Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reductions in mesophyll and guard cell photosynthesis impact on the control of stomatal responses to light and CO2

Transgenic antisense tobacco plants with a range of reductions in sedoheptulose-1,7-bisphosphatase (SBPase) activity were used to investigate the role of photosynthesis in stomatal opening responses. High resolution chlorophyll a fluorescence imaging showed that the quantum efficiency of photosystem II electron transport (Fq′/Fm′) was decreased similarly in both guard and mesophyll cells of the SBPase antisense plants compared to the wild-type plants. This demonstrated for the first time that photosynthetic operating efficiency in the guard cells responds to changes in the regeneration capacity of the Calvin cycle. The rate of stomatal opening in response to a 30 min, 10-fold step increase in red photon flux density in the leaves from the SBPase antisense plants was significantly greater than wild-type plants. Final stomatal conductance under red and mixed blue/red irradiance was greater in the antisense plants than in the wild-type control plants despite lower CO2 assimilation rates and higher internal CO2 concentrations. Increasing CO2 concentration resulted in a similar stomatal closing response in wild-type and antisense plants when measured in red light. However, in the antisense plants with small reductions in SBPase activity greater stomatal conductances were observed at all Ci levels. Together, these data suggest that the primary light-induced opening or CO2-dependent closing response of stomata is not dependent upon guard or mesophyll cell photosynthetic capacity, but that photosynthetic electron transport, or its end-products, regulate the control of stomatal responses to light and CO2.
A DCT-domain JND model based on visual attention for image

Most of the traditional JND models in DCT domain compute the JND threshold by incorporating the spatial contrast sensitivity function, the luminance adaptation effect and the contrast masking effect. How to integrate visual attention effect into the traditional JND models is still an open problem. In this paper, we proposed a new DCT-domain JND profile, in which a combined modulation function is built, based on the image saliency and textural characteristic to describe the visual attention effect and contrast masking effect on JND Threshold in DCT domain. Experimental results show that the proposed model can tolerate more distortion with the same perceptual quality, compared with the latest DCT-domain JND model. In terms of PSNR, the improvement of tolerated distortion is 0.54dB on average.
Perfusion‐weighted imaging defects during spontaneous migrainous aura

Perfusion‐and diffusion‐weighted magnetic resonance imaging was performed during spontaneous visual auras in four migraineurs. Alterations in relative cerebral blood flow (16–53% decrease), cerebral blood volume (6–33% decrease), and tissue mean transit time (10–54% increase) were observed in the gray matter of occipital cortex contralateral to the affected visual hemifield. No changes in the apparent diffusion coefficient were observed either while the patients were symptomatic or after resolution of the visual symptoms but before the onset of headache. Functional magnetic resonance imaging can be a useful noninvasive tool to study hemodynamic changes during spontaneous attacks of migraine with aura.
Data-driven simulation-based model for planning roadway operation and maintenance projects

Snow removal operations are required to maintain roadway safety during snowy winter conditions. Reliable plans outlining the dispatching of plow trucks must be made to deliver snow removal operations on time and within budget. Historical project performance data can be used to inform and facilitate decision-making processes associated with snow removal operations. This research proposes a data-driven simulation framework for planning snow removal projects considering weather and truck-related data collected by real-time sensors. An in-house developed simulation engine, Simphony.Net, is used to simulate operations based on input information extracted from mined sensor data. This model is capable of simulating plow operations to facilitate planning at both an operational and real-time level. What-if scenarios can be generated to simulate, predict, and optimize project and resource performance. A case study conducted in Alberta, Canada is presented to illustrate the practical application of the proposed method.
Clinical study of tympanostomy tube placement for patients with intractable Ménière's disease.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effectiveness of tympanostomy tube placement in controlling symptoms of intractable Ménière's disease. METHODS Fifteen patients with intractable Ménière's disease underwent tympanostomy tube placement in the affected ear. Post-operative changes in vertigo attacks and hearing level were recorded, and were evaluated according to American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery criteria. RESULTS At 12 months after treatment, 3 patients (20 per cent) showed complete control of vertigo, 7 (47 per cent) showed substantial control and 2 (13 per cent) showed limited control; 3 patients (20 per cent) required other treatment. At 24 months after treatment, 7 patients (47 per cent) showed complete control of vertigo, 3 (20 per cent) showed substantial control and 1 (7 per cent) showed limited control; 1 patient required other treatment 15 months after tympanostomy tube placement. CONCLUSION There is no definite pathophysiological explanation for the effect of tympanostomy tube placement in reducing vertigo attacks. This treatment is not effective for all patients with intractable Ménière's disease. However, tympanostomy tube placement might be an additional surgical therapeutic option to consider prior to contemplating other, more invasive treatments.
Coordinate Expression and Independent Subcellular Targeting of Multiple Proteins from a Single Transgene1

A variety of conventional methods allow the expression of multiple foreign proteins in plants by transgene stacking or pyramiding. However, most of these approaches have significant drawbacks. We describe a novel alternative, using a single transgene to coordinate expression of multiple proteins that are encoded as a polyprotein capable of dissociating into component proteins on translation. We demonstrate that this polyprotein system is compatible with the need to target proteins to a variety of subcellular locations, either cotranslationally or posttranslationally. It can also be used to coordinate the expression of selectable marker genes and effect genes or to link genes that are difficult to assay to reporter genes that are easily monitored. The unique features of this polyprotein system are based on the novel activity of the 2A peptide of Foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) that acts cotranslationally to effect a dissociation of the polyprotein while allowing translation to continue. This polyprotein system has many applications both as a research tool and for metabolic engineering and protein factory applications of plant biotechnology.
Analysis of diffusion geometry methods for shape recognition

Recent works have shown the use of diffusion geometry for various pattern recognition applications, including non-rigid shape analysis. In this paper, we analyze two recent methods for shape similarity due to Rustamov and Mahmoudi & Sapiro. We show the relations between the methods and propose a new shape similarity criterion combining the advantages of both methods.
Endurance running performance after 48 h of restricted fluid and/or energy intake.

PURPOSE To determine the effect of a 48-h period of either fluid restriction (FR), energy restriction (ER), or fluid and energy restriction (F + ER) on 30-min treadmill time trial (TT) performance in temperate conditions. METHODS Thirteen males participated in four randomized 48-h trials (mean +/- SD: age, 21 +/- 3 yr; VO2max 50.9 +/- 4.3 mL x kg(-1) x min(-1)). Control (CON) participants received their estimated energy (2903 +/- 199 kcal x d(-1)) and water (3912 +/- 500 mL x d(-1)) requirements. For FR, participants received their energy requirements and 193 +/- 50 mL x d(-1) water to drink, and for ER, participants received their water requirements and 290 +/- 20 kcal x d(-1). F + ER was a combination of FR and ER. After 48 h, participants performed a 30-min treadmill TT in temperate conditions (19.7 +/- 0.6 degrees C). A separate investigation (N = 10) showed the TT to be highly reproducible (CV 1.6%). RESULTS Body mass loss (BML) was 0.6 +/- 0.4% (CON), 3.2 +/- 0.5% (FR), 3.4 +/- 0.3% (ER), and 3.6 +/- 0.3% (F + ER). Compared with CON (6295 +/- 513 m), less distance was completed on ER (10.3%) and F + ER (15.0%: P < 0.01). Although less distance was completed on FR (2.8%), this was not significantly different from CON. CONCLUSIONS These results show a detrimental effect of a 48-h period of ER but no significant effect of FR on 30-min treadmill TT performance in temperate conditions. Therefore, these results do not support the popular contention that modest hypohydration (2-3% BML) significantly impairs endurance performance in temperate conditions.
Emotion Elicitation in Socially Intelligent Services: the Intelligent Typing Tutor Study Case

The paper discusses the challenges of user emotion elicitation in socially intelligent services, based on the experimental design and results of the intelligent typing tutor. Human-machine communication (HMC) of the typing tutor is supported by the continuous real-time emotion elicitation of user’s expressed emotions and the emotional feedback of the service, through the graphically rendered emoticons. It is argued that emotion elicitation is an important part of successful HMC, as it improves the communication loop and increases user engagement. Experimental results show that user’s valence and arousal are elicited during the typing practice, on average 18% to 25% of the time for valence and 20% to 31% of the time for arousal. However, the eﬃciency of emotion elicitation varies greatly throughout the use of the service, and also moderately among users. Overall, the results show that emotion elicitation, even via simple graphical emoticons, has signiﬁcant potential in socially intelligent services.
A Lifestyle Intervention Study in Patients with Diabetes or Impaired Glucose Tolerance: Translation of a Research Intervention into Practice

Objective: The objectives of this study were to translate a research-validated lifestyle modification curriculum of the Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) into a community-based program delivered by trained graduate students on a university campus and determine whether this delivery approach is effective in lowering risk factors of type 2 diabetes in at-risk adults. Methods: A convenience sample of 29 prediabetic or type 2 diabetic patients completed a 12-month behavior modification intervention to achieve and maintain at least 7% weight loss and become more active. Changes in weight, waist and hip circumferences, blood pressure, metabolic biomarkers, physical activity levels, and medication were assessed. Results: At 6 and 12 months, 39% and 56% of patients had lost ≥5% of their weight. The mean weight loss at 12 months was 6%. Significant improvements were noted in most other anthropometric measurements and diastolic BP (−4.1 mm Hg). Significant reductions in total cholesterol (−11.7%), LDL-C (−7.6%), and HDL-C (−6.5%) were observed by 6 months but not at 12 months. Fasting glucose (−12%), systolic BP (−8.4 mm Hg), and diastolic BP (−7.0 mm Hg) were significantly improved in a subgroup of participants with at least 5% weight loss. HbA1c levels were associated with percentage weight loss. Twenty-seven percent of participants on diabetes medication had their drug discontinued. Conclusion: Weight-related findings of this study are comparable with those of the DPP. DPP curriculum implemented in a nonclinical setting can help some adults at-risk for or in early stages of diabetes improve anthropometric and certain metabolic outcomes.
Global Metabolic Profiling of Escherichia Coli Cultures: an Evaluation of Methods for Quenching and Extraction of Intracellular Metabolites

Metabolomics and systems biology require the acquisition of reproducible, robust, reliable, and homogeneous biological data sets. Therefore, we developed and validated standard operating procedures (SOPs) for quenching and efficient extraction of metabolites from Escherichia coli to determine the best methods to approach global analysis of the metabolome. E. coli was grown in chemostat culture so that cellular metabolism could be held in reproducible, steady-state conditions under a range of precisely defined growth conditions, thus enabling sufficient replication of samples. The metabolome profiles were generated using gas chromatography/time-of-flight mass spectrometry (GC/TOF-MS). We employed univari-ate and multivariate statistical analyses to determine the most suitable method. This investigation indicates that 60% cold (-48 °C) methanol solution is the most appropriate method to quench metabolism, and we recommend 100% methanol, also at-48 °C, with multiple freeze-thaw cycles for the extraction of metabolites. However, complementary extractions would be necessary for coverage of the entire complement of metabolites as detected by GC/TOF-MS. Finally, the observation that metabolite leakage was significant and measurable whichever quenching method is used indicates that methods should be incorporated into the experiment to facilitate the accurate quantification of intracellular metabolites. Investigations in microbial metabolomics require reliable and reproducible analysis of the metabolites in the cell across a broad dynamic range of concentrations (nanomolar to millimolar) and from a range of different chemical functionalities. The development of robust and reliable experimental protocols for all steps in the experimental procedure, ranging from biomass cultivation, quenching , and extraction of the metabolome to the quantitative analysis of the metabolites, is required. The analytical methodology available for the detection and identification of metabolites is relatively well developed (see refs 1-4), and these platforms have been optimized. 5,6 More recently the Metabolomics Standards Initiative (refs 7-9 and see http://msi-workgroups.sourcefor-ge.net/) as well as others 3,10-12 have started to discuss the standardization of metabolomics experiments from biological growth-collection through chemical analysis to data processing. However, less consideration has been directed toward optimizing the methods for arresting metabolic activity by quenching protocols and the extraction methods for intracellular metabolites. Villas-Boas et al. have developed optimized quenching and extraction methods for the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. However , there are significant chemical and physical differences between the cell envelopes of eukaryotic and prokaryotic organisms , and this means that these protocols may not be directly transferable to prokaryotic organisms. Most notably, the leakage of metabolites during quenching with organic solvents in eukary-otic …
Effects of age and experience on contest behavior in the burying beetle, Nicrophorus vespilloides

Lay summary: Aggression and likelihood of winning contests are expected to change as a male ages. We test this idea in burying beetles, a species which competes over small mammal carcasses as a breeding resource. We find that male size relative to his opponent is far more important in determining contest outcome than any effects of age or social experience.
Design and analysis of a redundantly actuated parallel mechanism for rapid machining

This paper describes the design, construction, and performance analysis of the Eclipse, a redundantly actuated six-degree-of-freedom parallel mechanism intended for rapid machining. The Eclipse is a compact mechanism capable of performing five-face machining in a single setup while retaining the advantages of high stiffness and high accuracy characteristic of parallel mechanisms. We compare numerical and algebraic algorithms for the forward and inverse kinematics of a class of the Eclipse and formalize the notion of machine tool workspace. We also develop a simple method for the first-order elasto-kinematic analysis of parallel mechanisms that is amenable to design iterations. A complete characterization of the singularities of the Eclipse is given, and redundant actuation is proposed as a solution. The Eclipse case study demonstrates how diverse analytical tools originally developed in a robotics context can be synthesized into a practical design methodology for parallel mechanisms.
Treatment efficacy : Aphasia : Supplement on treatment efficacity: Part I

This article presents a brief overview of aphasia, followed by a summary of research studies and program evaluation data addressed to answering the question of the efficacy of treatment for aphasia. Selected studies are reviewed in terms of the quality of evidence they present. In addition, a number of questions that remain unanswered are also presented. Several tables, designed to provide clarifying information concerning several aspects of research design (number and types of patients studied, examples of well-designed small-group or single-subject studies, clinical techniques for which efficacy data are available), are included. The conclusion of this review is that, generally, treatment for aphasia is efficacious.
Tracking control of underactuated mechanical systems

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The comparison of Wiktionary thesauri transformed into the machine-readable format

Wiktionary is a unique, peculiar, valuable and original resource for natural language processing (NLP). The paper describes an open-source Wiktionary parser: its architecture and requirements followed by a description of Wiktionary features to be taken into account, some open problems of Wiktionary and the parser. The current implementation of the parser extracts the definitions, semantic relations, and translations from English and Russian Wiktionaries. The paper's goal is to interest researchers (1) in using the constructed machine-readable dictionary for different NLP tasks, (2) in extending the software to parse 170 still unused Wiktionaries. The comparison of a number and types of semantic relations, a number of definitions, and a number of translations in the English Wiktionary and the Russian Wiktionary has been carried out. It was found that the number of semantic relations in the English Wiktionary is larger by 1.57 times than in Russian (157 and 100 thousands). But the Russian Wiktionary has more "rich" entries (with a big number of semantic relations), e.g. the number of entries with three or more semantic relations is larger by 1.63 times than in the English Wiktionary. Upon comparison, it was found out the methodological shortcomings of the Wiktionary.
Rapid estimation of instruction cache hit rates using loop profiling

Estimation of the hit rate curve for an application is the first step in application specific cache tuning. Several techniques have been proposed to meet this objective however most of these have dealt with the data cache with little attention to the instruction cache. In this paper, we propose a novel, lightweight and highly scalable technique for rapid estimation of the instruction cache hit rate curve for a given application. Our technique works at the basic block level and relies on a one-time loop profiling of the weighted control flow graph of the application followed by estimation of the hit rate for different cache sizes. It accounts for the spatial and temporal locality separately and is sensitive to the cache size as well as block size. The proposed technique is highly accurate and when compared with results from an actual cache simulator, the mean error in estimation ranged from 1.11% to 2.46% for the benchmarks tested.
Early Oral Feeding Following McKeown Minimally Invasive Esophagectomy: An Open-label, Randomized, Controlled, Noninferiority Trial

Objective: Our objective was to evaluate the impact of early oral feeding (EOF) on postoperative cardiac, respiratory, and gastrointestinal (CRG) complications after McKeown minimally invasive esophagectomy for esophageal cancer. Summary Background Data: Nil-by-mouth with enteral tube feeding is routinely practiced after esophagectomy. Methods: Patients were randomly allocated to receive oral feeding on the first postoperative day (EOF group) or late oral feeding (LOF group) 7 days after surgery. The primary endpoint was the occurrence of postoperative CRG complications, and the secondary outcomes included bowel function recovery and short-term quality of life (QOL). Results: Between February 2014 and October 2015, 280 patients were enrolled in this study. There were 140 patients in the EOF group and 140 patients in the LOF group. EOF was noninferior to LOF for CRG complications (30.0% in the EOF group vs. 32.9% in the LOF group; 95% confidence interval of the difference: −13.8% to 8.0%). Compared with the LOF group, the EOF group showed significantly shorter time to first flatus (median of 2 days vs. 3 days, P = 0.001) and bowel movement (median of 3 vs. 4 days, P < 0.001). Two weeks after the operation, patients in the EOF group reported higher global QOL and function scores and lower symptom scores than patients in the LOF group. Conclusions: In patients after McKeown minimally invasive esophagectomy is noninferior to the standard of care with regard to postoperative CRG complications. In addition, patients in the EOF group had a quicker recovery of bowel function and improved short-term QOL.
On the NP-Completeness of the Minimum Circuit Size Problem

We study the Minimum Circuit Size Problem (MCSP): given the truth-table of a Boolean function f and a number k, does there exist a Boolean circuit of size at most k computing f? This is a fundamental NP problem that is not known to be NP-complete. Previous work has studied consequences of the NP-completeness of MCSP. We extend this work and consider whether MCSP may be complete for NP under more powerful reductions. We also show that NP-completeness of MCSP allows for amplification of circuit complexity. We show the following results. - If MCSP is NP-complete via many-one reductions, the following circuit complexity amplification result holds: If NP cap co-NP requires 2^n^{Omega(1)-size circuits, then E^NP requires 2^Omega(n)-size circuits. - If MCSP is NP-complete under truth-table reductions, then EXP neq NP cap SIZE(2^n^epsilon) for some epsilon> 0 and EXP neq ZPP. This result extends to polylog Turing reductions.