Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Genetic Differentiation and Genetic Diversity of Castanopsis (Fagaceae), the Dominant Tree Species in Japanese Broadleaved Evergreen Forests, Revealed by Analysis of EST-Associated Microsatellites

The broadleaved evergreen forests of the East Asian warm temperate zone are characterised by their high biodiversity and endemism, and there is therefore a need to extend our understanding of its genetic diversity and phylogeographic patterns. Castanopsis (Fagaceae) is one of the dominant tree species in the broadleaved evergreen forests of Japan. In this study we investigate the genetic diversity, genetic structure and leaf epidermal morphology of 63 natural populations of C. sieboldii and C. cuspidata, using 32 Expressed Sequence Tag associated microsatellites. The overall genetic differentiation between populations was low (G ST = 0.069 in C. sieboldii and G ST = 0.057 in C. cuspidata). Neighbor-joining tree and Bayesian clustering analyses revealed that the populations of C. sieboldii and C. cuspidata were genetically clearly differentiated, a result which is consistent with the morphology of their epidermal cell layers. This suggests that C. sieboldii and C. cuspidata should be treated as independent species, although intermediate morphologies are often observed, especially at sites where the two species coexist. The higher level of genetic diversity observed in the Kyushu region (for both species) and the Ryukyu Islands (for C. sieboldii) is consistent with the available fossil pollen data for Castanopsis-type broadleaved evergreen trees during the Last Glacial Maximum and suggests the existence of refugia for Castanopsis forests in southern Japan. Within the C. sieboldii populations, Bayesian clustering analyses detected three clusters, in the western and eastern parts of the main islands and in the Ryukyu Islands. The west-east genetic differentiation observed for this species in the main islands, a pattern which is also found in several plant and animal species inhabiting Castanopsis forests in Japan, suggests that they have been isolated from each other in the western and eastern populations for an extended period of time, and may imply the existence of eastern refugia.
Leaf Morphological and Stomatal Variations in Paper Birch Populations along Environmental Gradients in Canada

Variations in leaf morphology and stomatal characteristics have been extensively studied at both inter- and intraspecific levels although not explicitly in the context of paper birch (Betula papyrifera Marsh) populations. The birch populations might have developed the leaf variations that allowed them to adapt to a wide climatic gradient. Therefore, in this study we examined variations in the leaf morphological and stomatal characteristics of sixteen paper birch populations collected across Canada and grown in a common garden. We also examined the relationship between these leaf characteristics and the climate of the population’s origin. Significant genotypic differences were found in the leaf characteristics measured among the birch populations. Thus, we expected that the observed leaf variations may be partly explained as natural diversity in the birch due to differences in environment of origin. We noticed that along mean annual precipitation and aridity gradients, hair density on leaf adaxial surface had decreased whereas stomatal density increased significantly. Our results showed that the populations with larger leaf area and specific leaf area had higher hair density but low stomatal density. These leaf characteristics provided a structural basis in reducing water loss through leaves and increasing water use efficiency. A trade-off between stomatal area and density resulted in this study might be a strategy of the birch to balance stomatal conductance in decreased precipitation.
Both N-methyl-D-aspartate and non-N-methyl-D-aspartate glutamate receptors in the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis modulate the cardiovascular responses to acute restraint stress in rats

The bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) is a forebrain structure that has been implicated on cardiovascular responses evoked by emotional stress. However, the local neurochemical mechanisms mediating the BNST control of stress responses are not fully described. In our study we investigated the involvement of glutamatergic neurotransmission within the BNST in cardiovascular changes evoked by acute restraint stress in rats. For this study, we investigated the effects of bilateral microinjections of selective antagonists of either N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) or non-NMDA glutamate receptors into the BNST on the arterial pressure and heart rate increase and the decrease in tail skin temperature induced by acute restraint stress. Microinjection of the selective NMDA glutamate receptor antagonist LY235959 (1 nmol/100 nL) into the BNST decreased the tachycardiac response to restraint stress, without affecting the arterial pressure increase and the drop in skin temperature. Bilateral BNST treatment with the selective non-NMDA glutamate receptor NBQX (1 nmol/100 nL) decreased the heart rate increase and the fall in tail skin temperature, without affecting the blood pressure increase. These findings indicate a facilitatory influence of BNST glutamatergic neurotransmission via coactivation of local NMDA and non-NMDA receptors on the tachycardiac response to stress, whereas control of sympathetic-mediated cutaneous vasoconstriction is selectively mediated by local non-NMDA glutamate receptors.
Lethal and sub-lethal effects of a novel sulfoximine insecticide, sulfoxaflor, against Asian citrus psyllid and its primary parasitoid under laboratory and field conditions

ABSTRACT The Asian citrus psyllid, Diaphorina citri Kuwayama, is the most important international pest of citrus because it transmits the bacteria that cause huanglongbing (HLB). HLB limits citrus production globally. We evaluated the toxicity of sulfoxalor against D. citri and its parasitoid, Tamarixia radiata Waterston. Sulfoxaflor was as toxic as imidacloprid to adult D. citri. The LC50 values for sulfoxaflor and imidacloprid were 8.17 and 5.7 µg AI mL−1, respectively. The LC50 of sulfoxaflor for T. radiata adults was 3.3 times greater than for D. citri adults. Treatment with sulfoxaflor resulted in reduced oviposition, development of nymphs, and emergence of adult D. citri on plants, as compared with controls. The lowest concentration that reduced adult emergence was 0.6 µg AI mL−1. There was reduced feeding by D. citri adults on leaves treated with sulfoxaflor. The residual toxicity of sulfoxaflor was equivalent to imidacloprid. Under field conditions, formulated sulfoxaflor reduced populations of D. citri compared with untreated controls. Sulfoxaflor is a novel mode of action and is an effective tool for D. citri management.
Stoichiometry of Root and Leaf Nitrogen and Phosphorus in a Dry Alpine Steppe on the Northern Tibetan Plateau

Leaf nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) have been used widely in the ecological stoichiometry to understand nutrient limitation in plant. However,few studies have focused on the relationship between root nutrients and environmental factors. The main objective of this study was to clarify the pattern of root and leaf N and P concentrations and the relationships between plant nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) concentrations with climatic factors under low temperature conditions in the northern Tibetan Plateau of China. We conducted a systematic census of N and P concentrations, and the N∶P ratio in leaf and root for 139 plant samples, from 14 species and 7 families in a dry Stipa purpurea alpine steppe on the northern Tibetan Plateau of China. The results showed that the mean root N and P concentrations and the N∶P ratios across all species were 13.05 mg g−1, 0.60 mg g−1 and 23.40, respectively. The mean leaf N and P concentrations and the N∶P ratio were 23.20 mg g−1, 1.38 mg g−1, and 17.87, respectively. Compared to global plant nutrients concentrations, plants distributing in high altitude area have higher N concentrations and N∶P, but lower P concentrations, which could be used to explain normally-observed low growth rate of plant in the cold region. Plant N concentrations were unrelated to the mean annual temperature (MAT). The root and leaf P concentrations were negatively correlated with the MAT, but the N∶P ratios were positively correlated with the MAT. It is highly possible this region is not N limited, it is P limited, thus the temperature-biogeochemical hypothesis (TBH) can not be used to explain the relationship between plant N concentrations and MAT in alpine steppe. The results were valuable to understand the bio-geographic patterns of root and leaf nutrients traits and modeling ecosystem nutrient cycling in cold and dry environments.
Tropical cyclone intensity prediction over the North Indian Ocean - An NWP based objective approach

A Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) based objective intensity prediction approach has been explored for prediction of tropical cyclone intensity over the North Indian Ocean (NIO) using ECMWF model outputs. The intensity of a tropical cyclone is classified by the maximum sustained wind (10-min mean) according to World Meteorological Organization (WMO). An empirical relationship between the difference of the model’s maximum mean sea level pressure (MSLP) inside a 6° × 6° grid box around the centre of the system and the lowest mean sea level pressure at the centre of the system (ΔP) with the observed intensity is developed using over 100 analyses during 2010–2012. The same is used to predict intensity of very severe cyclonic storm Hudhud and a Deep Depression observed over the Bay of Bengal during 2014. The results show that the empirical equation is skillful in prediction of intensity as compared to predictions computed using the relationship Vmax = K DP with different constant values of K. The error analyses show that the relative error in intensity prediction using the empirical equation derived in the present study is 34% less than the same using K = 14.2 kt / hPa in Vmax = K DP with an improvement which is significant at the level of 0.95.
UIIM: A User-Item Interest Model Based on Bipartite Network for Top-N Recommender System

Recently, a sparse linear method (SLIM) is developed for top-N recommender systems, which can produce high-quality recommendations for sparse data sets. SLIM provides a better performance than other existing methods. In this paper, we provide a novel user-item interest method (UIIM) based on bipartite network to improve the performance of SLIM. UIIM generates top-N recommendations by building the user-item interest matrix R with the bipartite network of users and items, calculating the item-item similarity matrix with SLIM and predicting users’ ratings on items as a dot product of matrix and . And we also provide a parallel algorithm based on Spark to learn . Our results indicate that UIIM provides better performance and recommendation quality than other existing methods and parallel algorithm of learning outperforms serial algorithm on large-scale data sets.
Acute and chronic changes in rat soleus muscle after high‐fat high‐sucrose diet

The effects of obesity on different musculoskeletal tissues are not well understood. The glycolytic quadriceps muscles are compromised with obesity, but due to its high oxidative capacity, the soleus muscle may be protected against obesity‐induced muscle damage. To determine the time–course relationship between a high‐fat/high‐sucrose (HFS) metabolic challenge and soleus muscle integrity, defined as intramuscular fat invasion, fibrosis and molecular alterations over six time points. Male Sprague‐Dawley rats were fed a HFS diet (n = 64) and killed at serial short‐term (3 days, 1 week, 2 weeks, 4 weeks) and long‐term (12 weeks, 28 weeks) time points. Chow‐fed controls (n = 21) were killed at 4, 12, and 28 weeks. At sacrifice, animals were weighed, body composition was calculated (DXA), and soleus muscles were harvested and flash‐frozen. Cytokine and adipokine mRNA levels for soleus muscles were assessed, using RT‐qPCR. Histological assessment of muscle fibrosis and intramuscular fat was conducted, CD68+ cell number was determined using immunohistochemistry, and fiber typing was assessed using myosin heavy chain protein analysis. HFS animals demonstrated significant increases in body fat by 1 week, and this increase in body fat was sustained through 28 weeks on the HFS diet. Short‐term time‐point soleus muscles demonstrated up‐regulated mRNA levels for inflammation, atrophy, and oxidative stress molecules. However, intramuscular fat, fibrosis, and CD68+ cell number were similar to their respective control group at all time points evaluated. Therefore, the oxidative capacity of the soleus may be protective against diet‐induced alterations to muscle integrity. Increasing oxidative capacity of muscles using aerobic exercise may be a beneficial strategy for mitigating obesity‐induced muscle damage, and its consequences.
Load Minimization Design for Dual-rate Internet-based Control Systems

This paper presents a design method for Internet-based control systems in a dual-rate configuration to achieve load minimization and dynamic performance specifications. It avoids the complexity of large scale system design by focusing on individual control systems. In the dual-rate configuration, the plant under control is first stabilized by a local controller with a high sampling rate. The remote PID controller, which regulates the output according to the desirable reference, adopts a low sampling rate to reduce load on the network. The upper bound of the remote PID controller's sampling time which meets the requirement on control performance is derived and a simple tuning method for the remote PID controller is presented. Simulation and real-time examples are provided for illustration.
Complete Genome Sequence of Loktanella vestfoldensis Strain SMR4r, a Novel Strain Isolated from a Culture of the Chain-Forming Diatom Skeletonema marinoi

ABSTRACT We report here the genome sequence of Loktanella vestfoldensis strain SMR4r, isolated from the marine diatom Skeletonema marinoi strain RO5AC. Its 3,987,360-bp genome consists of a circular chromosome and two circular plasmids, one of which appears to be shared with an S. marinoi-associated Roseovarius species.
A music search engine built upon audio-based and web-based similarity measures

An approach is presented to automatically build a search engine for large-scale music collections that can be queried through natural language. While existing approaches depend on explicit manual annotations and meta-data assigned to the individual audio pieces, we automatically derive descriptions by making use of methods from Web Retrieval and Music Information Retrieval. Based on the ID3 tags of a collection of mp3 files, we retrieve relevant Web pages via Google queries and use the contents of these pages to characterize the music pieces and represent them by term vectors. By incorporating complementary information about acous tic similarity we are able to both reduce the dimensionality of the vector space and improve the performance of retrieval, i.e. the quality of the results. Furthermore, the usage of audio similarity allows us to also characterize audio pieces when there is no associated information found on the Web.
Thermal Tolerance Limits of Diamondback Moth in Ramping and Plunging Assays

Thermal sensitivity is a crucial determinant of insect abundance and distribution. The way it is measured can have a critical influence on the conclusions made. Diamondback moth (DBM), Plutella xylostella (L.) (Lepidoptera: Plutellidae) is an important insect pest of cruciferous crops around the world and the thermal responses of polyphagous species are critical to understand the influences of a rapidly changing climate on their distribution and abundance. Experiments were carried out to the lethal temperature limits (ULT0 and LLT0: temperatures where there is no survival) as well as Upper and Lower Lethal Temperature (ULT25 and LLT25) (temperature where 25% DBM survived) of lab-reared adult DBM population to extreme temperatures attained by either two-way ramping (ramping temperatures from baseline to LT25 and ramping back again) or sudden plunging method. In this study the ULT0 for DBM was recorded as 42.6°C and LLT0 was recorded as −16.5°C. DBM had an ULT25 of 41.8°C and LLT25 of −15.2°C. The duration of exposure to extreme temperatures had significant impacts on survival of DBM, with extreme temperatures and/or longer durations contributing to higher lethality. Comparing the two-way ramping temperature treatment to that of direct plunging temperature treatment, our study clearly demonstrated that DBM was more tolerant to temperature in the two-way ramping assay than that of the plunging assay for cold temperatures, but at warmer temperatures survival exhibited no differences between ramping and plunging. These results suggest that DBM will not be put under physiological stress from a rapidly changing climate, rather access to host plants in marginal habitats has enabled them to expand their distribution. Two-way temperature ramping enhances survival of DBM at cold temperatures, and this needs to be examined across a range of taxa and life stages to determine if enhanced survival is widespread incorporating a ramping recovery method.
Mapping the Web resources of a developing country

To develop a search engine tailored to a specific country, its relevant Web resources have to be identified. The first step in this resource discovery is to retrieve Web documents that contain content related to the country. In our work, we aim towards a search engine for Honduras, a developing country in Latin America with an emerging use of the Web. In a preparatory step, we aim to find relevant domains prior to setting up our own crawler so that they can serve as seeds to the crawler, which can then be run in a more focused way to retrieve the actual Web pages. We initially use two angles for domain resource discovery. The first is to use the data available from the DMOZ catalogue, the second is to use major commercial search engines for an overview of Honduran domain names used on the Web. We report on initial results as well as the used methods and additionally give data about the geographic distribution of Honduran Web servers both inside and outside the country.
Active Invasion of Oral and Aortic Tissues by Porphyromonas gingivalis in Mice Causally Links Periodontitis and Atherosclerosis

Atherosclerotic vascular disease is a leading cause of myocardial infarction and cerebrovascular accident, and independent associations with periodontal disease (PD) are reported. PD is caused by polymicrobial infections and aggressive immune responses. Genomic DNA of Porphyromonas gingivalis, the best-studied bacterial pathogen associated with severe PD, is detected within atherosclerotic plaque. We examined causal relationships between chronic P. gingivalis oral infection, PD, and atherosclerosis in hyperlipidemic ApoEnull mice. ApoEnull mice (n = 24) were orally infected with P. gingivalis for 12 and 24 weeks. PD was assessed by standard clinical measurements while the aorta was examined for atherosclerotic lesions and inflammatory markers by array. Systemic inflammatory markers serum amyloid A, nitric oxide, and oxidized low-density lipoprotein were analyzed. P. gingivalis infection elicited specific antibodies and alveolar bone loss. Fluorescent in situ hybridization detected viable P. gingivalis within oral epithelium and aorta, and genomic DNA was detected within systemic organs. Aortic plaque area was significantly increased in P. gingivalis-infected mice at 24 weeks (P<0.01). Aortic RNA and protein arrays indicated a strong Th2 response. Chronic oral infection with P. gingivalis results in a specific immune response, significant increases in oral bone resorption, aortic inflammation, viable bacteria in oral epithelium and aorta, and plaque development.
Opiate Prescribing Practices in the Postpartum Unit.

Background Louisiana is significantly impacted by the opioid epidemic. In preparation for a quality improvement project aimed at decreasing postpartum narcotics prescriptions, we evaluated routine prescribing practices on a postpartum unit and the number of patient-initiated encounters for postpartum pain. Methods We conducted a retrospective medical record review of all vaginal deliveries occurring at Ochsner Baptist Medical Center in New Orleans, LA in December 2016 and January 2017. We collected patient demographics, inpatient and outpatient pain medications, and the number of postpartum pain-related encounters prior to the scheduled postpartum visit. We evaluated the cohort for inpatient medication usage and for postpartum encounters for pain. Results After exclusions, 187 of 369 patients were included in the analysis: 78 patients had no perineal laceration, 40 had a first-degree laceration, and 69 had a second-degree laceration. The no-laceration (P=0.007) and second-degree laceration (P=0.011) groups had a significantly higher mean morphine milligram equivalent (MME) per patient during hospitalization than the first-degree group. Sixty-four patients were primiparous, and 123 were multiparous. Parity decreased as the severity of the laceration increased. Multiparous patients had a higher mean MME than primiparous patients (34.5 vs 30.0, respectively) during hospitalization, but the difference was not significant. In the no-laceration group, multiparous patients used significantly more narcotics during hospitalization (mean 41.4 MME) than primiparous patients (mean 22.5 MME) (P=0.029). A total of 3,635 narcotic pills were prescribed for our cohort at discharge, an average of 19.4 pills per patient. Overall, the mean number of postpartum encounters for pain was 0.19 per patient, with no difference between groups. Conclusion Despite a high number of outpatient narcotics prescriptions, approximately 1 in 5 patients initiated an encounter to address pain after vaginal delivery. Parity may play a role in postpartum inpatient narcotic usage, possibly because multiparous patients have had prior exposure to narcotics use in postpartum care.
Thermo-moisture responsive polyurethane shape-memory polymer and composites: a review

The polyurethane shape-memory polymer (SMP) developed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industry, Japan is not only thermo-responsive, but also moisture-responsive as recently found. The moisture-responsive ability atop the well-known thermo-responsive feature could open a new dimension for applications of this fantastic material. This paper presents a concise review of the thermo- and moisture-responsive properties and thermomechanical behaviors of this SMP and its composites, and potential applications utilizing these features, in particular in biomedical engineering.