Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multiple Stressors in a Top Predator Seabird: Potential Ecological Consequences of Environmental Contaminants, Population Health and Breeding Conditions

Environmental contaminants may have impacts on reproduction and survival in wildlife populations suffering from multiple stressors. This study examined whether adverse effects of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) increased with poor population health and breeding conditions in three colonies (60–74°N) of great skua (Stercorarius skua) in the north-eastern Atlantic (Shetland, Iceland and Bjørnøya [Bear Island]). POPs (organochlorines [OCs] and polybrominated diphenyl ethers [BDEs]) were measured in plasma of incubating birds (n = 222), concentrations differing nearly tenfold among colonies: Bjørnøya (2009) > Bjørnøya (2010) > Iceland (2009) > Shetland (2009). Reproductive success (hatching success and chick survival) showed that breeding conditions were favourable in Shetland and at Bjørnøya (2010), but were very poor in Iceland and at Bjørnøya (2009). Biomarkers indicated that health was poor in the Shetland population compared to the other populations. Females whose chicks hatched late had high POP concentrations in all colonies except at Bjørnøya (2010), and females losing their eggs at Bjørnøya (2009) tended to have higher concentrations than those hatching. Moreover, there was a negative relationship between female POP concentrations and chick body condition at hatching in Iceland and at Bjørnøya (2010). Supplementary feeding experiments were conducted, and in Iceland where feeding conditions were poor, significant negative relationships were found between female POP concentrations and daily growth-rate in first-hatched chicks of control nests, but not in food supplemented nests. This suggests that negative impacts of POPs were mitigated by improved feeding conditions. For second-chicks, there was a strong negative relationship between the female POP concentrations and growth-rate, but no effects of supplementary feeding. Lowered adult return-rate between breeding seasons with increasing POP loads were found both at Bjørnøya (2009) and in Shetland, especially related to BDEs. This indicates stronger fitness consequences of POPs following seasons with very poor breeding conditions and/or high reproductive effort. This study suggests that the impacts of POPs may differ depending on population health and breeding conditions, and that even low concentrations of POPs could have ecological consequences during adverse circumstances. This is important with regard to risk assessment of biomagnifying contaminants in marine ecosystems.
Are restrained children under 15 years of age in cars as effectively protected as adults?

Aim: To compare the injury distribution between children and adults, injured as restrained car passengers. Methods: Population based study of data from a French road trauma registry in 1996–2002. Children under 15 years old were compared with adult casualties according to the distribution of serious injuries in three distinct body regions (head, chest, and abdomen) when they were restrained car passengers. A multivariate logistic regression was performed to quantify the risk of AIS2+ injury (Abbreviated Injury Scale of 2 or more). Results: Among the 7568 casualties who were injured as restrained car passengers in car accidents, 1033 were less than 15 years old. Overall, 35.4% of children and 25.2% of adults were unrestrained. For children and adults, the risk of fatality was significantly reduced when they were restrained, but the percentages of children with Injury Severity Score (ISS) ⩾16, were not significantly different between restrained and not restrained casualties. Compared to adults, restrained children aged 5–9 were 2.7 times (OR 2.74; 95% CI 1.17 to 6.43) as likely to sustain an AIS2+ abdominal injury, and tended to be more at risk of AIS2+ head injuries, but were less at risk of AIS2+ chest injuries. Conclusions: Children aged 5–9 years injured in road accidents as restrained car passengers were more likely to sustain an AIS2+ abdominal injury than adults. This emphasises the need to reinforce educational campaigns aimed not only at getting children into restraint systems, but also insisting on their correct use.
Changes in Socioeconomic Status of the Chinese Male Population in the United States from 1960 to 1970 1

This study examines significant improvements in the changing socioeconomic status of Chinese males in America during the 1960s. The variables of education, occupation and income are reviewed in their relationship to the changes from unskilled labor to professional-technical employment. The need for further research on the income lag between the Chinese and white male population is demonstrated.
Eliminating false phase interactions to reduce optimization phase order search space

Compiler optimization phase ordering is a long-standing problem, and is of particular relevance to the performance-oriented and cost constrained domain of embedded systems applications. Optimization phases are known to interact with each other, enabling and disabling opportunities for successive phases. Therefore, varying the order of applying these phases often generates distinct output codes, with different speed, code-size and power consumption characteristics. Most current approaches to address this issue focus on developing innovative methods to selectively evaluate the vast phase order search space to produce a good (but, potentially suboptimal) representation for each program. In contrast, the goal of this work is to study and identify common causes of optimization phase interactions across all phases, and then devise techniques to eliminate them, if and when possible. We observe that several phase interactions are caused by false register dependence during many optimization phases. We further find that depending on the implementation of optimization phases, even an increased availability of registers may not be able to significantly reduce such false register dependences. We explore the potential of cleanup phases, such as register remapping and copy propagation, at reducing false dependences. We show that innovative implementation and application of these phases to reduce false register dependences not only reduces the size of the phase order search space substantially, but can also improve the quality of code generated by optimizing compilers.
Instructional, Transformational, and Managerial Leadership and Student Achievement: High School Principals Make a Difference

This statewide study examined the relationships between principal managerial, instructional, and transformational leadership and student achievement in public high schools. Differences in student achievement were found when schools were grouped according to principal leadership factors. Principal leadership behaviors promoting instructional and curriculum improvement were linked to achievement. Within transformational leadership, the principal’s ability to identify a vision and provide an appropriate model had the greatest relationship to achievement. Principal educational level also positively correlated with each leadership factor.
Connectionist diagnosis of lexical disorders in aphasia

Background: In the cognitive neurolinguistic approach to lexical deficits in aphasia, impaired levels of processing are localised in a cognitive model. Model-oriented treatment may target these impaired components. Thus a precise assessment of the disorder is crucial. Connectionist models add to this by using computer simulation to specify the details of the functioning of these components. The connectionist semantic-phonological model of lexical access (Dell, Martin, & Schwartz, 2007; Schwartz, Dell, Martin, Gahl, & Sobel, 2006) explores the impairment by simulating error patterns in naming and repetition. Aims: The purpose of the present study was to investigate the model's range of application as a diagnostic tool, and to derive recommendations for the model's use in clinical settings. Methods & Procedures: We demonstrate how we adapted the error analysis to 15 German-speaking patients with aphasia, analysed the model's accuracy in assessing naming and repetition disorders, and explained deviations between the error pattern produced by each patient and the one produced by the model's simulation by appealing to an extended version of the model. Outcomes & Results: Overall, the model yielded good fits of the patients' error patterns. Larger model–patient deviations could be explained by the model's limited set of lesionable components. Conclusions: The “connectionist diagnosis” of naming and repetition disorders in the semantic-phonological model is a reasonable tool in model-oriented assessment. However, the diagnosis needs to be complemented by further language tests.
Trophic level scales positively with body size in fishes

Aim The existence of a body size hierarchy across trophic connections is widely accepted anecdotally and is a basic assumption of many food-web models. Despite a strong theoretical basis, empirical evidence has been equivocal, and in general the relationship between trophic level and body size is often found to be weak or non-existent. Location Global (aquatic). Methods Using a global dataset for fishes (http://www.fishbase.org), we explored the relationship between body size and trophic position for 8361 fishes in 57 orders. Results Across all species, trophic position was positively related to maximum length (r2= 0.194, b= 0.065, P < 0.0001), meaning that a one-level increase in trophic level was associated with an increase in maximum length by a factor of 183. On average, fishes in orders that showed significantly positive trophic level–body size relations [mean = 51.6 cm ± 11.8 (95% confidence interval, CI)] were 86 cm smaller than fishes in orders that showed no relation [mean = 137.1 cm ± 50.3 (95% CI), P < 0.01]. A separate slopes model ANCOVA revealed that maximum length and trophic level were positively correlated for 47% (27 of 57) of orders, with two more orders showing marginally non-significant positive relations; no significant negative correlations were observed. The full model (order × body size) explained 37% of the variation between body size and trophic position (P < 0.0001). Main conclusions Our results support recent models which suggest that trophic level and body size should be positively correlated, and indicate that morphological constraints associated with gape limitation may play a stronger role in determining body size in smaller fishes. Differences among orders suggest that the nature of the trophic level–body size relation may be contingent, in part, on evolutionary history.
Winter-swimming as a building-up body resistance factor inducing adaptive changes in the oxidant/antioxidant status

Abstract The aim of our research was to examine whether winter-swimming for five consecutive months results in adaptational changes improving tolerance to stress induced by exposure to cryogenic temperatures during whole-body cryostimulation (WBC). The research involved 15 healthy men, with normal bodyweight, who had never been subjected to either WBC or cold water immersion. During the experiment, the participants were twice subjected to WBC (3 min/− 130°C), namely before the winter-swimming season and after the season. Blood was taken seven times: In the morning before each cryostimulation, 30 min after each cryostimulation and the next morning. Additionally, control blood was collected in the middle of the winter season, in February. Our analysis concerned changes in hematological parameters as well as in reduced glutathione and oxidized glutathione, total oxidant status, total antioxidant status and in components of the antioxidant system: Superoxide dismutase, catalase, glutathione peroxidase, glutathione reductase, glutathione S-transferase and 8-Isoprostanes as a sensitive indicator of oxidative stress. We found significant changes in hemoglobin concentration, the number of red blood cells, the hematocrit index and mean corpuscular volume of red blood cell and the percentage of monocytes and granulocytes after the winter swimming season. The response to cryogenic temperatures was milder after five months of winter-swimming. The obtained results may indicate positive adaptive changes in the antioxidant system of healthy winter-swimmers. These changes seem to increase the readiness of the human body to stress factors.
Defective Gp130-Mediated Signal Transducer and Activator of Transcription (Stat) Signaling Results in Degenerative Joint Disease, Gastrointestinal Ulceration, and Failure of Uterine Implantation

The receptor subunit gp130 transduces multiple cell type–specific activities of the leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF)/interleukin (IL)-6 family of cytokines through the signal transducer and activator of transcription (STAT) and src homology 2 domain–bearing protein tyrosine phosphatase (SHP)-2/ras/Erk pathways. To define STAT-dependent physiological responses, we generated mice with a COOH-terminal gp130ΔSTAT “knock-in” mutation which deleted all STAT-binding sites. gp130ΔSTAT mice phenocopyed mice deficient for IL-6 (impaired humoral and mucosal immune and hepatic acute phase responses) and LIF (failure of blastocyst implantation). However, unlike mice with null mutations in any of the components in the gp130 signaling pathway, gp130ΔSTAT mice also displayed gastrointestinal ulceration and a severe joint disease with features of chronic synovitis, cartilaginous metaplasia, and degradation of the articular cartilage. Mitogenic hyperresponsiveness of synovial cells to the LIF/IL-6 family of cyto-kines was caused by sustained gp130-mediated SHP-2/ras/Erk activation due to impaired STAT-mediated induction of suppressor of cytokine signaling (SOCS) proteins which normally limits gp130 signaling. Therefore, the joint pathology in gp130ΔSTAT mice is likely to arise from the disturbance of the otherwise balanced activation of the SHP-2/ras/Erk and STAT signaling cascades emanating from gp130.
On Task Recognition and Generalization in Long-Term Robot Teaching

Several research efforts address the challenge of having users incrementally teach or demonstrate a task to a robot. We are interested in an autonomous robot that persists over time and the problem of teaching it an additional task. We believe that the assumption that a user would know all the tasks previously taught to the robot does not hold. We hence investigate the problem of recognizing when a user is teaching a task similar to one the robot already knows and performing task autocompletion. In this extended abstract, we briefly discuss our approach, and report the results of an experiment run with human teachers.
Single-Molecule FISH Reveals Non-selective Packaging of Rift Valley Fever Virus Genome Segments

The bunyavirus genome comprises a small (S), medium (M), and large (L) RNA segment of negative polarity. Although genome segmentation confers evolutionary advantages by enabling genome reassortment events with related viruses, genome segmentation also complicates genome replication and packaging. Accumulating evidence suggests that genomes of viruses with eight or more genome segments are incorporated into virions by highly selective processes. Remarkably, little is known about the genome packaging process of the tri-segmented bunyaviruses. Here, we evaluated, by single-molecule RNA fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH), the intracellular spatio-temporal distribution and replication kinetics of the Rift Valley fever virus (RVFV) genome and determined the segment composition of mature virions. The results reveal that the RVFV genome segments start to replicate near the site of infection before spreading and replicating throughout the cytoplasm followed by translocation to the virion assembly site at the Golgi network. Despite the average intracellular S, M and L genome segments approached a 1:1:1 ratio, major differences in genome segment ratios were observed among cells. We also observed a significant amount of cells lacking evidence of M-segment replication. Analysis of two-segmented replicons and four-segmented viruses subsequently confirmed the previous notion that Golgi recruitment is mediated by the Gn glycoprotein. The absence of colocalization of the different segments in the cytoplasm and the successful rescue of a tri-segmented variant with a codon shuffled M-segment suggested that inter-segment interactions are unlikely to drive the copackaging of the different segments into a single virion. The latter was confirmed by direct visualization of RNPs inside mature virions which showed that the majority of virions lack one or more genome segments. Altogether, this study suggests that RVFV genome packaging is a non-selective process.
Expression and polarized distribution of an inwardly rectifying K+ channel, Kir4.1, in rat retinal pigment epithelium

1 In the eye, different substances and ions including potassium (K+) are transported between neural retina and choroid via the subretinal space. Inwardly rectifying K+ channels (Kir) on the apical membrane of retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells are thought to play an essential role in K+ transport in the subretinal space. 2 Single‐channel recordings from the apical membrane of RPE cells exhibited functional expression of a Kir channel with properties identical to those of Kir4.1, while recordings from the basolateral membrane showed no detectable Kir channel currents. 3 The expression of Kir4.1 mRNA in RPE cells was confirmed by RT‐PCR analysis and in situ hybridization. Furthermore, using immunohistochemistry, we found that Kir4.1 was prominently expressed in RPE cells and localized specifically on the processes on their apical membrane. 4 Developmental studies revealed that expression of Kir4.1 started to appear 10 days or later after birth in RPE cells, in parallel with the maturation of retinal neuronal activity as represented by the a‐ and b‐waves of the electroretinogram. 5 These data suggest that Kir4.1 is one of the Kir channels involved in RPE‐mediated control of K+ ions in the subretinal space.
Multilingual Evaluation of KnowNet

This paper presents a new fully automatic method for building highly dense and accurate knowledge bases from existing semantic resources. Basically, the method uses a wide-coverage and accurate knowledge-based Word Sense Disambiguation algorithm to assign the most appropriate senses to large sets of topically related words acquired from the web. KnowNet, the resulting knowledge-base which connects large sets of semantically-related concepts is a major step towards the autonomous acquisition of knowledge from raw corpora. In fact, KnowNet is several times larger than any available knowledge resource encoding relations between synsets, and the knowledge KnowNet contains outperform any other resource when is empirically evaluated in a common multilingual framework.
Somatosensory cortex excitability changes due to differences in instruction conditions of motor imagery

Abstract Purpose Vivid motor imagery appears to be associated with improved motor learning efficiency. However, the practical difficulties in measuring vivid motor imagery warrant new analytical approaches. The present study aimed to determine the instruction conditions for which vividness in motor imagery could be more easily seen and the excitability of the sensory cortex as it relates to the motor image. Materials and methods In total, 15 healthy, right-handed volunteers were instructed to imagine grasping a rubber ball under a verbal-only instruction condition (verbal condition), a verbal + visual instruction condition (visual condition), and a verbal + execution (physically grasping a real ball) condition (execution condition). We analyzed motor imagery-related changes in somatosensory cortical excitability by comparing somatosensory-evoked potentials in each condition with the rest (control) condition. We also used a visual analogue scale to measure subject-reported vividness of imagery. Results We found the N33 component was significantly lower in the execution condition than in the rest condition (p < 0.05). The results suggested a gating effect via central efferent mechanisms that affected the excitability of areas 3b or 1 in the primary somatosensory cortex, but only in the execution condition. Conclusions These data suggest that experiencing a movement through actual motor execution immediately prior to performing mental imagery of that movement enhances the excitability of motor-related cortical areas. It is suggested that the excitability of the motor-related region increased as a result of the motor imagery in the execution condition acting on the corresponding somatosensory cortex.
Comparison of the Products of the Reaction of 7-Methylbenz- [a]anthracene 5,6-Oxide and RNA, with Those Formed in 7-Methylbenz[a]anthracene-treated Cells

RNA was isolated by a phenol extraction method from mouse embryo cells treated in culture with either [G-~H]-7 methylbenz[a]anthracene or [G-:'H]-7-methylbenz[a]anthracene 5,6-oxide (the K-region epoxide). The RNA was degraded to ribonucleosides, mixed with ultraviolet-absorbing quantit ies of the epoxide ribonucleoside products isolated from RNA that had reacted with 7-methylbenz[a]anthracene 5,6-oxide in aqueous ethanol solution, and chromatographed on a column of Sephadex LH-20 eluted with a methanol:water gradient. The 7-methylbenz[a]anthracene 5,6-oxide ribonucleoside products formed in cells were identical to those formed in aqueous solution, although the relative amounts of the products varied. The majority of these epoxide-ribonucleoside products were not identical to the products formed in cells treated with the parent hydrocarbon. These results suggest that the major reactive form of 7-methylbenz[a]anthracene that binds to RNA in mouse embryo cells is not the K-region epoxide of this hydrocarbon.
The extracellular domains of FasL and Fas are sufficient for the formation of supramolecular FasL-Fas clusters of high stability

Using fluorescent variants of Fas and FasL, we show that membrane FasL and Fas form supramolecular clusters that are of flexible shape, but nevertheless stable and persistent. Membrane FasL-induced Fas clusters were formed in caspase-8– or FADD-deficient cells or when a cytoplasmic deletion mutant of Fas was used suggesting that cluster formation is independent of the assembly of the cytoplasmic Fas signaling complex and downstream activated signaling pathways. In contrast, cross-linked soluble FasL failed to aggregate the cytoplasmic deletion mutant of Fas, but still induced aggregation of signaling competent full-length Fas. Moreover, membrane FasL-induced Fas cluster formation occurred in the presence of the lipid raft destabilizing component methyl-β-cyclodextrin, whereas Fas aggregation by soluble FasL was blocked. Together, these data suggest that the extracellular domains of Fas and FasL alone are sufficient to drive membrane FasL-induced formation of supramolecular Fas–FasL complexes, whereas soluble FasL-induced Fas aggregation is dependent on lipid rafts and mechanisms associated with the intracellular domain of Fas.