Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of the successive planting of Eucalyptus urophylla on soil bacterial and fungal community structure, diversity, microbial biomass, and enzyme activity

Eucalyptus are a widely used short‐rotation species for timber production in South China. There are growing concerns regarding the influences of successive planting of Eucalyptus urophylla on microorganisms and soil. The aim of this work was to determine the effects of the successive planting of E. urophylla on soil characteristics. Five different stands, including 5‐, 10‐, 15‐, and 18‐year‐old E. urophylla plantations (abbreviated as 5yr, 10yr, 15yr, and 18yr, respectively) and one native evergreen broadleaf forest as a 0‐year‐old E. urophylla plantation (abbreviated as CK) were used. All of measured chemical indicators, microbial biomass, and enzyme activities were significantly lower in E. urophylla plantations compared with CK stand. The microbial biomass and enzyme activities significantly decreased in 5yr stand, significantly increased in 10yr stand, and subsequently declined in 15yr and 18yr stands. The relative abundance of Ascomycota in 15yr (77.10%) and 18yr (72.71%) plantations was significantly higher than in other stands. Basidiomycota relative abundance in the E. urophylla plantations was significantly lower than in the CK stand. In addition, the bacterial diversity was significantly decreased in 15yr and 18yr stands, whereas the fungal diversity was the lowest in 5yr stand and significantly increased in 10yr, 15yr, and 18yr stands. Furthermore, structural equation modelling showed that successive planting of E. urophylla decreased the soil bacterial community diversity, microbial biomass, and enzyme activity but increased the fungal community diversity. Thus, successive planting of E. urophylla negatively influenced the soil bacterial diversity, microbial biomass, and enzyme activity and positively influenced soil fungal diversity.
Assessment of depressive symptoms in people with diabetes mellitus and foot ulcers.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the intensity of symptoms of depression in patients with diabetic foot ulcers. METHODS a exploratory, descriptive, analytical and cross-sectional study was held at the wound clinic of a public hospital in Sorocaba, São Paulo State, Brazil. Fifty patients with diabetes mellitus and foot ulcers were enrolled. To assess the intensity of the symptoms of depression, a Beck Depression inventory was used. RESULTS Of the 50 patients evaluated, 41 had some degree of depressive symptoms and 32 (64%) had moderate depression, with symptoms of self-loathing, grief, body image distortion and decreased libido. CONCLUSION Patients with diabetic foot ulcers showed varying degrees of depressive symptoms.
Melusin Promotes a Protective Signal Transduction Cascade in Stressed Hearts

Melusin is a chaperone protein selectively expressed in heart and skeletal muscles. Melusin expression levels correlate with cardiac function in pre-clinical models and in human patients with aortic stenosis. Indeed, previous studies in several animal models indicated that Melusin plays a broad cardioprotective role in different pathological conditions. Chaperone proteins, besides playing a role in protein folding, are also able to facilitate supramolecular complex formation and conformational changes due to activation/deactivation of signaling molecules. This role sets chaperone proteins as crucial regulators of intracellular signal transduction pathways. In particular Melusin activates AKT and ERK1/2 signaling, protects cardiomyocytes from apoptosis and induces a compensatory hypertrophic response in several pathological conditions. Therefore, selective delivery of the Melusin gene in heart via cardiotropic adenoviral associated virus serotype 9 (AAV9), may represent a new promising gene-therapy approach for different cardiac pathologies.
Directed Width Measures and Monotonicity of Directed Graph Searching

We consider generalisations of tree width to directed graphs, that attracted much attention in the last fifteen years. About their relative strength with respect to "bounded width in one measure implies bounded width in the other" many problems remain unsolved. Only some results separating directed width measures are known. We give an almost complete picture of this relation. For this, we consider the cops and robber games characterising DAG-width and directed tree width (up to a constant factor). For DAG-width games, it is an open question whether the robber-monotonicity cost (the difference between the minimal numbers of cops capturing the robber in the general and in the monotone case) can be bounded by any function. Examples show that this function (if it exists) is at least $f(k) > 4k/3$ (Kreutzer, Ordyniak 2008). We approach a solution by defining weak monotonicity and showing that if $k$ cops win weakly monotonically, then $O(k^2)$ cops win monotonically. It follows that bounded Kelly-width implies bounded DAG-width, which has been open since the definition of Kelly-width by Hunter and Kreutzer in 2008. For directed tree width games we show that, unexpectedly, the cop-monotonicity cost (no cop revisits any vertex) is not bounded by any function. This separates directed tree width from D-width defined by Safari in 2005, refuting his conjecture.
Issue No.2 Welcome to Planet News!

During the last couple of months a variety of network activities and events took place. Most importantly, the First International Summer School on AI Planning was held. Both lecturers and participants reported that they not only learned a lot but also really enjoyed what can actually be called a very successful event. Congratulations to Maria Fox, Alfonso Gerevini, and Yannis Dimopoulos, who organised the school on behalf of PLANET! Detailed information about the lecturers, the courses, the site, and the participants is available from the network Web pages. A short summary and an informal reflection are presented here. A new TCU on Aerospace Applications of planning and scheduling was created and a first workshop was held in Rome in September. We are glad to provide the latest results from this workshop and some general information about the TCU. We are also happy to welcome a couple of new network members. They include the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Schindler Lifts Ltd., Örebro University, and Origin Nederland B.V. , which introduce themselves this time by short articles. Furthermore, you’ll find a contribution – coauthored by members of the University Carlos III of Madrid – concerning the application of planning technology for workflow management as well as a paper by Alfredo Milani from the University of Perugia on Planning and Information Technology for the Web. Based on the latter, a discussion about creating a new TCU has just started. Finally, there are some workshop reports and announcements as ever as well as the outcome of the PLANET internal evaluation. Most of the suggestions made there were included in the proposal for PLANET II, which is supposed to start in 2001. Susanne Biundo Bernd Schattenberg
Global Occurrence and Chemical Impact of Stratospheric Blue Jets Modeled With WACCM4

In this work we present the first parameterizations of the global occurrence rate and chemical influence of Blue Jets, a type of transient luminous event taking place in the stratospheric region above thunderclouds. These parameterizations are directly coupled with five different lightning parameterizations implemented in the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model (WACCM4). We have obtained a maximum Blue Jet global occurrence rate of about 0.9 BJ per minute. The geographical occurrence of Blue Jets is closely related to the chosen lightning parameterization. Some previously developed local chemical models of Blue Jets predicted an important influence onto the stratospheric concentration of N2O, NOx, and O3. We have used these results together with our global implementations of Blue Jets in WACCM4 to estimate their global chemical influence in the atmosphere. According to our results, Blue Jets can inject about 3.8 Tg N2O‐N/year and 0.07 Tg NO‐N/year near the stratosphere, where N2O‐N and NO‐N stand for the mass of nitrogen atoms in N2O and NO molecules, respectively. These production rates of N2O and NOx could have a direct impact on, for example, the acidity of rainwater or the greenhouse effect. We have found that Blue Jets could also slightly contribute to the depletion of stratospheric ozone. In particular, we have estimated that the maximum difference in the concentration of O3 at 30 km of altitude between simulations with and without Blue Jets can be about −5% in equatorial and polar regions.
Genetic alterations in localized prostate cancer: Identification of a common region of deletion on chromosome arm 18q

Accumulation of mutations in oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes transforms a normal cell into a malignant cell by allowing it to escape from normal control of growth. In prostate tumorigenesis, the current model envisages specific mutations of the TP53 tumor suppressor gene and loss of loci, detected by loss of heterozygosity (LOH), on chromosome arms 8p, 10q, 16q, and 18q. In order to determine if alterations frequently found in other adenocarcinomas (breast, ovarian, gastric, colorectal), including losses of genetic material from chromosome arms 1p, 3p, 7q, 8p, 11p, 17p, 17q, and 18q, are also involved in prostate cancer, we examined 20 localized early‐stage prostate tumors. We detected no mutations of the TP53 gene. Allelic losses were found from 7q (33%), 8p (50%), 10q (20%), and 18q (33%). Furthermore, as the first step toward isolating tumor suppressor genes on 18q, we used six polymorphic markers and identified a small common deleted region between the chromosome 18 centromere and the D18S19 locus.
Antigen‐specific B cell detection reagents: Use and quality control

Tests for immunoglobulin reactivity with specific antigens are some of the oldest and most used assays in immunology. With efforts to understand B cell development, B cell dysregulation in autoimmunity, and to generate B cell vaccines for infectious agents, investigators have found the need to understand the ontogeny and regulation of epitope‐specific B cell responses. The synchrony between surface and secreted antibodies for individual B cells has led to the development of reagents and techniques to identify antigen‐specific B cells via reagent interactions with the B cell receptor complex. B cell antigen‐specific reagents have been reported for model systems of haptens, for whole proteins, and for identification of double stranded (ds) DNA antibody‐producing B cells using peptide mimics. Here we provide an overview of reported techniques for the detection of antigen‐specific B cell responses via secreted antibody or by the surface B cell receptor and briefly discuss our recent work developing a panel of reagents to probe the B cell response to HIV‐1 envelope. We also present an analysis of strengths and weaknesses of various methods for flow cytometric analysis of antigen‐specific B cells. © 2008 International Society for Advancement of Cytometry
The PIT Corpus of German Multi-Party Dialogues

The PIT corpus is a German multi-media corpus of multi-party dialogues recorded in a Wizard-of-Oz environment at the University of Ulm. The scenario involves two human dialogue partners interacting with a multi-modal dialogue system in the domain of restaurant selection. In this paper we present the characteristics of the data which was recorded in three sessions resulting in a total of 75 dialogues and about 14 hours of audio and video data. The corpus is available at http://www.uni-ulm.de/in/pit.
Mineralogical Characterization and Dissolution Experiments in Gamble’s Solution of Tremolitic Amphibole from Passo di Caldenno (Sondrio, Italy)

In nature, asbestos is often associated with minerals and other non-asbestiform morphologies thought to be harmless, but not much is known about the potential toxic effects of these phases. Therefore, the characterization of natural assemblages should not be limited to asbestos fibers only. This paper combines a multi-analytical characterization of asbestos from Valmalenco (Italy) with data from dissolution experiments conducted in a simulated interstitial lung fluid (Gamble’s solution), and a detailed dimensional study that compares the particle population before and after this interaction. The sample is identified as a tremolitic amphibole, exhibiting a predominance of fiber and prismatic habits at lower magnification, but a bladed habit at higher magnification. The results show that at different magnification, the dimensional and habit distributions are notably different. After the dissolution experiments, the sample showed rounded edges and pyramid-shaped dissolution pits. Chemical analyses suggested that a nearly stoichiometric logarithmic loss of Si and Mg occurred associated with a relatively intense release of Ca in the first 24 h, whereas Fe was probably redeposited on the fiber surfaces. A rearrangement of the more frequent habits and dimensions was recorded after the dissolution experiment, with a peculiar increase of the proportion of elongated mineral particles.
Mutation analysis of the lamin A/C gene (LMNA) among patients with different cardiomuscular phenotypes

Laminopathies represent a heterogeneous group of genetic disorders characterised by mutations in the LMNA gene, which encodes two lamins, A and C, by alternative splicing of the primary transcript.1 Lamins belong to the intermediate filament multigene family and form the nuclear lamina, a mesh-like structure adjacent to the nucleoplasmic side of the inner nuclear membrane.2 They interact with emerin, the proteins encoded by the gene for the X-linked (X EDMD) form of EDMD, with several nuclear envelope proteins and with chromatin. Despite their widespread distribution and their role in nuclear architecture, alterations of lamin A/C are responsible for a number of very specific but quite heterogeneous disorders. The first laminopathy was the autosomal dominant form of Emery-Dreifuss muscular dystrophy (EDMD), a genetic disorder characterised by the clinical triad of early onset contractures, progressive muscular wasting and weakness with humeroperoneal distribution and cardiac conduction defects.3 The finding that emerin, an inner nuclear envelope protein, and LMNA were both involved in EDMD suggested that the lamins may represent specific and relevant factors in cardiac and skeletal muscle and that integrity of the nuclear membrane and associated structures is specifically required for muscle function. However, later on it was found that besides autosomal dominant Emery–Dreifuss muscular dystrophy (AD-EDMD), mutations in LMNA are responsible for six other disorders: limb girdle muscular dystrophy 1B, (LGMD1B),4,5 dilated cardiomyopathy with conduction system disease, (DCM-CD),6 Dunningan-type familial partial lipodystrophy,7–9 one recessive axonal form of Charcot-Marie-Tooth neuropathy,10 mandibuloacral dysplasia,11 and Hutchinson Gilford progeria.12,13 Despite the very different phenotypic consequences of mutations in LMNA , and the quite large number of mutations identified, no genotype/phenotype correlation has been demonstrated, pointing to the role of factors other than lamins A and C in determining the different tissue specific phenotypes. …
Characterization and first results of the planetary borehole-wall imager — methods to develop for in-situ exploration

Abstract Prototypes of borehole-wall imager instruments were developed and tested at a desert riverbed in Morocco and at a lake’s salty flat in the Atacama desert, to support the drilling activity of ExoMars rover. The onsite recorded borehole images contain information on the context that are lost during the sample acquisition. Benefits of the borehole-wall imaging is the easier maximal energy estimation of a fluvial flow, the detailed information on sedimentation and layering, especially the former existence of liquid water and its temporal changes, including paleo-flow direction estimation from grain imbrication direction. Benefits of laboratory analysis of the acquired samples are the better identification of mineral types, determination of the level of maturity of granular sediment, and identification of the smallest, wet weathered grains. Based on the lessons learned during the comparison of field and laboratory results, we demonstrate that recording the borehole-wall with optical instrument during/after drilling on Mars supports the paleo-environment reconstruction with such data that would otherwise be lost during the sample acquisition. Because of the lack of plate tectonism and the low geothermal gradient on Mars, even Ga old sediments provide observable features that are especially important for targeting Mars sample return and later crewed Mars missions.
Application of System on Chip (SoC) devices for the design of a smoke detector working with megapixel image streams

The paper discusses the application of System on Chip devices for processing Megapixel video streams. The domain of image processing using high resolution images is very demanding in the scope of calculating power and frequently exploits special processing hardware. The progress of integration technology brings about SoC which are capable of meeting such processing demands. Characteristics of FPGA and DSP based systems are assessed. A concise survey of chip solutions is presented and a pair of representative systems is chosen for comparison of their properties. The design of a smoke detection system is used for evaluating the advantages and drawbacks of using such SoC solutions. Almost identical image processing algorithms are implemented in the case of FPGA and DSP. Both solutions meet the image processing requirements and are suitable for real time processing. FPGA based solution is much faster as it uses pipelining for improving the utilisation of scarce memory resources.
Evaluation of Performance of Cooperative Web Caching with Web Polygraph

This paper presents a framework for evaluating the performance of cooperative Web cache hierarchies. Web Polygraph is employed to provide an environment for simulation, to generate desired workloads, and to obtain performance statistics from the standpoint of clients and servers. Squeezer, a proxy cache log analysis tool, provides detailed cache statistics including information about cache cooperation. Dummynet toolkit is used to manage network properties and simulate realistic network conditions. The result is a flexible framework that can analyze the performance of a given cache hierarchy on a given workload under given network conditions. All experiments are repeatable and results with different configurations can be compared. We describe our evaluation methodology and report our experience in employing it to compare cache hierarchies built with Squid proxy cache servers.
Evidence of Expanded Host Range and Mammalian-Associated Genetic Changes in a Duck H9N2 Influenza Virus Following Adaptation in Quail and Chickens

H9N2 avian influenza viruses continue to circulate worldwide; in Asia, H9N2 viruses have caused disease outbreaks and established lineages in land-based poultry. Some H9N2 strains are considered potentially pandemic because they have infected humans causing mild respiratory disease. In addition, some of these H9N2 strains replicate efficiently in mice without prior adaptation suggesting that H9N2 strains are expanding their host range. In order to understand the molecular basis of the interspecies transmission of H9N2 viruses, we adapted in the laboratory a wildtype duck H9N2 virus, influenza A/duck/Hong Kong/702/79 (WT702) virus, in quail and chickens through serial lung passages. We carried out comparative analysis of the replication and transmission in quail and chickens of WT702 and the viruses obtained after 23 serial passages in quail (QA23) followed by 10 serial passages in chickens (QA23CkA10). Although the WT702 virus can replicate and transmit in quail, it replicates poorly and does not transmit in chickens. In contrast, the QA23CkA10 virus was very efficient at replicating and transmitting in quail and chickens. Nucleotide sequence analysis of the QA23 and QA23CkA10 viruses compared to the WT702 virus indicated several nucleotide substitutions resulting in amino acid changes within the surface and internal proteins. In addition, a 21-amino acid deletion was found in the stalk of the NA protein of the QA23 virus and was maintained without further modification in the QA23CkA10 adapted virus. More importantly, both the QA23 and the QA23CkA10 viruses, unlike the WT702 virus, were able to readily infect mice, produce a large-plaque phenotype, showed faster replication kinetics in tissue culture, and resulted in the quick selection of the K627 amino acid mammalian-associated signature in PB2. These results are in agreement with the notion that adaptation of H9 viruses to land-based birds can lead to strains with expanded host range.
Information Diffusion and Economic Development

In many developing countries there remains a limited view on the socioeconomic status of the population, owing to the high cost associated with detailed and comprehensive surveying. This situation has encouraged a number of researchers to attempt to exploit alternative sources of data in order to derive estimates, including mobile phone data, which offers a rich depiction of the social dynamics of a population. Meanwhile, from the level of the individual to the city, access to information has been posited as an important factor in determining prosperity and economic development. In this paper we explore this relationship by simulating the flow of information through a mobile phone call graph in two sub-Saharan countries. We find a strong relationship between a location’s average wealth and its access to information as determined by the simulations in one country, and a weaker correlation in the second country. This finding adds to recent evidence that mining patterns from mobile phone data represents a viable means to estimate poverty in places where traditionally derived estimates are lacking. We further investigate the impact of various factors on the empirical results in order to explain the variation between the two countries.
Detection of a Hodgkin/Reed‐Sternberg cell specific immunoglobulin gene rearrangement in the serum DNA of a patient with Hodgkin's disease

We analysed multiple serum samples from a patient with mixed cellularity Hodgkin's disease for the Hodgkin/Reed‐Sternberg cell clone‐specific rearranged Ig gene sequence. The clone‐specific sequence could be detected in DNA extracted from a serum sample obtained during clinical relapse but not in serum samples obtained during or after treatment following relapse.
Towards a Conceptual Framework for Expert System Validation

In this paper we address a number of fundamental questions around validation of expert systems (ESs), an emerging field that still lacks of a comprehensive treatment in the literature. The final aim is to get a conceptual framework for ES validation, what is a difficult task because of the immaturity of the field. We analyze ES validation from four points of view. First, we consider the meaning of validation in ESs, what raises some terminological questions. We propose precise definitions for the terms verification, validation, evaluation and testing, that are in compliance with their respective meanings in software engineering. Second, we consider a number of validation targets, the elements or processes on which some validation activity can be made. Third, we discuss briefly specific techniques to achieve an effective validation for these targets. And fourth, we locate these validation targets in an ES life-cycle.