Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Seasonal variation in the contribution of different behavioural mechanisms to lizard thermoregulation

Summary 1. We studied seasonal changes in the thermoregulatory behaviour of the lacertid lizard Psammodroums algirus in a Mediterranean evergreen forest. Body temperatures ( T b ), environmental operative temperatures ( T e ) and upper and lower limits of the selected thermal range ( T sel ) were lower in May than in July. 2. On average, mean deviations of T b from T sel (0·7 ° C in both seasons) were much smaller than those of T e (8·3 ° C in both seasons). Thus both the accuracy (average difference between T b and T sel ) and effectiveness (the extent to which T b are closer than T e to T sel ) of thermoregulation were high, and similar in both seasons. 3. However the thermoregulatory contribution of two distinct behavioural mechanisms varied markedly between seasons. Daily activity contributed significantly to the regulation of T b in May (when a population of T e thermometers matching lizard activity patterns would be, on average, 1·0 ° C closer to T sel than were randomly available T e ), but not in July (when such a population would be only 0·2 ° C closer to T sel than were randomly available T e ). The selection of sun‐shade patches, the contribution of which was larger than that of daily activity in both seasons, was more important in July (when it produced a distribution of T e that would be, on average, 3·1 ° C closer to T sel than were randomly distributed T e ) than in May (when a population of thermometers matching the lizards’ pattern of exposure to sunlight would be 1·3 ° C closer to T sel than were randomly available T e ). 4. These changes are discussed in the light of seasonal differences in the daily patterns of among-patch variation in T e . In spring, lizard activity was low in the early morning because even the selection of sunlit patches was of limited utility to attain T b within T sel ; in summer, lizards could remain active at midday, despite low overall thermal suitability, by selecting shaded patches. Thus the contribution of patch selection to thermoregulation was important in the early basking period of both seasons, and at summer midday hours. 5. Our data suggest that shuttling between sun and shade, rather than selecting sun or shade, may be an additional mechanism of behavioural thermoregulation, the importance of which would be greatest at times of day when lizards use patches at random (e.g. spring midday hours), and that their mean T b is closer to the grand mean of full sun and full shade T e than to the mean equilibrium T e within any type of patch.
Intestinal Helminth Parasites of Wall Lizards, Podarcis vaucheri Complex (Sauria: Lacertidae) from Algeria

Abstract A parasitological survey was carried out to determine the relationships between the helminth fauna and biological traits of the hosts in three Algerian populations of Podarcis lizards belonging to two different evolutionary lineages. Size, sex, and locality of collection, as well as the infracommunities and component communities, were analyzed. Very low values of parasite infection parameters and diversity were found in all three populations. This is in accordance with the feeding habits of these lizard hosts, which only eat animal prey and no plant matter. Spauligodon saxicolae (Nematoda: Pharyngodonidae), a specialist in lizards, is reported here for the first time in Africa. This nematode was the dominant parasite species for the three populations of lizards regardless their phylogenetic lineage, size, sex, and environmental conditions.
Approximation Algorithms for Complex-Valued Ising Models on Bounded Degree Graphs

We study the problem of approximating the Ising model partition function with complex parameters on bounded degree graphs. We establish a deterministic polynomial-time approximation scheme for the partition function when the interactions and external fields are absolutely bounded close to zero. Furthermore, we prove that for this class of Ising models the partition function does not vanish. Our algorithm is based on an approach due to Barvinok for approximating evaluations of a polynomial based on the location of the complex zeros and a technique due to Patel and Regts for efficiently computing the leading coefficients of graph polynomials on bounded degree graphs. Finally, we show how our algorithm can be extended to approximate certain output probability amplitudes of quantum circuits.
Ecological correlates of the thermal quality of an ectotherm's habitat : a comparison between two temperate lizard populations

Summary 1. Although thermal factors are of paramount importance to the quality of the habitats occupied by small ectotherms (e.g. lizards), the hypothesis that the relative abundance of squamate populations is related to the thermal quality of their habitats remains untested. If differences in the availability of thermally suitable microhabitats was the primary determinant of the overall quality of a lizard’s habitat, population density in a habitat should be proportional to its thermal quality. 2. The influence of the thermal quality of a habitat on thermoregulatory behaviour, body temperatures, expected physiological performance and relative abundance was compared in two populations of the temperate lizard Psammodromus algirusseparated by 700 m altitude in central Spain. Habitat thermal quality was estimated with an index of how closely the available operative temperatures in a habitat match the range of body temperatures that lizards attempt to maintain in a laboratory thermogradient (Hertz, Huey & Stevenson 1993). 3. Operative temperatures, measured using copper models, were higher at the lowland site, where a large proportion of readings fell within or above the preferred range, especially in the early morning. Thermal habitat quality was also higher at the low altitude site, with smaller absolute deviations from the preferred range throughout most of the morning hours. Moreover, lizard body temperatures, the accuracy of thermoregulation and the predicted running performance of lizards were somewhat higher at the lowland site, although differences were smaller than expected on the basis of operative temperatures. A log-linear analysis showed that lizard selectivity for basking sites was more pronounced at the thermally inferior montane site. Thus, the observed differences in the thermal quality of habitats appeared to influence the behaviour of lizards. 4. Nevertheless, the relative abundance of lizards, as estimated by repeated transect counts, was higher at the montane site. This unexpected result suggests that thermal constraints may not be the most important factor determining lizard population densities on a regional scale. Alternatively, food availability and/or predation pressure might have a greater impact on the overall quality of a habitat for temperate lizards.
Morphology, performance and fighting capacity in male lizards, Gallotia galloti

Summary 1. Morphological characteristics (snout‐vent length, badge area, mass, limb and head measures) and whole-animal performance capacities (sprint speed, acceleration capacity, stamina and bite force) were measured in male lizards, Gallotia galloti . These males were also tested in paired staged contests to assess relative fighting capacity and to link these results to morphology and performance. 2. A multivariate analysis of the four performance features revealed a clear difference between the physiological capacities of winners vs losers, with bite force being the most important predictor of the outcome of fights. 3. The finding that bite performance is linked to dominance fits in with the high sexual dimorphism in head size in this species, as head size is a predictor of bite force performance. 4. Winners of contests also tended to have larger total areas of blue patches on their sides, suggesting that these badges convey information on the social status of the males. However, since no correlation was found between bite force and badge size, the patches seem to contain information on a component of fighting capacity other than bite force.
Does Consumer Protection Enhance Disclosure Credibility in Reward Crowdfunding?

We study how the interplay of disclosure and regulation shapes capital allocation in reward crowdfunding. Using data from Kickstarter, the largest online reward crowdfunding platform, we show that, even in the absence of clear regulation and enforcement mechanisms, disclosure helps entrepreneurs access capital for their projects and bolsters engagement with potential project backers, consistent with the notion that disclosure mitigates moral hazard. We further document that, subsequent to a change in Kickstarter’s terms of use that increases the threat of consumer litigation, the association between project funding and disclosure becomes stronger. This evidence suggests that consumer protection regulation enhances the perceived credibility of disclosure. We find the effect of the change in terms of use to be more pronounced in states with stricter consumer protection regulations. Taken together, our findings yield important insights on the role of disclosure, as well as on the potential effects of increased regulation on crowdfunding platforms.
Fish functional groups in a tropical wetland of the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico

The characterization of species' functional traits is a major step in the understanding and description of communities in natural habitats. The classification of species into functional groups is a useful tool to identify redundancy and uniqueness. We studied the fish community of a pristine freshwater wetland in the Sian Ka'an Biosphere Reserve by analysing two multidimensional functions: food acquisition and locomotion. We investigated changes in the functional group structure between habitats (permanent and temporary pools) and seasons (dry and wet). Six functional groups with different ecological characteristics were detected, two of which had high functional redundancy and three of them were represented by single species with unique ecological functions. In permanent pools during the dry season, functional group richness and diversity were lower, while evenness was higher. During the wet season, all functional groups were detected and similar functional group structure was found between habitats. These results suggest an effect of environmental filtering during the dry season and niche complementarity during the wet season.
CR-GAN: Learning Complete Representations for Multi-view Generation

Generating multi-view images from a single-view input is an important yet challenging problem. It has broad applications in vision, graphics, and robotics. Our study indicates that the widely-used generative adversarial network (GAN) may learn ? incomplete? representations due to the single-pathway framework: an encoder-decoder network followed by a discriminator network.We propose CR-GAN to address this problem. In addition to the single reconstruction path, we introduce a generation sideway to maintain the completeness of the learned embedding space. The two learning paths collaborate and compete in a parameter-sharing manner, yielding largely improved generality to ? unseen? dataset. More importantly, the two-pathway framework makes it possible to combine both labeled and unlabeled data for self-supervised learning, which further enriches the embedding space for realistic generations. We evaluate our approach on a wide range of datasets. The results prove that CR-GAN significantly outperforms state-of-the-art methods, especially when generating from ? unseen? inputs in wild conditions.
Gated Feedback Refinement Network for Coarse-to-Fine Dense Semantic Image Labeling

Effective integration of local and global contextual information is crucial for semantic segmentation and dense image labeling. We develop two encoder-decoder based deep learning architectures to address this problem. We first propose a network architecture called Label Refinement Network (LRN) that predicts segmentation labels in a coarse-to-fine fashion at several spatial resolutions. In this network, we also define loss functions at several stages to provide supervision at different stages of training. However, there are limits to the quality of refinement possible if ambiguous information is passed forward. In order to address this issue, we also propose Gated Feedback Refinement Network (G-FRNet) that addresses this limitation. Initially, G-FRNet makes a coarse-grained prediction which it progressively refines to recover details by effectively integrating local and global contextual information during the refinement stages. This is achieved by gate units proposed in this work, that control information passed forward in order to resolve the ambiguity. Experiments were conducted on four challenging dense labeling datasets (CamVid, PASCAL VOC 2012, Horse-Cow Parsing, PASCAL-Person-Part, and SUN-RGBD). G-FRNet achieves state-of-the-art semantic segmentation results on the CamVid and Horse-Cow Parsing datasets and produces results competitive with the best performing approaches that appear in the literature for the other three datasets.
QAM-DWT-SVD Based Watermarking Scheme for Medical Images

This paper presents a new semi-blind image watermarking system for medical applications. The new scheme utilizes Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) and Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) to embed a textual data into original medical images. In particular, text characters are encoded by a Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM-16). In order to increase the security of the system and protect then the watermark from several attacks, the embedded data is submitted to Arnold Transform before inserting it into the host medical image. To evaluate the performances of the scheme, several medical images have been used in the experiments. Simulation results show that the proposed watermarking system ensures good imperceptibility and high robustness against several attacks
Sharing resources in a tiny Mediterranean island? Comparative diets of Chalcides ocellatus and Podarcis filfolensis in Lampione

The insular lizard microcommunity inhabiting the Lampione islet (Pelagian islands, S Italy) is constituted by a skink (Chacides ocellatus) and a lacertid lizard (Podarcis filfolensis). Their diet composition (taxa and sizes) during spring-early summer were analysed based on 131 faecal pellets, which could be individually assigned to a lizard species and sex (only in P. filfolensis). The diet of C. ocellatus was biased towards hard prey of medium to large sizes (Coleoptera, insect larvae). Podarcis filfolensis displayed a more diverse prey spectrum including Formicidae, Coleoptera, insect lar- vae and minor prey not consumed by the skink, but restricted to the small items; differences between sexes were mini- mal. Both species were partially herbivorous. Evidence of cannibalism was found for P. filfolensis and C. ocellatus preyed upon P. filfolensis. Pseudocommunity analysis does not support community structure but instead points to convergence in trophic strategies between both species due to insular conditions. Evolutionary history, rather than resource partition- ing, seems responsible for the moderate trophic overlaps recorded and even may explain why both species coexist under the harsh conditions of this tiny islet.
Prevalence of Recurrent Aphthous Stomatitis: An Institutional Study

Objective: Recurrent aphthous stomatitis (RAS) is an inflammatory condition, which is characterized by recurrent painful, single or multiple ulcers, appearing in the oral mucosa. There is no particular curative treatment available for RAS. Prevalence data of RAS in general population of south India is lacking. Hence, the purpose of this investigation was to determine the prevalence of RAS among patients reporting to a Dental Institution in Mangaluru, India. Methods: Study involved the patients reporting to the Dental hospital with various complaints. Detailed case history was recorded and clinical examination was done by trained professionals. Patients having RAS were recruited in the study. For RAS patients, a questionnaire was provided which contained a details about demographic characteristics, predisposing factors, nature of the ulcers, treatment received . Data obtained from the questionnaire was analysed using software SPSS 16.0 for windows . Results: A total of 11,618 patients reported to the dental hospital during study period. Out of these patients 221 patients were clinically diagnosed with RAS. The prevalence of RAS was 1.9%. Study consisted of 114 females (51.6%) and 107 males (48.4%). The age of patients with RAS was ranging from 13 to 58-years. The percentage of patients with frequency of recurrent ulcers within one month was 24.4%, one to three months was 38.9%, three to six months was 21.3% and more than six months was 15.4%. Duration for the healing of ulcers was also recorded. Less than 1week duration(46.2% of patients), 1-2 weeks (38% of patients), and more than two weeks (15.8% of patients) was reported. RAS was associated with specific food intake in 21.3 % patients. Treatment for RAS was received by 54.8 % of patients. Conclusion: This study provides important information about the prevalence and pattern of recurrent aphthous stomatitis in south India in comparison to the data available in the current literature. This study alludes to importance of thorough history to identify the predisposing factors, thus prevention can be accomplished. Present study helps the dentists to know the patients outlook towards RAS, this would contribute to improve patient management and thus development of newer efficient therapeutics .
Hybrids of Darevskia valentini, D. armeniaca and D. unisexualis from a sympatric population in Armenia

A unique hybridization zone of rock lizard species of genus Darevskia, with diploid (2n), triploid (3n )a nd tetraploid (4n) individuals, occurs in the mountain steppe of central Armenia. Our long-term monitoring has showed an increasing birth rate of triploid hybrids in this mixed population. Among these hybrids, the frequency of captured males with fully developed reproductive systems and presumably fertile females also increased significantly. Consequently, intensive microevolution has taken place in this sympatric population. The morphological, ecological, cytological, histological, and parasitological characteristics of the hybrid Darevskia are presented here and compared with parental species.
Holaspis, a lizard that glided by accident: mosaics of cooption and adaptation in a tropical forest lacertid (Reptilia, Lacertidae)

SYNOPSIS. Holaspis is the most morphologically apomorphic lacertid taxon with 42 or more derived morphological features arising on its exclusive lineage. Nearly all of these confer advantages in three specialised activities, or ameliorate problems resulting from them. The activities are: climbing on the often vertical open surfaces on tree boles and branches, utilising ver y narrow crevices in wood and beneath bark, and the ability, unique among lacertids, to glide from tree to tree. Although many of the features related to these activities are likely to result from direct adaptation to the situations concerned, exaptation ha s been critical in the development of gliding. Two behaviours present in the earliest lacertids have been coopted to this activity: ri b spreading associated with basking contributes to an effective aerofoil, and balance control associated with running helps maint ain appropriate posture in the air. Features originally developed in the context of crevice use also contribute to the aerofoil and a high surface: weight ratio. So, while natural selection has moulded Holaspis for its present activities, multiple accidents of history have also been important, as they also have in the evolution of bird flight.
A diffusion strategy for distributed dictionary learning

We consider the problem of a set of nodes which is required to collectively learn a common dictionary from noisy measurements. This distributed dictionary learning approach may be useful in several contexts including sensor networks. Dif-fusion cooperation schemes have been proposed to estimate a consensus solution to distributed linear regression. This work proposes a diffusion-based adaptive dictionary learning strategy. Each node receives measurements which may be shared or not with its neighbors. All nodes cooperate with their neighbors by sharing their local dictionary to estimate a common representa-tion. In a diffusion approach, the resulting algorithm corresponds to a distributed alternate optimization. Beyond dictionary learn-ing, this strategy could be adapted to many matrix factorization problems in various settings. We illustrate its efficiency on some numerical experiments, including the difficult problem of blind hyperspectral images unmixing.
Effect of soil and plant covering and sowing time on the yield of fennel bulbs grown from sowing directly in the field

Abstract A field experiment on fennel growing (Foeniculum vulgare var. azoricum Mill.) was conducted at the Experimental Farm of the University of Life Sciences in Lublin, on a grey-brown podzolic soil. The experiment included the following factors: three kinds of covers - soil covering with black polyethylene film (PE 0.05 mm), soil covering with black polypropylene non-woven fabric (PP 50 g m-2) and flat covering of plants with white polypropylene non-woven fabric (PP 17 g m-2); three sowing terms - April, May, June; two fennel cultivars - ‘Rudy F1’ and ‘Zefa Fino’. Soil mulching with PP50 and, to a slightly lesser degree, black PE, caused an increase in the total and marketable yield of fennel bulbs and had a favourable effect on the yield structure. The lowest yield, with the highest share of non-marketable bulbs, was obtained following plant covering with PP17. The bulbs were the largest in the experimental treatments with PP50 mulching. The smallest bulbs were harvested following PP17 plant covering. For fennel growing, the most favourable sowing time was April. The lowest yield was obtained from the June sowings. The cultivars studied did not vary in terms of yield level and structure. The bulbs of the ‘Zefa Fino’ cultivar were longer and more slender than those of the ‘Rudy F1’ cultivar
Restrainer exposure to scatter radiation in practical small animal radiography measured using thermoluminescent dosimeters

This study was aimed at estimating restrainer exposure to scatter radiation in veterinary radiography using thermoluminescent dosimeters (TLDs) in different positions, and at different anatomic regions. A prospective study was conducted to measure exposure dose of two restrainers: A (cathode side) and B (anode side), and an observer C (at a 1-meter distance from the X-ray table) over two months. Protective devices included panorama mask, thyroid shield and arm shield. TLDs were placed on the inside and outside of the protective gear at five different anatomic sites (eye, thyroid, breast, gonad and arm). The study data consisted of 778 exposures, 82 patients (78 dogs, four cats), a mean kVp of 58.7 and a mean mAs of 11.4. The doses (outside the shield/inside the shield, in mSv) measured by restrainers A, B and C were eye (3.04/0.42), (2.29/0.17), (0.55/0.01), thyroid (2.93/0.01), (1.97/0.01), (0.19/0.01), breast (1.01/0.04), (0.73/0.01), (0.32/0.01), gonad (0.07/0.01), (0.01/0.01), (0.16/0.01) and arm (2.81/1.43), (1.17/0.01), (0.08/0.01), respectively. This study describes the extent of occupational radiation exposure in small animal radiography. The exposure dose for eyes outside lead protection showed the highest value in all participants. With lead protection, the reduction in the exposure dose of eyes was significant (A: 86%, B: 93%, C: 98%), and the highest reduction was 99% in the thyroid region. These results suggest the necessity of radiation shields in manual restraint, particularly for eye protection.