Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Antipredator Behaviour Towards Human in Birds of Southern Rajasthan, India

There are many anti-predatory escape strategies in animals. An established method for assessing escape behavior is the flight initiation distance (FID), which is the distance between prey and predator at which an animal flees. The ecological factors affecting avian FID have received much attention over the past few decades, and metaanalysis and comparative analysis have shown that FID is related to body mass and flock size and varies along rural to urban gradients. In our analyses, we determined the relation between FID with two important factor flock size and body mass of birds. Group or herd size can either impact FID negatively (i.e. the dilution effect caused by the presence of many individuals) or positively (i.e. increased alertness as more eyes search for predators).
Range separated functionals in the density functional based tight‐binding method: Formalism

A generalization of the density functional based tight‐binding method (DFTB) for the use with range‐separated exchange‐correlation functionals is presented. It is based on the generalized Kohn–Sham (GKS) formalism and employs the density matrix as basic variable in the expansion of the energy functional, in contrast to the traditional DFTB scheme. The GKS‐TB equations are derived and appropriate integral approximations are discussed in detail. Implementation issues and numerical aspects of the new scheme are also covered.
Nutrition Behavior and Physical Activity of Middle-Aged and Older Adults in Saudi Arabia

As people get older, their nutritional status deteriorates, resulting in increased vulnerability to chronic diseases. The adoption of a healthy lifestyle has been linked to improved health throughout the aging process. The current study aimed to assess nutritional behaviors, dietary patterns, and physical activity among middle-aged and older adults in Saudi Arabia. An electronic questionnaire was completed between September and November 2021 by 419 participants aged 45 years and older. Of those, 65% reported that nutrition was important to them and 19% stated that they were consuming a healthy diet. Participants reported consuming an average of around 6 servings/week each of fruit and vegetables, with mean intake scores of 5.92 ± 0.25 and 5.57 ± 0.22, respectively. It was reported that around 3 servings/week of red meat, 4 servings/week of poultry, and 1 serving/week of fish were consumed, with mean intake scores of 2.65 ± 0.13, 4.34 ± 0.16, and 1.36 ± 0.08, respectively. Most of the participants (60%) reported being inactive. Middle-aged and older adults living in Saudi Arabia have poor dietary patterns and nutritional behaviors. Education and guidance on nutrition are needed for this population to help them improve their diet and lifestyle.
Expression of ICOS in the salivary glands of patients with primary Sjogren's syndrome and its molecular mechanism

The present study aimed to explore latent markers for identifying primary Sjogren's syndrome (pSS), as well as their expression and molecular mechanism. Hub inducible T cell co-stimulator genes were retrieved from the Gene Expression Omnibus. A total of 95 patients with pSS and 68 healthy individuals from Affiliated Hospital of Nantong University (Nantong, China) were included in the study. The expression of inducible T cell co-stimulator (ICOS) in whole blood and saliva was evaluated using ELISA. Western blotting was performed to investigate aquaporin 5 (AQP5) protein expression, as well as the inflammatory effects of ICOS in patients with pSS compared with healthy individuals. Differentially expressed mRNAs were analyzed in whole blood (GSE84844) and salivary gland (GSE40611) of patients with pSS. In total, 15 hub genes were identified, among which ICOS was indicated to serve a role in the most pivotal immunity pathways. pSS was markedly associated with inflammatory pathways. Results from the present study found that ICOS was upregulated in the salivary gland, whole blood and saliva of patients with pSS. Salivary weight was negatively correlated with the levels of ICOS in the saliva of patients with pSS. The expression of AQP5 was markedly lower in patients with pSS. The expression of AQP5 was negatively associated with ICOS. Compared with that of healthy individuals, the expression of ICOS and inflammatory factors was higher and the expression of AQP5 was lower in pSS patients as assessed by western blotting. These data demonstrated that ICOS may affect AQP5 expression by promoting inflammation in the salivary glands of patients with pSS.
Psychotherapy Under Lockdown: The Use and Experience of Teleconsultation by Psychotherapists During the First Wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Background Facing the COVID-19 pandemic, some psychotherapists had to propose remote consultations, i.e., teleconsultation. While some evidence suggests positive outcomes from teleconsultation, professionals still hold negative beliefs towards it. Additionally, no rigorous and integrative practice framework for teleconsultation has yet been developed. This article aims to explore the use and experience of teleconsultation by 1) investigating differences between psychotherapists proposing and not proposing it; 2) evaluating the impact of negative attitudes towards teleconsultation on various variables; 3) determining the perceived detrimental effect of teleconsultation, as opposed to in-person, on the therapeutic relationship and personal experience; and 4) providing insights for the development of a teleconsultation practice framework. Method An online survey was distributed via different professional organisations across several countries to 246 (195 women) French-speaking psychotherapists. Results Psychotherapists who did not propose teleconsultation believed it to be more technically challenging than psychotherapists who proposed it, but felt less constrained to propose it, and had less colleagues offering it. Attitudes towards teleconsultation showed no significant associations with therapeutic relationship, personal experience, and percentage of teleconsultation. As compared to in-person, empathy, congruence, and therapeutic alliance were perceived to significantly deteriorate online, whereas work organisation was perceived to be significantly better. While most psychotherapists proposed remote consultations, they did not provide adaptations to such setting (e.g., ascertaining a neutral video background); nor used videoconferencing platforms meeting privacy and confidentiality criteria. Conclusion Training and evidenced-based information should be urgently provided to practitioners to develop rigorous guidelines and an ethically and legally safe practice framework.
Development and Validation of an Energy Consumption Model for Animal Houses Achieving Precision Livestock Farming

Simple Summary A customized thermal-dynamic model was developed in the present study based on the ISO13790 Standard to predict the energy consumption of poultry houses with indoor environment control. A validation test was performed in a layer house by applying sensors and meters to record the indoor environmental parameters including temperature, relative humidity, gas concentrations and energy consumption. The validation results indicated that the simulated environmental parameters agree well with the measured data showing a similar overall trend with limited discrepancies. Meanwhile, the difference in total energy consumption between the predicted and measured value was only about 10.6%, indicating the model was able to accurately estimate the energy demand during poultry farming. The proposed model enables farmers to quickly check and optimize their management strategies to achieve precision livestock farming from the energy consumption perspective. Abstract Indoor environmental control is usually applied in poultry farming to ensure optimum growth conditions for birds. However, these control methods represent a considerable share of total energy consumption, and the trend of applying new equipment in the future for precision livestock farming would further increase energy demand, resulting in an increase in greenhouse gas emissions and management costs. Therefore, to ensure optimum efficiency of both energy use and livestock productivity, a customized hourly model was developed in the present study to interpret and analyze the electronically collected data. The modules for estimating indoor gas concentrations were incorporated into the present model, as this has not been properly considered in previous studies. A validation test was performed in a manure-belt layer house using sensors and meters to measure the indoor environmental parameters and energy consumption. The predicted results, including indoor temperature, relative humidity, carbon dioxide and ammonia concentrations, showed good agreement with the measured data, indicating a similar overall trend with acceptable discrepancies. Moreover, the corresponding differences between the measured and simulated energy consumption for heating, tunnel ventilation and base ventilation were 13.7, 7.5, and 0.1%, respectively. The total energy demand estimated by the model showed a limited discrepancy of approximately 10.6% compared with that measured in reality. Although human factors, including inspection, cleaning, vaccination, etc., were not included in the model, the validation results still suggested that the customized model was able to accurately predict the indoor environment and overall energy consumption during poultry farming. The validated model provides a tool for poultry producers to optimize production planning and management strategies, increase the production rate of unit energy consumption and achieve precision livestock farming from an energy consumption standpoint.
Distributed Anytime-Feasible Resource Allocation Subject to Heterogeneous Time-Varying Delays

This paper considers distributed allocation strategies, formulated as a distributed sum-preserving (fixed-sum) allocation of resources over a multi-agent network in the presence of heterogeneous arbitrary time-varying delays. We propose a double time-scale scenario for unknown delays and a faster single time-scale scenario for known delays. Further, the links among the nodes are considered subject to certain nonlinearities (e.g, quantization and saturation/clipping). We discuss different models for nonlinearities and how they may affect the convergence, sum-preserving feasibility constraint, and solution optimality over general weight-balanced uniformly strongly connected networks and, further, time-delayed undirected networks. Our proposed scheme works in a variety of applications with general non-quadratic strongly-convex smooth objective functions. The non-quadratic part, for example, can be due to additive convex penalty or barrier functions to address the local box constraints. The network can change over time, is not necessarily connected at all times, but is only assumed to be uniformly-connected. The novelty of this work is to address all-time feasible Laplacian gradient solutions in presence of nonlinearities, switching digraph topology (not necessarily all-time connected), and heterogeneous time-varying delays.
From haloes to Galaxies – I. The dynamics of the gas regulator model and the implied cosmic sSFR history

We explore the basic parameters that drive the evolution of the fundamental properties of star forming galaxies within the gas regulator model, or bathtub-model. We derive the general analytic form of the evolution of the key galaxy properties, i.e. gas mass, star formation rate (SFR), stellar mass, specific SFR, gas fraction, gas phase metallicity and stellar metallicity, without assuming that galaxies live in the equilibrium state. We find that the timescale required to reach equilibrium, tau_eq, which is determined by the product of star-formation efficiency and mass-loading factor, is the central parameter that is essentially in control of the evolution of all key galaxy properties. The scatters in most of the key scaling relations, such as the mass-SFR relation and mass-metallicity relation, are primarily governed by tau_eq. Most strikingly, the predicted sSFR evolution is controlled solely by tau_eq (apart from the cosmic time). Although the precise evolution of the sSFR depends on tau_eq, the sSFR history is largely insensitive to different values of tau_eq. The difference between the minimum and maximum sSFR at any epoch is less than a factor of four. The shape of the predicted sSFR history simply mimics that of the specific mass increase rate of the dark matter halos (sMIR_DM) with the typical value of the sSFR around 2*sMIR_DM, in good agreement with the predictions from typical Semi-Analytic Models (SAMs), but both are fundamentally different from the observed sSFR history. This clearly implies that some key process is missing in both typical SAMs and gas regulator model, and we hint at some possible culprit. We emphasize the critical role of tau_eq in controlling the evolution of the galaxy population, especially for gas rich low mass galaxies that are very unlikely to live around the equilibrium state at any epoch and this has been largely ignored in many similar studies.
Functional Plasmon-Activated Water Increases Akkermansia muciniphila Abundance in Gut Microbiota to Ameliorate Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is associated with dysbiosis and intestinal barrier dysfunction, as indicated by epithelial hyperpermeability and high levels of mucosal-associated bacteria. Changes in gut microbiota may be correlated with IBD pathogenesis. Additionally, microbe-based treatments could mitigate clinical IBD symptoms. Plasmon-activated water (PAW) is known to have an anti-inflammatory potential. In this work, we studied the association between the anti-inflammatory ability of PAW and intestinal microbes, thereby improving IBD treatment. We examined the PAW-induced changes in the colonic immune activity and microbiota of mice by immunohistochemistry and next generation sequencing, determined whether drinking PAW can mitigate IBD induced by 2,4,6-trinitrobenzene sulfonic acid (TNBS) and dysbiosis through mice animal models. The effects of specific probiotic species on mice with TNBS-induced IBD were also investigated. Experimental results indicated that PAW could change the local inflammation in the intestinal microenvironment. Moreover, the abundance of Akkermansia spp. was degraded in the TNBS-treated mice but elevated in the PAW-drinking mice. Daily rectal injection of Akkermansia muciniphila, a potential probiotic species in Akkermansia spp. , also improved the health of the mice. Correspondingly, both PAW consumption and increasing the intestinal abundance of Akkermansia muciniphila can mitigate IBD in mice. These findings indicate that increasing the abundance of Akkermansia muciniphila in the gut through PAW consumption or other methods may mitigate IBD in mice with clinically significant IBD.
Characterization of Divergent Grapevine Badnavirus 1 Isolates Found on Different Fig Species (Ficus spp.)

Fig mosaic disease is spread worldwide and is believed to have a viral etiology. Divergent isolates of grapevine badnavirus 1 (GBV1), named fGBV1, were discovered on Ficus carica, F. palmata, F. virgata, and F. afghanistanica in the fig germplasm collection of the Nikita Botanical Gardens, Russia, expanding the list of viruses infecting this crop. The complete genomes of five fGBV1 isolates from F. carica and F. palmata trees were determined using high-throughput and Sanger sequencing. The genomes comprised 7283 base pairs, contained four overlapping open reading frames, were 99.7 to 99.9% identical to each other, and related to GBV1 (83.2% identity). The reverse transcriptase RNase H genome regions of fGBV1 and GBV1 share 84.6% identity, indicating that fGBV1 is a divergent isolate of GBV1, which was found on the new natural hosts from a different family (Moraceae). Further, fGBV1-specific primers were developed to detect the virus using RT-PCR. Survey of 47 trees, belonging to four fig species and 14 local and introduced F. carica cultivars, showed the high fGBV1 prevalence in the collection (93.6%), including trees with no obvious symptoms of fig mosaic disease.
Is flux rope a necessary condition for the progenitor of coronal mass ejections

A magnetic flux rope structure is believed to exist in most coronal mass ejections (CMEs). However, it has been long debated whether the flux rope exists before eruption or is formed during eruption via magnetic reconnection. The controversy has been continuing because of our lack of routine measurements of the magnetic field in the pre-eruption structure, such as solar filaments. However, recently an indirect method was proposed to infer the magnetic field configuration based on the sign of helicity and the bearing direction of the filament barbs. In this paper, we apply this method to two erupting filament events, one on 2014 September 2 and the other on 2011 March 7, and find that the first filament is supported by a magnetic flux rope and the second filament is supported by a sheared arcade, i.e., the first one is an inverse-polarity filament and the second one is a normal-polarity filament. With the identification of the magnetic configurations in these two filaments, we stress that a flux rope is not a necessary condition for the pre-CME structure.
The effects of first trimester cholesterol levels on pregnancy outcomes

The purpose of this study was to determine whether changes in lipid profile in pregnant women might have any effect on the perinatal outcomes. This retrospective study was conducted between January 2020 and December 2020 by evaluating data drawn from the hospital database. The total serum cholesterol(C), HDL-C, LDL-C, VLDL-C and triglycerides levels were measured in 587 women during the first trimester of pregnancy and confounding factors were analyzed. The mean age was 27 years. The mean gravida and parity were 2 and 1 respectively. The mean birth weight of newborn was 3280 g. The mean Apgar score was 9 at 0 and 5 minutes respectively. The vaginal delivery rate was 68.3% whereas caeserian delivery rate was 31.7%. Neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) was needed in 0.5% of newborns. There was no significant statistical difference between the rates of caeserian section and vaginal delivery in patients with respect to lipid profile levels. The total serum cholesterol(C), triglycerides, LDL-C and VLDL-C levels were significantly higher in mothers of babies hospitalized in NICU.HDL-C level was similar between two groups. Adequate lipid levels in the first trimester of pregnancy are crucial for the health of pregnant women and newborn. High levels of lipids can increase NICU need but not effect way of delivery.
ON THE SCATTER IN THE RADIUS–LUMINOSITY RELATIONSHIP FOR ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI

We investigate and quantify the observed scatter in the empirical relationship between the broad line region size R and the luminosity of the active galactic nucleus, in order to better understand its origin. This study is motivated by the indispensable role of this relationship in the mass estimation of cosmologically distant black holes, but may also be relevant to the recently proposed application of this relationship for measuring cosmic distances. We study six nearby reverberation-mapped active galactic nuclei (AGNs) for which simultaneous UV and optical monitoring data exist. We also examine the long-term optical luminosity variations of the Seyfert 1 galaxy NGC 5548 and employ Monte Carlo simulations to study the effects of the intrinsic variability of individual objects on the scatter in the global relationship for a sample of ∼40 AGNs. We find the scatter in this relationship has a correctable dependence on color. For individual AGNs, the size of the Hβ emitting region has a steeper dependence on the nuclear optical luminosity than on the UV luminosity, which can introduce a scatter of ∼0.08 dex into the global relationship, due the nonlinear relationship between the variations in the ionizing continuum and those in the optical continuum. Also, our analysis highlights the importance of understanding and minimizing the scatter in the relationship traced by the intrinsic variability of individual AGNs since it propagates directly into the global relationship. We find that using the UV luminosity as a substitute for the ionizing luminosity can reduce a sizable fraction of the current observed scatter of ∼0.13 dex.
Six years of XMM-Newton observations of NGC 1313 X-1 and X-2

We present a systematic analysis of the X-ray spectra of NGC 1313 X-1 and NGC 1313 X-2, using six years of XMM-Newton observations (17 observations). We fitted the continuum with a Comptonization model plus a multicolor blackbody disc, that describes the effects of an accretion disc plus an optically thick corona. We checked the consistency of this spectral model on the basis of the variability patterns of its spectral parameters. We found that the two sources show different spectral states. We tentatively interpret the observed behaviour of NGC 1313 X-1 within the framework of super-Eddington accretion and that of NGC 1313 X-2 within the framework of near Eddington accretion. We also attempted to determine the chemical abundances in the local environment of NGC 1313 X-1 and X-2, analyzing the RGS spectra of the longest observation available (122 ks). The results appear to indicate solar metallicity for the local environment of NGC 1313 X-1 and sub-solar metallicity for NGC 1313 X-2 (© 2011 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)
HIGHLY IONIZED PLASMA IN THE HALO OF A LUMINOUS SPIRAL GALAXY NEAR z = 0.225

We present analyses of the physical conditions in the and multiphase absorption systems detected in the ultraviolet Hubble Space Telescope/STIS and FUSE spectra of the quasar H 1821+643 (mV = 14.2, zem = 0.297). Both absorbers are likely associated with the extended halo of a ∼2L*B Sbc-Sc galaxy situated at a projected distance of ∼116 h−171 kpc from the sight line. The z = 0.22496 absorber is detected in C ii, C iii, C iv, O iii, O vi, Si ii, Si iii, and H i (Ly α-Lyθ) at >3σ significance. The components of Si iii and Si ii are narrow with implied temperatures of T ≲ 3 × 104 K. The low and intermediate ions in this absorber are consistent with an origin in a T ∼ 104 K photoionized gas with [Si/H] and [C/H] of ∼−0.6 dex. In contrast, the broader O vi absorption is likely produced in collisionally ionized plasma under nonequilibrium conditions. The system has broad Ly α (BLA) and C iii absorption offset by v = −53 km s−1 from O vi. The H i and C iii line widths for the BLA imply T = 1.1 × 105 K. For non-equilibrium cooling we obtain [C/H] ∼−1.5 dex and N(H) = 3.2 × 1018 cm−2 in the BLA. The O vi, offset from the BLA with no detected H i or C iii, is likely collisionally ionized at T ∼ 3 × 105 K. From the observed multiphase properties and the proximity to a luminous galaxy, we propose that the z = 0.22496 absorber is an extragalactic analog of a highly ionized Galactic HVC, in which the O vi is produced in transition temperature plasma (T ∼ 105 K) at the interface layers between the warm (T < 5 × 104 K) HVC gas phase and the hot (T ≳ 106 K) coronal halo of the galaxy. The z = 0.22638 O vi-BLA absorber could be tracing a cooling condensing fragment in the nearby galaxy's hot gaseous halo.