Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
REDUCED GENETIC VARIANCE AMONG HIGH FITNESS INDIVIDUALS: INFERRING STABILIZING SELECTION ON MALE SEXUAL DISPLAYS IN DROSOPHILA SERRATA

Directional selection is prevalent in nature, yet phenotypes tend to remain relatively constant, suggesting a limit to trait evolution. However, the genetic basis of this limit is unresolved. Given widespread pleiotropy, opposing selection on a trait may arise from the effects of the underlying alleles on other traits under selection, generating net stabilizing selection on trait genetic variance. These pleiotropic costs of trait exaggeration may arise through any number of other traits, making them hard to detect in phenotypic analyses. Stabilizing selection can be inferred, however, if genetic variance is greater among low‐ compared to high‐fitness individuals. We extend a recently suggested approach to provide a direct test of a difference in genetic variance for a suite of cuticular hydrocarbons (CHCs) in Drosophila serrata. Despite strong directional sexual selection on these traits, genetic variance differed between high‐ and low‐fitness individuals and was greater among the low‐fitness males for seven of eight CHCs, significantly more than expected by chance. Univariate tests of a difference in genetic variance were nonsignificant but likely have low power. Our results suggest that further CHC exaggeration in D. serrata in response to sexual selection is limited by pleiotropic costs mediated through other traits.
Estimation of Surface NO2 Volume Mixing Ratio in Four Metropolitan Cities in Korea Using Multiple Regression Models with OMI and AIRS Data

Surface NO2 volume mixing ratio (VMR) at a specific time (13:45 Local time) (NO2 VMRST) and monthly mean surface NO2 VMR (NO2 VMRM) are estimated for the first time using three regression models with Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) data in four metropolitan cities in South Korea: Seoul, Gyeonggi, Daejeon, and Gwangju. Relationships between the surface NO2 VMR obtained from in situ measurements (NO2 VMRIn-situ) and tropospheric NO2 vertical column density obtained from OMI from 2007 to 2013 were developed using regression models that also include boundary layer height (BLH) from Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) and surface pressure, temperature, dew point, and wind speed and direction. The performance of the regression models is evaluated via comparison with the NO2 VMRIn-situ for two validation years (2006 and 2014). Of the three regression models, a multiple regression model shows the best performance in estimating NO2 VMRST and NO2 VMRM. In the validation period, the average correlation coefficient (R), slope, mean bias (MB), mean absolute error (MAE), root mean square error (RMSE), and percent difference between NO2 VMRIn-situ and NO2 VMRST estimated by the multiple regression model are 0.66, 0.41, −1.36 ppbv, 6.89 ppbv, 8.98 ppbv, and 31.50%, respectively, while the average corresponding values for the other two models are 0.75, 0.41, −1.40 ppbv, 3.59 ppbv, 4.72 ppbv, and 16.59%, respectively. All three models have similar performance for NO2 VMRM, with average R, slope, MB, MAE, RMSE, and percent difference between NO2 VMRIn-situ and NO2 VMRM of 0.74, 0.49, −1.90 ppbv, 3.93 ppbv, 5.05 ppbv, and 18.76%, respectively.
Speech processing with a cortical representation of audio

Neurophysiological studies in the primary auditory cortex have recently demonstrated a rich diversity of responses that provide an explicit multidimensional representation of phonemic acoustic features (Mesgarani 2008). Specifically, distinct subsets of cortical neurons are activated by articulatory gestures and dynamics that are characteristic of different phonemes. Here we use a computational cortical model to illustrate how these phonetic features appear in such a multiresolution representation. We also review how this representation has been successfully applied in variety of speech processing tasks including robust speech discrimination, speech enhancement and phoneme recognition.
Connections between Voice Ergonomic Risk Factors in Classrooms and Teachers’ Voice Production

Objective: The aim of the study was to investigate if voice ergonomic risk factors in classrooms correlated with acoustic parameters of teachers’ voice production. Methods: The voice ergonomic risk factors in the fields of working culture, working postures and indoor air quality were assessed in 40 classrooms using the Voice Ergonomic Assessment in Work Environment – Handbook and Checklist. Teachers (32 females, 8 males) from the above-mentioned classrooms recorded text readings before and after a working day. Fundamental frequency, sound pressure level (SPL) and the slope of the spectrum (alpha ratio) were analyzed. Results: The higher the number of the risk factors in the classrooms, the higher SPL the teachers used and the more strained the males’ voices (increased alpha ratio) were. The SPL was already higher before the working day in the teachers with higher risk than in those with lower risk. Conclusion: In the working environment with many voice ergonomic risk factors, speakers increase voice loudness and use more strained voice quality (males). A practical implication of the results is that voice ergonomic assessments are needed in schools.
Wearable Travel Aid for Environment Perception and Navigation of Visually Impaired People

Assistive devices for visually impaired people (VIP) which support daily traveling and improve social inclusion are developing fast. Most of them try to solve the problem of navigation or obstacle avoidance, and other works focus on helping VIP to recognize their surrounding objects. However, very few of them couple both capabilities (i.e., navigation and recognition). Aiming at the above needs, this paper presents a wearable assistive device that allows VIP to (i) navigate safely and quickly in unfamiliar environment, and (ii) to recognize the objects in both indoor and outdoor environments. The device consists of a consumer Red, Green, Blue and Depth (RGB-D) camera and an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), which are mounted on a pair of eyeglasses, and a smartphone. The device leverages the ground height continuity among adjacent image frames to segment the ground accurately and rapidly, and then search the moving direction according to the ground. A lightweight Convolutional Neural Network (CNN)-based object recognition system is developed and deployed on the smartphone to increase the perception ability of VIP and promote the navigation system. It can provide the semantic information of surroundings, such as the categories, locations, and orientations of objects. Human–machine interaction is performed through audio module (a beeping sound for obstacle alert, speech recognition for understanding the user commands, and speech synthesis for expressing semantic information of surroundings). We evaluated the performance of the proposed system through many experiments conducted in both indoor and outdoor scenarios, demonstrating the efficiency and safety of the proposed assistive system.
Psychological Stress, Vascular Inflammation, and Atherogenesis: Potential Roles of Circulating Cytokines

Abstract: Cardiovascular disease is a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Epidemiological studies have clearly demonstrated that chronic psychosocial stress increases the risk of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease and this may involve multiple mediators and regulating pathways, whereas the precise mechanisms underlying the effects of stress on development of atherosclerosis are not completely understood. In this mini review, we summarize current information from various animal studies suggesting that stress may promote atherogenesis by stimulating vascular inflammation via elevating the level of circulating proinflammatory cytokines (such as tumor necrosis factor &agr; and interleukin 6). Although circulating cytokines can serve as reliable biomarkers of systemic inflammation, in light of the emerging evidence, we propose that these molecules may also have a causal role in mediating stress-triggered vascular inflammatory reaction and atherogenesis. Further studies are warranted to clarify whether targeting circulating cytokines may be an effective approach to reduce the detrimental effects of chronic stress.
Multi-Robot Exploration of an Unknown Environment, Efficiently Reducing the Odometry Error

This paper deals with the intelligent exploration of an unknown environment by autonomous robots. In particular, we present an algorithm and associated analysis for collaborative exploration using two mobile robots. Our approach is based on robots with range sensors limited by distance. By appropriate behavioural strategies, we show that odometry (motion) errors that would normally present problems for mapping can be severely reduced. Our analysis includes polynomial complexity bounds and a discussion of possible heuristics.
Cryogen spray cooling efficiency: Improvement of port wine stain laser therapy through multiple‐intermittent cryogen spurts and laser pulses

Cryogen spray cooling (CSC) is used to minimize the risk of epidermal damage during laser treatment of port wine stain (PWS) birthmarks. Unfortunately, CSC may not provide the necessary protection for patients with high concentrations of epidermal melanin. The objectives of this study are to: (1) provide a definition of cooling efficiency (η) based on the amount of heat removed per unit area of skin for a given cooling time; (2) using this definition, establish the η of previously reported spray nozzles; (3) identify the maximum benefit expected in PWS laser therapy based solely on improvement of η; and (4) study the feasibility of using multiple‐intermittent cryogen spurts and laser pulses to improve PWS laser therapy.
Drosophila Syncrip binds the gurken mRNA localisation signal and regulates localised transcripts during axis specification

Summary In the Drosophila oocyte, mRNA transport and localised translation play a fundamental role in axis determination and germline formation of the future embryo. gurken mRNA encodes a secreted TGF-α signal that specifies dorsal structures, and is localised to the dorso-anterior corner of the oocyte via a cis-acting 64 nucleotide gurken localisation signal. Using GRNA chromatography, we characterised the biochemical composition of the ribonucleoprotein complexes that form around the gurken mRNA localisation signal in the oocyte. We identified a number of the factors already known to be involved in gurken localisation and translational regulation, such as Squid and Imp, in addition to a number of factors with known links to mRNA localisation, such as Me31B and Exu. We also identified previously uncharacterised Drosophila proteins, including the fly homologue of mammalian SYNCRIP/hnRNPQ, a component of RNA transport granules in the dendrites of mammalian hippocampal neurons. We show that Drosophila Syncrip binds specifically to gurken and oskar, but not bicoid transcripts. The loss-of-function and overexpression phenotypes of syncrip in Drosophila egg chambers show that the protein is required for correct grk and osk mRNA localisation and translational regulation. We conclude that Drosophila Syncrip is a new factor required for localisation and translational regulation of oskar and gurken mRNA in the oocyte. We propose that Syncrip/SYNCRIP is part of a conserved complex associated with localised transcripts and required for their correct translational regulation in flies and mammals.
Comparative Evaluation of Automatic Age-Progression Methodologies

Automatic age-progression is the process of modifying an image showing the face of a person in order to predict his/her future facial appearance. In this paper, we compare the performance of two age-progression methodologies reported in the literature against two novel approaches to the problem. In particular, we compare the performance of a method based on age prototypes, a method based on aging functions defined in a low-dimensional parametric model space, and two methods based on the distributions of samples belonging to different individuals and different age groups. Quantitative comparative results reported in the paper are based on dedicated performance evaluation metrics that assess the ability of each method to produce accurate predictions of the future/previous facial appearance of subjects. The framework proposed in this paper promotes the idea of a standardized performance evaluation protocol for age-progression methodologies, using images from a publicly available image database.
Temporal Localization of Actions with Actoms.

We address the problem of localizing actions, such as opening a door, in hours of challenging video data. We propose a model based on a sequence of atomic action units, termed "actoms", that are semantically meaningful and characteristic for the action. Our Actom Sequence Model (ASM) represents an action as a sequence of histograms of actom-anchored visual features, which can be seen as a temporally structured extension of the bag-of-features. Training requires the annotation of actoms for action examples. At test time, actoms are localized automatically based on a non-parametric model of the distribution of actoms, which also acts as a prior on an action's temporal structure. We present experimental results on two recent benchmarks for action localization: "Coffee and Cigarettes" and the "DLSBP" dataset. We also adapt our approach to a classification-by-localization set-up and demonstrate its applicability on the challenging "Hollywood 2" dataset. We show that our ASM method outperforms the current state of the art in temporal action localization, as well as baselines that localize actions with a sliding window method.
Resveratrol Inhibits IL-6-Induced Transcriptional Activity of AR and STAT3 in Human Prostate Cancer LNCaP-FGC Cells

Prostate cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer. Although prostate tumors respond to androgen ablation therapy at an early stage, they often acquire the potential of androgen-independent growth. Elevated transcriptional activity of androgen receptor (AR) and/or signal transducer and activator of transcription-3 (STAT3) contributes to the proliferation of prostate cancer cells. In the present study, we examined the effect of resveratrol, a phytoalexin present in grapes, on the reporter gene activity of AR and STAT3 in human prostate cancer (LNCaP-FGC) cells stimulated with interleukin-6 (IL-6) and/or dihydrotestosterone (DHT). Our study revealed that resveratrol suppressed the growth of LNCaP-FGC cells in a time- and concentration-dependent manner. Whereas the AR transcriptional activity was induced by treatment with either IL-6 or DHT, the STAT3 transcriptional activity was induced only by treatment with IL-6 but not with DHT. Resveratrol significantly attenuated IL-6-induced STAT3 transcriptional activity, and DHT- or IL-6-induced AR transcriptional activity. Treatment of cells with DHT plus IL-6 significantly increased the AR transcriptional activity as compared to DHT or IL-6 treatment alone and resveratrol markedly diminished DHT plus IL-6-induced AR transcriptional activity. Furthermore, the production of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) was decreased by resveratrol in the DHT-, IL-6- or DHT plus IL-6-treated LNCaP-FGC cells. Taken together, the inhibitory effects of resveratrol on IL-6- and/or DHT-induced AR transcriptional activity in LNCaP prostate cancer cells are partly mediated through the suppression of STAT3 reporter gene activity, suggesting that resveratrol may be a promising therapeutic choice for the treatment of prostate cancer.
Synesthetically Induced Colors Evoke Apparent-Motion Perception

Synesthesia is a condition in which certain otherwise normal individuals see colors when they hear tones, or, when they look at black-and-white numbers, each number is tinged with a specific color (eg 5 is red and 2 is green). We constructed a display in which a random matrix of 5s had a vertical column of 2s ‘embedded’ in it. This was shown in frame 1 of a movie, followed by a similar display in frame 2 in which the element locations were uncorrelated but the bar as a whole was shifted horizontally. When normal subjects viewed the display, they just saw random jitter or twinkle; there was no impression of a bar moving horizontally. But, when our subject (JC) who had grapheme - color synesthesia viewed the display, he reported seeing a bar moving left or right depending on the trial. We conclude that, in at least some subjects, a synesthetically induced color that does not exist on the retina can nonetheless influence motion perception.
[Etiological and therapeutic aspects of schizoid and schizotypal personality disorder].

Following the introduction to the history of the concepts of abnormal personality, with regard to the schizoid and schizotypal forms, we present their systematic assessment in the modern classification systems.Both, the schizoid and schizotypal forms, are usually considered as schizophrenia-spectrum disorders. Biological and clinical data indicate relations to other axis-I disorders as well. However there are few systematic and strictly controlled studies on the psychotherapeutic and pharmacological treatment of schizotypal and schizoid personality disorders. Basic theoretic assumptions concerning both treatment concepts - for personality disorders in general, and especially in schizoid and schizotypal personality disorder - are given. Finally the role of neuroleptics and antidepressants for schizophrenia-spectrum disorders is discussed. New possibilities may emerge from the use of the recently developed atypical drugs, but further research in randomised studies is needed. Current prospective studies on early detected schizophrenia-spectrum disorders will broaden our knowledge about prevention and therapy.
Overexpression of eukaryotic initiation factor 4E (eIF4E) in breast carcinoma

Eukaryotic initiation factor 4E (eIF‐4E) is a 25‐kilodalton phosphoprotein that binds specifically to mRNA as the initial step for mRNA translation. An elevated level of eIF4E has been associated with the up‐regulation of various protooncogene products. Transfection of cell lines by viral vectors with eIF4E overexpression has resulted in malignant transformation. The objective in this study was twofold: to examine benign and malignant breast specimens for eIF4E expression, and to determine whether eIF4E overexpression may have prognostic potential.
Analysis of Cloud Storage & Emergence on Expressive words Searchable Encryption

The term search encryption allows conducting keyword search over encrypted data on behalf of the data users without learning the underlying plaintexts in cloud environment. The most existing searchable encryption schemes only support single or conjunctive keyword search, while a few other schemes that are able to perform expressive keyword search are computationally inefficient since they are built from bilinear pairings over the composite-order groups. Our analysis shows the public-key searchable encryption scheme in the prime-order groups, which allows keyword search policies predicates, access structures to be expressed in conjunctive, disjunctive or any monotonic Boolean formulas and achieves significant performance improvement over existing schemes. One of the most important is Keyword researching, valuable, and high return activities in the search marketing field keywords can make or break your website.
Preventing and treating posttraumatic seizures: The human experience

Posttraumatic epilepsy presents an ideal target for prevention efforts. Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is common, characteristics that put people at high risk such as penetrating injury or subdural hematoma or provoked seizures are easily identified, and the latency between the injury and the onset of epileptic seizures is frequently short. Several drugs have been tested for their ability to prevent provoked seizures and epilepsy after TBI. We describe the design of those studies and their results. Phenytoin and carbamazepine significantly reduce the incidence of provoked seizures. Phenobarbital and the combination of phenobarbital and phenytoin also look promising for reducing provoked seizures, but small sample sizes in the studies evaluating these drugs do not allow definitive conclusions. None of the drugs studied (phenytoin, phenobarbital, their combination, carbamazepine, valproate, or magnesium) have shown reliable evidence that they prevent, or even suppress, epileptic seizures after TBI. For most of the regimens tested (the phenytoin/phenobarbital combination being the exception), the best estimate of effect is under a 25% reduction in posttraumatic seizures, well less than the 50% reduction most studies were designed to detect. The evaluation of the tested drugs has serious limitations, however, and antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) developed since 1980 and other compounds have barely been tested at all. Better understanding the process of epileptogenesis, testing treatments that demonstrate antiepileptogenic effects in the laboratory, and performing thorough preclinical and phase II evaluations before attempting definitive trials should greatly improve the chance of identifying ways to prevent posttraumatic epilepsy, providing the ultimate cure for this condition.
Highly Divergent Methyltransferases Catalyze a Conserved Reaction in Tocopherol and Plastoquinone Synthesis in Cyanobacteria and Photosynthetic Eukaryotes Article, publication date, and citation information can be found at www.plantcell.org/cgi/doi/10.1105/tpc.013656.

Tocopherols are lipid-soluble compounds synthesized only by photosynthetic eukaryotes and oxygenic cyanobacteria. The pathway and enzymes for tocopherol synthesis are homologous in cyanobacteria and plants except for 2-methyl-6-phytyl-1,4-benzoquinone/2-methyl-6-solanyl-1,4-benzoquinone methyltransferase (MPBQ/MSBQ MT), which catalyzes a key methylation step in both tocopherol and plastoquinone (PQ) synthesis. Using a combined genomic, genetic, and biochemical approach, we isolated and characterized the VTE3 (vitamin E defective) locus, which encodes MPBQ/MSBQ MT in Arabidopsis. The phenotypes of vte3 mutants are consistent with the disruption of MPBQ/MSBQ MT activity to varying extents. The ethyl methanesulfonate–derived vte3-1 allele alters tocopherol composition but has little impact on PQ levels, whereas the null vte3-2 allele is deficient in PQ and α- and γ-tocopherols. In vitro enzyme assays confirmed that VTE3 is the plant functional equivalent of the previously characterized MPBQ/MSBQ MT (Sll0418) from Synechocystis sp PCC6803, although the two proteins are highly divergent in primary sequence. Sll0418 orthologs are present in all fully sequenced cyanobacterial genomes, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, and the diatom Thalassiosira pseudonana but absent from vascular and nonvascular plant databases. VTE3 orthologs are present in all vascular and nonvascular plant databases and in C. reinhardtii but absent from cyanobacterial genomes. Intriguingly, the only prokaryotic genomes that contain VTE3-like sequences are those of two species of archea, suggesting that, in contrast to all other enzymes of the plant tocopherol pathway, the evolutionary origin of VTE3 may have been archeal rather than cyanobacterial. In vivo analyses of vte3 mutants and the corresponding homozygous Synechocystis sp PCC6803 sll0418::aphII mutant revealed important differences in enzyme redundancy, the regulation of tocopherol synthesis, and the integration of tocopherol and PQ biosynthesis in cyanobacteria and plants.