Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evaluating the Potential for Adaptive Response to Mercury in Captive-Dosed Zebra Finches

Mercury (Hg) is a ubiquitous heavy metal contaminant that threatens human and environmental health. Birds are sensitive bioindicators of mercury toxicity, however, current predictions of mercury accumulation and biomagnification overlook possible variation in mercury uptake/removal within species and the potential for evolution in sensitive populations. I evaluated the potential for adaptive response to mercury within a captive population of Australian Zebra Finch (Taeniopygiaguttata) maintained on standardized diets containing 0.0, 0.3, 0.6, 1.2 or 2.4 ppm methylmercury cysteine. To control for common environmental effects, which can cause an upward bias in additive genetic variance, a small proportion of nestlings from each treatment were cross-fostered between nests. Because the genetic diversity of a study population can influence estimates of quantitative genetic variance,! measured genetic diversity in theZebra Finch colony by genotyping the parental generation using microsatellites. Microsatellite genotyping of the Zebra Finch colony demonstrated a high level of genetic diversity, indicating that the variance estimates were not biased by a lack of genetic diversity in the colony. The close resemblance between related individuals was also not influenced by common environmental effects of nesting environment. At all dietary methylmercury treatments, Zebra Finches exhibited considerable variation in blood mercury accumulation, and this variation was highly repeatable for individuals. I observed a strong genetic influence on blood mercury accumulation, however this effect was non-linear with increasing mercury exposure; a significant heritable component for blood mercury accumulation was estimated for the 0.6 and 1.2 ppm MeHg dietary doses, but not for treatments at 0.3 and 2.4 ppm dietary MeHg. The non-linear gene by environment interactions observed could be the result of thresholds at low and high levels of exposure which limit a genetic response to mercury toxicity. If wild bird populations exhibit a heritable response to mercury accumulation, natural selection could act to produce tolerant/resistant populations. Such populations could increase total mercury biomagnification in the food web as more individuals survive to pass mercury on to the next trophic level. More research is necessary to investigate potential adaptation to mercury in wild bird populations and to understand gene expression mechanisms underlying mercury tolerance in birds.
urdles in bacteriophage therapy : Deconstructing e parameters

Bacterial infections in animals impact our food production, leading to economic losses due to food rejection and the need for preventive and curative measures. Since the onset of the antibiotic era, the rise of antibiotic-resistant pathogens is causing scares in health care and food producing facilities worldwide. In the search of new therapeutics, re-evaluation of bacteriophage (phage) therapy, using naturally occurring bacterial viruses to tackle infections, is gaining interest. Many studies report about phage therapy success, showing the value and power of these natural viruses. Although phages carry some interesting traits and their basic biology is now well understood, this review argues that phage therapy has not revealed all of its secrets and many parameters remain understudied, making the outcome of phage therapy highly variable depending on the disease incidence. These difficulties include poorly understood mechanisms of phage penetration and distribution throughout the body, the variable expression and accessibility of phage receptors on the bacterial host in in vivo conditions and the unusual (non-linear) phage pharmacokinetics. These parameters are not easily measured in realistic in vivo settings, but are nevertheless important hurdles to overcome the high variability of phage therapy trials. This critical approach is in accordance with Goethe’s statement; ‘‘Difficulties increase the nearer we get to the goal’’. However, since the importance of the goal itself also rises, both difficulties and goal justify the need for additional in depth research in this domain. 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Corresponding author. Tel. : +32 16 37 95 24; fax: +32 16 3 21965. E-mail addresses: jessica.tsonos@gmail.com (J. Tsonos), ter.vandenheuvel@biw.kuleuven.be (D. Vandenheuvel), es.briers@biw.kuleuven.be (Y. Briers), hdegreve@vub.ac. be . De Greve), jphernal@vub.ac. be (J.-P. Hernalsteens), . lavigne@kuleuven.be (R. Lavigne).
Implementation of VLSI interconnect design

One of the key problems in VLSI interconnect design is the topology construction of signal nets with the minimum cost. The Steiner tree problem is to find the tree structure which connects all pins of the signal net such that the wire length (i.e., cost) can be minimized. If all edges of the tree are restricted to the horizontal and vertical directions as are the case in VLSI design, the problem is called rectilinear Steiner tree (RST). The problem of optimizing interconnections between microelectronic devices is an evolving area under VLSI architectures. Steiner tree is a fundamental problem in the automatic inter-connects optimization for VLSI design. Existing methodologies using a Steiner tree approach are not optimal in terms of path length.
PART I. PHYSICAL ACTIVITY OF SOCIAL AND PROFESSIONAL GROUPS

Authors’ contribution Wkład autorów: A. Study design/planning zaplanowanie badań B. Data collection/entry zebranie danych C. Data analysis/statistics dane – analiza i statystyki D. Data interpretation interpretacja danych E. Preparation of manuscript przygotowanie artykułu F. Literature analysis/search wyszukiwanie i analiza literatury G. Funds collection zebranie funduszy Summary Background. Sedentarism and Physical Activity (PA) are considered main components of people’s lifestyle and key indicators of health. Although they can be seen as opposite life conducts that reduce each other’s effects on health, no study has yet clarified the nature of their relation. However, both behaviors can be influenced by similar psychological, social, and environmental constructs. Material and methods. We selected 480 students (272 boys, 208 girls) from middle schools in the metropolitan area of Monterrey (Mexico), who filled in questionnaires on PA behaviors and social-environmental correlates through an online system. Results. Our outcomes highlighted overall low PA levels. Further, girls are more affected by their social environment, whereas physical environment barriers represent a fitting predictor of boys’ PA. Regardless of gender, PA engagement seems to be significantly determined by the level of enjoyment of sedentary behaviors. Conclusions. These results can help professionals in PA and health create gender-specific interventions targeting to raise youth’s PA levels by means of enhancing psychosocial and contextual features. Due to the lack of studies on psychological factors related to sedentary behaviors, our results could arouse attention on this issue and promote further research to better understand the processes beneath it.
Studying mutual context of grasp types and object attributes in hand manipulation activities

: Recognizing hand grasp types and object attributes are important in understanding human hand manipulation activities. However, the recognition tasks are challenging as hands and objects are often occluded by each other during interactions. We observe that there is strong correlation between grasp types and object attributes, which can serve as mutual context in recognition. In this paper, we propose an uniﬁed model in which contextual relationship between grasp types and object attributes are studied. First, we develop a novel method to extract probabilistic information about grasp types and object attributes from still images in which hand-object interactions are recorded. We then explore the contextual relationship between grasp types and object attributes and show how the context information is used to boost the recognition of both. On public cooking datasets involving egocentric hand manipulation activities, experiment results strongly support our proposal.
Investigating trends in the Contemporary Architecture of Amman : An after thought

Jordan, in the last forty years, went through dramatic changes in its socio-economic creating a new cultural environment. In response, the architecture of Amman changed and largely diversified; a mixture of buildings ranging from small scale houses to high rise buildings and large scale projects. These follow different schools of thought and vary in style; between modern styles and traditional one, from aesthetically pleasing to visually displeasing and from culturally acceptable to totally alien can be found. Through visual observation, this paper closely examines the architectural scene of Amman and attempts to give a preliminary classification of such stylistic trends. This paper identified seven architectural styles ranging from the modern to the regional to the neo-traditional. The afterthought of the paper concluded that these styles can be further grouped into three general categories reflecting three attitudes towards current developments; a contemporary attitude, a conservative attitude, and an attitude of confusion.
P 6 . 10 A NUMERICAL STUDY ON CHARACTERISTICS OF INTERNAL GRAVITY WAVES IN THE STRATOSPHERE INDUCED BY MESOSCALE CONVECTIVE SYSTEM

It is well known that the vertically propagating internal gravity waves can have profound effects on the largescale circulation in the middle atmosphere. Fritts (1984) observed that high-frequency gravity waves are ubiquitous in the middle atmosphere. Bergman and Salby (1994) showed the upward propagation of energy and momentum of high frequency waves is dominant in the tropical stratosphere. Thus cumulus convection can be considered as a major gravity wave source in the tropical region and the storm track region of the Northern Hemisphere. Chun and Baik (1998) theoretically investigated the thermally induced internal gravity waves. They showed that the wave breaking above the cloud top can change basic-state wind by 6 m s-1 / day. This amount of the wave drag is comparable to that calculated using the parameterization of the orographically generated gravity waves. Recently, Chun et al. (2001) investigated the effects of GWDC on the large-scale circulation using a general circulation model in which the GWDC parameterization developed by Chun and Baik is implemented. Importance of convection as a source of gravity waves has become recognized, and there have been several attempts to examine the mechanisms of the convetively generated gravity waves. There are two proposed mechanisms for internal gravity waves induced by convective clouds. Clark et al. (1986) proposed obstacle or thermal forcing mechanism that convective cloud acts like an obstacle to the ow and gravity waves can be generated when the basic-state wind relative to the convective cell is not zero. Analytical studies of the response of the stable atmosphere to a speci ed thermal forcing (e.g., Lin and Smith 1986; Nicholls et al. 1991; Chun and Lin 1995 ) can be categorized in this thermal forcing mechanism. Their results could account for some basic features of gravity waves simulated by sophisticated numerical models. Fovell et al. (1992) proposed the mechanical oscillator mechanism that strong updrafts in convective system can stimulate the statically stable stratosphere and thus generate internal gravity waves in the stratosphere under a zero storm-relative basic-state wind condition. Alexander et al. (1995) also accounted for characteristics of convectively generated gravity waves using this mechanism. In this study, we investigate characteristics of convectively generated internal gravity waves using twodimensional cloud-resolving model by comparing the me-
Urban Sprawl

M odern usage of the term “sprawl” was coined in 1937 by Earle Draper— one of the first city planners in the southeastern United States (Black, 1996). By the end of World War II, the major themes that characterize the current debate over sprawl and its connections to transportation and income had already emerged. These issues were summarized in the 1940s by the British advocate of city planning F. J. Osborn (1946 [1965], p. 15):
PLAGIARISM IN LITHUANIAN ACADEMIA : FORMAL DEFINITION AND INFORMAL ATTITUDE

The paper presents some research results derived from a national project “Scientific research ethics in Lithuania: analysis of the situation” (MIP-37/2010, 2010–2011). It aims to identify gaps between the formal definition of plagiarism and actual understanding of the phenomenon in Lithuanian academic community. Therefore, content analysis of the definitions of plagiarism in approved Ethic Codes (N = ) of Lithuanian science institutions and the academic community’s (ranging from professors and principal researchers to lecturers and technical assistants (n = )) attitudes concerning plagiarism expressed in a questionnaire survey was carried out. Ethic Codes were analysed using a semantic form of “plagiarism” as a coding unit. Results of this analysis demonstrate that discursive presentation of the phenomenon is more frequently related to students’ academic activities rather than academics’ research. Moreover, the Codes do not give clear-set directions how to avoid plagiarism and, thus, imply very little about plagiarism management at both the level of students and academics, although the consequences of identified plagiarism are much more clearly defined to the former than the latter. The results of content analysis of the answers to an open-ended question about the main research ethics problems observed in Lithuanian academia suggest that plagiarism can be regarded as an issue with a broad understanding, including copyright, forced authorship inclusion etc. However, the data are not sufficient to make a conclusion to what extent it is problematic and whether and to what extent consequences of the phenomenon are perceived. This calls for further research into the issue and a need for open discussion on it in the academic
Achieving Robust Localization in Geometrically Degenerated Tunnels

Although many methods have been proposed to localize a robot using onboard sensors in GPS-denied environments, achieving robust localization in geometrically degenerated tunnels remains a challenging problem in robot-based inspection tasks. In this work, we first present a novel model to analyze the localizability of the prior map at a given location. Then we propose the utilization of a single Ultra-Wideband (UWB) ranging device to compensate for the degeneration of LiDAR based localization inside tunnels. A probabilistic sensor fusion method is developed and demonstrated to achieve real-time robust localization inside a geometrically degenerated tunnel.
ect of subjective awareness measures on performance in arti fi cial grammar learning task

Systematic research into implicit learning requires well-developed awareness-measurement techniques. Recently, trial-by-trial measures have been widely used. However, they can increase complexity of a study because they are an additional experimental variable. We tested the effects of these measures on performance in artificial grammar learning study. Four groups of participants were assigned to different awareness measures conditions: confidence ratings, post-decision wagering, decision strategy attribution or none. Decision-strategy-attribution participants demonstrated better grammar learning and longer response times compared to controls. They also exhibited a conservative bias. Grammaticality by itself was a stronger predictor of strings endorsement in decision-strategy-attribution group compared to other groups. Confidence ratings and post-decision wagering only affected the response times. These results were supported by an additional experiment that used a balanced chunk strength design. We conclude that a decisionstrategy-attribution procedure may force participants to adopt an analytical decision-making strategy and rely mostly on conscious knowledge of artificial grammar.
Realization of Active Neutral Point Clamp Multilevel Inverter Using SPWM Technique

Because of some technical and some historical reasons AC power is more popular than DC. Inverter has become very important power electronics converter for having adjustable AC power output which is need of majority of industrial equipments. For better quality of output various modulation techniques are being implemented. As these techniques require high frequency operation which results in higher switching losses multilevel inverter are preferred for medium and high power applications. Multilevel inverters can give better quality output at low modulating frequency because of their multi step output. In this paper popular Sine wave Pulse Width Modulation (SPWM) has been implemented for Active Neutral Point Clamp (ANPC) multilevel inverter which has some better features with respect to standard diode clamp, flying capacitor or cascaded H-bridge topologies. This kind of multilevel inverter is a hybrid type of multilevel inverter in which a 3 level flying capacitor clamp multilevel inverter is cascaded to a 3 level diode clamp multilevel inverter. As low frequency Selective Harmonic Elimination technique has limitation of computational complexity for elimination of more than two harmonics simultaneously SPWM has been implemented to achieve a good quality output. Advance Risk Machine (ARM) controller has been used for generating control signals. Complete scheme has been discussed in this paper. Prototype of 5 level ANPC has been fabricated for experimentation and results are presented from the experiments.
On-line Argumentative Rationality Analysis by case of TCM Debate at Tianya Forum

Nowadays Internet-based social media platforms provide rooms for wider discussions toward a variety of topics, from normal living affairs to national policies, from gossips of celebrities to fight between square dancers and young basketball fans, from folk remedies to scientific stories, etc. All those emerging comments often reflect communities concerns towards those topics to some extent. Some topics may arouse hot discussions or long lasting debates. Instead as many studies conducted to analyze the on-line behavior patterns, such as general replies patterns fit power law, etc., this paper concentrates on debates styles, i.e. by what kind of ways those online debates go on, especially toward those bi-polarization debates. With Paul Graham's disagreement hierarchy and LDA topic models, the debate styles are analyzed toward the on-line traditional Chinese medicines debates in the famous Chinese BBS, Tianya Forum. Such kind of analysis aims to expose the rationality about the on-line debates and then may be helpful to conduct intervention for quality debates. KeywordsOn-line debates; opinion mining; disagreement hierarchy; LDA, traditional Chinese medicine
Pathogenic role of antiM 3 muscarinic acetylcholine receptor immune response in Sjögren ’ s syndrome

M3 muscarinic acetylcholine re glands [SGs] and lachrymal glan T cells have been detected in ci syndrome (SS), and the major T are located in the second loop are also present in sera of aroun N-region, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd loop SG cell lines showed that autoA influx, suggesting inhibition of s response induces autoimmune synthetic peptides and their developed severe sialadenitis, a the pathogenesis of AIS. These pathogenic role in AIS, sugge pathogenesis of SS.
STRUCTURAL CRYSTAL CHEMISTRY OF ORGANIC MINERALS : THE SYNTHETIC ROUTE

‘Organic minerals’ means naturally occurring crystalline organic compounds including metal salts of formic, acetic, citric, mellitic and oxalic acids. The primary tool to disclose their crystal structure and their mutual relationship with each other and with synthetic analogues and also to understand their physicochemical properties is X-ray diffraction. The structure of several synthetic organic minerals was solved well before the discovery of their natural counterpart. On the other hand, complete crystal structure determination of early discovered organic minerals had to await the advent of combined synthetic and advanced X-ray diffraction methods. We review here the crystallography of organic minerals showing the importance of structural studies on their synthetic analogues. This will be highlighted by the cases of synthetic novgorodovaite, Ca2(C2O4)Cl2·2H2O, and its heptahydrate analogue, Ca2(C2O4)Cl2·7H2O, and the isotypic to each other stepanovite, NaMg[Fe(C2O4)3]·9H2O, and zhemchuzhnikovite, NaMg[AlxFe1-x(C2O4)3]·9H2O.
Density and patterns of orientation of Patella caerulea L . in the Bay of Koper ( Gulf of Trieste , North Adriatic )

This study deals with the density and patterns of head-orientation of the midlittoral limpet Patella caerulea L. , along the Bay of Koper (Gulf of Trieste, North Adriatic). The aims were to determine the relationship in patterns of head-orientation and density of limpets on vertical, horizontal, wave exposed, and sheltered substrata. The results revealed that the density of limpets on vertical and exposed substrata was greater than those on horizontal and sheltered surfaces; the proportion of downward head-orientated limpets was higher in comparison with upward headoriented limpets; also the proportion of downward-facing limpets was higher on vertical exposed surfaces than on the others.
Implementation of Sport Science Coaching: Improving Strength and Conditioning Performance of Tennis Junior Athletes

the purpose of this research is to examine the improvement of strength and conditioning of performance for junior-aged tennis athletes, especially strength, speed, and endurance, by using sport science and A T-test which was used to assess and measure the improved strength, speed and endurance of the experimental research method. The tests subjects for this research were 13 athletes of “Tennis Plus” in Bandung City, Indonesia, consisting of seven male and six female juniors. This research used 3 instrument tests: the first instrument test for strength was the “push up”, the second test for speed was a 20-metre sprint, and the third test for endurance was a “bleep” test. The results showed an increase in physical conditioning, comparing the pre-test and post-test instrument test scores, comparing t-count with t-table with significance level of 0.05. Initial test results and final tests for strength obtained a t-count = 3.09, for the speed tests they obtained a t-count = 2.05, and initial test result and final test for the bleep test and endurance obtained a t-count = 1.80, with ttable value = 1.71. The conclusion from the research showed that the application of a sport science-based training program increased the physical conditioning (strength, speed and endurance) of the junior tennis athletes. Keywords—sport science, performance, strength conditioning, speed, endurance
CHALLENGES FOR HIGH FIELD CLINICAL MRI

Clinical MRI can potentially benefit greatly from the relatively recent advent of commercial high-field (7 and 9.4 Tesla) systems. However, there are several major engineering challenges associated with high fields, the main one of which is to produce a strong, homogeneous transmit B1 field, while remaining within regulatory guidelines for tissue power deposition.