Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Review of Cross-Backed Grasshoppers of the Genus

34 35 Phylogenetic analyses and species delimitation methods are powerful tools for understanding 36 patterns of species diversity. Given the current biodiversity crisis, it makes urgent the 37 assessment and delimitation of truthful species particularly of endangered and 38 morphologically cryptic taxa from vulnerable areas submitted to strong climate change and 39 progressive human intervention like the Mediterranean region. In this study, we applied two 40 DNA-based species delimitation methods and performed a Bayesian phylogenetic 41 reconstruction using three mitochondrial gene fragments (12S, 16S and COI) to solve several 42 taxonomic uncertainties among species of cross-backed grasshoppers (genus Dociostaurus 43 Fieber) from the western Mediterranean. Phylogenetic analyses demonstrate the polyphyletic 44 character of subgenera Dociostaurus, Kazakia Bey-Bienko and Stauronotulus Tarbinsky and, 45 thus, the need of revising the currently accepted taxonomic subgenera within the genus 46 Dociostaurus. We propose the split of closely related taxa with allopatric distributions such as 47 D. (S.) kraussi and D. (S.) crassiusculus, considering the later a distinct species limited to the 48 Iberian Peninsula and excluding the name crassiusculus from other forms of D. (S.) kraussi from 49 East Europe and Asia. Estimates of divergence times indicate that diversification of 50 Dociostaurus probably happened during the Miocene-Pliocene (3-7 Ma), and the split of the 51 studied pairs of sister taxa took place during the middle and late Pleistocene (1-2 Ma). This 52 study highlights the need for more molecular studies on the genus and their different species 53 for a better understanding of their evolution, genetic variation and population dynamics in 54 order to prioritize strategies for their adequate conservation and management. 55 56 57 58
The Dynamic Effect of Non-CYP3A4-Metabolized and CYP3A4-Metabolized Statins on Clopidogrel Resistance in Patients With Cerebral Infarction

Objective: To explore the treatment effect of statins used together with clopidogrel on cerebral infarction (CI). Methods: One hundred and thirty non-clopidogrel resistant patients were divided into a dynamic clopidogrel resistant (DCR) group and a continuous Non clopidogrel resistance (NCR) group. Patients were randomly assigned to AC group (atorvastatin 40 mg/d + clopidogrel, 51 patients) and RC group (rosuvastatin 20 mg/d + clopidogrel, 47 patients). The patient’s platelet aggregation rate (PAR) was measured on visit 0 (baseline), visit 1 (1 week after clopidogrel alone treatment), and visits 2 to 4 (one, three, and 6 months after clopidogrel plus statins treatment). The platelet reactivity index (PRI) was assessed on visits 0, 2, and 4, and clopidogrel thiol metabolite (H4) levels was measured on visits 2 and 4. DNA sequencing was used to determine CYP3A4, CYP2C9, and CYP2C19 genotypes in all patients. Results: PAR, PRI, and H4 levels, DCR ratio, and the genotype frequencies of CYP2C9*3εC, CYP2C19*2εA, and CYP2C19*3εA of both groups were similar (p > 0.05). CYP2C19εA *2 and *3 were independent risk factors for DCR (p < 0.05). Conclusion: Clopidogrel combined with atorvastatin does not affect platelet inhibition and does not increase the incidence of DCR. The incidence of DCR in the Chinese population is high and is related to CYP2C19εA.
Bandwidth Measurements of NbN HEB Devices with GaN Buffer Layers

Hot electron bolometers (HEBs) made of thin films of superconducting NbN are commonly used as far-infrared (THz) heterodyne detectors. The intermediate frequency (IF) bandwidth of a detector is limited by the rate of heat transfer away from the device. Detectors were fabricated from NbN on a GaN buffer layer, instead of a MgO buffer, in hopes of forming a closer acoustic match with the NbN and decreasing the phonon escape time. Acoustic matching has previously shown promising results with MgB2 films on SiC. Devices on both GaN/Si and MgO/Si were tested with frequencies of 15-25 GHz near Tc = 13.3 K. Results yielded an IF bandwidth for NbN on GaN/Si of approximately 2.8 GHz and of approximately 1.8 GHz for NbN on MgO/Si. These results contrast with a recent publication that measured IF bandwidth of 7.5-8 GHz for NbN HEBs on GaN [1]. It is believed that smaller devices used in the aforementioned publication might result in electron diffusion through the contacts, decreasing the overall electron energy relaxation time. The larger devices used in this experiment show no significant bandwidth improvement of GaN over Si for application in THz HEB detectors.
Review on Vanadium Pentoxide Thin Films Coated by Varying Thickness and Temperatures and Their Obtained Bandgaps

In the past decade delectable properties and the utilization of vanadium pentoxide thin films have attracted the attention of most researchers. An important role of V2O5 thin film applications, namely cathode material for Li batteries, gas sensors, transistors, resistance (in the form of thin film) and catalysts. This review summarizes the list of a few preparation methods of thin films known till now and different thickness of films, temperature and obtained bandgap from different methods.
Prototype 4.7 THz array local oscillator for GUSTO

We present an 8-beam local oscillator (LO) for the astronomically significant [OI] line at 4.7 THz. The beams are generated using a quantum cascade laser (QCL) in combination with a Fourier phase grating. The grating is fully characterized using a third order distributed feedback (DFB) QCL with a single mode emission at 4.7 THz as the input. The measured diffraction efficiency of 74.3 % is in an excellent agreement with the calculated result of 75.4 % using a 3D simulation. We show that the power distribution among the diffracted beams is uniform enough for pumping an array receiver. To validate the grating bandwidth, we apply a far-infrared (FIR) gas laser emission at 5.3 THz as the input and find a very similar performance in terms of efficiency, power distribution and spatial configuration of the diffracted beams. Both results represent the highest operating frequencies of THz phase gratings reported in the literature. By injecting one of the eight diffracted 4.7 THz beams into a superconducting hot electron bolometer (HEB) mixer, we find that the coupled power, taking the optical loss into account, is in consistency with the QCL power value. This paper has been published in Optics Express 25(24), 29587 (2017), and is submitted to ISSTT 2018 as a direct way of exposure to the most relevant community.
Circadian Clocks and Malignancy

The circadian molecular clock depicts the ebb and flow of protein production in the cell cycle. It relates to the oscillation of proteins synthesized by circadian genes and circadian controlled genes of the molecular clock, regulated by transcriptional-translational feedback loops (TTFL). In the molecular clock, the oscillation pertains to the movement of proteins between the cytoplasm and nucleus, and the regulation of transcription, translation, phosphorylation, dimerization, and degradation of the proteins. A cellular TTFL is present in each cell, and both the cell cycle and circadian clock have evolutionarily conserved cyclical features from cyanobacteria to higher order mammals. Cell cycle genes controlled by the circadian molecular clock include Wee1, Myc, Cyclin D, thymidylate synthase and p21. These circadian-gated cell division cycles arise from cell cycle and circadian clock crosstalk. The primary feedback loop transcription factors are known as clock genes and BMAL1. These transcription factors activate the the cryptochrome (CYP) genes and period (PER) genes. Dysregulation of the circadian genes and circadian controlled genes can lead to unregulated proliferation and tumorigenesis with genomic and chromosomal instability. Circadian rhythm disruption is associated with risks of many different types of cancer, including prostate, colon, lung, breast, ovarian, endometrial, liver, and hematological malignancies. Knowledge of these processes allows molecular targets to be identified in the search for cancer cure.
Elephant Chart: The African Experience: A Comparative Analysis Using Twenty Selected Countries in Africa

International and Intra-national inequality in income distribution has continued to be a topic of interest to development economists and policy makers over the past three decades. This paper presents data for national income per capita of twenty selected African countries compiled by the World Bank group over a period of twenty years. The purpose of this paper is to study critically the factors that hindered African countries at the tail of the elephant chart from growing using recalculated growth rates and time series data from the World Bank. We employed both descriptive and quantitative analysis in examining the validity of the claim by the proponents of the elephant chart, who claimed that African countries did not benefit from globalization. The selected countries were divided into four income groups low income, lower middle income, upper middle income and high income groups as classified by the World Bank. Our findings show’s that contrary to the claim by the elephant chart authors that countries at the tail (including African countries) did not benefit from globalization. On the contrary, African countries recorded significant growth brought about by globalization.
Outcomes of Adjuvant Oral versus Intravenous Fluoropyrimidines for High-Risk Stage II or Stage III Colon Adenocarcinoma: A Propensity Score-Matched, Nationwide, Population-Based Cohort Study

Objective: We conducted this propensity score (PS)-matched, nationwide, population-based cohort study to estimate the effects of adjuvant oral or intravenous (IV) fluoropyrimidine in patients with high-risk stage II or III colon adenocarcinoma. Design: Using PS matching, we minimized the confounding effects on adjuvant oral or IV fluoropyrimidine outcomes in patients with high-risk stage II or III resectable colon adenocarcinoma. Setting: We selected patients from the Taiwan Cancer Registry database receiving adjuvant fluoropyrimidine monotherapy and divided them into those receiving IV fluoropyrimidine (IV group) and those receiving oral fluoropyrimidine (oral group). Results: In both univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses, the adjusted hazard ratio (aHR) derived for the oral group was 1.34 (95% CI: 1.19-1.51) compared with the IV group. Moreover, in both univariate and multivariate analyses, aHR derived for significant independent prognostic risk factors for poor overall survival were male sex, age ≥ 60 years old, pathologic stage III, right-sided colon cancer, low income, and high Charlson comorbidity index. However, intergroup differences were not significant among female patients or patients < 60 years old on multivariate analysis, including no difference in overall survival. Conclusions: Adjuvant IV fluoropyrimidine is more suitable than adjuvant oral fluoropyrimidine for patients with stage II colon adenocarcinoma who have high-risk pathologic features or stage III colon adenocarcinoma.
Assets and Poverty Alleviation in South Africa: Evidence from the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS)

This paper investigates a number of factors responsible for asset poverty in South Africa. We use data from the first four waves of the National Income Dynamic Study to bring new evidence to bear on the determinants of assets poverty. We use the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to create the asset index and the logit model to identify the main determinants of asset poverty in South Africa. Results of the logit model show that some factors such as education levels (secondary, matric and tertiary), race dummies and location dummies (farms and urban areas) have a reducing effect on asset poverty in South Africa. However, other factors – employment and household size have no significant effect on asset poverty.
Structure Preserving Encoding of Non-euclidean Similarity Data

Domain-specific proximity measures, like divergence measures in signal processing or alignment scores in bioinformatics, often lead to non-metric, indefinite similarities or dissimilarities. However, many classical learning algorithms like kernel machines assume metric properties and struggle with such metric violations. For example, the classical support vector machine is no longer able to converge to an optimum. One possible direction to solve the indefiniteness problem is to transform the non-metric (dis-)similarity data into positive (semi-)definite matrices. For this purpose, many approaches have been proposed that adapt the eigenspectrum of the given data such that positive definiteness is ensured. Unfortunately, most of these approaches modify the eigenspectrum in such a strong manner that valuable information is removed or noise is added to the data. In particular, the shift operation has attracted a lot of interest in the past few years despite its frequently reoccurring disadvantages. In this work, we propose a modified advanced shift correction method that enables the preservation of the eigenspectrum structure of the data by means of a low-rank approximated nullspace correction. We compare our advanced shift to classical eigenvalue corrections like eigenvalue clipping, flipping, squaring, and shifting on several benchmark data. The impact of a low-rank approximation on the data’s eigenspectrum is analyzed.
Buoyant rise of anorthosite from a layered basic complex triggered by Rayleigh-Taylor instability: Insights from a numerical modeling study

Abstract A major unsolved problem of the Proterozoic is the genesis and tectonic evolution of the massif type anorthosites. The idea of large-scale floating of plagioclase crystals in a basaltic magma chamber eventually generating massif type anorthosite diapirs from the floatation cumulates is not supported by observations of the major layered basic complexes of Proterozoic to Eocene age. In this paper, we test and propose a new genetic process of anorthosite diapirism through Rayleigh-Taylor instability. We have carried out a numerical modeling study of parallel, horizontal, multiple layers of norite and anorthosite, in a model layered basic complex, behaving like Newtonian or non-Newtonian power law fluids in a jelly sandwich model of the continental lithosphere. We have shown that in this pressure-temperature-rheology configuration the model lithosphere generates Rayleigh-Taylor instability, which triggers diapirism of the anorthosite. In our model, the anorthosite diapirs buoyantly rise through stages of simple, symmetrical upwelling and pronounced bulbous growth to a full-blown mushroom-like form. This is the growth path of diapirs in nearly all analog and numerical previous studies on diapirism. Our anorthosite diapirs fully conform to this path. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the progressive diapirism brings in striking internal changes within the diapir itself. In the process, the lowermost anorthosite layer rises displacing the upper norite and anorthosite layers as progressively stretched and isolated segments driven to the margin of the rising diapir—a feature commonly seen in natural anorthosite massifs. We propose that a large plume-generated basaltic magma chamber may be ponded at the viscous lower crust or ductile-plastic upper mantle or further down in the weaker mantle of the jelly sandwich type continental lithosphere. The magma may cool and crystallize very slowly and resolve into a thick-layered basic complex with anorthosite layers. Rheologically behaving like Newtonian or non-Newtonian power law fluids, the layers of the basic complex with built-in density inversions would generate RT (Rayleigh-Taylor) instability. The RT instability would trigger a buoyant rise of the unstable anorthosite from the layered complex. The upward driven anorthosite, accumulated as anorthosite plutons, would gradually ascend across the lower and middle crust as anorthosite diapirs.
Shared internal models for feedforward and feedback control of arm dynamics in non-human primates

Previous work has shown that humans account for and learn novel properties or the arm’s dynamics, and that such learning causes changes in both the predictive (i.e., feedforward) control of reaching and reflex (i.e., feedback) responses to mechanical perturbations. Here we show that similar observations hold in old-world monkeys (macaca fascicularis). Two monkeys were trained to use an exoskeleton to perform a single-joint elbow reaching and to respond to mechanical perturbations that created pure elbow motion. Both of these tasks engaged robust shoulder muscle activity as required to account for the torques that typically arise at the shoulder when the forearm rotates around the elbow joint (i.e., intersegmental dynamics). We altered these intersegmental arm dynamics by having the monkeys generate the same elbow movements with the shoulder joint either free to rotate, as normal, or fixed by the robotic manipulandum, which eliminates the shoulder torques caused by forearm rotation. After fixing the shoulder joint, we found a systematic reduction in shoulder muscle activity. In addition, after releasing the shoulder joint again, we found evidence of kinematic aftereffects (i.e., reach errors) in the direction predicted if failing to compensate for normal arm dynamics. We also tested whether such learning transfers to feedback responses evoked by mechanical perturbations and found a reduction in shoulder feedback responses, as appropriate for these altered arm intersegmental dynamics. Demonstrating this learning and transfer in non-human primates will allow the investigation of the neural mechanisms involved in feedforward and feedback control of the arm’s dynamics.
Action-based organization and function of cerebellar cortical microcircuits

The cerebellum is the largest sensorimotor structure in the brain, but its mode of operation is not well understood. However, a fundamental organizational feature of the cerebellar cortex is division into elongated zones, defined by their inputs from specific parts of the inferior olive and Purkinje cell output to cerebellar and vestibular nuclei. Little is known about how the pattern of neuronal activity in zones, and their functional microcircuit subdivisions, microzones, is related to behaviour in awake animals. Here, we studied the organization of microzones within the C3 zone and their activity during a skilled forelimb reaching task in cats. Neurons in different parts of the C3 zone, functionally determined by receptive field characteristics, differed in their patterns of activity during movement. Our results suggest that the cerebellar C3 zone is organized and operates within an action-based frame of reference, with different microcircuits within the zone controlling specific muscle synergies.
Punishment history biases corticothalamic responses to motivationally-significant stimuli

Making predictions about future rewards or punishments is fundamental to adaptive behavior. These processes are influenced by prior experience. For example, prior exposure to aversive stimuli or stressors changes behavioral responses to negative- and positive-value predictive cues. Here, we demonstrate a role for medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) neurons projecting to the paraventricular nucleus of the thalamus (PVT; mPFC→PVT) in this process. We found that a history of punishments negatively biased behavioral responses to motivationally-relevant stimuli in mice and that this negative bias was associated with hyperactivity in mPFC→PVT neurons during exposure to those cues. Furthermore, artificially mimicking this hyperactive response with selective optogenetic excitation of the same pathway recapitulated the punishmentinduced negative behavioral bias. Together, our results highlight how information flow within the mPFC→PVT circuit is critical for making predictions about imminent motivationally-relevant outcomes as a function of prior experience.
A fundamental structure-function mapping in the ocean microbiome

Recent work on microbial communities from various environments has shown that coexisting microorganisms with similar metabolic functions can be combined into high level “functional groups”, independently of their taxonomy. In the case of the ocean microbiome, functional groups inferred from taxonomic annotations have been found to display strong correlations with environmental parameters such as nutrient availability or temperature, cementing the notion that such groups represent the true functional units of microbiomes. However, the general rules by which taxa should be aggregated into functional groups remains elusive, largely because the statistical properties of multi-taxa assemblages are poorly understood. Here, we show that two conditions are required for such assemblages to explain a higher percentage of variance in environmental parameters than single taxa. 1) the taxa - environmental parameter correlations should be of the same sign, and 2) taxa should be weakly or negatively correlated with each other. We call these conditions consistency and complementarity, respectively. Applying this framework to the ocean microbiome we found that the best grouping of taxa is one that partitions it into only two groups, a core and a flexible assemblage. The core assemblage is enriched in taxa commonly found in the surface ocean, such as cyanobacteria and oligotrophic heterotrophs, and was found to be almost perfectly correlated to the first principal component (PC1) of the taxa-sample matrix. The flexible assemblage instead was enriched in particle-associated taxa, which are more diverse and abundant at higher depths. We found that this core / flexible partitioning is the simplest and most robust structure-function pattern present in the global ocean microbiome data and that it outperforms more fine-grained functional groupings based on metabolic annotations.
Population Connectivity Predicts Vulnerability to White-Nose Syndrome in the Chilean Myotis (Myotis chiloensis) - A Genomics Approach

Despite its peculiar distribution, the biology of the southernmost bat species in the world, the Chilean myotis (Myotis chiloensis), has garnered little attention so far. The species has a north-south distribution of c. 2800 km, mostly on the eastern side of the Andes mountain range. Use of extended torpor occurs in the southernmost portion of the range, putting the species at risk of bat white-nose syndrome (WNS), a fungal disease responsible for massive population declines in North American bats. Here, we examined how geographic distance and topology would be reflected in the population structure of M. chiloensis along the majority of its range using a double digestion RAD-tag method. We sampled 66 individuals across the species range and discovered pronounced isolation-by-distance. Furthermore, and surprisingly, we found higher degrees of heterozygosity in the southernmost populations compared to the north. A coalescence analysis revealed that our populations may still not have reached secondary contact after the Last Glacial Maximum. As for the potential spread of pathogens, such as the fungus causing WNS, connectivity among populations was noticeably low, especially between the southern hibernatory populations in the Magallanes and Tierra del Fuego, and more northerly populations. This suggests the probability of geographic spread of the disease from the north through bat-to-bat contact to susceptible populations is low. The study presents a rare case of defined population structure in a bat species and warrants further research on the underlying factors contributing to this.