Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The effect of fertilizer amendment on diesel biodegradation in contaminated soils

Diesel biodegradation and the effect of application frequency were investigated in artificially contaminated soils (loam soil and sea sand) amended with commercial fertilizers and the effect of application frequency. Two sets of four equal portions (2 kg each) of diesel-contaminated soils were amended with 10% (w/w) of 2 different commercial fertilizers at 4 different but regular intervals for up to four times during a 7-week study period. The microcosms were then incubated at 30°C and sampled weekly. One sterilized soil microcosm contaminated with 10% (v/w) diesel and supplemented with 10% (w/w) fertilizer and one naturally attenuated microcosm served as controls. The amount of diesel remaining in each sample was determined using the Soxhlet extraction method and compared to the amount of diesel present in the same sample at day 0. The quantities of hydrocarbon contents in the supplemented samples and the controls were determined by GC-MS. The total heterotrophic population of each sample was also monitored. The population increase was found to correspond to the higher diesel degradation percentage in the study on sea sand. A significant enhancement (p<0.05) of diesel degradation was observed after the supplementation of fertilizers especially in sea sand compared with those in both controls. There were no significant differences in diesel degradation with the fertilizer application frequency. In conclusion, supplementation of diesel contaminated soils with commercial fertilizer results in a significant increase on diesel biodegradation. Additional supplementation did not further stimulate the degradation under the same conditions. Key words: Diesel, bioremediation, fertilizers, application frequency.
Series2Graph

Subsequence anomaly detection in long sequences is an important problem with applications in a wide range of domains. However, the approaches that have been proposed so far in the literature have severe limitations: they either require prior domain knowledge that is used to design the anomaly discovery algorithms, or become cumbersome and expensive to use in situations with recurrent anomalies of the same type. In this work, we address these problems, and propose an unsupervised method suitable for domain agnostic subsequence anomaly detection. Our method, Series2Graph, is based on a graph representation of a novel low-dimensionality embedding of subsequences. Series2Graph needs neither labeled instances (like supervised techniques), nor anomaly-free data (like zero-positive learning techniques), and identifies anomalies of varying lengths. The experimental results, on the largest set of synthetic and real datasets used to date, demonstrate that the proposed approach correctly identifies single and recurrent anomalies without any prior knowledge of their characteristics, outperforming by a large margin several competing approaches in accuracy, while being up to orders of magnitude faster.
Insights into the phenology of migration and survival of a long migrant land bird

Lay summary For polygamous long-migrant birds, the choice of migration strategy depends on social pressure and experience and influences the chance of survival. If you are a male, you’d better leave early in the spring to secure the best site to show off. In fall, juveniles have a hard time surviving to migration as they leave before the adults and lack experience on where to go and where to stop to rest. Abstract The process of migration stems from an adaptation of climatic seasonality and animals have developed various strategies to complete the journey between a wintering and breeding ground. Understanding the migratory behavior and determining when and where mortality occurs during the annual cycle is fundamental to understand population dynamics and implement appropriate conservation measures. Based on a big data set and advanced statistical methods, we inspected the phenology of migration of a polygynous land bird, the Macqueen’s bustard, Chlamydotis macqueenii. We explored its migration strategies between sex, age, season and geographical origin. We show that departure for migration depended on age in the fall with juveniles being the first to leave and on age and sex in the spring with juveniles departing later and males induced to arrive early in spring to secure high-quality territories. Birds breeding at higher latitudes were the first to leave in the fall and more likely to perform longer stopovers. Bustards exhibited different strategies for spring and fall migrations: spring migration was significantly longer than fall migration with more but shorter stopovers. Survival was lower for juveniles experiencing their first migration and for all birds during fall migration and on their wintering ground. Experience linked to social hierarchical pressures and environmental conditions might be the key drivers of migration strategies and survival in long-distance polygynous migrants.
A New Approach for Understanding Urban Microclimate by Integrating Complementary Predictors at Different Scales in Regression and Machine Learning Models

Climate change is a major contemporary phenomenon with multiple consequences. In urban areas, it exacerbates the urban heat island phenomenon. It impacts the health of the inhabitants and the sensation of thermal discomfort felt in urban areas. Thus, it is necessary to estimate as well as possible the air temperature at any point of a territory, in particular in view of the ongoing rationalization of the network of fixed meteorological stations of Météo-France. Understanding the air temperature is increasingly in demand to input quantitative models related to a wide range of fields, such as hydrology, ecology, or climate change studies. This study thus proposes to model air temperature, measured during four mobile campaigns carried out during the summer months, between 2016 and 2019, in Lyon (France), in clear sky weather, using regression models based on 33 explanatory variables from traditionally used data, data from remote sensing by LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging), or Landsat 8 satellite acquisition. Three types of statistical regression were experimented: partial least square regression, multiple linear regression, and a machine learning method, the random forest regression. For example, for the day of 30 August 2016, multiple linear regression explained 89% of the variance for the study days, with a root mean square error (RMSE) of only 0.23 °C. Variables such as surface temperature, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), and Modified Normalized Difference Water Index (MNDWI) have a strong impact on the estimation model. This study contributes to the emergence of urban cooling systems. The solutions available vary. For example, they may include increasing the proportion of vegetation on the ground, facades, or roofs, increasing the number of basins and water bodies to promote urban cooling, choosing water-retaining materials, humidifying the pavement, increasing the number of public fountains and foggers, or creating shade with stretched canvas.
Attitudes and Cultural Norms around Contraceptive Use among Young Adults of Urban Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Inadequate evidence exists on the challenges facing urban women in accessing and using family planning (FP). The purpose of this study is to identify perceptions, interpersonal and familial attitudes, and sociocultural norms around contraceptive use among young adults (18-25 years) in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Twelve focus group discussions (FGDs), each with approximately six participants, were conducted from Dec09-Jan10. The groups were based on whether the participants were men/women, recent migrants/long-term inhabitants of Dar es Salaam, and were married/cohabiting or single. The FGD themes centered on reasons for unmet need, factors affecting interpersonal communication between partners, quality of FP services, and norms around HIV/FP integration. Preliminary analysis shows that knowledge of methods and where to access them is known. Differences in attitudes, challenges facing interpersonal communication, and ability to access FP existed across gender and marital status. Very little variation in responses was noted due to migrant status.
Monitoring Forest Infestation and Fire Disturbance in the Southern Appalachian Using a Time Series Analysis of Landsat Imagery

The southern Appalachian forests have been threatened by several large-scale disturbances, such as wildfire and infestation, which alter the forest ecosystem structures and functions. Hemlock Woolly Adelgid (Adelges tsugae Annand, HWA) is a non-native pest that causes widespread foliar damage and eventual mortality, resulting in irreversible tree decline in eastern (Tsuga canadensis) and Carolina (T. caroliniana) hemlocks throughout the eastern United States. It is important to monitor the extent and severity of these disturbances over space and time to better understand their implications in the biogeochemical cycles of forest landscapes. Using all available Landsat images, we investigate and compare the performance of Tasseled Cap Transformation (TCT)-based indices, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), and Disturbance Index (DI) in capturing the spectral-temporal trajectory of both abrupt and gradual forest disturbances (e.g., fire and hemlock decline). For each Landsat pixel, the temporal trajectories of these indices were fitted into a time series model, separating the inter-annual disturbance patterns (low frequency) and seasonal phenology (high frequency) signals. We estimated the temporal dynamics of disturbances based on the residuals between the observed and predicted values of the model, investigated the performance of all the indices in capturing the hemlock decline intensity, and further validated the results with the number of individual dead hemlocks identified from high-resolution aerial images. Our results suggested that the overall performance of NDVI, followed by TCT wetness, was most accurate in detecting both the disturbance timing and hemlock decline intensity, explaining over 90% of the variability in the number of dead hemlocks. Despite the overall good performance of TCT wetness in characterizing the disturbance regime, our analysis showed that this index has some limitations in characterizing disturbances due to its recovery patterns following infestation.
Observations on the Life Histories of Turtles (Genus Pseudemys and Graptemys) in Lake Texoma, Oklahoma

Aspects of the life histories of Pseudemys scripta elegans and Graptemys pseudogeographica ouachitensis (Reptilia: Testudines) were studied in Lake Texoma, Oklahoma. Variation in the color patterns of the two species is considered. Males of Pseudemys are sexually mature at a plastron length of 9.0 to 10.0 cm; females at 17.4 to 19.3 The realized annual reproductive capacity of a female Pseudemys is estimated to be 26.4 eggs (3 clutches; 8.8 eggs per clutch). Some males become sexually mature in their third year; females in their fourth. Males of Graptemys are sexually mature at a plastron length of 7.0 cm; females at 15.0 cm. Each Graptemys female lays approximately 19.5 eggs per year (3 clutches; 6.5 eggs per clutch). The elongation of the tail and third claw of the forelimb are secondary sexual characters in males of both species. Growth in both species progresses rapidly prior to maturity, however, Graptemys females seemingly grow more slowly than Pseudemys during this period. Rapid fluctuation of the water level may result in a slowing of growth in Pseudemys, but the evidence is only suggestive, not conclusive. Alternation of habitats along the shoreline due to the changing water level is believed to be responsible for the nomadic behavior of Pseudemys as well as in determining the quality and quantity of food available. The abundance of the red-eared turtle, Pseudemys scripta elegans Wied, and the Ouachita map turtle, Graptemys pseudogeographica ouachitensis Cagle, in Lake Texoma, made possible a comparative life history study at the University of Oklahoma Biological Station, Marshall County, 2 miles east of Willis. Acknowledgments. -I am grateful to Dr. Carl D. Riggs, Director of the Biological Station for permission to utilize facilities in his care. I am indebted further to Dr. Harley P. Brown of the University of Oklahoma Department of Zoology for the analysis of the animal material in the contents of digestive tracts of selected turtles, and to Dr. George J. Goodman of the University of Oklahoma Department of Botany for selected botanical determinations. Finally, thanks are extended to Drs. Fred R. Cagle and Henry S. Fitch for constructive criticism of the manuscript.
The diploid origins of allopolyploid rose species studied using single nucleotide polymorphism haplotypes flanking a microsatellite repeat

Summary The taxonomy of the genus Rosa is complex, not least because of hybridisations between species. We aimed to develop a method to connect the diploid Rosa taxa to the allopolyploid taxa to which they contributed, based on the sharing of haplotypes. For this we used an SNPSTR marker, which combines a short tandem repeat (STR; microsatellite) marker with single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the flanking sequences. In total, 53 different sequences (haplotypes) were obtained for the SNPSTR marker, Rc06, from 20 diploid and 35 polyploid accessions from various species of Rosa. Most accessions of the diploid species had only one allele, while accessions of the polyploid species each contained two-to-five different alleles. Twelve SNPs were detected in the flanking sequences, which alone formed a total of 18 different haplotypes. A maximum likelihood dendrogram revealed five groups of haplotypes. Diploid species in the same Section of the genus Rosa contained SNP haplotypes from only one haplotype group. In contrast, polyploid species contained haplotypes from different haplotype groups. Identical SNP haplotypes were shared between polyploid species and diploid species from more than one Section of the genus Rosa. There were three different polymorphic repeat regions in the STR region. The STR repeat contained eight additional SNPs, but these contributed little to the resolution of the haplotype groups. Our results support hypotheses on diploid Rosa species that contributed to polyploid taxa. Finding different sets of haplotypes in different groups of species within the Sections Synstylae and Pimpinellifoliae supports the hypothesis that these may be paraphyletic.
Aria

Deterministic databases are able to efficiently run transactions across different replicas without coordination. However, existing state-of-the-art deterministic databases require that transaction read/write sets are known before execution, making such systems impractical in many OLTP applications. In this paper, we present Aria, a new distributed and deterministic OLTP database that does not have this limitation. The key idea behind Aria is that it first executes a batch of transactions against the same database snapshot in an execution phase, and then deterministically (without communication between replicas) chooses those that should commit to ensure serializability in a commit phase. We also propose a novel deterministic reordering mechanism that allows Aria to order transactions in a way that reduces the number of conflicts. Our experiments on a cluster of eight nodes show that Aria outperforms systems with conventional nondeterministic concurrency control algorithms and the state-of-the-art deterministic databases by up to a factor of two on two popular benchmarks (YCSB and TPC-C).
Bark Factors Affecting the Distribution of Corticolous Bryophytic Communities

The intensive study of the composition and ecology of bryophytic communities has been markedly lacking in America compared to the great amount of bryocoenological research which has been carried on by Europeans. This lack, perhaps, may be explained by the fact that we do not yet know much about the structure and environment of the larger forest communities which, as a result, occupy the greater part of the American ecologist's time and interest. However, the forest community is found almost always to be a phytocoenosis composed of two or more synusiae. It is not possible to understand truly the phytocoenosis as a whole unless each synusia has been thoroughly studied. It is impossible to isolate any synusia from its phytocoenosis and to treat it as a separate association (Gleason, 1936). On the other hand, each synusia, no matter how small or obscure, has some effect on the development and structure of the whole phytocoenosis and, therefore, intensive studies of the several synusiae are the foundation-stones in any research which would truly portray the life and composition of a complex forest community. In the virgin hardwood forests of the Great Smoky Mountains of eastern Tennessee, the bryophytic synusia not only occurs on rocks, rotting logs, and occasionally soil, but also extends some distance up the trunks of the large trees. The bryophyte layer in all of these types of habitats is made up of readily discernable communities or "unions" (Sirgo, 1935) dominated by one or two species. The present paper is confined to a study of only those bryophytic unions on the trunks of living trees. It is an attempt to learn the effect of various bark factors on the distribution of these unions on the trunks of several species of trees of the dominant synusia. Definite knowledge of the ecology of these bryophytic micro-communities should lead to a better understanding of this synusia and its place in the virgin forest phytocoenosis.
Leaf Metabolism During Summer Drought in Quercus Ilex Trees with Lifetime Exposure to Elevated CO 2

A marginal improvement in the response of Quercus ilex adult trees to drought appears to occur under a long-term natural CO2 enrichment. This is expressed, for example, by the absence of midday stomatal closure in trees growing under elevated CO2. Some protection against high irradiance and high temperature seems also to occur at the photochemical level, presumably as a result of more carbon available to the consumption of excess light energy. This would allow a better performance of the plants grown under elevated CO2 during the warmer hours of the day and there-
Explorations | Exploraciones Catching up and Falling behind: An Appraisal of Brazilian Industrial Policy in the Twenty-First Century

Amidst analyses of industrial policy’s renaissance in Latin America, Brazil is often hailed as the paragon of this movement. The mix of old and new institutions and instruments would constitute a unique effort in promoting industrial development in the post-neoliberal period. However, this experience has been followed by middling results of industrial performance. Reviewing an emerging literature about the institutionalization and results of the Brazilian industrial policy, we argue that important aspects of path-dependency have been ignored. Organizational and ideational resistance have led to a much more traditional and conservative industrial policy than would be expected. Grounded historical analysis about intragovernment conflicts, combined with studies about policy and sectoral developments, could give us elements to better assess the failures and achievements of the Brazilian case.
Cloaking via Mapping for the Heat Equation | Multiscale Modeling & Simulation | Vol. 16, No. 3 | Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics

This paper explores the concept of near-cloaking in the context of time-dependent heat propagation. We show that after the lapse of a certain threshold time, the boundary measurements for the homogeneous heat equation are close to the cloaked heat problem in a certain Sobolev space norm irrespective of the density-conductivity pair in the cloaked region. A regularized transformation media theory is employed to arrive at our results. Our proof relies on the study of the long time behavior of solutions to the parabolic problems with high contrast in density and conductivity coefficients. It further relies on the study of boundary measurement estimates in the presence of small defects in the context of steady conduction problems. We then present some numerical examples to illustrate our theoretical results.
A new fuzzy k-Nearest Neighbors rule in pattern recognition

A new fuzzy k-nearest neighbours (k-NN) rule is proposed in this article. On considering four feature variables in a k-NN methodology, a fuzzy class membership function is constructed. These four variables are the number of prototypes of same class in k-Nearest Neighbours of an incoming pattern, the distances from this incoming pattern to its k-Nearest Neighbours, the rank level of k-Nearest Neighbours, and finally, the variation in distances among the k-Nearest Neighbours. Three application examples are used to test our proposed rule. The number of samples misclassified or successful classification rate is calculated and presented in the results section. The fuzzy k-NN rule proposed seems to be very flexible and is adaptable according to the nature of the application. It yields good and satisfactory results when compared with other rules used in this domain, provided that the parameter, which is introduced to assign fuzzy weighting to each neighbour of an incoming pattern according to the importance of the evidence carried by that neighbour, is firstly well optimised.
Exploration Through Reward Biasing: Reward-Biased Maximum Likelihood Estimation for Stochastic Multi-Armed Bandits

Inspired by the Reward-Biased Maximum Likelihood Estimate method of adaptive control, we propose RBMLE -- a novel family of learning algorithms for stochastic multi-armed bandits (SMABs). For a broad range of SMABs including both the parametric Exponential Family as well as the non-parametric sub-Gaussian/Exponential family, we show that RBMLE yields an index policy. To choose the bias-growth rate $\alpha(t)$ in RBMLE, we reveal the nontrivial interplay between $\alpha(t)$ and the regret bound that generally applies in both the Exponential Family as well as the sub-Gaussian/Exponential family bandits. To quantify the finite-time performance, we prove that RBMLE attains order-optimality by adaptively estimating the unknown constants in the expression of $\alpha(t)$ for Gaussian and sub-Gaussian bandits. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed RBMLE achieves empirical regret performance competitive with the state-of-the-art methods, while being more computationally efficient and scalable in comparison to the best-performing ones among them.