Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Population abundance and seasonal migration patterns indicated by commercial catch-per-unit-effort of hakes (Merluccius capensis and M. paradoxus) in the northern Benguela Current Large Marine Ecosystem

We developed generalised additive models (GAMs) to estimate standardised time-series of population abundance indices for assessment purposes and to infer ecological and behavioural information on northern Benguela hakes, Merluccius capensis and M. paradoxus, using haul-by-haul commercial trawl catch-rate data as proxies for hake densities. The modelling indicated that individual ship identifiers should be used rather than general vessel characteristics, such as vessel size. The final models explained 79% and 68% of the variability in the commercial catch rates of M. capensis and M. paradoxus, respectively. The spatial density patterns were consistent and confirmed existing knowledge about these species in the northern Benguela system. Furthermore, seasonal migration patterns were described for the first time and were found to correspond to the known spawning areas and seasons for M. capensis and M. paradoxus. Spatial density patterns were validated using the geostatistical modelling results of fisheries-independent trawl survey data. Improved understanding of the relationships between fleet dynamics and fish movement can be achieved by taking into consideration the present catch-rate model and spatial and seasonal distribution maps. We conclude that the yearly standardised CPUE time-series are problematic as proxies for total stock abundance because of spatial coverage issues. Consequently, such CPUE data should not be used for stock-size assessments and fisheries advice concerning northern Benguela hakes until this is solved. We generally recommend the exclusion of standardised CPUE time-series from stock assessments when important and changing parts of the stock distribution cannot be targeted by the fishery, such as due to closed areas or seasons.
Effect of climate change on population dynamics of bark beetles: relationships between temperature and development rate of Ips sexdentatus (Boern.)

Global warming may trigger higher risk of biotic damage in forests because pest insects can quickly respond to increasing temperature through improved reproductive success. The present study aimed at studying the effect of warmer conditions on the population dynamics of Ips sexdentatus, the stenographer bark beetle. We performed breeding trials at six temperature regimes to determine the thermal requirements for complete development and we developed a model of degree-days to estimate the voltinism of the insect. We also tested the effects of temperature and breeding substrate on the number of offspring and their individual fitness. The minimum temperature threshold for I. sexdentatus development was estimated at 11±1°C, and the sum of degree-days at 517±52 DD. Adult developmental time required from 35 days at 25.5°C to 121 days at 15°C. On average, I. sexdentatus had two complete generations per year in Southern France over the past 17 years. The number of offspring per female exponentially increased with increasing temperature and volume of phloem whereas these variables had no influence on the sex ratio and individual beetle's fitness. This suggests that increasing temperatures would result in more generations per year and more offspring per generation and in consequence higher risk of bark beetle outbreaks.
Genotypic and Organ Variation in Ginsenoside Contents from American Ginseng Populations

Variation in ginsenoside content was investigated as a function of population/genotype, plant organ, and age using four geographically isolated wild populations and one landrace population of american ginseng (Panax quinquefolius L.). The contents of individual and total ginsenosides were affected by the main and two-way interactions between population, organ, and age. Ginsenoside Re was not detected in roots of the wild population plants but was found in leaves and in both organs of the landrace population. A positive relationship between root age and total root ginsenosides was detected in two wild populations. Individual root ginsenosides were highly correlated with certain leaf ginsenosides in wild populations rather than in landrace populations. Therefore, the results suggest that certain leaf ginsenosides would be applied for potential biomarkers to estimate individual root ginsenosides. Principal component analysis (PCA) scores plot indicates that all wild populations were segregated from the single landrace population. However, cluster analysis indicates that differences existed between organs, and between the wild and landrace populations. Overall, the result suggests that the variation of individual and total ginsenoside contents would be influenced by a combination of population, plant organ, and root age.
Including beyond-linear halo bias in halo models

We derive a simple prescription for including beyond-linear halo bias within the standard, analytical halo-model power spectrum calculation. This results in a corrective term that is added to the usual two-halo term. We measure this correction using data from N-body simulations and demonstrate that it can boost power in the two-halo term by a factor of ∼2 at scales $k\sim 0.7\, h\mathrm{Mpc}^{-1}$, with the exact magnitude of the boost determined by the specific pair of fields in the two-point function. How this translates to the full power spectrum depends on the relative strength of the one-halo term, which can mask the importance of this correction to a greater or lesser degree, again depending on the fields. Generally, we find that our correction is more important for signals that arise from lower mass haloes. When comparing our calculation to simulated data, we find that the underprediction of power in the transition region between the two- and one-halo terms, which typically plagues halo-model calculations, is almost completely eliminated when including the full non-linear halo bias. We show improved results for the autospectra and cross-spectra of galaxies, haloes, and matter. In the specific case of matter–matter or matter–halo power, we note that a large fraction of the improvement comes from the non-linear biasing between low- and high-mass haloes. We envisage our model being useful in the analytical modelling of cross-correlation signals. Our non-linear bias halo-model code is available at https://github.com/alexander-mead/BNL.
Polymorphism of a Mutation of DGAT1 Gene in Lori Sheep Breed

The objective of this study was to analyze exon 16 17 of DGAT1 gene polymorphism in Lori sheep breed. This Gene which is a key acyltransferase in triglyceride biosynthesis, has been located to chromosome 9 of sheep. A total of 118 blood samples have been collected from Lori sheep breed and genotypes were determined by PCR-RFLP assay. The amplified product was observed as 309 bp and the restriction digestion with AluI revealed three genotypes, TT (272 and 37 bp), TC (309, 272 and 37 bp) and CC (309 bp). The results showed that allele frequencies of the DGAT1 gene were 0.562 and 0.438 for C and T allele, respectively. Average heterozygosity for this locus was suitable (0.49). The genotype of SNP in population was not in consent with Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (p<0.01). The results indicated that this indigenous sheep breed is proper polymorphism and could be used to guide association studies between this polymorphism and Carcass traits.
Planar Cell Polarity and Neurodevelopment

PLANAR CELL POLARITY IN NEURODEVELOPMENT By Simon D Sun, B.S. ! A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Science at Virginia Commonwealth University. Virginia Commonwealth University, 2014 Major Director: Dr. Gregory S. Walsh, Department of Biology ! Planar cell polarity (PCP) is a developmental signaling mechanism that establishes a polarity within the plane of an epithelium. PCP has been shown to play a role in guiding numerous neurodevelopmental processes such as convergent extension, neuron migration, and axon pathfinding. Certain commissural neurons in the dorsal spinal cord make a series of guidance decisions en route to the brain: first, a ventral projection along the D-V axis, followed by a midline crossing, and after exiting the floorplate, a dorso-anterior turn along the A-P axis. Here, we provide in vivo evidence that the axons of the Commissural Primary Ascending (CoPAs) neurons in zebrafish require the PCP genes fzd3a, vangl2, and scribble for rostral pathfinding both before and after crossing the midline. Dorsoventral guidance of CoPA axons is unaltered in fzd3a, vangl2, and scribble mutants, suggesting that the PCP signaling pathway only
Unmet Needs for Care and Support for the Elderly in Nigeria: Gaps in Experiences and Expectations of the Aged in Ilesa, South-West Nigeria

The study is focused on understanding the broad issues of care and support of the elderly with a view to explaining factors influencing the gaps in their expectations and experiences. This is an empirical attempt with a view to understanding and underscoring the importance and limitation of the domains of support from core family members (spouses and children) within the available support networks for the elderly. The study utilized primary dataset including quantitative and qualitative data collected in Ijesa communities in South-west, Nigeria. The findings showed that children and spouses ranked highest among sources of support networks rated by the elderly for five patterns of support identified. Logistic regression results showed that individual variables including age, education, family of orientation, and living in same town with children to a large extent determine level of unmet need for support. The study concluded that personal attributes rather than other social variables are important determinants of high level of unmet need for elderly.
Investigation of caring capacity of ICU nurses

Objective The aim of the study is to investigate the ability of caring status and influence factors for ICU nurses and to provide humane care strategy to nursing managers. Methods Totals of 99 nurses met the inclusion criteria in ICU of four hospitals in Jilin, were surveyed with the Chinese Version Caring Ability Inventory scale questionnaire. Results The overall caring capacity of ICU nurses was low, with a total score of (181.83±21.48), within which the dimensions of cognitive, courage, patience were (70.38±10.17), (55.71±10.50) and (56.05±7.74), respectively. For different working years of ICU nurses, the difference was not statistically significant (t=1.591, P>0.05); For different form of employment and whether the ICU nurses was single-child, the differences were statistically significant (t=2.512, 2.475, respectively; P 0.05). Conclusions ICU nurses’ caring capacity is low in general, and caring for patients is insufficient. We recommend the interdisciplinary humanities knowledge training, especially for the lower educated nurses. Nursing administrators can provide more education and promotion opportunities, increase the proportion of permanent staff, and optimize scheduling model to enhance the caring capacity. Key words: Intensive care unit (ICU); Nurses; Caring capacity
ANNULOHYPOXYLON (HYPOXYLACEAE) SPECIES FROM ARGENTINA

Sir, E. B. ; E. Kuhnert; A. I. Hladki & A. I. Romero. 2018. Annulohypoxylon (Hypoxylaceae) species from Argentina. Darwiniana, nueva serie 6(1): 68-83. ANNULOHYPOXYLON (HYPOXYLACEAE) SPECIES FROM ARGENTINA 1 Fundación Miguel Lillo, CONICET, Laboratorio Criptogámico, Miguel Lillo 251, 4000 San Miguel de Tucumán, Tucumán, Argentina; sirestebanbenjamin@gmail.com (author for correspondence). 2 Institute for Organic Chemistry, BMWZ, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Schneiderberg 38, 30167 Hannover, Germany. 3 Fundación Miguel Lillo, Laboratorio Criptogámico, Tucumán, Argentina. 4 Departamento de Biodiversidad y Biología Experimental, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Ciudad Universitaria, Pabellón II Piso 4, 1428 Ciudad Universitaria, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina. 5 Instituto de Micología y Botánica (INMIBO), CONICET-Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Esteban B. Sir1, Eric Kuhnert2, Adriana I. HladkiI3 & Andrea I. Romero4,5 Eleven Annulohypoxylon species are recognized for Argentina. Annulohypoxylon purpureonitens and A. purpureopigmentum are recorded for the first time in the Southern Cone, while A. stygium and A. nitens represent new reports for Northwestern Argentina. Furthermore, the asexual states of A. purpureopigmentum and A. subeffusum are described for the first time. In addition, a comparative table, a key to the Argentinean species, photographs, and a distributional map of these species in South America are provided.
Moving Online: Changing the Focus of a Writing Center

This paper charts the development of a small departmental writing center at a university in Japan. The paper discusses the results from two semesters of an ongoing action research project focused on improving the usage of the center. Faced with significant constraints and decreasing usage, the project used student survey data collected at the end of each semester to drive developments to the center. This led to a shift from using a face-to-face peer model for the writing center, to organizing it as an online writing lab. The article demonstrates the potential benefits of moving online for centers facing significant constraints, and the importance of using data for decision making in driving center development.
Criteria for age assessment of blesbok

Three criteria to determine the age of blesbok, Damaliscus dorcas phillipsi namely, cementum growth layers in the first lower molar, tooth eruption and replacement, and horn annulation, were investigated. Four methods for age assessment by cementum growth layers, were compared. Ground sections were prepared and subsequently (i) stained with Alizarin Red S; (ii) etched with formic acid; or (iii) treated with silver nitrate. Histological sections were stained with 0,01% crystal violet. Only the latter produced accurate results which can be used for age determination. Tooth eruption and replacement sequences were determined for six and 18-month-old blesbok to augment published data. The rate of appearance of horn annulation was found to vary too much to allow its use as a criterion for age assessment. Drie kriteria is ondersoek om die ouderdom van blesbokke Damaliscus dorcas phillipsi te bepaal, naamlik, sementlae in die eerste maaltand van die onderkaak, tand-erupsie en -vervanging en horingjaarringe. Vier metodes is vergelyk om ouderdom vanaf sementlae te bepaal. Tandslypsels is voorberei en vervolgens met (i) Alizarin Red S behandel; (ii) mieresuur geets; of (iii) silwernitraat behandel. Histologiese snitte is met 0,01% kristalviolet behandel. Slags laasgenoemde metode het resultate gelewer wat akkuraat genoeg was vir ouderdomsbepaling. Die volgorde van tanderupsie en -vervanging, is vir blesbokke van ses en 18 maande vasgestel om gepubliseerde data aan te vul. Daar is gevind dat die tempo van horing-jaarringvorming te veel varieer om dit as 'n kriterion vir ouderdomsbepalingte gebruik.
Subgeometric hypocoercivity for piecewise-deterministic Markov process Monte Carlo methods

We extend the hypocoercivity framework for piecewise-deterministic Markov process (PDMP) Monte Carlo established in [Andrieu et. al. (2018)] to heavy-tailed target distributions, which exhibit subgeometric rates of convergence to equilibrium. We make use of weak Poincare inequalities, as developed in the work of [Grothaus and Wang (2019)], the ideas of which we adapt to the PDMPs of interest. On the way we report largely potential-independent approaches to bounding explicitly solutions of the Poisson equation of the Langevin diffusion and its first and second derivatives, required here to control various terms arising in the application of the hypocoercivity result.
A study of DC electrical breakdown in liquid helium through analysis of the empirical breakdown field distributions

We report results from a study on electrical breakdown in liquid helium using near-uniform-field stainless steel electrodes with a stressed area of $\sim$0.725 cm$^2$. The distribution of the breakdown field is obtained for temperatures between 1.7 K and 4.0 K, pressures between the saturated vapor pressure and 626 Torr, and with electrodes of different surface polishes. A data-based approach for determining the electrode-surface-area scaling of the breakdown field is presented. The dependence of the breakdown probability on the field strength as extracted from the breakdown field distribution data is used to show that breakdown is a surface phenomenon closely correlated with Fowler-Nordheim field emission from asperities on the cathode. We show that the results from this analysis provides an explanation for the supposed electrode gap-size effect and also allows for a determination of the breakdown-field distribution for arbitrary shaped electrodes. Most importantly, the analysis method presented in this work can be extended to other noble liquids to explore the dependencies for electrical breakdown in those media.
Reduction and reconstruction of SDEs via Girsanov and quasi Doob symmetries

A reduction procedure for stochastic differential equations based on stochastic symmetries including Girsanov random transformations is proposed. In this setting, a new notion of reconstruction is given, involving the expectation values of functionals of solution to the SDE and a reconstruction theorem for general stochastic symmetries is proved. Moreover, the notable case of reduction under the closed subclass of quasi Doob transformations is presented. The theoretical results are applied to stochastic models relevant in the applications.
FixBi: Bridging Domain Spaces for Unsupervised Domain Adaptation

Unsupervised domain adaptation (UDA) methods for learning domain invariant representations have achieved remarkable progress. However, most of the studies were based on direct adaptation from the source domain to the target domain and have suffered from large domain discrepancies. In this paper, we propose a UDA method that effectively handles such large domain discrepancies. We introduce a fixed ratio-based mixup to augment multiple intermediate domains between the source and target domain. From the augmented-domains, we train the source-dominant model and the target-dominant model that have complementary characteristics. Using our confidence-based learning methodologies, e.g., bidirectional matching with high-confidence predictions and self-penalization using low-confidence predictions, the models can learn from each other or from its own results. Through our proposed methods, the models gradually transfer domain knowledge from the source to the target domain. Extensive experiments demonstrate the superiority of our proposed method on three public benchmarks: Office-31, Office-Home, and VisDA-2017. 1
Turbulence and heat transfer on a rotating, heated half soap bubble

Abstract We use direct numerical simulations to study the two-dimensional flow of a rotating, half soap bubble that is heated at its equator. The heating produces buoyancy and rotation generates Coriolis forces in the fluid. However, owing to the curved surface of the bubble, the buoyancy and Coriolis forces vary with latitude on the bubble, giving rise to rich flow behaviour. We first explore the single-point properties of the flow, including the Reynolds and Nusselt numbers, mean fields and Reynolds stresses, all as a function of latitude. For a given Rayleigh number, we observe a non-monotonic dependence on the Rossby number $Ro$, and large-scale mean circulations that are strongly influenced by rotation. We then consider quantities that reveal the multiscale nature of the flow, including spectra and spectral fluxes of kinetic and thermal energy, enstrophy and structure functions of velocity and temperature. The fluxes show that just as for non-buoyant two-dimensional turbulence on a flat surface, there is an upscale flux of kinetic energy at larger scales (fed by buoyancy injection of turbulent kinetic energy at smaller scales), and a downscale flux of enstrophy at smaller scales. The kinetic energy spectrum and velocity structure functions are well described by Bolgiano–Obukhov (BO) scaling at scales where the effects of rotation are weak. The temperature structure functions do not, however, satisfy BO scaling in general, owing to strong intermittency in the temperature field.
Compressibility of complex networks

Many complex networks depend upon biological entities for their preservation. Such entities, from human cognition to evolution, must first encode and then replicate those networks under marked resource constraints. Networks that survive are those that are amenable to constrained encoding, or, in other words, are compressible. But how compressible is a network? And what features make one network more compressible than another? Here we answer these questions by modeling networks as information sources before compressing them using rate-distortion theory. Each network yields a unique rate-distortion curve, which specifies the minimal amount of information that remains at a given scale of description. A natural definition then emerges for the compressibility of a network: the amount of information that can be removed via compression, averaged across all scales. Analyzing an array of real and model networks, we demonstrate that compressibility increases with two common network properties: transitivity (or clustering) and degree heterogeneity. These results indicate that hierarchical organization -- which is characterized by modular structure and heavy-tailed degrees -- facilitates compression in complex networks. Generally, our framework sheds light on the interplay between a network's structure and its capacity to be compressed, enabling investigations into the role of compression in shaping real-world networks.
α-Adrenergic Control of Volume-Regulated Cl− Currents in Rabbit Atrial Myocytes

Abstract α-Adrenergic stimulation is known to play a role in cardiac arrhythmogenesis and to modulate a variety of cardiac K+ currents. The effects of α-adrenergic stimulation on Cl− currents are largely unknown. Many cardiac cell types show a volume-sensitive Cl− current induced by cell swelling (ICl.swell). The present experiments were designed to assess the potential α-adrenergic modulation of ICl.swell in rabbit atrial myocytes. ICl.swell was induced with the use of a hypotonic superfusate, under conditions designed to prevent currents carried by K+, Na+, and Ca2+ ions. A basal Cl− current (ICl.b) was observed under isotonic conditions in 128 of 150 cells (85%), had the same dependency on [Cl−]o as ICl.swell, and was reduced by cell shrinkage induced by hypertonic superfusion, suggesting that ICl.b is carried by the same volume-sensitive Cl− conductance as ICl.swell. Phenylephrine produced a concentration-dependent and near-complete inhibition of ICl.b and ICl.swell, with EC50 values of 86±5 and 72±7 .