Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Changing Numbers of Three Gull Species in the British Isles

Abstract. Between-population variation of changes in numbers can provide insights into factors influencing variation in demography and how population size or density is regulated. Here, spatio-temporal patterns of population change of Herring Gull (Larus argentatus), Lesser Black-backed Gull (L. fuscus) and Great Black-backed Gull (L. marinus) in the British Isles are described. The aim of this study was to test for density-dependence and spatial variation in population trends as two possible, but not mutually exclusive, explanations of population changes with important implications for the understanding of these changes. Between 1969 and 2013, the three species showed different population trends with Herring Gulls showing a strong decline, Lesser Black-backed Gulls an increase until 2000 but then a decline since, and Great Black-backed Gulls showing no clear pattern. Population changes in Herring Gulls varied between different regions of the British Isles with decreases in the northern and western parts of the British Isles and no clear trends elsewhere. Population changes were density-dependent in the Herring Gull, and Lesser Black-backed Gulls showed faster population increases at lower Herring Gull densities. Herring Gulls seemed to seek refuge in urban environments, whereas Lesser Black-backed Gulls expanded their range into the urban environment. The large declines in hitherto abundant species create a dilemma for conservation bodies in prioritizing conservation policies. The spatial variation in population changes and the differences between species suggest that there is no single cause for the observed changes, thus requiring region and species-specific conservation management strategies.
Observations of multiple pelagic egg masses from small-sized jumbo squid (Dosidicus gigas) in the Gulf of California

ABSTRACT Egg masses of ommastrephid squids are rarely found and not well studied. For the Humboldt squid, Dosidicus gigas, only a single egg mass has been scientifically documented in the wild. Little is known about the size and spatial or temporal distribution of egg masses, or the number of eggs they contain. In this study, we report observations of six egg masses laid in the Gulf of California in May 2015. Egg mass diameters were two to four times smaller in this study compared with the previously observed mass reported in 2008, consistent with the small and large sizes, respectively, of mature female squid captured during each study. Each egg mass contained 17,000–90,000 embryos, one to two orders of magnitude lower than that estimated for the large egg mass previously observed. Egg masses were observed at 9–14 m depth on or near a thermocline. Developmental stages of embryos and paralarvae differed between egg masses. No egg masses were observed in the 13 dives before or the four dives after these masses were found, suggesting that female spawning activity is probably spatially, or perhaps temporally, patchy. Developmental heterochronies in chromatophore development between D. gigas and other ommastrephid squids are discussed. Amphipods and ciliates infested the majority of masses, which is the first documented case of biota associated with wild ommastrephid egg masses.
INDIAN HERBAL MEDICINE AS HEPATOPROTECTIVE AND HEPATOCURATIVE: A REVIEW OF SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE

The use of plants, or their primary and secondary metabolites for curing human and/ animal diseases has long being in existence in India from the ancient times. Liver injury treatments are among the most important of today’s research domains, because with every passing year there is a more acute need for liver transplants. At modern time human beings have taken many allopathic drugs, toxic influence and food hazards which lead to some form of liver disorder. That is why today’s attention is drawn to the potentials of a few miracle plants that have the ability to reduce or cure liver damage. As many as 792 species belonging to 533 genera under 156 families have been recorded in the present database on hepatoprotective and hepatocurative plants of India. Of these, category-wise statistics reveals that 1 species of the genus Parmelia belongs to lichens; 16 species of 10 genera to Pteridophytes; 6 species of 5 genera to Gymnosperms and 769 species to angiosperms of which 99 species of 69 genera are monocots and the remaining 670 species under 448 genera to 122 dicotylednous families. Their properties are used in many liver disorders, and in the recent studies they are tested for their microbiological and hepatic curative actions.
iCache: An Importance-Sampling-Informed Cache for Accelerating I/O-Bound DNN Model Training

Fetching a large amount of DNN training data from storage systems incurs long I/O latency and fetch stalls of GPUs. Importance sampling in DNN training can reduce the amount of data computing on GPUs while maintaining a similar model accuracy. However, existing DNN training frameworks do not have a cache layer that reduces the number of data fetches and manages cached items according to sample importance, resulting in unnecessary data fetches, poor cache hit ratios, and random I/Os when importance sampling is used.In this paper, we design a new importance-sampling-informed cache, namely, iCache, to accelerate I/O bound DNN training jobs. iCache only fetches parts of samples instead of all samples in the dataset. The cache is partitioned into two regions: H-cache and L-cache, which store samples of high importance and low importance respectively. Rather than using recency or frequency, we manage data items in H-cache according to their corresponding sample importance. When there is a cache miss in L-cache, we use sample substitutability and dynamic packaging to improve the cache hit ratio and reduce the number of random I/Os. When multiple concurrent jobs access the same datasets in H-cache, we design a model to assign the relative importance values to cached samples to avoid cache thrashing, which may happen when there is no coordination among the concurrent training jobs. Our experimental results show that iCache has a negligible impact on training accuracy and speeds up the DNN training time by up to 2.0× compared to the state-of-the-art caching systems.
Structure and productivity of a 20-year-old stand of Rhizophora apiculata Bl. Mangrove forest

Mangroves are dominant interface ecosystems be- tween the land and the sea in the tropics, and are of import- ance in the economy of many of these regions in terms of mangrove-linked fisheries and forestry. Recently, mangroves have been of particular interest in relation to global change both because of the possible high carbon sequestration as well as being in the 'forefront' of any sea-level change, because of their location. To understand the impact of global change on these ecosystems (considered terrestrial and aquatic at the same time) and vice versa, it is necessary to obtain 'a more comprehensive and realistic picture of the terrestrial carbon cycle', which is one of the aims of the GCTE Programme. We therefore present here some of the results of our long-term study (started in the mid-1970s) on the carbon and nutrient budget of a mangrove ecosystem as a basis for further studies, including the proposed large-scale biogeochemical transects and climate models proposed by GCTE. The tree density of the 20 m X 40 m plot in the 20-year-old stand was equivalent to 2425 stems per hectare (1975 live trees per hectare). Size (girth at breast height) of Rhizophora apiculata trees ranged from 9 to 75.5 cm with a mean at 39 cm. The smallest live tree weighed 10 kg and the biggest weighed 510 kg with a mean biomass of 122 kg. About 70% of the trees were below 100 kg but the 30% of the bigger trees contributed to slightly more than half of the total biomass of the plot. The canopy had an average height of 21 m. The total standing biomass was 114 t C ha- 1; 74% of the biomass was
The Role of Different Daily Irradiations on Shoot Growth and Root/Shoot Ratio in Lucerne (Medicago sativa L.)

The effect of two levels of daily irradiation on shoot growth and root/shoot partitioning was investigated on two lucerne varieties (Medicago sativa L.). Individual plants were studied under constant temperature and optimal water and mineral nutrition conditions. For both lucerne varieties, daily irradiation did not change biomass partitioning between shoots and roots. It can be shown that leaf area expansion occurs independently of daily irradiation and that the process of shoot dry matter production is strictly proportional to daily irradiation, since the ratio leaf area/shoot dry matter is inversely proportional to it. From a model of shoot production of the isolated plant, we show that the relative shoot specific activity is not affected by daily irradiation. A simple model of partitioning leads us to determine why partitioning remains the same for the two levels of daily irradiation. Finally, the allocation between shoot and root turns out to be independent of the main stem extension rate, which is faster at the higher daily irradiation.
Corneal dystrophy in Fischer 344 rats.

: A spontaneous degenerative lesion of the cornea resembling calcific band keratopathy in man has been observed in 10-15% of the F-344 rats (aged 35-300 days) purchased from a private vendor's closed breeding colony. The lesion appears clinically as punctuate to linear superficial corneal opacities located in the interpalpebral fissure of one or both eyes. Occasional roughening, bleb formation, or pitting of the corneal surface resembling superficial ulcers may be observed. The lesion occurs in both sexes. It is rarely associated with inflammation or irritation. Histologically, it consists of mineral deposits along the epithelial basement membrane and Bowman's space, some of which are large enough to disrupt or destroy portions of the basilar epithelium. Energy dispersive X-ray analysis of the deposits proved them to be composed of calcium and phosphorus. Electron microscopic examination revealed a variety of extracellular laminated and crystalline arrays similar to those seen in humans with band keratopathy. The etiology of the lesion is as yet undetermined. A genetic-associated susceptibility due to hypercalcemia may be involved.
Between- and within-individual variation in activity increases with water temperature in wild perch

In contrast to a growing interest in the ecological implications of consistent individual differences in behavior, it is still unclear how consistent those differences are across environmental gradients, especially under ecologically relevant contexts and timescales. We investigated how individual variation in swimming activity of Eurasian perch (Perca fluviatilis) changes in response to natural fluctuations of water temperature as a proxy for an ecological gradient for ectothermic animals. Using an automated acoustic telemetry system, we tracked individual positions of adult perch in a whole natural lake for about 1 year and compared several model frameworks for the individual responses to water temperature. The best-fit model revealed that rising water temperature led to an increase in both betweenand within-individual variation in activity, thereby stabilizing behavioral repeatability across temperature. Further, including temporal autocorrelation significantly improved the model performance, suggesting that consistent individual differences in behavior could be partially explained by factors such as slowly changing states in the wild. By using ecologically relevant data, our results revealed complex patterns of behavioral variation in response to an environmental change represented by water temperature.
Factors affecting compensation in intercropping when one component fails

Compensation in intercropping was examined in a field experiment at Norwich, U.K., by simulating failure of one component at different stages of growth. All two-crop combinations of mustard, oat, and bean were examined in comparison with their sole crops. In the absence of failure, only the oat-bean combination gave an advantage over sole cropping (LER = 1.39). For all combinations, if failure of either component occurred at the early or medium stages of growth, or if the less competitive component failed late, the surviving component compensated and intercropping was higher yielding than sole cropping. However, if the more competitive component failed late, the suppressed surviving component was unable to compensate sufficiently and sole cropping was higher yielding. Compensation was dependent on the nature of the surviving component but was not simply a reflection of its competitive ability in the absence of failure.
Species richness in restinga vegetation on the eastern Maranhão State, Northeastern Brazil

The State of Maranhao comprises the second largest coastline in Brazil. Nonetheless, few floristic surveys on restinga vegetation have been performed in Northeastern Brazil. This study aimed to survey floristic in a restinga of Maranhao, and to assess its similarity to other restingas in the states of Para and Piaui. Botanical specimens were sampled at Sitio Aguahy, in the municipality of Sao Jose de Ribamar, along the eastern coast of Maranhao between June/2012 and October/2013. Species identification and life forms classification followed the usual methods employed in floristic studies. Similarities in plant composition of six sites were estimated based on cluster analysis through Bray-Curtis distance. In the studied area, we found 116 phanerogamic species, 100 genera and 52 families; 19 species were new occurrences for the restinga of Maranhao. Families with largest number of species were Fabaceae, Cyperaceae, Rubiaceae, Poaceae, Myrtaceae, Asteraceae, Malvaceae, Combretaceae, and Eriocaulaceae, which comprised 49.2% of all sampled species. We identified 41 nanophanerophytes, 34 terophytes, 15 camephytes, ten microphanerophytes, six hemicryptophytes, and five lianas. Similarity analyses indicated greater affinity between the restinga flora from the states of Maranhao and Para than that observed for the states of Maranhao and Piaui, suggesting that the process of species colonization in the former is more likely derived from the Amazon Forest. It is expected that these results may encourage future researchers to conduct further surveys in restinga areas of the Maranhao aiming to better understand the influence of neighboring vegetation on the colonization of the coastal areas of Maranhao.
Phylogeography of Quercus aquifolioides provides novel insights into the Neogene history of a major global hotspot of plant diversity in south‐west China

Hotspots of biodiversity are often associated with areas that have undergone orogenic activity during recent geological history. Mountain uplifts are known to catalyse species radiation but their impact on evolutionarily stable taxa such as many trees remains little understood. The oak Quercus aquifolioides is endemic to yet widely distributed across the Hengduanshan Biodiversity Hotspot in the Eastern Himalayas. Here, we investigate how the region's Neogene and Quaternary history has driven the species' past population dynamics and the resulting extant patterns of intraspecific diversity.
8.4 An 83.3-to-104.7GHz Harmonic-Extraction VCO Incorporating Multi-Resonance, Multi-Core, and Multi-Mode (3M) Techniques Achieving -124dBc/Hz Absolute PN and 190.7dBc/Hz $\text{FoM}_{\mathrm{T}}$

The W-band offers a rich spectrum resource for thriving industries, such as automotive radar and satellite communications. Yet, developing a W-band voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) simultaneously featuring a wide tuning range (TR) and low absolute phase noise (PN) is still challenging. The degraded quality factor (Q) of the switched-capacitor array (SCA) tightens the trade-off between TR and absolute PN at W-band oscillation frequency $(\mathrm{F}_{\text{OSC}})$. The multi-resonant VCO [1] alleviates such trade-off by the 3rd harmonic extraction. This act lowers $\mathrm{F}_{\text{OSC}}$ by 3×, and the created harmonic resonances can reshape the impulse sensitivity function (ISF), suppressing the circuit noise to PN upconversion. Yet, a single-core VCO has limited output power, and the achievable Q of the SCA under a single mode is low; both limit the improved absolute PN. Alternatively, the electrical-and-magnetic-coupling VCO in [2] nets 4 cores together and extends the number of modes from 2 to 4. Compared to every single core, the PN reduces by -6dB with the TR boosted by $\sim 4\times$. Yet, the magnetic coupling between different cores hinders the usage of the multi-resonant tank in every single core for further PN improvement. The near-sinusoidal waveform is also suboptimal for harmonic extraction. For the VCO in [3] that realizes the coupling of 4 multi-resonant cores, there is only 1 operating mode. In summary, prior works did not explore concurrently a multi-resonant tank, the multi-mode, and the multi-core.
Embedding social graphs from multiple national settings in common empirical opinion spaces

Ideological scaling is an ubiquitous tool for inferring political opinions of users in social networks, allowing to position a large number of users in left-right or liberal-conservative scales. More recent methods address the need, highlighted by social science research, to infer positions in additional social dimensions. These dimensions allow for the analysis of emerging divisions such as anti-elite sentiment, or attitudes towards globalization, among others. These methods propose to embed social networks in multi-dimensional attitudinal spaces, where dimensions stand as indicators of positive or negative attitudes towards several and separate issues of public debate. So far, these methods have been validated in the context of individual national settings. In this article we propose a method to embed a large number of social media users in multi-dimensional attitudinal spaces that are common to several countries, allowing for large-scale comparative studies. Additionally, we propose novel statistical benchmark validations that show the accuracy of the estimated positions. We illustrate our method on Twitter friendship networks in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain.
Integrated weed management under modified water regimes in System of Rice Intensification

A field study was conducted at Chiplima and Sambalpur under West Central Table Land Zone of Odisha during the winter (Rabi) seasons of 2013 and 2014 to evaluate different integrated weed management practices under modified water regimes in rice grown under System of Rice Intensification. Application of 5 cm depth of irrigation water before the day of weeding operation was effective in increasing yield significantly (4.72 t/ha) over saturation moisture regime (3.48 t/ha) due to low weed density, weed dry weight and highest number of ear bearing tillers per plant (24) and filled grains/panicle (72). Out of four levels of different weed management systems tested, the application of pretilachlor 750 g/ha (pre-emergence) fb chlorimuron-ethyl + metsulfuron-methyl 4 g/ha (post-emergence) recorded minimum weed density and weed dry weight, higher weed control efficiency and significantly higher grain yield of 5.45 t/ha. The same treatment also recorded highest net return (41, 441/ha) and highest B: C ratio (2.17).
Abundance and community composition of ammonia oxidizers in rhizosphere sediment of two submerged macrophytes

ABSTRACT Ammonium oxidation is both the first and a rate-limiting step in the nitrification process that can be catalysed by ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) or ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB). In this study, the abundance and community composition of AOA and AOB in the rhizosphere sediments of two submerged macrophytes (Ceratophyllum demersum and Potamogeton malainus) were investigated. Physicochemical parameters, including pH, total nitrogen, total phosphorus, ammonia nitrogen, nitrate and organic matter, were measured. The number of copies of both the archaeal and bacterial amoA gene was quantified by real-time PCR and clone libraries were constructed for both AOA and AOB. The abundance of archaeal amoA gene ranged from 3.83 × 106 to 4.23 × 106 copies per gram of dry sediment and no significant difference was found among the three treatment groups (one control group and two submerged macrophyte groups). The abundance of bacterial amoA gene ranged from 2.68 × 106 to 8.05 × 107 copies per gram of dry sediment. Bulk sediment maintained significantly higher copy numbers of bacterial amoA gene than those of C. demersum rhizosphere sediment. The diversity of archaeal amoA gene was higher in the rhizosphere sediment of C. demersum; however, the diversity of bacterial amoA gene was relatively lower in rhizosphere sediment of both macrophytes.
Pesticide drift from aircraft applications with conical nozzles and electrostatic system

Despite all advances obtained with the pesticide use worldwide and in Brazilian agriculture, there is still a lack of technologies for agricultural aircrafts. The objective of this study was to evaluate the drift produced by the use of conical nozzles and electrostatic system in aircraft application. The experimental design was completely randomized with a factorial arrangement and four replications. Treatments included two spraying equipment: electrostatic system with 5L ha-1 of spray volume and conical nozzle with 15 and 20L ha-1. In all treatments, azoxystrobin fungicide was used at a dose of 100g a.i. ha-1 and paraffinic mineral oil at a dose of 0.5% v.v. Volume median diameter (VMD) and droplet density were estimated using water sensitive paper. Evaluations of drift distance were performed with glass collectors distributed horizontally on the soil surface, 50m before the application band, at the application site and 12,5, 25, 50, 75, 100, 150, 200 and 300m after the application site, along the wind direction. Azoxystrobin concentration in glasses were quantified by UHPLC-MS/MS. Results indicated that the drift distance can reach more than 300 meters away from the application site, with variable concentrations according to the equipment used. Electrostatic system reduced drift when compared to hydraulic conical nozzles.
Processing and preservation of jack fruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus L.) bar (Thandra)

Jack fruit thandra (Bar) was prepared as per FPO specifications using two varieties of jack fruits and packed in butter paper (BP), polypropylene pouches (PP) and metallised polyester low density polyethylene laminate pouches (MPP) and stored at room temperature (30 - 36°C) for 6 months. The storage stability, microbiological and sensory changes were evaluated periodically during storage. The bar samples stored in MPP recorded higher percentage of nutrient retention and minimum microbial count than the samples in BP and PP at the end of 180 days. A reduction in vitamin C, β-carotene and total sugar contents were observed in the samples irrespective of the packaging materials. The sensory evaluation score values of the bar in MPP were found to be higher than by the samples in PP and BP in that order. Du Thandra de jaque, produit a base de fruit de Artocarpus heterophyllus, est prepare a partir de 2 varietes de fruits, emballe dans un papier a beurre (BP), un emballage en polpypropylene (PP) et un emballage lamine de polyester metallise/polyethylene basse densite (MPP) et entrepose a temperature ambiante pendant 6 mois (30-36°C). Les echantillons conserves dans le MPP montrent la meilleure retention des nutriments, le denombrement microbiologique le plus faible et les scores sensoriels les plus eleves.