Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Solar radiation explains litter degradation along alpine elevation gradients better than other climatic or edaphic parameters

Organic matter (OM) decomposition has been shown to vary across ecosystems, suggesting that variation in local ecological conditions influences this process. A better understanding of the ecological factors driving OM decomposition rates will allow to better predict the effect of ecosystem changes on the carbon cycle. While temperature and humidity have been put forward as the main drivers of OM decomposition, the concomitant role of other ecosystem properties, such as soil physicochemical properties, and local microbial communities, remains to be investigated within large-scale ecological gradients. To address this gap, we measured the decomposition of a standardized OM source – green tea and rooibos tea – across 24 sites spread within a full factorial design including elevation and exposition, and across two distinct bioclimatic regions in the Swiss Alps. By analyzing OM decomposition via 19 climatic, edaphic or soil microbial activity-related variables, which strongly varied across sites, we identified solar radiation as the primary source of variation of both green and rooibos teabags decomposition rate. This study thus highlights that while most variables, such as temperature or humidity, as well as soil microbial activity, do impact decomposition process, in combination with the measured pedo-climatic niche, solar radiation, very likely by means of indirect effects, best captures variation in OM degradation. For instance, high solar radiation might favor photodegradation, in turn speeding up the decomposition activity of the local microbial communities. Future work should thus disentangle the synergistic effects of the unique local microbial community and solar radiation on OM decomposition across different habitats.
The role of Curcuma longa essential oil in controlling acute toxoplasmosis by improving the immune system and reducing inflammation and oxidative stress

Background Chemotherapy with synthetic drugs is the principal approach for toxoplasmosis treatment; however, recent studies reported the limitations and adverse side effects of these chemical drugs. Objective This study aimed to examine the in vitro and in vivo effects of Curcuma longa essential oil (CLE) against the Toxoplasma gondii RH strain. Methods The in vitro effect of different concentrations of CLE on T. gondii tachyzoites was assessed by cell viability assay. Flow cytometry and apoptosis analysis were performed, and nitric oxide production by CLE was also evaluated in tachyzoites. BALB/c mice were orally treated with various doses (1.25, 2.5, and 5 mg·kg−1·day−1) of CLE for 2 weeks. After the induction of acute toxoplasmosis in the mice, their survival rate and the mean number of peritoneal parasites were checked. The hepatic level of antioxidant enzymes and oxidative stress markers was evaluated by commercial kits. The mRNA expression level of proinflammatory cytokines such as interleukin 1-beta (IL-1β) and interferon-gamma (IFN-γ) was evaluated by quantitative real-time PCR. Results CLE, especially at 50 µg/ml, showed potent inhibitory effects on T. gondii tachyzoites. It increased the survival rate (ninth day) and reduced the mean number of peritoneal tachyzoites in the infected mice. CLE dependently increased (p < 0.01) the number of necrotic and apoptotic cells as well as NO production. CLE significantly (p < 0.05) reduced the hepatic level of oxidative stress markers but increased (p < 0.001) the antioxidant enzymes and proinflammatory cytokines in the infected mice, with no important toxicity for vital organs. Conclusion The findings of this survey revealed the significant in vitro inhibitory effects of CLE on T. gondii tachyzoites. The results also exhibited promising in vivo effects of CLE. CLE improved the survival rate of infected mice and reduced the parasite number in them. Although the mechanisms of action of CLE are not clear, our study demonstrated its beneficial effects on acute toxoplasmosis by strengthening the immune system and reducing inflammation and oxidative stress. Still, more studies are required to confirm these results.
Disease-causing mutations in genes encoding transcription factors critical for photoreceptor development

Photoreceptor development of the vertebrate visual system is controlled by a complex transcription regulatory network. OTX2 is expressed in the mitotic retinal progenitor cells (RPCs) and controls photoreceptor genesis. CRX that is activated by OTX2 is expressed in photoreceptor precursors after cell cycle exit. NEUROD1 is also present in photoreceptor precursors that are ready to specify into rod and cone photoreceptor subtypes. NRL is required for the rod fate and regulates downstream rod-specific genes including the orphan nuclear receptor NR2E3 which further activates rod-specific genes and simultaneously represses cone-specific genes. Cone subtype specification is also regulated by the interplay of several transcription factors such as THRB and RXRG. Mutations in these key transcription factors are responsible for ocular defects at birth such as microphthalmia and inherited photoreceptor diseases such as Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA), retinitis pigmentosa (RP) and allied dystrophies. In particular, many mutations are inherited in an autosomal dominant fashion, including the majority of missense mutations in CRX and NRL. In this review, we describe the spectrum of photoreceptor defects that are associated with mutations in the above-mentioned transcription factors, and summarize the current knowledge of molecular mechanisms underlying the pathogenic mutations. At last, we deliberate the outstanding gaps in our understanding of the genotype–phenotype correlations and outline avenues for future research of the treatment strategies.
Effects from supplementary feeding of bamboo powder in perinatal period on farrowing process, serum biochemical indexes, and fecal microbes of sows and offspring piglets

Introduction This study was conducted to explore the effects of supplementary feeding of bamboo powder on the physical parameters of sows during the perinatal period of 7 days ± in parturition, including farrow duration, serum biochemical indexes, fecal physicochemical indexes, and microbial flora. Methods Thirty pregnant sows were randomly divided into three groups: the control group was fed a basal diet, TRE1 group and TRE2 group were fed a basal diet supplemented with 30 g d−1 and 60 g d−1 bamboo powder, respectively. Multiple parameters of sows and offspring piglets were determined. Results The contents of serum total cholesterol and triglyceride of sows in TRE2 group were significantly lower than those in the control group. The contents of serum malondialdehyde of sows in TRE2 and TRE1 groups were significantly lower than that in control group. The water content of sow feces in TRE2 group was significantly higher than that in control group, and the pH values of sows in TRE2 and TRE1 groups were significantly higher than that in control group. The richness index (Chao) of sow fecal bacterial community in TRE2 group was significantly lower than that of the control group, and the Ace and Sobs indexes tended to be lower than those of the control group. At the phylum level, the relative abundance of Actinobacteriota in the feces of sows in TRE2 group was significantly lower than that of the control group, while that of Fusobacteriota in the feces of suckling piglets in TRE2 group tended to be lower than that of the control group. At the genus level, among the Top10 dominant bacteria, the relative abundance of Tissierella in the feces of sows in TRE2 group was significantly lower than that of the control group while that of Fusobacterium in the feces of suckling piglets in TRE2 group tended to be lower than that of the control group. The relative abundance of Clostridium_sensu_stricto_1, Terrisporobacter, Turicibacter, and Tissierella in the feces of sows in TRE2 group was significantly lower than that of TRE1 group (p < 0.05), while Lactobacillus tended to be higher than that of TRE1 group (p < 0.10). Discussion The results suggested that supplementary feeding 60 g d−1 bamboo powder could increase the water content in the feces of sows, reduce the oxidative damage, and tend to reduce the relative abundance of opportunistic pathogenic Fusobacterium for suckling piglets, while it reduced the fecal microbial diversity of sows.
Neuroimaging alterations of the suicidal brain and its relevance to practice: an updated review of MRI studies

Suicide is a leading cause of death in the United States. Historically, scientific inquiry has focused on psychological theory. However, more recent studies have started to shed light on complex biosignatures using MRI techniques, including task-based and resting-state functional MRI, brain morphometry, and diffusion tensor imaging. Here, we review recent research across these modalities, with a focus on participants with depression and Suicidal Thoughts and Behavior (STB). A PubMed search identified 149 articles specific to our population of study, and this was further refined to rule out more diffuse pathologies such as psychotic disorders and organic brain injury and illness. This left 69 articles which are reviewed in the current study. The collated articles reviewed point to a complex impairment showing atypical functional activation in areas associated with perception of reward, social/affective stimuli, top-down control, and reward-based learning. This is broadly supported by the atypical morphometric and diffusion-weighted alterations and, most significantly, in the network-based resting-state functional connectivity data that extrapolates network functions from well validated psychological paradigms using functional MRI analysis. We see an emerging picture of cognitive dysfunction evident in task-based and resting state fMRI and network neuroscience studies, likely preceded by structural changes best demonstrated in morphometric and diffusion-weighted studies. We propose a clinically-oriented chronology of the diathesis-stress model of suicide and link other areas of research that may be useful to the practicing clinician, while helping to advance the translational study of the neurobiology of suicide.
slr2103, a homolog of type-2 diacylglycerol acyltransferase genes, for plastoquinone-related neutral lipid synthesis and NaCl-stress acclimatization in a cyanobacterium, Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803

A cyanobacterium, Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803, contains a lipid with triacylglycerol-like TLC mobility but its identity and physiological roles remain unknown. Here, on ESI-positive LC-MS2 analysis, it is shown that the triacylglycerol-like lipid (lipid X) is related to plastoquinone and can be grouped into two subclasses, Xa and Xb, the latter of which is esterified by 16:0 and 18:0. This study further shows that a Synechocystis homolog of type-2 diacylglycerol acyltransferase genes, slr2103, is essential for lipid X synthesis: lipid X disappears in a Synechocystis slr2103-disruptant whereas it appears in an slr2103-overexpressing transformant (OE) of Synechococcus elongatus PCC 7942 that intrinsically lacks lipid X. The slr2103 disruption causes Synechocystis cells to accumulate plastoquinone-C at an abnormally high level whereas slr2103 overexpression in Synechococcus causes the cells to almost completely lose it. It is thus deduced that slr2103 encodes a novel acyltransferase that esterifies 16:0 or 18:0 with plastoquinone-C for the synthesis of lipid Xb. Characterization of the slr2103-disruptant in Synechocystis shows that slr2103 contributes to sedimented-cell growth in a static culture, and to bloom-like structure formation and its expansion by promoting cell aggregation and floatation upon imposition of saline stress (0.3-0.6 M NaCl). These observations provide a basis for elucidation of the molecular mechanism of a novel cyanobacterial strategy to acclimatize to saline stress, and one for development of a system of seawater-utilization and economical harvesting of cyanobacterial cells with high-value added compounds, or blooming control of toxic cyanobacteria.
Nimodipine augments cerebrovascular reactivity in aging but runs the risk of local perfusion reduction in acute cerebral ischemia

Introduction The efficacy of cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR) is taken as an indicator of cerebrovascular health. Methods and Results We found that CVR tested with the inhalation of 10 % CO2 declined in the parietal cortex of 18-20-month-old rats. The CVR deficit in old rats was coincident with cerebrovascular smooth muscle cell and astrocyte senescence, revealed by the immuno-labeling of the cellular senescence marker p16 in these cells. In a next series of experiments, CVR was severely impaired in the acute phase of incomplete global forebrain ischemia produced by the bilateral occlusion of the common carotid arteries in young adult rats. In acute ischemia, CVR impairment often manifested as a perfusion drop rather than blood flow elevation in response to hypercapnia. Next, nimodipine, an L-type voltage-gated calcium channel antagonist was administered topically to rescue CVR in both aging, and cerebra ischemia. Nimodipine augmented CVR in the aged brain, but worsened CVR impairment in acute cerebral ischemia. Discussion A careful evaluation of benefits and side effects of nimodipine is recommended, especially in acute ischemic stroke.
Genetic population structure of the precious coral Corallium japonicum in the Northwest Pacific

Population sizes of the Japanese red coral Corallium japonicum have been severely affected by poaching and overfishing. Although genetic structure and connectivity patterns are considered important parameters for conservation strategies, there are few studies focusing on the population genetics of C. japonicum in the Northwest Pacific. We examined the genetic population structure of C. japonicum, in the Northwest Pacific. We used restriction-site-associated DNA sequencing (RAD-seq), which can be used to identify genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs), to reveal detailed within-species genetic variations. Using the variable SNP loci identified from this analysis, we successfully evaluated the population-level genetic diversity and patterns of gene flow among multiple populations of C. japonicum around Japan. The results of genetic analysis basically showed that gene flow is widely maintained in the geographic range examined in this study, but the analysis in combination with larval dispersal simulations revealed several populations that were genetically distinct from the other populations, suggesting geographically limited gene flows. The information obtained from this study will be useful for the design of effective management schemes for C. japonicum, which is under threat from overfishing.
NewsLines: Narrative Visualization of News Stories

Visual representations have the potential to improve information understanding. We explore this idea in the development of NewsLine, an open-source web-based prototype that focuses on narrative visualizations of news content. Having structured data as input, the prototype produces a storyline which showcases the narrative’s events and participants, allowing the user to interact with the visualization in a number of ways. We built an information hub around the storyline to allow for multiple levels of exploration, specifically the main visualization, the event information module, and the sidebar. The visualization depicts the sequence of events that make up a news story, as well as the interactions between the involved parties in each event. The event information module presents additional information on a particular event. The sidebar is the “control center” of the visualization, unlocking a number of interactions and configurations. The prototype was evaluated with a user study with journalists and also with an online survey which gathered feedback from 178 potential end users. From these, 106 participants (60.6%) provided a rating of four or above (one to five scale) when asked to quantify their interest in using the application. Moreover, participants were asked to rank the importance of the visualization elements used. The results highlight that two elements stand out as the most important, the events and the entities. Overall, the participants generally found the application to be useful, but in need of some work in order for it to be made available to a broader public.
Special issue: Urbanizing Degrowth: Towards a Radical Spatial Degrowth Agenda for Future Cities

Cities in lowand middle-income countries have experienced deindustrialisation as localised agglomerations that historically served domestic and regional markets have become exposed to highly productive global value chains as capital has been (re)allocated to primary sectors. State, corporate and social actors have responded to economic decline by embracing a range of coping and adaptation strategies, some of which are consistent with degrowth, but they are often combined with business-as-usual initiatives in pursuit of economic growth. We refer to this as subordinate degrowth because localised responses are conditioned by the subordinate position of countries and cities in the global economy. While we acknowledge its divergence from ‘pure’ ideal-type degrowth, we do not dismiss the transformative potential of incremental change. Indeed, we argue that any realistic strategy to spatialise degrowth within cities must recognise the indeterminacy and messiness of urban politics. We employ subordinate degrowth as an analytic to interpret responses to deindustrialisation and economic decline in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Our analysis attends to three meso-level blind spots that characterise much degrowth scholarship, between (1) particular and universal, (2) advanced-industrial and agrarian ideal-types and (3) past/current socio-technical regimes and ‘pure’ degrowth.
CMTR6D: Cross-Modal Transformer for 6D Pose Estimation

6D pose estimation is widely used in robot grasping and autopilot. RGB image and point cloud are the two main data modalities, how to mine and make full use of the two kinds of data is the key problem. Some existing methods either deal with the two kinds of data separately and don't make good use of the two potential complementary characteristics, or simply splice the two features and don't make good use of the context information. Therefore, we propose a multimodal transformer framework Cross-Modal Transformer6D(CMTR6D). Specifically, CMTR6D includes a PointTransformer (PTR) branch, an ImageTransformer (ITR) branch, and a Cross-Modal Transformer (CMTR) module. ITR and PTR learn features from RGB images and point clouds, and can learn complementary information from another mode through the CMTR module, so that a better representation can be obtained. Our CMTR6D is 5.8% and 5.4% higher than the best method on YCB-Video and LineMOD datasets, and it also performs well in the occlusion experiments.
A 220 GHz 5-Bit Phase Shifter with Low Phase-Error in 0.13µm BiCMOS Technology

This paper presents a 210-230 GHz vector-sum phase shifter using 0. 13µm SiGe BiCMOS technology. A differential coupler is exploited to generate the I/Q quadrature signals with low phase and amplitude imbalances. The amplitude weighting circuits are realized by two current control variable gain amplifiers with phase shift redundancies. The simulation results show that the phase shifter achieves 5-bit phase resolution with 360° phase tuning range, and a peak gain of -11 dB under 27.4 mW power consumption. From 210 to 230 GHz, the simulated root-mean-square(rms) phase and gain errors are 1.93-2.22° and 1.05-1.1 dB, respectively. The core chip area is 0.21×0.22 mm2.
Design of a Dual-Polarized Antenna with PPW and Dipole for 5G Application

A novel dual-polarized base station antenna for 5G applications is proposed in this paper. The antenna consists of a parallel plate waveguide and a dipole antenna, which are fed by an L-probe. To achieve a slant 45° dual-polarization, A dipole antenna is placed above the waveguide, and these are excited simultaneously. Arrange the waveguide periodically and exchange the directions of the dipole arms to form a ±45° dual-polarized antenna element. The simulation results show that the antenna has a good input impedance in the bandwidth of 3.39– 3.84 GHz and has high port-to-port isolation (>23dB). The antenna can be used as a heatsink antenna since it has an all-metal structure and the parallel plate can be utilized as a heatsink structure. Therefore, this antenna can be a promising contender for 5G services in a modern mobile communication system.
Wideband Vertically Polarized End-fire antenna Using Double-layer Parasitic Patches for 5G Millimeter-Wave Application

A millimeter-wave (mm-wave) end-fire antenna with wide operating band and vertical polarization is proposed in this paper. The proposed antenna is developed from an substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) antenna with an extended substrate. Then, two double-layer parasitic patches (DLPP) are introduced to the extended substrate, which significantly widens the impedance bandwidth. Moreover, with the contribution of the DLPP, the antenna gain is also significantly enhanced. Finally, the proposed antenna achieves a wide operating band of 23.12-40.53 GHz (54.7%), which can simultaneously cover the four 5G mmWave bands, including the n257, n258, n260, and n261 bands. And during the operating band, the antenna gain ranges from 2.85 -6.96 dBi.
Computation Offloading and Task Scheduling Based on Improved Integer Particle Swarm Optimization in Fog Computing

As an extension of cloud computing, fog computing is a promising computing paradigm. By placing resources near terminals, users can access the fog servers with lower latency than cloud and utilize server resources to complete offloading tasks for optimizing QoE. Task scheduling in fog computing is to map requested tasks to appropriate fog node, so as to improve resource utilization efficiency and drop the cost of IoT devices. In this paper, we focused on the scheduling problem of offloaded tasks in fog scenarios with multiple users. We first formulated the problem as a combinatorial optimization problem, and proposed an improved integer particle swarm optimization method to solve the problem in a reasonable time. Experimental results showed that the proposed algorithm can reduce the running time by 90% compared with the traversal method, while resulting an approximate optimal value. It has good performance in the optimization of task scheduling problems.
A 60 GHz IQ Transmitter with Psat of 16.6 dBm and Conversion Gain of 36.7 dB in 40 nm CMOS

This paper presents a 60 GHz direct conversion I/Q transmitter front end (TXFE) for 60 GHz-band large-scale phased-array systems. Compact and symmetrical floor-plan for the I/Q signal generator (IQSG) and I/Q modulators are introduced in this paper to relieve issues of IQ mismatch and LO feed-through. The simulated I/Q magnitude ratio and I/Q phase error at 60 GHz are 1 and 0.19°, respectively. The PA utilizes a distributed active transformer-based (DAT) power combiner to provide wide-band load matching and improve power efficiency. According to post-layout simulation results, the proposed PA achieves a saturated output power of 17 dBm and 20% peak power-added efficiency (PAE). The simulated conversion power gain of the TXFE is 36.7 dB with a 3 dB bandwidth of 7 GHz and the OP1dB is 13 dBm. This transmitter consumes 268 mW with a core area of 0.21 mm2.