Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Electrical characteristics of microdot sensors for X-ray imaging applications

In this paper, a recently interested radiation sensor operating in the gas proportional mode, the so-called microdot-typed radiation sensor, is described for inherently two-dimensional (2-D) readout capability. We present new observations and measurements realized with the microdot-typed sensor of a 50-/spl mu/m pitch, including gas gain, rate capability, aging effect, and insensitive zone. The intrinsically 2-D structure of this sensor makes it attractive for potential applications, such as X-ray imaging devices and tracking sensors, at colliders for the next-generation synchrotron radiation sources.
Finescale topographical correlates of behavioural investment in offspring by female grey seals, Halichoerus grypus


Grey seals breed colonially on substrates ranging from ice to rocky or sandy beaches. Clear differences in seal behaviour patterns exist among such broad classes of breeding habitat. However, finer scale topographical variation is likely to influence individual behaviour with consequences for pupping success. We examined topographical influences on the behaviour of breeding female grey seals by quantifying topography at a subseal size resolution. Using submetre resolution digital terrain models of two sites within a rocky breeding colony, we compared site topography in relation to observed differences in female behaviour at these sites. Females at both sites preferred breeding close to water (standing pools or sea) and frequently commuted between their pups and water. Topographical models indicated that one site was more costly for seals in terms of their locations and movements within the site. This was due to a lack of low-elevation land adjacent to the main access points from the sea and the reduced availability of pools. Females at this site showed reduced pup attendance and an increase in energetically costly behaviours, whilst females at the lower-cost site spent more time interacting with their pups and resting. These topographically induced behavioural differences are likely to affect the quantity and quality of pup provisioning by mothers and influence individual pupping site selection. Less costly sites are likely to be colonized preferentially and by larger, older and more dominant females, potentially generating finescale spatial heterogeneity in female quality within the breeding colony. Copyright 2000 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.
Object Recognition under Sequential Viewing Conditions: Evidence for Viewpoint-Specific Recognition Procedures

In many computational approaches to vision it has been emphasised that object recognition involves the encoding of view-independent descriptions prior to matching to a stored object model, thus enabling objects to be identified across different retinal projections. In contrast, neurophysiological studies suggest that image descriptions are matched to less abstract, view-specific representations, resulting in more efficient access to stored object knowledge for objects presented from a view similar to a stored viewpoint. Evidence favouring a primary role for view-specific object descriptions in object recognition is reported. In a series of experiments employing line drawings of familiar objects, the effects of depth rotation upon the efficiency of object recognition were investigated. Subjects were required to identify an object from a sequence of very briefly presented pictures. The results suggested that object recognition is based upon the matching of image descriptions to view-specific stored representations, and that priming effects under sequential viewing conditions are strongly influenced by the visual similarity of different views of objects.
Effects of Diet Complexity and Fermented Soy Protein on Growth Performance and Apparent Ileal Amino Acid Digestibility in Weanling Pigs

Two experiments were conducted to evaluate the effects of diet complexity and fermented soy protein on growth performance and amino acid digestibility. In Exp. 1, a total of 120 crossbred weanling pigs (5.68±0.80 kg BW) were randomly allocated into 4 treatments. Each treatment had 6 replicate pens comprising 5 pigs in each replicate. Experimental diets consisted of simple (soybean meal as protein source) and complex (soybean meal, rice protein concentrate, potato protein concentrate and fish meal as protein sources) diets; each diet contained 0 or 5% fermented soy protein (FSP), respectively. Dietary treatments included: i) simple diet; ii) simple diet with 5% FSP; iii) complex diet; iv) complex diet with 5% FSP. Pigs were provided each experimental diet for 20 d (phase 1) and then fed the same common diet for 10 d (phase 2). During days 0-10, pigs fed FSP diets had greater ADG than those fed non-FSP diets (p 0.05) in this experiment. In Exp 2, 12 ileal-cannulated, weanling barrows were housed in individual metabolism crates and randomly assigned to 1 of 4 treatments (same as Exp. 1) by using a 4x4 Latin square design. Among the essential amino acids, apparent ileal digestibility (AID) of Met and Val were increased in pigs fed FSP diets compared with those fed non-FSP diets (p<0.05). AID of Met, Phe and total essential amino acids were higher in pigs fed complex diets than in those fed simple diets (p<0.05). Among the non-essential amino acids, AID of Ala in FSP treatments was greater than that in non-FSP treatments (p<0.05). In addition, Asp, Cys, Glu, Pro, Ser and total non-essential amino acid digestibilities in pigs fed complex diets were higher compared with those fed simple diets (p<0.05). Interaction was observed in AID of Met, Asp and Pro. In conclusion, these results indicated that feeding of 5% FSP to nursery pigs improved feed efficiency and AID of amino acids, and diet complexity did not maximize the growth performance of pigs in the subsequent phase.
Fire regime and vegetation change in the transition from Aboriginal to European land management in a Tasmanian eucalypt savanna

Using pollen and charcoal analysis we examined how vegetation and fire regimes have changed over the last 600 years in the Midlands of Tasmania. Sediment cores from seven lagoons were sampled, with a chronology developed at one site (Diprose Lagoon) using 210Pb and 14C dating. Statistical contrasts of six cores where Pinus served as a marker of European settlement in the early 19th Century and showed significant changes in pollen composition following settlement with (a) influx of ruderal exotic taxa including Plantago lanceolata L. , Brassicaceae, Asteraceae (Liguliflorae) and Rumex, (b) increase in pollen of the aquatics Myriophyllum spp. and Cyperaceae, (c) a decline in native herbaceous pollen taxa, including Chenopodiaceae and Asteraceae (Tubuliflorae) and (d) a decline in Allocasuarina and an initial decline and then increase of Poaceae. The presence of Asteraceae (Liguliflorae) in the pre-European period suggests that an important root vegetable Microseris lanceolata (Walp.) Sch.Bip. may have been abundant. Charcoal deposition was low in the pre-European period and significantly increased immediately after European arrival. Collectively, these changes suggest substantial ecological impacts following European settlement including cessation of Aboriginal traditions of fire management, a shift in hydrological conditions from open water lagoons to more ephemeral herb covered lagoons, and increased diversity of alien herbaceous species following pasture establishment.
DISINTEGRATION OF BONE CEMENT BY CONTINUOUS AND PULSATING WATER JET

Original scientific paper The paper deals with the study of using continuous water jet and ultrasonic pulsating water jet for bone cement disintegration. Bone-cement Pallacos R+G (manually mixed) was disintegrated ex-vivo. Mechanical properties of the bone cement were determined by nano-indentation. Factors employed in evaluation were pressure (40, 80, 120) MPa and traverse speed for continuous water jet, pressure (8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 20) MPa and orifice type (flat, circular) for ultrasonic pulsating water jet. Depth penetration h (mm) was measured by non-contact optical profilometer MicroProf FRT. Results represent the first step towards feasibility of using effective water jet technique during reimplantation of cemented endoprosthesis, for bone cement removal from femoral canal without heat and mechanical damage of surrounding tissue.
Scaling Down the Analysis of Environmental Processes: Monitoring Enzyme Activity in Natural Substrates on a Millimeter Resolution Scale

ABSTRACT Natural environments often show high levels of spatial heterogeneity. With a methodology based on the immobilization of fluorescent substrates, the distribution of extracellular enzymes can be studied at a 2.3-mm resolution with a detection limit of 1.8 nmol · h−1 · cm−2. The method is applicable to environmental samples such as wood, litter, soil, or fungal colonies.
Prevalence of Upper Cervical Vertebrae Anomalies in Patients with Cleft Lip and/or Palate and Noncleft Patients

Objectives: To investigate the prevalence of upper cervical vertebrae anomalies in patients with isolated cleft lip, isolated cleft palate, and complete cleft lip and palate, as well as to compare the prevalence of these anomalies between groups, between genders, and with noncleft patients. Design: Retrospective cross-sectional study of randomly selected patients. Setting: Radiology Section, Hospital for Rehabilitation of Craniofacial Anomalies and Department of Orthodontics, Bauru School of Dentistry, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil. Participants: The sample comprised 300 lateral cephalograms of cleft patients, aged 12 to 13 years, of both genders, from the files of the Hospital for Rehabilitation of Craniofacial Anomalies–University of São Paulo and 300 lateral cephalograms from noncleft patients of the Department of Orthodontics, Bauru School of Dentistry. Cephalograms of patients with syndromes were not included. Method: Radiographs were interpreted on a film viewer by a single examiner; the profiles of vertebrae were traced on acetate paper, and cervical vertebrae anomalies were registered and categorized into posterior arch deficiencies, fusion, and association of both. Main Outcome Measures: Statistical comparison of groups using the chi-square test. Results: In the cleft group, 38.67% of the patients had cervical vertebrae anomalies. Of those in the noncleft sample, 31% showed anomalies of the cervical spine. This difference was statistically significant. There was no statistically significant difference when the types of clefts were compared with each other or when both genders were compared in both samples. Conclusions: This study confirms the association between clefts and cervical anomalies. Additional research on this topic is necessary.
Reliability score based multimodal fusion for biometric person authentication

In this paper, we propose a robust multilevel fusion strategy involving cascaded fusion of hybrid multimodal fusion of audio-lip-face motion, correlation and depth features for biometric person authentication. The proposed approach combines the information from different audio-video based modules, namely: audio-lip motion module, audio-lip correlation module, 2D+3D motiondepth fusion module, and performs a hybrid cascaded fusion in an automatic, unsupervised and adaptive manner, by adapting to the local performance of each module. This is done by taking the output-score based reliability estimates (confidence measures) of each of the module into account. The module weightings are determined automatically such that the reliability measure of the combined scores is maximised. To test the robustness of the proposed approach, the audio and visual speech (mouth) modalities are degraded to emulate various levels of train/test mismatch; employing additive white Gaussian noise for the audio and JPEG compression for the video signals. The results show improved fusion performance for a range of tested levels of audio and video degradation, compared to the individual module performances. Experiments on a 3D stereovision database AVOZES show that, at severe levels of audio and video mismatch, the audio, mouth, 3D face, and tri-module (audio-lip motion, correlation and depth) fusion EERs were 42.9%, 32%, 15%, and 7.3% respectively for biometric person authentication task.
Impact evaluation of institutional evaluation and programme accreditation at Technical University of Civil Engineering Bucharest (Romania)

ABSTRACT The article reports on a case study of impact evaluation of external quality assurance, i.e. institutional evaluation including programme accreditation, which was carried out by the Romanian Agency for Quality Assurance in Higher Education at Technical University of Civil Engineering Bucharest in the form of a methodological before-after comparison. The impact evaluation exhibits a marked stability of the attitudes towards quality assurance of different stakeholders on a high positive level. The analysis also shows that teachers, on the average, perceive better and perceive more effects of quality assurance in learning and teaching, and that they experience university leadership as highly supportive for quality assurance. The study further demonstrates that for teachers the perceived amount of benefit surpasses the perceived expenditure. Finally, a series of open answers gives indications for possible improvement of the university’s quality assurance and organizational structures.
Organizational Online Participation

As today’s employees demand higher degrees of involvement in terms of how, when, and where they work, open innovation and (internal) crowdsourcing are being widely adopted. Despite recent efforts by many organizations to implement such systems in order to increase the possibilities for organizational participation, studies have only narrowly explored how their design affects employee opinions and communication as well as how organizational culture influences usage and adoption. This thesis investigates the conditions, capabilities and components for the design of organizational online participation systems, applying a Design Science Research approach. Following a literature review on idea generation, collaboration and evaluation in open innovation processes, we outline success factors for open innovation systems. We validate our success factors in practice by conducting semi-structured interviews with 20 experts from mid- and large-cap private and public organizations in Germany. Moreover, we derive three key challenges that guide our subsequent studies. First, we investigate the “Bag of Lemons” approach, a novel rating technique, and compare it to the standard techniques Likert scales and up- and down-voting. Our study with 141 participants in an open innovation engagement at a public-private research organization finds that BOL is perceived as more frustrating than the other two rating techniques, which is partly mediated by the significantly increased information overload. Second, we turn to anonymity in two distinct studies. We analyze the effect of anonymity, as compared to identifiability of user profiles, on communication persuasiveness – operationalized as actual opinion change – in a two-staged online experimental survey with 377 participants. We find anonymity to be a double-edged sword as it decreases perceived social presence, which in turn affects both user involvement as well as perceived user credibility. Thereafter, we investigate the design of a feature for optional anonymous contributions and its effect on participation and the choice of language in an internal crowdsourcing platform. Our analysis of an implementation and five-month test at a public organization with more than 110 employees shows the effectiveness of our “opt-in anonymity” feature as we elicit participation from otherwise reticent employees and no disinhibited language. Third, we analyze the design of an internal crowdsourcing system at this public organization in more detail, focusing on the influence of its organizational culture on usage and acceptance. We assert an IT-culture-conflict, as the organizational values do not match the open and communal approach transposed by the crowdsourcing system. We suggest that organizational online participation is a promising tool to enhance employee involvement, driving innovations and enabling organizational transformation.
The dynamics of a cotton-grass (Eriophorum vaginatum L.) cover expansion in a vacuum-mined peatland, southern Québec, Canada

We studied from 1998 to 2003 the fine-scale vegetation dynamics of an abandoned vacuummined bog located in southern Québec in which cotton-grass (Eriophorum vaginatum) has become dominant. A water table no deeper than 30–40 cm below the soil surface combined with a volumetric peat water content>70% in the surface peat layer favored the increase in cotton-grass cover in abandoned peat fields. In one of the two peat fields that was monitored, the density of living tussocks was 30,750/ha in 1998. The density decreased constantly to reach 25,900/ha in 2002; a 16% decrease. The expansion of cotton-grass cover was mainly the result of the growth of established tussocks following a rise of the water table. The strong relationship between cotton-grass cover and water table suggests that the latter could be used as a predictor for cotton-grass cover change in mined bogs. The present study does not provide evidence that cotton-grass facilitates the establishment of moss species. At the study site, moss establishment was more highly associated with particular hydrologic characteristics (volumetric peat water content ≥85%) than with the presence of a dense cotton-grass cover. The use of cotton-grass to facilitate the establishment of Sphagnum colonies in mined peatlands is questionable, particularly where other efficient restoration techniques are available.
C. elegans orthologs of components of the RB tumor suppressor complex have distinct pro-apoptotic functions

To obtain insight into the role of the retinoblastoma susceptibility gene (Rb; also known as Rb1) in apoptosis, we analyzed Caenorhabditis elegans mutants lacking a functional lin-35 RB gene. We found that the loss of lin-35 function results in a decrease in constitutive germ cell apoptosis. We present evidence that lin-35 promotes germ cell apoptosis by repressing the expression of ced-9, an anti-apoptotic C. elegans gene that is orthologous to the human proto-oncogene BCL2. Furthermore, we show that the genes dpl-1 DP, efl-1 E2F and efl-2 E2F also promote constitutive germ cell apoptosis. However, in contrast to lin-35, dpl-1 (and probably also efl-1 and efl-2) promotes germ cell apoptosis by inducing the expression of the pro-apoptotic genes ced-4 and ced-3, which encode an APAF1-like adaptor protein and a pro-caspase, respectively. Based on these results, we propose that C. elegans orthologs of components of the RB tumor suppressor complex have distinct pro-apoptotic functions in the germ line and that the transcriptional regulation of components of the central apoptosis machinery is a critical determinant of constitutive germ cell apoptosis in C. elegans. Finally, we demonstrate that lin-35, dpl-1 and efl-2, but not efl-1, function either downstream of or in parallel to cep-1 p53 (also known as TP53) and egl-1 BH3-only to cause DNA damage-induced germ cell apoptosis. Our results have implications for the general mechanisms through which RB-like proteins control gene expression, the role of RB-, DP- and E2F-like proteins in apoptosis, and the regulation of apoptosis.
Valuasi Ekonomi Objek Wisata Pantai Parangtritis, Bantul Yogyakarta

Penilaian Pantai Parangtritis menjadi sangat penting seiring dengan masalah mikro mengenai rencana pembangunan infrastruktur, sarana, dan prasarana di wilayah jalur selatan. Pembangunan infrastruktur yang baru berjalan di antaranya Jalan Jalus Lintas Selatan yang di dalamnya termasuk wilayah sekitar Pantai Parangtritis. Alat analisis yang digunakan untuk mengetahui variabel yang memengaruhi jumlah wisatawan terhadap objek wisata Parangtritis dan nilai ekonomi Pantai Parangtritis adalah Travel Cost Method. Berdasarkan hasil penelitian bahwa variabel total biaya, tingkat pendapatan, usia, dan tingkat pendidikan memengaruhi jumlah kunjungan ke Pantai Parangtritis. Sementara itu valuasi ekonomi Pantai Parangtritis adalah sebesar Rp14.605. 101.491.
Voltage‐clamp analysis of a crayfish rectifying synapse.

1. The rectifying crayfish giant motor synapse has been studied in the second abdominal ganglion, using the double‐voltage‐clamp technique which allowed direct measurements of junctional current at various fixed transjunctional potentials. 2. The transjunctional potential (Vj), defined as the difference between the voltages recorded in the lateral giant axon and the giant motor fibre, was varied from ‐70 to +50 mV, the minimum and maximum junctional chord conductances (gmin and gmax, respectively) were found to be 1.2 +/‐ 1.3 microS (n = 10) and 22.9 +/‐ 6.3 microS (n = 10), respectively. 3. For a given Vj, changes in the lateral giant axon or giant motor fibre membrane potential over a range of +/‐ 30 mV around their resting levels did not influence the junctional permeability (gj), indicating that the inside‐outside potential of the junctional channel does not control gj. 4. Therefore, the steady‐state junctional chord conductances were dependent only upon Vj. 5. The voltage dependence of the chord conductance was well fitted by a modified Boltzmann relation given by the equation (Formula: see text) with the constants: A = 0.15 +/‐ 0.03 mV‐1 (n = 10) and V0 = 28 +/‐ 4 mV (n = 10); the latter two parameters were also found to be independent of both transmembrane potentials. 6. The junctional currents were already constant 1 ms after step changes in the junctional voltage; this was three orders of magnitude faster than the other known examples of voltage‐controlled gap junctions between embryonic cells. 7. Our results may be interpreted by a highly voltage‐dependent probability of opening of the junctional channels. They also suggest that the gap‐junction channels forming the giant motor synapse respond very rapidly to potential and that the hemi‐channels which constitute them may not be symmetric.