julilili42/papers huggingface dataset:
Combining maximal regularity and energy estimates for time discretizations of quasilinear parabolic equations
2016-10-26

We analyze fully implicit and linearly implicit backward difference formula (BDF) methods for quasilinear parabolic equations, without making any assumptions on the growth or decay of the coefficient functions. We combine maximal parabolic regularity and energy estimates to derive optimal-order error bounds for the time-discrete approximation to the solution and its gradient in the maximum norm and energy norm.
Interaction of the Nitrogen Regulatory Protein GlnB (PII) with Biotin Carboxyl Carrier Protein (BCCP) Controls Acetyl-CoA Levels in the Cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803
2016-10-26

The family of P<sub>II</sub> signal transduction proteins (members GlnB, GlnK, NifI) plays key roles in various cellular processes related to nitrogen metabolism at different functional levels. Recent studies implied that P<sub>II</sub> proteins may also be involved in the regulation of fatty acid metabolism, since GlnB proteins from Proteobacteria and from <i>Arabidopsis thaliana</i> were shown to interact with biotin carboxyl carrier protein (BCCP) of acetyl-CoA carboxylase (ACC). In case of <i>Escherichia coli</i> ACCase, this interaction reduces the k<sub>cat</sub> of acetyl-CoA carboxylation, which should have a marked impact on the acetyl-CoA metabolism. In this study we show that the P<sub>II</sub> protein of a unicellular cyanobacterium inhibits the biosynthetic activity of <i>E. coli</i> ACC and also interacts with cyanobacterial BCCP in an ATP and 2-oxoglutarate dependent manner. In a P<sub>II</sub> mutant strain of <i>Synechocystis</i> strain PCC 6803, the lacking control leads to reduced acetyl-CoA levels, slightly increased levels of fatty acids and formation of lipid bodies as well as an altered fatty acid composition.
A Nose for Death: Integrating Trophic and Informational Networks for Conservation and Management
2016-10-26

Non-lethal management of wildlife, both problem wildlife and pest species, to protect crops and threatened species is becoming increasingly important as non-human animals and humans come into closer proximity. A particularly promising approach is to apply predator scents to manipulate the cost/benefit ratio that influences the behavioral decisions made by prey and other predators about where to forage or rest. However, such olfactory manipulations are not always successful. Using insights from size-structured food webs, we develop a novel integrative model of the information that animals acquire from eavesdropping on predator and conspecific scents. We show how animals can use the information content in predator scents to derive knowledge of other predators and competitors and thus influence their decision to stay in or leave an area. This model framework clarifies how predator scents can influence all trophic levels, from interference competition directed at smaller predators, to predation and herbivory, and exploits direct and indirect pathways to promote landscapes of fear that influence spatial and temporal patch use in target animals. We illustrate how the application of this conceptual model can focus future research to enhance the use of predator scent-based deterrents in conservation and management. This integrated model shows great promise for addressing wildlife management concerns and for eventually improving the success and efficacy of traditional management techniques.
Impaired Decision Making and Loss of Inhibitory-Control in a Rat Model of Huntington Disease
2016-10-26

Cognitive deficits associated with Huntington disease (HD) are generally dominated by executive function disorders often associated with disinhibition and impulsivity/compulsivity. Few studies have directly examined symptoms and consequences of behavioral disinhibition in HD and its relation with decision-making. To assess the different forms of impulsivity in a transgenic model of HD (tgHD rats), two tasks assessing cognitive/choice impulsivity were used: risky decision-making with a rat gambling task (RGT) and intertemporal choices with a delay discounting task (DD). To assess waiting or action impulsivity the differential reinforcement of low rate of responding task (DRL) was used. In parallel, the volume as well as cellular activity of the amygdala was analyzed. In contrast to WT rats, 15 months old tgHD rats exhibited a poor efficiency in the RGT task with difficulties to choose advantageous options, a steep DD curve as delays increased in the DD task and a high rate of premature and bursts responses in the DRL task. tgHD rats also demonstrated a concomitant and correlated presence of both action and cognitive/choice impulsivity in contrast to wild type (WT) animals. Moreover, a reduced volume associated with an increased basal cellular activity of the central nucleus of amygdala indicated a dysfunctional amygdala in tgHD rats, which could underlie inhibitory dyscontrol. In conclusion, tgHD rats are a good model for impulsivity disorder that could be used more widely to identify potential pharmacotherapies to treat these invasive symptoms in HD.
Interaction Between Orexin‐A and Sleep Quality in Females in Extreme Weight Conditions
2016-10-26

Abstract The current study examined the relationship between plasma orexin‐A and sleep in obesity. Concentrations of orexin‐A and sleep were evaluated in 26 obese, 40 morbid obese and 32 healthy‐weight participants. The sleep monitor Actiwatch AW7 and the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index were used to evaluate sleep. The Symptom Checklist‐90‐Revised was administered to assess symptoms of psychopathology. A higher weight status was associated with elevated orexin‐A levels ( p = .050), greater depression, anxiety and somatization symptoms (all: p &lt; .001), and impoverished self‐reported sleep quality ( p &lt; .001). A quadratic trend was found in objective sleep time, being longest in the obese group ( p = .031). Structural equation modelling showed plasma orexin‐A to be related to poor total sleep quality, which in turn was associated with elevated body mass index. Our data confirm an interaction between elevated plasma orexin‐A concentrations and poor sleep that contributes to fluctuations in body mass index. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley &amp; Sons, Ltd and Eating Disorders Association.
Cytomegalovirus Seropositivity Predicts a Decline in the T Cell But Not the Antibody Response to Influenza in Vaccinated Older Adults Independent of Type 2 Diabetes Status
2016-10-27

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and persistent cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection are postulated contributors to inflammatory processes that impact on the age-related decline in T-cell responses to influenza vaccination. Older subjects with T2DM (n = 30) and healthy aged controls (n = 40) were enrolled and received influenza vaccination in this study. Serum inflammatory markers and CMV serostatus were measured. Pre- to post-vaccination changes in serum antibody titers to the A/H3N2 strain, and levels of granzyme B (GrB, cytotoxic T lymphocytes) in lysates and cytokines in supernatants from influenza A/H3N2-challenged peripheral blood mononuclear cells were measured. We found no difference between the T2DM and healthy groups in the immune responses measured. However, CMV serostatus was a key determinant of the GrB response to influenza challenge; CMV+ subjects had low levels of inducible GrB (iGrB) activity in response to influenza challenge. In contrast, the serum antibody response to the A/H3N2 vaccine strain did not differ with CMV serostatus, and serum levels of the inflammatory marker, β2-microglobulin, were positively correlated with age, T2DM, and serum IL-10 levels. In conclusion, CMV seropositivity associated with a decline in GrB responses to influenza may predict increased susceptibility to influenza in older adults.
Health systems in the Republic of Congo: challenges and opportunities for implementing tuberculosis and HIV collaborative service, research, and training activities
2016-10-27

The Republic of Congo is on the World Health Organization (WHO) list of 'high burden' countries for tuberculosis (TB) and HIV. TB is the leading cause of death among HIV-infected patients in the Republic of Congo. In this viewpoint, the available data on TB and HIV in the Republic of Congo are reviewed, and the gaps and bottlenecks that the National TB Control Program (NTCP) faces are discussed. Furthermore, priority requirements for developing and implementing TB and HIV collaborative service activities are identified. HIV and TB control programs operate as distinct entities with separate case management plans. The implementation of collaborative TB/HIV activities to evaluate and monitor the management of TB/HIV co-infected individuals remains inefficient in most regions, and these activities are sometimes non-existent. This reveals major challenges that require definition in order to improve the delivery of healthcare. The NTCP lacks adequate resources for optimal implementation of control measures of TB and HIV compliance and outcomes. The importance of aligning and integrating TB and HIV treatment services (including follow-up) and adherence support services through coordinated and collaborative efforts between individual TB and HIV programs is discussed. Aligning and integrating TB and HIV treatment services through coordinated and collaborative efforts between individual TB and HIV programs is required. However, the WHO recommendations are generic, and health services in the Republic of Congo need to tailor their TB and HIV programs according to the availability of resources and operational feasibility. This will also open opportunities for synergizing collaborative TB/HIV research and training activities, which should be prioritized by the donors supporting the TB/HIV programs.
Isolated recessive nail dysplasia caused byFZD6mutations: report of three families and review of the literature
2016-10-27

Congenital abnormalities of the nail are rare conditions that are most frequently associated with congenital ectodermal syndromes involving several of the epidermal appendages including the skin, teeth, hair and nails. Isolated recessive nail dysplasia (IRND) is much rarer but has recently been recognized as a condition resulting in 20-nail dystrophy in the absence of other cutaneous or extracutaneous findings. A few case reports have identified mutations in the Frizzled 6 (FZD6) gene in families presenting with abnormal nails consistent with IRND. These reports have highlighted the role of Wnt-FZD signalling in the process of nail formation. We report three families presenting with features of IRND, in whom we identified mutations in FZD6, including one previously unreported mutation.
Are all the triangles blue? – ERP evidence for the incremental processing of German quantifier restriction
2016-10-27

abstract The present ERP study investigates the neural correlates of pictorial context effects on compositional-semantic processing. We examined whether the incremental processing of questions involving quantifier restriction is modulated by the reliability of pictorial information. Contexts either allowed for an unambiguous meaning evaluation at an early sentential position or were ambiguous with respect to whether a further restrictive cue could trigger later meaning revisions. Attention was either guided towards (Experiment 1) or away from (Experiment 2) the picture–question mapping. In both experiments, negative answers elicited a broadly distributed negativity opposed to affirmative answers as soon as an unambiguous truth evaluation was possible. In the presence of ambiguous context information, the truth evaluation initially remained underspecified, as an early commitment would have resulted in the risk of a semantic reanalysis. The negativity was followed by a late positivity in Experiment 1, but not in Experiment 2, suggesting that attention towards the mismatch affected semantic processing, but only at a later time window. The current results are consistent with the notion that an incremental meaning evaluation is dependent on the reliability of contextual information.
A simple statistical test of taxonomic or functional homogeneity using replicated microbiome sequencing samples
2016-10-27

One important question in microbiome analysis is how to assess the homogeneity of the microbial composition in a given environment, with respect to a given analysis method. Do different microbial samples taken from the same environment follow the same taxonomic distribution of organisms, or the same distribution of functions? Here we provide a non-parametric statistical "triangulation test" to address this type of question. The test requires that multiple replicates are available for each of the biological samples, and it is based on three-way computational comparisons of samples. To illustrate the application of the test, we collected three biological samples taken from different locations in one piece of human stool, each represented by three replicates, and analyzed them using MEGAN. (Despite its name, the triangulation test does not require that the number of biological samples or replicates be three.) The triangulation test rejects the null hypothesis that the three biological samples exhibit the same distribution of taxa or function (error probability ≤0.05), indicating that the microbial composition of the investigated human stool is not homogenous on a macroscopic scale, suggesting that pooling material from multiple locations is a reasonable practice. We provide an implementation of the test in our open source program MEGAN Community Edition.
Leveraging uncertainty information from deep neural networks for disease detection
2016-10-28

Abstract Deep learning (DL) has revolutionized the field of computer vision and image processing. In medical imaging, algorithmic solutions based on DL have been shown to achieve high performance on tasks that previously required medical experts. However, DL-based solutions for disease detection have been proposed without methods to quantify and control their uncertainty in a decision. In contrast, a physician knows whether she is uncertain about a case and will consult more experienced colleagues if needed. Here we evaluate drop-out based Bayesian uncertainty measures for DL in diagnosing diabetic retinopathy (DR) from fundus images and show that it captures uncertainty better than straightforward alternatives. Furthermore, we show that uncertainty informed decision referral can improve diagnostic performance. Experiments across different networks, tasks and datasets show robust generalization. Depending on network capacity and task/dataset difficulty, we surpass 85% sensitivity and 80% specificity as recommended by the NHS when referring 0%–20% of the most uncertain decisions for further inspection. We analyse causes of uncertainty by relating intuitions from 2D visualizations to the high-dimensional image space. While uncertainty is sensitive to clinically relevant cases, sensitivity to unfamiliar data samples is task dependent, but can be rendered more robust.
The impact of pragmatic markers and hedging on sentence comprehension: a case study ofcommeandgenre
2016-10-28

ABSTRACT Current research on conceptual and semantic representations is mainly based on prototypical word classes, such as nouns and verbs. Hence, most models of language processing and language representation rely on experimental investigations on these word classes. Until today, only a few psycholinguistic studies centre on the processing of pragmatic markers and hedges and their effect on speech comprehension. The present article aims to give experimental evidence for the processing of semantic meaning patterns and pragmatic functions of pragmatic markers. The focus will be on the question, if pragmatic markers and hedges play a role in sentence processing. This main problem will be illustrated and discussed by means of experimental data. In a monolingual sentence verification task with lexical decision, the meaning patterns and functions of the partially equivalent pragmatic French markers comme and genre are investigated in Canadian and European French. The results of the sentence word verification task provide evidence for an impact of pragmatic functions and semantic meaning patterns of pragmatic markers on sentence processing.
Structure and development of ectomycorrhizal roots
2016-10-28

This chapter focuses on the development of the structures that form an ectomycorrhiza, which is a complex organ formed not only of two individuals, but also of two fungal pseudo-tissues that are easily distinguishable under a microscope. The development of ectomycorrhizae involves a series of events that have been elucidated through the use of in vitro mycorrhizal systems that allow the different stages involved in this process to be separated. In the vicinity of a mycorrhizal fungus, the root architecture of the host plant may be profoundly modified by stimulation of lateral short root development. Auxin accumulation at the root apex and redistribution, in response to fungal signaling molecules during the early stage of interaction, may stimulate the process. The chapter considers the aspects leading to the establishment of a functioning ectomycorrhiza. It points out the highly dynamic development of individual ectomycorrhizae, which results in a kind of metabolic zonation.
Understanding the Potential of WO3 Based Sensors for Breath Analysis
2016-10-29

Tungsten trioxide is the second most commonly used semiconducting metal oxide in gas sensors. Semiconducting metal oxide (SMOX)-based sensors are small, robust, inexpensive and sensitive, making them highly attractive for handheld portable medical diagnostic detectors. WO3 is reported to show high sensor responses to several biomarkers found in breath, e.g., acetone, ammonia, carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide, toluene, and nitric oxide. Modern material science allows WO3 samples to be tailored to address certain sensing needs. Utilizing recent advances in breath sampling it will be possible in the future to test WO3-based sensors in application conditions and to compare the sensing results to those obtained using more expensive analytical methods.
Reactivity of [Ge9{Si(SiMe3)3}3]− Towards Transition‐Metal M2+ Cations: Coordination and Redox Chemistry
2016-10-31

Abstract Recently the metalloid cluster compound [Ge 9 Hyp 3 ] − ( 1 ; Hyp=Si(SiMe 3 ) 3 ) was oxidatively coupled by an iron(II) salt to give the largest metalloid Group 14 cluster [Ge 18 Hyp 6 ]. Such redox chemistry is also possible with different transition metal (TM) salts TM 2+ (TM=Fe, Co, Ni) to give the TM + complexes [Fe(dppe) 2 ][Ge 9 Hyp 3 ] ( 3 ; dppe=1,2‐bis(diphenylphosphino)ethane), [Co(dppe) 2 ][Ge 9 Hyp 3 ] ( 4 ), [Ni(dppe)(Ge 9 Hyp 3 )] ( 5 ) and [Ni(dppe) 2 (Ge 9 Hyp 3 )] + ( 6 ). Such a redox reaction does not proceed for Mn, for which a salt metathesis gives the first open shell [Hyp 3 Ge 9 ‐M‐Ge 9 Hyp 3 ] cluster ( 2 ; M=Mn). The bonding of the transition metal atom to 1 is also possible for Ni (e.g., compound 6 ), in which one or even two nickel atoms can bind to 1 . In contrast to this in case of the Fe and Co compounds 3 and 4 , respectively, the transition‐metal atom is not bound to the Ge 9 core of 1 . The synthesis and the experimentally determined structures of 2 – 6 are presented. Additionally the bonding within 2 – 6 is analyzed and discussed with the aid of EPR measurements and quantum chemical calculations.
Partial transpose criteria for symmetric states
2016-10-31

We express the positive partial transpose (PPT) separability criterion for\\nsymmetric states of multi-qubit systems in terms of matrix inequalities based\\non the recently introduced tensor representation for spin states. We construct\\na matrix from the tensor representation of the state and show that it is\\nsimilar to the partial transpose of the density matrix written in the\\ncomputational basis. Furthermore, the positivity of this matrix is equivalent\\nto the positivity of a correlation matrix constructed from tensor products of\\nPauli operators. This allows for a more transparent experimental interpretation\\nof the PPT criteria for an arbitrary spin-j state. The unitary matrices\\nconnecting our matrix to the partial transpose of the state generalize the\\nso-called magic basis that plays a central role in Wootters' explicit formula\\nfor the concurrence of a 2-qubit system and the Bell bases used for the\\nteleportation of a one or two-qubit state.\\n
Using touchscreen interaction data to predict cognitive workload
2016-10-31

Although a great number of today's learning applications run on devices with an interactive screen, the high-resolution interaction data which these devices provide have not been used for workload-adaptive systems yet. This paper aims at exploring the potential of using touch sensor data to predict user states in learning scenarios. For this purpose, we collected touch interaction patterns of children solving math tasks on a multi-touch device. 30 fourth-grade students from a primary school participated in the study. Based on these data, we investigate how machine learning methods can be applied to predict cognitive workload associated with tasks of varying difficulty. Our results show that interaction patterns from a touchscreen can be used to significantly improve automatic prediction of high levels of cognitive workload (average classification accuracy of 90.67% between the easiest and most difficult tasks). Analyzing an extensive set of features, we discuss which characteristics are most likely to be of high value for future implementations. We furthermore elaborate on design choices made for the used multiple choice interface and discuss critical factors that should be considered for future touch-based learning interfaces.
Dynamic of cold-atom tips in anharmonic potentials
2016-10-31

Background: Understanding the dynamics of ultracold quantum gases in an anharmonic potential is essential for applications in the new field of cold-atom scanning probe microscopy. Therein, cold atomic ensembles are used as sensitive probe tips to investigate nanostructured surfaces and surface-near potentials, which typically cause anharmonic tip motion. Results: Besides a theoretical description of this anharmonic tip motion, we introduce a novel method for detecting the cold-atom tip dynamics in situ and real time. In agreement with theory, the first measurements show that particle interactions and anharmonic motion have a significant impact on the tip dynamics. Conclusion: Our findings will be crucial for the realization of high-sensitivity force spectroscopy with cold-atom tips and could possibly allow for the development of advanced spectroscopic techniques such as Q-control.
Rapid and independent memory formation in the parietal cortex
2016-11-01

Significance When it comes to memory, our brain needs to deal with two opposing demands: remaining plastic to acquire new information rapidly and maintaining old information faithfully over long periods. It is assumed that two distinct brain systems are in charge of these functions: the fast-learning hippocampus and the slow-learning neocortex. The interaction between these two systems has traditionally been seen as very slow, requiring weeks or months to build a neocortical memory trace. In this study, brain activity during virtual-reality navigation shows that contributions of hippocampus and parietal neocortex to memory are changing substantially already at the time a spatial memory representation is built. Notably, we show that the posterior parietal cortex fulfills all criteria for a hippocampus-independent memory representation.