Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Behavioral Activities of Male Cerulean Warblers in Relation to Habitat Characteristics

Abstract Activities of 29 male Cerulean Warblers (Setophaga cerulea) were quantified on two sites in West Virginia during May–June 2005. Singing and foraging were the most common of 11 observed behavioral activities (81.6%), while maintenance and mating behaviors were uncommonly observed. Male activity differed among vegetative strata (P = 0.02) with lower- and mid-canopy strata used most often (70% of observations), especially for foraging, perching, and preening. The upper-canopy was used primarily for singing, particularly within core areas of territories and in association with canopy gaps. Foraging occurred more than expected outside of core areas. Males were associated with canopy gaps during 30% of observations, but the distribution of behavioral activities was not significantly related (P = 0.06) to gap presence. Males used 23 different tree species for a variety of activities with oaks (Quercus spp.) used most often on the xeric site and black cherry (Prunus serotina) and black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) on the mesic site. Tree species used for singing differed between core and non-core areas (P < 0.0001) but distribution of singing and foraging activity did not differ among tree species (P = 0.13). Cerulean Warblers appear to be flexible in use of tree species. Their use of different canopy strata for different behavioral activities provides an explanation for the affinity this species exhibits for a vertically stratified forest canopy.
Hepatotoxic hyperplasia, cellular degeneration, and biochemical alterations associated with gasoline vapour-induced liver injury in rats

The aim of this study was to assess the biochemical and structural changes associated with exposure to gasoline vapour in rat. Twenty-four female rats were divided into test and control groups. After the exposure period, all animals were sacrificed, blood was obtained for biochemical analysis, and the liver was removed, and processed for histopathological examination. Abnormal liver architecture, liver enzymes, bilirubin, and malondialdehyde were significantly higher while serum protein were significantly lower in the exposed group than in the unexposed group (p < 0.05). Exposure to GV may represent a significant risk factor for a wide spectrum of liver disorders. © 2017 Elixir All rights reserved. Elixir Pollution 104 (2017) 45892-45896 Pollution Available online at www.elixirpublishers. com (Elixir International Journal)
EVALUATION OF THREE SUGARCANE VARIETIES GROWN UNDER DIFFERENT NUMBER OF IRRIGATIONS

The present study was carried out at El-Mattana Agricultural Research Station, (latitude of 25.17 N and longitude 32.33 E), Luxor Governorate, Upper Egypt in 2008/2009 and 2009/2010 growing seasons to evaluate the performance of three sugarcane varieties F. 160, Phil. 8013 and the commercial variety G.T. 54-9) grown under different number of irrigations to obtain maximum cane and sugar yields/Fed. A split-plot experimental design with four replications was used in this work, where the main plots were assigned for number of irrigations, while sugarcane varieties were distributed in the sub-plots. The results showed that increasing the number of irrigations from 14 to 18 and 22 increased considerably stalk height, number of millable canes/m, reducing sugars, cane and sugar yields/Fed. Meanwhile, sucrose, purity and sugar recovery percentages were insignificantly influenced by irrigation number. The tested sugarcane varieties differed significantly in stalk height, number of millable canes/m, reducing sugars, juice purity %, cane and sugar yields. Commercial variety G.T. 54-9 recorded the highest values of stalk height and number of millable canes/m (in both seasons) as well as purity %, cane and sugar yields (in the 2 season). Sugarcane Phil. 8013 variety attained the highest cane and sugar yields, in the 1 season. Sugarcane F. 160 variety had the shortest stalks, the lowest number of millable canes/m, juice purity%, cane and sugar yields, but it recorded the highest reducing sugars %, compared with the other two varieties. It could be concluded that under the conditions of the present work, growing either G.T. 54-9 or Phil.8013 with the application of 22 irrigations can be recommended to obtain the highest cane and sugar yields/fed.
Determining the most efficient method of age determination for estimating the age structure of a fish population

Less precise, but economic methods for estimating the age of individual fish can provide better estimates of age structure than precise, but expensive methods. The benefits of using a precise ageing method can be compromised by its cost, which may restrict the size of the sample aged. If sample size is restricted, the effect of sampling error on an age structure may be greater than the effect of ageing error from a less precise ageing method that does not restrict sample size. We used Monte Carlo simulations to assess the relative size of sampling and ageing errors when estimating the age structure of populations of Pomacentrus moluccensis from the southern Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Sampling error associated with ageing less than 200 individuals was, on average, larger than the effects of most commonly reported ageing errors. Other factors that may complicate this comparison of ageing methods involve the financial cost of different methods and the logistics of sampling more fish.
A Benchmark Study on the Correlation of CAG Trinucleotide Repeat Length with SARA Score, Age of Onset and Disease Duration of Genetically-positive Spinocerebellar Ataxia 2 Filipino Family

Background: Spinocerebellar ataxia 2 is a rare neurodegenerative disease characterized by a complex neurological presentation of ataxia of adult onset with an autosomal dominant inheritance caused by an abnormal expansion of trinucleotide CAG repeat. Objective: The aim of this study is to determine the correlation of CAG trinucleotide repeat length with Scale for assessment and rating of ataxia score, age of onset and disease duration among genetically-positive individuals. Methods: The study involved 10 genetically-positive spinocerebellar ataxia 2 individuals in a Filipino family. CAG trinucleotide repeat length were determined using genetic studies done in Yokohama University. A statistical analysis of the results were performed using Pearson’s and Spearman’s rho correlational coefficient. The statistical significance level was established for p-values < 0.05. Results: Among the 10 individuals, the mean age of disease onset is 46.8 ± 11.7 years, disease duration of 10.2 ± 6.3 years and SARA scores of 15.2 ± 12.5. There is a significant inverse correlation of CAG trinucleotide repeat length and age of onset (Pearson correlation coefficient of r = -0.778 (p-value = 0.008) and Spearman’s rho of -0.932 (p-value < 0.001). Disease duration and SARA scores did not show any significant correlational analysis with CAG trinucleotide repeat lengths. Conclusion: This is the first study on spinocerebellar ataxia 2 in a Filipino family with 10 genetically-confirmed individuals exploring the genotype and phenotype characteristics. The findings of this study confirmed the complex symptomatology of spinocerebellar ataxia 2. Further studies are recommended to further elucidate the diverse involvement of the nervous system to pave way for novel disease-treatment.
Genetic divergence among Nellore breed herds raised in the South Region of Brazil

The objective of this study was to evaluate the genetic divergence among Nellore breed animals raised in 45 farms in the Southern Region of Brazil. The characteristic studied was weaning weight adjusted to 205 days of life (P205), from 10,874 animals sired by 425 bulls and 7,629 cows, collected between 1976 and 2001, and distributed in the states of Rio Grande do Sul (1,499), Santa Catarina (2,332) and Parana (7,043). The animals were distributed by cluster analysis in eight genetic divergent groups, enabling this technique to be applied to organize the matings in order to obtain heterotic effect. The herd/farm groups were formed through the hierarchical Ward method, using the direct (VGD) and maternal (VGM) breeding values predicted by the REML method. The VGD of the animal accounted for 90% of the differences among herds, and the remaining 10% was attributed to differences in the VGM. On average, the P205 for the animals from inter-group mating was 1.4kg higher than those from intra-group mating, representing 2.4% of heterosis.
Morphological colour change in the American lobster (Homarus americanus) in response to background colour and UV light

Abstract American lobster (Homarus americanus) have a thick calcified cuticle, and do not exhibit rapid colour changes characteristic of other crustaceans. Thus, the plasticity of their coloration has been largely overlooked. Colour in lobsters is determined by the amount, location, and form of the carotenoid pigment astaxanthin, and it is possible for lobsters to alter colour by changing one of these characteristics of astaxanthin deposition. Here, short‐term colour variation in American lobster in response to environmental cues (background colour and ultraviolet (UV) light) was investigated in a laboratory experiment. Lobsters were reared in conditions controlling background colour (white, black) and UV light (present, absent). Digital photographic analysis was used to determine how these conditions influenced the luminescence (light or dark) of lobster colour, as well as the ratio of red to blue hues. Of the environmental variables considered within this experiment, UV light was the predominant factor, and caused lobsters to become darker in colour. In the absence of UV light, lobsters matched background colour, and turned darker in response to the darker background. Environmental matching has practical implications both for wild lobsters as they settle to the benthic habitat, and for enhancement programmes, to grow lobsters that are best suited for local habitats.
Ignition of explosive atmospheres by mechanical equipment

Ignition of explosive atmospheres by mechanical equipment is a problem in many industries and has led to a large number of incidents including those that have been classified as Major Accidents with serious effects. The European ATEX Directives (94/9/EC and 1999/92/EC) are designed to improve the control of hazards in explosive atmospheres by a number of means, one of which is the control of all ignition sources, including those from mechanical equipment. This paper discusses the problem of ignition by mechanical equipment and identifies factors that may be of importance in assessing mechanical systems for use in explosive atmospheres. The parameters describing the mechanical generation of heat (power, energy, speed and load) during rubbing, grinding and impact are discussed together with how they might effectively be related to the ignition characteristics of explosive atmospheres. The discussion draws on data and findings from the MECHEX project (EU contract G6RD-CT-2001-00553) to illustrate possible approaches and problems, and where further investigation might be required.
Evidence from Coffee Farmers in Costa Rica

Although field experimental methods are the workhorse of researchers interested in risk preferences, practitioners find surveys easier to implement. This paper compares results from experimental versus survey-based methods to elicit farmers’ risk attitudes, in context-free and context-specific decision settings. We then explore how the different survey estimates of risk preferences relate to real-life farming choices in a population of coffee farmers in Costa Rica. Our results indicate that one should be careful when extrapolating risk attitudes across contexts. Contextualized, survey-based estimates of risk preferences do not correlate with general context-free survey estimates, yet context-free survey estimates do predict risk-taking behavior in a context-free risk experiment. Importantly, context-specific survey estimates are associated with risk-taking in the same agricultural real-life context, while context-free survey estimates are not. Practitioners interested primarily in using risk preferences as inputs into policy design should make sure that preferences are elicited in the specific context targeted by the potential policy instrument.
Depletion of regenerative bud resources during cyclic drought: What are the implications for fire management?

Summary Resprouting is a common regenerative strategy in plant taxa that occurs in fire and drought-prone environments. When plants are forced to use bud resources in quick succession as a result of repeated disturbances, recovery vigour may be diminished. The loss of bud resources through the combined effect of successive fire and drought is likely to be more damaging for plant survival and persistence than one or other disturbance on its own. In this study, we examine the resprouting response of seven trees and two shrubs after fire and drought in woodland communities in the New England and Bioregion of New South Wales. We also investigate whether there is a cumulative impact on plant vitality as a result of the combined disturbances of fire followed by drought. Preliminary results suggest that resprouting after drought occurs from buds located on the same morphological parts of tree and shrub species as after fire, although the response reflects the intensity of impact. Mortality in nine species affected by drought was similar to that in plants affected by both fire and drought. Since a drought between successive fires has the potential to deplete bud resources and debilitate plants, drought should be taken into account when determining fire regimes, and a severe drought between two fires should be considered in a similar way to an unplanned burn. Failure to do so may lead to reduced vigour and excessive mortality in resprouting species after planned fire.
ENHANCEMENT OF TOTAL PHENOLIC, L-DOPA AND PROLINE CONTENTS IN GERMINATING FAVA BEAN (VICIA FABA) IN RESPONSE TO BACTERIAL ELICITORS

Fava beans are important legumes of the Mediterranean diets that potentially contain higher total phenolics and associated antioxidant activity compared to many other legumes. Further, fava beans with high L-dihydroxy phenylalanine (L-DOPA) are known to have anti-Parkinson's effect. In this study, we investigated the stimulation of L-DOPA, total phenolics and related antioxidant activity in dark germinated seeds by food grade elicitors, gellan gum, a polysaccharide from Pseudomonas elodea and xanthangum from Xanthomonas campestris. The objective of this study was to investigate the role of glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PDH), the first rate-limiting enzyme of the pentose phosphate pathway leading to the synthesis of phenolic acid, L-DOPA and the activity of guaiacol peroxidase (GPX). We also investigated the potential link between proline metabolism and G6PDH activity in dark germinated fava bean over a period of 8 days. Total phenolics, L-DOPA, proline and antioxidant activity were determined. L-DOPA was measured spectrophotometrically and by HPLC. Results indicate that gellan gum stimulated a 9-fold increase in total phenolic compared to the control and this may be regulated via the pentose-phosphate pathway. The corresponding L-DOPA and antioxidant activity did not vary significantly between gellan gum and control treatments. The L-DOPA content was higher in the hypocotyl compared to cotyledon. This novel approach to stimulate the levels of phenolic metabolites provides a mechanism to improve their nutraceutical functionality and enhance their potential for the treatment of Parkinson's disease with enhanced phenolic content.
Data augmentation and the role of hardness for feature learning in NLP

Abstract Neural models often exploit features that generalize badly in order to achieve good performance. Overcoming this tendency is a central challenge in areas such as representation learning and ML fairness. We approach this problem, in part, from the perspective of feature hardness and data augmentation. First, we construct a dataset for linguistic acceptability in which multiple, competing features might be used for prediction. We ﬁnd that in this setting, the downstream model ‘prefers’ – to some extent – the feature that is more easily extracted from the pre-trained model. OUr preliminary results suggest that the learning of downstream tasks in natural language processing (NLP) is governed, in part, by the ‘clarity’ with which features are represented by pre-trained models. Second, we introduce a toy setting to probe the eﬀectiveness of data augmentation, a widely-used strategy to prevent models from learning undesirable heuristics. Adversarial or counterfactual data augmentation involves generating training examples where these heuristics fail, in order to encourage the model to use more general features. We show that, often, the added training examples help prevent the model from adopting the targeted heuristic, but do not help it learn more general features. We also ﬁnd in many cases that the number of adversarial examples needed to reach a given error rate is independent of the amount of training data, and that adversarial data augmentation becomes less eﬀective as the number of available heuristics increases and/or as the underlying learning problem becomes more challenging. Finally, we explore several deﬁnitions of feature hardness in the context of the same toy setting, including: (1) the area under the classiﬁcation learning curve, (2) the sum of weights of a classiﬁcation model, (3) the minimum description length given by the probing methods of Voita and Titov [2020], and (4) the number of adversarial counterexamples that are needed to induce a model to learn the feature. We show an correspondence between these deﬁnitions for the features in our toy setting.
GA AND ACO TECHNIQUES FOR THE ANALOG CIRCUITS DESIGN OPTIMIZATION

In this paper we propose a comparison between two population-based metaheuristic techniques, the Genetic Algorithm (GA) and the Ant Colony Optimization (ACO), to make easier the sizing of analog circuits with optimal objective functions. The paper details the corresponding algorithms and highlights the optimal design of a positive second generation current conveyor (CCII+) and an active filter circuit. The computing time and robustness of both algorithms are checked. SPICE simulation is used to validate the obtained sizing/performances
Regeneration cycles of the keystone species Carnegiea gigantea are linked to worldwide volcanism

Abstract Question: We know of no study that has linked volcanic eruptions occurring anywhere worldwide and the local population cycles of any species. The keystone saguaro cactus (Carnegiea gigantea) establishes in cohorts. We test whether there is a statistical relationship between Carnegiea gigantea establishment and volcanic eruptions. Location: Northern Sonoran Desert, Arizona, USA. Methods: We use both a region-wide dataset made up of 30 populations, and a dataset from a marginal site. We incorporate data for over 750 individuals over an area of more than 50 000 km2. We created a 111-year time series of population peaks and troughs and correlated this over the 111-year record with the annual Weighted Historical Dust Veil Index (WHDVI). A t-test compared establishment patterns with the WHDVI. Results: We found a significant relationship between volcanism and C. gigantea regeneration at both the marginal site, and in the region-wide dataset. Conclusions: We suggest that while different populations are influenced by temporary global temperature ameliorations to different extents, our results show that populations do derive significant benefits from volcanic eruptions that promote their regeneration over large portions of their range, as is also exhibited locally at our marginal site, where populations are most susceptible to the inhospitable conditions that are witnessed at the edge of their range. This paper draws a link between the population fluctuations and regeneration of a species locally with geologic events from distant parts of the earth.
Learning to Plan Precise and Task-oriented Grasps for Autonomous Robotic Assembly

Robust, precise, and task-oriented grasp planning is vital for autonomous robotic assembly. It requires reasoning about the object geometry and pre-conditions of a task so as to properly grasp an object and complete the down-stream tasks. However, achieving such grasps is challenging due to the diﬃ-culty in understanding constraints and dynamics during objects interaction, as well as noise in control and unknown object properties. To tackle this problem, we proposed two data-driven, learning-based frameworks to plan precise and task-oriented grasps. Our ﬁrst experiment focuses on planning robotic grasps that are both robust and precise by training two convolutional neural networks - one to predict the robustness of a grasp and another to predict a distribution of post-grasp object displacements. Our networks are trained with depth images in simulation on a dataset of over 1000 industrial parts and were successfully deployed on a real robot without having to be further ﬁne-tuned. The proposed displacement estimator achieves a mean prediction errors of 0 . 68cm and 3 . 42deg on novel objects in real world experiments. Our second experiment further investigates whether a grasp is appropriate to a given downstream task. We propose a method that optimizes for grasp robustness, precision, and task performance all together by learning three cascaded networks. We collect training data based on large-scale self-supervised grasp simulation with procedurally generated objects. We form the training process as a curriculum learning problem, and perform both simulated and real world experiments on two common assembly tasks: inserting gears onto pegs and aligning brackets into corners. Our model achieves 4 . 28mm precision for bracket insertion and 1 . 44mm precision for gear insertion in real world experiments.
THREE STEPS OF HOMOLOGY ASSESSMENT

Abstract — In 1991 de Pinna (Cladistics 7: 367–394) coined the term primary homology as the putative homology statements prior to tree reconstruction. However, some confusion still exists regarding the conjectural nature of homology and to the analysis of DNA sequences. By dividing de Pinna's term primary homology into topographical identity and character state identity, we emphasize the sequential refinement of putative homology statements. We discuss the problem of transformational versus taxic homology and explain the application of our terms to DNA sequence data.