Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of irradiance on the emission of short-lived halocarbons from three common tropical marine microalgae

Marine algae have been reported as important sources of biogenic volatile halocarbons that are emitted into the atmosphere. These compounds are linked to destruction of the ozone layer, thus contributing to climate change. There may be mutual interactions between the halocarbon emission and the environment. In this study, the effect of irradiance on the emission of halocarbons from selected microalgae was investigated. Using controlled laboratory experiments, three tropical marine microalgae cultures, Synechococcus sp. UMACC 371 (cyanophyte), Parachlorella sp. UMACC 245 (chlorophyte) and Amphora sp. UMACC 370 (diatom) were exposed to irradiance of 0, 40 and 120 µmol photons m−2s−1. Stress in the microalgal cultures was indicated by the photosynthetic performance (Fv/Fm, maximum quantum yield). An increase in halocarbon emissions was observed at 120 µmol photons m−2s−1, together with a decrease in Fv/Fm. This was most evident in the release of CH3I by Amphora sp. Synechococcus sp. was observed to be the most affected by irradiance as shown by the increase in emissions of most halocarbons except for CHBr3 and CHBr2Cl. High positive correlation between Fv/Fm and halocarbon emission rates was observed in Synechococcus sp. for CH2Br2. No clear trends in correlation could be observed for the other halocarbons in the other two microalgal species. This suggests that other mechanisms like mitochondria respiration may contribute to halocarbon production, in addition to photosynthetic performance.
Quantised control of nonlinear systems: analysis of robustness to parameter uncertainty, measurement errors, and exogenous disturbances

We propose a variant of the recently introduced strategy for stabilisation with limited information by D. Liberzon and J.P. Hespanha and analyse its robustness properties. We show that, if the nominal plant can be made input-to-state stable with respect to measurement errors, parameter uncertainty and exogenous disturbances, then this robustness is preserved with this quantised feedback. More precisely, if a sufficient bandwidth is available on the communication network, then the resulting closed loop is shown to be semiglobally input-to-state practically stable.
Implicit identification with death predicts change in suicide ideation during psychiatric treatment in adolescents

BACKGROUND Suicidal thoughts and behaviors are major public health concerns in youth. Unfortunately, knowledge of reliable predictors of suicide risk in adolescents is limited. Promising research using a death stimuli version of the Implicit Association Test (Death IAT) indicates that stronger identification with death differs between adults with and without a history of suicidal thoughts and behaviors and uniquely predicts suicide ideation and behavior. However, research in adolescents is lacking and existing findings have been mixed. This study extends previous research by testing whether implicit identification with death predicts changes in suicide ideation during psychiatric treatment in adolescents. METHODS Participants included 276 adolescents, ages 13-19, admitted to a short-term residential treatment program. At hospital admission and discharge, adolescents completed the Death IAT and measures of recent suicidal thoughts. RESULTS At admission, implicit identification with death was associated with recent suicide ideation, but did not differ between those who engaged in prior suicidal behavior and those who did not. Prospectively, adolescents' implicit identification with death at admission significantly predicted their suicide ideation severity at discharge, above and beyond explicit suicide ideation. However, this effect only was significant for adolescents with longer treatment stays (i.e., more than 13 days). CONCLUSIONS Implicit identification with death predicts suicidal thinking among adolescents in psychiatric treatment. Findings clarify over what period of time implicit cognition about death may predict suicide risk in adolescents.
Fish Intake during Pregnancy and Foetal Neurodevelopment—A Systematic Review of the Evidence

Fish is a source of several nutrients that are important for healthy foetal development. Guidelines from Australia, Europe and the USA encourage fish consumption during pregnancy. The potential for contamination by heavy metals, as well as risk of listeriosis requires careful consideration of the shaping of dietary messages related to fish intake during pregnancy. This review critically evaluates literature on fish intake in pregnant women, with a focus on the association between neurodevelopmental outcomes in the offspring and maternal fish intake during pregnancy. Peer-reviewed journal articles published between January 2000 and March 2014 were included. Eligible studies included those of healthy pregnant women who had experienced full term births and those that had measured fish or seafood intake and assessed neurodevelopmental outcomes in offspring. Medline, Scopus, Web of Science, ScienceDirect and the Cochrane Library were searched using the search terms: pregnant, neurodevelopment, cognition, fish and seafood. Of 279 papers sourced, eight were included in the final review. Due to heterogeneity in methodology and measured outcomes, a qualitative comparison of study findings was conducted. This review indicates that the benefits of diets providing moderate amounts of fish during pregnancy outweigh potential detrimental effects in regards to offspring neurodevelopment. It is important that the type of fish consumed is low in mercury.
A Global Baseline for Spawning Aggregations of Reef Fishes

Abstract: Species that periodically and predictably congregate on land or in the sea can be extremely vulnerable to overexploitation. Many coral reef fishes form spawning aggregations that are increasingly the target of fishing. Although serious declines are well known for a few species, the extent of this behavior among fishes and the impacts of aggregation fishing are not appreciated widely. To profile aggregating species globally, establish a baseline for future work, and strengthen the case for protection, we (as members of the Society for the Conservation of Reef Fish Aggregations) developed a global database on the occurrence, history, and management of spawning aggregations. We complemented the database with information from interviews with over 300 fishers in Asia and the western Pacific. Sixty‐seven species, mainly commercial, in 9 families aggregate to spawn in the 29 countries or territories considered in the database. Ninety percent of aggregation records were from reef pass channels, promontories, and outer reef‐slope drop‐offs. Multispecies aggregation sites were common, and spawning seasons of most species typically lasted <3 months. The best‐documented species in the database, the Nassau grouper (Epinephelus striatus), has undergone substantial declines in aggregations throughout its range and is now considered threatened. Our findings have important conservation and management implications for aggregating species given that exploitation pressures on them are increasing, there is little effective management, and 79% of those aggregations sufficiently well documented were reported to be in decline. Nonetheless, a few success stories demonstrate the benefits of aggregation management. A major shift in perspective on spawning aggregations of reef fish, from being seen as opportunities for exploitation to acknowledging them as important life‐history phenomena in need of management, is urgently needed.
Decoding of Large Terrains Using a Hardware Rendering Pipeline y

In this paper, we present a simple approach to the quantization of vertex-coordinate values of a very large terrain dataset, allowing both efficient representation and timely rendering of the data. We focus on uniform scalar quantization, which, although theoretically suboptimal in general, is shown to produce the same level of accuracy as a Lloyd-Max optimal quantizer for the terrain data under consideration. We find that a rate of quantization on the order of 6 bits per vertex results in visually lossless rendering of a very large terrain, allowing fly-throughs of high quality at interactive frame rates. Our novel approach to uniform scalar quantizer represents the inverse-quantization operation as a homogeneous matrix, allowing the rendering of the terrain data directly from the encoded representation with inverse quantization taking place automatically in the hardware rendering pipeline without the assumption of any special decompression engine. Additionally, our formulation is general and therefore amenable to incorporation in more sophisticated geometric-compression systems.
A new joint feedback and scheduling scheme based on the users' satisfaction

In this paper, a new joint feedback and scheduling scheme based on the users' satisfaction has been proposed. The scheme divides the users into different groups based on the QOS of users and calculates the users' satisfaction. Based on the satisfaction, the scheme takes it as scheduling weight of ZFBF-SUS in real-time users. Also, the scheduling weight of non-real-time users has been analyzed. It shows that the PDF of the scheduling weight of non-real-time users is given by gamma distribution. Furthermore, an appropriate feedback threshold has been derived. The scheme tradeoff the users' satisfaction, system sum-rate and feedback ratio. It reduces the feedback ratio effectively and proves the average of users' satisfaction with little decreasing of system sum-rate.
, November 2013 Career Choice and Economic Innovation : A Comparison Between China , Germany and the USA

This paper investigates some individual career choices in China, Germany and the US that have an impact on economic innovation. It presents evidence that public administration in China attracts highly educated and talented people, while those who create firms tend to have low educational attainment and do not stand out in terms of talent. In contrast, Americans of high ability tend to go in the private sector either as employees or as entrepreneurs. While education generates attractive alternatives to creating one's own firm, educated American entrepreneurs are highly successful, suggesting that they engage in frontier innovation. We then discuss some policy recommendations that may help increase the attractiveness of creating one’s own firm in China.
R-Ras promotes apoptosis caused by growth factor deprivation via a Bcl- 2 suppressible mechanism

The Bcl-2 protein is an important regulator of programmed cell death, but the biochemical mechanism by which this protein prevents apoptosis remains enigmatic. Recently, Bcl-2 has been reported to physically interact with a member of the Ras superfamily of small GTPases, p23-R- Ras. To examine the functional significance of R-Ras for regulation of cell death pathways, the IL-3-dependent cells 32D.3 and FL5.12 were stably transfected with expression plasmids encoding an activated form (38 Glycine-->Valine) of R-Ras protein. R-Ras(38V)-producing 32D.3 and FL5.12 cells experienced increased rates of apoptotic cell death relative to control transfected cells when deprived of IL-3. Analysis of several independent clones of transfected 32D.3 cells revealed a correlation between higher levels of R-Ras protein and faster rates of cell death upon withdrawal of IL-3 from cultures. 32D.3 cells cotransfected with R-Ras(38V) and Bcl-2 exhibited prolonged cell survival in the absence of IL-3, equivalent to 32D.3 cells transfected with Bcl-2 expression plasmids alone. R-Ras(38V) also increased rates of cell death in serum-deprived NIH-3T3 cells, and Bcl-2 again abrogated most of this effect. The ratio of GTP and GDP bound to R- Ras(38V) was not significantly different in control 32D.3 cells vs those that overexpressed Bcl-2, indicating that Bcl-2 does not abrogate R-Ras-mediated effects on cell death by altering R-Ras GDP/GTP regulation. Moreover, purified Bcl-2 protein had no effect on the GTPase activity of recombinant wild-type R-Ras in vitro. When expressed in Sf9 cells using recombinant baculoviruses, R-Ras(38V) bound to and induced activation of Raf-1 kinase irrespective of whether Bcl-2 was coproduced in these cells, suggesting that Bcl-2 does not nullify R-Ras effects by interfering with R-Ras-mediated activation of Raf-1 kinase. Taken together, these findings suggest that R-Ras enhances the activity of a cell death pathway in growth factor-deprived cells and imply that Bcl-2 acts downstream of R-Ras to promote cell survival.
Genome-Wide Association Mapping of Correlated Traits in Cassava: Dry Matter and Total Carotenoid Content

Cassava (Manihot esculenta (L.) Crantz) is a starchy root crop cultivated in the tropics for fresh consumption and commercial processing. Dry matter content and micronutrient density, particularly of provitamin A – traits that are negatively correlated – are among the primary selection objectives in cassava breeding. This study aimed at identifying genetic markers associated with these traits and uncovering the potential underlying cause of their negative correlation – whether linkage and/or pleiotropy. A genome-wide association mapping using 672 clones genotyped at 72,279 SNP loci was carried out. Root yellowness was used indirectly to assess variation in carotenoid content. Two major loci for root yellowness was identified on chromosome 1 at positions 24.1 and 30.5 Mbp. A single locus for dry matter content that co-located with the 24.1 Mbp peak for carotenoid content was identified. Haplotypes at these loci explained a large proportion of the phenotypic variability. Evidence of mega-base-scale linkage disequilibrium around the major loci of the two traits and detection of the major dry matter locus in independent analysis for the white- and yellow-root subpopulations suggests that physical linkage rather that pleiotropy is more likely to be the cause of the negative correlation between the target traits. Moreover, candidate genes for carotenoid (phytoene synthase) and starch biosynthesis (UDP-glucose pyrophosphorylase and sucrose synthase) occurred in the vicinity of the identified locus at 24.1 Mbp. These findings elucidate on the genetic architecture of carotenoids and dry matter in cassava and provides an opportunity to accelerate genetic improvement of these traits. CORE IDEAS Cassava, a starchy root crop, is a major source of dietary calories in the tropics. Most varieties consumed are poor in micronutrients, including pro-vitamin A. These two traits are governed by few major loci on chromosome one. Genetic linkage, rather than pleiotropy, is the most likely cause of their negative correlation.
Force Field Benchmark of Organic Liquids: Density, Enthalpy of Vaporization, Heat Capacities, Surface Tension, Isothermal Compressibility, Volumetric Expansion Coefficient, and Dielectric Constant

The chemical composition of small organic molecules is often very similar to amino acid side chains or the bases in nucleic acids, and hence there is no a priori reason why a molecular mechanics force field could not describe both organic liquids and biomolecules with a single parameter set. Here, we devise a benchmark for force fields in order to test the ability of existing force fields to reproduce some key properties of organic liquids, namely, the density, enthalpy of vaporization, the surface tension, the heat capacity at constant volume and pressure, the isothermal compressibility, the volumetric expansion coefficient, and the static dielectric constant. Well over 1200 experimental measurements were used for comparison to the simulations of 146 organic liquids. Novel polynomial interpolations of the dielectric constant (32 molecules), heat capacity at constant pressure (three molecules), and the isothermal compressibility (53 molecules) as a function of the temperature have been made, based on experimental data, in order to be able to compare simulation results to them. To compute the heat capacities, we applied the two phase thermodynamics method (Lin et al. J. Chem. Phys.2003, 119, 11792), which allows one to compute thermodynamic properties on the basis of the density of states as derived from the velocity autocorrelation function. The method is implemented in a new utility within the GROMACS molecular simulation package, named g_dos, and a detailed exposé of the underlying equations is presented. The purpose of this work is to establish the state of the art of two popular force fields, OPLS/AA (all-atom optimized potential for liquid simulation) and GAFF (generalized Amber force field), to find common bottlenecks, i.e., particularly difficult molecules, and to serve as a reference point for future force field development. To make for a fair playing field, all molecules were evaluated with the same parameter settings, such as thermostats and barostats, treatment of electrostatic interactions, and system size (1000 molecules). The densities and enthalpy of vaporization from an independent data set based on simulations using the CHARMM General Force Field (CGenFF) presented by Vanommeslaeghe et al. (J. Comput. Chem.2010, 31, 671) are included for comparison. We find that, overall, the OPLS/AA force field performs somewhat better than GAFF, but there are significant issues with reproduction of the surface tension and dielectric constants for both force fields.
Classification of Grain Discoloration via Transfer Learning and Convolutional Neural Networks

Grain discoloration disease of rice is an emerging threat to rice harvest in Vietnam as well as all over the world and it acquires specific attention as it results in qualitative loss of harvested crop. An accurate classification is preliminary to any kind of intervention. Unfortunately, collecting enough grain discoloration data as well as building and training a machine learning model from scratch is next to impossible due to the lack of hardware infrastructure and finance support. It painfully restricts the needs of rapid solutions to deal with the disease. For this purpose, this paper exploits the idea of transfer learning which is the improvement of learning in a new prediction task through the transfer of knowledge from a related prediction task that has already been learned. By utilizing convolutional neural networks trained with our collected data, our experiment shows that the proposed idea performs perfectly and achieves the classification accuracy of 88.2% with the acceptable training time on a normal laptop.
Work smart, not hard: Recalling relevant experiences for vast-scale but time-constrained localisation

This paper is about life-long vast-scale localisation in spite of changes in weather, lighting and scene structure. Building upon our previous work in Experience-based Navigation [1], we continually grow and curate a visual map of the world that explicitly supports multiple representations of the same place. We refer to these representations as experiences, where a single experience captures the appearance of an environment under certain conditions. Pedagogically, an experience can be thought of as a visual memory. By accumulating experiences we are able to handle cyclic appearance change (diurnal lighting, seasonal changes, and extreme weather conditions) and also adapt to slow structural change. This strategy, although elegant and effective, poses a new challenge: In a region with many stored representations - which one(s) should we try to localise against given finite computational resources? By learning from our previous use of the experience-map, we can make predictions about which memories we should consider next, conditioned on how the robot is currently localised in the experience-map. During localisation, we prioritise the loading of past experiences in order to minimise the expected computation required. We do this in a probabilistic way and show that this memory policy significantly improves localisation efficiency, enabling long-term autonomy on robots with limited computational resources. We demonstrate and evaluate our system over three challenging datasets, totalling 206km of outdoor travel. We demonstrate the system in a diverse range of lighting and weather conditions, scene clutter, camera occlusions, and permanent structural change in the environment.
A Comparison of HIV Health Services Utilization Measures in a Marginalized Population: Self-Report Versus Medical Records

Background:In studies examining the use of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) health services, researchers often use subjects' self-reported measures. Agreement between a subject's self-reports and medical records in marginalized populations is uncertain, yet important to understand, as this population is disproportionately affected by HIV. Methods:We sought to examine agreement between self-report and medical record health care utilization measures. Using a cross-sectional study, we studied 428 unstably housed HIV-infected adults in New York City. Self-reported data were collected from Audio Computer-Assisted Self-Interviews, and medical record data from health care providers' and facilities' ambulatory medical records. Agreement for a 6-month period was compared for ambulatory visits (0, 1, ≥2), HIV medications (antiretroviral therapy, opportunistic infection prophylaxis), whether CD4 counts and viral loads were performed and their values (CD4: <200, 200–500, >500 cells/mm3; Viral load: undetectable, detected). Results:Agreement between self-report and medical records was 55.2% (kappa = 0.12) for visits, and 68.2–79.1% (kappa = 0.27–0.48) for medications. Agreement on whether laboratory tests were performed was 62.3–65.7% (kappa = 0.11–0.14), whereas agreement on laboratory values was 77.6–79.3% (kappa = 0.52–0.70). Most disagreement resulted in greater number of self-reported visits, use of medications, and laboratory tests compared with medical record data. Conclusions:Among HIV-infected marginalized individuals, agreement between self-report and medical records was poor for ambulatory visits, poor to fair for medication use, and poor for laboratory tests performed. However, agreement for CD4 count value was substantially better. These findings have implications on health services research in marginalized populations that relies only on self-report or medical record data. This study underscores the importance of understanding how self-reported and medical record data are correlated in marginalized populations.
Computational Modelling of Calcium Buffering in a Star Shaped Astrocyte

Before last two decades, astrocytes were treated as supporting cells of neuron. Now it is regarded as important and strong participant in central nervous system. Astrocytes also play important role in many neuronal disorders like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's etc. Astrocytes release gliotransmitters like glutamate. Astrocytes take part in synapse in calcium dependent manner. However, it is not clear about the effect of astrocyte geometry on calcium distribution. In this study we present a geometry based mathematical model of an astrocytes. Mathematical model is developed in the form of reaction diffusion equation by considering the effect of endogenous and exogenous buffers on cytosolic calcium concentration. In present study it is concluded that the effect of geometry also visible and found significant on cytosolic calcium distribution in astrocytes.