Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Impacts of Thiamethoxam Seed Treatment and Host Plant Resistance on the Soybean Aphid Fungal Pathogen, Pandora neoaphidis

ABSTRACT Since the introduction of soybean aphid, Aphis glycines Matsumura, from Asia, insecticide use in soybean has increased substantially in the north central United States. Insecticide seed treatments and aphid resistant soybean varieties are management tactics that may reduce reliance on foliar applications of broad-spectrum insecticides. Exploring potential non-target impacts of these technologies will be an important step in incorporating them into aphid management programs. We investigated impacts of thiamethoxam seed treatment and Rag1 aphid resistant soybean on a fungal pathogen of soybean aphid, Pandora neoaphidis (Remaudière & Hennebert) Humber, via open plot and cage studies. We found that although thiamethoxam seed treatment did significantly lower aphid pressure in open plots compared with an untreated control, this reduction in aphid density translated into nonsignificant decreases in fungal disease prevalence in aphids. Furthermore, when aphid densities were approximately equal in seed treated and untreated soybean, no impact on aphid fungal disease was observed. In open plots, Rag1 resistant soybean experienced lower aphid pressure and aphid disease prevalence compared with a nonresistant isoline. However, in cages when aphid densities were equivalent in both resistant and susceptible soybean, resistance had no impact on aphid disease prevalence. The addition of thiamethoxam seed treatment to resistant soybean yielded aphid densities and aphid disease prevalence similar to untreated, resistant soybean. These studies provide evidence that thiamethoxam seed treatments and Rag1 resistance can impact P. neoaphidis via decreased aphid densities; however, this impact is minimal, implying use of seed treatments and host plant resistance are compatible with P. neoaphidis.
Positionnement concurrentiel des zones commerciales et satisfaction du consommateur

Cet article présente une analyse des éléments de compétitivité des espaces commerciaux au moyen de l'évaluation de la satisfaction des consommateurs à l'égard de la zone commerciale. La recherche montre tout d'abord que ce concept global intervient tout autant que l'accessibilité dans les choix de fréquentation des consommateurs. L'analyse des différents attributs d'une zone commerciale montre ensuite que tous ne contribuent pas de la même manière à la satisfaction des consommateurs. Enfin, selon le caractère central ou périphérique d'une zone, les consommateurs ne donnent pas la même importance à tous les critères.
Shape difference visualization for ancient bronze mirrors through 3D range images

Japanese archaeologists have paid special attention to ancient Chinese bronze mirrors because the mirrors may provide a key for the exact location of Yamatai State, which is one of the major archaeological controversies. Currently, archaeologists visually analyse ancient Chinese bronze mirrors for their shape difference. The practice requires a huge amount of time and effort. In this paper, we propose an automatic method for detecting the shape difference between a pair of ancient mirrors. The 3D data of the mirrors are obtained using a laser range scanner. Our algorithm then aligns them into the same coordinate and visualizes their shape differences. Our proposed algorithm provides fast and non-damaging analysis for shape difference. Further analysis can be evaluated on our data instead of the actual mirror, so it can be performed by more than one group of archaeologists. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Targeted Disruption of the Cln3 Gene Provides a Mouse Model for Batten Disease

Batten disease, a degenerative neurological disorder with juvenile onset, is the most common form of the neuronal ceroid lipofuscinoses. Mutations in the CLN3 gene cause Batten disease. To facilitate studies of Batten disease pathogenesis and treatment, a murine model was created by targeted disruption of the Cln3 gene. Mice homozygous for the disrupted Cln3 allele had a neuronal storage disorder resembling that seen in Batten disease patients: there was widespread and progressive intracellular accumulation of autofluorescent material that by EM displayed a multilamellar rectilinear/fingerprint appearance. Inclusions contained subunit c of mitochondrial ATP synthase. Mutant animals also showed neuropathological abnormalities with loss of certain cortical interneurons and hypertrophy of many interneuron populations in the hippocampus. Finally, as is true in Batten disease patients, there was increased activity in the brain of the lysosomal protease Cln2/TPP-1. Our findings are evidence that the Cln3-deficient mouse provides a valuable model for studying Batten disease.
Desarrollo de un sistema para medir similitud entre clases

Resumen. El incremento continuo de informacion en formato digital obliga a contar con nuevos metodos y tecnicas para acceder, recopilar y organizar estos volumenes de informacion textual. Una de las tecnicas mas utilizadas para organizar dicha informacion es la clasificacion de documentos. Los sistemas de clasificacion automatica de textos tienen una baja eficiencia cuando las clases son muy parecidas, y en este caso es muy importante el poder identificar aquellos atributos que nos permiten separar una clase de otra. En este trabajo se presenta un sistema para generar graficas de similitud entre documentos pertenecientes a clases de un corpus dado, tarea previa al proceso de clasificacion automatica. Estas graficas son utilizadas como un metodo de refinamiento auxiliandose de las similitudes entre los documentos no clasificados. Con esto se busca poder anticipar el desempeno de un metodo de clasificacion automatica. Los resultados obtenidos permiten ver la viabilidad de la metodologia propuesta.
An analysis of dialysis training in the United States and Canada.

BACKGROUND Because the prevalence of end-stage renal disease (ESRD) has progressively increased in both the United States and Canada, patients with ESRD are likely to constitute progressively larger proportions of nephrology practices. METHODS We mailed a questionnaire to US and Canadian nephrology program directors to determine methods used in dialysis training; 53% of US and 73% of Canadian programs responded. RESULTS Training programs in the United States enrolled a larger median number of fellows and had a lower median faculty-fellow ratio compared with programs in Canada. However, the availability of faculty in providing training in the care of patients undergoing maintenance hemodialysis (MHD) or chronic peritoneal dialysis (CPD) was similar in both countries. There were wide variations in availability of patients in both the United States and Canada. US training programs offered trainees significantly lower numbers of MHD and CPD patients; 29% of US training programs had less than five CPD patients per fellow. Similarly, there were wide variations in the amount of time trainees spent providing care to MHD and CPD patients; in 14% of US training programs, fellows spent less than 5% of their time receiving training for patients undergoing CPD. Only a small proportion of training programs had faculty resources or ensured training for fellows in the placement of percutaneous tunneled venous hemodialysis catheters or peritoneal dialysis catheters. CONCLUSIONS To conclude, there are wide variations in dialysis training in both the United States and Canada. This survey raises concerns that many US training programs either do not have an appropriate number of CPD patients or do not allocate appropriate time to ensure the preparedness of fellows in providing independent care for patients with ESRD undergoing CPD.
Pemoline abuse.

Addictive use of the stimulant drug pemoline caused a delusional disorder in a middle-aged man. Discontinuance of use of the drug promptly reversed the psychosis, which subsequently recurred when pemoline was again used. Pemoline seems to be an addictive drug and has an additional property that heretofore has been attributed mainly to amphetamines--precipitation of a paranoid psychosis.
Early and delayed clinical cardiotoxicity of doxorubicin

Five hundred thirty‐four evaluable patients with breast cancer were treated with a combination of 5‐fluorouracil, doxorubicin, and cyclophosphamide. The total planned dose of doxorubicin was 300 mg/m2 in patients with Stage II or III disease, and 450 mg/m2 in patients with isolated recurrences. The median time interval from start of adjuvant therapy to time of analysis was 68 months. Two percent had congestive heart failure associated with doxorubicin. Fifteen patients showed myocardial dysfunction attributed to either additional treatment with potentially cardiotoxic drugs for recurrent disease or other causes. The incidence of congestive heart failure was 1% in patients treated with up to 300 mg/m2, and 4% in patients who received 450 mg/m2 of doxorubicin. The median time interval from the end of doxorubicin to development of congestive heart failure was 1 month (range, 0–33 months). None of the 326 patients who have been followed 3 or more years (162 followed 5 or more years) since completion of doxorubicin therapy have developed congestive heart failure which was considered to be related from that therapy.
Interactions of dopamine D1 and D2 receptor antagonists with D‐methamphetamine‐induced hyperthermia and striatal dopamine and serotonin reductions

The effects of the dopamine D1 receptor antagonist R(+)‐SCH‐23390 and D2 receptor antagonist S(–)‐eticlopride on d‐methamphetamine‐induced striatal monoamine reductions 72 h after treatment were investigated in relation to changes in body temperature. Rats were administered four 10‐mg/kg doses of d‐methamphetamine or saline with a 2‐h interval between treatments; 0.5 mg/kg eticlopride or SCH‐23390 was administered 15 min before each methamphetamine or saline injection. Two ambient temperature conditions were investigated: 24 and 33°C. Methamphetamine administered at 24°C induced hyperthermia and reduced striatal dopamine content by 73%; 0.5 mg/kg eticlopride or SCH‐23390 administered in combination with methamphetamine at 24°C attenuated methamphetamine‐induced hyperthermia and prevented significant reductions in dopamine content. At 33°C, eticlopride and SCH‐23390 were ineffective in blocking methamphetamine‐induced hyperthermia and dopamine content was reduced by 65% in the SCH‐23390‐methamphetamine group. By contrast, dopamine content was reduced by only 31% in the 33°C eticlopride‐methamphetamine group. Thus, although the eticlopride‐methamphetamine treatment combination at 33°C exhibited a hyperthermic response comparable to that seen with methamphetamine alone at 24°C, reductions in dopamine content were attenuated in the combination group compared with methamphetamine alone at 24°C. Serotonin changes showed similar attenuated reductions after SCH‐23390 or eticlopride pretreatment at 24°C in combination with methamphetamine, but this attenuation was absent at 33°C. The dissociation of methamphetamine‐induced striatal dopamine reduction and hyperthermia seen after eticlopride pretreatment suggests a dopamine D2 receptor mechanism in mediating methamphetamine‐induced dopamine depletion. However this D2 mechanism does not apply to methamphetamine‐induced striatal serotonin reductions. Synapse 56:84–93, 2005. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Overgeneralizing Belonging: Limited Exposure to Baby-Faced Targets Increases the Feeling of Social Belonging

ABSTRACT We tested the hypothesis that exposure to babyish faces can serve a social surrogacy function, such that even limited exposure to babyish faces can fulfill social belongingness needs. We manipulated the sex and facial maturity of a target face seen in an imagined social interaction, on a between-participants basis. Regardless of target sex, individuals indicated greater satisfaction of social belongingness needs following an imagined interaction with a babyish face, compared to a mature adult face. These results indicate that brief exposure to babyish (relative to mature) faces, even without an extensive interaction, can lead to the satisfaction of social belongingness needs.
Compensation in PID control system for valve stiction based on equivalent-input-disturbance approach

In industrial processes, valve stiction often induces loop oscillations, and limits the control loop performance. To better control the plant with valve stiction, in this paper, the equivalent-input-disturbance (EID) approach is incorporated into the conventional PID control system to improve the ability of disturbance and nonlinearity rejection. The newly proposed method uses a classic two-parameter stiction model to represent the nonlinearity of valve stiction. According to the EID method, an EID estimator is constructed to estimate the influence of valve stiction on the system output. The controller is based on the basic proportional-integral-derivative (PID) control. And a simulation example is provided to demonstrate the validity of this method.
A RAINFOREST SURVEY OF AMPHIBIANS , REPTILES AND SMALL MAMMALS AT MONTAGNE D ' AMBRE , MADAGASCAR

The Montagne d'Ambre mountain range in northern Madagascar was surveyed for amphibians, reptiles, and small mammals. The rainforest of this region is geographically isolated from the continuous rainforest belt of northern and eastern Madagascar. A total of 24 amphibian, 46 reptile, and 12 mammal species was recorded over two months, by direct sampling and pitfall trapping. Despite previous collecting in this region for more than 100 years, 56% of the species found were new records for Montagne d'Ambre. Possibly seven (three amphibians, three reptiles, one small mammal.) of the species recorded are undescribed, and nine are probably endemic to Montagne d'Ambre. The endemic species are Plethodontohyla sp. nov. 2 and 3, Brookesia sp. nov. 1 and 2, Paracontias brocchii, Zonosaurus haroldmeieri, Liopholidophis sp. nov., Pseudoxyrhopus ambreensis, and Microgale parvula. Published amphibian and reptile species lists for Montagne d'Ambre contained 26-40% errors, which is probably typical for most sites in Madagascar, and cautions against using such sources of data indiscriminately. The vast majority of species (83%) were found only in primary forest, and the majority (70%) had restricted altitudinal ranges, either occurring above or below 900 m elevation. The presence of low-altitude specialists at Montagne d'Ambre clearly demonstrates the need to conserve the lower altitude peripheral forests which are most vulnerable to encroachment and degradation.
CNODE: clustering of set-valued non-ordered discrete data

This paper introduces a clustering technique named 'Clustering of set-valued Non-Ordered DiscretE data' (CNODE), in which each data item is a vector having a set of non-ordered discrete values per dimension. Since usual definitions of distance like Euclidean and Manhattan do not hold for 'non-ordered discrete data space' (NDDS), other measures like Hamming distance are often used to define distance between vectors having single-valued discrete dimensions. Such type of distance is not meaningful for set-valued dimensions and hence, we propose a similarity measure based on set intersection for clustering set-valued vectors. We also suggest a new measure for determining quality of clustering named 'lines of clustroids' (LOC) for this type of data. In contrast to other existing clustering techniques in NDDS, CNODE does not rely on any kind of pre-processing of dataset. Experiments with synthetic and real datasets show that CNODE is robust to data variations, scalable to large dataset size and efficient for high dimensions.
VOPT: Robust Visual Odometry by Simultaneous Feature Matching and Camera Calibration

In this paper we describe VOPT, a robust algorithm for visual odometry. It tracks features of the environment with known position in space, which can be acquired through monocular or RGBD SLAM mapping algorithms. The main idea of VOPT is to jointly optimize the matching of feature projections on successive frames, the camera’s extrinsic matrix, the photometric correction parameters, and the weight of each feature at the same time, by a multi-scale iterative procedure. VOPT uses GPU acceleration to achieve real-time performance, and includes robust procedures for automatic initialization and recovery, without user intervention. Our tests show that VOPT outperforms the PTAMM algorithm in challenging videos available publicly.
Nanosafety: Towards Safer Nanoparticles by Design.

BACKGROUND Nanosafety aims for a solution through the safer design (and re-design) of nanostructured materials, optimizing both performance and safety, by resolving which structural features lead to the desired properties and modifying them to avoid their detrimental effects without losing their desired nanoscale properties in the process. Starting with known toxic NPs, the final aim should be the re-design of such detrimental specific NP characteristics and to redefine the way they should be manipulated from the beginning to the end of their life cycle. METHODS The researchers reviewed literature in the area of novel nanosafety strategies addressing the "safe-by-design" paradigm. RESULTS The potential hazards of engineered NPs are not only determined by the physicochemical properties of the engineered NPs per se but also on the interactions of these NPs with immediate surrounding environments. The aim of promoting the timely and safe development of NPs cannot be achieved via traditional studies as they address one material at one time. The development of a safer design strategy of engineered NPs requires an understanding of both intrinsic (synthetic) properties together with their extrinsic responses to external stimuli. CONCLUSIONS We have summarized recent developments of novel nanosafety strategies addressing the "safe-by-design" paradigm for optimizing both performance and safety, allowing the comparison of results of different studies and ultimately providing guidelines for the re-design of safer NPs. The resulting discussion is intended to provide guidelines for synthetic nanochemists on how to design NPs to be safe during their full life cycle while maintaining their parental desired properties.
Neurobehavioral sequelae of cranial irradiation in adults: a review of radiation-induced encephalopathy.

PURPOSE To examine behavioral dimensions of treatment outcomes for patients receiving cranial irradiation. Radiation encephalopathy is one of these and refers to significant cognitive and emotional dysfunction following radiation therapy to the brain. Issues of definition, estimated incidence, pathophysiologic mechanisms, and recommended research designs are reviewed in relationship to functional neurobehavioral outcomes. PATIENTS AND METHODS Twenty-nine studies of adults receiving therapeutic cranial irradiation (TCI) involving 748 patients and 18 studies of prophylactic cranial irradiation (PCI) involving 368 patients are reviewed. Assessment of patient outcomes are summarized for research published since 1980, with specific attention to adverse changes in cognitive and emotional functioning. RESULTS Analyses revealed that 213 TCI patients and 100 PCI patients showed encephalopathy attributed to radiation. Manifestations of the late delayed effects of radiotherapy on brain function are related to patient age, total dose of irradiation, fraction sizes, and timing of chemotherapy. Radiation encephalopathy appears to be more common than the pathologic tissue injury of radiation necrosis. Accurate diagnosis of these neurobehavioral sequelae can require follow-up over a period of years with sensitive assessment procedures. CONCLUSIONS It is likely that the true incidence of treatment-related side effects of cranial irradiation in adults who survive more than 6 months without brain tumor growth or recurrence has been significantly underestimated. Research designs that include formal neuropsychologic assessment in conjunction with other neurodiagnostic tests can provide more comprehensive evaluation of long-term neurobehavioral outcomes.
Effective monitoring of slow suspicious activites on computer networks

Slow and suspicious malicious activities on modern computer networks are increasingly hard to detect. An attacker may take days, weeks or months to complete an attack life cycle. A particular challenge is to monitor for stealthy attempts deliberately designed to stay beneath detection thresholds. This doctoral research presents a theoretical framework for effective monitoring of such activities. The main contribution of this work is a scalable monitoring scheme proposed in a Bayesian framework, which allows for detection of multiple attackers by setting a threshold using the Grubbs’ test. Second contribution is a tracing algorithm for such attacks. Network paths from a victim to its immediate visible hops are mapped and profiled in a Bayesian framework and the highest scored path is prioritised for monitoring. Third contribution explores an approach to minimise data collection by employing traffic sampling. The traffic is sampled using the stratification sampling technique with optimum allocation method. Using a 10% sampling rate was sufficient to detect simulated attackers, and some network parameters affected on sampling error. Final contribution is a target-centric monitoring scheme to detect nodes under attack. Target-centric approach is quicker to detect stealthy attacks and has potential to detect collusion as it completely independent from source information. Experiments are carried out in a simulated environment using the network simulator NS3. Anomalous traffic is generated along with normal traffic within and between networks using a Poisson arrival model. Our work addresses a key problem of network security monitoring: a scalable monitoring scheme for slow and suspicious activities. State size, in terms of a node score, is a small multiple of number of nodes in the network and hence storage is feasible for very large scale networks. Effective monitoring of slow suspicious activities on computer networks Harsha Kumara Kalutarage Digital Security & Forensics (SaFe) Research Group Department of Computing, Faculty of Engineering & Computing Coventry University, UK A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Cyber Security Date: November 15, 2013
A NEW MODEL OF THE GALACTIC MAGNETIC FIELD

A new, much-improved model of the Galactic magnetic field (GMF) is presented. We use the WMAP7 Galactic synchrotron emission map and more than 40,000 extragalactic rotation measures to constrain the parameters of the GMF model, which is substantially generalized compared with earlier work to now include an out-of-plane component (as suggested by observations of external galaxies) and striated-random fields (motivated by theoretical considerations). The new model provides a greatly improved fit to observations. Consistent with our earlier analyses, the best-fit model has a disk field and an extended halo field. Our new analysis reveals the presence of a large, out-of-plane component of the GMF; as a result, the polarized synchrotron emission of our Galaxy seen by an edge-on observer is predicted to look intriguingly similar to what has been observed in external edge-on galaxies. We find evidence that the cosmic-ray electron density is significantly larger than given by GALPROP or else that there is a widespread striated component to the GMF.