Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Efektivna veličina populacije buše i gatačkog govečeta: ekološki i molekularni pristup

Efektivna velicina populacije (Ne) je jedan od osnovnih parametara populacione genetike. Pracenje efektivne velicine populacije zajedno sa pracenjem geneticke varijabilnosti je veoma znacajno za populaciono geneticka istraživanja i ima veliku primjenu u uspostavljanju konzervacione strategije. U radu je izracunata Ne za populaciju buse sa dva lokaliteta (istocna i zapadna Hercegovina) i populaciju gatackog goveceta iz regije Hercegovina. Koriscene su dvije metode za racunanje Ne i to: ekoloska i molekularna metoda. Za ekolosku metodu izracunavanja efektivne velicine populacije koriscen je broj mužjaka i ženki koje se pare. Ne prema molekularnim metodama je racunata na osnovu varijacije broja ponovaka (SSMM), kao i na osnovu ocekivane heterozigotnosti (IAM). Ekoloska Ne je u odnosu na cenzus (N) u opsegu ocekivanom za populacije goveda i kretala se od 7,5 do 18,5. Molekularna Ne prema IAM metodi se kretala od 3040 do 3947, a prema SSMM metodi se kretala od 28875 do 35196. Dobijeni rezultati ukazuju na znacaj molekularnih metoda u ocjeni Ne kao parametra u konzervaciji autohtonih goveda.
Characterization of Hesitations Using Acoustic Models

Spontaneous speech is full of hesitations, such as fillers, word cut-offs, repetitions and segmental extensions. Automatic identification of such hesitations has several applications; however, it is a challenging research problem. In this paper acoustic-phonetic properties of hesitation phenomena are explored in order to identify and annotate some of these events in a spontaneous speech corpus of Portuguese broadcast television news. Based on pitch, energy, spectral and durational characteristics of the filled pauses and segmental extensions during their production, we intend to characterize the acoustic-phonetic regularity of the phenomena. A speech recognition sys-tem was used to help locating the filled pauses and extensions. The events detected were then manually validated. Our preliminary results suggest that there are regular trends in the production of these hesitation events, which could distinguish them from other events within the structure of Portuguese. Our purpose with this work is to improve acoustic modeling for spontaneous speech recognition systems. Some insights into the process of human speech communication for Portuguese are gained as well.
Image Recognition using SVM-weighted Non-negative Matrix Factorization

This paper presents a new image classification method by learning with non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) and SVM. Firstly, NMF is utilized to extract effective features from the high dimensional feature vector. Then the weight coefficients of features are estimated automatically using relevance feedback strategy by linear SVM. NMF and SVM construct a neural network actually. Finally, classification depends on the K-nearest neighbor rule. Experimental results on the ORL face database and the 9-class task of cells from blood smears show high classification accuracy of the method.
An improved grey dynamic GM(2, 1) model

In recent years, the grey dynamic model GM(2, 1), which is based on the grey system theory has been successfully applied in many prediction fields to solve efficiently the predicted problems of uncertainty systems. However, this model has irrational problem concerning the calculation of initial value and derivative. Therefore, the predicted accuracy of GM(2, 1) is unsatisfying when original data show great randomness. In this paper, the new calculation of initial value and derivative are first proposed to enhance the predicted power according to cubic spline function. The newly generated model is defined as 3spGM(2, 1). To further improve predicted accuracy, the Taylor approximation method is then applied to 3spGM(2, 1). We call the improved version as T-3spGM(2, 1). Finally, the effectiveness of proposed model is validated by using fault data sets of electric product.
Latitude, solar elevation angles and gap‐regenerating rain forest pioneers

1. Tropical rain forests have more species‐rich tree assemblages than forests at higher latitudes, but is this because they comprise a wider array of niches or functional types? We address this by considering one tree functional type – light‐demanding canopy trees with fast foliage turnover and growth – that is common in the tropics and subtropics, but virtually absent from mid‐latitude rain forests. Although often referred to as ‘tall pioneers’ or ‘large pioneers’, they are by no means confined to early‐successional stages, also recruiting directly to the canopy in old‐growth stands by rapid growth beneath tree‐fall gaps.
Descriptions of Comfort in the Social Networks Surrounding a Dying Child

Aim: The aim of this study was to describe how comforters of one dying child were comforted, described by the child's mother and nurse. Background: The death of a child is one of the greatest losses parents can sustain and a stressful experience for nurses. Those who provide comfort may also need comfort, yet little is known about how comforters are comforted. Method: The interviews with mother and nurse were analysed using content analysis. Persons and activities mentioned as comforting were outlined in a sociogram. Findings: The findings show that the mother received comfort from her child and family, the nurse, extended family and others close to the family. She found comfort in being involved in the care and sharing worries with the nurse and in self-comfort. She described that siblings found comfort in each other, in living everyday life, in music and in expressing their feelings in drawings. The nurse gained comfort from sharing hardships with colleagues and a relative and from making a difference to the child. Conclusion: The findings provide a picture of interacting comforting social networks surrounding one dying child.
A functional comparison of tumor cell killing by activated macrophages and natural killer cells

This report compares the sensitivity of 17 tumor cell lines to cytolysis mediated by natural killer (NK) cells or by activated, bone marrow‐derived macrophages (AM) from 15 inbred mouse strains. Some tumor cell lines, notably P815, were highly sensitive to AM‐mediated lysis but almost completely insensitive to NK cells, whereas other cell lines were lysed by NK cells but not AM. In a genotype survey, some low‐responder strains in the NK system, such as A/Sn, were high responders in the AM system, and, conversely, one intermediate to high‐responder strain (C3 H/HeJ) in the NK system was a low responder in AM‐mediated cytolysis. In addition, macrophage cytotoxicity factor was necessary to activate macrophages, but this lymphokine did not augment NK activity. Furthermore, the NK population did not contain pre‐activated macrophages since pre‐activated cells were removed on glass bead columns or by iron carbonyl and a magnet; treatments which have been previously shown not to affect NK cells. These results suggest that NK cells are distinct from AM in physical characteristics, target selectivity, genotype distribution and the mechanism of cytolysis.
Low molecular weight RNAs transcribed in vitro by RNA polymerase III from Alu-type dispersed repeats in Chinese hamster DNA are also found in vivo.

An Alu-type dispersed repeat previously identified in a cloned fragment of Chinese hamster DNA [Haynes, S. R. , Toomey, T. P., Leinwand, L. & Jelinek, W. R. (1981) Mol. Cell. Biol. 1, 573-583] serves as a template for cell-free transcription of discrete low molecular weight RNAs by RNA polymerase III [RNA nucleotidyltransferase (DNA-directed), EC 2.7. 7.6]. A class of analogous RNAs has been isolated from growing Chinese hamster cells by hybridization of total low molecular weight nuclear RNAs to the cloned DNA fragment from which cell-free transcription occurs. Two-dimensional analysis of RNase digestion products of these RNAs suggests that they are transcribed from multiple members of the Alu-type dispersed repeat family.
Differential Sensitivity of Peripheral Retina to Intermittent White Light

The ability of the eye to detect differences in the interruption rate of white light was investigated for various rates and for several locations onthe temporal periphery of the right eye. The complex relationship previously reported was again found, but only for stimulation of the fovea. The results from the peripheral regions indicate that differential sensitivity is adecreasing function of the rate of intermittence.
Update on amyloid‐β homeostasis markers for sporadic Alzheimer's disease

Amyloid‐β (Aβ) is either directly involved in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD) or tightly correlated with other primary pathogenic factors. It is produced from amyloid precursor protein (APP) by proteolytic processing dependent on the β‐site APP‐cleaving enzyme 1 (BACE1) and γ‐secretase, and is degraded by a broad range of proteases. This update summarizes the currently available studies that have determined the usefulness of BACE1 and secreted fragments of APP and Aβ as cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers for AD.
Dermatomyositis induced by anti-tumor necrosis factor in a patient with juvenile idiopathic arthritis.

IMPORTANCE Biologic therapies, including anti-tumor necrosis factor (TNF) agents, are increasingly used to treat a variety of autoimmune diseases. Paradoxically, these agents have been reported to induce some of the very diseases they were designed to treat, including dermatomyositis (DM). We describe the first case of anti-TNF-associated DM without muscle involvement presenting in an adult patient with a history of arthritis since childhood. This cutaneous eruption recurred after rechallenge with an alternate anti-TNF agent. OBSERVATIONS A 46-year-old man with juvenile idiopathic arthritis developed a pruritic cutaneous eruption while receiving etanercept. Given concern about a drug-induced eruption, etanercept therapy was discontinued and the cutaneous findings improved. However, after rechallenge with adalimumab, he developed similar findings consistent with the skin manifestations of DM. After discontinuation of all anti-TNF drug therapy and the addition of methotrexate sodium, his eruption improved. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE Because the use of these agents is increasing, practitioners should be aware of the possibility of anti-TNF-induced autoimmune disorders, including DM. The case described herein is unique in that anti-TNF-induced autoimmune disease occurred in a patient with existing arthritis since childhood and recurred with rechallenge, adding further evidence to support the existence of anti-TNF-induced DM.
Systemic treatment of advanced pancreatic cancer—step by step progress

Advanced pancreatic cancer still has a dismal prognosis. For the past 15 years, gemcitabine has been the standard of care for this disease providing clinical benefit and a median overall survival of slightly more than 6 months. Many compounds have been examined in combination with gemcitabine, but only the addition of the epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor, erlotinib, led to a significant improvement in overall survival of the patients.1 However, the absolute improvement was only in the range of several days in the intention to treat population. A subgroup of patients, namely those who developed a skin rash in response to erlotinib, seemed to benefit more from the addition of the drug. Recently, a combination of 5-fluorouracil, oxaliplatin and irinotecan, the so-called FOLFIRINOX regimen, showed for the first time a marked improvement of overall survival (OS) in patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer compared with single-agent gemcitabine.2 This finding has two implications: Pancreatic cancer is not as chemotherapy-resistant as previously thought, and gemcitabine may not be the ideal combination partner for other chemotherapeutic agents in pancreatic cancer. How to proceed after failure of first-line chemotherapy in pancreatic cancer is still an open question. Heinemann and colleagues3 investigated a sequential treatment with conventionally dosed gemcitabine, or capecitabine plus erlotinib, followed by the comparator cytostatic …
The novel protein phosphatase PphA from Synechocystis PCC 6803 controls dephosphorylation of the signalling protein PII

The family of PII signal transduction proteins consists of one of the most highly conserved signalling proteins in nature. The cyanobacterial PII homologue transmits signals on the nitrogen and carbon status of the cells through phosphorylation of a seryl residue. Recently, we identified a protein phosphatase 2C (PP2C) homologue from the cyanobacterium Synechocystis PCC 6803, termed PphA, to be the cellular phospho-PII (PII-P) phosphatase. In this investigation, we characterized the enzymatic properties of PphA and investigated the regulation of its catalytic activity towards PII-P. PphA dephosphorylates phosphocasein and PII-P with similar efficiency in a strictly Mg2+- or Mn2+-dependent reaction. Low-molecular-weight phosphorylated molecules are poor substrates for PphA. Its reactivity towards PII-P, but not towards phosphocasein, is inhibited by various nucleotides, suggesting that this effect is based on specific properties of the PII protein. The inhibitory effect of ATP can be strongly enhanced by the addition of 2-oxoglutarate or oxaloacetate. At low concentrations of 2-oxoglutarate, changes in the ATP levels within the physiological range affect the degree of PII-Pase inhibition, whereas at 2-oxoglutarate levels beyond 0.1 mM, inhibition is almost complete at very low ATP levels. This suggests that PII dephosphorylation is not only sensitive to 2-oxoglutarate and oxaloacetate levels, it also integrates signals from the energy charge of the cells under specific cellular conditions.
Reduced cerebrospinal fluid BACE1 activity in multiple sclerosis

Background Cell and animal experiments have shown that β-site APP-cleaving enzyme 1 (BACE1) may be involved in myelination. Objective Here, we assess the association of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) BACE1 activity with multiple sclerosis (MS). Methods BACE1 activity and levels of secreted amyloid precursor protein (APP) and amyloid-β (Aβ) isoforms were analyzed in CSF from 100 patients with MS and 114 neurologically healthy controls. Patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), 26 with and 41 without cerebral engagement, were also included to enable comparisons with regards to another autoimmune disease. A subset of patients with MS and controls underwent a second lumbar puncture after 10 years. Results MS patients had lower CSF BACE1 activity than controls (P = 0.03) and patients with cerebral SLE (P < 0.001). Patients with cerebral SLE had higher BACE1 activity than any other group (P < 0.05 for all comparisons). BACE1 activity correlated with the different amyloid markers in all study groups. BACE1 activity decreased over 10 years in the MS group (P = 0.039) and correlated weakly with clinical disease severity scores in an inverse manner. Conclusions These results suggest an involvement of BACE1 in the MS disease process.
Applying Recurrent Neural Networks to Sentiment Analysis of Spanish Tweets

This article presents the participation of the Intelligent Systems Group (GSI) at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) in the Sentiment Analysis workshop focused in Spanish tweets, TASS2017. We have worked on Task 1, aiming to classify sentiment polarity of Spanish tweets. For this task we propose a Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) architecture composed of Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) cells followed by a feedforward network. The architecture makes use of two different types of features: word embeddings and sentiment lexicon values. The recurrent architecture allows us to process text sequences of different lengths, while the lexicon inserts directly into the system sentiment information. The results indicate that this feature combination leads to enhanced sentiment analysis performances.
RP evidence for context congruity effects during simultaneous bject – scene processing

Contextual regularities help us analyze visual scenes and form judgments on their constituents. The present study investigates the effect of context violation on scene processing using event-related potentials (ERPs). We compared ERPs evoked by congruent vs. incongruent visual scenes (e.g., a man playing a violin vs. a man “playing” a broomstick), when the scene and object are presented simultaneously, so subjects cannot form previous expectations about the object’s identity. As expected, an ongoing anterior negativity emerged around 270 ms post-stimulus presentation, lasting for about 330 ms. This negativity, resembling the N300/N400 effect previously associated with semantic integration, was followed by a later and broadly distributed negativity between 650 and 850 ms, possibly related to late processes ontext effects 400 vent-related potentials ncongruency of semantic evaluation and response preparation. The results confirm that contextual congruity affects scene processing starting from ∼300 ms or earlier, and that this early electrophysiological congruity effect indeed reflects context violation processing, rather than indexing a mismatch between expected vs. actual events, or between prepared vs. correct responses. They also suggest that contextual information may affect object model selection processes, and influence later stages of semantic knowledge -ma activation and/or decision
A high performance dynamic logic with nMOS based resistive keeper circuit

Dynamic logic is highly in demand for designing low power VLSI circuits. It need less number of transistor though but the performance of the dynamic logic is not so promising due to prolonged contention time and higher leakage power. Present research proposes a new nMOS based resistive circuit in order to reduce the contention time for minimum leakage power. Simulation results using LTspice tools demonstrate that the proposed model significantly reduces the contention time as well as the leakage power.
Peripheral Blood Hematocrit in Critically Ill Surgical Patients: An Imprecise Surrogate of True Red Blood Cell Volume

BACKGROUND:Peripheral blood hematocrit (red blood cell volume/total blood volume) is conventionally used to determine the need for blood transfusions. In critically ill surgical patients, this variable may not accurately approximate true red blood cell volume. We compared peripheral blood hematocrit to (1) plasma volume, (2) estimated circulating blood volume, and (3) a normalized hematocrit to clarify their relationships. METHODS:Consecutive patients admitted to the surgical intensive care unit were evaluated using the BVA-100 Blood Volume Analyzer (Daxor Corporation, New York City, NY). Plasma volume was directly measured by serial tagged albumin concentration. Red blood cell volume was calculated using plasma volume and the peripheral blood hematocrit result. All volumes were presented as percentage deviation from ideal volumes. These ideal volumes were obtained using a patented formula incorporating ideal body weight as determined by Metropolitan Life tables. The peripheral blood hematocrit was compared with a “normalized” hematocrit, defined as the hematocrit value if plasma volume was adjusted to a normal whole blood volume. RESULTS:Eighty-six data points were recorded for 40 patients with average age 61 ± 20 yr, APACHE II score 20 ± 6, and a 13% mortality rate. The primary reasons for admission were severe sepsis/septic shock (n = 11), hemorrhagic shock (n = 7), respiratory failure (n = 20), and cardiac failure (n = 2). Bland–Altman analysis showed a mean difference of 3.4 ± 7.8 hematocrit percentage points between normalized and peripheral blood hematocrit methods, with a 95% confidence interval of 1.7–5.1 and limits of agreement of ±15.2 hematocrit percentage points. Peripheral blood hematocrit was lower than the normalized hematocrit in 48% of measurements, higher in 17%, and equivalent in 35%. CONCLUSIONS:Peripheral blood hematocrit may not accurately estimate red blood cell volume in a cohort of critically ill surgical patients. This remains to be validated in a larger group of patients, comparing these results with the double isotope technique.
Emperipolesis of granular leukocytes within megakaryocytes in human hemopoietic bone marrow.

The presence of granular leukocytes within megakaryocytes was a striking and unusual feature of the bone marrow from a 59-year-old, uremic, diabetic woman being investigated for anemia and thrombocytopenia. By using tissue culture technics and time-lapse phase-contrast cinephotography, emperipolesis (“ inside round about wandering ”) of leukocytes within megakaryocytes was demonstrated. In the tissue culture, leukocytes appeared to be attracted to the megakaryocytes. Upon entry into a megakaryocyte they exhibited considerable movement therein, then departed without apparent injury to either participant. The appearance of the cytologic and histologic material suggested that this phenomenon was very prevalent in vivo . Studies using the electron microscope demonstrated intact membranes surrounding the granulocytes and lining the megakaryocytic vesicles. The significance of this rare finding has not been established. It is hoped that this report will draw attention to this phenomenon.
ON THE EVOLUTION OF SEXUAL REPRODUCTION IN HOSTS COEVOLVING WITH MULTIPLE PARASITES

Host–parasite coevolution has been studied extensively in the context of the evolution of sex. Although hosts typically coevolve with several parasites, most studies considered one‐host/one‐parasite interactions. Here, we study population‐genetic models in which hosts interact with two parasites. We find that host/multiple‐parasite models differ nontrivially from host/single‐parasite models. Selection for sex resulting from interactions with a single parasite is often outweighed by detrimental effects due to the interaction between parasites if coinfection affects the host more severely than expected based on single infections, and/or if double infections are more common than expected based on single infections. The resulting selection against sex is caused by strong linkage‐disequilibria of constant sign that arise between host loci interacting with different parasites. In contrast, if coinfection affects hosts less severely than expected and double infections are less common than expected, selection for sex due to interactions with individual parasites can now be reinforced by additional rapid linkage‐disequilibrium oscillations with changing sign. Thus, our findings indicate that the presence of an additional parasite can strongly affect the evolution of sex in ways that cannot be predicted from single‐parasite models, and that thus host/multiparasite models are an important extension of the Red Queen Hypothesis.