Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Environmental heterogeneity and the spatial structure of fern species diversity in one hectare of old‐growth forest

The precise relationship between species diversity and spatial heterogeneity has not often been investigated using quantitative and repeatable measures of environmental variation. In this study, we map the metre-level distribution of fern species in one hectare of old-growth forest and test for a relationship between diversity and heterogeneity of physical features and soil conditions. The nineteen species recorded in the hectare were non-randomly distributed and varied greatly in abundance and spatial aggregation. Different. Species distributions were not independent of one another: three groups were formed with species which occurred together significantly more often than random expectation. Physical and soil conditions were highly variable and spatially auto correlated from the 5 m scale up to the extent of the whole hectare. Based on the sites where they grew, species differed in their references for soil moisture, fertility and pH. Fern diversity was highest at sites with high soil moisture and low soil fertility: however, there was no relationship between diversity and the environmental variance within quadrats. Unpredictable spatial distribution patterns produced by processes of dispersal and immigration may obscure any relationship between diversity and spatial heterogeneity at this fine scale.
Expanding “Irish Family” Repertoires: Exploring Gay Men's Experiences as Parents in the Republic of Ireland

ABSTRACTThis article explores gay men's parenting experiences and practices in order to seek insight into how gay men accept or challenge heterosexual family norms and how “family” is understood in the Irish context. It is based on small-scale qualitative research (interviews) with seven gay fathers. Despite the limited routes to parenthood for gay men in Ireland, the research findings indicate that the participants enjoy parenting and that they are motivated in their parenting practices. The gay fathers in this study are participative parents who have made significant decisions in their lives in order to prioritize their children's welfare. The diversity of family constellations and care arrangements that surround gay fathering in Ireland can expand family and care repertoires beyond the traditional biparent heterosexual norm. Gay fathers in Ireland appear to enjoy some security at the private familial level and in the responses from their families and communities, but they are keenly aware that nontradi.
Simultaneous wire permutation, inversion, and spacing with genetic algorithm for energy-efficient bus design

With decreasing feature size on silicon, the coupling capacitances of buses grow rapidly causing a significant impact on the power consumption of the whole chip. Thus, buses should be designed and optimized to dissipate less power without sacrificing performance. In this paper, we address this problem by simultaneously optimizing wire permutation, inversion and spacing (space between consecutive wires) using a combination of optimal as well as genetic algorithms. Unlike previous studies, our approach is applicable to not only address buses (behave more regularly), but also instruction buses of microprocessors. For the spacing problem, an algorithm is presented which determines the optimal solution instead of applying time consuming heuristic algorithms as presented in (L. Macchiarulo et al., 2002). For our experiments, we used instruction bus traces obtained from 12 SPEC2000 benchmark programs. We simulate different combinations among permutation, spacing, and inversion. Integrated all optimization techniques together, our approach can save energy up to 68% for the best case and 58% on average while only increasing the total wire space by about 50% (compared to a bus with minimal spacing between adjacent wires for a particular technology).
Visualizing polysemy using LSA and the predication algorithm

Context is a determining factor in language, and plays a decisive role in polysemic words. Several psycholinguistically-motivated algorithms have been proposed to emulate human management of context, under the assumption that the value of a word is evanescent and takes on meaning only in interaction with other structures. The predication algorithm (Kintsch, 2001), for example, uses a vector representation of the words produced by LSA (Latent Semantic Analysis) to dynamically simulate the comprehension of predications and even of predicative metaphors. The objective of this study is to predict some unwanted effects that could be present in vector-space models when extracting different meanings of a polysemic word (Predominant meaning inundation, Lack of precision and Low-level definition), and propose ideas based on the predication algorithm for avoiding them. Our first step was to visualize such unwanted phenomena and also the effect of solutions. We use different methods to extract the meanings for a polysemic word (without context, Vector Sum and Predication Algorithm). Our second step was to conduct an ANOVA to compare such methods and measure the impact of potential solutions. Results support the idea that a human-based computational algorithm like the Predication algorithm can take into account features that ensure more accurate representations of the structures we seek to extract. Theoretical assumptions and their repercussions are discussed.
Physical Weight Loading Induces Expression of Tryptophan Hydroxylase 2 in the Brain Stem

Sustaining brain serotonin is essential in mental health. Physical activities can attenuate mental problems by enhancing serotonin signaling. However, such activity is not always possible in disabled individuals or patients with dementia. Knee loading, a form of physical activity, has been found to mimic effects of voluntary exercise. Focusing on serotonergic signaling, we addressed a question: Does local mechanical loading to the skeleton elevate expression of tryptophan hydroxylase 2 (tph2) that is a rate-limiting enzyme for brain serotonin? A 5 min knee loading was applied to mice using 1 N force at 5 Hz for 1,500 cycles. A 5-min treadmill running was used as an exercise (positive) control, and a 90-min tail suspension was used as a stress (negative) control. Expression of tph2 was determined 30 min – 2 h in three brain regions ––frontal cortex (FC), ventromedial hypothalamus (VMH), and brain stem (BS). We demonstrated for the first time that knee loading and treadmill exercise upregulated the mRNA level of tph2 in the BS, while tail suspension downregulated it. The protein level of tph2 in the BS was also upregulated by knee loading and downregulated by tail suspension. Furthermore, the downregulation of tph2 mRNA by tail suspension can be partially suppressed by pre-application of knee loading. The expression of tph2 in the FC and VMH was not significantly altered with knee loading. In this study we provided evidence that peripheral mechanical loading can activate central tph2 expression, suggesting that physical cues may mediate tph2-cathalyzed serotonergic signaling in the brain.
Design Optimization of Switched Reluctance Machines Operating Under Voltage PWM Control Strategy

Because of inherent interdepencdence between magnetic design and control of switched reluctance machines (SRMs), change of modulation (control) strategy leads to different optimum designs. Modulation variables added to machine design parameters increase search-space dimensions and bring more complications in machine design problem. This paper intends to identify some relationships among machine design parameters, modulation variables and machine outputs for a selected modulation strategy (here, voltage PWM) to reduce search and computation burden in design process. These relationships are used to develop novel SRM synthesis algorithms which are employed elaborately in SRM design optimization. Moreover, as drives in most of applications operate normally at a number of operating points, the SRM design is optimized in terms of the global machine-drive performance over an operating region.
The dnaKJ operon of Agrobacterium tumefaciens: transcriptional analysis and evidence for a new heat shock promoter

The dnaKJ operon of Agrobacterium tumefaciens was cloned and sequenced and was found to be highly homologous to previously analyzed dnaKJ operons. Transcription of this operon in A. tumefaciens was stimulated by heat shock as well as by exposure to ethanol and hydrogen peroxide. There were two transcripts representing the dnaKJ operon: one containing the dnaK and dnaJ genes and the second containing only the dnaK gene. Primer extension analysis indicated that transcription started from the same site in heat-shocked cells and in untreated cells. The upstream regulatory region of the dnaKJ operon of A. tumefaciens does not contain the highly conserved inverted repeat sequence previously found in the groESL operon of this bacterium, as well as in many other groE and dnaK operons. Sequence analysis of the promoter region of several groESL and dnaK operons from alpha-purple proteobacteria indicates the existence of a putative promoter sequence different from the known consensus promoter sequences recognized by the Escherichia coli vegetative or heat shock sigma factor. This promoter may constitute the heat shock promoter of these alpha-purple proteobacteria.
Transnational Terrorism: An Economic Analysis

Focussing on the economics of terrorism in the post 9/11 world, this book brings together original research based on the collaborative efforts of leading economists and planners. The authoritative and expert contributors use a variety of methodological approaches and apply them to different types of terrorist attacks (on airports, highways, seaports, electric power infrastructure, for example).
15-851 Project Report: Refinement Type Inference using Abstract Interpretation

Typing checking is an efficient way to catch simple errors. Refinement types [3] are invented to take advantage of type systems in specifying more program properties and verifying them through type checking. In [3, 2], a method to use rectype declaration has been proposed to specify regular tree grammar based invariants. Datatype lattices are then derived from rectype declarations. An algorithm based on abstract interpretation [1] is used to infer refinement types. Abstract interpretation [1] is a program analysis techniques. Abstract domain is defined for a program, and the program’s execution on the concrete domain is approximated by operations on this abstract domain. Most often, results on the abstract domain are safe simulations of the actual execution. In this project, two refinement type inference algorithms based on abstract interpretation are described. one without intersection types and one with principal intersection types. In Section 2, a dialect of Mini-ML with type annotations to function arguments is defined, which is our source language. In Section 3, a simple refinement type inference algorithm is outlined, where there are no intersection types, thus expressions do not have principal types. In Section 4, a full-blown refinement type inference algorithm as is described in [2] is outlined. Experimental comparisons of these two algorithms are discussed in Section 5. Section 6 concludes the report with some future work.
A mobility prediction scheme of LTE/LTE-A femtocells under different velocity scenarios

Femtocells have been standardized by the Third-Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) technical specifications to be placed indoors and in the cell edge. Femtocells extend the coverage area and fulfil the upcoming demands of higher data rates. However, as a result of the mass deployment of femtocells, users experience extra delay and unnecessary handovers. This can severely influence the Quality of Service (QoS) of delay-sensitive Real-Time (RT) applications such as Voice over Long Term Evolution (VoLTE). 3GPP LTE/LTE-A wireless networks aim to ensure seamless mobility and fast handover support to RT and non-RT application services under high mobility. Mobility prediction is an effective technique to identify a future evolved and Home NodeB (eNB/HeNB) in advance, improve overall network QoS and satisfy end-user experience. This study investigates the role of mobility prediction in reducing VoLTE end-to-end delay and handover delay under different User Equipment (UE) velocities in mixed femtocell and macrocell environments. A mobility prediction scheme based on the user's path and Reference Signal Received Power and Reference Signal Received Quality (RSRP/RSRQ) measurements with mixed RT and non-RT traffic is proposed and then evaluated using a novel network model. The simulation results reveal that the proposed scheme has clearly reduced handover delay by 29%, kept VoLTE end-to-end delay within the ITU-T standard recommendations and maintained the desired QoS.
Robust real-time PPG-based heart rate monitoring

Many existing methods for tracking heart rate (HR) from pho-toplethysmographic (PPG) signals can be found in the literature, but they are tested only in static scenarios and fail when motion artifacts are strong. Recently, an algorithm called TROIKA was proposed for robust HR tracking, but the computational complexity of that algorithm is very high which makes it difficult to implement in small embedded devices, such as wrist-wearable HR monitors. In this article we present a new, fast family of methods robust against very strong motion artifacts using spectral subtraction or nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) for signal enhancement and MA removal and online Viterbi decoding or particle filtering for HR tracking. On our test data set we obtain an average error of 1.3%.
Emotion Dysregulation Moderates the Link Between Perfectionism and Dysmorphic Appearance Concern

Past research has revealed a relationship of perfectionism with dysmorphic appearance concern (DAC). Little research, however, has examined moderators of this relationship, including among men, whose appearance concerns are underresearched compared with women. Emotion regulation is one potential moderator that may be particularly compromised among men. Thus, the aim of the present study was to examine the role of emotion dysregulation in the relationship of perfectionism with DAC among men. Participants were 106 undergraduate men who completed an online survey that included questions about DAC, difficulties in emotion regulation, perfectionism, and depressive symptoms. Results showed that increased emotional awareness and low impulse control were associated with DAC. Moreover, difficulties in emotion regulation moderated the relationship between perfectionism and DAC. Implications of the present findings are discussed.
Relationship between depression and exacerbations in COPD

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is associated with exacerbations. Some patients are prone to frequent exacerbations and these individuals have a worse quality of life, greater limitation of their daily activity and faster disease progression than patients with less frequent exacerbations. A prospective study in a well-characterised cohort was performed and it was assessed whether depression, as determined by the Centre for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale, was related to exacerbation frequency, systemic inflammation and various social factors. The associations of any increase in depressive symptoms at exacerbation were also investigated. Frequent exacerbators had a significantly higher median (interquartile range) baseline depression score than infrequent exacerbators (17.0 (7.0–25.0) and 12.0 (6.0–18.0), respectively). Depressed patients spend significantly less time outdoors and had significantly worse quality of life as measured by the St George's Respiratory Questionnaire. Depression increased significantly in patients from baseline to exacerbation (12.5 (5.0–19.0) and 19.5 (12.0–28.0) respectively). The present study is the first to show a relationship between depression and exacerbation frequency in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The finding that frequent exacerbators are more depressed than infrequent exacerbators is relevant, as exacerbation frequency is an important outcome measure in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
High-Protein Diet in Lactation Leads to a Sudden Infant Death-Like Syndrome in Mice

Background It is well accepted that reduced foetal growth and development resulting from maternal malnutrition are associated with a number of chronic conditions in later life. On the other hand such generation-transcending effects of over-nutrition and of high-protein consumption in pregnancy and lactation, a proven fact in all developed societies, are widely unknown. Thus, we intended to describe the generation-transcending effects of a high-protein diet, covering most relevant topics of human life like embryonic mortality, infant death, and physical health in later life. Methods Female mice received control food (21% protein) or were fed a high protein diet (42% protein) during mating. After fertilisation, females stayed on their respective diet until weaning. At birth, pups were put to foster mothers who were fed with standard food or with HP diet. After weaning, control diet was fed to all mice. All offspring were monitored up to 360 days after birth. We determined glucose-tolerance and measured cardiovascular parameters using a tip-catheter. Finally, abdominal fat amount was measured. Results and Conclusions We identified a worried impact of high-protein diet during pregnancy on dams' body weight gain, body weight of newborns, number of offspring, and also survival in later life. Even more important is the discovery that high-protein diet during lactation caused a more than eight-fold increase in offspring mortality. The observed higher newborn mortality during lactation is a hitherto non-described, unique link to the still incompletely understood human sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). Thus, although offspring of lactating mothers on high-protein diet might have the advantage of lower abdominal fat within the second half of life, this benefit seems not to compensate the immense risk of an early sudden death during lactation. Our data may implicate that both pregnant women and lactating mothers should not follow classical high-protein diets.
Infusing Collaborative Recommenders with Distributed Representations

Recommender systems assist users in navigating complex information spaces and focus their attention on the content most relevant to their needs. Often these systems rely on user activity or descriptions of the content. Social annotation systems, in which users collaboratively assign tags to items, provide another means to capture information about users and items. Each of these data sources provides unique benefits, capturing different relationships. In this paper, we propose leveraging multiple sources of data: ratings data as users report their affinity toward an item, tagging data as users assign annotations to items, and item data collected from an online database. Taken together, these datasets provide the opportunity to learn rich distributed representations by exploiting recent advances in neural network architectures. We first produce representations that subjectively capture interesting relationships among the data. We then empirically evaluate the utility of the representations to predict a user's rating on an item and show that it outperforms more traditional representations. Finally, we demonstrate that traditional representations can be combined with representations trained through a neural network to achieve even better results.
Vertical Tax Externalities in the Theory of Fiscal Federalism

Federal structures create the possibility of vertical tax externalities between levels of government, with the private sector's response to the tax policy decisions of one level affecting the tax base of the other. Such effects arise most obviously when both levels of government co-occupy the same tax base. This paper reviews and extends recent results on the implications of such externalities for the relationship between state and federal tax rates, the equilibrium levels of these taxes, the (ir)relevance of experience in federal countries for analyzing international tax issues, the pattern of intergovernmental grants, and the assignment of tax powers.
Cardiac troponins I and T are biological markers of left ventricular dysfunction in septic shock.

BACKGROUND Cardiac depression in severe sepsis and septic shock is characterized by left ventricular (LV) failure. To date, it is unclear whether clinically unrecognized myocardial cell injury accompanies, causes, or results from this decreased cardiac performance. We therefore studied the relationship between cardiac troponin I (cTnI) and T (cTnT) and LV dysfunction in early septic shock. METHODS Forty-six patients were consecutively enrolled, fluid-resuscitated, and treated with catecholamines. Cardiac markers were measured at study entry and after 24 and 48 h. LV function was assessed by two-dimensional transesophageal echocardiography. RESULTS Increased plasma concentrations of cTnI (>/=0.4 microgram/L) and cTnT (>/=0.1 microgram/L) were found in 50% and 36%, respectively, of the patients at one or more time points. cTnI and cTnT were significantly correlated (r = 0.847; P <0.0001). Compared with cTnI-negative patients, cTnI-positive subjects were older, presented higher Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II scores at diagnosis, and tended to have a worse survival rate and a more frequent history of arterial hypertension or previous myocardial infarction. In contrast, the two groups did not differ in type of infection or pathogen, or in dose and type of catecholamine administered. Continuous electrocardiographic monitoring in all patients and autopsy in 12 nonsurvivors did not disclose the occurrence of acute ischemia during the first 48 h of observation. LV dysfunction was strongly associated with cTnI positivity (78% vs 9% in cTnI-negative patients; P <0.001). In multiple regression analysis, both cTnI and cTnT were exclusively associated with LV dysfunction (P <0.0001). CONCLUSIONS These findings suggest that in septic shock, clinically unrecognized myocardial cell injury is a marker of LV dysfunction. The latter condition tends to occur more often in severely ill older patients with underlying cardiovascular disease. Further studies are needed to determine the extent to which myocardial damage is a cause or a consequence of LV dysfunction.