Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Role of environmental pollutants on immune functions, parasitic infections and limb malformations in marine toads and whistling frogs from Bermuda

Soil, water, and amphibian tissues collected between 1995 and 1999 from 15 study sites in Bermuda were analysed for pesticides and heavy metals. The most abundant pesticide residue in soil was p,p′-dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene (DDE) which was found at all sites in concentrations ranging from 0.003 to 4.023 p.p.m. No pesticide residues were found in water. DDE was also recovered from the livers and fat bodies of marine toads (Bufo marinus) and whistling frogs (Eleutherodactylus johnstonei). Analyses of food sources consumed by these anuran species revealed residue levels of p, p′-DDE ranging from 0.05 to 0.217 p.p.m. Other soil residues included dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) at eight study sites, Dicofol(kelthane) at eight sites, dieldrin at five sites, and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) as Arochlor 1254 and Arochlor 1260 at seven sites. Analyses of toad livers revealed significant concentrations of cadmium, chromium, copper and zinc. Livers of Bermuda toads exhibited altered hepatocytic morphology and an increased number of melanomacrophages and possible granulomas, while spleens showed a marked decrease in white pulp. Spleen cells from Bufo marinus collected at one site having high levels of cadmium exhibited a decreased B cell response to lipopolysaccharide. The incidence of trematode infection in Bufo marinus increased from 53.8% in 1995 to 90% in 1999. Deformity rates in the limbs of subadult and adult toads ranged between 15 and 25%. Examination of 1,995 newly-metamorphosed toads revealed deformity rates as high as 47%. The current comprehensive study suggests that environmental pollutants may account for immunosuppression, increased susceptibility to infections, limb malformations and possible decline in amphibian populations from Bermuda.
Type a Behavior Pattern and Tendency to Cooperate or Compete during a Simulation Negotiation Activity

This study examined the Type A behavior pattern of 80 indidividuals who participated in a simulation in which they acted in either a cooperative or a competitive manner. Correlations of Type A behavior scores with the tendency to compete were small but significant and positive. These findings were consistent with the existing literature on the Type A behavior pattern but suggested that the competitiveness of this pattern may exist for situations in which competition is inappropriate.
O PROFESSOR DE LÍNGUAS ESTRANGEIRAS DO CORPO MOLE AO CORPO DÓCIL

ABSCTRACT: This text defends the need for political commitment on the part of the foreign language teacher, claiming that the teaching model based on methodological issues only is already exhausted. The concepts of participatory democracy, with an emphasis on personal resoluteness, representative democracy, stressing the dangers of evading responsibility, and Foucault’s idea of the docile body are presented. It is proposed that the teacher should be aware of the dangers of both student’s and teacher’s alienation. The conclusion is that a political view of language teaching should lead to a better appreciation of the foreign language and more tolerance to diversity, which would eventually lead to more democracy.
Performance Comparison of Aggregated and Distributed Energy Storage Systems in a Wind Farm For Wind Power Fluctuation Suppression

As wind penetration increases, the adverse impact of wind power fluctuations on the system frequency becomes significant. Especially for isolated or weakly connected small- scale power systems, the wind power induced system frequency deviations might exceed beyond the safe range set by utilities. Coupling energy storage system (ESS) to wind energy can smooth the wind power. The ESS in a wind farm can be either aggregated or distributed configured. This paper examines the performance differences of the two ESS configurations. The evaluation of the ESS performance is based on the fluctuation harmonic content (FHC) which quantitatively describes how fluctuant the power is. The system frequency deviations induced by untreated and filtered wind powers are investigated in a study system with different generation mixes. This research shows the distributed ESS configuration is as effective as its aggregated counterpart in wind power smoothing and system frequency deviation reduction.
Social Inequalities, Empowerment, and Women’s Transitions into Abusive Marriages

Extant sociological theories of gendered power within marriage focus on how social forces—such as gender inequality—shape women’s power within already established partnerships and subsequently affect their risk of intimate partner violence. Yet, inequitable social forces similarly shape women’s life conditions prior to and during the marital transition, with implications for women’s power in marriage. In Myanmar, gender relations between women and men historically have been touted as equitable and advantageous to women. Rare qualitative data find that structural gender inequalities permeate Myanmar society, and intersect with other social forces, to constrain women’s marital power. In particular, we argue that women’s transition into marriage is a critical period to assess how gendered social inequalities determine the future distribution of power within marital relationships. These premarital social processes result in a “preconditioning” of relationship dynamics from the onset of marriage, with long-term effects on women’s power within the relationship, and subsequent exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV). We encourage sociological work on gendered power in the family to systematically consider women’s premarital social conditions as predictors of women’s relative power in marriage, with implications for their health and well-being.
Behavioral Plasticity in Hooded Warblers (Setophaga citrina): Linking Behavior, Environmental Context and Reproductive Success

WILLIAMS, KELLY, A. , Ph.D., August 2013, Biological Sciences Behavioral Plasticity in Hooded Warblers (Setophaga citrina): Linking Behavior, Environmental Context and Reproductive Success Director of Dissertation: Donald B. Miles The ability of organisms to cope with altered environments generated by anthropogenic disturbance is often assumed to involve behavioral plasticity. Despite the observation that changes in behavior appear to represent adaptations to environmental variation, few studies consider whether behavioral plasticity enhances fitness across environments. Establishing links between environmental conditions, shifts in behavior and reproductive success is critical in determining the conditions in which organisms are able to alter their behavior and if this plasticity is indeed adaptive. I quantified and compared the habitat characteristics, the behavior and reproductive success of hooded warblers (Setophaga citrina) in three forest stands (unaltered forest, and two forest stands affected by anthropogenic disturbance: selective harvest and prescribed fire). I then quantified the association between environmental context, behavioral variation and reproductive success. In response to burning, hooded warblers abandoned the habitat for reproduction for two years post burning. Hooded warblers in the unaltered and harvested stand overlapped in their habitat space use; however, I found key differences in the habitat characteristics used in the two stands and between males and females. I found sex specific differences in
Scientific Drilling at Lake Tanganyika, Africa: A Transformative Record for Understanding Evolution in Isolation and the Biological History of the African Continent, University of Basel, 6-8 June 2016

Abstract. We report on the outcomes of a workshop held to discuss evolutionary biology, paleobiology and paleoecology questions that could be addressed by a scientific drilling project at Lake Tanganyika, the largest, deepest and oldest of the African Rift Valley lakes. Lake Tanganyika is of special significance to evolutionary biologists as it harbors one of the most spectacular endemic faunas of any lake on earth, with hundreds of unique species of fish, molluscs, crustaceans and other organisms that have evolved over the lake's long history. Most of these groups of organisms are known from fossils in short cores from the lake, raising the possibility that both body fossil and ancient DNA records might be recovered from long drill cores. The lake's sedimentary record could also provide a record of African terrestrial ecosystem history since the late Miocene. This 3-day workshop brought together biological and geological specialists on the lake and its surroundings to prioritize paleobiological, ecological and microbiological objectives that could ultimately be incorporated into an overall drilling plan for Lake Tanganyika and to consider how biological objectives can effectively be integrated into the paleoclimate and tectonics objectives of a Lake Tanganyika drilling project already considered in prior workshops.
Standards for specialized nutrition support: home care patients.

American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition Board of Directors and the Standards for Specialized Nutrition Support Task Force: Debra S. Kovacevich, RN, MPH*; Annie Frederick, RD, CNSD†; Darlene Kelly, MD, PhD‡; Reid Nishikawa, PharmD, BCNSP§; and Lorraine Young, MS, RD, CNSD *HomeMed, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan; †Lifecare Solutions, Inc, Spokane Valley, Washington; ‡Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota; §Clinical Services, Nutrishare, Inc, Fair Oaks, California; and the Boston Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts
A High Resolution Video Display System by Seamlessly Tiling Multiple Projectors

With the rapid advances of digital photography technology, high resolution video can be recorded using video camera for home entertainment and digital cinema. High end projector used for high resolution video display is bulky and expensive, only suitable for fixed installation, and prevents itself from being widely adopted. In this paper, we present one high resolution video display system using multiple projectors to replace the high end projector playback system. Our system is driven by single PC with PCI-E16 x interface and supports at least triple projectors, which is suitable for building surround video display system. It fully exploits the high bandwidth between CPU and graphics card, and efficiently plays back high resolution video of any format supported by commercial video player. We design geometric alignment and photometric correction methods to display the video content seamlessly on the planar display screen. Experimental results show that our system displays high resolution video at its full frame rate.
Is It Tonotopy after All?

In this functional MRI study the frequency-dependent localization of acoustically evoked BOLD responses within the human auditory cortex was investigated. A blocked design was employed, consisting of periods of tonal stimulation (random frequency modulations with center frequencies 0.25, 0.5, 4.0, and 8.0 kHz) and resting periods during which only the ambient scanner noise was audible. Multiple frequency-dependent activation sites were reliably demonstrated on the surface of the auditory cortex. The individual gyral pattern of the superior temporal plane (STP), especially the anatomy of Heschl's gyrus (HG), was found to be the major source of interindividual variability. Considering this variability by tracking the frequency responsiveness to the four stimulus frequencies along individual Heschl's gyri yielded medio-lateral gradients of responsiveness to high frequencies medially and low frequencies laterally. It is, however, argued that with regard to the results of electrophysiological and cytoarchitectonical studies in humans and in nonhuman primates, the multiple frequency-dependent activation sites found in the present study as well as in other recent fMRI investigations are no direct indication of tonotopic organization of cytoarchitectonical areas. An alternative interpretation is that the activation sites correspond to different cortical fields, the topological organization of which cannot be resolved with the current spatial resolution of fMRI. In this notion, the detected frequency selectivity of different cortical areas arises from an excess of neurons engaged in the processing of different acoustic features, which are associated with different frequency bands. Differences in the response properties of medial compared to lateral and frontal compared to occipital portions of HG strongly support this notion.
Improvement in Blood Pressure, Arterial Stiffness and Wave Reflections With a Very-Low-Dose Perindopril/Indapamide Combination in Hypertensive Patient: A Comparison With Atenolol

International guidelines recommend that antihypertensive drug therapy should normalize not only diastolic (DBP) but also systolic blood pressure (SBP). Therapeutic trials based on cardiovascular mortality have recently shown that SBP reduction requires normalization of both large artery stiffness and wave reflections. The aim of the present study was to compare the antihypertensive effects of the very-low-dose combination indapamide (0.625 mg) and perindopril (2 mg) (Per/Ind) with the &bgr;-blocking agent atenolol (50 mg) to determine whether Per/Ind decreases SBP and pulse pressure (PP) more than does atenolol and, if so, whether this decrease is predominantly due to reduction of aortic pulse wave velocity (PWV) (automatic measurements) and reduction of wave reflections (pulse wave analysis, applanation tonometry). In a double-blind randomized study, 471 patients with essential hypertension were followed for 12 months. For the same DBP reduction, Per/Ind decreased brachial SBP (−6.02 mm Hg; 95% confidence interval, −8.90 to −3.14) and PP (−5.57; 95% confidence interval, −7.70 to −3.44) significantly more than did atenolol. This difference was significantly more pronounced for the carotid artery than for the brachial artery. Whereas the 2 antihypertensive agents decreased PWV to a similar degree, only Per/Ind significantly attenuated carotid wave reflections, resulting in a selective decrease in SBP and PP. The very-low-dose combination Per/Ind normalizes SBP, PP, and arterial function to a significantly larger extent than does atenolol, a hemodynamic profile that is known to improve survival in hypertensive populations with high cardiovascular risk.
An Automatic Online News Topic Keyphrase Extraction System

News Topics are related to a set of keywords or keyphrases. Topic keyphrases briefly describe the key content of topics and help users decide whether to do further reading about them. Moreover, keyphrases of a news topic can be considered as a cluster of related terms, which provides term relationship information that can be integrated into information retrieval models. In this paper, an automatic online news topic keyphrase extraction system is proposed. News stories are organized into topics. Keyword candidates are firstly extracted from single news stories and filtered with topic information. Then a phrase identification process combines keywords into phrases using position information. Finally, the phrases are ranked and top ones are selected as topic keyphrases. Experiments performed on practical Web datasets show that the proposed system works effectively, with a performance of precision=70.61% and recall=67.94%.
Semantics for Service Oriented Architectures

ABSTRACT The term Service Oriented Architecture describes a vision in which a large number of services are available via standard Internet protocols and applications can be assembled in a fast and flexible way an top of these services. We argue that the semantics of service behavior and policies need to be made explicit in order for this vision be become a reality. We propose a unified declarative framework for modeling policies, goals, pre-, and post-conditions, which allows for a more dynamic interaction between requester and provider. Specifically, we show how policies can be used to select a suitable provider and how a requester can invoke a service without prior knowledge of the required parameters and message formats. Most notably, our framework is embedded within the standard web service technologies.
Design of an integrated potentiostat circuit for CMOS bio sensor chips

A design strategy is presented for potentiostat circuits suitable for electronic bio sensors on CMOS. Guidelines are given to guarantee stable operation under the condition of widely varying and only roughly known electrochemical parameters. A concrete design example used in a fully electronic DNA sensor array CMOS chip is shown. Measurement results with a biological analyte applied to that chip prove proper operation of the potentiostat.
QD-Based FRET Probes at a Glance

The unique optoelectronic properties of quantum dots (QDs) give them significant advantages over traditional organic dyes, not only as fluorescent labels for bioimaging, but also as emissive sensing probes. QD sensors that function via manipulation of fluorescent resonance energy transfer (FRET) are of special interest due to the multiple response mechanisms that may be utilized, which in turn imparts enhanced flexibility in their design. They may also function as ratiometric, or “color-changing” probes. In this review, we describe the fundamentals of FRET and provide examples of QD-FRET sensors as grouped by their response mechanisms such as link cleavage and structural rearrangement. An overview of early works, recent advances, and various models of QD-FRET sensors for the measurement of pH and oxygen, as well as the presence of metal ions and proteins such as enzymes, are also provided.
Regional Active Contours based on Variational level sets and Machine Learning for Image Segmentation

Image segmentation is the problem of partitioning an image into different subsets, where each subset may have a different characterization in terms of color, intensity, texture, and/or other features. Segmentation is a fundamental component of image processing, and plays a significant role in computer vision, object recognition, and object tracking. Active Contour Models (ACMs) constitute a powerful energy-based minimization framework for image segmentation, which relies on the concept of contour evolution. Starting from an initial guess, the contour is evolved with the aim of approximating better and better the actual object boundary. Handling complex images in an efficient, effective, and robust way is a real challenge, especially in the presence of intensity inhomogeneity, overlap between the foreground/background intensity distributions, objects characterized by many different intensities, and/or additive noise. In this thesis, to deal with these challenges, we propose a number of image segmentation models relying on variational level set methods and specific kinds of neural networks, to handle complex images in both supervised and unsupervised ways. Experimental results demonstrate the high accuracy of the segmentation results, obtained by the proposed models on various benchmark synthetic and real images compared with state-of-the-art active contour models.
The L1 adhesion molecule supports alpha v beta 3-mediated migration of human tumor cells and activated T lymphocytes.

The L1 adhesion molecule is a member of the immunoglobulin superfamily which is expressed by neural and hematopoietic cells. L1 is primarily a cell surface molecule but in its released form it becomes embedded in the extracellular matrix. In addition to the established L1-L1 homotypic interaction, L1 can bind to alpha v beta 3 in the human. The 6th Ig-like domain is critical for this function. We now demonstrate that a fusion protein containing the 6th Ig-like domain of L1 (6.L1-Fc) can support the migration of human MED-B1 (alpha v beta 3+) but not of Nalm-6 cells (alpha 5 beta 1+). The migration was blocked in the presence of a mab to alpha v beta 3 and was not seen on a 6.L1-Fc in which the RGD site was mutated. Activation of human T lymphocytes in the presence of PHA and PMA led to the induction of alpha v beta 3 and alpha v beta 5 expression and concomitantly induced migration of the cells on 6.L1-Fc. The migration was blocked by mabs to alpha v beta 3 but not to alpha v beta 5. Our results suggest that L1 exposed at the cell surface or as a matrix constituent can serve as a potent substrate for alpha v beta 3 mediated cell migration.
Multiple Routes to Perceptual Learning

A listener’s ability to utilize indexical information in the speech signal can enhance their performance on a variety of speech perception tasks. It is unclear, however, whether such information plays a similar role for spectrally reduced speech signals, such as those experienced by individuals with cochlear implants. The present study compared the effects of training on linguistic versus indexical tasks when adapting to cochlear implant simulations. Listening to sentences processed with an 8-channel sinewave vocoder, three groups of subjects were trained on a transcription task (Transcription), a talker identification task (Talker ID) or a gender identification task (Gender ID). Preto post-test comparisons demonstrated that training produced significant improvement for all groups. Moreover, subjects from the Talker ID and Transcription training groups performed similarly at post-test and generalization, and significantly better than the subjects from the Gender ID training group. These data suggest that training on an indexical task that requires high levels of attention can provide equivalent benefit to training on a linguistic task. When listeners selectively focus their attention on the extralinguistic information in the speech signal, they still extract linguistic information, the degree to which they do so, however, appears to be task dependent.
Modeling and advanced control of wireless power transfer system with Z-source inverter

In many practical applications of wireless power transfer (WPT) system, high power transmission efficiency is required and has been widely studied as an important issue. This paper presents and analyzes a Series-Parallel compensated WPT system with a Z-source inverter network inserted. To obtain higher efficiency, asymmetrical voltage-cancellation (AVC) control is applied and the ZVS operation is achieved. The AVC control algorithm should also be modified to help Z-source inverter to realize voltage boosted and fully utilize the null state existed in the AVC control. On account of the ZVS operation, the power factor of the system decreases inevitably, but it decreases less in Series-Parallel compensated topology than in Series-Series compensated topology. To verify the feasibility of the proposed method, a small-signal model is fully analyzed, and a controller is designed to help to realize AVC control. Finally, a simulation model is established and the result agrees with the analysis.
Image congruence effects on product evaluations: The role of self‐monitoring and public/private consumption

Past research has demonstrated that congruence between brand image and self-image is positively related to consumers' product evaluations. Results from this study support the hypothesis that increased self-monitoring is associated with a greater effect of image congruence on consumers' evaluations of publicly consumed brands, but not privately consumed brands. Results also suggest that consumers' evaluations of publicly consumed brands are more affected by the congruence between brand image and ideal self-image than actual self-image, whereas actual and ideal congruence have equal effects on consumers' evaluations of privately consumed brands. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.