Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Flamingo-like footprints and the problem of addressing biological diversity in the past

ABSTRACT In this work we present new avian fossil footprints preserved in the Vinchina Formation at del Yeso Creek, La Rioja, Argentina. To understand the morphological variation of very similar footprints not organizaed in trackways, we use statistical analyses combined with taphonomic analyses, resulting in a more refined classification of the ichnotaxa. Accordingly, the monospecific ichnogenus Phoenicopterichnum rector Aramayo and Manera de Blanco 1987 assigned to flamingoes, has two new ichnospecies, P. lucioi isp. nov. and P. vinchinaensis isp. nov. In addition, footprints produced by anatids, Anatipeda ips, are also reported. The predictive clustering analysis allow us to propose new ichnospecies by identifying which variables are of statistical significance to differentiate morphotypes. We defined two taphonomic groups and plotted it on the cluster analysis, inferring that the taphonomic input do not influence the morphologic analysis. Finally, we recommend testing statistically which variables are in fact of more influence in distinguishing morphotypes and/or ichnotaxa. That increase the value of paleobiological and/or ichnotaxonomical interpretations. By using these tools, we can achieve a better identification of footprint morphologies and consequently their trackmakers and the assignation of ichnotaxa to help address biological diversity in the past.
Examination of Multidrug-resistant Enterobacteriaceae Isolated from Salted Cattle Hides and Sheep Skins

Antibiotic resistance profiles in Enterobacteriaceae isolated fromsalted cattle hides and sheep skin samples were examined in thisstudy. Antibiotic resistance profiles of 27 cattle hide and 28sheep skin isolates, obtained from five salted cattle hide and fiveskin samples originating in different countries such as Dubai,Turkey, Israel, Australia, Lebanon, U.S.A. and South Africa,were examined by disc diffussion susceptibility method using 24different antimicrobial agents. Seventy percent of the salted hideisolates and sixty-eight percent of the salted sheep skin isolatesexhibited resistance to three or more of 24 antimicrobial agentsused. Less than 50% of the isolates was resistant to tobramycin(13%), cephalothin (16%), tetracycline (16%), amoxycillinclavulanate(25%), ampicillin-sulbactam (29%), piperacillintazobactam(38%), cefoxitin (20%), ceftriaxone (45%),ceftazidime (33%), cefuroxime sodium (45%), trimethoprimsulfamethoxazole(25%), ampicillin (45%), chloramphenicol(35%) and nalidixic acid (42%). Although 71% of isolates exhibitedresistance to aztreonam, all isolates were susceptible tonorfloxacin. Resistance to amikacin (5%), streptomycin (9%),kanamycin (9%), gentamicin (5%), imipenem (4%), meropenem(2%), ciprofloxacin (5%) and ofloxacin (2%) was not very commonamong the isolates. Our research results showed that multidrugresistantEnterobacteriaceae were common on both salted cattlehide and sheep skin samples. Therefore, we suggest effectiveantibacterial applications during salt curing of hides and skins toeradicate these multidrug-resistant bacteria in the leather industry.
Studies in Aristolochia (Aristolochiaceae) of Hispaniola

A review of the literature at large and the field photographic record of the senior author of this study indicate that there are several undescribed species of Aristolochia in Hispaniola (Dominican Republic and Haiti), related to A. bilobata. Here we show that A. mirandae is a synonym of A. bilobata and that what appears as A. bilobata in Marión H. (2011: 76–77) is a new species here described as Aristolochia adiastola. In addition, two new species, A. bonettiana and A. marioniana, also related to A. bilobata, are described and illustrated herein.
Multimodal Interventions for Improving Convalescence Following Major Colonic Surgery

Major surgery is followed by a long period of convalescence. However this recovery period is not well defined and tools for its measurement and assessment are lacking. This thesis describes the concept of Post Operative Fatigue as a clinically relevant outcome measure for assessment of convalescence. It will analyse the existing literature and describe a clinically relevant measurement tool for assessment of POF and will provide a clinically appropriate definition for this topic. It will demonstrate that POF is as a result of interaction between psychological and biological variables which are as a direct result of the perioperative care and operation itself. It will also be hypothesised that inflammatory mediators may also play an important role in the development of POF. These mediators stimulate the vagus nerve, which through its central connection leads to behavioural changes in subjects. Chapter 2 will analyse evidence available which may address the numerous factors which contribute to the development of POF. This leads to the introduction of Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) care pathways. Chapter 3 will review a prospective study which demonstrates that ERAS is an effective measure to improve outcomes following major colonic surgery. Chapter 4 will utilize a recently validated multi-dimensional measurement tool called the Identity-Consequence Fatigue Scale to measure POF in a group of patients undergoing surgery within a conventional care plan compared to a group within a structured ERAS program. It will be shown that ERAS can lead to detectable changes in POF in patients undergoing major colonic surgery. Lastly, it will be demonstrated through a randomised controlled trial that preoperative dexamethasone suppresses the post operative inflammatory response following surgery. It will be subsequently demonstrated that there is a direct correlation between post operative peritoneal IL-6 and POF and reduction in peritoneal IL-6 levels leads to a detectable reduction in POF.
Response of broilers to reduced-protein diets under heat stress conditions

Decreasing heat increment through lowering crude protein (CP) level via supplemental amino acids (AA) have long been suggested as a nutritional practice to alleviate negative heat stress effects on broiler performance. However, there is a considerable body of inconclusive reports on optimisation of such practices, whereby bird performance remains unchanged. The exact mechanism underlying the impaired growth performance in birds fed with reduced-CP diets is not clear yet. Furthermore, adding the environmental temperature factor to the situation may complicate the solution. To date, there is no agreement on the extent of reducing CP level via AA supplementation so that growth performance remains unaffected. Evidence suggests that dietary CP could be reduced safely by 2.3% via essential AA supplementation during later ages, when birds are exposed to an average daily ambient temperature of ≤27.3°C. When Gly was added (a non-essential AA source), the margin of CP reduction could be increased to 5.1% without compromising the growth of broilers subjected to cyclic heat stress. Nonetheless, feeding broilers with a similar Gly-fortified, reduced protein diet failed to support optimal performance under hot and humid tropical climates in 1-21-d-old broilers and had a major impact on growth in broilers reared at 34°C. Regardless of supplemental AA composition or the level of CP reduction, the performance of broilers was negatively affected when birds were subjected to chronic heat stress conditions (≥30°C). These discrepancies can be attributed to a wide range of confounding factors, such as the extent of lowering CP level, types of AA used, age and environmental conditions. Accordingly, the addition of Gly may represent a good approach for reducing dietary CP levels for broilers raised under elevated ambient temperature. Reducing dietary CP is recommended when birds are exposed to moderate but not chronic heat stress conditions.
VARIATIONS IN SOCIOECONOMIC OUTCOMES OF SECOND GENERATION YOUNG ADULTS

Educational and labour market profiles are constructed from the 2001 Census of Canada for the second generation youth aged 20 to 29. In general, second generation youth overachieve compared with the non-visible minority third-plus generation. However, variations exist within the visible minority population, with some groups doing very well and others less well. C anada is a popular country of destination for immigrants, and the foreign born now represent 18% of Canada’s 2001 population (Boyd and Vickers 2000). Many of these immigrants arrived as adults and have children born in Canada. This latter group is also large. Among people aged 15 and older in 2001, those born in Canada to one or more foreign-born parents (most have two foreign-born parents) make up nearly 17% of the Canadian population.This sizable presence of immigrant offspring redirects the question “How well are immigrants doing in the host society? ” into “How well are the children of immigrants faring? ” Both questions focus on the experiences of immigrant origin groups, but they differ in their time horizons.Thefirstquestionfocusesonwhathappenstoimmigrantsoveragivenperiodof time.Todate, we know that newly arrived immigrants generally do less well,with respect to economic indicators such as home ownership, employment and earnings, compared with the Canadian born or groups with longer duration in Canada.In contrast,difficulties associated with newcomer status are not expected to occur for their Canadian-born offspring since the latter are educated in Canada, are fluent in English and/or French and are likely to have greater familiarity with workplace practices and customs. Looking at how well children of immigrants do with respect to socioeconomic indicators, then, is useful for two reasons. First, it provides a longer time horizon for assessing how well immigrant origin groups do simply because the emphasis is on outcomes that exist for a subsequent generation, one armed with a greater knowledge about the host society. Second, it usually indicates if the negative experiences of specific immigrant groups persist or disappear for the next generation.The persistence of disadvantages may indicate the existence of barriers based on origins or race that permeate a society and stratify groups; the disappearance of disadvantages across generations suggests the opposite.
Pediatric CT: Understanding of Radiation Dose and Optimization of Imaging Techniques

The number of CT examinations is dramatically increasing due to recent technical advances including multi-slice spiral CT. Although the benefits of CT outweigh the risks of radiation exposure of CT, radiologists should alert to the potential harmful effects of CT and avoid unnecessarily high CT dose, especially for pediatric CT examinations. To accomplish this, we should understand CT radiation dose and be familiar with imaging techniques of reducing CT dose without degrading diagnostic image quality. In addition, it is important to spread this balanced and useful information into CT referring clinicians, radiologists in training, and medical students.
Molecular properties are a primary control on the microbial utilization of dissolved organic matter in the ocean

The global ocean sequesters a large amount of reduced carbon in dissolved organic molecules that can persist for centuries to millennia. The persistence of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in the deep ocean has been attributed to inherently refractory molecules and to low concentrations of molecules, but the relative roles of molecular properties and molecular concentrations remain uncertain. We investigate both of these possibilities using bioassay experiments with unfiltered seawater collected from five depths (50–1500 m) at the Bermuda Atlantic Time‐Series Study site. The microbial utilization of compositionally distinct forms of seawater DOC at in situ and elevated concentrations was determined. Microbial utilization of in situ organic carbon ranged from 6% to 7% in surface waters to 0% in deep water after 180 d. Additions of surface plankton‐derived DOC (~18 μmol L−1), which was enriched in amino acids and carbohydrates, revealed substantial (50–75%) removal of the added DOC at all depths within 7 d. In sharp contrast, additions of C‐18 isolated deep‐sea DOC (~20 μmol L−1) showed insignificant or minimal utilization at all depths after 7 or 180 d, even when primed with labile substrates. These experiments demonstrate microbial communities from varying depths and environments in the ocean could rapidly utilize elevated concentrations of plankton‐derived DOC, whereas these same microbes failed to utilize elevated concentrations of C‐18 DOC. These results indicate molecular properties are the primary control on the microbial utilization of DOC in the ocean. Our findings imply a dynamic DOC reservoir with a flexible capacity for carbon sequestration in the global ocean.
Evaluation of the results of the systemic thrombolysis in elderly

Background: Heart diseases constitute the main cause of death in industrialized countries and among them the ischemic heart disease with its deadlier complication, the acute myocardial infarction. Objective: To evaluate the results of the thrombolytic treatment in patients older than 60 years with clinicalelectrocardiographic diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction. Method: A descriptive retrospective study was performed from January 2003 to December 2007 to the patients that were admitted in the Intensive Care Unit at “Dr. Octavio de la Concepción y de la Pedraja” Educational Surgical Clinical Military Hospital with clinicalelectrocardiographic diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction. Forty-five patients admitted with this diagnosis constituted the sample, for which medical and necropsy records were revised in dead cases. Thrombolysis to the 62.22% of the patients was carried out. Results: In the age group between 60 and 79 years the thrombolysis was the most frequent with 12 patients. The global mortality was about six patients, where the age group between 70 and 79 years predominated with three cases. The most frequent cause that impeded the thrombolysis was the heart attack of more than 12h of evolution with 13 patients (28,88%). The most frequent adverse reaction was the low blood pressure with 15 patients for a (15,55%). Conclusions: The thrombolysis in elderly turned out to be beneficial and in absence of contra-indications there is no motives in our medium for its exclusion. DeCS: Thrombolytic therapy; aged; epidemiology descriptive; hypotension
Disminución de la incidencia de defectos de cierre del tubo neural en el Hospital Universitario de Neiva: posible efecto de la promoción del consumo de ácido fólico

Neural tube defects (NTD) are brain or spinal cord congenital defects, causing death or severe disability Causes of NTDs are unknown. It seems that NTDs occur due to environmental and genetic interactions. ln 1997, a significant increase in the rate of NTDs (p=0.035) related to 1996 was obse~ed in the maternity wing at the University Hospital in Neiva, Colombia. Health authorities initiated a program according to the universal recommendation about folic acid supplementation and fortification to prevent NTDs (CDC Folic Acid Resource Guide). The aim of this study was to measure the incidence of NTDs in 1998, related to previous years, as a possible way to measure the impact of the actions adopted by the community and health authorities. The incidence of NTDs, Down syndrome, cleft
Broad binaural fusion impairs segregation of speech based on voice pitch differences in a ‘cocktail party’ environment

In the normal auditory system, central auditory neurons are sharply tuned to the same frequency ranges for each ear. This precise tuning is mirrored behaviorally as the binaural fusion of tones evoking similar pitches across ears. In contrast, hearing-impaired listeners exhibit abnormally broad tuning of binaural pitch fusion, fusing sounds with pitches differing by up to 3-4 octaves across ears into a single object. Here we present evidence that such broad fusion may similarly impair the segregation and recognition of speech based on voice pitch differences in a ‘cocktail party’ environment. Speech recognition performance in a multi-talker environment was measured in four groups of adult subjects: normal-hearing (NH) listeners and hearing-impaired listeners with bilateral hearing aids (HAs), bimodal cochlear implant (CI) worn with a contralateral HA, or bilateral CIs. Performance was measured as the threshold target-to-masker ratio needed to understand a target talker in the presence of masker talkers either co-located or symmetrically spatially separated from the target. Binaural pitch fusion was also measured. Voice pitch differences between target and masker talkers improved speech recognition performance for the NH, bilateral HA, and bimodal CI groups, but not the bilateral CI group. Spatial separation only improved performance for the NH group, indicating an inability of the hearing-impaired groups to benefit from spatial release from masking. A moderate to strong negative correlation was observed between the benefit from voice pitch differences and the breadth of binaural pitch fusion in all groups except the bilateral CI group in the co-located spatial condition. Hence, tuning of binaural pitch fusion predicts the ability to segregate voices based on pitch when acoustic cues are available. The findings suggest that obligatory binaural fusion, with a concomitant loss of information from individual streams, may occur at a level of processing before auditory object formation and segregation.
Heterogeneous synaptic weighting improves neural coding in the presence of common noise

Simultaneous recordings from the cortex have revealed that neural activity is highly variable, and that some variability is shared across neurons in a population. Further experimental work has demonstrated that the shared component of a neuronal population’s variability is typically comparable to or larger than its private component. Meanwhile, an abundance of theoretical work has assessed the impact shared variability has upon a population code. For example, shared input noise is understood to have a detrimental impact on a neural population’s coding fidelity. However, other contributions to variability, such as common noise, can also play a role in shaping correlated variability. We present a network of linear-nonlinear neurons in which we introduce a common noise input to model, for instance, variability resulting from upstream action potentials that are irrelevant for the task at hand. We show that by applying a heterogeneous set of synaptic weights to the neural inputs carrying the common noise, the network can improve its coding ability as measured by both Fisher information and Shannon mutual information, even in cases where this results in amplification of the common noise. With a broad and heterogeneous distribution of synaptic weights, a population of neurons can remove the harmful effects imposed by afferents that are uninformative about a stimulus. We demonstrate that some nonlinear networks benefit from weight diversification up to a certain population size, above which the drawbacks from amplified noise dominate over the benefits of diversification. We further characterize these benefits in terms of the relative strength of shared and private variability sources. Finally, we studied the asymptotic behavior of the mutual information and Fisher information analytically in our various networks as a function of population size. We find some surprising qualitative changes in the asymptotic behavior as we make seemingly minor changes in the synaptic weight distributions.
Heterochronically expressed midline netrin was recruited to guide mesoderm migration in epibolic gastrulation of the leech

Netrin is a remarkably conserved midline landmark, serving as a chemotactic factor that organizes the bilateral neural architecture in the post-gastrula bilaterian embryos. Netrin signal also guides cell migration in many other neural and non-neural organogenesis events in later developmental stages, but it has never been before found to participate in gastrulation – the earliest cell migration in metazoan embryogenesis. Here, we found that netrin signaling molecules and their receptors are expressed during gastrulation of the leech Helobdella. Intriguigly, Hau-netrin-1 was expressed in the N lineage, the precursor of ventral ectoderm, at the onset of gastrulation. We demonstrated that the N lineage is required for the entrance of mesoderm into the germinal band and that misexpression of Hau-netrin-1 in early gastrulation prevented mesoderm from entering the germinal band. Together, these results suggested that Hau-netrin-1 secreted by the N lineage guides mesoderm migration during germinal band assembly. Furthermore, ectopic expression of Hau-netrin-1 after the completion of germinal band assembly disrupted the epibolic migration of the germinal bands in a later stage of gastrulation. Thus, Hau-netrin-1 is likely involved in two distinct events in sequential stages of leech gastrulation: the assembly of germinal bands in early gastrulation and their epibolic migration in mid-gastrulation. This mode of gastrulation as observed in the leech is apomorphic for clitellate annelids. We postulated that a heterochronic shift of netrin gene expression in the clitellate ancestor might have facilitated the evolutionary emergence of a novel form of gastrulation in this lineage.
Quantitative trait variation and adaptation in contemporary humans

Quantitative trait variation and adaptation in contemporary humans Hakhamanesh Mostafavi Human genomic data sets are now reaching sample sizes on the order of hundreds of thousands and soon exceeding millions, providing unprecedented opportunities to understand human evolution. Most studies of human adaptation so far have focused on selection that has acted over the past million to few thousand years. However, powered by large data sets, it is now feasible to study allele frequency changes that occur within the short timescale of a few generations, directly observing selection acting in contemporary humans. I take this approach in the work presented in Chapter 1 of this thesis, where we performed a genome-wide scan to identify a set of genetic variants that influence age-specific mortality in present-day samples. Our findings include two variants in the APOE and CHRNA3 loci, as well as sets of variants contributing to a number of traits, including coronary artery disease and cholesterol levels, and intriguingly, to timing of puberty and child birth. New research directions have also opened up with the advent of large-scale genome-wide association studies (GWAS), which have begun to uncover genetic variants underlying a number of human traits, ranging from disease susceptibility to social and behavioral traits such as educational attainment and neuroticism. One such direction is the use of polygenic scores (PGS), which aggregate GWAS findings into one score as a measure of genetic propensity for traits, for phenotypic prediction. A major obstacle to this application is that the prediction accuracy of PGS drops in samples that have a different genetic ancestry than the GWAS sample. Our work, presented in Chapter 2, demonstrates that PGS prediction accuracy is also variable within genetic ancestries depending on factors such as age, sex, and socioeconomic status, as well as GWAS study design. These findings have important implications for the increasing use of these measures in diverse disciplines such as social sciences and human genetics.