Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Local extinctions in flocking birds in Amazonian forest fragments

Questions: Does the tendency to join flocks predispose a bird species to local or global extinction? Does the ability to revise particular social preferences in fragmented landscapes confer greater persistence? Do solitary species of birds persist longer in small forest patches? Background: Social carnivores range more widely than solitary carnivores and are more prone to local extinction in fragmented landscapes. Flocking bird species typically range over larger areas than solitary ones, thus potentially encountering threats in and beyond the edges of their habitat more often than solitary species. Data: A 14-year bird-capture database from the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project (BDFFP) near Manaus, Brazil. Methods: From the literature, from independent field observations and mist-net captures we identified 30 species that join mixed flocks or follow ant swarms. We quantify the tendency for these species to flock both before and after habitat fragmentation. We test the effect of flocking on understory species’ persistence in forest fragments of 1, 10 and 100 ha. Results: Species that typically forage in flocks before plot isolation persist for shorter times than those that infrequently join flocks. Species that drop out of flocks after fragmentation persist longer than those that remain in flocks. Our model outperformed a nested analysis of variance that treated each species as a variable, inherently testing for life-history idiosyncrasies and phylogeny. Recapture rates, calculated using MARK, did not explain the residual variation from our model. Flocking behaviour, and its plasticity, influence species persistence and so are important criteria in understanding local extinction.
THE UTILIZATION OF Halymenia durvillaei TO SUPPORT THE MANAGEMENT OF Eucheuma spinosum SEAWEED FARMING IN GEGER COASTAL AREA, BALI

Seaweed farming activity is now facing some problems caused by pest fish herbivore and ice-ice disease . To solve those and improve our seaweed quality, seaweed production management requires some ecological technique improvements. The purpose of this study was to determine the functions of seaweed H. durvillaei for improving the production of the seaweed E. spinosum in the coastal area of Geger Beach, Peminge Village, South Kuta subdistrict, Badung regency, Bali. The measured data includes parameter of weight, length and water quality. Data was measured every 10 days for up to 40 days. The best growth result was shown by the model of E. spinosum that were fenced by H. durvillaei of 456 g for E. spinosum . H. durvillaei showed good impact on increasing the production of E. spinosum up to 68.7% compared to the control. Water quality conditions on seaweed culture was good with temperature ranged from 27.7 to 30.1°C, salinity from 30 to 32.3 ppt, DO from 3.9 to 5.5 ppm, pH from 7.9 to 8.4, current 0.1 to 0.2 m/s, and clearness of 100%.
Scalable Inference and Training of Context-Rich Syntactic Translation Models

Statistical MT has made great progress in the last few years, but current translation models are weak on re-ordering and target language fluency. Syntactic approaches seek to remedy these problems. In this paper, we take the framework for acquiring multi-level syntactic translation rules of (Galley et al., 2004) from aligned tree-string pairs, and present two main extensions of their approach: first, instead of merely computing a single derivation that minimally explains a sentence pair, we construct a large number of derivations that include contextually richer rules, and account for multiple interpretations of unaligned words. Second, we propose probability estimates and a training procedure for weighting these rules. We contrast different approaches on real examples, show that our estimates based on multiple derivations favor phrasal re-orderings that are linguistically better motivated, and establish that our larger rules provide a 3.63 BLEU point increase over minimal rules.
Azithromycin and Clarithromycin Inhibit Lipopolysaccharide-Induced Murine Pulmonary Neutrophilia Mainly through Effects on Macrophage-Derived Granulocyte-Macrophage Colony-Stimulating Factor and Interleukin-1β

Macrolide antibiotics possess immunomodulatory/anti-inflammatory properties. These properties are considered fundamental for the efficacy of macrolide antibiotics in the treatment of chronic inflammatory diseases like diffuse panbronchiolitis and cystic fibrosis. However, the molecular mechanisms and cellular targets of anti-inflammatory/immunomodulatory macrolide activity are still not fully understood. To describe anti-inflammatory effects of macrolides in more detail and to identify potential biomarkers of their activity, we have investigated the influence of azithromycin and clarithromycin on the inflammatory cascade leading to neutrophil infiltration into lungs after intranasal lipopolysaccharide challenge in mice. Azithromycin and clarithromycin pretreatment reduced total cell and neutrophil numbers in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid and myeloperoxidase concentration in lung tissue. In addition, concentrations of several inflammatory mediators, including CCL2, granulocyte-macrophage colony stimulating factor (GM-CSF), interleukin-1β (IL-1β), tumor necrosis factor α, and sE-selectin in lung homogenates were decreased after macrolide treatment. Inhibition of cytokine production observed in vivo was also corroborated in vitro in lipopolysaccharide-stimulated monocytes/macrophages, but not in an epithelial cell line. In summary, results presented in this article confirm that macrolides can suppress neutrophil-dominated pulmonary inflammation and suggest that the effect is mediated through inhibition of GM-CSF and IL-1β production by alveolar macrophages. Besides GM-CSF and IL-1β, CCL2 and sE-selectin are also identified as potential biomarkers of macrolide anti-inflammatory activity in the lungs.
March Madness Prediction : A Matrix Completion Approach

In this paper, we present a new predictive model based on matrix completion to forecast the winning probabilities of each potential game in NCAA basketball tournament. The predictive model is evaluated in Kaggle’s March Machine Learning Mania competition, where each submission is rated by Log Loss function for each matchup that occurs in the tournament. We discuss neural network and probability refinements used to estimate and normalize our predicted probability from the predicted performance accomplishments in each matchup and team ranks, with the ultimate goal of lowering our Log Loss score per matchup. In the stage one of predicting 2011-2014 results, our team is ranked 61 out of 347 teams with Log loss score of 0.56915, which exceeds Seed-based benchmark method (0.59071). Furthermore, we analyze the pitfalls that were encountered during our research so others can improve upon our methodology for future research into the March Madness tournament.
Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) for the Spatial Planning of Flood Evacuation Shelters in Jakarta, Indonesia

During disasters and crises, social media have been acknowledged as key communication channels (Wendling et al., 2013). Authorities and emergency response agencies use social media as a valuable source of information, as well as a useful platform for the rapid delivery of it (Kreiner and Neubauer, 2012). Social media assist the response to and management of disasters by, for example, providing a platform for sending alerts, identifying critical needs and focusing responses (Carley et al., 2015). Inhabitants use social media to request help during crises, share views and experiences GIS in Sustainable Urban Planning and Management Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) for Spatial Planning
Skin Detection of Animation Characters

The increasing popularity of animes makes it vulnerable to unwanted usages like copyright violations and pornography. That is why, we need to develop a method to detect and recognize animation characters. Skin detection is one of the most important steps in this way. Though there are some methods to detect human skin color, but those methods do not work properly for anime characters. Anime skin varies greatly from human skin in color, texture, tone and in different kinds of lighting. They also vary greatly among themselves. Moreover, many other things (for example leather, shirt, hair etc.), which are not skin, can have color similar to skin. In this paper, we have proposed three methods that can identify an anime character skin more successfully as compared with Kovac, Swift, Saleh and Osman methods, which are primarily designed for human skin detection. Our methods are based on RGB values and their comparative relations.
Effect of aging on myocardial perfusion reserve.

UNLABELLED Myocardial perfusion reserve (hyperemic divided by basal myocardial blood flow) describes vasodilator responsiveness of coronary-resistive vessels. The effect of aging and gender on myocardial perfusion reserve remains controversial. METHODS We studied 56 normal volunteers (21 women, 35 men; aged 50 +/- 20 yr, range 21-86 yr) with 15O-water PET to measure myocardial blood flow during basal and hyperemic states with intravenous dipyridamole (0.56 mg/kg, n = 46) or adenosine (140 micrograms/kg/min, n = 10). For comparative analysis, patients were grouped according to age: < 30 yr (n = 11), 30-49 yr (n = 18), 50-69 yr (n = 15) and > or = 70 yr (n = 12). RESULTS Overall, basal flow was 1.00 +/- 0.26 ml/min/g and hyperemic flow was 3.31 +/- 1.38 ml/min/g, resulting in a myocardial perfusion reserve of 3.38 +/- 1.35. There was an increase in basal flow with age (r = 0.45, p < 0.025), although hyperemic flow was only lower in patients > or = 70 yr, causing a significant reduction in myocardial perfusion reserve: 3.54 +/- 0.96 in < 30 yr, 4.23 +/- 1.35 in 30-49 yr, 3.51 +/- 1.21 in 50-69 yr and 1.94 +/- 0.46 in > or = 70 yr (p < 0.05 versus all groups < 70 yr). CONCLUSION Myocardial blood flow during basal and hyperemia conditions are roughly comparable up to 60 yr of age. Above this age, there is significant increase in basal flow associated with an increase in systolic blood pressure. Above 70 yr, there is a significant reduction in hyperemic flow, and thus myocardial perfusion reserve independent of hemodynamic response to vasodilator stress.
Estradiol inhibits leukocyte adhesion and transendothelial migration in rabbits in vivo : possible mechanisms for gender differences in atherosclerosis.

The mechanism by which estrogens protect against atherosclerosis is not known. We evaluated in vivo whether there is a gender difference in monocyte adhesion and subendothelial migration in hypercholesterolemic rabbits and whether any gender differences observed are due to estradiol. Monocyte adhesion and subendothelial migration were assessed in a blinded fashion by analyzing a standardized segment of aorta using a scanning electron microscope. We also assessed whether estradiol modulates induction of vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (VCAM-1) protein using Western blot and flow cytometric analyses. We observed that male rabbits develop more monocyte adhesion and subendothelial migration than do female rabbits during hypercholesterolemia. We also observed that oophorectomized rabbits given physiological estradiol supplementation demonstrate fewer adherent and subendothelial monocytes than do oophorectomized rabbits given placebo. VCAM-1 protein expression was increased in aortae obtained from hypercholesterolemic, oophorectomized animals supplemented with placebo, and this increase was attenuated by estradiol. Finally, in cultured rabbit aortic endothelial cells stimulated with lysophosphatidylcholine, we observed an increase in VCAM-1 protein that was inhibited in a concentration-dependent fashion by estradiol. We have demonstrated in vivo that there is a gender difference in monocyte adhesion to endothelial cells and transendothelial migration after hypercholesterolemia and that this gender difference is due in part to estradiol. Our results also suggest that estradiol inhibits monocyte adhesion by inhibiting expression of VCAM-1.
Antinuclear Matrix Protein 2 Autoantibodies and Edema, Muscle Disease, and Malignancy Risk in Dermatomyositis Patients

Dermatomyositis (DM) patients typically present with proximal weakness and autoantibodies that are associated with distinct clinical phenotypes. We observed that DM patients with autoantibodies recognizing the nuclear matrix protein NXP‐2 often presented with especially severe weakness. The aim of this study was to characterize the clinical features associated with anti–NXP‐2 autoantibodies.
What's New Is Old: Resolving the Identity of Leptothrix ochracea Using Single Cell Genomics, Pyrosequencing and FISH

Leptothrix ochracea is a common inhabitant of freshwater iron seeps and iron-rich wetlands. Its defining characteristic is copious production of extracellular sheaths encrusted with iron oxyhydroxides. Surprisingly, over 90% of these sheaths are empty, hence, what appears to be an abundant population of iron-oxidizing bacteria, consists of relatively few cells. Because L. ochracea has proven difficult to cultivate, its identification is based solely on habitat preference and morphology. We utilized cultivation-independent techniques to resolve this long-standing enigma. By selecting the actively growing edge of a Leptothrix-containing iron mat, a conventional SSU rRNA gene clone library was obtained that had 29 clones (42% of the total library) related to the Leptothrix/Sphaerotilus group (≤96% identical to cultured representatives). A pyrotagged library of the V4 hypervariable region constructed from the bulk mat showed that 7.2% of the total sequences also belonged to the Leptothrix/Sphaerotilus group. Sorting of individual L. ochracea sheaths, followed by whole genome amplification (WGA) and PCR identified a SSU rRNA sequence that clustered closely with the putative Leptothrix clones and pyrotags. Using these data, a fluorescence in-situ hybridization (FISH) probe, Lepto175, was designed that bound to ensheathed cells. Quantitative use of this probe demonstrated that up to 35% of microbial cells in an actively accreting iron mat were L. ochracea. The SSU rRNA gene of L. ochracea shares 96% homology with its closet cultivated relative, L. cholodnii, This establishes that L. ochracea is indeed related to this group of morphologically similar, filamentous, sheathed microorganisms.
A STUDY OF ILLNESS IN A GROUP OF CLEVELAND FAMILIES

Feeding of stool supernates to volunteers has demonstrated that there are at least two different types—afebrile and febrile—of acute infectious non-bacterial gastroenteritis. The afebrile illness, produced by the Marcy agent previously described, has an average incubation period of 60 hours and is characterized by watery diarrhea. The agent (FS) responsible for the febrile illness has been carried through 3 human passages. The febrile disease has an average incubation period of 27 hours and is characterized by constitutional symptoms. It is believed that the two agents are not the same because of the differences in incubation period, the clinical picture, and the absence of cross-immunity. Intranasal instillation of throat washings obtained from 2 persons with gastroenteritis failed to produce illness in 2 groups of volunteers.
Scheduling Multiple Parts in a Robotic Cell Served by a Dual-Gripper Robot

A robotic cell-a manufacturing system widely used in industry-contains two or more robot-served machines, repetitively producing a number of part types. In this paper, we consider scheduling of operations in a bufferless dual-gripper robotic cell processing multiple part types. The processing constraints specify the cell to be a flowshop. The objective is to determine the robot move sequence and the sequence in which parts are to be processed so as to maximize the long-run average throughput rate for repetitive production of parts. We provide a framework to study the problem, and address the issues of problem complexity and solvability. Focusing on a particular class of robot move sequences, we identify all potentially optimal robot move sequences for the part-sequencing problem in a two-machine dual-gripper robot cell. In the case when the gripper switching time is sufficiently small, we specify the best robot move sequence in the class. We prove the problem of finding an optimal part sequence to be strongly NP-hard, even when the robot move sequence is specified. We provide a heuristic approach to solve the general two-machine problem and evaluate its performance on the set of randomly generated problem instances. We perform computations to estimate the productivity gain of using a dual-gripper robot in place of a single-gripper robot. Finally, we extend our results for the two-machine cell to solve an m -machine problem.
Genetic variation in the endocannabinoid system and response to Cognitive Behavior Therapy for child anxiety disorders

Extinction learning is an important mechanism in the successful psychological treatment of anxiety. Individual differences in response and relapse following Cognitive Behavior Therapy may in part be explained by variability in the ease with which fears are extinguished or the vulnerability of these fears to re‐emerge. Given the role of the endocannabinoid system in fear extinction, this study investigates whether genetic variation in the endocannabinoid system explains individual differences in response to CBT. Children (N = 1,309) with a primary anxiety disorder diagnosis were recruited. We investigated the relationship between variation in the CNR1, CNR2, and FAAH genes and change in primary anxiety disorder severity between pre‐ and post‐treatment and during the follow‐up period in the full sample and a subset with fear‐based anxiety disorder diagnoses. Change in symptom severity during active treatment was nominally associated (P < 0.05) with two SNPs. During the follow‐up period, five SNPs were nominally associated with a poorer treatment response (rs806365 [CNR1]; rs2501431 [CNR2]; rs2070956 [CNR2]; rs7769940 [CNR1]; rs2209172 [FAAH]) and one with a more favorable response (rs6928813 [CNR1]). Within the fear‐based subset, the effect of rs806365 survived multiple testing corrections (P < 0.0016). We found very limited evidence for an association between variants in endocannabinoid system genes and treatment response once multiple testing corrections were applied. Larger, more homogenous cohorts are needed to allow the identification of variants of small but statistically significant effect and to estimate effect sizes for these variants with greater precision in order to determine their potential clinical utility. © 2016 The Authors. American Journal of Medical Genetics Part B: Neuropsychiatric Genetics Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Should Symbionts Be Nice or Selfish? Antiviral Effects of Wolbachia Are Costly but Reproductive Parasitism Is Not

Symbionts can have mutualistic effects that increase their host’s fitness and/or parasitic effects that reduce it. Which of these strategies evolves depends in part on the balance of their costs and benefits to the symbiont. We have examined these questions in Wolbachia, a vertically transmitted endosymbiont of insects that can provide protection against viral infection and/or parasitically manipulate its hosts’ reproduction. Across multiple symbiont strains we find that the parasitic phenotype of cytoplasmic incompatibility and antiviral protection are uncorrelated. Strong antiviral protection is associated with substantial reductions in other fitness-related traits, whereas no such trade-off was detected for cytoplasmic incompatibility. The reason for this difference is likely that antiviral protection requires high symbiont densities but cytoplasmic incompatibility does not. These results are important for the use of Wolbachia to block dengue virus transmission by mosquitoes, as natural selection to reduce these costs may lead to reduced symbiont density and the loss of antiviral protection.
Multiple effects of caffeine on simulated high-intensity team-sport performance.

INTRODUCTION Caffeine enhances performance of single bouts of endurance exercise, but its effects on repeated bouts typical of those in high-intensity team sports are unclear. PURPOSE To investigate effects of caffeine in a performance test simulating physical and skill demands of a rugby union game. METHODS The study was a double-blind, randomized, crossover design in which nine competitive male rugby players ingested either caffeine (6 mg.kg(-1) body mass) or placebo (dextrose) 70 min before performing a rugby test. Each test consisted of seven circuits in each of two 40-min halves with a 10-min half-time rest. Each circuit included stations for measurement of sprint time (two straight-line and three agility sprints), power generation in two consecutive drives, and accuracy for passing balls rapidly. Interstitial fluid was sampled transdermally by electrosonophoresis before ingestion of caffeine or placebo and then before testing, at half-time, and immediately after testing; samples were assayed chromatographically for caffeine and epinephrine concentrations. RESULTS The effects of caffeine on mean performance (+/-90% confidence limits) over all 14 circuits were: sprint speeds, 0.5% (+/-1.7%) through 2.9% (+/-1.3%); first-drive power, 5.0% (+/-2.5%); second-drive power, -1.2% (+/-6.8%); and passing accuracy, 9.6% (+/-6.1%). The enhancements were mediated partly through a reduction of fatigue that developed throughout the test and partly by enhanced performance for some measures from the first circuit. Caffeine produced a 51% (+/-11%) increase in mean epinephrine concentration; correlations between individual changes in epinephrine concentration and changes in performance were mostly unclear, but there were some strong positive correlations with sprint speeds and a strong negative correlation with passing accuracy. CONCLUSION Caffeine is likely to produce substantial enhancement of several aspects of high-intensity team-sport performance.
High-Performance DRAMs in Workstation Environments

This paper presents a simulation-based performance study of several of the new high-performance DRAM architectures, each evaluated in a small system organization. These small-system organizations correspond to workstation-class computers and use only a handful of DRAM chips (/spl sim/10, as opposed to /spl sim/1 or /spl sim/100). The study covers Fast Page Mode, Extended Data Out, Synchronous, Enhanced Synchronous, Double Data Rate, Synchronous Link, Rambus, and Direct Rambus designs. Our simulations reveal several things: 1) Current advanced DRAM technologies are attacking the memory bandwidth problem but not the latency problem; 2) bus transmission speed will soon become a primary factor limiting memory-system performance; 3) the post-L2 address stream still contains significant locality, though it varies from application to application; 4) systems without L2 caches are feasible for low- and medium-speed CPUs (1 GHz and below); and 5) as we move to wider buses, row access time becomes more prominent, making it important to investigate techniques to exploit the available locality to decrease access time.
Dynamical Behaviors of Delayed Neural Network Systems with Discontinuous Activation Functions

In this letter, without assuming the boundedness of the activation functions, we discuss the dynamics of a class of delayed neural networks with discontinuous activation functions. A relaxed set of sufficient conditions is derived, guaranteeing the existence, uniqueness, and global stability of the equilibrium point. Convergence behaviors for both state and output are discussed. The constraints imposed on the feedback matrix are independent of the delay parameter and can be validated by the linear matrix inequality technique. We also prove that the solution of delayed neural networks with discontinuous activation functions can be regarded as a limit of the solutions of delayed neural networks with high-slope continuous activation functions.