Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparison of Selected Benchmark Testing Methodologies as Predictors of Virginia Standards of Learning Test Scores

This study examined how Math-Curriculum Based Measurement (M-CBM) benchmark assessment scores predict fifth grade math Standards of Learning (SOL) assessment scores. Three school districts participated in the study by providing student data on math benchmark assessments and fifth grade math SOL assessment scores. Scores were organized and analyzed to determine the level of prediction between the two data sets. The results of the study indicated that M-CBM benchmark assessments were good predictors of fifth grade math SOL assessment scores. A second purpose of the study was to measure the differences in the capacity of three different M-CBM benchmark assessments in predicting fifth grade math SOL assessment scores. The three school districts used M-CBM benchmark assessments that varied in the method of creation and the type (commercial, teacher created, released test item) to develop the assessments. The findings show the M-CBM benchmark assessments created by teachers were better predictors of student scores on the fifth grade math SOL assessment followed by released test items and the commercially developed assessments. The third goal of the research study was to determine if there were differences in costs associated with three different M-CBM benchmark assessments. The reported costs for each of the three assessment types were analyzed but the gross cost per student did not accurately reflect the total costs involved in creating, operating, and/or maintaining the M-CBM benchmark assessment systems in any of the three districts. A literature review identified contributions in the field in the areas of assessment, Curriculum Based Measurement (CBM), and predicting student performance. The research design was quantitative and the school district data collected was over the 2009-2010 school year. Recommendation for future research was to focus on the implementation methods and utilization of M-CBM benchmark assessments by teachers to modify instruction. Possible research on how the benchmark data can be utilized or converted into a practical classroom predictor of SOL assessment outcomes was recommended also.
Shifts in gut microbiome across five decades of repeated guppy translocations in Trinidadian streams

An organism's gut microbiome can alter its fitness, yet we do not know how gut microbiomes change as their hosts evolve in the wild. We took advantage of a five-decade ‘chronosequence’ of translocated fish populations to examine associated changes in the gut microbiome. Populations of Trinidadian guppies have displayed parallel phenotypic convergence six times when moved from high predation (HP) to low predation (LP) environments. Across four drainages, we found microbiomes of fish translocated 5–6 years prior to sampling were already distinct from the microbiomes of their HP source populations. Changes in environmental conditions were most important in driving this shift, followed by phenotypic shifts in gut morphology. After 30–60 years in LP environments, microbiome composition was still distinct from native LP populations, but microbiome function was not. We found some evidence that nitrogen fixation enhanced gut nutrient absorption, but most functional shifts were not parallel across drainages. Stream-and drainage-specific signatures were present for both composition and function, despite our overall finding of consistent microbiome change across drainages. As we unravel the complexities of host–microbiome evolution in the wild, studies should consider environmental microbial colonization, host phenotypic plasticity in nature, and more realistic environmental conditions excluded from laboratory studies.
Diurnal dynamics of stress and mood during COVID-19 lockdown: a large multinational ecological momentary assessment study

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in severe disruption to people's lives as governments imposed national ‘lockdowns’. Several large surveys have underlined the detrimental short- and long-term mental health consequences resulting from this disruption, but survey findings are only informative of individuals' retrospectively reported psychological states. Furthermore, knowledge on psychobiological responses to lockdown restrictions is scarce. We used smartphone-based real-time assessments in 731 participants for 7 days and investigated how individuals’ self-reported stress and mood fluctuated diurnally during lockdown in spring 2020. We found that age, gender, financial security, depressive symptoms and trait loneliness modulated the diurnal dynamics of participants' momentary stress and mood. For example, younger and less financially secure individuals showed an attenuated decline in stress as the day progressed, and similarly, more lonely individuals showed a diminished increase in calmness throughout the day. Hair collected from a subsample (n = 140) indicated a decrease in cortisol concentrations following lockdown, but these changes were not related to any of the assessed person-related characteristics. Our findings provide novel insights into the psychobiological impact of lockdown and have implications for how, when and which individuals might benefit most from interventions during psychologically demanding periods.
Not like night and day: the nocturnal letter-winged kite does not differ from diurnal congeners in orbit or endocast morphology

Nocturnal birds display diverse adaptations of the visual system to low-light conditions. The skulls of birds reflect many of these and are used increasingly to infer nocturnality in extinct species. However, it is unclear how reliable such assessments are, particularly in cases of recent evolutionary transitions to nocturnality. Here, we investigate a case of recently evolved nocturnality in the world's only nocturnal hawk, the letter-winged kite Elanus scriptus. We employed phylogenetically informed analyses of orbit, optic foramen and endocast measurements from three-dimensional reconstructions of micro-computed tomography scanned skulls of the letter-winged kite, two congeners, and 13 other accipitrid and falconid raptors. Contrary to earlier suggestions, the letter-winged kite was not unique in any of our metrics. However, all species of Elanus have significantly higher ratios of orbit versus optic foramen diameter, suggesting high visual sensitivity at the expense of acuity. In addition, visual system morphology varies greatly across accipitrid species, likely reflecting hunting styles. Overall, our results suggest that the transition to nocturnality can occur rapidly and without changes to key hard-tissue indicators of vision, but also that hard-tissue anatomy of the visual system may provide a means of inferring a range of raptor behaviours, well beyond nocturnality.
Evaluating how management policies affect red wolf mortality and disappearance

Poaching is the major cause of death for large carnivores in several regions, contributing to their global endangerment. The traditional hypothesis used in wildlife management (killing for tolerance) suggests reducing protections for a species will decrease poaching. However, recent studies suggest reducing protections will instead increase poaching (facilitated illegal killing) and its concealment (facilitated cryptic poaching). Here, we build survival and competing risk models for mortality and disappearances of adult collared red wolves (Canis rufus) released in North Carolina, USA from 1987 to 2020 (n = 526). We evaluated how changes in federal and state policies protecting red wolves influenced the hazard and incidence of mortality and disappearance. We observed substantial increases in the hazard and incidence of red wolf reported poaching, and smaller increases in disappearances, during periods of reduced federal and state protections (including liberalizing hunting of coyotes, C. latrans); white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) and American black bear (Ursus americanus) hunting seasons; and management phases. Observed increases in hazard (85–256%) and incidence of reported poaching (56–243%) support the ‘facilitated illegal killing' hypothesis. We suggest improving protective policies intended to conserve endangered species generally and large carnivores in particular, to mitigate environmental crimes and generally improve the protection of wild animals.
Year-round at-sea movements of fairy prions from southeastern Australia

Effective conservation assessments require detailed information of species' ecological niches during the whole annual cycle. For seabirds, this implies investigating the at-sea distribution and foraging behaviour during both the breeding and non-breeding periods. However, until recently, collecting information about small species has been precluded by the excessive size of the required devices. This lack of knowledge is exacerbated in the case of polytypic genera with species sharing very similar appearance and behaviour, such as the super-abundant prions (Pachyptila spp.). The present study investigates the year-round at-sea distribution and foraging ecology of the fairy prion (Pachyptila turtur) in southeastern Australia. Miniaturized GPS loggers during the breeding season and geolocators (GLS) during the non-breeding period were used over 4 consecutive years (2017–2021), with results that highlight the importance of the continental shelf-edge waters for fairy prions throughout the year. In addition, contrary to previous assumptions, the GLS data revealed an unsuspected post-breeding migration to the waters south of Australia, during which individuals probably undergo a rapid moult of flight feathers. Understanding the at-sea distribution and ecology of prions during the whole annual cycle will be fundamental to their conservation as it can reveal species- or population-specific threats that have been overlooked because of their status as abundant species.
Temperature preferences drive additive biotic homogenization of Orthoptera assemblages

The degradation of natural habitats is causing ongoing homogenization of biological communities and declines in terrestrial insect biodiversity, particularly in agricultural landscapes. Orthoptera are focal species of nature conservation and experienced significant diversity losses over the past decades. However, the causes underlying these changes are not yet fully understood. We analysed changes in Orthoptera assemblages surveyed in 1988, 2004 and 2019 on 198 plots distributed across four major grassland types in Central Europe. We demonstrated compositional differences in Orthoptera assemblages found in wet, dry and mesic grasslands, as well as ruderal habitats decreased, indicating biotic homogenization. However, mean α-diversity of Orthoptera assemblages increased over the study period. We detected increasing numbers of species with preferences for higher temperatures in mesic and wet grasslands. By analysing the temperature, moisture and vegetation preferences of Orthoptera, we found that additive homogenization was driven by a loss of species adapted to extremely dry and nitrogen-poor habitats and a parallel spread of species preferring warmer macroclimates.
The time course of metabolic plasticity and its consequences for growth performance under variable food supply in the northern pike

Many species up- or downregulate their resting metabolic rate (RMR) when they encounter favourable or unfavourable feeding conditions, respectively. This is thought to promote faster growth when food is abundant and conserve energy reserves when food is scarce. The time it takes to express metabolic plasticity remain little studied. Here, we develop a conceptual model showing how rapid or slow metabolic plasticity alter growth trajectories in response to changes in food supply. We test predictions from the model in a food manipulation experiment with young-of-the-year northern pike, Esox lucius, a species that experience drastic changes in food supply in nature. We find that metabolic plasticity is expressed gradually over several weeks in this species. Rapid changes in food supply thus caused apparent trait-environment mismatches that persisted for at least five weeks. Contrary to predictions, pike grew faster at high food levels when they had previously experienced low food levels and downregulated their RMR. This was not owing to increases in food intake but probably reflected that low RMRs increased the energetic scope for growth when feeding conditions improved. This highlights the important but complex effects of metabolic plasticity on growth dynamics under variable resource levels on ecologically relevant time scales.
Elastic anisotropy in the reduced Landau–de Gennes model

We study the effects of elastic anisotropy on Landau–de Gennes critical points, for nematic liquid crystals, on a square domain. The elastic anisotropy is captured by a parameter, L2, and the critical points are described by 3 d.f. We analytically construct a symmetric critical point for all admissible values of L2, which is necessarily globally stable for small domains, i.e. when the square edge length, λ, is small enough. We perform asymptotic analyses and numerical studies to discover at least five classes of these symmetric critical points—the WORS, Ring±, Constant and pWORS solutions, of which the WORS, Ring+ and Constant solutions can be stable. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the novel Constant solution is energetically preferable for large λ and large L2, and prove associated stability results that corroborate the stabilizing effects of L2 for reduced Landau–de Gennes critical points. We complement our analysis with numerically computed bifurcation diagrams for different values of L2, which illustrate the interplay of elastic anisotropy and geometry for nematic solution landscapes, at low temperatures.
Clinical Outcomes of Treated and Untreated C. difficile PCR-Positive/Toxin-Negative Adult Hospitalized Patients: a Quasi-Experimental Noninferiority Study

Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI) is routinely diagnosed by PCR, with or without toxin enzyme immunoassay testing. The role of therapy for positive PCR and negative toxin remains unclear. ABSTRACT Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI) is routinely diagnosed by PCR, with or without toxin enzyme immunoassay testing. The role of therapy for positive PCR and negative toxin remains unclear. The objective of this study was to determine whether clinical outcomes of PCR+/cycle threshold-based toxin (CT-toxin)− individuals vary by result reporting and treatment strategy. We performed a quasiexperimental noninferiority study comparing clinical outcomes of PCR+/CT-toxin− individuals by reporting PCR result only (most patients treated) with reporting CT-toxin result only (most patients untreated) in a single-center, tertiary academic hospital. The primary outcome was symptomatic PCR+/CT-toxin+ conversion at 8 weeks. Secondary outcomes included 7-day diarrhea resolution, hospital length of stay, and 30-day all-cause mortality. A total of 663 PCR+/CT-toxin− test results were analyzed from 632 individuals with a median age of 61 years (interquartile range [IQR], 44 to 72) and 50.4% immunocompromised. Individuals in the preintervention group were more likely to have received CDI therapy than those in the intervention group (91.5 versus 15.1%; P < 0.001). Symptomatic toxin conversion at 8 weeks and hospital length of stay failed to establish the predefined thresholds for noninferiority. Lack of diarrhea resolution at 7 days and 30-day all-cause mortality was similar and established noninferiority (20.0 versus 13.7%; adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 0.57; 90% confidence interval [CI], 0.32 to 1.01; P = 0.1; and 8.6 versus 6.5%; aOR, 0.46; 90% CI, 0.20 to 1.04; P = 0.12). These data support the safety of withholding antibiotics for selected hospitalized individuals with suspected CDI but negative toxin.
Threats to Training: A Survey of Poisoning Attacks and Defenses on Machine Learning Systems

Machine learning (ML) has been universally adopted for automated decisions in a variety of fields, including recognition and classification applications, recommendation systems, natural language processing, and so on. However, in light of high expenses on training data and computing resources, recent years have witnessed a rapid increase in outsourced ML training, either partially or completely, which provides vulnerabilities for adversaries to exploit. A prime threat in training phase is called poisoning attack, where adversaries strive to subvert the behavior of machine learning systems by poisoning training data or other means of interference. Although a growing number of relevant studies have been proposed, the research among poisoning attack is still overly scattered, with each paper focusing on a particular task in a specific domain. In this survey, we summarize and categorize existing attack methods and corresponding defenses, as well as demonstrate compelling application scenarios, thus providing a unified framework to analyze poisoning attacks. Besides, we also discuss the main limitations of current works, along with the corresponding future directions to facilitate further researches. Our ultimate motivation is to provide a comprehensive and self-contained survey of this growing field of research and lay the foundation for a more standardized approach to reproducible studies.
Combustion and flame position impacts on shear layer dynamics in a reacting jet in cross-flow

Abstract This study experimentally investigates reacting jets in cross-flow (RJICF), considering flame/shear layer offset, momentum flux ratio ($J$) and density ratio ($S$) effects. These results demonstrate that non-reacting JICF and RJICF can exhibit very similar or completely different dynamics and controlling physics, depending upon streamwise and radial flame location. Consistent with prior measurements of Getsinger et al. (Exp. Fluids, vol. 53 (3), 2012, pp. 783–801), spatial amplification rates of shear layer vortex (SLV) structures increased with decreasing $S$ for non-reacting cases. Similar $S$ dependencies exist for reacting cases in which the flame lay outside the jet shear layer, whose flow topology is also quite similar to non-reacting cases, albeit with reduced SLV growth rates. However, although the reacting cases have lower growth rates, these SLV structures ultimately reach approximately the same peak strength as in the non-reacting cases. Finally, the SLV decay rate in both non-reacting and reacting cases was found to similarly scale inversely with the initial SLV growth rate. As such, primarily inertial mechanisms govern SLV growth and decay for reacting cases where the flame lies outside the shear layer. In contrast, very different behaviour is exhibited by reacting cases where the flame lies inside the shear layer, where the locally increased viscosity exerts significant influences. In these reacting cases, SLV roll-up is completely suppressed and the entire jet column undulates over a long length scale relative to the jet diameter. As such, the relative roles of inertial and viscous mechanisms in controlling combustion influences on the SLV dynamics, changes markedly with shear layer–flame offset.
Particle radial velocity and concentration kernels estimation in isotropic grid turbulence experiments of inertialess particles at small separation distances

Abstract We report experimental measurements of kinematic and dynamic particle concentration kernels conditioned by the separation distances of solid inertialess particles in isotropic turbulence by three-dimensional particle tracking velocimetry with particle diameters smaller than the Kolmogorov length scale. Particle radial relative velocity statistics are measured from the dissipation to the integral length-scale range. The radial scaling of particle and fluid relative velocity variance $\langle w_r(r)^{2} \rangle \sim r^{2/3}$ in the inertial subrange, consistent with Kolmogorov's theory, is reported, while a new scaling is found for small distances due to finite-size effects between particles. The measured concentration kernels at small separation distances therefore deviate from those in the theory of Saffman & Turner (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 1, 1956, pp. 16–30) at small inter-particle distances due to hydrodynamic interactions. A real kernel taking into account the history of the particle tracks and excluding multiple events is also calculated, while the normalised particle concentration kernels are found to be essentially insensitive to the flow Reynolds number.
Inferring Missing Citations: A Quantitative Multi-Criteria Ranking of all Journals in Economics

This paper presents a novel ranking of economics journals. Our methodology is the following. First, we construct an index to rank the 304 journals recorded in the Thomson Reuters (JCR) database, for which citation counts exist. This index combines (sophisticated) citation indexes, field of specialization normalized indexes, and a h-index based on Google Scholar citations. Moreover this index puts forward journals in economics. Second, we extend this index to the 898 EconLit non JCR journals. We estimate a model in which the index is explained by the score of the journal's authors and its Google Scholar citations. Finally we use the estimated model to predict the value of the index for the non JCR journals. Therefore we obtain a consistent ranking index of all EconLit journals.
Transport and direct radiative forcing of carbonaceous and sulfate aerosols in the GISS GCM

We simulate the major anthropogenic aerosols, sulfate, organic carbon and black carbon, in the Goddard Institute for Space Studies General Circulation Model (GISS GCM), and examine their transport, relative abundances, and direct radiative forcing. Both present-day and projected future emissions are used, as provided by the IPCC SRES (A2) scenarios for 2030 and 2100. We consider the sensitivity of the black carbon distribution to the treatment of its solubility and allow solubility to depend upon exposure to gas phase production of sulfuric acid (case S), or time (case A), or a fixed rate (case C). We show that all three approaches can be tuned to give reasonable agreement with present-day observations. However, case S has higher black carbon in the arctic winter, owing to reduced SO2 oxidation and black carbon solubility. This improves upon the arctic deficiency in previous models, though may be somewhat excessive in this model. We also show that with a different ratio of sulfur/carbonaceous emissions, the case S mechanism can give significantly different results compared to the other mechanisms. Thus, in the 2100 simulation, with reduced sulfur and increased black carbon emissions, the black carbon burden is ∼13% higher and the direct radiative forcing is ∼40% higher in case S compared to the other cases. We consider the relative abundances of carbonaceous and sulfate aerosols in different regions. In the current simulations, carbonaceous aerosols exceed sulfate at the surface in Asia and much of Europe and throughout the column in biomass burning regions. We show that the model ratio of carbonaceous to sulfate aerosols increases with altitude over many oceanic regions, especially in summertime, as was observed during the Tropospheric Aerosol Radiative Forcing Observational Experiment campaign; however, over land and during other seasons the ratio generally decreases with altitude. The (present day) direct radiative forcings for externally mixed (case A) black carbon, organic carbon, and sulfate are calculated to be 0.35, −0.30, and −0.65 W/m2, respectively. In the 2100 simulation these forcings are 0.89, −0.64, and −0.54 W/m2, respectively. The net anthropogenic aerosol global average forcing seasonality inverts between the current and future simulations: the forcing is most negative in (Northern Hemisphere) summertime in 2000 but is least negative or even positive during (NH) summer in 2100; this inversion is more extreme in the Northern Hemisphere.