Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Role of Frugivorous Bats in Tropical Forest Succession

Discussion of successional change has traditionally focused on plants. The role of animals in producing and responding to successional change has received far less attention. Dispersal of plant propagules by animals is a fundamental part of successional change in the tropics. Here we review the role played by frugivorous bats in successional change in tropical forests. We explore the similarities and differences of this ecological service provided by New and Old World seed‐dispersing bats and conclude with a discussion of their current economic and conservation implications. Our review suggests that frugivorous New World phyllostomid bats play a more important role in early plant succession than their Old World pteropodid counterparts. We propose that phyllostomid bats have shared a long evolutionary history with small‐seeded early successional shrubs and treelets while pteropodid bats are principally dispersers of the seeds of later successional canopy fruits. When species of figs (Ficus) are involved in the early stages of primary succession (e.g. in the river meander system in Amazonia and on Krakatau, Indonesia), both groups of bats are important contributors of propagules. Because they disperse and sometimes pollinate canopy trees, pteropodid bats have a considerable impact on the economic value of Old World tropical forests; phyllostomid bats appear to make a more modest direct contribution to the economic value of New World tropical forests. Nonetheless, because they critically influence forest regeneration, phyllostomid bats make an important indirect contribution to the economic value of these forests. Overall, fruit‐eating bats play important roles in forest regeneration throughout the tropics, making their conservation highly desirable.
Facilitation and delayed release at single frog neuromuscular junctions

Facilitation and delayed spontaneous release were recorded from neuromuscular junctions at 2 temperatures. In some experiments, Sr2+ substituted for Ca2+. We measured the ratio of delayed release to resting spontaneous release (D), and the ratio of the second end-plate potential amplitude to the first (F). An extension of the model of Barton et al. (1983) relating Ca2+ to evoked and spontaneous release is presented. If residual Ca2+ accounts for facilitation and delayed release, then D must be greater than F. In all of our experiments, D was greater than F. We conclude that residual Ca2+ is sufficient to account for facilitation and delayed release at the frog neuromuscular junction. However, D falls abruptly at a time when F is almost unaltered, which raises serious difficulties in accepting the residual calcium hypothesis.
Dynamic Wettability of Different Machined Wood Surfaces

Abstract Wetting dynamics on machined wood surfaces is of great interest for the adhesive bonding technology of wood. In this work, the change of apparent contact angles with time of phenolresorcinol-formaldehyde (PRF), polyvinyl-acetate (PVAc), and a series of probe liquids on sawed, planed, sanded, and razor-blade-cut wood surfaces of Southern pine was studied by the sessile drop method using a CCD camera technique. The results indicate that the fastest wetting of the probe liquids occurs on the sanded surfaces because of higher surface roughness and the resulting increase in capillary forces as compared with the sawed, planed and razor blade cut surfaces. The fastest wetting of the PRF and PVAc resins occurred on the comparably smooth planed and razor-blade-cut wood surfaces. A smoother wood surface seems to provide better wetting and penetration properties for high-viscosity liquids such as adhesives, which probably can be attributed to less entrapment of air between the resin and the wood structure.
Multisensor System for Safer Human-Robot Interaction

The development of a system for automatically locating and tracking a human in the vicinity of a robot is described. The system consists of multiple passive infrared (PIR) sensors, two color cameras, a pair of microwave sensors and a pair of PCs for data collection, signal processing and data fusion. The cameras are treated as individual sensors rather than a stereo pair to minimize the affect of occlusion by the robot. The area around the robot is subdivided into an occupancy grid with 0.5m by 0.5m cells. A data fusion algorithm, based on Dempster-Shafer evidence theory, is used to estimate the probability of human occupancy for each cell. This information is used to estimate the human’s location. A novel concept termed a “protective cell” is introduced to further increase the human’s safety in the presence of sensor uncertainty. Experimental results are included demonstrating the system’s effectiveness.
Ionospheric Polarimetric Dispersion Effect on Low-Frequency Spaceborne SAR Imaging

Ionospheric Faraday rotation (FR) introduces polarimetric distortion to trans-ionosphere signals. Spaceborne low-frequency wide-bandwidth synthetic aperture radar (SAR) signals may be distorted by FR effect because it is highly dispersive. Ionospheric polarimetric dispersion (PD) effects on spaceborne SAR imaging are modeled and analyzed. PD effect is included in polarimetric SAR system impulse response matrices. In particular, PD effects on linearly polarized and circularly polarized SAR systems are analyzed by system impulse response matrices. Theoretically, PD will introduce amplitude modulation to SAR spectrums and hence distort linearly polarized SAR imaging; for circularly polarized systems, it introduces relative image shift and phase errors between images of different channels. Numerical evaluations and simulations show that PD effects will introduce noticeable effects on future P-band wide-bandwidth SAR systems.
A PCA-based Kernel for Kernel PCA on Multivariate Time Series

Multivariate time series (MTS) data sets are common in various multimedia, medical and financial application domains. These applications perform several data-analysis operations on large number of MTS data sets such as similarity searches, feature-subset-selection, cluster ing and classification. Inherently, an MTS item has a large number of dimensions. Hence, before applying data mining techniques, some form of dimension reduction, e.g., feature extraction, should be performed. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is one of the techniques that have been frequently utilized for dimension reduction. However, traditional PCA does not scale well in terms of dimensionality, and therefore may not be applied to MTS data sets. The Kernel PCA technique addresses this problem of scalability by utilizing the kernel trick. In this paper, we propose a PCA based kernel to be employed for the Kernel PCA technique on the MTS data sets, termed KEros, which is based on Eros, a PCA based similarity measure for MTS data sets. We evaluate the performance of KEros using Support Vector Machine (SVM), and compare the performance with Kernel PCA using linear kernel and Generalized Principal Component (GPCA). The experimental results show that KEros outperforms these other techniques in terms of classificati on
[Role of inhibition of transcription factor forkhead box M1 expression by RNA interference in the proliferation and invasiveness of non-small cell lung cancer cells].

OBJECTIVE To investigate the change of proliferation and invasiveness of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cell lines SPC-A-1, A549 and LTEP-a-2 with forkhead box M1 (FoxM1) expression deficiency. METHODS A siRNA targeting FoxM1 was designed to deplete the FoxM1 expression of these cell lines and an unrelated siRNA used as control. Real-time RT-PCR and Western blotting were used to examine the FoxM1 expression in mRNA and protein level respectively. Colony assay, wound healing assay and transwell chamber assay were employed to evaluate the colony formation ability and invasiveness of FoxM1 deficient cells. RESULTS The designed siRNA could efficiently deplete FoxM1 expression by 83.9%, 83.6% and 88.6% in SPC-A-1, A549 and LTEP-a-2 cell lines respectively. Real-time RT-PCR and Western blot test showed that the FoxM1 protein was also depleted. The colony formation numbers (136.0 +/- 15.5, 87.0 +/- 2.6 and 121.7 +/- 9.4 respectively) and invasion cell numbers (19.2 +/- 2.5, 4.2 +/- 0.8 and 6.2 +/- 1.8 respectively) of FoxM1 deficient SPC-A-1, A549 and LTEP-a-2 cell lines were significantly fewer than those of the unrelated-siRNA transfected group (colony formation numbers were 222.3 +/- 20.5, 164.7 +/- 14.1 and 260.7 +/- 13.5 respectively, and invasive cell numbers were 81.4 +/- 6.2, 39.2 +/- 4.6 and 35.6 +/- 3.0 respectively, all P < 0.01). The cell migration rate of siFoxM1 deficient SPC-A-1 (52.6% +/- 7.8%) was significantly lower than that of the unrelated-siRNA transfected group (85.3% +/- 18.6%, P < 0.01). CONCLUSIONS The proliferation and invasiveness of several NSCLC cell lines were significantly inhibited after the FoxM1 gene expression was depleted. It suggests that inhibiting the FoxM1 expression might be a promising way for lung cancer therapy.
A comparison of medical education in Germany and the United States: from applying to medical school to the beginnings of residency

Both Germany and the United States of America have a long tradition of science and medical excellence reaching back as far as the nineteenth century. The same tribute must be paid to the medical educational system in both countries. Despite significant initial similarities and cross-inspiration, the paths from enrolling in a medical university to graduating as a medical doctor in Germany and the US seem to have become much different. To fill a void in literature, the authors’ objective therefore is to delineate both structures of medical education in an up-to-date review and examine their current differences and similarities. Recent medical publications, legal guidelines of governmental or official organizations, articles in media, as well as the authors’ personal experiences are used as sources of this report. Tuition loans of over $200,000 are not uncommon for students in the US after graduating from medical schools, which are often private institutions. In Germany, however, the vast majority of medical universities are tax-funded and, for this reason, free of tuition. Significant differences and surprisingly multiple similarities exist between these two systems, despite one depending on government and the other on private organizations. Germany currently employs an integrated medical curriculum that typically begins right after high school and consists of a 2-year long pre-clinical segment teaching basic sciences and a 4-year clinical segment leading medical students to the practical aspects of medicine. On the other hand, the US education is a two-stage process. After successful completion of a Bachelor’s degree in college, an American student goes through a 4-year medical program encompassing 2 years of basic science and 2 years of clinical training. In this review, we will address some of these similarities and major differences.
Using Matrix Decompositions in Formal Concept Analysis

One of the main problems connected with the formal concept analysis and lattice construction is the high complexity of algorithms which plays a significant role when computing all concepts from a huge incidence matrix. In some cases, we only need to compute some of them to test for common attributes. In our research we try to modify an incidence matrix using matrix decompositions, creating a new matrix with fewer dimensions as an input for some known algorithms for lattice construction. In this paper, we want to describe methods of matrix decompositions and their influence on the concept lattice.
Accuracy of protein hydropathy predictions

Hydropathy is a dominant force in protein folding. Sequence-based hydropathy predictions are widely used, without knowledge about their accuracy and reliability. We investigated the prediction accuracy of 56 hydropathy scales by correlating predicted values with the accessible surface area in known protein structures. Results for different amino acids vary greatly within each scale. We also investigated prediction accuracies of amino acids separately in secondary structural elements and in protein fold families. Despite very low overall correlation, hydropathy predictions can still be used if the shape of the plot is important instead of the prediction values.
Multi-Criterion Active Learning in Conditional Random Fields

Conditional random fields (CRFs), which are popular supervised learning models for many natural language processing (NLP) tasks, typically require a large collection of labeled data for training. In practice, however, manual annotation of text documents is quite costly. Furthermore, even large labeled training sets can have arbitrarily limited performance peaks if they are not chosen with care. This paper considers the use of multi-criterion active learning for identification of a small but sufficient set of text samples for training CRFs. Our empirical results demonstrate that our method is capable of reducing the manual annotation costs, while also limiting the retraining costs that are often associated with active learning. In addition, we show that the generalization performance of CRFs can be enhanced through judicious selection of training examples
Evaluation of Effect of Plastic Injection Molding Process Parameters on Shrinkage Based on Neural Network Simulation

The effects of process parameters, mold temperature (T mo), melt temperature (T me), cooling time (tc ), fill pressure (Pf ), packing pressure (Pp ), and packing time (tp ) on the shrinkage of injection molded polypropylene were investigated by utilizing a combination of the Artificial Neural Network (ANN) method and Moldflow software. An ANN model is developed to understand the relationship between plastic injection molding process parameters and shrinkage. The test results on the performance of the ANN model show that it can predict the shrinkage with reasonable accuracy. The simulation results show that the most important process parameter affecting shrinkage is Pp , followed by T me and T mo, with tc , Pf , and tp having the least effect. Shrinkage increases with the elevated T mo and tc . In contrast, the increases in Pp , Tme , tp , and Pf cause shrinkage to decrease. The strongest effect on the shrinkage is the amount of material forced into the mold, followed by the crystallinity and orientation of the material.
MiR-124 Radiosensitizes Human Colorectal Cancer Cells by Targeting PRRX1

One of the challenges in the treatment of colorectal cancer patients is that these tumors show resistance to radiation. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are involved in essential biological activities, including chemoresistance and radioresistance. Several research studies have indicated that miRNA played an important role in sensitizing cellular response to ionizing radiation (IR). In this study, we found that miR-124 was significantly down-regulated both in CRC-derived cell lines and clinical CRC samples compared with adjacent non-tumor colorectal tissues, MiR-124 could sensitize human colorectal cancer cells to IR in vitro and in vivo. We identified PRRX1, a new EMT inducer and stemness regulator as a novel direct target of miR-124 by using target prediction algorithms and luciferase assay. PRRX1 knockdown could sensitize CRC cells to IR similar to the effects caused by miR-124. Overexpression of PRRX1 in stably overexpressed-miR-124 cell lines could rescue the effects of radiosensitivity enhancement brought by miR-124. Taking these observations into consideration, we illustrated that miR-124 could increase the radiosensitivity of CRC cells by blocking the expression of PRRX1, which indicated miR-124 could act as a great therapeutic target for CRC patients.
Central regulation of English local authorities:an example of meta-governance?

This paper discusses how the UK government has reconfigured its regulation of English local authorities by moving from direct oversight to using an indirect independent agency as a vehicle of meta-governance. This theme is discussed through two strands: first, by examining how several factors eroded central government's capacity to directly regulate councils. The second strand examines the strategies used by the Audit Commission, an independent agency, to assert its authority over councils and how its hegemony is sustained by facilitating and participating in horizontal and vertical networks across government, specialist policy and stakeholders' communities. © Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2006.
Differential methylation of insulin-like growth factor 2 in offspring of physically active pregnant women

Abstract Several studies have suggested that maternal lifestyle during pregnancy may influence long-term health of offspring by altering the offspring epigenome. Whether maternal leisure-time physical activity (LTPA) during pregnancy might have this effect is unknown. The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between maternal LTPA during pregnancy and offspring DNA methylation. Participants were recruited from the Archive for Research on Child Health study. At enrollment, participants’ demographic information and self-reported LTPA during pregnancy were determined. High active participants (averaged 637.5 min per week of LTPA; n=14) were matched by age and race to low active participants (averaged 59.5 min per week LTPA; n=28). Blood spots were obtained at birth. Pyrosequencing was used to determine methylation levels of long interspersed nucleotide elements (LINE-1) (global methylation) and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-gamma (PPARγ), peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-gamma coactivator (PGC1-α), insulin-like growth factor 2 (IGF2), pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase, isozyme 4 (PDK4) and transcription factor 7-like 2 (TCF7L2). We found no differences between offspring of high active and low active groups for LINE-1 methylation. The only differences in candidate gene methylation between groups were at two CpG sites in the P2 promoter of IGF2; the offspring of low active group had significantly higher DNA methylation (74.70±2.25% methylation for low active v. 72.83±2.85% methylation for high active; P=0.045). Our results suggest no effect of maternal LTPA on offspring global and candidate gene methylation, with the exception of IGF2. IGF2 has been previously associated with regulation of physical activity, suggesting a possible role of maternal LTPA on regulation of offspring physical activity.
Astragaloside IV Attenuates Glutamate-Induced Neurotoxicity in PC12 Cells through Raf-MEK-ERK Pathway

Astragaloside IV (AGS-IV) is a main active ingredient of Astragalus membranaceus Bunge, a medicinal herb prescribed as an immunostimulant, hepatoprotective, antiperspirant, a diuretic or a tonic as documented in Chinese Materia Medica. In the present study, we employed a high-throughput comparative proteomic approach based on 2D-nano-LC-MS/MS to investigate the possible mechanism of action involved in the neuroprotective effect of AGS-IV against glutamate-induced neurotoxicity in PC12 cells. Differential proteins were identified, among which 13 proteins survived the stringent filter criteria and were further included for functional discussion. Two proteins (vimentin and Gap43) were randomly selected, and their expression levels were further confirmed by western blots analysis. The results matched well with those of proteomics. Furthermore, network analysis of protein-protein interactions (PPI) and pathways enrichment with AGS-IV associated proteins were carried out to illustrate its underlying molecular mechanism. Proteins associated with signal transduction, immune system, signaling molecules and interaction, and energy metabolism play important roles in neuroprotective effect of AGS-IV and Raf-MEK-ERK pathway was involved in the neuroprotective effect of AGS-IV against glutamate-induced neurotoxicity in PC12 cells. This study demonstrates that comparative proteomics based on shotgun approach is a valuable tool for molecular mechanism studies, since it allows the simultaneously evaluate the global proteins alterations.
Can T cells be too exhausted to fight back?

The transcriptional network becomes less malleable in persistently activated T cells When T cells are persistently activated by antigen, such as during chronic infection or in cancer, they can become functionally incapable of performing their effector activities, a condition called T cell exhaustion. Exhaustion therefore thwarts optimal immune control of infection and tumors. There is a need to learn more about the molecular factors that drive T cell exhaustion and just how malleable T cell immunity is once exhaustion is established. On pages 1165 and 1160 of this issue, Sen et al. (1) and Pauken et al. (2), respectively, demonstrate that T cell exhaustion represents a stable differentiation state, underpinned by the apparently irreversible installation of an exhaustion-specific genetic landscape. This implies that perhaps in a majority of cases of persistent immune activation, T cells are too exhausted to fight back against cancer or pathogens.
Exploiting Social Networks in Recommendation: a Multi-Domain Comparison

Recommender Systems aim at automatically nding the most useful products or services for a particular user, providing a personalised list of items according to dierent input and attributes of users and items. State-of-the-art recommender systems are usually based on ratings and implicit feedback given by users about the items. Recently, due to the large number of social systems appearing in the so called Web 2.0, where friendship relations between people are explicit, social contexts exploitation has started to receive signicant interest. In particular, social recommenders have started to be investigated that exploit social links between users in a community to suggest interesting items. In this paper we compare a series of experiments developed in recent years with dierent datasets where standard collaborative and social ltering techniques were analysed. We show that social ltering techniques achieve very high performance in the three domains discussed (bookmarks, music, and movies), although they may have lower coverage than traditional collaborative ltering algorithms.
In vitro blood compatibility evaluation of silk fibroin by chemical crosslinking

Abstract Poly(ethylene glycol) diglycidyl ether (PEG-DE) has been used as a crosslinker to construct artificial blood vessels of silk fibroin, endowing materials suitable compliance. As a biomaterial directly contacting with blood, it requires excellent anticoagulant property. In this article, hemolysis, platelet adhesion, platelet activity and plasma recalcification time of PEG-DE crosslinked silk fibroin were investigated using absorption spectrometry, scanning electron microscopy, methyl thiazolyl tetrazolium analysis and the time counting method. The hemolysis at ratios of PEG-DE crosslinked silk fibroin materials was < 0·5%, although it increased with increasing PEG-DE content. The platelet adhesion ratio and aggregation activity of PEG-DE crosslinked silk fibroin were higher than those of ethanol treated silk fibroin and increased with increasing PEG-DE content. However, the plasma recalcification time of PEG-DE crosslinked silk fibroin was longer than that of the ethanol treated silk fibroin and increased slightly with the increase of PEG-DE content. Based on these, PEG-DE used to crosslink silk fibroin showed different anticoagulant characteristics in different coagulation pathways.