Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Key stages in the evolution of the Antarctic marine fauna

We are beginning to appreciate that the origin of the modern Antarctic marine fauna is related to a series of key events throughout the Cenozoic era. In the first of these, the mass extinction at the Cretaceous–Palaeogene boundary (66 Ma) reset the evolutionary stage and led to a major radiation of modern taxa in the benthic realm. Although this took place in a greenhouse world, there is evidence to suggest that the radiation was tempered by the seasonality of primary productivity, and this may be a time‐invariant feature of the polar regions. Although there could well have been a single, abrupt extinction event at c. 34 Ma, there is also evidence to suggest a phased extinction of various taxa over a period of millions of years. Important new molecular phylogenetic data are indicating that a wide variety of both benthic and pelagic taxa radiated shortly after a second major phase of cooling at c. 14 Ma. Such a phenomenon is linked to a series of major palaeoceanographic changes, which in turn led to a proliferation of diatom‐based ecosystems. Although the modern benthic marine fauna can be traced back some 45–50 Myr, a substantial component of the modern pelagic one may be less than 14 Myr old. The latter is also characterized by assemblages of high abundance but comparatively low species richness and evenness. A distinctive signature of low diversity but high dominance within Antarctic marine assemblages was maintained by the interplay between temperature and primary productivity throughout the Cenozoic.
ANALYTIC HIERARCHY PROCESS MODEL FOR THE SELECTION OF OPTIMAL INTERNET ACCESS TECHNOLOGIES IN RURAL PAKISTAN

Information and telecommunication technologies are considered significant for the economic and social development of isolated and remote areas. Internet technologies create links between urban and rural areas that can overcome the barrier of distance that typically hinders development. In rural areas of Pakistan, Internet penetration is low due to high cost, lack of manageable infrastructure, public issues and many other factors that disturb sustainable Internet provision; however, the choice of access to technology in rural areas is a complex process. In this paper, we used the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method, which is a powerful multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach and is a structured procedure for organizing and analyzing complex decisions. Furthermore, we proposed an AHP model for the selection of an ideal Internet access technology, which would facilitate access to Internet services to the 61% of the population who live in Pakistan’s rural areas. Data were collected from 38 respondents, from both academia and the telecom sector IT professionals. The relative weights of each factor and technology alternative were synthesized with Expert Choice 2000. This paper can provide comprehensive recommendations to telecommunication policymakers for Internet deployment and the selection of optimal Internet access technology in rural Pakistan.
Validation of the quasi-steady performance model for pumping airborne wind energy systems

The quasi-steady performance model (QSM) has been developed specifically for pumping airborne wind energy systems using flexible membrane wings. In this study, we validate this model using a comprehensive set of flight data that includes 87 consecutive pumping cycles and is acquired with the development platform of Kitepower B.V. The aerodynamic properties of the kite are determined using onboard measurements of the relative flow velocity. We found that neglecting the vertical wind component and straightening and slacking motion of the tether lead to substantial errors in the kite velocity calculated using the system model. A reasonable agreement between the QSM simulations and flight data can be obtained by multiplying the kite’s drag coefficient by a fudge factor and thereby turning the QSM into a grey-box model. The model accuracy is statistically evaluated as opposed to only evaluating a single pumping cycle per system configuration as done in earlier research.
Global regularity to the 2D non-isothermal inhomogeneous nematic liquid crystal flows

ABSTRACT In this paper, we prove the global strong solutions for the Cauchy problem of two-dimensional (2D) incompressible non-isothermal nematic liquid crystal flows, if the initial orientation satisfies a geometric condition. Note that the initial data can be arbitrarily large and the initial density can contain vacuum states. When d is a constant vector and , we also extend the corresponding result in Wang Y. [Global strong solution to the two dimensional nonhomogeneous incompressible heat conducting Navier–Stokes flows with vacuum. Discrete Contin Dyn Syst B. doi:10.3934/dcdsb.2020099. ] to the whole space , where the global strong solution of 2D inhomogeneous incompressible heat conducting Navier–Stokes flows is established on bounded domain.
Assessment of malaria parasitemia and genotype of patients attending two hospitals in Benue State, Nigeria

Malaria parasitemia and genotype of patients attending Federal Medical Center, Makurdi and General Hospital Otupko in Benue State was assessed between the months of November, 2017 and February, 2018. A total of 400 samples were collected from consented patients through venipuncture techniques. The blood samples were processed within 3 to 6 hours of collection. Infection status and genotype were ascertained using standard techniques. Their demographic characteristics and malaria control measures were determined using questionnaires. Chi-square test was used to determine the degree of association between malaria prevalence and other factors influencing its transmission. 162 patients (40.5 %) were positive. Females had higher prevalence than males and the difference was significant (x2 = 11.993, df = 1, p = 0.00, p<0.05). The age group 0 – 9 had the highest prevalence of 46.8 %. The prevalence of malaria was not found to be dependent upon age group and the difference was not significant (x2= 4.798, df = 6, p = 0.570, p<0.05). Individuals with genotype AA had the highest prevalence rate of 46.7 % followed by AS with 29.9 %, while no SS individual was infected. Prevalence between the three genotypes was significant (p = 0.001, p<0.05). The finding from the study showed that malaria prevalence depends on risk factors that promote transmission and that AS and SS individuals have a genetic advantage over AA individuals in relation to plasmodium parasitemia. Public enlightenment should be taken more seriously in both the urban and rural areas of Benue State. Keywords: Malaria, Makurdi, Genotype, Hospital, Mosquito
Diet of Leptodactylus macrosternum (Miranda-Ribeiro 1926) (Anura: Leptodactylidae) in the Caatinga domain, Northeastern Brazil, Neotropical Region

We analyzed a composition diet of Leptodactylus macrosternum from municipality of Milagres, Ceara State, Northeastern Brazil, from September 2011. Coleoptera and Hymenoptera were the most frequence prey. Orthoptera was volumetrically most important. The most important prey categories for L. macrosternum were Insect eggs. The diet of L. macrosternum presents a wide variety of items similar at the prey consumed for others Leptodactylidae species in neotropical region. The results suggest that L. macrosternum have a generalist feeding habitat.
Flying with the Dragon: Estimating Developing Countries’ Gains from China's Imports

As a large trading nation, China competes with importing countries’ domestic and third‐country markets but also creates growth opportunities for exporters. Most studies on China trade shocks or “China shocks” focuse on the impacts of import competition on developed economies. The present paper complements research on China shocks by exploring the other side of the trade exposure to China – China as the largest importer, rather than as an exporter. We analyze the effects of export expansion into China on the local labor markets of the exporting developing countries for the years 1992 to 2018. Using detailed export and employment data, we estimate employment pattern variations in manufacturing industries with exports from other developing countries as instruments for export exposure. We find that the increase in trade exposure to China in the world economy has caused extensive job gains in manufacturing industries in developing countries that were exporters. On average, our estimations show that this trade exposure created approximately 1.5 million additional jobs from 1992 to 2018, which made an important contribution to manufacturing industries in developing countries. Our empirical analysis also shows that trade had stabilizing effects on employment in the countries in our sample generally.
Tungsten Nanoparticles Produced by Magnetron Sputtering Gas Aggregation: Process Characterization and Particle Properties

Tungsten and tungsten nanoparticles are involved in a series of processes, in nanotechnology, metallurgy, and fusion technology. Apart from chemical methods, nanoparticle synthesis by plasma offers advantages as good control of size, shape, and surface chemistry. The plasma methods are also environmentally friendly. In this chapter, we present aspects related to the magnetron sputtering gas aggregation (MSGA) process applied to synthesis of tungsten nanoparticles, with size in the range of tens to hundreds of nanometers. We present the MSGA process and its peculiarities in the case of tungsten nanoparticle synthesis. The properties of the obtained particles with a focus on the influence of the process parameters over the particle production rate, their size, morphology, and structure are discussed. To the end, we emphasize the utility of such particles for assessing the environmental and biological impacts in case of using tungsten as wall material in thermonuclear fusion reactors.
Study of Coagulation Process with Lime in Treatment of Landfill Leachate from Fkih Ben Salah City (Morocco)

The leachates are the seat of complex processes which give them a heterogeneous character. Their compositions vary according to several factors: nature of the waste, conditions of their deposition, climatic conditions, their durations of stay, etc. They contain important quantities of organic, mineral matters even of bacteria, which require their treatment in order to safeguard the environment. To do this, several methods are used, such as membrane techniques (reverse osmosis, nanofiltration, etc.), biological techniques (activated sludge, SBR, etc.) and physicochemical techniques (Coagulation-flocculation, adsorption on activated carbon, etc.). Among these techniques, the leachate treatment by coagulation process with the lime showed interesting reduction of the various pollutants: 92.95% of turbidity, 88.23% of suspended matter, 89.89% of COD, 90.83% of BOD5, 78.39% of Fe, 77.78% of Mo, 38.29% of Cd, 48.75% of Al, 50.24% of S2-, 20.57% of K+, 27.24% of phosphorus and 19.53% of Cl-. Based on these results, the coagulation with the lime reveals interesting because it allows to reduce at a lesser cost the pollutants present in leachates.
Investigation of hepatitis A outbreak in a municipality in Northern Kerala

Hepatitis A is a contagious viral liver disease caused by hepatitis A virus (HAV) that can result in mild to severe illness. The incubation period of hepatitis A is usually 1428 days. Symptoms of hepatitis A range from fever, malaise, loss of appetite, diarrhoea, nausea, abdominal discomfort, dark-coloured urine and jaundice. The peak infectivity occurs during the two weeks before the onset of jaundice or elevation of liver enzyme levels when the concentration of virus in the stool is highest.
The roles of geography and environment in divergence within and between two closely related plant species inhabiting an island‐like habitat

In island‐like habitats, geographic isolation facilitates population and species divergence by constraining gene flow, while environmental isolation can enhance divergence. We tested the relative contribution of geographic and environmental isolation in genetic and phenotypic divergence within and between two species of the figwort Ameroglossum (Scrophulariaceae) inhabiting spatially isolated habitats, known as inselbergs.
Efficient obstacle detection based on prior estimation network and spatially constrained mixture model for unmanned surface vehicles

Recently, spatially constrained mixture model has become the mainstream method for the task of vision‐based obstacle detection in unmanned surface vehicles (USVs), and has shown its potential of modeling the semantic structure of the marine environment. However, the expectation maximization (EM) optimization of this model is quite sensitive to initial values and easily falls into a local optimal solution in the presence of significant rolling and pitching in rough seas. In addition, existing methods based on spatially constrained mixture model are susceptible to false positives in the presence of sun glitter. In this paper, a prior estimation network (PEN) is proposed to improve the mixture model, which together enable reliable monocular obstacle detection for USVs. We develop a weakly supervised E‐step to train the PEN for learning the semantic structure of marine images and estimating initial class priors in obstacle detection. To mitigate the influence of poor initial parameters on the convergence of EM optimization, we use the priors estimated by the PEN to calculate the initial parameters of the mixture model and automatically adjust the hyper priors on the semantic components in the mixture model. The output of the PEN is also applied to set the probability values of the outlier component in the mixture model, aiming to reduce false positives caused by sun glitter. Experimental results show that our approach outperforms the current state‐of‐the‐art monocular method by 15% improvement in sea edge estimation and a 3.3% increase in F‐score on the marine obstacle detection data set, as well as 69.5% improvement in sea edge estimation and a 39.2% increase in F‐score on our data set, while running over 40 fps.
Optimal uniform error estimates for moving least‐squares collocation with application to option pricing under jump‐diffusion processes

In this study, we derive optimal uniform error bounds for moving least‐squares (MLS) mesh‐free point collocation (also called finite point method) when applied to solve second‐order elliptic partial integro‐differential equations (PIDEs). In the special case of elliptic partial differential equations (PDEs), we show that our estimate improves the results of Cheng and Cheng (Appl. Numer. Math. 58 (2008), no. 6, 884–898) both in terms of the used error norm (here the uniform norm and there the discrete vector norm) and the obtained order of convergence. We then present optimal convergence rate estimates for second‐order elliptic PIDEs. We proceed by some numerical experiments dealing with elliptic PDEs that confirm the obtained theoretical results. The article concludes with numerical approximation of the linear parabolic PIDE arising from European option pricing problem under Merton's and Kou's jump‐diffusion models. The presented computational results (including the computation of option Greeks) and comparisons with other competing approaches suggest that the MLS collocation scheme is an efficient and reliable numerical method to solve elliptic and parabolic PIDEs arising from applied areas such as financial engineering.
Pollen analysis of honeys of Melipona (Michmelia) seminigra merrillae and Melipona (Melikerria) interrupta (Hymenoptera: Apidae) bred in Central Amazon, Brazil

Abstract The pollen present in honey in colonies of Melipona seminigra merrillae and Melipona interrupta bred in Manaus was analysed. Between August and October 2012, honey samples were collected from the Sucupira meliponary, located in Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil. We identified a total of 70 pollen types belonging to 35 botanical families. In the samples from Melipona seminigra merrillae, the most represented pollen types were: Miconia-type (Melastomataceae) was the dominant pollen (DP) in August (51.19%), September (76.83%) and October (58.33%); Triplaris-type (Polygonaceae) was an accessory pollen (AP) in August (20.5%); and the remaining pollen types were classified as isolated pollen (IP), with Talisia macrophylla (Sapindaceae) exhibiting the highest percentage in August (12.92%). For Melipona interrupta, the most frequent pollen types were as follows: Miconia-type was the DP in August (59.33%) and October (61.33%) and an AP in September (37.5%); and Triplaris-type was an AP in August (35.83%), September (34.16%) and October (23.33%). The diversity of pollen types was not significantly different between the bees in the months evaluated. However, there was a large significant niche overlap in the months studied, August (Oik = 0.95), October (Oik = 0.89) and September (Oik = 0.69), revealing that of the 70 pollen types found in the samples, 22 were shared by the two bee species in large proportions, 28 were exploited exclusively by Melipona seminigra merrillae and 20 were collected only by Melipona interrupta.
Target-Site Resistance to Glyphosate in Chloris Virgata Biotypes and Alternative Herbicide Options for its Control

Due to the overdependence on glyphosate to manage weeds in fallow conditions, glyphosate resistance has developed in various biotypes of several grass weeds, including Chloris virgata Sw. The first case of glyphosate resistance in C. virgata was found in 2015 in Australia, and since then several cases have been confirmed in several biotypes across Australia. Pot studies were conducted with 10 biotypes of C. virgata to determine glyphosate resistance levels. The biotypes were identified as either susceptible, moderately resistant or highly resistant based on the glyphosate dose required to kill 50% of plants. Two glyphosate-susceptible (GS) and two glyphosate-resistant (GR) biotypes were identified by the dose-response study and analyzed for the presence of target-site mutation in the 5–enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate synthase (EPSPS) gene. Performance of alternative herbicides to glyphosate as well as the double-knock herbicide approach was evaluated on the two GS (Ch and SGM2) and two GR (SGW2 and CP2) biotypes. Three herbicides, clethodim, haloxyfop and paraquat, were found to be effective (100% control) against all four biotypes when applied at the 4–5 leaf stage. All the sequential herbicide treatments, such as glyphosate followed by paraquat and glufosinate-ammonium followed by paraquat, provided 100% control of all four biotypes of C. virgata. This study identified effective herbicide options for the control of GR C. virgata and showed that target-site mutations were involved in the resistance of two biotypes to glyphosate (SGW2 and CP2). Results could aid farmers in selecting herbicides to manage C. virgata in their fields.
Determination of the most economic thickness and energy source in the design of local hemispherical clay pots

There is currently great emphasis on research regarding various aspects of energy sources but the question of optimum usage of the energy is equally important. This work seeks to produce an economic computer-aided design of a fire-clay pot based on conditions that give minimum cost per unit of usage time for the consumer. A percentage of energy loss from the fuel to the environment due to inefficiency of the heating system was incorporated as a variable in the calculations. Graphs are presented to indicate the calculated optimum economic pot thicknesses at various values of the inner radii. For a common inner radius of 6.0 cm and 75% energy loss, the optimum pot thicknesses for cooking at temperatures of 60, 80, and 100°C were found to be 9.6, 12.0, and 13.8 mm, respectively. The results show that the economic thickness increases with increase in both inner radius and cooking temperature. It has also been established that the operational cost increases with increase in temperature even at the optimum economic thickness. This work includes a study of the calorimetric value of the most commonly used types of wood and charcoal fuel, in Zambia, for clay-pot cooking. These types of fuel come from the four trees locally known as the Musamba, Mubanga, Mutondo, and Mutiti. Several wood and charcoal samples from all these trees were collected and experimentally analysed using an oxygen bomb calorimeter to determine the amount of heat energy in Joules which can be realizable per kilogram of the fuel materials. Key words: Calorific value, economic operational cost, computer-aided design.
Social Entrepreneurial Intention and the Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic: A Structural Model

The interest in promoting social entrepreneurship projects lies in their ability to develop innovative solutions to social and environmental problems. This ability becomes even more important in situations of global crises such as that arising from COVID-19. Based on the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), an explanatory structural model of social entrepreneurial intention was tested, and the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on this intention was evaluated. To do this, a quantitative investigation was conducted using a survey of Spanish university students, obtaining a total of 558 responses: 324 before the COVID-19 crisis and 234 during the crisis period (February and June 2020). The results obtained make it possible to validate the explanatory model of social entrepreneurial intention from the perspective of the TPB. In addition, it shows that social entrepreneurial intention decreases in times of deep socioeconomic crises and high uncertainty, such as that caused by COVID-19.
COMPARISON STUDY OF ANTIOXIDANT, ANTIMICROBIAL AND CYTOTOXIC PROPERTIES OF SECONDARY METABOLITE AND PROTEIN EXTRACTS FROM CLINACANTHUS NUTANS

Objective: The present study aims to evaluate the antioxidant, antimicrobial and cytotoxic properties of the secondary metabolites and proteins extracted from Clinacanthus nutans. Methods: Methanol (ME) and acetone (AC) and also protein (PE) extracts were obtained from Clinacanthus nutans. Antioxidant activity of sample extracts was examined by using 1,1-Diphenyl-2-Picrydyl Hydrazyl (DPPH) assay and antimicrobial activity was examined by using the agar diffusion method against Bacillus subtilis, Bacillus cereus, Streptococcus pyrogenes, Escherichia coli, and Pseudomonas aeroginosa bacterial strain. The cytotoxic potential was determined by brine shrimp lethality assay. Results: Methanol extract (ME) demonstrated to have the highest antioxidant activity with IC50 value of 98.84 μg/ml, followed by acetone extract (AE) with IC50 value of 134. 83µg/ml, and protein extract (PE) with IC50 value of 353.49 µg/ml. Among all of the sample extracts, only methanol crude extracts (ME) displayed moderate inhibition against Gram-positive B. cereus (7.33±1.15 mm) and S. pyrogenes (8.67±0.57 mm) at concentration of 100 mg/ml, while both acetone (AE) and protein (PE) extracts had no activity against all tested microorganisms. All extracts from methanol (ME), acetone (AE) and protein (PE) exhibited significant cytotoxic activity against brine shrimps at LC50 7.2 μg/ml, 1.42 μg/ml and 70.6 μg/ml respectively. Conclusion: These data proved that methanol extract from the leaves of Clinacanthus nutans is the most potent among all samples tested and has the potential to be developed as an antioxidant, antimicrobial and cytotoxic agents. Whilst, acetone and protein crude extracts have potent antioxidant and cytotoxicity activities.