependent Fuzzy Control for Nonlinear Multiple Time-Delay Large-scale Systems by Dithers: Neural-Network-Based Approach

In this study, the stabilization problem for nonlinear multiple time-delay large-scale systems is considered. First, a neural-network (NN) model is employed to approximate each interconnected subsystem. Then, a linear differential inclusion (LDI) state-space representation is established for the dynamics of the NN model. Based on this LDI state-space representation, a robust fuzzy control design is proposed to overcome the effect of modeling errors between the nonlinear multiple time-delay large-scale systems and the NN models. Next, in terms of Lyapunov's direct method, a delay-dependent criterion is derived in order to guarantee the stability (UUB) of nonlinear multiple time-delay large-scale systems. Subsequently, the stability conditions of this criterion are reformulated into linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). Based on the LMIs and the decentralized control scheme, a set of fuzzy controllers is then synthesized to stabilize the nonlinear large-scale system and the H∞ control performance is achieved at the same time. If the designed fuzzy controllers cannot stabilize the nonlinear large-scale system, a batch of dithers (as the auxiliaries of fuzzy controllers) is simultaneously introduced to stabilize the nonlinear large-scale system. The injection of high-frequency signals, commonly called dithers, into nonlinear systems may improve their performance. If the frequencies of the dithers are high enough, the outputs of the dithered large-scale system and those of its corresponding mathematical model-the relaxed large-scale system can be made as close as desired. This makes it possible to obtain a rigorous prediction of the stability of the dithered large-scale system by establishing that of the relaxed large-scale system. Finally, a numerical example with simulations is provided to illustrate the feasibility of our approach.
The chiton stylus canal: An element delivery pathway for tooth cusp biomineralization

A detailed investigation of the stylus canal situated within the iron mineralized major lateral teeth of the chiton Acanthopleura hirtosa was undertaken in conjunction with a row‐by‐row examination of cusp mineralization. The canal is shown to contain columnar epithelial tissue similar to that surrounding the mineralized cusps, including the presence of iron rich particles characteristic of the iron storage protein ferritin. Within the tooth core, a previously undescribed internal pathway or plume is evident above the stylus canal, between the junction zone and mineralizing posterior face of the cusp. Plume formation coincides with the appearance of iron in the superior epithelium and the onset of mineralization at tooth row 13. The plume persists during the delivery of phosphorous and calcium into the tooth core, and is the final region of the cusp to become mineralized. The presence of the stylus canal was confirmed in a further 18 chiton species, revealing that the canal is common to polyplacophoran molluscs. These new data strongly support the growing body of evidence highlighting the importance of the junction zone for tooth mineralization in chiton teeth, and indicate that the chemical and structural environment within the tooth cusp is under far greater biological control than previously considered. J. Morphol. 2009. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Predictive Modeling of Biomass Component Tradeoffs in Brassica napus Developing Oilseeds Based on in Silico Manipulation of Storage Metabolism1[W][OA]

Seed oil content is a key agronomical trait, while the control of carbon allocation into different seed storage compounds is still poorly understood and hard to manipulate. Using bna572, a large-scale model of cellular metabolism in developing embryos of rapeseed (Brassica napus) oilseeds, we present an in silico approach for the analysis of carbon allocation into seed storage products. Optimal metabolic flux states were obtained by flux variability analysis based on minimization of the uptakes of substrates in the natural environment of the embryo. For a typical embryo biomass composition, flux sensitivities to changes in different storage components were derived. Upper and lower flux bounds of each reaction were categorized as oil or protein responsive. Among the most oil-responsive reactions were glycolytic reactions, while reactions related to mitochondrial ATP production were most protein responsive. To assess different biomass compositions, a tradeoff between the fractions of oil and protein was simulated. Based on flux-bound discontinuities and shadow prices along the tradeoff, three main metabolic phases with distinct pathway usage were identified. Transitions between the phases can be related to changing modes of the tricarboxylic acid cycle, reorganizing the usage of organic carbon and nitrogen sources for protein synthesis and acetyl-coenzyme A for cytosol-localized fatty acid elongation. The phase close to equal oil and protein fractions included an unexpected pathway bypassing α-ketoglutarate-oxidizing steps in the tricarboxylic acid cycle. The in vivo relevance of the findings is discussed based on literature on seed storage metabolism.