Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Chronic Diseases Associated With Mortality in British Columbia, Canada During the 2021 Western North America Extreme Heat Event

Western North America experienced an unprecedented extreme heat event (EHE) in 2021, characterized by high temperatures and reduced air quality. There were approximately 740 excess deaths during the EHE in the province of British Columbia, making it one of the deadliest weather events in Canadian history. It is important to understand who is at risk of death during EHEs so that appropriate public health interventions can be developed. This study compares 1,614 deaths from 25 June to 02 July 2021 with 6,524 deaths on the same dates from 2012 to 2020 to examine differences in the prevalence of 26 chronic diseases between the two groups. Conditional logistic regression was used to estimate the odds ratio (OR) for each chronic disease, adjusted for age, sex, and all other diseases, and conditioned on geographic area. The OR [95% confidence interval] for schizophrenia among all EHE deaths was 3.07 [2.39, 3.94], and was larger than the ORs for other conditions. Chronic kidney disease and ischemic heart disease were also significantly increased among all EHE deaths, with ORs of 1.36 [1.18, 1.56] and 1.18 [1.00, 1.38], respectively. Chronic diseases associated with EHE mortality were somewhat different for deaths attributed to extreme heat, deaths with an unknown/pending cause, and non‐heat‐related deaths. Schizophrenia was the only condition associated with significantly increased odds of EHE mortality in all three subgroups. These results confirm the role of mental illness in EHE risk and provide further impetus for interventions that target specific groups of high‐risk individuals based on underlying chronic conditions.
An Old World leaf‐cutting, fungus‐growing ant: A case of convergent evolution

Abstract The African myrmicine ant Crematogaster clariventris is a territorially dominant arboreal species that constructs very hard carton nests. Noting that workers cut off leaves from different plant species while building or repairing their nests, we asked ourselves if there was a correlation. We conducted scanning electron microscopic observations of nest walls that revealed the presence of fungal mycelia. As the presence of filamentous Ascomycota has been shown on arboreal ant nests worldwide, we used a metabarcoding approach and, indeed, noted the presence of Operational Taxonomic Unit (OTU) Cre_006041 of the Capnodiales known to reinforce large nests of an unidentified African Crematogaster. This OTU was also recorded in the workers' bodies. At a very low level, we also noted OTU Cre_320021 of the Chaetothyriales known for their relationships with the African plant‐ant species C. margaritae. Therefore, by cutting leaves and growing fungus, C. clariventris illustrates a case of convergent evolution with higher New World leaf‐cutting, fungus‐growing Attina of the genera Acromyrmex, Amoimyrmex and Atta. However, there are notable differences. Leaf‐cutting Attina cultivate Agaricaceae (Basidiomycota) for food, whereas C. clariventris uses Capnodiales to reinforce their nests (i.e., after the mycelium died, the hyphae's cell walls remained sturdy forming a natural composite material), have a distinct geographical origin (i.e., New World vs. Old World) and belong to a distinct ant tribe in the subfamily Myrmicinae (i.e., Attini vs. Crematogastrini). Furthermore, leaf‐cutting Attina evolved an efficacious means of cutting leaves by using their mandibles asymmetrically, whereas C. clariventris workers, typically, use their mandibles symmetrically.
High power dissipative soliton laser using chirally-coupled core fiber

We report the energy scaling of mode-locked fiber lasers using a large-mode area chirally-coupled core fiber. This is a demonstration of the scaling of ultrafast fiber oscillators to large cores in an all-solid glass package that holds the lowest order fiber mode while maintaining compatibility with fiber fusion technology. An all-normal dispersion cavity design yields pulse energies above 40 nJ that dechirp to durations below 200 fs. Using lower net dispersion, pulses dechirping close to 100 fs are obtained with pump limited energies. Effectively single-mode operation is confirmed by beam quality as well as spectral interference measurements.
The summertime ABL structure over an antarctic oasis with a vertical Doppler sodar

The one-component version of the multiple-frequency LATAN-3M sodar was operated during the summer 2006-2007 at the Russian Antarctic station Novolazarevskaya at Schirmacher oasis. We show the typical echograms for the prevailing conditions of forced turbulence, convective turbulence, strong katabatic flows and moist air advection with wave structures. The profiles of the vertical wind component and its variance reveal the vertical structure of local diurnal katabatic winds. We observed the core of a drainage flow at a height of 10-30 m. During the sea air mass advection, the wavy structures are clearly seen in the echograms at heights of 100-200 m a.g. l. The vertical wind component time series show that these waves are propagating rather than advected. The spectrum of the waves has a pronounced peak corresponding to the Brunt-Vaisala frequency in the layer 400-1000 m a.g. l. but not to that in the layer where the waves appear.
M ODEL -T ARGETED P OISONING A TTACKS WITH P ROVABLE C ONVERGENCE

In a poisoning attack, an adversary with control over a small fraction of the training data attempts to select that data in a way that induces a model that misbehaves in a particular way desired by the adversary, such as misclassifying certain inputs. We propose an efficient poisoning attack that can target a desired model based on online convex optimization. Unlike previous model-targeted poisoning attacks, our attack comes with provable convergence to any achievable target classifier. The distance from the induced classifier to the target classifier is inversely proportional to the square root of the number of poisoning points. We also provide a lower bound on the minimum number of poisoning points needed to achieve a given target classifier. Our attack is the first model-targeted poisoning attack that provides provable convergence, and in our experiments it either exceeds or matches the best state-of-the-art attacks in terms of attack success rate and distance to the target model. In addition, as an online attack our attack can incrementally determine nearly optimal poisoning points.
Configuration optimization of dampers for adjacent buildings under seismic excitations

Passive coupling of adjacent structures is known to be an effective method to reduce undesirable vibrations and structural pounding effects. Past results have shown that reducing the number of dampers can considerably decrease the cost of implementation and does not significantly decrease the efficiency of the system. The main objective of this study was to find the optimal arrangement of a limited number of dampers to minimize interstorey drift. Five approaches to solving the resulting bi-level optimization problem are introduced and examined (exhaustive search, inserting dampers, inserting floors, locations of maximum relative velocity and a genetic algorithm) and the numerical efficiency of each method is examined. The results reveal that the inserting damper method is the most efficient and reliable method, particularly for tall structures. It was also found that increasing the number of dampers does not necessarily increase the efficiency of the system. In fact, increasing the number of dampers can exacerbate the dynamic response of the system.
Recommendations for Designing, Conducting and Reporting Clinical Observational Studies in Homeopathic Veterinary Medicine

Abstract Background Clinical observational studies are an important methodological approach in human and veterinary research, examining and describing treatment experience with good external validity. There are currently few observational studies in the field of homeopathic veterinary medicine. Aim The aim of the study was to develop recommendations for designing, conducting and reporting observational studies in homeopathic veterinary medicine. Materials and Methods A literature review was performed using various search strategies for identifying guidelines and checklist tools relevant for observational studies, veterinary research and homeopathy. Useful guidelines were selected. Prior recommendations for designing and conducting observational studies in human homeopathic medicine were supplemented with recommendations for homeopathic veterinary medicine that were evaluated by an expert panel. Results The veterinary extension of the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology – Veterinary (STROBE-Vet) statement was identified as a useful tool to improve the reporting quality of observational studies, and it has been supplemented here with additional recommendations that are applicable to homeopathy. STROBE-Vet is complemented in the literature by several reports, checklists and guidelines on veterinary medicine in general, such as the Checklist for One Health Epidemiological Reporting of Evidence (COHERE) and the Animal Health Surveillance Reporting Guidelines (AHSURED). Identified items that related to laboratory animal research were excluded as non-relevant to our study. Conclusion Clinical observational studies are an important methodological approach, having currently unrealized potential in the field of homeopathic veterinary medicine. With relatively minor adjustments, the practical guidelines and checklists available to researchers in designing, conducting and reporting observational studies in human homeopathic medicine have been adapted for homeopathic veterinary medicine, for which high quality can be assured by implementing recommendations such as those in STROBE-Vet. With the emergence of the One Health concept, the COHERE checklist can be viewed with growing significance.
The Price of Anarchy of Strategic Queuing Systems

Bounding the price of anarchy, which quantifies the damage to social welfare due to selfish behavior of the participants, has been an important area of research in algorithmic game theory. Classical work on such bounds in repeated games makes the strong assumption that the subsequent rounds of the repeated games are independent beyond any influence on play from past history. This work studies such bounds in environments that themselves change due to the actions of the agents. Concretely, we consider this problem in discrete-time queuing systems, where competitive queues try to get their packets served. In this model, a queue gets to send a packet at each step to one of the servers, which will attempt to serve the oldest arriving packet, and unprocessed packets are returned to each queue. We model this as a repeated game where queues compete for the capacity of the servers, but where the state of the game evolves as the length of each queue varies. We analyze this queuing system from multiple perspectives. As a baseline measure, we first establish precise conditions on the queuing arrival rates and service capacities that ensure all packets clear efficiently under centralized coordination. We then show that if queues strategically choose servers according to independent and stationary distributions, the system remains stable provided it would be stable under coordination with arrival rates scaled up by a factor of just \(\frac{e}{e-1}\) . Finally, we extend these results to no-regret learning dynamics: if queues use learning algorithms satisfying the no-regret property to choose servers, then the requisite factor increases to 2, and both of these bounds are tight. Both of these results require new probabilistic techniques compared to the classical price of anarchy literature and show that in such settings, no-regret learning can exhibit efficiency loss due to myopia.
Proportionality on Spatial Data with Context

More often than not, spatial objects are associated with some context, in the form of text, descriptive tags (e.g., points of interest, flickr photos), or linked entities in semantic graphs (e.g., Yago2, DBpedia). Hence, location-based retrieval should be extended to consider not only the locations but also the context of the objects, especially when the retrieved objects are too many and the query result is overwhelming. In this article, we study the problem of selecting a subset of the query result, which is the most representative. We argue that objects with similar context and nearby locations should proportionally be represented in the selection. Proportionality dictates the pairwise comparison of all retrieved objects and hence bears a high cost. We propose novel algorithms which greatly reduce the cost of proportional object selection in practice. In addition, we propose pre-processing, pruning, and approximate computation techniques that their combination reduces the computational cost of the algorithms even further. We theoretically analyze the approximation quality of our approaches. Extensive empirical studies on real datasets show that our algorithms are effective and efficient. A user evaluation verifies that proportional selection is more preferable than random selection and selection based on object diversification.
CHAPTER 1An introduction to the Lepidoptera Iranica project

© Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde Stuttgart Up-to-date checklists of living organisms are an essential and inescapable tool for research, habitat management and conservation, pest control and biodiversity monitoring. However, such organized and trustable baseline data are missing for many groups of animals in Iran, including Lepi doptera (butterflies and moths). Several lists published in the past have contributed to our understanding of Iranian Lepidoptera (e.g., RotHscHild 1921; sutton 1963; BaRou 1967; HasHemi 1966; miRzayans & Kalali 1970; modaRRes awal 1994, 1997, 2012; nazaRi 2003; nadeRi 2012; KoçaK & Kemal 2014; tsHiKolovets et al. 2014). However, most of these checklists covered either a narrow geographic range (e.g., RotHscHild 1921; Kalali 1976) or only few taxo nomic groups (e.g., ecKweileR & Hofmann 1980; nazaRi 2003), or suffered from a limited examination of collections (e.g., BaRou 1967; miRzayans & Kalali 1970). The only published list with national scope and broader taxonomic (at the order level) coverage, published by KoçaK & Kemal (2014), is unfortunately full of errors and misleading data, suffers from structural problems and is useless for most purposes (see last section of Rajaei et al. 2023b). Unfortunately, due to a lack of sufficiently trained lepi dopterists in Iran, to the low number of amateur lepidopterists and collectors and to the extremely low number of research collections and active projects in Iran, a large part of the Lepidoptera fauna of the country is estimated as still undiscovered (see landRy et al. 2023). The only well-organized research initiative, “Association Lepidoptera Iranica” or A.L. I. , which started in 2004, laid the foundations for boosting and centralizing lepidopterological activities in the country (see Rajaei et al. 2023b). During the course of three A.L. I. symposiums in Karlsruhe and Tehran, a large number of lepidopterists from around the world focused their efforts on the identification of Iranian Lepidoptera for a few years. However, the A.L. I. initiative did not receive enough attention in Iran and ended too soon, after just three years. The present catalogue is the first modern catalogue of Iranian Lepidoptera with national coverage for the whole order. In it, we tried to combine all presently-known phylogenetic, systematic, taxonomic, nomenclatural and geographic information on the Lepidoptera of Iran. Our main target was to present the data in a useful, easy-to-use and compact format.
Visualization and quality control tools for large-scale multiplex tissue analysis in TissUUmaps3

Large-scale multiplex tissue analysis aims to understand processes such as development and tumor formation by studying the occurrence and interaction of cells in local environments in e.g. tissue samples from patient cohorts. A typical procedure in the analysis is to delineate individual cells, classify them into cell types, and analyze their spatial relationships. All steps come with a number of challenges, and to address them and identify the bottlenecks of the analysis, it is necessary to include quality control tools in the analysis workflow. This makes it possible to optimize the steps and adjust settings in order to get better and more precise results. Additionally, the development of automated approaches for tissue analysis requires visual verification to reduce skepticism with regard to the accuracy of the results. Quality control tools could be used to build users’ trust in automated approaches. In this paper, we present three plugins for visualization and quality control in large-scale multiplex tissue analysis of microscopy images. The first plugin focuses on the quality of cell staining, the second one was made for interactive evaluation and comparison of different cell classification results, and the third one serves for reviewing interactions of different cell types.
Insights on the Impact of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Symbiosis on Eucalyptus grandis Tolerance to Drought Stress

Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi play an important role in improving plant growth and development under drought stress. The MAPK cascade may regulate many physiological and biochemical processes in plants in response to drought stress. ABSTRACT Drought stress has a negative impact on plant growth and production. Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi, which establish symbioses with most terrestrial vascular plant species, play important roles in improving host plant mineral nutrient acquisition and resistance to drought. However, the physiological and molecular regulation mechanisms occurring in mycorrhizal Eucalyptus grandis coping with drought stress remain unclear. Here, we studied the physiological changes and mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) cascade gene expression profiles of E. grandis associated with AM fungi under drought stress. The results showed that colonization by AM fungi significantly enhanced plant growth, with higher plant biomass, shoot height, root length, and relative water content (RWC) under drought conditions. Mycorrhizal plants had lower levels of accumulation of proline, malondialdehyde (MDA), H2O2, and O2·− than seedlings not colonized with AM fungi. In addition, mycorrhizal E. grandis also had higher peroxidase (POD), superoxide dismutase (SOD), and catalase (CAT) activities under drought conditions, improving the antioxidant system response. Eighteen MAPK cascade genes were isolated from E. grandis, and the expression levels of the MAPK cascade genes were positively induced by symbiosis with AM fungi, which was correlated with changes in the proline, MDA, H2O2, and O2·− contents and POD, SOD, and CAT activities. In summary, our results showed that AM symbiosis enhances E. grandis drought tolerance by regulating plant antioxidation abilities and MAPK cascade gene expression. IMPORTANCE Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi play an important role in improving plant growth and development under drought stress. The MAPK cascade may regulate many physiological and biochemical processes in plants in response to drought stress. Previous studies have shown that there is a complex regulatory network between the plant MAPK cascade and drought stress. However, the relationship between the E. grandis MAPK cascade and AM symbiosis in coping with drought remains to be investigated. Our results suggest that AM fungi could improve plant drought tolerance mainly by improving the antioxidant ability to protect plants from reactive oxygen species (ROS) and alleviate oxidative stress damage. The expression of the MAPK cascade genes was induced in mycorrhizal E. grandis seedlings under drought stress. This study revealed that MAPK cascade regulation is of special significance for improving the drought tolerance of E. grandis. This study provides a reference for improving mycorrhizal seedling cultivation under stress.
Excision of Integrated Human Herpesvirus 6A Genomes Using CRISPR/Cas9 Technology

Human herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6) infects almost all humans and integrates into the telomeres of latently infected cells to persist in the host for life. In addition, HHV-6 can also integrate into the telomeres of germ cells, which results in about 80 million individuals worldwide who carry the virus in every cell of their body and can pass it on to their offspring. ABSTRACT Human herpesviruses 6A and 6B are betaherpesviruses that can integrate their genomes into the telomeres of latently infected cells. Integration can also occur in germ cells, resulting in individuals who harbor the integrated virus in every cell of their body and can pass it on to their offspring. This condition is termed inherited chromosomally integrated HHV-6 (iciHHV-6) and affects about 1% of the human population. The integrated HHV-6A/B genome can reactivate in iciHHV-6 patients and in rare cases can also cause severe diseases including encephalitis and graft-versus-host disease. Until now, it has remained impossible to prevent virus reactivation or remove the integrated virus genome. Therefore, we developed a system that allows the removal of HHV-6A from the host telomeres using the CRISPR/Cas9 system. We used specific guide RNAs (gRNAs) targeting the direct repeat region at the ends of the viral genome to remove the virus from latently infected cells generated in vitro and iciHHV-6A patient cells. Fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS), quantitative PCR (qPCR), and fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) analyses revealed that the virus genome was efficiently excised and lost in most cells. Efficient excision was achieved with both constitutive and transient expression of Cas9. In addition, reverse transcription-qPCR (RT-qPCR) revealed that the virus genome did not reactivate upon excision. Taken together, our data show that our CRISPR/Cas9 approach allows efficient removal of the integrated virus genome from host telomeres. IMPORTANCE Human herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6) infects almost all humans and integrates into the telomeres of latently infected cells to persist in the host for life. In addition, HHV-6 can also integrate into the telomeres of germ cells, which results in about 80 million individuals worldwide who carry the virus in every cell of their body and can pass it on to their offspring. In this study, we develop the first system that allows excision of the integrated HHV-6 genome from host telomeres using CRISPR/Cas9 technology. Our data revealed that the integrated HHV-6 genome can be efficiently removed from the telomeres of latently infected cells and cells of patients harboring the virus in their germ line. Virus removal could be achieved with both stable and transient Cas9 expression, without inducing viral reactivation.
A review on authorship attribution in text mining

The issue of authorship attribution has long been considered and continues to be a popular topic. Because of advances in digital computers, this field has experienced rapid developments in the last decade. In this article, a survey of recent advances in authorship attribution in text mining is presented. This survey focuses on authorship attribution methods that are statistically or computationally supported as opposed to traditional literary approaches. The main aspects covered include the changes in research topics over time, basic feature metrics, machine learning techniques, and the advantages and disadvantages of each approach. Moreover, the corpus size, number of candidates, data imbalance, and result description, all of which pose challenges in authorship attribution, are discussed to inform future work.