Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Polar and brown bear genomes reveal ancient admixture and demographic footprints of past climate change

Polar bears (PBs) are superbly adapted to the extreme Arctic environment and have become emblematic of the threat to biodiversity from global climate change. Their divergence from the lower-latitude brown bear provides a textbook example of rapid evolution of distinct phenotypes. However, limited mitochondrial and nuclear DNA evidence conflicts in the timing of PB origin as well as placement of the species within versus sister to the brown bear lineage. We gathered extensive genomic sequence data from contemporary polar, brown, and American black bear samples, in addition to a 130,000- to 110,000-y old PB, to examine this problem from a genome-wide perspective. Nuclear DNA markers reflect a species tree consistent with expectation, showing polar and brown bears to be sister species. However, for the enigmatic brown bears native to Alaska's Alexander Archipelago, we estimate that not only their mitochondrial genome, but also 5–10% of their nuclear genome, is most closely related to PBs, indicating ancient admixture between the two species. Explicit admixture analyses are consistent with ancient splits among PBs, brown bears and black bears that were later followed by occasional admixture. We also provide paleodemographic estimates that suggest bear evolution has tracked key climate events, and that PB in particular experienced a prolonged and dramatic decline in its effective population size during the last ca. 500,000 years. We demonstrate that brown bears and PBs have had sufficiently independent evolutionary histories over the last 4–5 million years to leave imprints in the PB nuclear genome that likely are associated with ecological adaptation to the Arctic environment.
Renoprotective Effect of Chronic Adrenomedullin Infusion in Dahl Salt-Sensitive Rats

The present study was designed to examine whether chronic adrenomedullin infusion has renoprotective effects in hypertensive renal failure and the mechanism by which chronic adrenomedullin infusion exerts its effects. Dahl salt-sensitive rats and Dahl salt-resistant rats were fed a high salt diet starting at 6 weeks of age. Recombinant human adrenomedullin or vehicle was infused for 7 weeks in 11-week-old Dahl salt-sensitive rats. Dahl salt-resistant rat was used as a control. After 7 weeks, untreated Dahl salt-sensitive rats were characterized by decreased kidney function, abnormal morphological findings, increased hormone levels, increased renal tissue angiotensin II levels, and altered mRNA expressions of transforming growth factor &bgr; (TGF-&bgr;) and components of the renin-angiotensin system compared with Dahl salt-resistant rats. Chronic adrenomedullin treatment significantly improved renal function (serum creatinine −87%, creatinine clearance +114%, urinary protein excretion −59%) and histological findings (glomerular injury score −54%) without changing mean arterial pressure compared with untreated Dahl salt-sensitive rats. Interestingly, long-term human adrenomedullin infusion decreased the endogenous rat adrenomedullin level (−97%) with a slight increase of human adrenomedullin level. Chronic adrenomedullin treatment also significantly inhibited the increase of plasma renin concentration (−269%), aldosterone level (−82%), and renal tissue angiotensin II levels (−60%). Furthermore, adrenomedullin infusion significantly decreased the increases of mRNA expressions of TGF-&bgr; (− 63%), angiotensin-converting enzyme (−137%), renin (−230%), and angiotensinogen (−38%) in renal cortex. These results suggest that increased endogenous adrenomedullin plays a compensatory role in chronic hypertensive renal failure and that long-term adrenomedullin infusion has renoprotective effects in this type of hypertension model, partly via inhibition of the circulating and renal renin-angiotensin system.
Flexible Inertia Optimization for Single-Phase Voltage Source Inverter Based on Hold Filter

With the increasing penetration of renewable energy sources (RESs) in the power system, voltage source inverters (VSIs) are widely used as the power electronic interface of the RESs, which will decline the inertia of power system. The insufficient inertia has been becoming a big challenge for the modern power system. Synchronverter (SV) technology can operate the inverter mimic the characteristic of the synchronous generator to provide virtual inertia. However, the virtual inertia of conventional SV is associated with the frequency stability, which limits the inertia that can be provided. Taking the analysis of single-phase SV as an example, this paper proposes a flexible inertia optimization method for single-phase VSIs based on the inertial characteristic of hold filter, which gives a new degree of freedom for the optimization of single-phase VSIs inertia. In this way, the inertia of single-phase VSIs can be adjusted more freely according to system requirements without affecting the frequency stability. Furthermore, the effects of the proposed method on the system dynamic characteristics are investigated. Finally, simulation and experimental results are given to verify the feasibility and feature of the proposed inertia optimization method.
Virtual peer-delivered memory intervention: a single-case experimental design in an adolescent with chronic memory impairment

ABSTRACT Background: Children and adolescents with chronic memory impairment may develop coping strategies that enable functioning, yet these often remain undetectable using traditional psychometric measures. Personalized intervention studies that promote the use of such strategies designed specifically for use by this young cohort are scarce. Objective: To investigate the effect of a novel virtual reality peer-delivered memory intervention on the everyday functioning and well-being of SE, a 17-year-old female with a history of chronic verbal memory issues, impaired autobiographical event recall and elevated mood symptoms. Research design: A single-case ABA experimental design study was used to assess change. Methods: Following initial baseline assessment using objective neuropsychological and subjective functional questionnaires and intervention training, case SE used the intervention daily for 3 weeks before repeating key outcome measures. Results: Using non-overlap of all pairs and qualitative feedback analysis, the results revealed a significant increase in event recall and self-reported positive changes to levels of everyday functioning. Conclusion: Supporting autobiographical event recall and prospective memory via a virtual peer-delivered intervention may lead to reduction in cognitive load, and benefit overall well-being and everyday functioning.
An Architectural View for Data Protection by Design

Data Protection by Design (DPbD) is a truly interdisciplinary effort that involves many stakeholders such as legal experts, requirements engineers, software architects, developers, and system operators. Building software-intensive systems that respect the fundamental rights to privacy and data protection is the result of intensive dialogue and careful trade-off decisions. In practice however, there is a dichotomy between the legal reasoning which is conducted in Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIA) and software engineering approaches, such as threat modeling, aimed at identifying privacy requirements and privacy risks. These activities are commonly performed in total isolation, which negatively impacts (i) the compliance exercise, (ii) the ability to evolve the system over time, and (iii) the architectural trade-offs made during system design. In this article, we present an architectural viewpoint for describing software architectures from a legal, data protection perspective whose core modeling abstractions are based on an in-depth legal analysis of the EU General Data Protection Regulation. This viewpoint is tied to Data Flow Diagrams-commonly used in threat modeling-through correspondence rules. The proposed viewpoint supports the automation of a number of data protection impact assessment steps through (i) meta-model constraints, (ii) model analysis, and (iii) interaction with the involved stakeholders. This enables a streamlined compliance exercise, reconciling legal privacy and data protection notions with architecture-driven software engineering practices. We validate our approach in the context of a realistic e-health application for a number of complementary development scenarios.
Contextualizing family risk factors for alcoholism and alcohol abuse.

OBJECTIVE Studies of alcohol and the family should represent the full range of family types in the U.S. population. Developments from studies of family systems in other research contexts may be usefully applied to the alcohol field. METHOD This commentary highlights important methodological and conceptual issues relevant for the design and conduct of family research. RESULTS Data indicate major changes in the composition of the American family over the past quarter century. Some recent conceptual developments in the field of family research are relevant for studies of alcohol and the family and for intervention development. CONCLUSION Family-based alcohol research should acknowledge and address the heterogeneity that exists among modern American families. Studies of family risk and resiliency should distinguish between threats to the family's ability to function as a whole, and threats to the well-being of individual members. Additional research is needed on the role of race and ethnicity in family processes.
What Size of Language Unit Is More Appropriate for Text Summarization?

Extractive text summarization is to find the important sentences from texts and concatenates these sentences as a summary. However, sentences selected according to ranking rules are usually not coherent. Is a larger language unit such as a group of sentences or a paragraph more appropriate to be selected for summarization? This paper is to answer this question. Investigating the summarization algorithm based on ranking semantic link networks of texts, we find the following three results: 1) comparing with the summaries composed by sentences, the summaries composed by larger language units have similar ROUGE scores but have better readability; 2) using a group of sentences is more effective than using sentence and paragraph; and, 3) the quality of summaries composed by group becomes better when the average length of the source texts increases.
The Contribution of Radiation-Induced Large Deletion of the Genome to Chromosomal Instability

Abstract Toyokuni, H. , Maruo, A. , Suzuki, K. and Watanabe, M. The Contribution of Radiation-Induced Large Deletion of the Genome to Chromosomal Instability. Radiat. Res. 171, 198–203 (2009). Ionizing radiation is known to induce genomic instability that is transmitted across many generations of the progeny of surviving cells. However, the mechanism underlying the initiation, perpetuation and manifestation of radiation-induced genomic instability remains unclear. We expect that large radiation-induced deletions destabilize the structure of chromatin and that this destabilization is transmitted across many generations and plays a role in the perpetuation of genomic instability. Therefore, in this study, we examined the relationship between deletion size and the frequency of delayed chromosomal aberrations in SV40-immortalized normal human fibroblast (GM638) cells. GM638 cells were irradiated with 3 Gy of X rays, and chromosomal aberrations were analyzed in clones derived after irradiation. To determine the size of each deletion, we isolated mutants of the HPRT gene from the X-irradiated cell population and examined the genes around the HPRT locus, which is located in the q-arm of chromosome X. The results indicated that X chromosomes with large (>0.5 Mb) deletions have a higher probability of exhibiting delayed chromosomal aberrations and that these aberrations were induced more frequently in q-arms than in p-arms. Because no induction of X-chromosomal instability was observed in clones that lacked such large deletions, the present findings suggest that chromosomes with large radiation-induced deletions can be genomically unstable.
Arginine deiminase system and bacterial adaptation to acid environments

The arginine deiminase system in a variety of streptococci and in Pseudomonas aeruginosa was found to be unusually acid tolerant in that arginolysis occurred at pH values well below the minima for growth and glycolysis. The acid tolerance of the system allowed bacteria to survive potentially lethal acidification through production of ammonia to raise the environmental pH value.
A Lyapunov-Based Approach to Exploit Asymmetries in Robotic Dual-Arm Task Resolution

Dual-arm manipulation tasks can be prescribed to a robotic system in terms of desired absolute and relative motion of the robot’s end-effectors. These can represent, e.g., jointly carrying a rigid object or performing an assembly task. When both types of motion are to be executed concurrently, the symmetric distribution of the relative motion between arms prevents task conflicts. Conversely, an asymmetric solution to the relative motion task will result in conflicts with the absolute task. In this work, we address the problem of designing a control law for the absolute motion task together with updating the distribution of the relative task among arms. Through a set of numerical results, we contrast our approach with the classical symmetric distribution of the relative motion task to illustrate the advantages of our method.
How to Analyze Survey Data Pertaining to the "Time Bind", and How "Not" to Analyze Such Data

This note considers various ways of analyzing survey data pertaining to a central thesis of The Time Bind (Hochschild, 1997), and it comments on the particular analysis presented by Brown and Booth (2002). The following kinds of problems will be discussed here: (1) problems pertaining to the measurement of concepts, (2) problems pertaining to the selection of the data to be analyzed, and (3) problems pertaining to the selection of the statistical models to be used in the analysis. Appropriate methods for dealing with each of these three kinds of problems are introduced and described in the present note. When these appropriate methods are compared with the particular methods applied by Brown and Booth (2002), we find fault with the latter methods. Our attention in this note is focused on the analysis of data pertaining to a central thesis of The Time Bind, but the general approach presented here can also be applied more generally to study other theses of interest in the social sciences.
A Clash of Emotions: The Politics of Humiliation and Political Violence in the Middle East

After the attacks of 9/11 Americans asked, `Why do they hate us so much? ' The answer has been framed in terms of a range of `clashes', none of which has addressed emotion, which is at the centre of the question. Emotion, and particularly humiliation, has begun to be addressed within the literature of IR. Numerous scholars have highlighted the pervasiveness of a discourse of humiliation in the Middle East and its relationship to the swelling ranks of recruits who are willing to act as human bombs. The purpose of this article is to examine the emotional dynamics of this relationship. The first section undertakes a conceptual analysis of humiliation and betrayal. The second section explores how these emotions have been given coherent meaning in the narrative of Islamists from the region. This is followed by an historical analysis of how this narrative has provided a framework for giving meaning to a range of national, regional and international interactions, particularly since 1967, and has contributed to the emergence of Islam as the basis for transnational identity in what had become a highly secular region. Section three examines flaws in the logic of both militant Islamists and the US-led `War on Terrorism', arguing that both have exacerbated feelings of humiliation in the region rather than contributing to a restoration of dignity. The conclusion builds on the principle of human dignity to rethink the international approach to political violence.
Numerical Simulation of Transducer-Tipped Ultrasound Catheter for Necrosis of Blood Clot through Coronary Artery

Therapeutic ultrasound has been established as a targeted therapy treatment method. Nonlinear propagation of acoustic waves heats up the tissue especially in the region close to the ultrasound source. Intravascular Ultrasound uses thermal aspect of acoustic wave in the catheter size, in order to break down the blood clot tissue or plaque. A numerical method is conducted on three-dimensional model of the coronary artery partially blocked with a clot. The numerical simulation is developed to give a proper estimation of the temperature field through the coronary artery after implantation of the ultrasound catheter-assisted device. The wave propagates with the frequency of 1MHz and initial transducer pressure of 0.24MPa. Exposure of intravascular ultrasound leads to temperature rise of 1.54 °C during 100 seconds in the clot areas. Moreover, results show that by increasing the frequency of the transducer and the exposure time, the temperature rise could be increased.
fi cient Scheme for MIMO Broadcast Channels Based on Iterative User Selection

Dirty paper coding (DPC) is shown to achieve the capacity of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) Gaussian broadcast channels (BCs). In circuit data scenarios, users demand to get service at fixed desire rate. Finding the optimal covariance matrices and order of users for maximizing user capacity requires high complexity computation. To deal with this problem, many researchers use fixed order of users and get subpar performance. In this paper we present an iterative user selection scheme that aims to maximize user capacity. The main feature of the proposed scheme is that it do not impose a fixed order on the users. Users to be served are chosen iteratively considering influence from the chosen ones. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme achieves better performance than similar simple schemes. In addition, a compromise between performance and complexity can be made by a candidate user set concept. Cardinality of the candidate user set is fixed and users in the set are dynamically adjusted.
A cancer‐causing gene is positively correlated with male aggression in Xiphophorus cortezi

The persistence of seemingly maladaptive genes in organisms challenges evolutionary biological thought. In Xiphophorus fishes, certain melanin patterns form malignant melanomas because of a cancer‐causing gene (Xiphophorus melanoma receptor kinase; Xmrk), which arose several millions years ago from unequal meiotic recombination. Xiphophorus melanomas are male biased and induced by androgens however male behaviour and Xmrk genotype has not been investigated. This study found that male X. cortezi with the spotted caudal (Sc) pattern, from which melanomas originate, displayed increased aggression in mirror image trials. Furthermore, Xmrk males (regardless of Sc phenotype) bit and performed more agonistic displays than Xmrk deficient males. Male aggressive response decreased when males viewed their Sc image as compared with their non‐Sc image. Collectively, these results indicate that Xmrk males experience a competitive advantage over wild‐type males and that intrasexual selection could be an important component in the evolutionary maintenance of this oncogene within Xiphophorus.
Chelidonium majus L. (Greater celandine) – A Review on its Phytochemical and Therapeutic Perspectives

Chelidonium majus L. (Papaveraceae) is a medicinal herb used in various traditional systems of medicine to treat ulcer, cancer, oral infection, liver disorders, chronic bronchitis, asthma, etc. Different parts of this plant contain numerous therapeutically important alkaloidal constituents such as chelidonine, chelerythrine, sanguinarine, berberine and so on. The plant and its active compounds exhibit a wide range of pharmacological activities. The plants has long history of therapeutic use in medicines without any toxic effect. Today it is one of the important components of some pharmaceutical preparations. Consumption of C. majus preparations possesses toxic effects on the liver although the effect becomes controversial with its hepatoprotective effect. Numerous active constituents of C. majus interact with various drug metabolizing enzymes that mimic possible interactions of this herb with the conventional drugs. This review provides detailed phytochemical, pharmacological and toxicological information of C. majus along with mechanisms of action of its various active compounds on different aspects of pharmacology. This review also highlights plausible drug interaction of its various active compounds and the future prospect of this herb.
The benefits and risks associated with cholinesterase inhibitor therapy in Alzheimer’s disease

The ‘second-generation’ cholinesterase inhibitors (ChEIs), donepezil, galantamine and rivastigmine, are a class of medications that are currently approved for the treatment of mild-to-moderate Alzheimer’s disease (AD). These medications have proven efficacy in improving cognition, behaviour, activities of daily living, and global functioning in mild-to-moderate AD. They have also been shown to reduce caregiver stress and to delay time to nursing home placement. Two separate meta-analyses have indicated that ChEIs confer a modest but significant therapeutic benefit in the treatment of AD, despite higher rates of treatment discontinuation and side effects than placebo. There is growing evidence to support their efficacy in treating moderate-to-severe AD. ChEIs are generally well-tolerated, with side effects that tend to be dose-related and are most problematic during dose titration. The most common adverse effects, related to cholinergic stimulation in the brain and peripheral tissues, include gastrointestinal, cardiorespiratory, extrapyramidal, genitourinary, and musculoskeletal symptoms, as well as sleep disturbances. Few clinically significant drug–drug interactions with ChEIs have been identified. Three head-to-head trials of ChEIs in the treatment of AD have been published to date, but are limited due to their open-label design, rates of titration, and the drug dosage levels utilised. Further study is needed to examine other indications for ChEIs, as well as their combination with newer treatments, such as memantine.
Cascaded H Bridge Multi Level Inverter Based Unified Power Quality Conditioner

This paper is proposing a cascaded H bridge (CHB) multilevel inverter based unified power quality conditioner (UPQC) for mitigation multiple power quality problems, such as voltage harmonics, voltage sag, current harmonics, reactive power compensation and current unbalance. This paper implements a three level UPQC by using Six H Bridge with three DC link capacitors. Compare to the conventional CHB based UPQC it does not require any additional transformer in the shunt part of the UPQC for ensuring the isolation. However, this proposed CHB based three-level UPQC is ensuring the isolation for HB by providing the isolated transformers in the series part of the UPQC. Hence the proposed topology will be saving three transformers compare to conventional topologies. The isolated phases in the series part of the proposed UPQC may cause for the zero sequence or unbalance in the load voltage. To defeat the voltage unbalance problem a modified control strategy is explained in this paper by introducing an additional PI controller. The performance of the proposed topology system is analyzed and verified through the simulation software MATLAB/Simulink