Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Ecological Models in Support of Regulatory Risk Assessments of Pesticides: Developing a Strategy for the Future

Abstract This brief communication reports on the main findings of the LEMTOX workshop, held from 9 to 12 September 2007, at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) in Leipzig, Germany. The workshop brought together a diverse group of stakeholders from academia, regulatory authorities, contract research organizations, and industry, representing Europe, the United States, and Asia, to discuss the role of ecological modeling in risk assessments of pesticides, particularly under the European regulatory framework. The following questions were addressed: What are the potential benefits of using ecological models in pesticide registration and risk assessment? What obstacles prevent ecological modeling from being used routinely in regulatory submissions? What actions are needed to overcome the identified obstacles? What recommendations should be made to ensure good modeling practice in this context? The workshop focused exclusively on population models, and discussion was focused on those categories of population models that link effects on individuals (e.g., survival, growth, reproduction, behavior) to effects on population dynamics. The workshop participants concluded that the overall benefits of ecological modeling are that it could bring more ecology into ecological risk assessment, and it could provide an excellent tool for exploring the importance of, and interactions among, ecological complexities. However, there are a number of challenges that need to be overcome before such models will receive wide acceptance for pesticide risk assessment, despite having been used extensively in other contexts (e.g., conservation biology). The need for guidance on Good Modeling Practice (on model development, analysis, interpretation, evaluation, documentation, and communication), as well as the need for case studies that can be used to explore the added value of ecological models for risk assessment, were identified as top priorities. Assessing recovery potential of exposed nontarget species and clarifying the ecological relevance of standard laboratory test results are two areas for which ecological modeling may be able to provide considerable benefits.
Low frequency dielectric response of multilayer graphene/epoxy nanocomposites

In this paper the properties of epoxy-based nanocomposites with multilayer graphene (MLG) as a filler are investigated. In particular dielectric properties, such as conductivity and polarization characteristics, are studied as a function of MLG filler content, ranging between 0.05 wt. % to 0.5 wt. %, through charging / discharging current measurements at the field of 25 kV/mm and two temperatures (20°C and 60°C). Experimental results show that steady-state value of the charging current (conduction current) increases remarkably with a higher filler content. Moreover, Fourier analysis of discharging currents shows that dielectric susceptibility at very low frequency is significantly affected by the addition of MLG nanoplatelets. These results indicate that even a small percentage of MLG nanofiller is able to modify the electrical properties of the final nanocomposite.
Interferon-Responsive Protein Kinase (p68) and Proliferating Cell Nuclear Antigen Are Inversely Distributed in Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma

PKR (protein kinase, interferon-responsive) is a ribosomal-associated protein kinase found in all human cells. When activated by dsRNA or polyanionic substances, PKR efficiently inhibits cellular protein synthesis. PKR expression has been correlated with cellular differentiation in a number of tumor types, including squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck region. Although transfection of PKR into mouse fibroblasts and yeast cells inhibits proliferation, it is not known if modulation of native PKR levels occurs during cellular proliferation and differentiation in human normal and neoplastic tissues. To determine whether PKR expression was inversely related to proliferative activity in vivo, we used double-label immunohistochemistry to colocalize PKR and the proliferation marker, proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA), in a series of head and neck squamous cell carcinomas. Overall, neoplasms demonstrating high levels of PKR showed low levels of PCNA immunoreactivity; carcinomas with low levels of PKR expressed high levels of PCNA. Within individual tumors, PKR and PCNA showed an inverse regional distribution: PKR was located predominantly in the center of tumor nests, while PCNA was restricted to the periphery. Patients whose tumors expressed high levels of both PKR and PCNA had the longest mean disease-free survival. These findings support the hypothesis that PKR levels are modulated in cell proliferation and differentiation in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma. Further studies are needed to clarify the mechanisms underlying the antiproliferative activity of PKR.
Human Obesity Reduces the Number of Hepatic Leptin Receptor (Ob-R) Expressing NK Cells

Objective. In the industrialized world, obesity is an increasing socioeconomic health problem. Obese subjects have a higher risk of developing several types of cancer. NK cells are an integral component of the innate immune system, able to destruct tumor cells. The adipokine leptin plays a crucial role in the development of obesity and its related diseases. Peripheral leptin signaling is modulated by the liver. Methods. The aim of this study was to evaluate the number of hepatic NK cells (CD56+) and the number of leptin-receptor positive (Ob-R+) cells in the livers of five normal-weight and five obese humans. Livers were removed during autopsy and accurately defined sections were stained immunohistochemically and CD56+, Ob-R+, and double-positive cells were quantified. Results. Results revealed a dramatic reduction of NK cells and Ob-R-expressing NK cells in the livers of obese individuals. Conclusions. The present study demonstrates, for the first time, body-weight-dependent numbers of hepatic NK cells. This supports the hypothesis of obesity-associated alterations of immune cell numbers in different human organs.
IODINE IN CONTRAST AGENTS AND SKIN DISINFECTANTS IS THE MAJOR CAUSE OF HYPOTHYROIDISM IN PREMATURE INFANTS DURING INTENSIVE CARE

Unexpectedly, the administration of only 1 ml radiopaque dye and a single skin disinfection with PVP-iodine (PVP-I) induced clinical hypothyroidism in a premature newborn. Therefore, we studied the impact of two different, non-ionic, iodine containing contrast agents (administered for diagnostic reasons), Amipaque 01) and Omnipaque (2), and of PVP-I alone (3) on the immature thyroid gland by measuring TSH, T4, T3 and I excretion before, 5 and 14 days (TSH 0, 5, 14, resp.) after I-exposure. Rarely infants of group 1 and 2 received single doses of PVP-I. The content of free iodide is higher in the solubilized contrast agent (Omni-paque). TSH values(μU/ml) are shown below (medians):Total iodine excretion was excessively increased in all groups. In group 1, T4 and T3 levels were in the lower normal range and only 1 case of transient hyperthyrotropinemia was observed. In groups 2 and 3 T4 and T3 values were very low; we diagnosed hypothyroidism in 90 % of preterm and in 30 % of term infants and treated 8 in whom hypothyroidism persisted for > 14 days.Conclusion: Prematurity and iodide content are responsible for the occurrence of transient hypothyroidism in infants in intensive care.
Electrical modeling of carbon nanotube based through-silicon vias for three-dimensional ICs

In this work, through-silicon vias (TSV) filled with carbon nanotube (CNT) bundle are investigated based on the equivalent circuit model. The concept of effective complex conductivity is employed for accurately characterizing the impacts of CNT kinetic inductance. The high frequency electrical performance of CNT based TSVs is captured and analyzed. Finally, the TSVs filled with a composite of Cu and CNT are discussed.
Relationship Between Clinical Signs and Symptoms of Convergence Insufficiency

Purpose The percentage of children who are symptomatic has been shown to increase with the number of signs of convergence insufficiency (CI). Our goal was to investigate whether there is a relationship between the severity of the clinical signs of CI and symptom level reported in children with a three-sign symptomatic CI. Methods The Convergence Insufficiency Treatment Trial enrolled 221 children with symptomatic CI from ages 9 to 17 years. Inclusion criteria included the following three signs of CI: (1) exophoria at near at least 4&Dgr; greater than at distance, (2) insufficient positive fusional vergence (PFV) at near, and (3) a receded near point of convergence (NPC) of 6 cm break or greater. The relationships between the severity of each sign of CI (mild, moderate, and severe) and the level of symptoms as measured by the Convergence Insufficiency Symptom Survey (CISS) at baseline were evaluated. Results Mean CISS scores were not significantly different between mild, moderate, and severe exophoria (p = 0.60), PFV blur (p = 0.99), Sheard’s criterion (p = 0.89), or NPC break (p = 0.84). There was also no difference between the frequency of subjects scoring at mild, moderate, or severe levels on the CISS and the severity of each sign of CI. Correlations between individual clinical signs and the CISS score were very low and not statistically significant. Conclusions Among symptomatic children with a CISS score of 16 or higher and three clinical signs of CI, there is no further association between the severity of the clinical signs and their level of symptoms.
Nutrient intake and haematological status of vegetarians and age-sex matched omnivores.

OBJECTIVE The study was designed to investigate the nutritional intake and haematological status of adult vegetarians. DESIGN Cross-sectional comparison of vegetarians and age/sex-matched omnivores. SETTING Free-living community subjects. SUBJECTS Fifty vegetarians were recruited by local advertisement. Each vegetarian selected their own age/sex-matched 'friend' control. OUTCOME MEASURES Each subject completed a 12 day dietary record. Haemoglobin, red cell indices, and serum ferritin, B12 and folate were measured. RESULTS Protein, saturated fat and vitamin D intake were significantly lower in the vegetarians, particularly in the vegans. Dietary fibre was higher in the vegetarians, and intake of calcium and zinc was similar. Mean (SD) iron intake in the vegetarians and vegans of 16.8 (4.8) mg/day was significantly greater than that of the omnivores: 14.6 (4.3) mg/day (P = 0.02). All the iron consumed by the vegetarians was non-haem; for the omnivores 10% was haem iron. Serum ferritin concentrations were significantly lower in male vegetarians than omnivores; mean (SD): 36.6 (36.0) and 105.4 (78.7) ng/ml, respectively, P < 0.01; and significantly more had values below 12 ng/ml (P < 0.001), despite having higher iron intakes which exceeded the Recommended Nutrient Intake (RNI). Female vegetarians also had lower ferritin concentrations than omnivores; mean (SD) 13.6 (7.5) compared to 33.6 (54.3) ng/ml, P < 0.01, but similar numbers of women had values below 12 ng/ml (42% and 39%). The vegans all had B12 intakes below the RNI; and 35% of the long-term vegetarians and vegans had serum vitamin B12 concentrations below the reference range. CONCLUSION Although the vegetarians had diets nearer to the recommended diet with a lower fat and salt content, a significant number need advice to improve their haematological status. Recommended intakes of iron may also need to be higher for vegetarians, particularly men.
Systemic associations of retinal microvascular signs: a review of recent population‐based studies

Retinal microvascular signs, such as generalized retinal arteriolar narrowing, focal arteriolar narrowing, arteriovenous nicking and retinal haemorrhages, microaneurysms and cotton wool spots, are common fundus findings in the general population, even in individuals without hypertension or diabetes. Recent population‐based studies have provided new insights into the systemic associations and clinical significance of these retinal signs. Studies show that these retinal microvascular signs are strongly associated with elevated blood pressure (BP). Generalized retinal arteriolar narrowing may be associated with markers of inflammation and risk of diabetes and hypertension. Retinal haemorrhages, microaneurysms and cotton wool spots are associated with risk of subclinical and clinical stroke, cognitive impairment, renal dysfunction and cardiovascular mortality, independent of BP and cardiovascular risk factors. A consistent pattern of association between retinal microvascular signs and ischaemic heart disease has not been demonstrated. This suggests that patients with some retinopathy signs (retinal haemorrhages, microaneurysms and cotton wool spots) may benefit from a careful systemic evaluation and, if supported by further research, appropriate risk reduction therapy.
Robust sound event detection in bioacoustic sensor networks

Bioacoustic sensors, sometimes known as autonomous recording units (ARUs), can record sounds of wildlife over long periods of time in scalable and minimally invasive ways. Deriving per-species abundance estimates from these sensors requires detection, classification, and quantification of animal vocalizations as individual acoustic events. Yet, variability in ambient noise, both over time and across sensors, hinders the reliability of current automated systems for sound event detection (SED), such as convolutional neural networks (CNN) in the time-frequency domain. In this article, we develop, benchmark, and combine several machine listening techniques to improve the generalizability of SED models across heterogeneous acoustic environments. As a case study, we consider the problem of detecting avian flight calls from a ten-hour recording of nocturnal bird migration, recorded by a network of six ARUs in the presence of heterogeneous background noise. Starting from a CNN yielding state-of-the-art accuracy on this task, we introduce two noise adaptation techniques, respectively integrating short-term (60 ms) and long-term (30 min) context. First, we apply per-channel energy normalization (PCEN) in the time-frequency domain, which applies short-term automatic gain control to every subband in the mel-frequency spectrogram. Secondly, we replace the last dense layer in the network by a context-adaptive neural network (CA-NN) layer, i.e. an affine layer whose weights are dynamically adapted at prediction time by an auxiliary network taking long-term summary statistics of spectrotemporal features as input. We show that PCEN reduces temporal overfitting across dawn vs. dusk audio clips whereas context adaptation on PCEN-based summary statistics reduces spatial overfitting across sensor locations. Moreover, combining them yields state-of-the-art results that are unmatched by artificial data augmentation alone. We release a pre-trained version of our best performing system under the name of BirdVoxDetect, a ready-to-use detector of avian flight calls in field recordings.
Evaluation and Validation of an Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay and an Immunochromatographic Test for Serological Diagnosis of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome

ABSTRACT A newly developed severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-specific enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was further validated to confirm cutoff values and evaluate its diagnostic performance with clinical samples. In parallel, an immunochromatographic test was also evaluated. A total of 227 clinical serum specimens collected from SARS patients were used in the study, together with 385 samples from healthy donors. By use of an immunofluorescent (IF) test as the “gold standard, ” both the ELISA and the immunochromatographic test were able to detect immunoglobulin G antibodies to SARS not only from late-convalescent-stage samples (>21 days from the onset of clinical symptoms), as previously established, but also from early-acute-phase samples (1 to 10 days from onset). The ELISA, using an optical density (OD) of 0.25 as its cutoff value, produced the best sensitivity while maintaining high specificity. It detected SARS-specific antibodies in 58, 70, 75, and 95%, respectively, of the four groups of samples collected from patients 1 to 10 days, 11 to 20 days, 21 to 30 days, and more than 30 days after the onset of clinical symptoms. Similarly, the immunochromatographic test detected SARS-specific antibodies in 55, 68, 81, and 79% of the four groups, respectively. The overall specificities for the ELISA and the rapid test were 99.5 and 97.7%, respectively. Although the positive correlation observed between the ELISA OD values and the IF titers was moderate (r = 0.6915; P < 0.001), the detection rates of both the ELISA and the rapid test were found well in agreement with the IF titers.
On the marginal likelihood and cross-validation

In Bayesian statistics, the marginal likelihood, also known as the evidence, is used to evaluate model fit as it quantifies the joint probability of the data under the prior. In contrast, non-Bayesian models are typically compared using cross-validation on held-out data, either through $k$-fold partitioning or leave-$p$-out subsampling. We show that the marginal likelihood is formally equivalent to exhaustive leave-$p$-out crossvalidation averaged over all values of $p$ and all held-out test sets when using the log posterior predictive probability as the scoring rule. Moreover, the log posterior predictive score is the only coherent scoring rule under data exchangeability. This offers new insight into the marginal likelihood and cross-validation, and highlights the potential sensitivity of the marginal likelihood to the choice of the prior. We suggest an alternative approach using cumulative cross-validation following a preparatory training phase. Our work has connections to prequential analysis and intrinsic Bayes factors, but is motivated in a different way.
Development and calcium level changes in pre‐implantation porcine nuclear transfer embryos activated with 6‐DMAP after fusion

This study investigated the effect of treatment with 6‐dimethylaminopurine (6‐DMAP) following fusion on in vitro development of porcine nuclear transfer (NT) embryos. Frozen thawed ear skin cells were transferred into the perivitelline space of enucleated oocytes. Reconstructed oocytes were fused and activated with electric pulse in 0.3 M mannitol supplemented with either 0.1 or 1.0 mM CaCl2. In each calcium concentration, activated oocytes were divided into three groups. Two groups of them were exposed to either ionomycin (I + 6‐DMAP or 6‐DMAP alone. In experiment 2, fused NT embryos in 0.3 M mannitol containing 1.0 mM CaCl2 were exposed to 6‐DMAP either immediately or 20 min after fusion/activation. For 0.1 mM CaCl2, oocytes activated with either I + 6‐DMAP or 6‐DMAP alone showed a higher (P < 0.05) developmental rate to the blastocyst stage than those activated with an electric pulse alone (26.7 and 22.5 vs. 12.5%). For 1.0 mM CaCl2, oocytes activated with either I + 6‐DMAP or 6‐DMAP alone showed significantly higher (P < 0.05) developmental rate to the blastocyst stage (35.6 and 28.3 vs. 19.8%). Developmental rate to the blastocyst stage was (P < 0.05) increased in NT embryos activated with 6‐DMAP 20 min after fusion. 6‐DMAP made a higher and wider Ca2+ transient compared to that induced by electric pulses (Fig. 3). The fluctuation lasted during the time that oocytes were cultured in 6‐DMAP. Regardless of Ca2+ concentration in fusion medium, activation with 6‐DMAP following electric pulses supported more development of porcine NT embryos. Activation of NT embryos with 6‐DMAP after fusion in the presence of 1.0 mM CaCl2 could support better developmental rate to the blastocyst stage. Mol. Reprod. Dev. 74: 1158–1164, 2007. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Limits of III-V nanowire growth based on particle dynamics

Crystal growth of III-V semiconductor nanowires assisted by a liquid particle/droplet occurs at the solid-liquid interface. This makes the stability of a droplet on the top of a nanowire crucial for successful nanowire growth. Using in-situ transmission electron microscopy together with theoretical analysis of the capillary forces involved, we conclude that truncation of the solid-liquid interface extend the stability range for a droplet in contact with the nanowire top interface. This provides insights to the limits of nanowire growth and is used to experimentally estimate the surface energy of the wurtzite $\{11\bar{2}\}$ facet of GaAs.
GAPNet: Graph Attention based Point Neural Network for Exploiting Local Feature of Point Cloud

Exploiting fine-grained semantic features on point cloud is still challenging due to its irregular and sparse structure in a non-Euclidean space. Among existing studies, PointNet provides an efficient and promising approach to learn shape features directly on unordered 3D point cloud and has achieved competitive performance. However, local feature that is helpful towards better contextual learning is not considered. Meanwhile, attention mechanism shows efficiency in capturing node representation on graph-based data by attending over neighboring nodes. In this paper, we propose a novel neural network for point cloud, dubbed GAPNet, to learn local geometric representations by embedding graph attention mechanism within stacked Multi-Layer-Perceptron (MLP) layers. Firstly, we introduce a GAPLayer to learn attention features for each point by highlighting different attention weights on neighborhood. Secondly, in order to exploit sufficient features, a multi-head mechanism is employed to allow GAPLayer to aggregate different features from independent heads. Thirdly, we propose an attention pooling layer over neighbors to capture local signature aimed at enhancing network robustness. Finally, GAPNet applies stacked MLP layers to attention features and local signature to fully extract local geometric structures. The proposed GAPNet architecture is tested on the ModelNet40 and ShapeNet part datasets, and achieves state-of-the-art performance in both shape classification and part segmentation tasks.
A Universal Approximation Result for Difference of Log-Sum-Exp Neural Networks

We show that a neural network whose output is obtained as the difference of the outputs of two feedforward networks with exponential activation function in the hidden layer and logarithmic activation function in the output node, referred to as log-sum-exp (LSE) network, is a smooth universal approximator of continuous functions over convex, compact sets. By using a logarithmic transform, this class of network maps to a family of subtraction-free ratios of generalized posynomials (GPOS), which we also show to be universal approximators of positive functions over log-convex, compact subsets of the positive orthant. The main advantage of difference-LSE networks with respect to classical feedforward neural networks is that, after a standard training phase, they provide surrogate models for a design that possesses a specific difference-of-convex-functions form, which makes them optimizable via relatively efficient numerical methods. In particular, by adapting an existing difference-of-convex algorithm to these models, we obtain an algorithm for performing an effective optimization-based design. We illustrate the proposed approach by applying it to the data-driven design of a diet for a patient with type-2 diabetes and to a nonconvex optimization problem.