Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Convergent evolution of floral signals underlies the success of Neotropical orchids

The great majority of plant species in the tropics require animals to achieve pollination, but the exact role of floral signals in attraction of animal pollinators is often debated. Many plants provide a floral reward to attract a guild of pollinators, and it has been proposed that floral signals of non-rewarding species may converge on those of rewarding species to exploit the relationship of the latter with their pollinators. In the orchid family (Orchidaceae), pollination is almost universally animal-mediated, but a third of species provide no floral reward, which suggests that deceptive pollination mechanisms are prevalent. Here, we examine floral colour and shape convergence in Neotropical plant communities, focusing on certain food-deceptive Oncidiinae orchids (e.g. Trichocentrum ascendens and Oncidium nebulosum) and rewarding species of Malpighiaceae. We show that the species from these two distantly related families are often more similar in floral colour and shape than expected by chance and propose that a system of multifarious floral mimicry—a form of Batesian mimicry that involves multiple models and is more complex than a simple one model–one mimic system—operates in these orchids. The same mimetic pollination system has evolved at least 14 times within the species-rich Oncidiinae throughout the Neotropics. These results help explain the extraordinary diversification of Neotropical orchids and highlight the complexity of plant–animal interactions.
Transcribing Southern Min speech corpora with a Web-Based language learning system

The paper proposes a human-computation-based scheme for transcribing Southern Min speech corpora. The core idea is to implement a Web-based language learning system to collect orthographic and phonetic labels from a large amount of language learners and choose the commonly input labels as the transcriptions of the corpora. It is essentially a technology of distributed knowledge acquisition. Some computer-aided mechanisms are also used to verify the collected transcriptions. The benefit of the scheme is that it makes the transcribing task neither tedious nor costly. No significant budget should be made for transcribing large corpora. The design of a system for transcribing Min Nan speech corpora is described in detail. The application of a prototype version of the system shows that this transcribing scheme is an effective and economical way to generate orthographic and phonetic transcriptions.
Functional Plasticity in the Type IV Secretion System of Helicobacter pylori

Helicobacter pylori causes clinical disease primarily in those individuals infected with a strain that carries the cytotoxin associated gene pathogenicity island (cagPAI). The cagPAI encodes a type IV secretion system (T4SS) that injects the CagA oncoprotein into epithelial cells and is required for induction of the pro-inflammatory cytokine, interleukin-8 (IL-8). CagY is an essential component of the H. pylori T4SS that has an unusual sequence structure, in which an extraordinary number of direct DNA repeats is predicted to cause rearrangements that invariably yield in-frame insertions or deletions. Here we demonstrate in murine and non-human primate models that immune-driven host selection of rearrangements in CagY is sufficient to cause gain or loss of function in the H. pylori T4SS. We propose that CagY functions as a sort of molecular switch or perhaps a rheostat that alters the function of the T4SS and “tunes” the host inflammatory response so as to maximize persistent infection.
Fisheries-induced evolution

Increased mortality from fishing is expected to favor faster life histories, realized through earlier maturation, increased reproductive investment, and reduced postmaturation growth. There is also direct and indirect selection on behavioral traits. Molecular genetic methods have so far contributed minimally to understanding such fisheries-induced evolution (FIE), but a large body of literature studying evolution using phenotypic methods has suggested that FIE in life-history traits, in particular maturation traits, is commonplace in exploited fish populations. Although no phenotypic study in the wild can individually provide conclusive evidence for FIE, the observed common pattern suggests a common explanation, strengthening the case for FIE. This interpretation is supported by theoretical and experimental studies. Evidence for FIE of behavioral traits is limited from the wild, but strong from experimental studies. We suggest that such evolution is also common, but has so far been overlooked.
GRATIN: Accelerating Graph Traversals in Main-Memory Column Stores

Native graph query and processing capabilities have become indispensable for modern business applications in enterprise-critical operations on data that is stored in relational database management systems. Traversal operations are a basic ingredient of graph algorithms and graph queries. As a consequence, they are fundamental for querying graph data in a relational database management system. In this paper we present gratin, a concise secondary index structure to speedup graph traversals in main-memory column stores. Conventional approaches for graph traversals rely on repeated full column scans, making it an inefficient approach for deep traversals on very large graphs. To tackle this challenge, we devise a novel and adaptive block-based index to handle graphs efficiently. Most importantly, gratin is updateable in constant time and allows supporting evolving graphs with frequent updates to the graph topology. We conducted an extensive evaluation on real-world data sets from different domains for a large variety of traversal queries. Our experiments show improvements of up to an order of magnitude compared to a scan-based traversal algorithm.
An Efficient Small Data Transmission Scheme in the 3GPP NB-IoT System

This letter proposes an efficient small data transmission scheme in the narrow band (NB)-Internet of Things (IoT) system. For the efficient use of radio resources, the proposed scheme enables devices in an idle state to transmit a small data packet without the radio resource control connection setup process. This can improve the maximum number of supportable devices in the NB-IoT system which has insufficient radio resources. Numerical results have shown that the proposed scheme can increase the maximum number of supportable devices by about 60% compared with the conventional scheme.
A Fractal Ultra-High-Speed Oscillator/Distributor Network with Structural Robustness to Voltage and Temperature Gradients

A study of a fractal structure of a clock generator and distributor is performed with possible use in today’s ultra-high-speed, GHz range or higher, integrated circuit design and other future digital system applications. A fractal cell is composed of a simple ring oscillator with three inverting amplifiers, configuring a triangle shape, with an inverting amplifier placed at each side. Each side is then shared with an adjacent cell, which makes this fractal structure that is, theoretically, spreadable infinitely in 2D domain. This fractal structure is proved to have insensitivities to supply voltage and temperature variations: less than 1% of clocks skew of a clock period, with given 3% of supply voltage or 5% of temperature fluctuations. This is because any local disturbances or gradients will instantly and evenly be distributed to the whole networks yielding a global averaged state change. SPICE simulations are done with 0.5 μ m, 3V, N-Well CMOS process technology in order to prove the validity of the idea. A simple fractal CMOS layout, with 108 inverters, is also performed and included for future chip measurement.
Diffusive spatio-temporal noise in a first-passage time model for intracellular calcium release.

The intracellular release of calcium from the endoplasmic reticulum is controlled by ion channels. The resulting calcium signals exhibit a rich spatio-temporal signature, which originates at least partly from microscopic fluctuations. While stochasticity in the gating transition of ion channels has been incorporated into many models, the distribution of calcium is usually described by deterministic reaction-diffusion equations. Here we test the validity of the latter modeling approach by using two different models to calculate the frequency of localized calcium signals (calcium puffs) from clustered IP3 receptor channels. The complexity of the full calcium system is here limited to the basic opening mechanism of the ion channels and, in the mathematical reduction simplifies to the calculation of a first passage time. Two models are then studied: (i) a hybrid model, where channel gating is treated stochastically, while calcium concentration is deterministic and (ii) a fully stochastic model with noisy channel gating and Brownian calcium ion motion. The second model utilises the recently developed two-regime method [M. B. Flegg, S. J. Chapman, and R. Erban, "The two-regime method for optimizing stochastic reaction-diffusion simulations," J. R. Soc. , Interface 9, 859-868 (2012)] in order to simulate a large domain with precision required only near the Ca(2+) absorbing channels. The expected time for a first channel opening that results in a calcium puff event is calculated. It is found that for a large diffusion constant, predictions of the interpuff time are significantly overestimated using the model (i) with a deterministic non-spatial calcium variable. It is thus demonstrated that the presence of diffusive noise in local concentrations of intracellular Ca(2+) ions can substantially influence the occurrence of calcium signals. The presented approach and results may also be relevant for other cell-physiological first-passage time problems with small ligand concentration and high cooperativity.
Loss of the Type I Interferon Pathway Increases Vulnerability of Mice to Genital Herpes Simplex Virus 2 Infection

ABSTRACT The mouse model of genital herpes relies on medoxyprogesterone treatment of female mice to render the vaginal lumen susceptible to inoculation with herpes simplex virus 2 (HSV-2). In the present study, we report that mice deficient in the A1 chain of the type I interferon receptor (CD118−/−) are susceptible to HSV-2 in the absence of medroxyprogesterone preconditioning. In the absence of hormone pretreatment, 2,000 PFU of a clinical isolate of HSV-2 was sufficient to establish a productive infection in the vagina of 75% ± 17% and in the spinal cord of 71% ± 14% of CD118−/− mice, whereas the same dose of HSV-2 replicated to detectable levels in only 13% ± 13% of vaginal samples and 0% of spinal cord samples from wild-type mice, as determined at day 5 postinfection. The susceptibility to HSV-2 infection in the CD118−/− mice was associated with a significant reduction in the infiltration of HSV-specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes into the vaginal tissue, the local production of gamma interferon (IFN-γ), and the expression of T cell-recruiting chemokines CCL5, CXCL9, and CXCL10. Collectively, the results underscore the significant contribution of type I IFNs in resistance to genital HSV-2 infection.
Content-Centric Sparse Multicast Beamforming for Cache-Enabled Cloud RAN

This paper presents a content-centric transmission design in a cloud radio access network by incorporating multicasting and caching. Users requesting the same content form a multicast group and are served by a same cluster of base stations (BSs) cooperatively. Each BS has a local cache, and it acquires the requested contents either from its local cache or from the central processor via backhaul links. We investigate the dynamic content-centric BS clustering and multicast beamforming with respect to both channel condition and caching status. We first formulate a mixed-integer nonlinear programming problem of minimizing the weighted sum of backhaul cost and transmit power under the quality-of-service constraint for each multicast group. Theoretical analysis reveals that all the BSs caching a requested content can be included in the BS cluster of this content, regardless of the channel conditions. Then, we reformulate an equivalent sparse multicast beamforming (SBF) problem. By adopting smoothed ℓ0-norm approximation and other techniques, the SBF problem is transformed into the difference of convex programs and effectively solved using the convex-concave procedure algorithms. Simulation results demonstrate significant advantage of the proposed content-centric transmission. The effects of heuristic caching strategies are also evaluated.
Cognitive Impairment and Slow Gait Speed in Elderly Outpatients with Arterial Hypertension: The Effect of Blood Pressure Values

To the Editor: The prevalence of cognitive impairment and mobility limitation is high in elderly adults, and these conditions are often associated and related. Hypertension is the most common cardiovascular disease in elderly adults and is a risk factor for cognitive decline. Nevertheless, the relationships between blood pressure and cognitive impairment are tangled and still debated. Moreover, hypertension and other cardiovascular risk factors are associated with mobility limitation in older adults. Usual gait speed has been shown to be an easy, useful marker and predictor of functional decline and survival, and there is evidence that high blood pressure accelerates gait slowing in older adults and that slow gait predicts cognitive decline. The aim of the current study was to examine the association between cognitive impairment, gait speed, and blood pressure in elderly outpatients with arterial hypertension.
Effects of Mutant Alpha-Synuclein In the Activation of Retrograde Fast Axonal Transport BY SUN

S: Sun Kyong Lee, Gerardo Morfini, Julia M. George, Scott T. Brady. Role of Parkinson’s disease-linked mutant α-synuclein in the activation of retrograde fast axonal transport. The 43 Annual Meeting of American Society for Neurochemistry, 2012 Sun Kyong Lee, Erwan Paitel, Bettina Drisaldi, Agnes Petit, Stephen Schmidt, Paul M.Matthews, Fusheng Chen, Paul E.Fraser, Peter St.George-Hyslop, Laurent Meijer, David Westaway. Effects of indirubin, a GSK3/CDK5 inhibitor, on the Amyloid beta and tau pathways of Alzheimer’s disease. Vol. 2, Iss. 3, S599. The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association, 2006 Sun Kyong Lee, Jung-Uek Lee, Kyong-Tai Kim. Upregulation of BAT1/UAP56 and ALY/REF during peripheral nerve regeneration. The 61th Annual Meeting of Korean Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 2004 Sun Kyong Lee, Jung-Uek Lee, Kyong-Tai Kim. Retinoic acid-induced BAT1/UAP56 expression after sciatic nerve injury in rats. The 15 Annual Meeting of Korean Society for Molecular and Cellular Biology, 2003
Properties of Foamed Mortar Prepared with Granulated Blast-Furnace Slag

Foamed mortar with a density of 1300 kg/m3 was prepared. In the initial laboratory trials, water-to-cement (w/c) ratios ranging from 0.54 to 0.64 were tested to determine the optimal value for foamed mortar corresponding to the highest compressive strength without compromising its fresh state properties. With the obtained optimal w/c ratio of 0.56, two types of foamed mortar were prepared, namely cement-foamed mortar (CFM) and slag-foamed mortar (SFM, 50% cement was replaced by slag weight). Four different curing conditions were adopted for both types of foamed mortar to assess their compressive strength, ultrasonic pulse velocity (UPV) and thermal insulation performance. The test results indicated that utilizing 50% of slag as cement replacement in the production of foamed mortar improved the compressive strength, UPV and thermal insulation properties. Additionally, the initial water curing of seven days gained higher compressive strength and increased UPV values as compared to the air cured and natural weather curing samples. However, this positive effect was more pronounced in the case of compressive strength than in the UPV and thermal conductivity of foamed mortar.
Postischemic Estrogen Reduces Hypoperfusion and Secondary Ischemia After Experimental Stroke

Background and Purpose— Estrogen is a known neuroprotective and vasoprotective agent in experimental cerebral ischemia. Preischemic steroid treatment protects animals of both sexes from focal cerebral ischemia. This study determined whether intravenous estrogen acts as a vasodilator when administered on reperfusion and whether the resulting increase in cerebral blood flow (CBF) provides tissue protection from middle cerebral artery occlusion. Methods— Adult male Wistar rats were treated with reversible middle cerebral artery occlusion (2 hours), then infused with intravenous estrogen (Premarin; 1 mg/kg) or vehicle during the first minutes of reperfusion (n=15 per group). Cortical laser-Doppler flowmetry was used to assess adequacy of occlusion. Ischemic lesion volume was determined at 22 hours after occlusion by 2,3,5-triphenyltetrazolium chloride staining and image analysis. Cortical and striatal CBF was measured by 14[C]iodoantipyrine autoradiography at 10 (n=10) or 90 (n=11) minutes of reperfusion. Results— As expected, supraphysiological plasma estrogen levels were achieved during reperfusion (estrogen, 198±45 pg/mL; vehicle, 6±5;P =0.001). Physiological variables were controlled and not different between groups. Total hemispheric infarction was reduced in estrogen-treated rats (estrogen, 49±4% of ipsilateral structure; vehicle, 33±5%;P =0.02), which was most pronounced in striatum (estrogen, 40±6% of ipsilateral striatum; vehicle, 60±3%;P =0.01). CBF recovery was strikingly increased by estrogen infusion at 10 minutes in frontal (estrogen, 102±12 mL/100 g per minute; vehicle, 45±15;P =0.01) and parietal cortex (estrogen, 74±15 mL/100 g per minute; vehicle, 22±13;P =0.028) and throughout striatum (estrogen, 87±13 mL/100 g per minute; vehicle, 25±20;P =0.02). Hemispheric volume with low CBF recovery (eg, <20 mL/100 g per minute) was smaller in estrogen-treated animals (estrogen, 73±18 mm3; vehicle, 257±46;P =0.002). However, differences in CBF recovery could not be appreciated between groups by 90 minutes of reperfusion. Conclusions— Acute estrogen therapy during reperfusion improves tissue outcome from experimental stroke. The steroid rapidly promotes CBF recovery and reduces hemispheric no-reflow zones. This beneficial effect appears only during early reperfusion and likely complements other known mechanisms by which estrogen salvages brain from focal necrosis.
Coexpression of c-kit and bcl-2 in Small Cell Carcinoma and Large Cell Neuroendocrine Carcinoma of the Lung

It has been shown that tyrosine kinase oncoprotein c-kit and antiapoptotic molecule bcl-2 are overexpressed in several types of malignancy, including small cell carcinoma (SCLC) and large cell neuroendocrine carcinoma (LCNEC) of the lung. Whether these 2 molecules are coexpressed in lung neuroendocrine tumors has not been investigated. Here, we analyzed immunohistochemical results to determine expression and coexpression patterns of c-kit and bcl-2 in the spectrum of lung neuroendocrine tumors. Using a polyclonal antibody against c-kit and a monoclonal antibody against bcl-2, our data demonstrated that all 7 cases (100%) of SCLC included in this study were positive for both c-kit and bcl-2. Among 14 LCNECs, 7 (50%) stained positive for c-kit and 9 (64%) for bcl-2. All cases of high grade neuroendocrine carcinomas (SCLCs and LCNECs) that showed positive staining for c-kit coexpressed bcl-2. In contrast, all typical and atypical carcinoids (TC and AC) were negative for c-kit, and only 1 of 16 (6.3%) TCs and 1 of 6 (16.7%) ACs stained positive for bcl-2. These results indicate a progressive increase in the frequency of c-kit and bcl-2 expression and coexpression, from carcinoid tumors (TC and AC) to LCNEC and to SCLC. High grade neuroendocrine carcinomas are more likely to coexpress c-kit and bcl-2 when compared with carcinoid tumors. The high frequency of coexpression of these 2 molecules in high grade neuroendocrine carcinomas of the lung suggests that they may be involved in the carcinogenic pathway, given their important roles in carcinogenesis. Therapeutic targeting on both c-kit and bcl-2 molecules might be beneficial in the management of patients with high grade neuroendocrine carcinomas of the lung in the future.
On-the-fly transformation synthesis for information sharing in heterogeneous multi-agent systems

Cooperation in multi-agent teams opens up the possibility of solving large-scale and complex tasks. One of the important aspects in performing cooperation is the ability to share information. In this paper, we propose an on-the-fly synthesis of transformations that enables information sharing in a dynamic group of heterogeneous agents. The synthesis is done by a declarative logic program, which is based on semantic descriptions of representations. Our experiments show that this approach is useful to compensate heterogeneity in dynamic multi-agent teams.
Flavopiridol, An Inhibitor of Transcription: Implications, Problems and Solutions

After a decade of exciting promises, the CDK inhibitor flavopiridol has quietly failed in most clinical trials. This review discusses that flavopiridol is a potent inhibitor of global transcription. This explains not only downregulation of numerous proteins, cell cycle arrest and apoptosis but also all pleiotropic and mysterious effects of flavopiridol. Yet, flavopiridol is not just a second actinomycin D. As an inhibitor of transcription with a unique mechanism of action, flavopiridol may have tremendous clinical potentials. This article reviews the molecular and cellular effects of flavopiridol as well as mechanisms of therapeutic and side effects, suggesting its novel clinical applications as a single agent and in drug combinations.
Turkish Version of the Dutch Eating Behaviour Questionnaire： In Evaluation of Eating Behaviour among a Group of Turkish University Student

Objective: This study aims at examining eating behaviours according to the Dutch Eating Behaviour Questionnaire (DEBQ), among a population of normal-weight university students. Methods: The study was conducted among Ankara University students. The questionnaire was administered to 500 subjects. The participants were given a questionnaire form. A reliability test was performed to determine the extent the 33-item questionnaire can measure eating behaviors of individuals. Items 31, “Can you resist eating delicious food? ”, and 32, “Do you eat more than usual when you see others eating (do you eat even if it is not meal time)? ” were removed from the questionnaire since their factor loading values were below 0.30. “Varimax Factor Analysis” was performed to determine if the survey questions used in this research have the same structure. Results: The analysis resulted in three factors. This study demonstrated the factorial validity and reliability of its Dutch version.
Item recognition in menu selection: the effect of practice

This study examines the role of global and local visual features in menu seieaicu M&r being trained to work with a simple menu-driven system, subjects performed two series of tasks with two types of rnodifled menus: “Jumbled” ones (the sequence of items within a menu changed from task to task) and “Dotted” ones (item names were replaced with strings of “bullets”). It was found that menu selection skills wem learnt mcxe efficiently undex the second condition. ‘lb implications of this finding for modem studies of display based competeme are diaassd.