Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The soil bacterial community regulates germination of Plasmodiophora brassicae resting spores rather than root exudates

Clubroot, caused by Plasmodiophora brassicae, is a severe soil-borne disease that restricts the production of cruciferous crops worldwide. A better understanding of biotic and abiotic factors regulating germination of P. brassicae resting spores in the soil is significant for developing novel control methods. Previous studies reported that root exudates can trigger P. brassicae resting spore germination, thus enabling a targeted attack of P. brassicae on host plant roots. However, we found that native root exudates collected under sterile conditions from host or non-host plants cannot stimulate the germination of sterile spores, indicating that root exudates may not be direct stimulation factors. Instead, our studies demonstrate that soil bacteria are essential for triggering germination. Through 16s rRNA amplicon sequencing analysis, we found that certain carbon sources and nitrate can reshape the initial microbial community to an inducing community leading to the germination of P. brassicae resting spores. The stimulating communities significantly differed in composition and abundance of bacterial taxa compared to the non-stimulating ones. Several enriched bacterial taxa in stimulating community were significantly correlated with spore germination rates and may be involved as stimulation factors. Based on our findings, a multi-factorial ‘pathobiome’ model comprising abiotic and biotic factors is proposed to represent the putative plant-microbiome-pathogen interactions associated with breaking spore dormancy of P. brassicae in soil. This study presents novel views on P. brassicae pathogenicity and lays the foundation for novel sustainable control strategies of clubroot.
Severely Attenuated Visual Feedback Processing in Children on the Autism Spectrum

Individuals on the autism spectrum often exhibit atypicality in their sensory perception, but the neural underpinnings of these perceptual differences remain incompletely understood. One proposed mechanism is an imbalance in higher-order feedback re-entrant inputs to early sensory cortices during sensory perception, leading to increased propensity to focus on local object features over global context. We explored this theory by measuring visual evoked potentials during contour integration as considerable work has revealed that these processes are largely driven by feedback inputs from higher-order ventral visual stream regions. We tested the hypothesis that autistic individuals would have attenuated evoked responses to illusory contours compared with neurotypical controls. Electrophysiology was acquired while 29 autistic and 31 neurotypical children (7-17 years old, inclusive of both males and females) passively viewed a random series of Kanizsa figure stimuli, each consisting of four inducers that were aligned either at random rotational angles or such that contour integration would form an illusory square. Autistic children demonstrated attenuated automatic contour integration over lateral occipital regions relative to neurotypical controls. The data are discussed in terms of the role of predictive feedback processes on perception of global stimulus features and the notion that weakened “priors” may play a role in the visual processing anomalies seen in autism. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Children on the autism spectrum differ from typically developing children in many aspects of their processing of sensory stimuli. One proposed mechanism for these differences is an imbalance in higher-order feedback to primary sensory regions, leading to an increased focus on local object features rather than global context. However, systematic investigation of these feedback mechanisms remains limited. Using EEG and a visual illusion paradigm that is highly dependent on intact feedback processing, we demonstrated significant disruptions to visual feedback processing in children with autism. This provides much needed experimental evidence that advances our understanding of the contribution of feedback processing to visual perception in autism spectrum disorder.
Development and Content Validation of a Questionnaire for Measuring Beliefs About Using Nicotine Replacement Therapy for Smoking Cessation in Pregnancy

Abstract Introduction Improving adherence to nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) in pregnancy may result in higher smoking cessation rates. Informed by the Necessities and Concerns Framework, we developed an intervention targeting pregnancy NRT adherence. To evaluate this, we derived the NRT in pregnancy necessities and concerns questionnaire (NiP-NCQ), which measures perceived need for NRT and concerns about potential consequences. Aims and Methods Here we describe the development and content validation of NiP-NCQ. From qualitative work, we identified potentially modifiable determinants of pregnancy NRT adherence and classed these as necessity beliefs or concerns. We translated these into draft self-report items and piloted items on 39 pregnant women offered NRT and a prototype NRT adherence intervention, assessing distributions and sensitivity to change. After removing poorly performing items, smoking cessation experts (N = 16) completed an online discriminant content validation (DCV) task to determine whether retained items measure a necessity belief, concern, both, or neither construct. Results Draft NRT concern items encompassed safety for the baby, side effects, too much or insufficient nicotine, and addictiveness. Draft necessity belief items included perceived need for NRT for short- and longer-term abstinence, and desire to minimize or cope without NRT. Of 22 out of 29 items retained after piloting, four were removed following the DCV task: three were judged to measure neither construct and one possibly both. The final NiP-NCQ comprised nine items per construct (18 total). Conclusions The NiP-NCQ measures potentially modifiable determinants of pregnancy NRT adherence within two distinct constructs and may have research and clinical utility for evaluating interventions targeting these. Implications Poor adherence to NRT in pregnancy may result from low perceived need and concerns about consequences; interventions challenging these beliefs may yield higher smoking cessation rates. To evaluate an NRT adherence intervention informed by the Necessities and Concerns Framework, we developed the NiP-NCQ. Through the content development and refinement processes described in this paper, we derived an evidence-based, 18-item questionnaire measuring two distinct constructs within two nine-item subscales. Higher concerns and lower necessity beliefs indicate more negative NRT beliefs; NiP-NCQ may have research and clinical utility for interventions targeting these.
Investigation of pain sensitivity following 3 nights of disrupted sleep in healthy individuals

Poor quality sleep is a common complaint among people with chronic pain. The co‐occurrence of poor sleep quality and chronic pain often comes with increased pain intensity, more disability and a higher cost of healthcare. Poor sleep has been suggested to affect measures of peripheral and central pain mechanisms. To date, sleep provocations are the only models proven to affect measures of central pain mechanisms in healthy subjects. However, there are limited studies investigating the effect of several nights of sleep disruption on measures of central pain mechanisms.
Magnetic refrigeration materials (invited)

Research on the magnetocaloric effect and its application for cooling near room temperature over the past few years has helped to move this phenomenon from a scientific curiosity to an emerging technology. Two of the most important advances include the demonstration which proved that it is possible to obtain significant cooling powers (600 W) at high Carnot efficiencies (60%) and with a large coefficient of performance (15) near room temperature in moderately strong magnetic fields (⩽5 T); and the discovery of the giant magnetocaloric effect in the Gd5(SixGe1−x)4 series of alloys. Also, new knowledge about the magnetocaloric effect has been gained. This includes: the relationship between the nature of the magnetic transformation(s) and the temperature dependence of the magnetocaloric effect, the entropy utilized in the magnetocaloric process, and the role of impurities on the giant magnetocaloric effect.
Performances of Hyperbolical and Spherical Lens Imaging Systems At Millimeter Wavelengths

This paper mainly discusses the optical transfer functions (OTF) of two lenses systems with different aberrations according to power distribution, which is calculated via vectorial Stratton-Chu diffraction integral combining with ray-tracing method. The results in the meridian plane are compared with that of Airy's pattern distribution, which has no aberration. We find that diffraction can affect the OTF distribution severely, which is a little different to the classic viewpoint in optics that the OTF is mainly decided by the central power distribution. This work is aimed to study the relations between the OTF and the aberrations of the lenses systems and to estimate the performances of the lenses imaging systems.
Comparative study for the nondestructive testing of advanced ceramic materials by infrared thermography and holographic interferometry

Advanced ceramic materials are increasingly employed in varied and new applications where improved electrical, mechanical and/or thermal properties are sought. For instance, in a manner similar to carbon or glass fiber reinforced plastics, ceramic matrix composites (CMCs) are designed to improve the naturally brittle characteristics of monolithic ceramics thanks to the inclusion of fibers. Among the main interests for advanced ceramics are the increase in the operation temperature of components, the elimination of the use of cooling fluids, and weight savings. In this paper, the capabilities of infrared thermography and holographic interferometry are investigated and compared for the nondestructive assessment of advanced ceramic materials using three experimental specimens: (1) a monolithic green ceramic tile with fabricated defects, (2) a CMC specimen (from production reject) with a porous alumina matrix reinforced with glass fibers, and (3) a sandwich structure consisting on a carbon fiber honeycomb core with a ceramic plate bonded in one side.
Helium-rich stars in globular clusters: constraints for self-enrichment by massive stars

Abstract Globular clusters exhibit peculiar chemical patterns where Fe and heavy elements are constant inside a given cluster while light elements (Li to Al) show strong star-to-star variations. This pattern can be explained by self-pollution of the intracluster gas by the slow winds of fast rotating massive stars. Besides, several main sequences have been observed in several globular clusters which can be understood only with different stellar populations with distinct He content. Here we explore how these He abundances can constrain the self-enrichment in globular clusters.
A Diagnostic for Evaluating the Representation of Turbulence in Atmospheric Models at the Kilometric Scale

AbstractTurbulence is well represented by atmospheric models at very fine grid sizes, from 10 to 100 m, for which turbulent movements are mainly resolved, and by atmospheric models with grid sizes greater than 2 km, for which those movements are entirely parameterized. But what happens at intermediate scales, Wyngaard’s so-called terra incognita? Here an original method is presented that provides a new diagnostic by calculating the subgrid and resolved parts of five variables at different scales: turbulent kinetic energy (TKE), heat and moisture fluxes, and potential temperature and mixing ratio variances. They are established at intermediate scales for dry and cumulus-topped convective boundary layers. The similarity theorem allows the determination of the dimensionless variables of the problem. When the subgrid and resolved parts are studied, a new dimensionless variable, the dimensionless mesh size , needs to be added to the Deardorff free convective scaling variables, where h is the boundary layer heig.
Adaptive feedforward and feedback control of non-linear time-varying uncertain systems

An adaptive regulation scheme is proposed for a class of non-linear time-varying systems with parametric uncertainties. The proposed approach is based upon a combination of the adaptive backstepping design method and a feedforward control scheme to design a non-linear adaptive feedforward and feedback controller, such that robust output tracking can be achieved even in the presence of structured uncertainties, as well as time-varying, measurable disturbances. Although the systematic design procedure does not a priori satisfy the feedback linearizable system with triangular structures, however, the constructed condition must be satisfied to ensure that the control scheme has a stable inversion. Under the feasibility condition, the states of the resulting closed-loop system would be guaranteed boundedness and converge to a bounded set. Finally, the proposed methodology is illustrated by a chemical reactor example.
Mellin Transform Applied to Uncertainty Analysis in Hydrology/Hydraulics

In hydraulic and hydrologic design and analysis, engineers frequently face uncertainties involving quantities that cannot be assessed with absolute accuracy. Under such circumstances, uncertainty analysis is undertaken to examine the effects of uncertain factors on the results of design and analysis. The paper introduces a mathematical technique called the Mellin transform. The technique is analytically convenient in determining the exact statistical moments of a random variable that is a function of several nonnegative independent random variables in a multiplicative form. Two examples are given to demonstrate the application of the Mellin transform to uncertainty analysis of hydrologic and hydraulic problems.
Diet composition of Asiatic lions in protected areas and multi-use land matrix

Abstract. Comparative studies on the diet of large felids in protected areas (PAs) and surrounding multi-use landscapes are important for their conservation. The Asiatic lion is an endangered felid distributed in Gir PA and the surrounding multi-use land matrix. Based on scat analyses, we assessed the dietary composition of Asiatic lions. The frequency of occurrence (FOO), biomass consumption model, dietary niche breadth and dietary overlap index was used to quantify diet. The Asiatic lion ate more wild prey (74%) than domestic livestock (26%) in the Gir PA. In contrast, lion diets comprised 51% wild prey and 42% domestic livestock in the multi-use land matrix. Sambar contributed most (38%) to the diet in PAs, while blue bull most (29%) in the multi-use land matrix. However, diet diversity and niche breadth were similar between these two areas. The dietary overlap in the lions' diet between these two areas was 0.52. The results suggest that large-size wild ungulates are the main prey species in Gir PA, while in the surrounding multi-use land matrix, both large wild ungulates and domestic livestock are the main prey. The present study may help future lion conservation management decisions.
Asynchronous Automata Processing on GPUs

Finite-state automata serve as compute kernels for many application domains such as pattern matching and data analytics. Existing approaches on GPUs exploit three levels of parallelism in automata processing tasks: 1)~input stream level, 2)~automaton-level and 3)~state-level. Among these, only state-level parallelism is intrinsic to automata while the other two levels of parallelism depend on the number of automata and input streams to be processed. As GPU resources increase, a parallelism-limited automata processing task can underutilize GPU compute resources. To this end, we propose AsyncAP, a low-overhead approach that optimizes for both scalability and throughput. Our insight is that most automata processing tasks have an additional source of parallelism originating from the input symbols which has not been leveraged before. Making the matching process associated with the automata tasks asynchronous, i.e., parallel GPU threads start processing an input stream from different input locations instead of processing it serially, improves throughput significantly and scales with input length. When the task does not have enough parallelism to utilize all the GPU cores, detailed evaluation across 12 evaluated applications shows that AsyncAP achieves up to 58× speedup on average over the state-of-the-art GPU automata processing engine. When the tasks have enough parallelism to utilize GPU cores, AsyncAP still achieves 2.4× speedup.
West Nile virus–associated HLA‐DRB1 alleles in the Greek population: A structural perspective

The HLA system plays a significant role via the regulation of the immune system and contributes to the progression and protection of many diseases. In our previous study, several HLA‐DRB1 alleles were found to have a susceptible or protective role toward infection and neuroinvasion of West Nile Virus (WNV) in the Greek population. As expected, the majority of polymorphic positions are located in the peptide‐binding region of the molecule. In the present work, the structure of these alleles was studied in silico, to examine the effect of polymorphism on the conformation of DRB1 proteins, with the aspect of WNV association. More specifically, molecular dynamics simulations were used for structural prediction of 23 available alleles. These modeled alleles were evaluated using root‐mean‐square deviation (RMSD) and root‐mean‐square fluctuation analysis. Low RMSD values indicate that different alleles have similar structures. Furthermore, low fluctuation was observed in the peptide‐binding region between alleles with the higher and the lowest RMSD values. These findings indicate that probably variable residues do not affect the behavior of DRB1 alleles in WNV disease, by causing structural differences between them.
Dispersion of tracers in the deep ocean

Exact solutions are used to contrast the behaviour of vertical dye streaks and of point discharge in the deep ocean. After a few inertial periods the growth of the contaminant cloud in both cases can be modelled by a diffusion equation with slowly varying coefficients. However, the apparent long-term diffusivity for the dye streak can be as much as three times as large as the horizontal diffusivity for the point discharge, depending upon the precise time of release. This anomalously large rate of spreading for the dye streak can persist for several weeks until sufficient time has elapsed for vertical diffusion over the vertical lengthscale of the dominant inertial- frequency waves.
Opportunistic computing in fully decentralized and mobile networks

The interplay of social networking platforms, information retrieval techniques and dynamic wireless communications has grown exponentially over the past few years. Together, these tools are shaping new forms of fully decentralized computation and applications. These opportunities are amplified by the relative simplicity to set up networks of small or tiny devices, such as wireless sensors and active or passive RFIDs, that allow to extract information from the environment, to process and to share it, expanding our data access and interaction capabilities and blurring the border between the digital and physical world. These new technologies coexist with traditional ones and entail a model of communication and computation that is decentralized and opportunistic in nature, in which new challenges arise and many standard assumptions do not hold. At the same time, more mature technologies, such as cellular telephony, have evolved to the point where we have small, portable, but relatively powerful devices, often endowed with sensing capabilities, that can run sophisticated applications and can exchange data in an ad-hoc fashion using wireless technologies such as Bluetooth. As a result, a number of potential applications arise, in which users interact across the digital and physical world, exchanging and processing data extracted from their local environment in real time. While a number of theoretical models of distributed computation have been proposed in the past, new efforts have been done recently in order to describe the interaction and the computing power of networks of tiny devices with limited capabilities. One first objective of this thesis was studying methods for the opportunistic estimation of statistics of interest in fully decentralized environments and their use to implement key tools in social networking applications. Since many scenarios of interest for this work involve dynamic networks of wireless devices with limited or very limited capabilities, another direction of research in my work was to investigate the limits of theoretical models proposed to describe them. Furthermore, many opportunistic scenarios of interest involve computations over evolving networks, dynamically formed by the interaction of wireless devices carried by humans, moving in a given area of interest. Intuitively, the performance of applications in such scenarios can be greatly affected by the characteristics of the underlying evolving networks. In order to address this aspect and to gain an initial understanding of its impact in practice, I exploited recently proposed technologies, to perform real time tracking of social interactions occurring between individuals in the physical space. This activity resulted in the collection of mobility and interaction traces in a number of indoor scenarios. In doing this, I also investigated techniques and methods to efficiently represent and to analyze evolving social network and to reconstruct them from real interaction traces.
Advancing our understanding of immigrants’ trust in police: the role of ethnicity, immigrant generational status and measurement

ABSTRACT Studies of immigrant populations point to numerous immigrant-specific factors that may explain their level of trust in police. Yet research on immigrants’ trust in police remains sparse, and available studies present contradictory findings. Some studies find that immigrants are more trusting of police than non-immigrants, while other studies find immigrants are less trusting of police. We argue that these contradictions can be explained by three factors: (1) how trust is measured; (2) immigrants’ ethnic group (e.g. minority vs non-minority); and (3) immigrants’ generational status (i.e. 1st vs. 2nd generation immigrant). To address these contradictions, we draw on survey data from 903 immigrants living in Sydney, Australia. We examine the relationship between ethnicity, immigrant generational status and various measures of trust in police. We find when trust is measured as an overarching orientation, minority immigrants tend to distrust police more than non-minority immigrants, and that 2nd generation immigrants are more distrusting than 1st generation immigrants. However, these findings vary when measuring trust multi-dimensionally and when accounting for the interaction between ethnicity and generational status. Implications for immigrant research and police practice are discussed.