Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dermatotoxins synthesized by blue-green algae ( Cyanobacteria )

In this paper we have reviewed dermatotoxins produced by blue-green algae. Dermatotoxins are harmful compounds that target human skin. Blue-green algae (Cyanobacteria) are prokaryotic microorganisms, mainly found in the water environment – marine and freshwater. A number of species are able to synthesize several toxic substances that affect human health upon exposure to lyngbya-, aplysiaand debromoaplysiatoxin. Lipopolysaccharides present in cyanobacteria cell walls can be irritating to human skin. Therefore, surface waters for recreational use should be monitored for the presence of toxic species of blue-green algae.
Deep Covariance Descriptors for Facial Expression Recognition

In this paper, covariance matrices are exploited to encode the deep convolutional neural networks (DCNN) features for facial expression recognition. The space geometry of the covariance matrices is that of Symmetric Positive Definite (SPD) matrices. By performing the classification of the facial expressions using Gaussian kernel on SPD manifold, we show that the covariance descriptors computed on DCNN features are more efficient than the standard classification with fully connected layers and softmax. By implementing our approach using the VGG-face and ExpNet architectures with extensive experiments on the Oulu-CASIA and SFEW datasets, we show that the proposed approach achieves performance at the state of the art for facial expression recognition.
Exploring the childless universe: Profiles of women and men without children in Italy

Background: In recent decades, several Western countries have experienced a large increase in childlessness. Relatively little is known about the profiles of childless women in Italy, and virtually nothing about childless men. Objective: The aim of this paper is to address this gap by identifying typical life course trajectories of childless women and men in Italy from a gender perspective and in a cross-cohort comparison. Methods: In order to identify typical patterns I adopted a holistic perspective, applying sequence analysis to data on partnership, employment, and education for a sample of childless women and men derived from the 2009 Italian Family and Social Subjects survey. Results: Six profiles each were identified for childless women and men, which illustrate the marked heterogeneity of the childless universe. Four out of the six were similar for both genders. Importantly, the life course of the childless evolved across cohorts, with an increasing proportion of employed women and single men in the youngest generations. Contribution: This work sheds light on differences in childlessness in Italy by gender and generation. It confirms the role of factors such as not having a partner, and adds new empirical findings such as the pattern of disadvantaged, less-educated women and that of highly educated men with a history of unstable employment.
Honey bee aggression supports a link between gene regulation and behavioral evolution

A prominent theory states that animal phenotypes arise by evolutionary changes in gene regulation, but the extent to which this theory holds true for behavioral evolution is not known. Because “nature and nurture” are now understood to involve hereditary and environmental influences on gene expression, we studied whether environmental influences on a behavioral phenotype, i.e., aggression, could have evolved into inherited differences via changes in gene expression. Here, with microarray analysis of honey bees, we show that aggression-related genes with inherited patterns of brain expression are also environmentally regulated. There were expression differences in the brain for hundreds of genes between the highly aggressive Africanized honey bee compared with European honey bee (EHB) subspecies. Similar results were obtained for EHB in response to exposure to alarm pheromone (which provokes aggression) and when comparing old and young bees (aggressive tendencies increase with age). There was significant overlap of the gene lists generated from these three microarray experiments. Moreover, there was statistical enrichment of several of the same cis regulatory motifs in promoters of genes on all three gene lists. Aggression shows a remarkably robust brain molecular signature regardless of whether it occurs because of inherited, age-related, or environmental (social) factors. It appears that one element in the evolution of different degrees of aggressive behavior in honey bees involved changes in regulation of genes that mediate the response to alarm pheromone.
Local Connections of Excitatory Neurons to Corticothalamic Neurons in the Rat Barrel Cortex

Corticothalamic projection neurons in the cerebral cortex constitute an important component of the thalamocortical reciprocal circuit, an essential input/output organization for cortical information processing. However, the spatial organization of local excitatory connections to corticothalamic neurons is only partially understood. In the present study, we first developed an adenovirus vector expressing somatodendritic membrane-targeted green fluorescent protein. After injection of the adenovirus vector into the ventrobasal thalamic complex, a band of layer (L) 6 corticothalamic neurons in the rat barrel cortex were retrogradely labeled. In addition to their cell bodies, fine dendritic spines of corticothalamic neurons were well visualized without the labeling of their axon collaterals or thalamocortical axons. In cortical slices containing retrogradely labeled L6 corticothalamic neurons, we intracellularly stained single pyramidal/spiny neurons of L2–6. We examined the spatial distribution of contact sites between the local axon collaterals of each pyramidal neuron and the dendrites of corticothalamic neurons. We found that corticothalamic neurons received strong and focused connections from L4 neurons just above them, and that the most numerous nearby and distant sources of local excitatory connections to corticothalamic neurons were corticothalamic neurons themselves and L6 putative corticocortical neurons, respectively. These results suggest that L4 neurons may serve as an important source of local excitatory inputs in shaping the cortical modulation of thalamic activity.
Transcriptional Enhancement of the Human Gene Encoding for a Melanoma‐associated Antigen (ME491) in Association with Malignant Transformation

A cloned DNA fragment (λR31) containing the human gene for melanoma‐associated ME491 antigen was transfected into mouse fibroblast cell lines and the antigen expression was studied. Our preliminary observation of higher expression of the antigen in more malignant Ltk cells and weaker expression in less malignant NIH3T3 cells tempted us to investigate the antigen expression in Harvey (H)‐ras‐transformed NIH3T3 cells. It was observed that malignant transformation of the λR31‐transfected NIH3T3 cells by H‐ras oncogene enhanced the antigen expression to some extent. Northern blot analysis suggested that the enhancement occurred at the transcriptionsl level. Nucleotide sequence analysis of the 5′‐regulatory region of the ME491 antigen gene in λR31 identified a number of consensus sequence motifs for binding of transcription factors such as Sp1, AP‐2 and polyomavirus enhancer binding proteins 2 and 3. A consensus sequence motif for binding of AP‐1, known as a ras‐responsive element, was not found in that region. The significance and possible involvement of the transcription factors in the enhancement of ME491 antigen expression are discussed.
Antimicrobial and antioxidant activities of salt stress callus of Brinjal (Solanum melongena L.)

Ethanolic and methanolic salt stress callus extracts of Solanum melongena L. were tested for in vitro antimicrobial and free radical scavenging assayssuch as DPPH (1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl) and ABTS+(2,2'Azinobis (3-ethyl benzo-thizoline-6-sulfonic acid) . In both the extracts the zone of inhibition is higher in Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumonia, Staphylococcus aureusand Streptococcus pyogenesat 90 µl concentration against the control. The antifungal activity of these extracts also the zone of inhibition is higher at 90 µl concentration against the control. The DPPH activity of different concentration of solvent extracts (1 mg/ml to 5 mg/ml) along with standard ascorbic acid among the five different concentration (50 µg/ml to 250 µg/ml) of extracts tested, the higher percentage of inhibition was observed in 250 µg/ml of methanol extract followed by ethanolic extract against the standard ascorbic acid. In ABTS+ activity the absorbance was increased with the increasing concentrations of both methanolic and ethanolic callus extracts.
Design of Vector Quantizer for Image Compression Using Hybrid ANT GLA algorithm

Compression is a key technique for digital transmission and storage of images due to the vast amount of data associated with it. Image compression algorithms using Vector Quantization (VQ) have been receiving considerable attention. In VQ, minimization of Mean Square Error (MSE) between code book vectors and training vectors is a non-linear problem. Traditional GLA algorithm used for designing the codebooks for Vector Quantizer converges to a local minimum, which depends on the initial code book. Ant colony algorithm is a population-based meta-heuristic search approach that has been receiving increasing attention in the recent years. Ant colony algorithm is inspired by the behavior of real ant colonies. It has shown to be successful and popular for solving optimization problems. In this paper we present a new hybrid approach in which Ant colony algorithm is combined with GLA to design a codebook for vector quantization. Simulation results indicate that ANTGLA has better performance in designing the optimal codebook for Vector Quantizer than GLA. The Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) is used as an objective measure of reconstructed image quality.
Visual ecology of true lemurs suggests a cathemeral origin for the primate cone opsin polymorphism

Summary In contrast to the majority of primates, which exhibit dedicated diurnality or nocturnality, all species of Eulemur are cathemeral. Colour vision, in particular, is strongly affected by the spectral composition and intensity of ambient light, and the impact of activity period on the evolution of primate colour vision is actively debated. We studied three groups of wild brown lemurs (Eulemur fulvus) in Ankarafantsika National Park, Madagascar, over a 1-year span. We also used non-invasive faecal DNA collection and analysis to study the opsin genes underlying the colour vision of 24 individuals. We quantified the colour and brightness of dietary fruits and modelled the chromaticity and discriminability of food objects to different visual phenotypes under daylight, twilight and moonlight conditions. We found that E. fulvus possesses routine dichromacy, unlike its congener E. flavifrons, for which polymorphic trichromacy has been reported. Our models suggest that dichromacy is well suited to the foraging ecology of E. fulvus. The performance of modelled dichromats and trichromats is comparable under nocturnal illuminants, and the luminance values of most diet items are detectable across light conditions. The trichromatic phenotype demonstrates a modest advantage under daylight conditions. Our results, taken together with reports of polymorphic trichromacy in E. flavifrons, suggest functional ecological variation in the visual system of the genus Eulemur. Interspecific phenotypic variation in the colour vision of a genus is both unexpected and instructive. Ecological differences between species of Eulemur could reveal thresholds for the origins of polymorphic trichromacy, which preceded the evolution of routine trichromatic vision in humans and other primates.
Thickness and histologic and histochemical properties of the superior pharyngeal constrictor muscle in velocardiofacial syndrome.

BACKGROUND Velocardiofacial syndrome (VCFS) is one of the most common multiple anomaly syndromes in humans. Pharyngeal hypotonia, one of the most common findings in VCFS, contributes to hypernasal speech, which occurs in approximately 75% of individuals with VCFS. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the thickness and histologic and histochemical properties of the superior pharyngeal constrictor (SPC) muscle in patients with VCFS to determine whether a muscle abnormality exists that might contribute to the hypotonia seen in these patients. Subjects The SPC muscle thickness in 26 VCFS patients (18 male and 8 female; age range, 3-29 years) was compared with SPC muscle thickness in age- and sex-matched controls using magnetic resonance images. The histologic and histochemical properties of the SPC muscle in 9 VCFS patients (6 male and 3 female; age range, 4-12 years) were compared with SPC muscle in 3 adult cadavers without VCFS (all male; age range, 80-86 years) using specimens obtained during pharyngeal flap surgery. RESULTS The thickness of the SPC muscle was significantly less in patients with VCFS (2.03 mm) than in patients without VCFS (2.85 mm). The SPC muscle contained a significantly greater proportion of type 1 fibers in patients with VCFS (27.7%) than in adults without VCFS (17.9%), and the diameter of the type 1 fibers was significantly smaller in patients with VCFS (21.6 micro m) than in adults without VCFS (26.6 micro m). CONCLUSIONS Differences in the thickness and histologic and histochemical properties of the SPC muscle found in patients with VCFS compared with individuals without VCFS may offer insight into the cause of pharyngeal hypotonia and hypernasal speech seen in these patients.
Development of the precerebellar nuclei in the rat: I. The precerebellar neuroepithelium of the rhombencephalon

Short‐survival thymidine radiograms from rat embryos aged 13–19 days were analyzed to delineate the precerebellar neuroepithelium of the rhombencephalon. The original definition of the term “rhombencephalon” was modified to refer only to the unique dorsal portion (surface plate) of the medulla and pons where the neural groove fails to fuse and, instead, the medullary velum covers the rhomboid lumen of the fourth ventricle. Initially, the neuroepithelial tissue of the rhombencephalon consists of a pair of rostral and caudal bridgeheads: the former the primary neuroepithelium of the cerebellum and the latter the primary neuroepithelium of the octavo‐precerebellar system. The spatial relationship between the cerebellar and precerebellar neuroepithelia soon changes as a result of ongoing morphogenetic events, such that the cerebellar primordium assumes a dorsal position and the precerebellar primordium a ventral position, and the distance between the two decreases. Concurrently the tela choroidea invaginates into the fourth ventricle and a secondary precerebellar neuroepithelium develops. The rostral portion of the secondary precerebellar neuroepithelium grows forward along the choroid plexus and forms the medial recess of the anterior fourth ventricle, while its caudal portion grows in the opposite direction beneath the medullary velum and forms the rostral wall of the posterior fourth ventricle. Evidence will be presented in the succeeding papers that the primary precerebellar neuroepithelium first generates the neurons of the inferior olive that migrate by a circumferential intramural (parenchymal) route to their destination. Next, the neurons of the lateral reticular and external cuneate nuclei are generated. These migrate by a posterior extramural (superficial) route and settle contralaterally. Subsequently, the primary precerebellar neuroepithelium produces the neurons of the nucleus reticularis tegmenti pontis and these form the anterior extramural migratory stream and settle ipsilaterally. Finally, the secondary precerebellar neuroepithelium produces the latest generated neurons of the basal pontine gray that follow the anterior extramural stream and settle ipsilaterally.
Information Technology in Daily Life An Assessment of the Full Integration Hypothesis

This paper examines the role of computers in daily human activity from the perspective of the full integration hypothe­ sis. The full integration hypothesis assumes that as infonnation technology evolves it will influence and support virtually every aspect of daily life and work life. The analysis scrutinizes the full integration hypothesis during three eras of infonnation technology: 1) the recent past, 2) the present, and 3) the near future. Empirical research results and present technological capabilities are exam­ ined to assess current and future trends and the probable impact on daily activities. In general the analysis indicates that it is only recently, with the advent of the personal computer, that the phrase "computers in daily life" makes sense. Secondly, as computeriza­ tion becomes more ubiquitous and intensive in daily human activ­ ities the nature of the impacts change. Third, the prognosis for the full integration of computers into daily life depends more on social adaptation and acceptance than technological developments. The paper concludes with a set of issues relevant to policy making and future systems design.
Transitory expression of and in maxillary arch Dlx 5 Dlx 6 precursors is essential for upper jaw morphogenesis

Asymmetric, articulated jaws support active predation in vertebrates; they derive from the first pharyngeal arch (PA1) which generates both maxillary and mandibular components. PA1 is colonized by cranial neural crest cells (CNCCs) which give rise to most bones and tendons of the jaws. The elements formed by different CNCCs contingents are specified by the combinatorial expression of genes. and are predominantly expressed by Dlx Dlx5 Dlx6 mandibular CNCCs. Analysis of the phenotype of and double mutant Dlx5 Dlx6 mice has suggested that they are necessary and sufficient to specify mandibular identity. Here, using 3D reconstruction, we show that inactivation of and does not only affect the mandibular arch, but results in the Dlx5 Dlx6 simultaneous transformation of mandibular and maxillary skeletal elements which assume a similar morphology with gain of symmetry. As and Dlx5Dlx6 -expressing cells are not found in the maxillary bud, we have examined the lineage of -expressing progenitors using an genetic approach. We Dlx5 in vivo find that a contingent of cells deriving from precursors transiently expressing participate in the formation of the maxillary arch. These cells are mostly Dlx5 located in the distal part of the maxillary arch and might derive from its lambdoidal junction with the olfactory pit. Our findings extend current models of jaw morphogenesis and provide an explanation for the maxillary defects of Dlx5 and mutants. Our results imply that Dlx5 and Dlx6 model the upper and Dlx6 the lower PA1 components through different morphogenetic mechanisms which are, however, coordinated as they give rise to functional, articulated jaws. Referee Status:
A Novel Mutant from Apoptosis‐resistant Colon Cancer HT‐29 Cells Showing Hyper‐apoptotic Response to Hypoxia, Low Glucose and Cisplatin

Solid tumors usually have regions of hypoxia and glucose deprivation. Human colon carcinoma HT‐29 cells show an apoptosis‐resistant phenotype in response to microenvironmental stresses. In this study, we isolated a novel mutant of HT‐29, designated as HA511, that showed a high apoptotic response to hypoxia, glucose deprivation and treatment with the chemical stressors tunicamycin and glucosamine. The mutant HA511 cells exhibited nuclear condensation and fragmentation and activation of CPP32 (caspase‐3) protease under the stress conditions, while the parental HT‐29 cells did not. We found that apoptosis occurred in HA511 cells after prolonged cell cycle arrest at the G1 phase, while in the parental cells a progression to S phase occurred after the G1 arrest. Upon exposure to an anti‐Fas antibody, HA511 cells underwent apoptosis, whereas the parental cells proliferated without substantial cell death. Furthermore, HA511 cells were preferentially hypersensitive to cisplatin. We found no alteration in expression of GRP78, anti‐apoptotic protein Bcl‐XL, or p53, of which the gene was mutated in HT‐29 cells. The mutant HA511 cells could provide useful information on the mechanism of apoptosis of solid tumors.
Synergistic Enhancement of Cisplatin Cytotoxicity by SN‐38, an Active Metabolite of CPT‐11, for Cisplatin‐resistant HeLa Cells

A cisplatin (cis‐diamininedichloroplatinuin(II); CDDP)‐resistant HeLa cell line (HeLa/CDDP cells), which showed more than 8‐fold resistance to CDDF compared to the parent cells, was newly established for this study. HeLa/CDDP cells accumulated 50% less platinum than the parent cells. There was no difference in intracellular glutathione (GSH) content between the parent and HeLa/ CDDP cells. The dose modification factor by DL‐buthionine‐S, R‐sulfoximine (BSO) pretreatment was similar in both cell lines. HeLa/CDDP cells had cross‐resistance to diammine (l, l‐cyclobutanedicarboxylato)platinum(II) (CBDCA), (cis‐diammine (glycolato)platinum (254‐S), but not to (‐)‐(R)‐2‐aminomethylpyrrolidine(1,1‐cyclobutanedicarboxylato)platinum(II) (DWA2114R), adriamycin, or VP‐16. HeLa/CDDP cells showed a collateral sensitivity to 7‐ethyl‐10‐hydroxycampto‐thecin (SN‐38), an active metabolite of 7‐ethyl‐10‐[4‐(l‐piperidino)‐l‐piperidino]carbonyloxycamptothecin (CPT‐11). Furthermore, isobologram analysis indicated synergistic interaction of CDDP and SN‐38 only for HeLa/CDDP cells. The present study suggests that combination therapy with CDDP and CPT‐11 may he potentially useful in the treatment of some patients with CDDP‐resistant cancer.
Design of a Phonetically Balanced Code-Mixed Hindi-English

Code-mixing is a frequently encountered phenomenon in day-to-day natural language communication in the multilingual and bilingual communities. The phenomenon is so widespread that is often considered a different, emerging variety of the language. Computational modeling of the phenomenon of code-mixing and code-switching assumes particular relevance with the advancement of social media. However, computational studies for both textual and speech processing of code-mixing suffer from a sincere disadvantage: lack of data. In this thesis, we present the development of a Phonetically Balanced read speech corpus of Code-Mixed Hindi-English (the PBCM corpus). A Large Code-Mixed (LCM corpus) has been extracted from selected sections of two widely read Hindi newspapers. These sections (namely: Sports, Technology and Lifestyle) contain frequent English insertions embeddded within the matrix of Hindi sentences. Phonetic balance in the corpus has been established by selecting sentences that contain triphones lower in frequency than a predefined threshold. The assumption with the compulsory inclusion of such rare units is that the high frequency triphones will inevitably be included [66]. Using this metric, the Pearson’s correlation coefficient of the phonetically balanced corpus with a large code-mixed reference corpus was recorded to be 0.996. Statistics on the phone and triphone distribution have been presented, to graphically display the phonetic likeness between the large reference corpus (LCM corpus) and the corpus sampled through our method. A pilot PBCM corpus (PBCM-Phase I) has been recorded by 4 volunteer Hindi speakers. As a second contribution of this thesis, we present a baseline automatic speech recognition (ASR) system for code-mixed read speech in Hindi-English, developed upon the extrapolation of monolingual training resources. Two distinct monolingual acoustic models (Hindi and English) have been implemented to train a neural network and subspace GMM based speech recognition framework. The testing has been performed on PBCM-Phase I corpus. We examine the combination of a code-mixed trigram language model with each of the acoustic models described above. We contrast the combination of the code-mixed language model with a monolingual language model, and see drastic improvements in accuracy. The Hindi monolingual acoustic model, in combination with the code-mixed language model is our best performing experimental setup. (word error rate: 41.22%)