Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Regional Activity in the Rat Anterior Cingulate Cortex and Insula during Persistence and Quitting in a Physical-Effort Task

As animals carry out behaviors, particularly costly ones, they must constantly assess whether or not to persist in the behavior or quit. The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) has been shown to assess the value of behaviors and to be especially sensitive to physical effort costs. Complimentary to these functions, the insula is thought to represent the internal state of the animal including factors such as hunger, thirst, and fatigue. Utilizing a novel weight lifting task for rats, we characterized the local field potential (LFP) activity of the ACC and anterior insula (AI) during effort expenditure. In the task male rats are challenged to work for sucrose reward, which costs progressively more effort over time to obtain. Rats are able to quit the task at any point. We found modest shifts in LFP theta (7-9 Hz) activity as the task got progressively more difficult in terms of absolute effort expenditure. However, when the LFP data were analyzed based on the rat’s relative progress towards quitting the task, or performance state, substantial shifts in LFP power in the theta and gamma (55-100 Hz) frequency bands were observed in ACC and AI. Both ACC and AI theta power decreased as the rats got closer to quitting, while ACC and AI gamma power increased. Furthermore, coherency between ACC and AI in the delta (2-4 Hz) range shifted alongside the rat’s performance state. Overall we show that ACC and AI LFP activity changes correlate to the rats’ relative performance state in an effort-based task. Significance Statement Animals need to assess whether or not a behavior is worth pursuing based on their internal states (e.g., hunger, fatigue) and the costs and benefits of the behavior. However, internal states often change as behaviors are carried out, such as becoming fatigued, necessitating constant reassessment as to whether to continue the behavior or quit. We characterized brain activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and insula, brain regions involved in cost-benefit decision making and internal state representations, respectively, as rats carried out a challenging physical-effort task. Both brain regions showed significant shifts in activity as the rats approached their quitting point. Our study provides one of the first characterizations of neural activity as an animal decides to quit an effortful task.
No-Till Corn Response to Crop Rotation and In-Row Residue Placement

Enhanced corn (Zea mays L.) yield responses to rotation in no-till systems may be due to the types and amounts of surface-placed plant residue. Research in 1989, 1990, and 1995 evaluated no-till corn yield response to various preceding crops and examined whether in-row residue removal affected no-till corn response to rotation crops. The soil was an imperfectly drained loam (medium, mixed, weakly to moderately calcareous Typic Hapludalf). The preceding crops were: corn harvested for grain or whole-plant silage; hard red spring wheat (Triticum aestivum L.); barley (Hordeum vulgare L.); red clover (Trifolium pratense L.) cover crops, following barley, that were killed by spraying either 3 wk (early-kill) or 1 d (late-kill) prior to corn planting; canola (Brassica napus L.); and soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr. ]. In-row residue was either retained while planting or cleared using planter-mounted, notched-disk row cleaners. Clearing in-row cover crop residue increased early-season corn growth and was associated with yield increases of 0.61 Mg ha -1 (8%) following early-killed red clover and 0.43 Mg ha -1 (6%) (P = 0.10) following late-killed red clover. In 2 of 3 yr, corn yields following early-killed red clover were similar to following soybean and greater than following grain corn, provided that in-row residue was cleared. Following the other crops, grain yield response to clearing in-row residue was smaller and less consistent over years. Preceding cropping affected early-season corn growth, with the largest plants at 5 wk after planting following either soybean or silage corn and the smallest following either red clover or grain corn. In 2 of 3 yr, when preceding crop effects on grain yield were statistically significant, yields following either soybean or spring wheat were more than 1.05 Mg ha -1 (16%) higher than after grain corn. That yield increase occurred regardless of in-row residue placement. Removing corn stover by harvesting as silage increased corn yield by 0.86 Mg ha -1 (12%) over yield following grain corn. During 1995, corn yield following silage corn was less than after soybean, canola, barley, or wheat; thus, no-till corn yield response to rotation is not exclusively due to the presence of surface-placed stover. In-row residue placement and preceding cropping practices affected in-row soil temperature, but this could not totally account for the treatment effects on early-season corn growth and yields.
Structural Visualization of Septum Formation in Staphylococcus warneri Using Atomic Force Microscopy

This work shows that the septum of Staphylococcus warneri is composed of two layers and that the peptidoglycan on the inner surface of the double-layered septum is organized into concentric rings. Moreover, new cell cycles of S. warneri can be initiated before the previous cell cycle is complete. This work advances our knowledge about a basic structure of bacterial cell and provides information on the double-layered structure of the septum for bacteria that divide with the “popping” mechanism. ABSTRACT Cell division of Staphylococcus adopts a “popping” mechanism that mediates extremely rapid separation of the septum. Elucidating the structure of the septum is crucial for understanding this exceptional bacterial cell division mechanism. Here, the septum structure of Staphylococcus warneri was extensively characterized using high-speed time-lapse confocal microscopy, atomic force microscopy, and electron microscopy. The cells of S. warneri divide in a fast popping manner on a millisecond timescale. Our results show that the septum is composed of two separable layers, providing a structural basis for the ultrafast daughter cell separation. The septum is formed progressively toward the center with nonuniform thickness of the septal disk in radial directions. The peptidoglycan on the inner surface of double-layered septa is organized into concentric rings, which are generated along with septum formation. Moreover, this study signifies the importance of new septum formation in initiating new cell cycles. This work unravels the structural basis underlying the popping mechanism that drives S. warneri cell division and reveals a generic structure of the bacterial cell. IMPORTANCE This work shows that the septum of Staphylococcus warneri is composed of two layers and that the peptidoglycan on the inner surface of the double-layered septum is organized into concentric rings. Moreover, new cell cycles of S. warneri can be initiated before the previous cell cycle is complete. This work advances our knowledge about a basic structure of bacterial cell and provides information on the double-layered structure of the septum for bacteria that divide with the “popping” mechanism.
Quantification of surface crack depth in concrete panels using 1.6 GHz GPR images

Cracking of concrete structures such as highway bridges is commonly observed in the U.S. and around the world, which can be attributed to one or many damage mechanisms. The inability of visual inspection for determining crack depth has a detrimental effect on its reliability. With the use of nondestructive evaluation (NDE) techniques such as microwave and radar sensors, subsurface sensing can be achieved in concrete structures. The objective of this paper is to investigate the performance of a commercially available ground penetrating radar (GPR) sensor on artificially-cracked concrete panels in the laboratory and real concrete structures with cracks in the field. Three artificially-cracked concrete panels (30x30x4 cm3) with different crack dimensions were manufactured with one pristine concrete panel without any crack as the control sample. Three different crack dimensions were introduced in concrete panels, including panel CNC with a 10x0.5x0. 5 cm3 crack, panel CNCD with a 10x0.5x1. 5 cm3 crack, panel CNCW with a 10x2x0.5 cm3 crack. An L-band GPR sensor (carrier frequency = 1.6GHz) was used in all experimental measurements. From our result, it was found that the use of a 1.6GHz GPR sensor can detect the presence of an artificial crack, as well as detecting crack dimensions (e.g., width, depth). Empirical models were developed from the B-scan GPR images for crack quantification
Evolution of Niche Width

Lerner, I. M. 1958. The genetic basis of selection. Wiley, New York. 273 pp. Milkman, R. 1970. The genetic basis of natural variation in Drosophila melanogaster. Advanc. Genet. 15:55-114. Roughgarden, J. 1972. Evolution of niche width. Amer. Natur. 106:683-718. Scharloo, W. 1964. The effect of disruptive and stabilizing selection on the expression of a cubitus interruptus mutant in Drosophila. Genetics 50:553-562. Scharloo, W. , M. S. Hoogmoed, and A. ter Kuile. 1967. Stabilizing and disruptive selection on a mutant character in Drosophila. I. The phenotypic variance and its components. Genetics 56:709-726. Slatkin, M. 1970. Selection and polygenic characters. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. 66 :87-93.
Maize with Multilayer Aleurone of High Protein Content1

Coroico corn (Zea mays L.), a South American race of floury maize contained two to six layers of aleurone cells instead of the customary single aleurone cell layer found in ordinary yellow dent corn. In Coroico with an average of 3.7 aleurone cell layers, the aleurone made up 4.3% of the endosperm as against 2.1% in yellow dent corn. Total protein in Coroico aleurone is 35 to 38% compared with 22% in yellow dent com. Lysine levels in aleurone proteins of all corns examined, both Coroico and yellow dent were comparable ranging from 4.0 to 4.4 g/lOO g of protein. Because of the additive effect of the multiple aleurone and the high protein content of the aleurone, lysine in Coroico endosperm was higher than in that of yellow dent corn. Multiple aleurone is transmitted as a partial dominant character over the normal single aleurone condition. Improvement of protein nutritional quality using Coroico germ plasm appears worthwhile.
Pictorial balance is a bottom-up aesthetic property mediated by eye movements. A model of a primitive visual operating system explains visual balance and some aesthetics properties of pictures

The concept of pictorial balance as a visual center-of-mass effect originated at the beginning of the 20th century to explain why some paintings evoke feelings of unity and harmony. It had never been mentioned in art commentary of the previous 500 years and is an unsubstantiated but widely assumed illusion. However, the visual basis for this illusion exists, and it is the object of this paper to explain what balance is and what it says about the visual system. A computer model was created of an unnamed pictorial effect known to painters when a picture feels unusually unified and harmonious. It was first described by a 17th century critic Roger de Piles, and there are descriptions of it by renowned artists. It was thought by the author that this effect was due to the painting being in a state of perfect balance. Computer modeling found that it had bilateral luminance symmetry with a lighter lower half by ∼1.07 and that balance is based solely on luminosity. A study was done in which the identical picture in two different frames could seem different to subjects who viewed them in sequence; the sole difference being the total balance of the image. The study did not show that the subjects could see the effect but did show that the method of calculating balance using an algorithm was correct. It was found that low averaged balanced pairs could be distinguished from high averaged balanced pairs. This method views an organism as a collection of lights all moving together against a ground. This is divided by a vertical line into two equally luminous parts and further divided in half by a horizontal line. Four virtual lines are drawn parallel to the above two to create a picture. Light from each quadrant is spread to fill its respective quadrant, and the upper half is arbitrarily filtered to make it darker so that organisms illuminated from above would appear more balance. Balance is calculated by a center of quadrant luminance equation analogous to a center-of-mass calculation. It is suggested that object balance is a residual primitive visual processing system identifying organisms. An ecological explanation of the study is presented. Balance and the visual concepts involved can help painters create more visually attractive paintings if desired and for everyone to understand the neuro-aesthetic effects of paintings.
Cytoplasmic pool of spliceosome protein SNRNP70 regulates the axonal transcriptome and development of motor connectivity

Regulation of pre-mRNA splicing and polyadenylation plays a profound role in neurons by diversifying the proteome and modulating gene expression during development and in response to physiological cues. Although most pre-mRNA processing reactions are thought to occur in the nucleus, numerous splicing regulators are also found in neurites. Here, we show that U1-70K/SNRNP70, a major spliceosomal component, localizes in RNA-associated granules in axons. We identify the cytoplasmic pool of SNRNP70 as an important local regulator of motor axonal growth, nerve-dependent acetylcholine receptor (AChR) clustering and neuromuscular synaptogenesis. This cytoplasmic pool has a protective role for a limited number of axonal transcripts preventing them from degradation. Moreover, non-nuclear SNRNP70 is able to locally regulates splice variants of transcripts such as agrin, thereby locally controlling formation of synapses. Our results point to an unexpected, yet essential, function of local SNRNP70 in axonal development and indicate a role of splicing factors in local RNA metabolism during establishment and maintenance of neuronal connectivity.
Clinical Usefulness of SISCOM-SPM Compared to Visual Analysis to Locate the Epileptogenic Zone

Introduction: Subtraction of ictal-interictal SPECT co-registered to MRI (SISCOM) is a quantification tool that can improve the sensitivity and specificity of the epileptogenic zone (EZ) localization. Commercially available image analysis software packages for SISCOM are costly, and Statistical Parametric Mapping (SPM) could be an alternative free software for the definition of the EZ. There are only a few studies that compare SISCOM using SPM (SISCOM-SPM) with visual analysis. Aim: To compare SISCOM-SPM vs. visual analysis for localization of the EZ in patients with pharmacoresistant focal epilepsies. Materials and methods: We evaluated all our patients with focal epilepsies that underwent ictal and interictal SPECT. We defined the reference standard to locate the EZ by pathology and follow-up (in patients submitted to surgery), or seizure semiology, serial EEG, long-term video-EEG, 18F-FDG PET/CT, and MRI (in patients who were not operated). We compared the location of the EZ by visual analysis of SPECT images and by SISCOM-SPM to the reference standard and classified as concordant, discordant, or partially concordant. Results: We included 23 patients. Visual analysis was concordant with the EZ reference standard in only 13 patients (56.5%), while SISCOM-SPM was concordant in 18 cases (78.3%), providing a 21.8% increase in the location of EZ. However, this difference was not significant due to the small sample size (p = 0.0856). Conclusion: Our preliminary results demonstrate that, in clinical practice, SISCOM-SPM has the potential to add information that might help localize the EZ compared to visual analysis. SISCOM-SPM has a lower cost than other commercially available SISCOM software packages, which is an advantage for developing countries. Studies with more patients are necessary to confirm our findings.
Automatic boiler tube leak detection with deep bidirectional LSTM neural networks of acoustic emission signals

Boiler tubes in power plants develop defects including creep and thermal fatigue damage that can lead to fluid leakage over the operation period. Such leakage is the main cause of outages and power generation losses in thermal power plants. Therefore, early detection of leaks in boiler tubes is necessary to avoid more than 60% of boiler outages. To monitor and detect tube leaks in real-time, Acoustic Emission (AE) technique is widely used in power plants. A boiler tube leak could be detected using Average Signal Level (ASL) of the acquired AE signal using a network of sensors attached to the body of the boiler. Changes in ASL are proportional to the tube leakage; however, background signals generated by operating soot blowers bury the features which represent the tube leaks in the boiler and makes it nearly impossible to detect them automatically with established threshold methods. Soot blowers are used to remove the soot that is deposited on the tubes to maintain the efficacy and continuous operation of boilers. In this study, a bidirectional long short-term memory (LSTM) recurrent neural network (RNN) is developed to automatically detect tube leaks in power plant boilers. This detection method aims at identifying abnormal acoustic signals which differ from the reference/normal data that the system was trained with. The neural networks are trained on a sample boiler and the evaluation was done on the same boiler on the intervals with leak presence. Once the developed machine learning algorithm was tested with AE signals acquired from boiler tubes, the results show that this novel approach can detect anomalies in the signal levels as an indication of tube defects with an acceptable accuracy.
Summary of Discussions From the 2019 OECD Conference on RNAi Based Pesticides

RNA interference (RNAi) is a biological process in which double-stranded ribonucleic acid (dsRNA) molecules inhibit protein expression. In recent years, the application of dsRNA has been used in the development of agricultural products for pest control. The 2019 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Conference on RNAi Based Pesticides (“the Conference”) brought together academic, industry, and government experts in various aspects of RNAi to discuss the current state of knowledge and topics to help in developing considerations for risk assessment. The Conference focused on environment, with some discussion of human health. Along with presentations on the use of dsRNA-based products in agriculture, government regulation, risk assessment, and a background on the Draft OECD Working Paper on “Considerations for the Environmental Risk Assessment of the Application of Sprayed or Externally Applied dsRNA-Based Pesticides” (“OECD Working Paper”), the Conference included panel discussions from presenters at the end of each session and a larger discussion session with Conference participants on the environmental fate of dsRNA, non-target organism (NTO) risk assessment, and human health risk assessment. This paper summarizes input from presenters and Conference participants during these discussions. Key considerations from these discussions have already been incorporated into the OECD Working Paper, that once finalized and published, will facilitate regulators in evaluating externally applied dsRNA-based products for potential environmental risks.
Comparison of heat transfer coefficient according to the materials and structures

The modeling in this study was conducted to maximize the high performance of adhesive materials. Aluminum nitride (AlN) and epoxy resin were used to model AlN in the form of a sphere and resin in a liquid state. The results are expected to be dependent on the location of the sphere in the resin. First of all, spherical AlN is regularly stacked in the basic form of 3x3. Secondly, the volume ratio of AlN was maximized at a unit volume considered of the packing factor of AlN. Air pockets with the same diameter of AIN can be substantially added inside the resin. Then, the heat transfer coefficient of the air was very low, so it was considered as a factor that could sufficiently affect the heat transfer coefficient of the adhesive material. The modeling was compared the cases with and without the air pockets. Thirdly, the modeling of the same structures showed the larger heat transfer rate when the material was changed to zinc oxide (ZnO), which has the larger heat transfer coefficient than AlN. Finally, the molecular crystal of ZnO can be implemented as a tetrapod type. The ZnO of tetrapod type had the good heat transfer rate because of the greater proportion per unit volume than the sphere.
Effectiveness of zinc sulfate and zinc chelate as foliar sprays in alleviating zinc deficiency of wheat grown on zinc-deficient soils in Western Australia

Western Australian Department of Agriculture, Albany, W.A. 6330, Australia. Summary. The relative effectiveness of zinc chelate (Zn-EDTA, 15% Zn) and zinc sulfate (23% Zn) applied as folk sprays for alleviating zinc deficiency of wheat was assessed. The experiments were conducted at 3 sites in 3 different years, in the Newdegate district about 350 km south-east of Perth, Western Australia. Each source was sprayed at 6 rates of Zn, to define the relationship between grain yield and the amount of foliar Zn applied for wheat grown on Zn-deficient soils where no Zn had been Introduction Many Australian soils are deficient in zinc (Zn) (Donald and Prescott 1975). It has been estimated that in the south-west of Western Australia, 8-9 million hectares of soils are Zn-deficient. The grain yield of cereal crops grown on these soils is greatly reduced unless Zn is applied (Gartrell and Glencross 1968). The initial soil application of Zn has been sufficient to meet the requirements of crops and pastures for many years (Anon. 1961; Ozanne et al. 1965) because Zn is present as a contaminant in superphosphate (400-600 mg Zn/kg) made from the Nauru and Christmas Island rock phosphates (Williams 1974). An adequate Zn supply for cereals and pastures has been maintained where at least 150 kgha of superphosphate was applied annually. With applications of superphosphate declining to less than 150 kgha annually on many Western Australian soils, and increased use of rock phosphate with less Zn impurities in the manufacture of superphosphate, Zn deficiency is now being observed in many crops and pastures. The increased use of imported diammonium phosphate (DAP) fertiliser, with about one-twelfth of the zinc content of the superphosphate it is replacing in the cereal phase of the pasture-cereal rotation, has often resulted in immediate Zn deficiency in crops. Zinc sulfate is widely used as a foliar spray in situations where Zn deficiency has been diagnosed in the growing crop. Chelated Zn compounds were used in agriculture about 30 years ago because they were previously applied. The levels of Zn sprayed were 0, 25, 50, 100,200 and 400 g/ha (experiment 1); and 0, 28, 56, 112,225 and 450 gha (experiments 2 and 3). Foliar-applied zinc chelate was 1.4-1.7 times more effective than zinc sulfate applied at the GS 14 growth stage. However, the sprays were equally effective when applied at the GS 23-24 growth stage. Zinc sulfate banded with the seed at sowing produced the highest grain yields. considered more effective than inorganic Zn salts (Wallace and Wallace 1982). However, the relative effectiveness of chelated zinc in overcoming Zn deficiency of wheat has never been evaluated under the wheat-growing conditions of Western Australia. The experiments described in this paper compared the effectiveness of chelated zinc (Zn-EDTA, 15% Zn) and zinc sulfate