Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An assessment of temporal variability in mast seeding of North American Pinaceae

Our overall objective is to synthesize mast-seeding data on North American Pinaceae to detect characteristic features of reproduction (i.e. development cycle length, serotiny, dispersal agents), and test for patterns in temporal variation based on weather variables. We use a large dataset (n = 286 time series; mean length = 18.9 years) on crop sizes in four conifer genera (Abies, Picea, Pinus, Tsuga) collected between 1960 and 2014. Temporal variability in mast seeding (CVp) for 2 year genera (Abies, Picea, Tsuga) was higher than for Pinus (3 year), and serotinous species had lower CVp than non-serotinous species; there were no relationships of CVp with elevation or latitude. There was no difference in family-wide CVp across four tree regions of North America. Across all genera, July temperature differences between bud initiation and the prior year (ΔT) was more strongly associated with reproduction than absolute temperature. Both CVp and ΔT remained steady over time, while absolute temperature increased by 0.09°C per decade. Our use of the ΔT model included a modification for Pinus, which initiates cone primordia 2 years before seedfall, as opposed to 1 year. These findings have implications for how mast-seeding patterns may change with future increases in temperature, and the adaptive benefits of mast seeding. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The ecology and evolution of synchronized seed production in plants’.
Delayed fertilization facilitates flowering time diversity in Fagaceae

Fagaceae includes typical masting species that exhibit highly synchronized and fluctuating acorn production. Fagaceae shows an interesting feature in that fertilization is delayed by several weeks to more than 1 year after pollination. Although delayed fertilization was recorded over a century ago, the evolutionary advantage of delayed fertilization is still poorly understood. Here, we present a new hypothesis that delayed fertilization facilitates temporal niche differentiation via non-overlapping flowering times among species. Comparing flowering and fruiting times in 228 species from five genera in Fagaceae, we first show that there is a close association between a wider spread of flowering times and the likelihood of a 2-year fruiting habit in which there is a long delay from pollination to fertilization. To study the coevolution of flowering time and delayed fertilization, we developed a mathematical model that incorporates the effects of competition for pollinators, seed predator satiation and unfavourable season for reproduction on fitness. The model shows that delayed fertilization facilitates the diversification of flowering time in a population, which is advantageous for animal-pollinated trees that compete over pollinators. Our new hypothesis about the coevolution of delayed fertilization and flowering time will provide new insight into the evolution of masting. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The ecology and evolution of synchronized seed production in plants’.
Comparative Study on the Effect of Common Ions on Zn2+ and Cu2+ Adsorption by Cattle Manure Vermicompost (VC) and VC-amended Soil

ABSTRACT Nowadays, special attention has been paid to remediate contaminated media through low-cost and high-efficiency biosorbents. In this research, the sorption of zinc (Zn2+) and copper (Cu2+) by cattle manure vermicompost (VC) and VC-amended soil and the effect of common ions on sorption was studied. The VC was characterized by using FT-IR spectra, SEM, BET analyses. Isotherm experiments were carried out with different concentrations of Zn2+ and Cu2+ (0–100 mg L−1) in the presence of 10 mM of background electrolytes (Ca2+, Mg2+, SO42-, and Cl−) as the binary system and the absence of other ions (single system). Data of Zn2+ and Cu2+ adsorption onto VC were fitted to the Langmuir equation. The maximum adsorption capacity (Qmax) of Zn2+ and Cu2+ onto VC in the single system was 7.27 and 17.73 mg g−1, respectively, which decreased in the following order Ca2+ > Mg2+ > SO42– > Cl – in the binary system. The effect of electrolytes on Zn2+ adsorption was more significant than Cu2+ and the Qmax of Zn2+ and Cu2+ decreased on average 20.4 and 10.8%, respectively. The VC addition increased adsorption in soil. Results indicate that VC had potential for the removal of Zn2+ and Cu2+ from single and binary systems.
Management of Nano-black Carbon, Phosphorous and Bio Fertilizer Improve Soil Organic Carbon and Ensilage Biomass of Soybean and Maize

ABSTRACT Field experiments were conducted for two-consecutive summer seasons of 2016–17 and 2017–18 at Agriculture Research Institute Mingora Swat, Pakistan, on soybean and maize under soybean-wheat (S-W) and maize-wheat (M-W) cropping systems. Three peach sources were used as a residues, its compost and its Nano-black carbon, three phosphorus-rates (50, 75 and 100 kg-ha−1) and two beneficial microbes (PSB and Trichoderma) were tested for improvement of ensilage biomass of maize and soybean, and soil organic-carbon (SOC) under both cropping systems. The results revealed that all the treated plots produced highest SOC compared to the control plots under soybean and maize cropping system. Improved SOC was noted with the OS amendment of Nano-black carbon in both cropping systems. Whereas minimum SOC was noted in soybean experimentation with compost while in maize plot reduced SOC was noted with peach residues incorporation. Beneficial microbes had a significant effect on SOC and improved SOC was recorded with soil application Trichoderma as compared to seed inoculation with PSB in soybean and maize plots. Phosphorus levels had also significant effect on SOC and highest SOC was recorded at 100 kg P ha−1 followed by 75 kg P ha−1 whereas the smallest SOC was recorded with 50 kg P ha−1. Ensilage highest biomass of the both crops was noted with peach Nano-black carbon, followed by compost and reduced biomass were noted with peach residues application. Among the P-rate, increased ensilage biomass was recorded with 100 kg P ha−1application while in case of beneficial microbes application, soil application of Trichoderma produced highest biomass as compared to seed inoculation with PSB.
Mental health services and psychotropic medications provided to children at risk for placement instability in foster care

Children at risk for placement instability are subpopulation in out-of-home care with a critical need for enhanced mental health services, but little is known about the types and adequacy of the mental services they receive. This descriptive study sought to identify the types of mental health services and psychotropic medications provided to children with a risk for moves, foster parents’ perceptions of their adequacy, consistency of therapy services with evidence-based models, and racial and gender differences in service provision. Foster parents completed telephone surveys for a randomly selected sample of 144 children aged 8–14 in specialized or traditional family foster care with a history of placement moves or hospitalizations in a large state in the US. Over two-thirds of children were reported to have mental health diagnoses, with ADHD most frequent (52%). Most children with a diagnosis received psychotherapy (75%) and psychotropic medications (90%). The majority did not receive additional services. A quarter received therapy supporting use of behavioral interventions in foster homes, with 40% of foster parents reporting this was inadequate. Additionally, half reported inadequate initial training. No racial differences in services were reported. However, girls were more likely to receive therapy described as trauma-focused than boys (30.9% and 5.6%, respectively); more boys received treatment for anger (17%) and psychotropic medication (60%). Findings indicate that children at risk for multiple moves receive a high level of services, but questions are raised about the content and adequacy of these services. Evidence-based psychosocial interventions are needed to support positive outcomes and potentially reduce psychotropic medication use.
Femtosecond laser filamentation and supercontinuum generation in strong air turbulence

Turbulence is ubiquitous in ambient air and has always posed a great challenge for realizing optical applications in the atmosphere. The refractive index of turbulent air fluctuates randomly has obviously influences on the nonlinear process and characteristics of filamentation, which is a crucial role for many practical applications in free-space atmosphere. In the numerical simulation, we have investigated the filamentation and supercontinuum generation of femtosecond laser pulse with strong atmospheric turbulence in the path of whole the propagation distance. The spatial profile of intensity is analyzed in detail by changing perturbation strength of turbulence. The results show that the laser energy flow distribution presents stronger optical modulation instability with the increase of turbulence intensity in air. Complex spatial multifilament structures are generated by nonlinear propagation in strong turbulent air. The optical intensity along propagation distance significantly decrease as the strength of turbulence increases. The supercontinuum spectrum of filamentation in different strengths turbulence is also investigated. The physical mechanism of supercontinuum intensity change with different strengths of turbulence is discussed. Our results are valuable for realizing the free-space applications based on filamentation and supercontinuum in extreme weather with strong turbulence.
Sources of psychological distress among primary care physicians during the COVID-19 pandemic’s first wave in Spain: a cross-sectional study

Abstract Background: The COVID-19 pandemic is affecting people worldwide. In Spain, the first wave was especially severe. Objectives: This study aimed to identify sources and levels of distress among Spanish primary care physicians (PCPs) during the first wave of the pandemic (April 2020). Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted using a survey that included sociodemographic data, a description of working conditions related to distress [such as gaps in training in protective measures, cleaning, and hygiene procedures in work setting, unavailability of personal protective equipments (PPEs) and COVID-19 RT-PCR test, and lack of staff due to be infected] and a validated scale, the ‘Self-applied Acute Stress Scale’ (EASE). The survey was answered by a non-probability sampling of PCPs working in family healthcare centres from different regions of Spain. Analysis of variance and multivariate linear regression analysis were performed. Results: In all, out of 518 PCP participants, 123 (23.7%) obtained high psychological distress scores. Only half of them had received information about the appropriate use of PPE. PCP characteristics associated with higher levels of distress include female gender [1.69; 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.54, 2.84]; lack of training in protective measures (1.96; 95% CI 0.94, 2.99); unavailable COVID-19 RT-PCR for health care workers after quarantine or COVID-19 treatment (−0.77 (−1.52, −0.02). Reinforcing disinfection of the work environment (P < 0.05), availability of PPEs (P < 0.05), and no healthcare professional was infected (P < 0.05) were related to the lowest distress score. Conclusions: A better understanding of the sources of distress among PCPs could prevent its effect on future outbreaks.
Model‐Informed Drug Development: Connecting the Dots With a Totality of Evidence Mindset to Advance Therapeutics

The MerriamWebster dictionary offers the essential meaning of a model as “a usually small copy of something,” or “a set of ideas and numbers that describe the past, present, or future state of something. ” Modelinformed drug development (MIDD) involves the strategic creation and integration of mathematical models for knowledge management, predictions, and decision making in pharmaceutical research and development. These models can “connect the dots” across various inputs related to drug properties, disease biology, patient characteristics and trial designs, transforming data to knowledge, enhancing efficiency in drug discovery and development, and maximizing therapeutic potential. This issue of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics (CPT) includes Original Research Articles, Reviews, and Perspectives illustrating recent advances in established and emerging areas of MIDD, highlighting opportunities for interdisciplinary and crosssector collaboration for enhancing impact.
A molecular phylogeny of Tetrastemma and its allies (Nemertea, Monostilifera)

Tetrastemma Ehrenberg, 1828, is one of the most speciose (~110 spp.) genera within the phylum Nemertea, comprising marine monostiliferans generally having four eyes. Monophyly of Tetrastemma remains open to question, having been tested to date only with 18S rRNA gene sequences targeting 13 species. Here, we examine the clade Tetrastemma with additional gene markers (18S rRNA, 28S rRNA, histone H3, 16S rRNA, and cytochrome c oxidase subunit I genes) and OTUs (66 specimens representing 53 species in Tetrastemma), along with a taxon sampling covering the entire Eumonostilifera. Our analysis revealed that Tetrastemma (a) as non‐monophyletic (as were Tetrastemmatidae) (b) contains a major clade consisting of four geographically cohesive subclades, whereas (c) Tetrastemma arcticum Uschakov, 1926; Tetrastemma bilineatum Coe, 1904; Tetrastemma vittigerum (Bürger, 1904); Tetrastemma wilsoni Coe, 1943; and two specimens tentatively identified as Tetrastemma sp. occur outside this major clade, and iv) the three species of Psammamphiporus Gibson, 1989, and Quasitetrastemma Chernyshev, 2004, nest within in the major Tetrastemma clade. Thus, we (a) synonymize Psammamphiporus and Quasitetrastemma with the senior name Tetrastemma and (b) establish Arctostemma gen. nov. for T. arcticum to yield Arctostemma arcticum (Uschakov, 1926) comb. nov.
TsFPS: An Accurate and Flexible 6DoF Tracking System with Fiducial Platonic Solids

We present a vision-based system for real-time pose tracking of the rigid object, it can not only estimate a single pose in six degrees of freedom (6DoF), but also suitable for recovering compound movements. The system is comprised of a monocular camera, and a series of 3D printed platonic solids with squared fiducial markers attached on each single face, which is easy to setup and extend, extra cameras are allowed to incorporate into the pipeline for meeting different requirements. The system realizes object tracking by estimating the pose of the fiducial platonic solid (FPS) which can be fixed onto the surface of the target object. Different sizes and shapes of the platonic solids are allowed to combine with each other to adapt to different application scenarios, this strategy provides enormous flexibility and applicability to our system. In order to track the motion of the fiducial platonic solid accurately, a robust algorithm that combines the fiducial constraint and the statistical constraint is introduced, which is able to handle illumination changes, motion blur and partial occlusion. We evaluate the performance of the proposed approach with qualitative and quantitative experiments, in addition, a couple of mixed reality (MR) applications are developed for demonstrating the effectiveness of the system.
Synthesizing Formal Models of Hardware from RTL for Efficient Verification of Memory Model Implementations

Modern hardware complexity makes it challenging to determine if a given microarchitecture adheres to a particular memory consistency model (MCM). This observation inspired the Check tools, which formally check that a specific microarchitecture correctly implements an MCM with respect to a suite of litmus test programs. Unfortunately, despite their effectiveness and efficiency, the Check tools must be supplied a microarchitecture in the guise of a manually constructed axiomatic specification, called a μspec model. To facilitate MCM verification—and enable the Check tools to consume processor RTL directly—we introduce a methodology and associated tool, rtl2μspec, for automatically synthesizing μspec models from processor designs written in Verilog or SystemVerilog, with the help of modest user-provided design metadata. As a case study, we use rtl2μspec to facilitate the Check-based verification of the four-core RISC-V V-scale (multi-V-scale) processor’s MCM implementation. We show that rtl2μspec can synthesize a complete, and proven correct by construction, μspec model from the SystemVerilog design of the multi-V-scale processor in 6.84 minutes. Subsequent Check-based MCM verification of the synthesized μspec model takes less than one second per litmus test.
Viewing from Frequency Domain: A DCT-based Information Enhancement Network for Video Person Re-Identification

Video-based person re-identification (Re-ID) aims to match the target pedestrians under non-overlapping camera system by video tracklets. The key issue of video Re-ID focuses on exploring effective spatio-temporal features. Generally, the spatio-temporal information of a video sequence can be divided into two aspects: the discriminative information in each frame and the shared information over the whole sequence. To make full use of the rich information in video sequences, this paper proposes a Discrete Cosine Transform based Information Enhancement Network (DCT-IEN) to achieve more comprehensive spatio-temporal representation from frequency domain. Inspired by the principle that average pooling is one of the special frequency components in DCT (the lowest frequency component), DCT-IEN first adopts discrete cosine transform to convert the extracted feature maps into frequency domain, thereby retaining more information that embedded in different frequency components. With the help of DCT frequency spectrum, two branches are adopted to learn the final video representation: Frequency Selection Module (FSM) and Lowest Frequency Enhancement Module (LFEM). FSM explores the most discriminative features in each frame by aggregating different frequency components with attention mechanism. LFEM enhances the shared feature over the whole video sequence by frame feature regularization. By fusing these two kinds of features together, DCT-IEN finally achieves comprehensive video representation. We conduct extensive experiments on two widely used datasets. The experimental results verify our idea and demonstrate the effectiveness of DCT-IEN for video-based Re-ID.
Legitimate Adversarial Patches: Evading Human Eyes and Detection Models in the Physical World

It is known that deep neural models are vulnerable to adversarial attacks. Digital attacks can craft imperceptible perturbations but lack of the ability to apply in physical environment. To address this issue, efforts have been investigated to study physical patch attacks in the physical world, especially for object detection models. Previous works mostly focus on evading the detection model itself but ignore the impact of human observers. In this paper, we study legitimate adversarial attacks that evade both human eyes and detection models in the physical world. To this end, we delve into the issue of patch rationality, and propose some indicators for evaluating the rationality of physical adversarial patches. Besides, we propose a novel framework with a two-stage training strategy to generate our legitimate adversarial patches (LAPs). Both in numerical simulations and physical experiments our LAPs have significant attack effects and visual rationality.
CG-GAN: Class-Attribute Guided Generative Adversarial Network for Old Photo Restoration

Old photos are an important carrier to preserve the past. Usually, the degradation of old photos is rather diverse and complex. Therefore, the existing methods to solve conventional restoration tasks are difficult to generalize. To solve this problem, we propose a novel method based on generative adversarial network. Our method utilizes the class-attributes of old photos to complete restoration in latent space. Specifically, we divide the process of restoring old photos into two stages, one is global defect restoration stage and the other is local detail restoration stage. In global defect restoration stage, we extract the latent representations of four classes of high-level attributes that are smoothness, clarity, connectivity and completeness. We use latent class-attribute information to restore global defects in latent space and we obtain conditional control vector through a condition network to guide the subsequent local detail restoration stage. In local detail restoration stage, we propose a dynamic condition-guided restoration module that selects the most suitable combination of features to further restore local details through a dynamic network. In addition, we propose a dual discriminator to pay more attention to style and defect restoration. We ignore the complex degradation of old photos to directly restore advanced class-attributes. Therefore, our method has better generalization performance. Experiments show that our method is superior to other existing methods of image restoration in terms of visual quality and numerical metrics.
Trident: Harnessing Architectural Resources for All Page Sizes in x86 Processors

Intel and AMD processors have long supported more than one large page sizes – 1GB and 2MB, to reduce address translation overheads for applications with large memory footprints. However, previous works on large pages have primarily focused on 2MB pages, partly due to a lack of evidence on the usefulness of 1GB pages to real-world applications. Consequently, micro-architectural resources devoted to 1GB pages have gone underutilized for a decade. We quantitatively demonstrate where 1GB pages can be valuable, especially when employed in conjunction with 2MB pages. Unfortunately, the lack of application-transparent dynamic allocation of 1GB pages is to blame for the under-utilization of 1GB pages on today’s systems. Toward this, we design and implement Trident in Linux to fully harness micro-architectural resources devoted for all page sizes in the current x86 hardware by transparently allocating 1GB, 2MB, and 4KB pages as suitable at runtime. Trident speeds up eight memory-intensive applications by 18%, on average, over Linux’s use of 2MB pages. We then propose Tridentpv, an extension to Trident that virtualizes 1GB pages via copy-less promotion and compaction in the guest OS. Overall, this paper shows that adequate software enablement brings practical relevance to even GB-sized pages, and motivates micro-architects to continue enhancing hardware support for all large page sizes.
Characterizing and Mitigating Soft Errors in GPU DRAM

While graphics processing units (GPUs) are used in high-reliability systems, wide GPU dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) interfaces make error protection difficult, as wide-device correction through error checking and correcting (ECC) is expensive and impractical. This challenge is compounded by worsening relative rates of multibit DRAM errors and increasing GPU memory capacities. This work uses high-energy neutron beam tests to inform the design and evaluation of GPU DRAM error-protection mechanisms. Based on observed locality in multibit error patterns, we propose several novel ECC schemes to decrease the silent data corruption (SDC) risk by up to five orders of magnitude relative to single-bit-error-correcting and double-bit-error-detecting (SEC-DED) ECC, while also reducing the number of uncorrectable errors by up to 7.87×. We compare novel binary and symbol-based ECC organizations that differ in their design complexity and hardware overheads, ultimately recommending two promising organizations. These schemes replace SEC-DED ECC with no additional redundancy, likely no performance degradation, and modest area and complexity costs.