Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Postmating sexual selection and the enigmatic jawed genitalia of Callosobruchus subinnotatus

ABSTRACT Insect genitalia exhibit rapid divergent evolution. Truly extraordinary structures have evolved in some groups, presumably as a result of postmating sexual selection. To increase our understanding of this phenomenon, we studied the function of one such structure. The male genitalia of Callosobruchus subinnotatus (Coleoptera: Bruchinae) contain a pair of jaw-like structures with unknown function. Here, we used phenotypic engineering to ablate the teeth on these jaws. We then experimentally assessed the effects of ablation of the genital jaws on mating duration, ejaculate weight, male fertilization success and female fecundity, using a double-mating experimental design. We predicted that copulatory wounding in females should be positively related to male fertilization success; however, we found no significant correlation between genital tract scarring in females and male fertilization success. Male fertilization success was, however, positively related to the amount of ejaculate transferred by males and negatively related to female ejaculate dumping. Ablation of male genital jaws did not affect male relative fertilization success but resulted in a reduction in female egg production. Our results suggest that postmating sexual selection in males indeed favors these genital jaws, not primarily through an elevated relative success in sperm competition but by increasing female egg production. Summary: A toothed jaw-like structure on the male genitalia of the seed beetle Callosobruchus subinnotatus increases female egg production after mating.
Comparative Study of the Protective Effect Afforded by Intravenous Administration of Bovine or Ovine Insulin to Young NOD Mice

Soluble bovine or ovine insulin given intravenously to female NOD mice shortly after weaning had a downregulating effect on several autoimmune parameters associated with insulin-dependent diabetes. The titer of spontaneous anti-insulin antibodies was reduced, insulitis was delayed and less severe, and only 25% of treated mice were diabetic at 30 weeks compared with 70% of untreated mice. An interesting paradox occurred in that bovine insulin, although poorly immunogenic in NOD mice and ineffective as a tolerogen for complete Freund's adjuvant–induced cellular and humoral responses to ovine insulin, was nearly as effective as immunogenic ovine insulin in protecting against diabetes and better than ovine insulin at downregulating spontaneous autoantibodies to insulin. Bovine and ovine insulins differ by only one amino acid on the A-chain loop, but whereas modulation of the induced response to ovine insulin appeared to be sheep-specific, modulation of the induced and spontaneous autoimmunity was achieved almost equally well by bovine or ovine insulin. We suggest therefore that modulation of the induced and spontaneous responses are dependent on different T-cell epitopes and that modulation of spontaneous autoimmunity appears to be governed by an epitope common to both insulins.
Kinetics of germinal center development in lymph nodes of young and aging immune mice

Recent findings imply that germinal center paucity in old mice, at least in part, results from a defect in the mechanisms responsible for the transport of antigens to lymphoid nodules (follicles) and the consequent impairment of the antigen retaining reticulum (ARR) of follicular dendritic cells (FDCs). The present objective was to observe the kinetics of lymph node germinal center development in old mice having antigen transport and ARR deficits. Germinal center development was monitored in popliteal (PLN) and axillary (AXLN) lymph nodes of 6–;8 wk and 23‐mo‐old horseradish peroxidase (HRP) immune C57BL/6 mice. Using the selective binding of germinal center B cells for peanut agglutinin (PNA), germinal centers were identified in serial vibratome sections following histochemical labeling with PNA‐peroxidase conjugates at times 0, 15 min, 1, 3, 5, and 10 days after footpad challenge with 8 μg HRP. To follow the fate of preexisting (environmental antigen‐induced) germinal centers and the development of de novo (HRP‐induced) germinal centers, it was essential to distinguish between these germinal centers. Accordingly, PNA positive germinal centers associated with HRP‐retaining (peroxidase positive) ARR were identified as de novo germinal centers and germinal centers not associated with a peroxidase positive ARR were classified as preexisting germinal centers. Kinetic analysis of PNA positive germinal centers showed the following: (1) Preexisting, environmentally‐induced germinal centers dissociated and disappeared by day 3 as indicated by a decline in their numbers after antigen injection; the process of germinal center dissociation remained unaffected by aging. (2) The latency of de novo germinal center appearance was approximately equal in duration (∼3 days) to the disappearance of preexisting germinal centers. (3) The number and size of de novo HRP‐induced germinal centers increased through the experimental period in young lymph nodes, but in old mice these parameters were depressed, resulting in a significant germinal center deficit. (4) The ratio of HRP‐retaining ARR to de novo induced germinal centers was 1:1 in young and responder old mice. This ratio was not affected by aging. This finding favored the concept that antigen retention in ARR is a requirement of germinal center development. The observations supported our hypothesis that germinal center development, at least in part, depends on a normal antigen transport by showing that in aged mice with defective antigen transport‐related ARR and iccosome deficits there is an impaired development of germinal centers.
String-Like Structures in Complex Kerr Geometry

The Kerr geometry is represented as being created by a source moving along an analytical complex world-line. The equivalence of this complex world-line and an Euclidean version of complex strings (hyperbolic strings) is discussed. It is shown that the complex Kerr source satisfies the corresponding string equations. The boundary conditions of the complex Euclidean strings require an orbifold-like structure of the world-sheet. The related orbifold-like structure of the Kerr geometry is discussed.
Influence of Caffeine and other Methylxanthines on Mechanical Properties of Isolated Mammalian Heart Muscle: EVIDENCE FOR A DUAL MECHANISM OF ACTION

Caffeine, theophylline, and theobromine have similar effects on the contractions of kitten atrial and papillary muscle preparations in vitro. In concentrations between 2 and 20 mM they both intensify and prolong the active state, as indicated by isometric and delayed-release isotonic contractions; contracture is not normally produced. Instantaneous force-velocity curves are shifted approximately symmetrically by caffeine; force-velocity curves derived from simple afterloaded contractions are misleading because of the great prolongation of activity. After the addition of caffeine the onset of the increased degree of activation is more rapid than that of the prolongation of activity; procaine antagonizes the prolongation of activity but not the intensification. In the presence of the methylxanthines, the duration of contraction is no longer abbreviated by isoproterenol, though it is still readily influenced by changes in frequency. The prolongation of activity by Sr2^plus; differs in significant respects from that induced by methylxanthines. The results suggest that the methylxanthines exert two effects on excitation-contraction coupling. One of these is presumed to be the inhibition of calcium sequestration by the sarcoplasmic reticulum; the other may be an effect on the cell membrane that leads to increased calcium entry. Most of the features of the altered mechanical response can be explained on this basis if it is assumed that intracellular calcium stores available for release are depleted as a result of the process that impairs calcium sequestration.
Gastrointestinal Hormones Cause Rapid c-Met Receptor Down-regulation by a Novel Mechanism Involving Clathrin-mediated Endocytosis and a Lysosome-dependent Mechanism*

The activated c-Met receptor has potent effects on normal tissues and tumors. c-Met levels are regulated by hepatocyte growth factor (HGF); however, it is unknown if they can be regulated by gastrointestinal (GI) hormones. c-Met is found in many GI tissues/tumors that possess GI hormone receptors. We studied the effect of GI hormones on c-Met in rat pancreatic acini, which possess both receptors. CCK-8, carbachol, and bombesin, but not VIP/secretin, decreased c-Met. CCK-8 caused rapid and potent c-Met down-regulation and abolished HGF-induced c-Met and Gab1 tyrosine phosphorylation, while stimulating c-Met serine phosphorylation. The effect of cholecystokinin (CCK) was also seen in intact acini using immunofluorescence, in a biotinylated fraction representing membrane proteins, in single acinar cells, in Panc-1 tumor cells, and in vivo in rats injected with CCK. CCK-8 did not decrease cell viability or overall responsiveness. GF109203X, thapsigargin, or their combination partially reversed the effect of CCK-8. In contrast to HGF-induced c-Met down-regulation, the effect of CCK was decreased by a lysosome inhibitor (concanamycin) but not the proteasome inhibitor lactacystin. Inhibitors of clathrin-mediated endocytosis blocked the effect of CCK. HGF but not CCK-8 caused c-Met ubiquitination. These results show CCK and other GI hormones can cause rapid c-Met down-regulation, which occurs by a novel mechanism. These results could be important for c-Met regulation in normal as well as in neoplastic tissue in the GI tract.
WSD and Closed Semantic Constraint

The application-driven construction of lexicon has been emphasized as a methodology of Computational Lexicology recently. We focus on the closed semantic constraint of the argument(s) of any verb concept by the noun concepts in a WordNet-like lexicon, which theoretically is related to Word Sense Disambiguation (WSD) at different levels. From the viewpoint of Dynamic Lexicon, WSD provides a way of automatic construction for the closed semantic constraints and also benefits from the semantic descriptions.
Practical techniques to obviate setuid-to-root binaries

Trusted, setuid-to-root binaries have been a substantial, long-lived source of privilege escalation vulnerabilities on Unix systems. Prior work on limiting privilege escalation has only considered privilege from the perspective of the administrator, neglecting the perspective of regular users---the primary reason for having setuid-to-root binaries. The paper presents a study of the current state of setuid-to-root binaries on Linux, focusing on the 28 most commonly deployed setuid binaries in the Debian and Ubuntu distributions. This study reveals several points where Linux kernel policies and abstractions are a poor fit for the policies desired by the administrator, and root privilege is used to create point solutions. The majority of these point solutions address 8 system calls that require administrator privilege, but also export functionality required by unprivileged users. This paper demonstrates how least privilege can be achieved on modern systems for non-administrator users. We identify the policies currently encoded in setuid-to-root binaries, and present a framework for expressing and enforcing these policy categories in the kernel. Our prototype, called Protego, deprivileges over 10,000 lines of code by changing only 715 lines of Linux kernel code. Protego also adds additional utilities to keep the kernel policy synchronized with legacy, policy-relevant configuration files, such as /etc/sudoers. Although some previously-privileged binaries may require changes, Protego provides users with the same functionality as Linux and introduces acceptable performance overheads. For instance, a Linux kernel compile incurs less than 2% overhead on Protego.
Defense Technical Information Center Compilation Part Notice ADP 012439 TITLE : New Heat and Cold Strain Predictive Indices

[Souffler le chaud et le froid: comment se proteger contre les conditions climstiques extremes] To order the complete compilation report, use: ADA403853 The component part is provided here to allow users access to individually authored sections f proceedings, annals, symposia, etc. However, the component should be considered within [he context of the overall compilation report and not as a stand-alone technical report. Summary New heat and cold strain predictive indices have recently been developed which should be of great military utility. The physiological strain index (PSI), based on rectal temperature (Tre) and heart rate (HR), is capable of indicating heat strain online and analyzing existing databases. We assumed that the maximal Tre and HR rise during exposure to exercise-heat stress from normothermia to hyperthermia was 3°C (36.5°C to 39.5°C) and 120 beats/min (60 to 180 beats/min), respectively. Tre and HR were assigned the same weight functions as follows: where Tret and HRt are simultaneous measurements taken at any time during the exposure and Tre0 and HR 0 are the initial measurements. Six independent studies, containing eight different databases were analyzed in order to evaluate PSI for different climatic conditions, hydration levels, types of clothing, exercise intensities, gender and the effects of aging. PSI was capable of significantly differentiating (P < 0.05) between all of these conditions and some combinations of these conditions. Our cold strain index (CSI), based on core (Tcore) and mean skin temperatures (T Jk) is capable of indicating cold strain in real time and analyzing existing databases. Tcore represents both Tre and esophageal temperature (Tes). CSI was calculated as follows:where Tcore0 and T sko are the initial measurements and Tcoret and T skt are simultaneous measurements taken at any time during the exposure; when Tcoret > Tcore0, then Tcoret-Tcoreo = 0. Three independent studies containing three different databases were analyzed in order to evaluate CSI for different cold air and cold-water immersion conditions. CSI significantly differentiated (P < 0.01) between the conditions for two of these three databases. However, further study is required to possibly adjust CSI for a wider range of cold air and water temperatures, and to consider the effects of physical exercise. Both PSI and CSI rate heat and cold strain on a universal scale of 0-10. Both indices have the potential to be widely accepted and used universally for many military scenarios.
Impulse noise removal by spectral clustering and regularization on graphs

In this paper we present a method for impulse noise removal that makes use of spectral clustering and graph regularization. The image is modeled as a graph and local spectral analysis is performed to identify noisy and noise free pixels. On the set of noise free pixels, a topology adapted graph regularization is performed. Experimental results show the benefits of the proposed approach regarding the standard VMF when noise proportion is high.
Staphylococcus epidermidis and Staphylococcus haemolyticus: Molecular Detection of Cytotoxin and Enterotoxin Genes

Although opportunistic pathogens, coagulase-negative staphylococci (CoNS), including Staphylococcus epidermidis and Staphylococcus haemolyticus, have long been regarded as avirulent organisms. The role of toxins in the development of infections caused by CoNS is still controversial. The objective of this study was to characterize the presence of enterotoxin and cytotoxin genes in S. epidermidis and S. haemolyticus isolates obtained from blood cultures. Cytotoxin genes were detected by PCR using novel species-specific primers. Among the 85 S. epidermidis and 84 S. haemolyticus isolates, 95.3% and 79.8%, respectively, carried at least one enterotoxin gene. The most frequent enterotoxin genes were sea (53.3%), seg (64.5%) and sei (67.5%). The seg gene was positively associated with S. epidermidis (p = 0.02), and this species was more toxigenic than S. haemolyticus. The hla/yidD gene was detected in 92.9% of S. epidermidis and the hla gene in 91.7% of S. haemolyticus isolates; hlb was detected in 92.9% of the S. epidermidis isolates and hld in 95.3%. Nosocomial Staphylococcus epidermidis and S. haemolyticus isolates exhibited a high toxigenic potential, mainly containing the non-classical enterotoxin genes seg and sei. The previously unreported detection of hla/yidD and hlb in S. epidermidis and S. haemolyticus using species-specific primers showed that these hemolysin genes differ between CoNS species and that they are highly frequent in blood culture isolates.
Psychological distress after stroke and aphasia: the first six months

Objective: We explored the factors that predicted psychological distress in the first six months post stroke in a sample including people with aphasia. Design: Prospective longitudinal observational study. Setting and subjects: Participants with a first stroke from two acute stroke units were assessed while still in hospital (baseline) and at three and six months post stroke. Main measures: Distress was assessed with the General Health Questionnaire-12. Other measures included: NIH Stroke Scale, Barthel Index, Frenchay Aphasia Screening Test, Frenchay Activities Index, MOS Social Support Scale and social network indicators. Logistic regression was used to identify predictors of distress at each stage post stroke; and to determine what baseline factors predicted distress at six months. Results: Eighty-seven participants were able to self-report on measures used, of whom 32 (37%) had aphasia. 71 (82%) were seen at six months, including 11 (16%) with aphasia. Predictors of distress were: stroke severity at baseline; low social support at three months; and loneliness and low satisfaction with social network at six months. The baseline factors that predicted distress at six months were psychological distress, loneliness and low satisfaction with social network (Nagelkerke R2 = 0.49). Aphasia was not a predictor of distress at any time point. Yet, at three months post stroke 93% of those with aphasia experienced high distress, as opposed to 50% of those without aphasia (χ2 (1) = 8.61, P<0.01). Conclusions: Factors contributing to distress after stroke vary across time. Loneliness and low satisfaction with one’s social network are particularly important and contribute to long-term psychological distress.
Pose from Action: Unsupervised Learning of Pose Features based on Motion

Human actions are comprised of a sequence of poses. This makes videos of humans a rich and dense source of human poses. We propose an unsupervised method to learn pose features from videos that exploits a signal which is complementary to appearance and can be used as supervision: motion. The key idea is that humans go through poses in a predictable manner while performing actions. Hence, given two poses, it should be possible to model the motion that caused the change between them. We represent each of the poses as a feature in a CNN (Appearance ConvNet) and generate a motion encoding from optical flow maps using a separate CNN (Motion ConvNet). The data for this task is automatically generated allowing us to train without human supervision. We demonstrate the strength of the learned representation by finetuning the trained model for Pose Estimation on the FLIC dataset, for static image action recognition on PASCAL and for action recognition in videos on UCF101 and HMDB51.
Statistical significance and effect sizes of differences among research universities at the level of nations and worldwide based on the leiden rankings

The Leiden Rankings can be used for grouping research universities by considering universities which are not statistically significantly different as homogeneous sets. The groups and intergroup relations can be analyzed and visualized using tools from network analysis. Using the so‐called “excellence indicator” PPtop‐10%—the proportion of the top‐10% most‐highly‐cited papers assigned to a university—we pursue a classification using (a) overlapping stability intervals, (b) statistical‐significance tests, and (c) effect sizes of differences among 902 universities in 54 countries; we focus on the UK, Germany, Brazil, and the USA as national examples. Although the groupings remain largely the same using different statistical significance levels or overlapping stability intervals, these classifications are uncorrelated with those based on effect sizes. Effect sizes for the differences between universities are small (w < .2). The more detailed analysis of universities at the country level suggests that distinctions beyond three or perhaps four groups of universities (high, middle, low) may not be meaningful. Given similar institutional incentives, isomorphism within each eco‐system of universities should not be underestimated. Our results suggest that networks based on overlapping stability intervals can provide a first impression of the relevant groupings among universities. However, the clusters are not well‐defined divisions between groups of universities.
Relationship between litter size and perinatal and pre-weaning survival in pigs

The objective of this study was to analyse the relationship between direct and maternal genetic effects on litter size and piglet survival. The analyses were performed on records from 26 564 Landrace litters and 15 103 Yorkshire litters from first parity dams in Finnish herds. The trivariate model fitted total number of piglets born, proportion alive at birth and proportion survived from birth until 3 weeks as traits of the litter. The model included direct genetic and maternal genetic effects for all traits. In Landrace pigs, maternal heritabilities were estimated to be 0·11 for total number born , 0·06 for proportion alive at birth, and 0·08 for proportion survived from birth until 3 weeks. The corresponding estimates for the Yorkshire breed were 0·14, 0·06 and 0·01. All heritability estimates of direct effects were below 0·05. In the Landrace breed, there was a negative correlation of ‐0·39 between maternal genetic effects on total number born and maternal genetic effects on proportion survived from birth until 3 weeks and a negative correlation of ‐0·41 between direct and maternal genetic effects on proportion survived from birth until 3 weeks. These correlations were not significant in the Yorkshire breed. The results show that selection for number born in total alone will lead to a deterioration in the maternal ability of sows. Selection for pre-weaning survival could be achieved by selecting on direct and maternal components jointly.
User Assisted Tree Reconstruction from Point Clouds

Leavenworth, William P. M.S., Purdue University, August 2012. User Assisted Tree Reconstruction from Point Clouds. Major Professor: Bedrich Benes. LIDAR is a useful tool for quickly digitalizing real world objects, but it usually takes some effort to produce a recognizable object from the raw input. When the object is a tree, the challenge is to create a three‐dimensional model that represents its general shape, while avoiding the influence of undersampling and noise. In the method developed for this research, the user creates a sketch overlaying a display of the raw input data. Each node in the sketch creates an estimated slice of the tree skeleton at that point, and the slices are connected according to the connectivity of the sketch. Both user‐guided and automated sketches are tested. Analysis is performed by simulating the LIDAR scan process on pre‐existing three‐dimensional tree models, and then comparing the surface of the reconstruction to that of the original. The results of the method are presented on scans of both synthetic and real trees. It is shown that the output meshes follow the general shapes of the trees, although the influence of undersampling and noise can still be found.