Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Variation in Recombination Rate and Its Genetic Determinism in Sheep Populations

Recombination is a complex biological process that results from a cascade of multiple events during meiosis. Understanding the genetic determinism of recombination can help to understand if and how these events are interacting. To tackle this question, we studied the patterns of recombination in sheep, using multiple approaches and data sets. We constructed male recombination maps in a dairy breed from the south of France (the Lacaune breed) at a fine scale by combining meiotic recombination rates from a large pedigree genotyped with a 50K SNP array and historical recombination rates from a sample of unrelated individuals genotyped with a 600K SNP array. This analysis revealed recombination patterns in sheep similar to other mammals but also genome regions that have likely been affected by directional and diversifying selection. We estimated the average recombination rate of Lacaune sheep at 1.5 cM/Mb, identified ∼50,000 crossover hotspots on the genome, and found a high correlation between historical and meiotic recombination rate estimates. A genome-wide association study revealed two major loci affecting interindividual variation in recombination rate in Lacaune, including the RNF212 and HEI10 genes and possibly two other loci of smaller effects including the KCNJ15 and FSHR genes. The comparison of these new results to those obtained previously in a distantly related population of domestic sheep (the Soay) revealed that Soay and Lacaune males have a very similar distribution of recombination along the genome. The two data sets were thus combined to create more precise male meiotic recombination maps in Sheep. However, despite their similar recombination maps, Soay and Lacaune males were found to exhibit different heritabilities and QTL effects for interindividual variation in genome-wide recombination rates. This highlights the robustness of recombination patterns to underlying variation in their genetic determinism.
Assessment of the Anthelmintic Efficacy of Albendazole in School Children in Seven Countries Where Soil-Transmitted Helminths Are Endemic

Background The three major soil-transmitted helminths (STH) Ascaris lumbricoides, Trichuris trichiura and Necator americanus/Ancylostoma duodenale are among the most widespread parasites worldwide. Despite the global expansion of preventive anthelmintic treatment, standard operating procedures to monitor anthelmintic drug efficacy are lacking. The objective of this study, therefore, was to define the efficacy of a single 400 milligram dose of albendazole (ALB) against these three STH using a standardized protocol. Methodology/Principal Findings Seven trials were undertaken among school children in Brazil, Cameroon, Cambodia, Ethiopia, India, Tanzania and Vietnam. Efficacy was assessed by the Cure Rate (CR) and the Fecal Egg Count Reduction (FECR) using the McMaster egg counting technique to determine fecal egg counts (FEC). Overall, the highest CRs were observed for A. lumbricoides (98.2%) followed by hookworms (87.8%) and T. trichiura (46.6%). There was considerable variation in the CR for the three parasites across trials (country), by age or the pre-intervention FEC (pre-treatment). The latter is probably the most important as it had a considerable effect on the CR of all three STH. Therapeutic efficacies, as reflected by the FECRs, were very high for A. lumbricoides (99.5%) and hookworms (94.8%) but significantly lower for T. trichiura (50.8%), and were affected to different extents among the 3 species by the pre-intervention FEC counts and trial (country), but not by sex or age. Conclusions/Significance Our findings suggest that a FECR (based on arithmetic means) of >95% for A. lumbricoides and >90% for hookworms should be the expected minimum in all future surveys, and that therapeutic efficacy below this level following a single dose of ALB should be viewed with concern in light of potential drug resistance. A standard threshold for efficacy against T. trichiura has yet to be established, as a single-dose of ALB is unlikely to be satisfactory for this parasite. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01087099
Advanced colorectal cancer, refractory to infusional fluorouracil treatment: efficacy of second line fluorouracil in combination with a different biochemical modulation.

BACKGROUND Currently there is no standard second line treatment for patients with advanced colorectal cancer (ACC). Previous reports have demonstrated that some patients may benefit from second line infusional 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) after failing 5-FU bolus treatment. PATIENTS AND METHODS We retrospectively studied the efficacy and toxicity of infusional 5FU regimens given in second line, which only differed from the first line regimen in the type of biochemical modulation and compared these results in a non-randomized fashion to the outcome of patients receiving supportive care only in second line. RESULTS Sixty six patients with ACC were treated in first line with an infusional 5-FU-based schedule. At the time of disease progression 38 patients received supportive care only. The remaining 28 patients continued treatment with the same 5-FU regimen, but with another biochemical modulator. Fourteen patients achieved stable disease for a median duration of 6 months and one patient achieved a complete remission which lasted 34 months. The median survival from the time of disease progression on first line treatment was 7 months for patients who received second line treatment, whereas those who received supportive care survived for a median period of 3 months (p < 0.05). CONCLUSION Changing the type of biochemical modulation of infusional 5-FU as a second line treatment-alternative may be of some benefit to a subgroup of patients with ACC.
An Investigation of Skill Acquisition under Conditions of Augmented Reality

Author: Russell P. Milham Title: An Investigation of Skill Acquisition Under Conditions of Augmented Reality Institution: Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Degree: Master of Science in Human Factors & Systems Year: 2000 Augmented reality is a virtual environment that integrates rendered content with the experience of the real world. There is evidence suggesting that augmented reality provides for important spatial constancy of objects relative to the real world coordinate system and that this quality contributes to rapid skill acquisition. The qualities of simulation, through the use of augmented reality, may be incorporated into actual job activities to produce a condition of "just-in-time learning. " This may make possible the rapid acquisition of information and reliable completion of novel or infrequently performed tasks by individuals possessing a basic skill-set. The purpose of this research has been to investigate the degree to which the acquisition of a skill is enhanced through the use of an augmented reality training device.
Mechanisms of planar cell polarity establishment in Drosophila

Correct patterning and polarization of epithelial and mesenchymal cells are essential for morphogenesis and function of all organs and organisms. Epithelial cells are generally polarized in two axes: (a) the ubiquitous apical-basal axis and (b) polarity within the plane of the epithelium. The latter is generally referred to as planar cell polarity (PCP) and also is found in several contexts of mesenchymal cell patterning. In Drosophila, all adult structures display PCP features, and two conserved molecular systems (the Fat [Ft]/Dachsous [Ds] system and the Frizzled [Fz]/PCP pathway) that regulate this process have been identified. Although significant progress has been made in dissecting aspects of PCP signaling within cells, much remains to be discovered about the mechanisms of long-range and local PCP cell-cell interactions. Here, we discuss the current models based on Drosophila studies and incorporate recent insights into this long-standing cell and developmental biology problem.
MITIGATION OF CONTINUOUS INTERFERENCE IN RADIO ASTRONOMY USING SPATIAL FILTERING

The contamination of radio astronomical measurements by man-made Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) is becoming an increasingly serious problem and therefore the application of interference mitigation techniques is essential. Most current techniques address impulsive or intermittent interference and are based on time-frequency detection and blanking. Continually present interferers cannot be cut out in the time-frequency plane and have to be removed using spatial filtering. One technique is based on the estimation of the spatial signature vector of the interferer from short-term spatial covariance matrices followed by a subspace projection to remove that dimension from the covariance matrix, and by further averaging. The projections will also modify the astronomical data, and hence a correction has to be applied to the long-term average to compensate for this. In this paper we analyse the performance of this spatial filtering algorithm.
Acquisition of a Simple Motor Skill: Task-Dependent Adaptation Plus Long-Term Change in the Human Soleus H-Reflex

Activity-dependent plasticity occurs throughout the CNS. However, investigations of skill acquisition usually focus on cortex. To expand the focus, we analyzed in humans the development of operantly conditioned H-reflex change, a simple motor skill that develops gradually and involves plasticity in both the brain and the spinal cord. Each person completed 6 baseline and 24 conditioning sessions over 10 weeks. In each conditioning session, the soleus H-reflex was measured while the subject was or was not asked to increase (HRup subjects) or decrease (HRdown subjects) it. When the subject was asked to change H-reflex size, immediate visual feedback indicated whether a size criterion had been satisfied. Over the 24 conditioning sessions, H-reflex size gradually increased in six of eight HRup subjects and decreased in eight of nine HRdown subjects, resulting in final sizes of 140 ± 12 and 69 ± 6% of baseline size, respectively. The final H-reflex change was the sum of within-session (i.e., task-dependent) adaptation and across-session (i.e., long-term) change. Task-dependent adaptation appeared within four to six sessions and persisted thereafter, averaging +13% in HRup subjects and −15% in HRdown subjects. In contrast, long-term change began after 10 sessions and increased gradually thereafter, reaching +27% in HRup subjects and −16% in HRdown subjects. Thus, the acquisition of H-reflex conditioning consists of two phenomena, task-dependent adaptation and long-term change, that together constitute the new motor skill. In combination with previous data, this new finding further elucidates the interaction of plasticity in brain and spinal cord that underlies the acquisition and maintenance of motor skills.
WHO sponsored collaborative studies on nutritional anaemia in India The effect of parenteral iron administration in the control of anaemia of pregnancy

I . The relative efficacy of oral and parenteral iron administration in the prophylaxis and treatment of Fe-deficiency anaemia of pregnancy has been studied. 2. Intravenous administration of Fe by total dose infusion of Fe dextran was not superior to oral Fe I 20 mg/d, 6 d/week for 1 0 1 z weeks. 3. Intramuscular Fe dextran, 100 mg twice per week for I ~ I Z weeks, produced a significantly greater rise in mean haemoglobin concentration than oral Fe therapy. 4. The superiority of intramuscular Fe as compared with intravenous Fe is probably related to the different handling of the Fe dextran by the reticulo-endothelial system. 5 . In spite of the better response to intramuscular Fe dextran, it is not recommended for public health practice because of the risks associated with its use and the much higher cost of the preparation and its delivery.
Drug allergy evaluation for betalactam hypersensitivity: Cross-reactivity with cephalosporines, carbapenems and negative predictive value.

BACKGROUND There are no studies on cross-reactivity of betalactams among patients allergic to penicillin, or on the negative predictive value (NPV) of penicillin allergy evaluation from Arabian Gulf countries. OBJECTIVE We aimed to assess the role and NPV of drug provocation test (DPT) for betalactam hypersensitivity reactions in patients referred for allergy evaluation in Kuwait. METHODS Skin test (ST) was performed for all patients with a history of betalactam hypersensitivity, other than anaphylaxis. Patients with a negative ST were challenged with a DPT containing phenoxymethyl penicillin or the culprit drug. Patients with anaphylaxis or who tested positive to betalactams were then challenged with a DPT containing cefuroxime, meropenem or ceftriaxone. Patients who tested negative were contacted by phone to evaluate subsequent betalactam intake. RESULTS A total of 214 patients were tested for betalactam hypersensitivity. We had 91(42.5%) positive cases. Among positives, there were 78 (85.7%) patients with an initial reaction to penicillin and 13 (14.3%) who reacted to cephalosporin. DPT with alternative betalactam was performed in fifty who tested positive for betalactam hypersensitivity and 45 (90%) tolerated alternative antibiotics. Phone calls to 113 (59.8%) patients with negative betalactam testing showed that among 40(35.4%) patients who were successfully contacted; 17 (15%) took betalactams and 23 (20%) did not. Among the 17 patients who took betalactams, our calculated NPV for penicillin testing range from 88.2 to 100%, as the 2 patients who reported a reaction refused confirmatory retesting. CONCLUSION Carbapenems and cephalosporines can be safely given to penicillin allergic patients by means of skin testing and if negative, proceeding with a graded challenge. Our calculated NPV for penicillin testing is similar to other studies.
Static field estimation using a wireless sensor network based on the finite element method

In this paper, we propose a novel framework for field estimation in a wireless sensor network (WSN). The fundamental problem of estimating field values at locations where no WSN measurements are available is tackled by including a physical field model in the form of a partial differential equation (PDE). If the PDE is discretized in the spatiotemporal domain by use of the finite element method (FEM), then the physical field model reduces to a set of linear equations that can be elegantly combined with the WSN field measurements in a constrained optimization problem. In contrast to existing approaches, we do not require the driving source function or the locations of point sources to be known. Instead, we assume limited prior knowledge on the nature of the field and/or source functions, such as a sparsity or nonnegativity prior, for obtaining a unique solution of the otherwise underdetermined problem of joint field and source estimation. Within the proposed framework, we derive a cooperative estimation algorithm for static 2-D fields governed by a Poisson PDE. Simulation results illustrate that a significant improvement in field estimation accuracy can be obtained, compared to the cases when only WSN measurements (without a physical model) or only the FEM (without WSN measurements) are used.
Chemistry of Riming : The Retention of Organic and Inorganic Atmospheric Trace Constituents

During free fall in clouds ice hydrometeors such as snowflakes and ice particles grow effectively by riming, i.e., the accretion of supercooled droplets. Volatile atmospheric trace constituents dissolved in the supercooled droplets may remain in ice during freezing or may be released back to the gas phase. This process is quantified by retention coefficients. Once in the ice phase the trace constituents may be vertically redistributed by scavenging and subsequent precipitation or by evaporation of these ice hydrometeors at high altitudes. Retention coefficients of the most dominant carboxylic acids and aldehydes found 5 in cloud water were investigated in the Mainz vertical wind tunnel under dry growth (surface temperature < 0 C) riming conditions which are typically prevailing in the mixed phase zone of convective clouds (i.e., temperatures from 16 to 7 C and a liquid water content of 0.9± 0.2 g cm 3 ::::::::::::: 0.9± 0.2 gm 3). The mean retention coefficients of formic and acetic acids are found to be 0.68±0.09 and 0.63±0.19. Oxalic and malonic acids as well as formaldehyde show mean retention coefficients of 0.97± 0.06, 0.98± 0.08 and 0.97± 0.11, respectively. Application of a semi-empirical model on the present and earlier wind 10 tunnel measurements reveals that retention coefficients can be well interpreted by the effective Henry’s law constant accounting for solubility and dissociation. A parameterization for the retention coefficients has been derived for substances whose aqueous phase kinetics are fast compared to mass transport timescales. For other cases, the semi-empirical model in combination with a kinetic approach is suited to determine the retention coefficients. These may be implemented in high resolution cloud models.
Sensitizing a Gifted Child with Autism Spectrum Disorder towards Social Cognition: From Assessment to Treatment

Social cognition difficulties are well documented in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). This clinical case study reports on social cognition assessment and treatment of a gifted child, SC (9 years), with ASD and an extraordinarily high verbal IQ (146). The assessment of theory of mind, emotion recognition and pragmatic abilities showed some weaknesses in these areas. The 4-month treatment was divided into 14 sessions and was aimed at helping SC to improve his abilities to recognize emotions and comprehend mental states. The main technique used in the intervention was “social reading” with video clips. The initial assessment was repeated after the treatment and in a follow up session. The results of this case study suggest that “social reading” can be considered as a beneficial technique for children with high-functioning ASD, and especially in giftedness conditions.
Comorbidity of substance misuse and mental illness in community mental health and substance misuse services

Background Improved management of mental illness and substance misuse comorbidity is a National Health Service priority, but little is known about its prevalence and current management. Aims To measure the prevalence of comorbidity among patients of community mental health teams (CMHTs) and substance misuse services, and to assess the potential for joint management. Method Cross-sectional prevalence survey in four urban UK centres. Results Of CMHT patients, 44% (95% CI 38.1-49.9) reported past-year problem drug use and/or harmful alcohol use; 75% (95% CI 68.2-80.2) of drug service and 85% of alcohol service patients (95% CI 74.2-931) had a past-year psychiatric disorder. Most comorbidity patients appear ineligible for cross-referral between services. Large proportions are not identified by services and receive no specialist intervention. Conclusions Comorbidity is highly prevalent in CMHT, drug and alcohol treatment populations, but may be difficult to manage by cross-referral psychiatric and substance misuse services as currently configured and resourced.
An improved method to quantify Puccinia coronata f. sp. avenae DNA in the host Avena sativa

Abstract Identification and genetic mapping of loci conferring resistance to polycyclic pathogens such as the rust fungi depends on accurate measurement of disease resistance. We converted an absolute quantification assay of Puccinia coronata DNA to a relative assay by adding a TaqMan® primers/probe set specific to the oat β-actin gene to simplify and improve quantification of fungal infection. The new multiplex assay estimates the amount of fungal DNA in a sample relative to the amount of host DNA and requires fewer and less labour-intensive steps than previous assays. The relative fungal DNA assay (RFDNA) reliably detected and quantified both host and pathogen DNA over five orders of magnitude and was at least as sensitive as either digital image analysis (DLA) or absolute estimation of fungal DNA (AFDNA) in repeated greenhouse studies using 12 oat cultivars with different resistance responses to P. coronata isolate LGCG. Measuring crown rust resistance to LGCG using DLA, AFDNA and RFDNA in a P8669/P94163 recombinant inbred line population produced segregation ratios that did not differ from the 1:1 Mendelian ratio expected for a single gene. Compared to the AFDNA assessment method, the RFDNA assay is equally sensitive, yet faster and much easier to use than the AFDNA method for precise quantification of the crown rust pathogen in oat leaves. The method will be especially useful for streamlining measurement of partial resistance, since uncovering small differences in resistance requires phenotypic evaluation of large populations.
Finding and Tracking Local Twitter Users for News Detection

The popular micro-blogging service, Twitter, hides invaluable information about real world events. Extracting such information, especially local news, exerts a measure of influence over various applications such as situation awareness and disaster recovery. Detecting small, local news is very challenging, however, due to the sparsity of publicly available Tweets on a specific area. In this work, we present a Twitter user-based method to mitigate the data sparsity. In essence, for a given geographical area, we aim to find as many Twitter users as possible from it and then track their posts to monitor the news happening in that area. However, only a small fraction of Twitter users provide information about their location, making the location information for most of Twitter users not available. Therefore, we utilize a geotagging procedure to estimate location for unknown-location Twitter users thereby finding more Twitter users in a given geographical area. Tracking the post updates of such Twitter users yields a real-time local live tweet stream and thus alleviates the paucity of local tweet data. On the real-time collected tweet stream, we perform online clustering to group tweets together to report potential news. The evaluation shows that in so doing, our method detects hundreds of more local news in comparison with solely utilizing the existing Twitter's publicly available tweet stream.
A new algorithm and routing protocol based on convolutional codes using TCNet : Trellis Coded Network

Currently emerging technologies have taken advantage of the possibility of communication with the World Wide Web to expand to all applications of this technology, among them the Internet of Things – IoT. This work proposes the implementation of new packets forwarding algorithms using the concept of convolutional codes. The results obtained by means of extensive simulations show gains in terms of latency and energy consumption reduction compared to the AODV protocol. The implementation complexity is extremely low and compatible with the few hardware resources usually available in the elements of a wireless sensor network (WSN). This research uses Finite State Machine (FSM) to get the networks nodes, obtained from settings with Mealy machine – (MM) due to the low complexity of (“XOR” gates and "shift registers"), eliminating the use of any routing tables by means of Trellis decoding. The route can be chosen based on criteria of Quality of Service (Qos) – aware routing protocols.
Floating shock fitting via Lagrangian adaptive meshes

In recent work we have formulated a new approach to compressible flow simulation, combining the advantages of shock-fitting and shock-capturing. Using a cell-centered on Roe scheme discretization on unstructured meshes, we warp the mesh while marching to steady state, so that mesh edges align with shocks and other discontinuities. This new algorithm, the Shock-fitting Lagrangian Adaptive Method (SLAM), is, in effect, a reliable shock-capturing algorithm which yields shock-fitted accuracy at convergence.