Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evaluating mating compatibility within fruit fly cryptic species complexes and the potential role of sex pheromones in pre-mating isolation

Abstract The study of sexual behavior and the identification of the signals involved in mate recognition between con-specifics are key components that can shed some light, as part of an integrative taxonomic approach, in delimitating species within species complexes. In the Tephritidae family several species complexes have received particular attention as they include important agricultural pests such as the Ceratitis fasciventris (Bezzi), Ceratitis anonae (Graham) and Ceratitis rosa Karsch (FAR) complex, the Bactrocera dorsalis (Hendel) complex and the Anastrepha fraterculus (Wiedemann) complex. Here the value and usefulness of a methodology that uses walk-in field cages with host trees to assess, under semi-natural conditions, mating compatibility within these complexes is reviewed, and the same methodology to study the role of chemical communication in pre-mating isolation among Anastrepha fraterculus populations is used. Results showed that under the same experimental conditions it was possible to distinguish an entire range of different outcomes: from full mating compatibility among some populations to complete assortative mating among others. The effectiveness of the methodology in contributing to defining species limits was shown in two species complexes: Anastrepha fraterculus and Bactrocera dorsalis, and in the case of the latter the synonymization of several established species was published. We conclude that walk-in field cages constitute a powerful tool to measure mating compatibility, which is also useful to determine the role of chemical signals in species recognition. Overall, this experimental approach provides a good source of information about reproductive boundaries to delimit species. However, it needs to be applied as part of an integrative taxonomic approach that simultaneously assesses cytogenetic, molecular, physiological and morphological traits in order to reach more robust species delimitations.
Evolutionary foundations for cancer biology

New applications of evolutionary biology are transforming our understanding of cancer. The articles in this special issue provide many specific examples, such as microorganisms inducing cancers, the significance of within‐tumor heterogeneity, and the possibility that lower dose chemotherapy may sometimes promote longer survival. Underlying these specific advances is a large‐scale transformation, as cancer research incorporates evolutionary methods into its toolkit, and asks new evolutionary questions about why we are vulnerable to cancer. Evolution explains why cancer exists at all, how neoplasms grow, why cancer is remarkably rare, and why it occurs despite powerful cancer suppression mechanisms. Cancer exists because of somatic selection; mutations in somatic cells result in some dividing faster than others, in some cases generating neoplasms. Neoplasms grow, or do not, in complex cellular ecosystems. Cancer is relatively rare because of natural selection; our genomes were derived disproportionally from individuals with effective mechanisms for suppressing cancer. Cancer occurs nonetheless for the same six evolutionary reasons that explain why we remain vulnerable to other diseases. These four principles—cancers evolve by somatic selection, neoplasms grow in complex ecosystems, natural selection has shaped powerful cancer defenses, and the limitations of those defenses have evolutionary explanations—provide a foundation for understanding, preventing, and treating cancer.
Misspecification, Identification or Measurement? Another Look at the Price Puzzle

This paper re-examines the VAR analysis of the price puzzle with regard to the issues of measurement, identification and misspecification. In an empirical analysis conducted for the US economy, we consider alternative measures of economic activity and inflation, alternative assumptions to identify the monetary policy shock and various VAR specifications making use of contemporaneous and forward looking variables. All three issues are found to be important for the resolution of the price puzzle and a robust preferred specification is proposed.
On the Design of Safety Communication Systems for Vehicles

Statistics show that the number of casualties due to traffic accidents exceeds one million each year. For the development of systems that prevent vehicle collisions, vehicular communication is considered a promising technology. This paper focuses on design aspects of communication systems that support the development of collaborative active safety systems such as collision warning and collision avoidance. We introduce a design method for safety communication systems that includes a set of analyses and a reasoning system for modeling and analyzing traffic scenarios. An overview of a specific solution for communication is presented in this paper. This solution proposes techniques for network organization and data dissemination that make use of contextual information. This allows the development of a communication system that is adaptable to the specifics of the traffic situation.
English teachers in Indonesian senior high schools in Gorontalo : a qualitative study of professional formation, identity and practice

This study contributes to an understanding of why the implementation of new curriculum in the teaching of English as a foreign language continues to be unsuccessful in Indonesia, through exploring teachers’ own conceptualizations of themselves, and their responsibilities and practices as professionals. The study sets out to examine factors that have affected teachers through their formation as learners and as professionals, and considers how these factors influence their beliefs and attitudes towards their practice and their responses to curriculum change in secondary high school classrooms in Indonesia.
Effects of Linseed Oil or Whole Linseed Supplementation on Performance and Milk Fatty Acid Composition of Lactating Dairy Cows

The objective of this study was to determine the effects of linseed oil or whole linseed supplementation on performance and milk fatty acid composition of lactating dairy cows. Thirty six Holstein Friesian crossbred lactating dairy cows were blocked by milking days first and then stratified random balanced for milk yields and body weight into three groups of 12 cows each. The treatments consisted of basal ration (53:47; forage:concentrate ratio, on a dry matter [DM] basis, respectively) supplemented with 300 g/d of palm oil as a positive control diet (PO), or supplemented with 300 g/d of linseed oil (LSO), or supplemented with 688 g/d of top-dressed whole linseed (WLS). All cows were received ad libitum grass silage and individually fed according to the treatments. The experiment lasted for 10 weeks including the first 2 weeks as the adjustment period, followed by 8 weeks of measurement period. The results showed that LSO and WLS supplementation had no effects on total dry matter intake, milk yield, milk composition, and live weight change; however, the animals fed WLS had higher crude protein (CP) intake than those fed PO and LSO (p<0.05). To compare with the control diet, dairy cow’s diets supplemented with LSO and WLS significantly increased milk concentrations of cis-9, trans-11-conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) (p<0.05) and n-3 fatty acids (FA) (p<0.01), particularly, cis-9,12,15-C18:3, C20:5n-3 and C22:6n-3. Supplementing LSO and WLS induced a reduction of medium chain FA, especially, C12:0-C16:0 FA (p<0.05) while increasing the concentration of milk unsaturated fatty acids (UFA) (p<0.05). Milk FA proportions of n-3 FA remarkably increased whereas the ratio of n-6 to n-3 decreased in the cows supplemented with WLS as compared with those fed the control diet and LSO (p<0.01). In conclusion, supplementing dairy cows’ diet based on grass silage with WLS had no effect on milk yield and milk composition; however, trans-9- C18:1, cis-9, trans-11-CLA, n-3 FA and UFA were increased while saturated FA were decreased by WLS supplementation. Therefore, it is recommended that the addition 300 g/d of oil from whole linseed should be used to lactating dairy cows’ diets.
Your emotion or mine: labeling feelings alters emotional face perception—an ERP study on automatic and intentional affect labeling

Empirical evidence suggests that words are powerful regulators of emotion processing. Although a number of studies have used words as contextual cues for emotion processing, the role of what is being labeled by the words (i.e., one's own emotion as compared to the emotion expressed by the sender) is poorly understood. The present study reports results from two experiments which used ERP methodology to evaluate the impact of emotional faces and self- vs. sender-related emotional pronoun-noun pairs (e.g., my fear vs. his fear) as cues for emotional face processing. The influence of self- and sender-related cues on the processing of fearful, angry and happy faces was investigated in two contexts: an automatic (experiment 1) and intentional affect labeling task (experiment 2), along with control conditions of passive face processing. ERP patterns varied as a function of the label's reference (self vs. sender) and the intentionality of the labeling task (experiment 1 vs. experiment 2). In experiment 1, self-related labels increased the motivational relevance of the emotional faces in the time-window of the EPN component. Processing of sender-related labels improved emotion recognition specifically for fearful faces in the N170 time-window. Spontaneous processing of affective labels modulated later stages of face processing as well. Amplitudes of the late positive potential (LPP) were reduced for fearful, happy, and angry faces relative to the control condition of passive viewing. During intentional regulation (experiment 2) amplitudes of the LPP were enhanced for emotional faces when subjects used the self-related emotion labels to label their own emotion during face processing, and they rated the faces as higher in arousal than the emotional faces that had been presented in the “label sender's emotion” condition or the passive viewing condition. The present results argue in favor of a differentiated view of language-as-context for emotion processing.
Stopping‐time resampling for sequential Monte Carlo methods

Summary. Motivated by the statistical inference problem in population genetics, we present a new sequential importance sampling with resampling strategy. The idea of resampling is key to the recent surge of popularity of sequential Monte Carlo methods in the statistics and engin‐eering communities, but existing resampling techniques do not work well for coalescent‐based inference problems in population genetics. We develop a new method called ‘stopping‐time resampling’, which allows us to compare partially simulated samples at different stages to terminate unpromising partial samples and to multiply promising samples early on. To illustrate the idea, we first apply the new method to approximate the solution of a Dirichlet problem and the likelihood function of a non‐Markovian process. Then we focus on its application in population genetics. All our examples show that the new resampling method can significantly improve the computational efficiency of existing sequential importance sampling methods.
Association of mitral annular calcification and aortic valve morphology: a substudy of the aortic stenosis progression observation measuring effects of rosuvastatin (ASTRONOMER) study.

AIMS Mitral annular calcification (MAC) is characterized by calcium and lipid deposition in the annular fibrosa of the mitral valve. Although individuals with MAC are at increased risk of cardiovascular events, little is known about the significance of this finding in patients with concurrent aortic stenosis (AS). The aim of this study was to describe the association of baseline MAC and aortic valve morphology in asymptomatic patients enrolled in the ASTRONOMER study, a multicentre study to assess the effect of Rosuvastatin on the progression of AS. METHODS AND RESULTS At baseline, transthoracic echocardiography was performed with two-dimensional and Doppler imaging following a standardized protocol. Echo measurements including left ventricular (LV) dimensions and aortic root dimensions were obtained according to the ASE recommendations. MAC was identified by bright echoes at the base of the mitral leaflets or annulus on 2D imaging, and aortic valve calcification by visualization of bright echoes on the aortic valve leaflets. The degree of calcification was semi-quantitated from absent to severe. The study population included 219 patients (57 +/- 14 years; 129 males), divided into two pre-specified categories; bicuspid (n = 133) and tricuspid (n = 86) aortic valves. Baseline LV dimensions, aortic valve haemodynamics, and cholesterol profiles were similar between the two groups at baseline. Individuals with tricuspid aortic valves were older, more hypertensive, with higher degrees of MAC and AV calcification (P < 0.001). The higher degree of MAC persisted in patients with tricuspid AV after adjustment for age and systolic blood pressure (P = 0.004). CONCLUSION In patients with asymptomatic mild to moderate AS, MAC is more prevalent in those individuals with tricuspid AV, independent of age, and systolic blood pressure. Whether the degree of MAC may be a surrogate for atherosclerosis, and predict the subset of patients who will respond to statin therapy in preventing the progression of AS, remains to be determined.
Connections Between Adolescents’ Parasocial Interactions and Recollections of Childhood Imaginative Activities

Parasocial interactions (PSIs; one-sided communication imagined with a media figure) in adolescence and imaginative activities in childhood, such as imaginary companions and role play, have a shared foundation in that both use imagination for social purposes. This commonality in both cognitive processes and social uses begs the question of whether they are related phenomena. We examined PSI’s connection to retrospective reports of childhood imaginative activities in the context of the social environment, including relationship functioning (attachment style and social support) and well-being (self-esteem and depressive symptoms), in 151 adolescents (Mage = 14.8 years). PSI and reports of childhood imagination were unrelated to each other and differentially related to the social environment, suggesting that each form of social imagination relates to the developmental task it addresses rather than to individual differences in predilection for fantasy or social functioning.
Performance Analysis of TCP over Static Ad Hoc Wireless Networks

Most research in mobile ad hoc networks has been devoted to routing protocols since they are fundamental to the technology. Performance analyses of these protocols have shown advantages and disadvantages and the effectiveness usually depends on the type of application or environment they are meant to run on. Lately, some studies have also included the performance of transport level protocols over ad hoc networks, in particular TCP. However, these studies provide general insights about the performance of TCP over these networks but no specific application is associated with them. In this paper we study the performance of the most important TCP versions and ad hoc routing protocols in a closed environment simulating a very likely scenario such as a classroom, conference room, or the like and show that due to the static nature of the setting these types of networks are a good solution, in particular when TCP Reno and DSR routing protocols are combined.
Bar strengths in spiral galaxies estimated from 2MASS images

Non-axisymmetric forces are presented for a sample of 107 spiral galaxies, of which 31 are barred (SB) and 53 show nuclear activity. As a data base we use JHK images from the 2 Micron All-sky Survey, and the non-axisymmetries are characterized by the ratio of the tangential force to the mean axisymmetric radial force field, following Buta & Block. Bar strengths have an important role in many extragalactic problems and therefore it is important to verify that the different numerical methods applied for calculating the forces give mutually consistent results. We apply both direct Cartesian integration and a polar grid integration utilizing a limited number of azimuthal Fourier components of density. We find that the bar strength is independent of the method used to evaluate the gravitational potential. However, because of the distance-dependent smoothing by Fourier decomposition, the polar method is more suitable for weak and noisy images. The largest source of uncertainty in the derived bar strength appears to be the uncertainty in the vertical scaleheight, which is difficult to measure directly for most galaxies. On the other hand, the derived bar strength is rather insensitive to the possible gradient in the vertical scaleheight of the disc or to the exact model of the vertical density distribution, provided that the same effective vertical dispersion is assumed in all models. In comparison with the pioneering study by Buta & Block, the bar strength estimate is improved here by taking into account the dependence of the vertical scaleheight on the Hubble type: we find that for thin discs bar strengths are stronger than for thick discs by an amount that may correspond to as much as one bar strength class. We confirm the previous result by Buta and co-workers showing that the dispersion in bar strength is large among all the de Vaucouleurs optical bar classes. In the near-infrared 40 per cent of the galaxies in our sample have bars (showing constant phases in the m = 2 Fourier amplitudes in the bar region), while in the optical band one-third of these bars are obscured by dust. Significant non-axisymmetric forces can also be induced by the spiral arms, generally in the outer parts of the galactic discs, which may have important implications on galaxy evolution. Possible biases of the selected sample are also studied: we find that the number of bars identified drops rapidly when the inclination of the galactic disc is larger than 50 ◦ . A similar bias is found in the Third Reference Catalogue of Bright Galaxies, which might be of interest when comparing bar frequencies at high and low redshifts.
Rents, Technical Change, and Risk Premia

The secular decline in safe interest rates since the early 1980s has been the subject of considerable attention. In this short paper, we argue that it is important to consider the evolution of safe real rates in conjunction with three other first-order macroeconomic stylized facts: the relative constancy of the real return to productive capital, the decline in the labor share, and the decline and subsequent stabilization of the earnings yield. Through the lens of a simple accounting framework, these four facts offer insights into the economic forces that might be at work.
Dazzle Camouflage Affects Speed Perception

Movement is the enemy of camouflage: most attempts at concealment are disrupted by motion of the target. Faced with this problem, navies in both World Wars in the twentieth century painted their warships with high contrast geometric patterns: so-called “dazzle camouflage”. Rather than attempting to hide individual units, it was claimed that this patterning would disrupt the perception of their range, heading, size, shape and speed, and hence reduce losses from, in particular, torpedo attacks by submarines. Similar arguments had been advanced earlier for biological camouflage. Whilst there are good reasons to believe that most of these perceptual distortions may have occurred, there is no evidence for the last claim: changing perceived speed. Here we show that dazzle patterns can distort speed perception, and that this effect is greatest at high speeds. The effect should obtain in predators launching ballistic attacks against rapidly moving prey, or modern, low-tech battlefields where handheld weapons are fired from short ranges against moving vehicles. In the latter case, we demonstrate that in a typical situation involving an RPG7 attack on a Land Rover the reduction in perceived speed is sufficient to make the grenade miss where it was aimed by about a metre, which could be the difference between survival or not for the occupants of the vehicle.
Differentiability of quadratic BSDE generated by continuous martingales and hedging in incomplete markets

In this paper we consider a class of BSDE with drivers of quadratic growth, on a stochastic basis generated by continuous local martingales. We first derive the Markov property of a forward-backward system (FBSDE) if the generating martingale is a strong Markov process. Then we establish the differentiability of a FBSDE with respect to the initial value of its forward component. This enables us to obtain the main result of this article which from the perspective of a utility optimization interpretation of the underlying control problem on a financial market takes the following form. The control process of the BSDE steers the system into a random liability depending on a market external uncertainty and this way describes the optimal derivative hedge of the liability by investment in a capital market the dynamics of which is described by the forward component. This delta hedge is described in a key formula in terms of a derivative functional of the solution process and the correlation structure of the internal uncertainty captured by the forward process and the external uncertainty responsible for the market incompleteness. The formula largely extends the scope of validity of the results obtained by several authors in the Brownian setting, designed to give a genuinely stochastic representation of the optimal delta hedge in the context of cross hedging insurance derivatives generalizing the derivative hedge in the Black-Scholes model. Of course, Malliavin’s calculus needed in the Brownian setting is not available in the general local martingale framework. We replace it by new tools based on stochastic calculus techniques.
First�?Best Fiscal Policy with Social Status

This paper examines the first‐best fiscal policy in a stochastic, infinite‐horizon representative agent model that exhibits consumption‐enhanced as well as wealth‐enhanced social status in the household utility. We show that the first‐best labour tax rate is a positive constant that is used to correct negative consumption externalities. The first‐best tax rate on capital income is also positive in order to overturn agents' status‐seeking capital over‐accumulation. Moreover, we find that in sharp contrast to a conventional automatic stabilizer, the first‐best capital tax rate moves in the opposite direction with shocks to firms' production technology, thus exacerbating the business cycle.
Accumulator-based generation for serial TPG

Arithmetic modules can be utilized to generate test patterns and compact test responses. In this work we investigate the utilization of an accumulator whose inputs are driven by a Feedback Shift Register as a candidate structure for bit-serial test-pattern generation. The proposed scheme compares favorably to previously proposed schemes with respect to the length of the output sequence / hardware overhead tradeoff.