Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Spatial ecology of the Vicuña (Lama vicugna) in a high Andean protected area

The study of animal space use is fundamental to effective conservation and management of wildlife populations and habitats in a rapidly changing world, yet many species remain poorly described. Such is the case for the spatial ecology of the Vicuña–a medium-sized wild camelid that plays a critical role, both as a consumer and as prey, in the high Andean food web. We studied patterns of space use of 24 adult female vicuñas from April 2014 to February 2017 at the southern edge of its range. Vicuñas showed strong fidelity to their home range locations across the study period and shared large portions of their home ranges with vicuñas from other family groups. Vicuña home ranges in our study were considerably larger than previous estimates across the range of the species. Variation in environmental and terrain factors and the associated risk of predation affected vicuña diel migration distance but not home range size or overlap. Our study offers new ecological insights into vicuña space use that can inform conservation and management efforts of vicuñas and other social ungulates. El estudio del uso del espacio en animales es fundamental para la conservación y gestión eficaz de sus poblaciones y hábitats silvestres en un mundo que cambia rápidamente, sin embargo muchas especies siguen estando mal descritas. Tal es el caso del estudio de ecología espacial de la vicuña, un camélido silvestre de tamaño mediano que tiene un papel crítico en la red trófica altoandina. Estudiamos el uso del espacio de 24 hembras adultas de vicuñas desde abril de 2014 hasta febrero de 2017 en el extremo sur del área de distribución de la especie. Las vicuñas mostraron una gran fidelidad en la ubicación de sus áreas de acción durante el período de estudio y compartieron gran parte de sus áreas de acción con otros grupos familiars. Las áreas de acción de las vicuñas en nuestro estudio fueron considerablemente más grandes que las estimaciones previas en todo el rango de la especie. Variacíon en factores ambientales y topográficos, y el riesgo asociado de depredación afectaron las distancias de las migraciones diarias de las vicuñas, pero no afectaron el tamaño del área de acción. Nuestro estudio reporta nuevos datos ecológicos sobre el uso del espacio de vicuñas que pueden informar los esfuerzos de conservación y manejo de esta especie y otros ungulados sociales.
Low complexity fractal-based image compression technique

A fast image compression technique as well as its progressive image transmission (PIT) version using fractals is presented which uses a small pool of domains extracted using visually significant patterns. The affine transformations for an edge block are obtained by using its edge characteristics instead of the minimum mean square error criterion. Simulation studies demonstrate that this method is computationally simple, gives faster encoding speed and achieves good fidelity at relatively higher compression ratios than other fractal based techniques.
WHAT WE LEARN ABOUT COOLING FLOWS THROUGH THE STUDY OF THE 104K GAS IN CLUSTERS

The physical properties of the emission line nebulae associated with central dominant galaxies in clusters are explored within the context of standard cooling flow models of the hot ICM. It is pointed out that the properties of the 104K gas are inconsistent with simple theories in which this gas has accreted out of the hot ICM in thermal instabilities within a standard cooling flow atmosphere. Several possible ramifications for our understanding of the properties of clusters and the hot intracluster medium are discussed.
Asymmetry in High-Precision Global H I Profiles of Isolated Spiral Galaxies

New high signal-to-noise ratio 21 cm H I line profiles have been obtained for 104 galaxies with the Green Bank 43 m telescope. The primary sample is composed of isolated spirals with no known optical companions within a 1° radius and a median ratio of optical diameter to beamwidth of 0.17. An effort was made to ensure linearity of baseline fitting and precise flux density calibration to better than 5%. Two quantitative measures of asymmetry are applied to assess the occurrence of lopsidedness in the global H I profiles. In agreement with previous estimates, half the galaxies show significant H I profile asymmetries. The lopsidedness cannot be explained by pointing offsets but, rather, must result from noncircular motions, confusion with unidentified companions within the telescope beam, or true distortions in the H I distribution.
Prosocial behavior predicts meaning in life during the COVID-19 pandemic: The longitudinal mediating role of perceived social support

The COVID-19 pandemic was an unexpected, long-term negative event. Meaning in life has been linked to better psychological adjustment to such events. The current study uses longitudinal data collected during the COVID-19 pandemic to discover whether perceived social support mediates the relationship between six dimensions of prosocial behavior (Altruistic, Anonymous, Public, Compliant, Emotional, and Dire) and meaning in life. A sample of Chinese college students (N = 514) was tracked at three time points (T1, T2, and T3) during the COVID-19 outbreak. A cross-lagged panel model (CLPM) was used for mediation analysis. The mediation effect was found in all the dimensions of prosocial behavior except for Public prosocial behavior. We also found a longitudinal, bidirectional association between perceived social support and meaning in life. The current study contributes to the growing literature on the significance of prosocial behavior in predicting meaning in life.
UAS-Borne Radar for Autonomous Navigation and Surveillance Applications

The autonomous navigation of UAS requires, among others, detect-and-avoid capability as a prerequisite for enabling wide-ranging applications, including the transportation of goods and people. This article presents the design, implementation, and experimental results of a UAS-borne radar system detecting drones. The applications of the proposed system include not only detect-and-avoid systems for safe and autonomous navigation of unmanned aircraft systems but also airborne surveillance of malicious drones in controlled or restricted airspace for mitigating security and privacy threats. The system performance in terms of maximum detection range is evaluated through field tests. The experimental results show that the proposed UAS-borne radar can detect a DJI Phantom 4 and a DJI Matrice 600 Pro at a maximum distance of 440 and 500 meters, respectively. The article also provides insights into the system implementation and integration aspects, discusses future research direction, and stresses the need for standardization efforts to benchmark the required performance levels for UAS-borne radars.
Structure of Turbulent Channel Flow Perturbed by a Wall-Mounted Cylindrical Element

The current study reports structural modifications imposed in fully developed, turbulent channel flow by an isolated wall-mounted circular cylinder. The cylinder extended into the logarithmic layer of the flow, perturbing the larger flow scales that embody a significant fraction of the turbulent kinetic energy and Reynolds shear stress. Hot-wire measurements were made in the wake of the wall-mounted circular cylinder at multiple wall-normal and streamwise positions. Besides observing the expected mean velocity deficit in the wake of the cylinder, a secondary peak in streamwise Reynolds normal stress away from the wall was observed, coupled with suppression of the near-wall peak native to the incoming unperturbed, turbulent flow. These observations are similar to those made by Ryan et al. (“Effects of Simple Wall-Mounted Cylinder Arrangements on a Turbulent Boundary Layer,” AIAA Journal, Vol. 49, No. 10, 2011, pp. 2210–2220) for a wall-mounted cylinder protruding into the logarithmic layer of a turbulent b.
The Differential Role of Executive Apathy in Alzheimer’s Disease Dementia, Mild Cognitive Impairment and Healthy Cognitive Ageing

The objective of the present work was to compare the levels of executive, emotional, and initiation apathy in individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), mild Alzheimer’s disease dementia (ADD), and cognitively intact healthy controls (HCs). Fifty-two patients with mild ADD, 40 individuals with MCI, and 37 cognitively intact individuals were included in the current study. The participants were consecutive visitors to the Outpatient Memory Clinic of “Nestor” Alzheimer’s Center. The symptoms of apathy were measured with the dimensional apathy scale. Analyses showed that ADD patients had significantly higher degrees of executive, emotional, initiation, and overall apathy compared with both the MCI group and the HCs. Additionally, a significant difference was observed in the dimension of executive apathy between individuals with MCI and the HCs. In conclusion, the dimension of executive apathy was the most sensitive measure regarding the differentiation of individuals with mild ADD or MCI and HCs. Hence, detailed evaluation of executive apathy in older individuals referred to a memory clinic may provide useful information contributing to their diagnostic categorization and to the differentiation between neurocognitive disorders and healthy cognitive ageing.
Cosmic microwave background reconstruction from WMAP and Planck PR2 data

We describe a new estimate of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) intensity map reconstructed by a joint analysis of the full Planck 2015 data (PR2) and nine years of WMAP data. The proposed map provides more than a mere update of the CMB map introduced in a previous paper since it benefits from an improvement of the component separation method L-GMCA (Local-Generalized Morphological Component Analysis), which facilitates efficient separation of correlated components. Based on the most recent CMB data, we further confirm previous results showing that the proposed CMB map estimate exhibits appealing characteristics for astrophysical and cosmological applications: i) it is a full-sky map as it did not require any inpainting or interpolation postprocessing; ii) foreground contamination is very low even on the galactic center; and iii) the map does not exhibit any detectable trace of thermal Sunyaev-Zel’dovich contamination. We show that its power spectrum is in good agreement with the Planck PR2 official theoretical best-fit power spectrum. Finally, following the principle of reproducible research, we provide the codes to reproduce the L-GMCA, which makes it the only reproducible CMB map.
Pretreatment Frequency of Circulating Th17 Cells and FeNO Levels Predicted the Real-World Response after 1 Year of Benralizumab Treatment in Patients with Severe Asthma

Benralizumab treatment reduces exacerbations and improves symptom control and quality of life in patients with severe eosinophilic asthma. However, the determination of biomarkers that predict therapeutic effectiveness is required for precision medicine. Herein, we elucidated the dynamics of various parameters before and after treatment as well as patient characteristics predictive of clinical effectiveness after 1 year of benralizumab treatment in severe asthma in a real-world setting. Thirty-six patients with severe asthma were treated with benralizumab for 1 year. Lymphocyte subsets in peripheral blood samples were analyzed using flow cytometry. Treatment effectiveness was determined based on the ACT score, forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1), and the number of exacerbations. Benralizumab provided symptomatic improvement in severe asthma. Benralizumab significantly decreased peripheral blood eosinophil and basophil counts and the frequencies of regulatory T cells (Tregs), and increased the frequencies of Th2 cells. To our knowledge, this is the first study to show benralizumab treatment increasing circulating Th2 cells and decreasing circulating Tregs. Finally, the ROC curve to discriminate patients who achieved clinical effectiveness of benralizumab treatment revealed that the frequency of circulating Th17 cells and FeNO levels might be used as parameters for predicting the real-world response of benralizumab treatment in patients with severe asthma.
1/N expansion in two‐dimensional lattice gauge theory

We use the method of orthonormal polynomials to investigate the large N limit of the two‐dimensional lattice gauge theory. The 1/N2 and 1/N4 corrections to the vacuum energy and the expectation value of the Wilson loop operator are calculated in the low temperature phase (λ ≡g2 N<2). These corrections diverge at the transition point. In the high temperature phase we show that there are only corrections which fall exponentially as N becomes large, and hence there are no 1/N corrections in this phase.
Boundary Layer Development in the BR710 and BR715 LP Turbines—The Implementation of High-Lift and Ultra-High-Lift Concepts

This paper describes a detailed study into the unsteady boundary layer behaviour in two high lift and one ultra high lift Rolls-Royce Deutschland LP turbines. The objectives of the paper are to show that high lift and ultra high-lift concepts have been successfully incorporated into the design of these new LP turbine profiles. Measurements from surface mounted hot film sensors were made in full size, cold flow test rigs at the altitude test facility at Stuttgart University. The LP turbine blade profiles are thought to be state of the art in terms of their lift and design philosophy. The two high lift profiles represent slightly different styles of velocity distribution. The first high-lift profile comes from a two stage LP turbine (the BR710 cold-flow, high-lift demonstrator rig). The second high-lift profile tested is from a three-stage machine (the BR715 LPT rig). The ultra-high lift profile measurements come from a redesign of the BR715 LP turbine: this is designated the BR715UHL LP turbine. This ultra high-lift profile represents a 12% reduction in blade numbers compared to the original BR715 turbine. The results from NGV2 on all of the turbines show “classical” unsteady boundary layer behaviour. The measurements from NGV3 (of both the BR715 and BR715UHL turbines) are more complicated, but can still be broken down into classical regions of wake-induced transition, natural transition and calming. The wakes from both upstream rotors and NGVs interact in a complicated manner, affecting the suction surface boundary layer of NGV3. This has important implications for the prediction of the flows on blade rows in multistage environments. NOMENCLATURE w τ Quasi wall shear stress w τ ′ RMS of signal w τ ~ Non-dimensional ensemble mean quasi wall shear stress
DeepTrip: A Deep Learning Model for the Individual Next Trip Prediction With Arbitrary Prediction Times

The increasing availability of travel trajectory data allows for a better understanding of travel behavior. In the individual mobility analysis, the problem of next trip prediction assumes a central role and is beneficial for applications such as personalized services and mobility management. This paper addresses the next trip prediction problem with arbitrary prediction times (the time when the prediction is made). This problem has not been studied adequately in the literature and it is important for applications driven by system events, such as proactive travel recommendations under disruptions or crowding in transport systems. It predicts an individual’s next trips given their historical trip sequences and the prediction time. We formulate the next trip prediction problem as on-board and off-board predictions depending on an individual’s travel status (i.e. on-board/off-board). Using historical/real-time travel trajectories, a DeepTrip model is proposed based on a trip sequence-to-sequence deep learning structure coupled with an attention mechanism. A novel overlapped embedding method is proposed to represent continuous travel attributes capturing simultaneously the categorical and numerical feature information. We also develop a random-sampling training algorithm to learn the impact of the prediction time. The model is validated using trip data in urban rails. The results show that DeepTrip outperforms statistical-based models by more than 10% in terms of accuracy and other deep learning models by 2%-3%. The impact analysis shows that different representations are appropriate for the two prediction cases (on-board/off-board), and the prediction performance does not monotonically improve as the prediction time approaches the next trip.
A systematic mapping of public health primary prevention interventions with relevance for policing

This study aimed to utilise systematic mapping techniques to assess existing empirical reviews of the evidence-base for primary prevention public health initiatives relevant to policing. In total, 9410 records were extracted of which 9373 were screened by two researchers; 356 studies were assessed for eligibility of which 134 titles were included. The majority of titles were academic publications (81%) across 16 subject domains. The main domains reviewed were violence (53%), substance misuse (37%) and mental health (27%). Forty-two per cent of the titles were across multiple points of contact and 38% were within school settings. Few primary prevention studies were delivered for domestic abuse, female genital mutilation, hate crime, road traffic accidents, terrorism and white-collar crimes. Positive outcomes were ascribed to parenting, family-based, school and pre-school primary prevention interventions. Definitional problems identifying primary prevention initiatives from the literature were identified as a major concern. Thematic analysis identified issues linking causal mechanisms with behaviour change and how to ensure high-quality methods are deployed to measure outcomes. Further work is required to develop preventative approaches in areas with limited knowledge. It is recommended that research focuses on expanding understanding causal mechanisms underpinning primary prevention initiatives.
Passivity-Based Trajectory Tracking and Formation Control of Nonholonomic Wheeled Robots Without Velocity Measurements

This note proposes a passivity-based control method for trajectory tracking and formation control of nonholonomic wheeled robots without velocity measurements. Coordinate transformations are used to incorporate the nonholonomic constraints, which are then avoided by controlling the front end of the robot rather than the center of the wheel axle into the differential equations. Starting from the passivity-based coordination design, the control goals are achieved via an internal controller for velocity tracking and heading control, and an external controller for formation in the port-Hamiltonian framework. This approach endows the resulting controller with a physical interpretation. To avoid unavailable velocity measurements or unreliable velocity estimations, we derive the distributed control law with only position measurements by introducing a dynamic extension. In addition, we prove that our approach is suitable not only for acyclic graphs but also for a class of nonacyclic graphs, namely, ring graphs. Simulations are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the approach.
Can Fighting Misinformation Have a Negative Spillover Effect? How Warnings for the Threat of Misinformation Can Decrease General News Credibility

ABSTRACT In the battle against misinformation, do negative spillover effects of communicative efforts intended to protect audiences from inaccurate information exist? Given the relatively limited prevalence of misinformation in people’s news diets, this study explores if the heightened salience of misinformation as a persistent societal threat can have an unintended spillover effect by decreasing the credibility of factually accurate news. Using an experimental design (N = 1305), we test whether credibility ratings of factually accurate news are subject to exposure to misinformation, corrective information, misinformation warnings, and news media literacy (NML) interventions relativizing the misinformation threat. Findings suggest that efforts like warning about the threat of misinformation can prime general distrust in authentic news, hinting toward a deception bias in the context of fear of misinformation being salient. Next, the successfulness of NML interventions is not straight forward if it comes to avoiding that the salience of misinformation distorts people’s creditability accuracy. We conclude that the threats of the misinformation order may not just be remedied by fighting false information, but also by reestablishing trust in legitimate news.
A study of particle paths in non-axisymmetric Taylor–Couette flows

We study the paths of fluid particles in velocity fields modelling rigidly rotating velocity fields that occur in the concentric Taylor problem. We set up velocity fields using the model of Davey, DiPrima & Stuart (1968) based on small-gap asymptotics. This allows a numerical study of the Lagrangian properties of steady flow patterns in a rotating frame. The spiral and Taylor vortex modes are integrable, implying that in these cases almost all particle paths are confined to two-dimensional surfaces in the fluid. For the case of Taylor vortices the motion on these surfaces is quasi-periodic, whereas for spirals the particles propagate up or down the cylinder on these surfaces. The non-axisymmetric modes we consider are wavy vortices, spirals, ribbons and twisted Taylor vortices. All of these flows have the property that they are steady flows when examined in a rotating frame of reference. For all non-axisymmetric modes with the exception of spirals, we observe the existence of regions of chaotic mixing within the fluid. We discuss mixing of the fluid by these flows with reference to the pattern of stagnation points and some of the periodic trajectories within the fluid and on the boundary.
Short-term outcomes among patients with subclinical hypothyroidism undergoing primary percutaneous coronary intervention

Summary Objectives This study aimed to examine possible associations between previously undiagnosed subclinical hypothyroidism and short-term outcomes and mortality in a sample of Iraqi patients undergoing primary percutaneous coronary intervention for ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction. Design This is a prospective observational cohort study. Setting The study was conducted in a single tertiary referral centre in Baghdad, Iraq. Participants Thyroid-stimulating hormone and free T4 levels were measured in 257 patients hospitalised with ST-elevation myocardial infarction who underwent primary percutaneous coronary intervention between January 2020 and March 2022. Main outcome measures Adverse cardiovascular and renal events during hospitalisation and 30-day mortality were observed. Results Previously undiagnosed subclinical hypothyroidism was detected in 36/257 (14%) ST-elevation myocardial infarction patients and observed more commonly in females than males. Patients with subclinical hypothyroidism had significantly worse short-term outcomes, including higher rates of suboptimal TIMI Flow (< III) (p =0.014), left ventricular ejection fraction ≤ 40% (p=0.035), Killip class >I (p=0.042), cardiogenic shock (p =0.016), cardiac arrest in the hospital (p= 0.01), and acute kidney injury (p= 0.044). Additionally, 30-day mortality was significantly higher in patients with subclinical hypothyroidism (p= 0.029). Conclusion Subclinical hypothyroidism previously undiagnosed and untreated had a significant association with adverse short-term outcomes and higher short-term mortality within 30 days compared to euthyroid patients undergoing primary percutaneous coronary intervention. Routine thyroid function testing during these patients' hospitalisation may be warranted. Funding None declared