Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
OCCURRENCE AND VARIATION IN THE DEPTH OF BURROWS OF MANGROVE CRABS AROUND A TROPICAL CREEK IN NIGERIA

Mangrove crabs are active burrowers in intertidal sediments of wetland, living beneath drifts and high-tide marks in lagoon shores in many parts of the world. The occurrence, distribution and burrow depths and diameters of the mangrove crabs, Cardisoma armatum and Goniopsis pelii collected from a mangrove wetland of the Lagos Lagoon were investigated between February and July, 2017. Burrows were counted biweekly on permanent square plots marked out in the six stations, while the appearance of new burrows as well as disappearance of old burrows, depths and diameters were recorded. C. armatum was present in all the study sites with a total of 848 specimens and occurred throughout the study period, while G. pelli with a total of 115 specimens occurred in two study sites and during the wet season only. Species ratio was 1: 0.37 while the Chi- squared value at 1 d.f and 5 % significant level was 557.93. The depth of the crab burrows across the stations ranged from 16.65 – 33.47 cm with diameter ranging between 4.0 – 6.40 cm. Crab burrows, its occurrence and distribution were observed to be affected by natural and anthropogenic factors. There was a rapid decline in burrows in the month of April when rainfall seized and anthropogenic factors like noise, refuse dumping and construction works also played major roles in determining the dispersion of burrows. Therefore, mangrove crabs and their burrows are greatly influenced by both abiotic and biotic factors.
Simulating the Impacts of Irrigation and Dynamic Vegetation Over the North China Plain on Regional Climate

A dynamic irrigation scheme that considers groundwater processes and dynamic vegetation was constructed and incorporated into Noah land surface model with multiparameterization options coupled with the weather research and forecasting model. Multiple experiments (with and without irrigation) were designed to simulate the impacts of irrigation over the North China Plain (NCP) on regional climate. The simulated irrigation rate of the NCP was close to observations, and its interannual variations were clearly associated with dry or wet years. The groundwater table affected by irrigation varied in the NCP irrigated areas during simulation period but declined overall. The irrigation‐induced increases in green vegetation fraction led to increases in transpiration, indicating that the influences of irrigation on latent heat flux should contain the changes of transpiration besides changes of soil evaporation. The modified surface energy budget caused by irrigation affected surface air temperature (SAT), and the spring and summer SAT in the areas with larger irrigation rate decreased significantly by 0.8–1.6 and 1.2–2.6 °C, respectively. The experiment that considered irrigation showed obvious improvement in simulating several key variables (gross primary productivity, green vegetation fraction, sensible heat flux, and summer SAT). In the NCP, irrigation increased water vapor and caused cooling in boundary layer, which had opposing influences on precipitation, resulting in heterogeneous changes in summer precipitation. The changes of precipitation in nonirrigated areas were related to the influences of irrigation on wind fields. The contribution of direct effects of irrigation to blended influences of irrigation and dynamic vegetation on spring (summer) SAT was 70.9% (63.8%).
The Do-All problem with Byzantine processor failures

Do-All is the abstract problem of usingprocessors to cooperatively perform m independent tasks in the presence of failures. This problem and its derivatives have been a centerpiece in the study of trade-offs between efficiency and fault-tolerance in cooperative computing environments. Many algorithms have been developed for Do-All in various models of computation, including messagepassing, partitionable networks, and shared-memory models under a variety of failure models. This work initiates the study of the Do-All problem for synchronous message-passing processors prone toByzantinefailures. In particular, upper and lower bounds are given on the complexity of ∗Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: anto@gsyc.escet. urjc.es(A. Fernández), chryssis@ucy.ac. cy (C. Georgiou), acr@cse.uconn. edu (A. Russell),aas@cse.uconn. edu (A.A. Shvartsman). 1Partially supported by the Spanish MCyT under grant TIC2001-1586-C03-01, the Comunidad de Madrid under grant 07T/0022/2003, and the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos under grant PPR-2003-37. Work done while at the University of Connecticut. 2Work done in part while at the University of Connecticut. 3The work of this author is supported in part by the NSF C AREERAward 0093065 and NSF grants 0220264, 0218443, 0121277, and 0311368. 4Partially supported by the NSF C AREER Award 9984778 and the NSF Grants 9988304, 0121277, and 0311368. 0304-3975/$ see front matter © 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.tcs. 2004.06. 034 434 A. Fernández et al. / Theoretical Computer Science 333 (2005) 433–454 Do-All for several cases: (a) the case where the maximum number of faulty processors f is known a priori, (b) the case where f is not known, (c) the case where a task execution can be verified (without re-executing the task), and (d) the case where task executions cannot be verified. The efficiency of algorithms is evaluated in terms of work andmessage complexities. Thework complexity accounts for all computational steps taken by the processors and themessage complexity accounts for all messages sent by the processors during the computation. The work and messages of a faulty processor are counted only until the processor fails to follow the algorithm. It is shown that in some cases obtaining work (mn) is the best one can do. It is also shown that in certain cases communication cannot help improve work efficiency. © 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
A DYNAMIC MODEL

The paper presents a dynamic model for the analysis of the National Agricultural Research Systems (NARS) strategy. In a context of increasing globalisation, both intersectoral and international technology spill-ins may greatly affect the NARS design, and this paper proposes an analytical framework for its study when major spill-ins are present. These spill-ins are calculated by applying the Yale Technology Concordance (YTC) methodology. A VAR/VEC model is then specified to detect empirically, given the calculated spill-ins, what NARS design prevails in a dynamic framework. The model is estimated for the Italian agriculture data and provides evidence of close dependency on external R&D sources. * I wish to thank Renato Balducci, Pierpaolo Pierani, Franco Sotte and Alessandro Sterlacchini for their useful suggestions.
Transmission pathways of China’s historical climate change impacts based on a food security framework

There are still many uncertainties about how climate change affects the development of human society. The impact of climate change is likely to be weakened or amplified by the response and adaptation of the reciprocal feedback process after entering the socio-economical subsystem. The study of the climate change impact processes is the basis for understanding the mechanisms of climate change impacts. Furthermore, long-term research of climate change impacts can provide historical similarity and experience for current or future adaptation of climate change. Ancient China was traditionally an agricultural country. Its food production safety, food supply safety, and food consumption safety reflect the impacts of climate change being transferred from a production subsystem to a population subsystem to an economic subsystem. Based on a conceptual framework of food security, we selected 10-year resolution sequences of grain harvest grades, famine indices, and economic levels in China over the past 2000 years (206 BC–AD 1911) to quantify and recognize the main transmission pathways of climate change impacts during cold and warm units of climate change. Our results were as follows: (1) according to the transmission relationship climate change → grain harvests → famines → economic levels, there are 16 main transmission pathways, including 10 pathways starting from cold units and 6 pathways starting from warm units. (2) The main pathway is dominated by natural factors and socio-economic factors, with each factor set accounting for approximately 50%. However, the probability of the main pathways with socio-economic influence leading toward negative developments was 60% for cold units, and the probability of the main pathways with socio-economic influence leading toward positive developments was 66.7% for warm units. According to the main pathway led by natural factors, of all transmission pathways in cold units (100%), 14.7% of the depressed economy may be more directly related to climate change. However, 32.3% of the prosperous economy may have a more direct relationship with climate change in warm units (100%). (3) Famine is the most important link in the climate change influence on transmission chains regulated by socio-economic factors. Famine reflects both poor harvests due to the natural production subsystem and a lack of grain allocation by the socio-economic subsystem or the government’s ability to eliminate famine. Thus, there may be another pathway of transmission, such as climate change → agricultural yield/grain production → economic prosperity → famine relief (social vulnerability).
Impact of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic on Obstetric Interventions at a Public Hospital

Introduction: In response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, health systems quickly implemented changes in care delivery with a goal of balancing patient-focused obstetric care with the need to protect pregnant persons and health care providers from infection. Yet, there is no consensus within the scienti ﬁ c community on the impact these measures have on obstetric outcomes in vulnerable populations. We aimed to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on rates of obstetric procedures and severe maternal morbidity (SMM) among births at an urban safety net institution. Methods: We used an interrupted time series design to calculate risk ratios (RRs) and 95% con ﬁ dence intervals (CIs) comparing monthly rates of labor induction, cesarean births (overall and among nulliparous, term, singleton, vertex births), operative vaginal births, and SMM among births occurring at a public hospital before (March 1, 2016, to February 29, 2020) and during (March 1, 2020, to May 31, 2021) the COVID-19 pandemic. Results: There were 10,714 and 2,736 births in the prepandemic and postpandemic periods, respectively. Overall, the rates of obstetric interventions and SMM were constant over the two time periods. There were no signi ﬁ cant differences in rates of labor induction (42% during prepandemic period vs. 45% during pandemic period; RR,1.12; 95% CI, 0.93 – 1.34),
Processus adaptatifs des végétaux marins face au changement climatique à différentes échelles de temps et d'espace : dynamique de populations, métabolomique, écophysiologie et potentiels de valorisation

Trois modeles invasifs a large repartition en Europe, le long d'un gradient latitudinal Norvege-Portugal, ont ete choisis : Sargassum muticum, Codium fragile et Gracilaria vermiculophylla. Cette these a pour objectif l'etude de la phenologie, de l'ecophysiologie et du metabolome de ces macrophytes invasifs face a une variation de facteurs environnementaux 1) a une echelle locale, 2) a l'echelle du gradient latitudinal (en lien avec le changement climatique global) ainsi que l'etude 3) des voies de valorisation possibles des metabolites de stress par bio-inspiration. Le gradient latitudinal, se traduisant par un gradient thermique, permet de mimer le rechauffement climatique car les consequences de ce changement climatique sur les especes en milieu naturel ne sont generalement appreciables qu'a l'echelle de dizaines d'annees. Les suivis de l'ecologie, dumetabolome ainsi que des impacts potentiels de ces especes a une echelle locale en France, a permis d'etudier le developpement et le cycle de vie des especes. En particulier, G. vermiculophylla se caracterise par une phenologie specifique (avec la preponderance de petits fragments vegetatifs, <3cm) en Rade de Brest et par une tolerance accrue a l'envasement jusqu'a 12 cm de profondeur en acclimatant son metabolome tout en maintenant une physiologie dormante. Cette espece ingenieur impacte en profondeur l'ecosysteme vaseux de la Rade. Le suivi le long du gradient latitudinal a permis d'illustrer la plasticite phenologique des especes et notamment un potentiel invasif contraste de C. fragile entre les differentes latitudes. Lors de maree basse de vives eaux, les especes presentent une acclimatation de leur photo-physiologie en fonction de la latitude avec la mise en evidence d'une photoinhibition du PSll, lie au stress engendre par les conditions environnementales.Enfin, ce travail a illustre les proprietes multifonctionnelles d'extraits enrichis en composes phenoliques, presentant des activites antioxydantes mais egalement photoprotectrices ou osteogeniques, soulignant l'emergence de voies de valorisation originales par bio-inspiration pour divers secteurs tels que la cosmetologie et les biomateriaux en sante humaine.
World Journal of Gastroenterology

BACKGROUND Transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt (TIPS) has been extensively used to treat portal hypertension-associated complications, including cirrhosis. The prediction of post-TIPS prognosis is important for cirrhotic patients, as more aggressive liver transplantation is needed when the post-TIPS prognosis is poor. AIM To construct a nutrition-based model that could predict the disease progression of cirrhotic patients after TIPS implantation in a sex-dependent manner.
Consumer Acceptance of Personal Cloud: Integrating Trust and Risk with the Technology Acceptance Model

This paper conducts a conceptual replication of Pavlou (2003) which studied factors that impacted consumer’s behavioral intentions to make online transactions by integrating trust and perceived risk with the technology acceptance model (TAM). We test the generalizability of the model by replicating the study a decade later using a different online setting—personal cloud computing. Our results that are based on 240 observations, confirm the original study’s research model except perceived ease of use lost its direct predictive power to trust, perceived risk and perceived usefulness. Trust continues to be an important factor in perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness and should be an area of focus in online marketing strategies. Perceived usefulness continued to have a significant relationship for consumer’s intentions to use, but perceived ease of use did not affect consumer’s intention to use. Thus, more online businesses should focus on the usefulness of their service(s). Future studies are encouraged to methodologically replicate this study in different contexts and after another period in time to examine whether results hold.
Les peuplements benthiques de l'estuaire de la Loire : distribution spatio-temporelle : reproduction et croissance des bivalves tellinides

L’environnement physique de l'estuaire de la Loire est aussi naturellement complexe que modifie par les pollutions et amenagements. La variabilite de la salinite, la mosaique des sediments, une turbidite accentuee sont les caracteristiques de ce milieu. Les peuplements macrozoobenthiques s'organisent selon le gradient de salinite mais l'oxygene dissous, la teneur en fines du sediment et la matiere organique conditionnent la presence de certaines especes sensibles ainsi que la densite et la diversite des peuplements. Le long du gradient halin, trois communautes, elles-memes parfois divisees en facies, se succedent. Les especes recensees sont peu nombreuses, la diversite reste faible et l'abondance est maximale en milieu limnique. Le suivi sur deux ans d'une radiale coupant le secteur polyhalin a travers une vasiere franche et deux estrans sablo-vaseux, montre l'existence de trois micropeuplements definis par des facteurs abiotiques et microphytobenthiques: matiere organique, microphytobenthos, pourcentage de fines. Les parametres de richesse et structure des peuplements ainsi que l'evolution des especes principales, dans le temps comme dans l'espace, ont complete l'etude. Les facteurs du milieu justifient tres souvent la variabilite spatio-temporelle des abondances et des biomasses tandis que la richesse specifique reste toujours faible. Les peuplements alternent entre les divers stades de maturite, dans un etat neanmoins revelateur d'immaturite. L’ensemble des especes est euryece tolerant mais celles-ci peuvent devenir sensibles ou opportunistes a un facteur particulier. Macoma balthica et Scrobicularia plana montrent aussi une plasticite adaptative aux conditions de l'environnement, mais ce sont les fluctuations des quantites de nourriture disponible et les temperatures hivernales qui sont les plus restrictives pour ces Tellinides.
Biomass and Carbon Stock Assessment in Different Age Group Plantations of Teak (Tectona grandis Linn. F.) in Bhabar and Shivalik Regions of Uttarakhand

1Dept. of Silviculture and Agro-forestry, College of Forestry, Dr. Y. S. Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry, Nauni, Solan, Himachal Pradesh (173 230), India 2College of Forestry, V. C. S. G. Uttarakhand University of Horticulture & Forestry, Bharsar Ranichauri, Tehri-Garhwal, Uttarakhand (246 123), India 3College of Forestry, ACHF, Navsari Agricultural University, Navsari, Gujarat (396 450), India
MEXSVMs : Mid-level Features for Scalable Action Recognition

This paper introduces MEXSVMs, a mid-level representation enabling efficient recognition of actions in videos. The entries in our descriptor are the outputs of several movement classifiers evaluated over spatial-temporal volumes of the image sequence, using space-time interest points as low-level features. Each movement classifier is a simple exemplar-SVM, i.e., an SVM trained using a single positive video and a large number of negative sequences. Our representation offers two main advantages. First, since our mid-level features are learned from individual video exemplars, they require minimal amount of supervision. Second, we show that even simple linear classification models trained on our global video descriptor yield action recognition accuracy comparable to the state-of-theart. Because of the simplicity of linear models, our descriptor can efficiently learn classifiers for a large number of different actions and to recognize actions even in large video databases. Experiments on two of the most challenging action recognition benchmarks demonstrate that our approach achieves accuracy similar to the best known methods while performing 70 times faster than the closest competitor.
The role of damage and recrystallization in the elastic properties of columnar ice

Effects of damage on elastic properties were studied in columnar-grained specimens of freshwater and saline ice, subjected, at –10°C, to varying levels of inelastic strain. The ice was compressed uniaxially at constant strain rates up to 0.20 strain, which caused localized recrystallization and imparted damage in the form of non-propagating cracks. Damage was quantified in terms of dimensionless crack density, which, along with recrystallized area fraction, was determined from thin sections. The change in porosity due to stress-induced cracks served as another indicator of damage. Elastic properties were derived using P-wave and S-wave ultrasonic transmission velocities measured in across-column directions through the damaged ice, either parallel (x1) or perpendicular (x2) to the initial loading direction. In general, as damage increased with greater strain, the ice became more compliant and (particularly freshwater ice) more anisotropic. Furthermore, with increasing strain rate, the magnitude of these effects and crack density tended to increase, in contrast to the recrystallized area fraction, which tended to decrease. We observed compliance to correspond closely with porosity and with dimensionless crack density, for strains up to 0.10. At greater levels of strain these correspondences became less clear due, in part, to the different character of the damage.
Automatic phonetic segmentation using boundary models

This study attempts to improve automatic phonetic segmentation within the HMM framework. Experiments were conducted to investigate the use of phone boundary models, the use of precise phonetic segmentation for training HMMs, and the difference between context-dependent and contextindependent phone models in terms of forced alignment performance. Results show that the combination of special one-state phone boundary models and monophone HMMs can significantly improve forced alignment accuracy. HMM-based forced alignment systems can also benefit from using precise phonetic segmentation for training HMMs. Context-dependent phone models are not better than context-independent models when combined with phone boundary models. The proposed system achieves 93.92% agreement (of phone boundaries) within 20 ms compared to manual segmentation on the TIMIT corpus. This is the best reported result on TIMIT to our knowledge.
BOISE STATE UNIVERSITY GRADUATE COLLEGE DEFENSE COMMITTEE AND FINAL READING APPROVALS

Avian reproductive success depends on favorable nesting environment and physiological conditions. Both external and endogenous factors can contribute to egg loss, chick mortality, or poor parental care that results in nest failure. I examined whether habitat type, habitat quality and individual quality (hereafter quality), or human disturbance affect American Kestrel reproductive success in southwestern Idaho. Specifically, I was interested in how these factors lead to nest failure or abandonment. I also investigated whether elevated corticosterone (CORT) concentrations mediate the relationships among explanatory variables and nest failure. To examine these relationships I monitored 89 nest boxes posted along roads with varying amounts of traffic and surrounding development in Southwest Idaho during the 2008 and 2009 breeding seasons. I captured adult birds during the incubation stages and then followed nest fates by checking the boxes at expected hatch dates, and when nestlings were 10 and 25 days old. Twenty six (36%) of 73 nests failed and most (n = 23, 88%) nests failed during incubation. Human disturbance, but not habitat type or quality measures, was negatively associated with kestrel reproductive success. A disturbance score based on traffic patterns and the distance of the nest from the road best predicted kestrel reproductive success (disturbance: β = -1.08, 95% CI: -1.87 -0.28; distance from road: β