Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Response of Avian Communities to Historic Habitat Change in the Northern Chihuahuan Desert

Abstract: Throughout much of the northern Chihuahuan Desert, the grasslands that were widespread at the time of European settlement have been replaced by desert shrublands. Little is known about the effects of this change on avian communities. We analyzed historic U.S. Government Land Office records to assess large‐scale changes in vegetation cover from the 1880s to the present day. We studied vegetation and avian communities in one grassland habitat type and four desert shrubland habitat types to examine (1) how breeding‐bird communities may have changed in response to habitat conversion from grassland to desert shrubland and (2) whether breeding‐bird communities differ among the four desert shrubland habitat types that compose Chihuahuan Desert scrub in this region. To estimate the characteristics of 1880s black grama ( Bouteloua eriopoda) grassland, we focused on plots located within extensive patches of present‐day black grama and compared the avian communities found there with those in desert shrubland. Species richness was higher in desert shrubland than grassland. Among the desert shrubland habitat types, species richness was consistently highest in mesquite. Avian abundance patterns differed among the four desert shrubland habitat types. At least 30% of the avian community in each habitat pair was distinct. Conversion of grassland to shrubland in south‐central New Mexico has likely been accompanied by a major turnover in the avian community. Remaining tracts of black grama provide habitat for species that may be uniquely adapted to the northern Chihuahuan Desert and should be protected.
Black Virgin Islands Male High School Dropouts: A Qualitative Study

The dropout phenomenon involving Black Virgin Islands male high school students residing in the United States Virgin Islands has become a major area of concern for parents, educators, policy makers, and other community stakeholders. However, little is known about the direct or indirect factors that lead many Black Virgin Islands male students to drop out of high school. For the actual study, the researcher used a qualitative phenomenological approach to examine the experiences of seven Black Virgin Islands males who dropped out of high school. The study results revealed seven important themes (a) grade retention, (b) disengagement with school officials, (c) adequate intake, (d) stress, (e) socioeconomics, (f) parental disengagement, and (g) low effort. These findings have important implications for parents and school officials, with respect to designing and implementing effective intervention strategies that will aid in Black Virgin Islands male students remaining in and graduating from high school.
Emulating natural fire effects using harvesting in an eastern boreal forest landscape of northeast China

Questions: Efforts to emulate natural fire effects through harvesting have met with limited success due to insufficient consideration of variable fire severities and spatial heterogeneity of fire regimes (e.g. mean return interval and fire size) in boreal ecosystems. What is the relative importance of fire severity and spatial heterogeneity on tree species composition, age structure and spatial pattern? Location: An eastern boreal forest landscape of northeast China, consisting of larch and birch forests. Methods: We constructed a factorial design of forest management alternatives and conducted simulation experiments using a landscape disturbance and succession model, LANDIS. We used a management area delineation method to simulate spatial heterogeneity of fire regime and a silvicultural regeneration method to simulate variable fire severity. Results: Management area delineation had a greater influence on tree species composition, age structure and spatial pattern of the boreal forests than the silvicultural regeneration method. The silvicultural regeneration method had more influence on the age structure of larch than birch, due to the variable severity of fire on larch. Conclusions: Spatial heterogeneity of fire regime has a more important influence on ecosystem characteristics than fire severity in this eastern boreal landscape. Efforts to emulate natural fire effects through harvesting should first account for the effects of spatial heterogeneity of the fire regime. It is necessary to delineate the landscape into fire management units and incorporate variable fire severities in harvest prescriptions for each unit.
Evaluation of the Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire in Sub-Acute and Chronic Low Back Pain Patients: Data Quality, Reliability and Validity

Background Illness perceptions have received increasing attention in the treatment of a range of illnesses and medical conditions, however, the instruments available have not been evaluated on sub-acute and chronic low back pain patients. This study aims to evaluate the Brief IPQ in the prevailing patient group. Methods The Brief IPQ was administered to 90 patients attending care in Norway and evaluated for data quality, reliability and validity. The questionnaire was re-administered to 61 patients within a week for re-test purposes. The evaluation followed COSMIN recommendations for measurement properties. Results Item missing data ranged from 0% to 6.7%. Item-total correlation ranged from 0.12 to 0.67. Cronbach’s alpha was 0.72 for the Brief IPQ scale. Test-retest intra class correlation (ICC) values were 0.86 for the scale and ranged from 0.64 to 0.88 for the individual items. The standard error of measurement (SEM) for the Brief IPQ scale (0- 10) was 0.63 and the minimal detectable change (MDC) was 1.75. The MDC for single items (0-10) ranged from 3.16 to 4.40. Brief IPQ scale scores were approximately normally distributed and had small to moderate correlations with the reference scales supporting the hypotheses, however, the hypothesis were only partly supported on single item level. Conclusions The Brief IPQ can be applied as a concise instrument for assessing illness perceptions of patients with sub-acute and chronic low back pain. The Brief IPQ scale has evidence for reliability and validity however the evidence was less satisfactory at the item level.
Context-specific marker-assisted selection for improved grain yield in elite soybean populations.

Despite the importance of grain yield potential to plant breeders and society in general, it has been diffi cult to identify grain yield quantitative trait loci (QTL) effective for marker-assisted selection (MAS) across a wide range of genetic and/ or environmental contexts. However, as genotyping becomes more cost effective, it might be feasible to use preliminary yield trials to model a target genotype within each context and immediately select the progeny that approach that target genotype in real time. In the present study, elite soybean cultivars with residual heterogeneity were leveraged as populations (the genetic context) to detect yield QTL within a limited set of environments (the environmental context), to model a target genotype, and to select subline haplotypes that comprised the target genotype. The yield potential of the selected subline haplotypes were then compared to their respective mother lines in highly replicated yield trials across multiple environments and years. Statistically signifi cant yield gains of up to 5.8% were confi rmed in some of the selected sublines, and two of the improved sublines were released as improved cultivars. This context-specifi c MAS (CSM) approach might also be applicable to the more typical biparental and backcross populations commonly used in plant breeding programs. Factors that can affect the effi ciency and applicability of CSM are discussed.
Efficacy of Chitosan as Vaccine Adjuvant Against Paracoccidioidomycosis in Mice

Paracoccidioidomycosis (PCM) is a systemic disease caused by thermodimorphic fungi of Paracoccidioides genus that is endemic in several Latin American countries. The treatment for this disease can be performed with different drugs. In general, it is a long duration treatment that aims the control of the clinical manifestations. Even after treatment, the patient usually shows relapse and incapacitating sequelae, such as fibrosis and pulmonary emphysema. So, drug therapy against PCM is considered inefficient. As an alternative to the therapeutic treatment, studies for the formulation of vaccines against P. brasiliensis have been performed, among them, recombinant Pb27 (rPb27) has demonstrated potential as an inducer of protective immune response against P. brasiliensis and in the reduction of disabling sequelae as a prophylactic vaccine. In this work, adjuvants that can be used in human vaccines were evaluated to modulate the immune response in an efficient manner and to produce lower adverse effects related to the post-vaccination inflammatory responses. The adjuvants chosen for this study were chitosan and CPG. Both adjuvants were associated with rPb27 in the prophylactic protocol and compared with the adjuvant used by our research group in previous studies, aluminum hydroxide associated with Corynebacterium parvum. We tested in vitro and prophylactic protocol. Chitosan adjuvant associated with rPb27 showed better results in vitro with high fungicidal capacity and IL-1β cytokine production. In addition, induced lower levels of IL-10 and IL-6. Moreover in the prophylactic assay, animals immunized with this adjuvant obtained high protective effect and satisfactory survival levels 60 days post infection.
Spatiotemporal Analysis of the Effect of Ozone and Fine Particulate on CVD Emergency Room Visits in Harris County, Texas

Researchers have reported statistically significant associations between air pollutants and cardiovascular disease (CVD). However, few studies have investigated the acute cardiovascular effects of joint exposure to Ozone (O3) and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in a location so distinctive like Harris County. The objective of this study was to investigate the association between the joint exposure to O3 and PM2.5, and emergency room diagnosis of CVD, in Harris County, Texas. Data used include all emergency room (ER) visits, and O3 and PM2.5 levels in the same years. Logistic regression modeled the effect of temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, wind, ozone, and fine particulate matter, averaged by day. Three models were estimated for all visits, visits during the months of April and September of 2005 and 2009, and for visits for patients from zip codes that are close to monitoring stations. A 1 μg/m3 increase in PM2.5 was associated with a 0.4% increase in the odds of cardiovascular disease emergency room diagnoses on the same day (p-value < 0.001), and a 0.2% increase in the odds of cardiovascular disease emergency room diagnoses on the following day (p-value < 0.001). This study demonstrated that there are statistically significant associations between ER visits for CVD diagnosis in Harris County, with joint exposure to O3 and PM2.5 of the same day and previous day. The increase of CVD cases as well as association between humidity and the numbers of CVD cases, males and blacks has higher odds.
INSTABILITY AND TRANSITION MECHANISMS IN LAMINAR SEPARATION BUBBLES

The present paper is intended to give an introduction and an overview on instability and transition mechanisms found in generic pressure-induced laminar separation bubbles. These bubbles have been generated by imposing an external positive stream-wise pressure gradient on a laminar boundary layer ow along a smooth at plate. Using velocity pro les extracted at various streamwise stations for a local stability analysis based on the Orr{Sommerfeld equation it is shown that linear primary instability is a valid tool to describe the initial disturbance development. Then, linear stability theory is used to clarify the competition between the so-called \Tollmien{Schlichting instability" of the boundary layer and the so-called \Kelvin{Helmholtz instability" of a mixing layer, followed by a further re nement of the border between `convective' and `absolute' instability. Non-linear scenarios are investigated by DNS. They show a dramatic in uence of small upstream disturbances on the mean ow of the laminar separation bubble. Next, transition scenarios are investigated, analysed and compared to each other. It turns out that secondary instability doesn't play the same remarkable role as in an attached boundary layer. In fact, large-amplitude 2-D uctuations can control the re-attachment process to a large extent. The fastest transition to turbulence is found to occur when moderately oblique waves interact with each other. This mechanism directly yields to small-scale turbulence, as well as longitudinal vortices in the re-attachment zone. For large enough laminar separation bubbles a new instability mechanism has been identi ed which ampli es small-amplitude 3-D disturbances in the re-attachment zone. Finally, the author's view on receptivity, apping and the bubble bursting process is presented. Hence, the present investigations concentrate on di erent instability mechanisms and their possible contributions to laminar-turbulent transition in laminar separation bubbles based on research performed by the author.
Signatures of Fermi Surface Reconstruction in Raman Spectra of Underdoped Cuprates

We have calculated the Raman ${\text{B}}_{1g}$ and ${\text{B}}_{2g}$ spectra as a function of temperature, as well as doping, for the underdoped cuprates, using a model based on the resonating valence-bond spin liquid. We discuss changes in intensity and peak position brought about by the presence of a pseudogap and the implied Fermi surface reconstruction, which are elements of this model. Signatures of Fermi surface reconstruction are evident as a sharp rise in the doping dependence of the antinodal to nodal peak ratio which occurs below the quantum critical point. The temperature dependence of the ${\text{B}}_{1g}$ polarization can be used to determine if the superconducting gap is limited to the Fermi pocket, as seen in angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, or extends beyond. We find that the slope of the linear low-energy ${\text{B}}_{2g}$ spectrum maintains its usual $d$-wave form, but with an effective gap which reflects the gap amplitude projected on the Fermi pocket. Our calculations capture the main qualitative features revealed in the extensive data set available on the ${\text{HgBa}}_{2}{\text{CuO}}_{4+\ensuremath{\delta}}$ (Hg-1201) cuprate.
An Easily Extensible HMM Word Aligner

Abstract In this paper, we present a new word aligner with built-in support for alignment types, as well as comparisons between various models and existing aligner systems. It is an open source software that can be easily extended to use models of users’ own design. We expect it to suffice the academics as well as scientists working in the industry to do word alignment, as well as experimenting on their own new models. Here in the present paper, the basic designs and structures will be introduced. Examples and demos of the system are also provided.
Music Information Retrieval in P 2 P networksi

In this chapter we present the most significant trends in recent research in the field of content-based music information retrieval in peer-to-peer networks. Despite the diminished attention the area has received in general terms, the relatively close area of metadata MIR in P2P is by far new. As metadata prove to be inefficient for the purposes of MIR as well as the peculiarities of music in comparison to text and image data, developing dedicated solutions for CBMIR in P2P networks becomes a necessity while the challenges faced therein, unique. Depending on the type of P2P network, a number of prominent research works are presented and compared in this chapter.
Intellectual Property Rights and Innovation in SMEs in OECD Countries

The increasing importance of intangible assets as a source of competitive advantage for firms, has made the intellectual property (IP) system increasingly attractive and, in many cases, indispensable for all economic agents. As small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) account for approximately 95% of the business population and play a significant role in the national economy in terms of their sizeable contribution to GDP, employment generation, export performance, and achieving sustainable national economic development, most governments have placed increasing emphasis on facilitating the creation and development of the national SMEs sector. Nevertheless, empirical evidence suggests that SMEs face significant barriers in making effective use of the IP system and this may have an impact on their ability to exploit their innovative and creative capabilities. This paper explores some of these barriers and analyses some of the policies enacted, primarily in OECD countries, to try and over come them. The paper also suggests that it is crucial that initiatives seeking to make a real impact in increasing awareness and encouraging a more effective use of the IP system by entrepreneurs and SMEs manage to incorporate IP within the broader development framework of support for SMEs.
Protective Ability of Vitamin E Against Acetylsalicylic Acid-Induced Glutathione Depletion, Acetylcholinesterase and (Na+,K+)-ATPase Activities, and Erythrocyte Osmotic Fragility

Citation: Ahmad I, Swaroop A, Bagchi D (2018) Protective Ability of Vitamin E Against Acetylsalicylic Acid-Induced Glutathione Depletion, Acetylcholinesterase and (Na+,K+)-ATPase Activities, and Erythrocyte Osmotic Fragility. J Nutr Health Sci 5(3): 308 Volume 5 | Issue 3 Journal of Nutrition and Health Sciences
The use of medical cannabis in common medical conditions excluding cancer

Pearl Zaki, BSc(C), Vithusha Ganesh, BSc(C), Shannon O’Hearn, MSc, Amiti Wolt, BA, Stephanie Chan, BSc(C), Liying Zhang, PhD, Henry Lam, MLS, Bo Angela Wan, MPhil, Marissa Slaven, MD, Erynn Shaw, MD, Carlo DeAngelis, PharmD, Leila Malek, BSc(Hons), Edward Chow, MBBS, and Alexia Blake, MSc Odette Cancer Centre, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada MedReleaf, Markham, Ontario, Canada Juravinski Cancer Centre, Hamilton Health Sciences, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Variability of preferred environmental conditions for Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) larvae in the Gulf of Mexico during 1993–2011

The Gulf of Mexico (GOM) is the primary spawning ground for western Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus). In this work, information reported by previous studies about the preferred environmental conditions for the occurrence of bluefin tuna larvae in the GOM is integrated into a dimensionless index, the BFT_Index. This index is used to evaluate the spatial and temporal variability of areas with favorable environmental conditions for larvae within the GOM during 1993–2011. The main findings of this work are that: (i) the proposed index successfully captures the spatial and temporal variability in the in situ occurrence of bluefin tuna larvae; (ii) areas with favorable environmental conditions for larvae in the GOM exhibit year-to-year spatial and temporal variability linked with mesoscale ocean features and sea surface temperature; and (iii) comparison of the BFT_Index-derived variability with recruitment of age-0 fish estimated from recent stock assessment indicates that changes in environmental conditions may drive a relevant component (~58%) of the recruitment variability. The comparison with the recruitment dataset further revealed the existence of key regions linked with recruitment in the central/northern GOM, and that the Loop Current may function as a trap for larvae, possibly leading to low survival rates. Above (below) average conditions for occurrence of larvae in the GOM during spring were observed in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2006–2008, and 2011 (1994, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2003 and 2010). Results reported here have potential applications to assessment of bluefin tuna.
The North Atlantic Ocean Is in a State of Reduced Overturning

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is responsible for a variable and climatically important northward transport of heat. Using data from an array of instruments that span the Atlantic at 26°N, we show that the AMOC has been in a state of reduced overturning since 2008 as compared to 2004–2008. This change of AMOC state is concurrent with other changes in the North Atlantic such as a northward shift and broadening of the Gulf Stream and altered patterns of heat content and sea surface temperature. These changes resemble the response to a declining AMOC predicted by coupled climate models. Concurrent changes in air‐sea fluxes close to the western boundary reveal that the changes in ocean heat transport and sea surface temperature have altered the pattern of ocean‐atmosphere heat exchange over the North Atlantic. These results provide strong observational evidence that the AMOC is a major factor in decadal‐scale variability of North Atlantic climate.
Quantifying the effects of freeze-thaw transitions and snowpack melt on land surface albedo and energy exchange over Alaska and Western Canada

Variations in land surface albedo and snow-cover strongly impact the global biosphere, particularly through the snow-albedo feedback on climate. The seasonal freeze-thaw (FT) transition is coupled with snowpack melt dynamics and strongly impacts surface water mobility and the energy budget in the northern (≥45°N) arctic and boreal region (ABR). However, understanding of the regional variation in snowmelt and its effect on the surface energy budget are limited due to sparse in situ measurements of these processes and environmental constraints on effective monitoring within the ABR. In this study, we combined synergistic observations from overlapping satellite optical-infrared and microwave sensor records to quantify the regional patterns and seasonal progression in wet snow conditions during the spring snowmelt and autumn snow accumulation periods across Alaska and western Canada. The integrated satellite record included daily landscape FT status from AMSR microwave brightness temperature retrievals; and snow-cover extent, black sky albedo and net shortwave solar radiation (Rsnet) derived from MODIS and AVHRR observations. The integrated satellite records were analyzed with in situ surface air temperature and humidity observations from regional weather stations over a two-year study period (2015–2016) overlapping with the NASA ABoVE (Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment). Our results show a large (79%) mean decline in land surface albedo between dry snow and snow-free conditions during the spring (March–June) and autumn (August–November) transition periods. Onset of diurnal thawing and refreezing of the surface snow layer and associated wet snow conditions in spring contributed to an approximate 25% decrease in snow cover albedo that extended over a seven to 21 week snowpack depletion period. The lower wet snow albedo enhances Rsnet by approximately 74% (9–10 MJ m−2 d−1) relative to dry snow conditions, reinforcing snowmelt and surface warming, and contributing to growing season onset and activation of biological and hydrological processes in the ABR. These results contribute to better understanding of snow albedo feedbacks to Arctic amplification, and the representation of these processes in global Earth system models.