Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Enhanced Localization and Classification of Coral Reef Structures and Compositions

The automatic annotation of coral images is important for researching the underwater ecosystem, which is the focus of the Image-CLEFcoral task. We participated by reﬁning our approaches from the last years challenge for localization and classiﬁcation of corals within images of sea ﬂoor. Underwater images bear multiple diﬃculties which we tackle with applying image enhancement algorithms. To locate and classify the corals we applied multiple deep learning approaches and also revisioned our two-staged algorithm. The results show that deep learning approaches are the most convincing. Still, the localization of corals is the most challenging part for us, but we managed to increase our models performance signiﬁcantly.
A COMPARISON OF THE APPLICATIONS OF TODIM AND THOR TO AN IMPORTANT ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEM

This paper presents the application of two discrete multicriteria methods TODIM and THOR to an important environmental problem. In the case study reported in this paper three major water treatment (ballast water) technologies have been evaluated. Those were indeed evaluated separately both by TODIM and THOR according to five major criteria: practicability; biological effectiveness; cost/benefit ratio; time frame within which standards could be implemented; and environmental impact of the process' sub-products. While TODIM has elements both from the American and the French School of MCDA, THOR relies on the treatment of imprecision within the context of French School methods. After structuring the problem in a clear way and consulting different experts, the two separate applications of both TODIM and THOR were performed. The conclusion was that these two methods, although conceptually and analytically quite different, lead to practically the same results. Key-words: Maritime transportation, Multicriteria decisions, Prospect theory Resumo Este artigo apresenta a aplicação de dois métodos discretos de apoio multicritério à decisão, TODIM e THOR, a um importante problema ambiental. No estudo de caso aqui relatado avaliam-se três principais tecnologias para tratamento da água de lastro. Fazem-se as avaliações separadamente segundo os critérios de praticidade, eficácia biológica, quociente beneficio/custo, horizonte de tempo para implantação de padrões necessários e impacto ambiental dos subprodutos de cada processo. Enquanto o método TODIM possui, em sua formulação analítica, tanto elementos da escola norte-americana como da escola francesa, o sistema, THOR calca-se na abordagem da imprecisão por meio das teorias de conjuntos nebulosos ou aproximativos, no contexto dos métodos da escola francesa. Após estruturar-se o problema de avaliação multicritério e de consultar-se diferentes expecialistas, efetuam-se as aplicações dos dois métodos. A conclusão essencial é que ambos, embora fundamentados em bases conceituais e analíticas distintas, conduzem a praticamente os mesmos resultados. Palavras-chave: Transporte marítimo, Decisões multicritério, Teoria dos prospectos
WELDABILITY STUDIES OF 18 mm THICK AISI 409 FERRITIC STEEL PLATE USING ELECTRON BEAM WELDING PROCESS

Ferritic stainless steel is admired for its corrosion resistance property in chloride atmosphere, and low cost. It is designed as an alternative to carbon steel, and in some applications it has also replaced austenitic stainless steel. Despite its appreciating mechanical properties, it suffers from drawback of low weldability which constraint its utilization. High grain growth is observed at heat affected zone and fusion zone during welding. This degrades its mechanical and microstructural properties. Further, welding of plate above 8mm thickness, with conventional welding process, exhibits high deterioration of properties which restrict the thickness of plate to be welded. In the present research, attempts have been made to weld 18mm thick AISI 409 ferritic steel plate in a single pass weld. Electron beam welding process was used to prepare the joint. The joint was investigated for macro-structural, micro-structural, micro-hardness, impact toughness and tensile strength. The coarse ferrite grains of base metal were converted into fine equiaxed columnar grains in the weld zone. The results revealed higher tensile strength, yield strength and micro-hardness values of weld joint than the base metal. The weld joint properties improved after subjecting to post weld heat treatment at 550oC for 75 minutes.
Effective Exponential-Size Integer Programming Models for Bioinformatics Problems

Over the past two decades, the field of bioinformatics (oftentimes also referred to as Computational Biology) has experienced a tremendous growth. Computational biology problems are mostly concerned with the interpretation and analysis of (possibly large volumes of) genomic data. More precisely, the simulation of some biological processes in the cell, as well as the discovery of important signals in genomic data, or even the detection and removal of experimental errors, are cast as computational problems over some suitable mathematical models. Once the genomic data have been translated into mathematical objects (e.g., graphs, strings, permutations, etc.) the original biology questions become computational problems, to be solved by standard techniques. Moreover, most of the times, these problems turn out to be very hard optimization problems, whose hardness not only stems from their theoretical complexity but also from the large size of the instances of interest in real-life bioinformatics applications. The availability of genomic data has increased at almost exponential rate over the past thirty years (although, recently, this increase has been slowing down). For example, the EMBL repository for nucleotide sequences has increased from roughly 1,000 entries of 1982 to about 100,000,000 of today [41]. Notice that each entry itself is a sequence that can range from a few hundred to several hundred thousand of nucleotides. Similarly, the PDB [10] (the main data bank for 3D protein structures) has grown from 100 to almost 100,000 entries, where each entry is the 3D representation of a protein which can contain several thousands amino acids. This increase in both volume and size of genomic data has posed new challenging problems which require sophisticated lines of attack. Without any doubts, mathematical programming techniques rank amongst the most powerful approaches for hard optimization problems [52, 58, 28], and hence
Restarting Sub-Saharan Africa ’ s Growth Engine

After nearly two decades of strong growth, average economic activity in sub-Saharan Africa has decelerated sharply, against the backdrop of lower commodity prices, a less-supportive global environment, and, in the hardest-hit countries, a delayed policy response (Chapter 1). However, the full picture is more complex, with considerable heterogeneity across countries. Against this backdrop, two related questions arise: How can growth be revived in the hardest-hit countries? And for countries that are still growing fast, how can growth be sustained?
COMPARING THE PHOSPHORUS REGIMES IN SOFT SEDIMENTS FROM TWO SUB-SYSTEMS OF THE BALTIC SEA WITH DIFFERENT REDOX CONDITIONS

The role of sediments in the phosphorus (P) dynamics of the Baltic Sea is often highlighted. The impact of the sediments on the water column is strictly limited by the amount of potentially mobile P available in the sediments. We present total P measurements for ten sediment cores from the Bothnian Sea and the Baltic Proper and detailed measurements of different P forms with different mobility in two cores. The Baltic Proper is characterized by anoxic conditions in the bottom waters overlying the accumulation sediments, whereas the bottom waters of the Bothnian Sea are generally oxidized which is also reflected in the sediments. Integrating the sediment concentrations over the depth profiles, amounts of mobile phosphorus were estimated in each sediment core. Average mobile P content in the sediments of the Bothnian Sea was found to be an order of magnitude higher than in the Baltic Proper. By contrast, the bottom waters of the Baltic Proper contained dramatically higher P concentrations indicating that the available mobile P was largely present above the sediments. An indicative distribution of P between deep water and sediment in the Bothnian Sea is 1:16, while the corresponding ratio in the Baltic Proper is 3:1.
Divergent temporal trends of net biomass change in western Canadian boreal forests

Forests play a strong role in the global carbon cycle by absorbing atmospheric carbon dioxide through increasing forest biomass. Understanding temporal trends of forest net above‐ground biomass change (ΔAGB) can help infer how forest carbon sequestration responds to ongoing climate changes. Despite wide spatial variation in the long‐term average of climate moisture availability (CMIaverage) across forest ecosystems, temporal trends of ΔAGB associated with CMIaverage remain unclear. We tested the hypothesis that the negative impacts of climate change on ΔAGB would decrease with CMIaverage using the data from permanent sample plots, monitored from 1958 to 2011, with stand ages varying from 17 to 210 years, in western boreal forests of Canada. We found that ΔAGB on average increased with CMIaverage. Temporally, ΔAGB declined sharply between 1958 and 2011 in plots with low CMIaverage owing to increased biomass loss from mortality accompanied by little growth gain, whereas ΔAGB changed little in plots with high CMIaverage. The temporal decrease of ΔAGB in drier areas was attributable to its negative responses to warming‐induced temporal decreases in climate moisture availability. Synthesis. Our results indicate that large‐scale changes in forest carbon functioning associated with climate change depend on the long‐term average of climate moisture availability. Our finding suggests a possible retreat of boreal biome at the drier distribution limits with predicted declines in water availability in the 21st century.
Prevalence of Malocclusion Most of the Population in Luxor City of Egypt

Background: Malocclusion is identified as one of the most common dental troubles affecting young adults and formative years globally. Oral capabilities and facial aesthetics are influenced through the severity of malocclusion and it’s of excellent problem to the individual, their households and health authorities as well. Most of the reported studies for the Egypt are from the eastern, southern and central regions. To the exceptional of our knowledge, no records are available for the northern vicinity of Luxor; consequently the goal of this look at turned into to determine the superiority of malocclusion many of the population of Luxor city. Methodology: Descriptive take a look at having a cross-sectional look at, a convenient pattern length of 504 Egypt populations among the age group of 13 to 50 years. Informed consent became taken from the participants before carrying out the examination, parents consent turned into searched for children. Malocclusion changed into recorded as defined through WHO, oral health Survey, and simple methods. Each issue was examined for the kind of malocclusion in keeping with Angle’s classification. Results: Most major malocclusions became Angles Class I 41.7% in women and 26.2% in males. The 15.4% adult males and 23.3% adult males had excessive overjet (<2 mm) as compared to 38% adult males and (24.3%) girls who had reduced overjet (<2 mm) while 32.3% men and 20.5% males had reduced overbite.
Screening of Ber cultivars / germplasm against Oidium erysiphoides f. sp. ziziphi , causing powdery mildew

Powdery mildew incited by Oidium erysiphoides f. sp. ziziphi, Yan and Wang is the most important disease that causes maximum reduction in yield and quality of ber (Ziziphus mauritiana Lamk.) fruits grown under semi-arid and arid regions of India. Developing a varietal resistance to disease provides an early, cheaper, stable and effective means of disease control. In the present investigation, 21cultivars / germplasm were tested for resistant against Oidium erysiphoides f. sp. ziziphi. Out of theses, two cultivars / germplasm namely Darakhi-2, Nazuk showed 2.60 and 4.67 per cent disease intensity, respectively and categorized as resistant whereas Faliso Alwari, Jogia, Kaithali, Katha, Kishmis, Mehroon, Mundia, Safarchandi, Tabestaso and ZG-3 showed moderately susceptible reaction and Chhuhara, Chhuhara-1, Chonchal, Gola, Illaichi, Kathaphal, Seb, Thornless and Umran showed susceptible reaction.
A UTOMATIC B RAIN T UMOR D ETECTION AND F EATURE E XTRACTION F ROM MRI I MAGE

The brain tumor is one of the major dangerous health problems. Early detection and diagnosis of brain tumors reduce the mortality rate significantly. For efficient detection and classification, this paper has proposed an automatic brain tumor detection and classification algorithm. The proposed algorithm divided into five steps. At first, the input MRI image is preprocessed using principle component-based grayscale conversion coupled with anisotropic diffusion filter to remove unwanted artifacts. After that, the contrast limited adaptive histogram equalization (CLAHE) is introduced to enhance the image contrast. Then the tumor is segmented using a multi-variant thresholding and Chan-Vese algorithm. Now, the statistical features, texture features, wavelet features are measured to classify the segmented objects. Finally, the appropriate features are selected using a genetic al-gorithm and classify the segmented object using an artificial neural network. The performance of the proposed algorithm is tested on publicly available BRATS datasets. The experimental result showed that the proposed al-gorithm achieved 99.5% for the BRATS dataset and 98.3% for augmented BRATS dataset image of accuracy, which is better than many existing well known state-of-arts methods.
Molecular mechanisms regulating the intracortical migration of interneurons

The cerebral cortex is composed of two main types of neurons, inhibitory GABAergic interneurons and excitatory glutamatergic pyramidal cells. These two major classes of cortical neurons are generated in different and distant proliferative regions in the developing brain and follow diverse strategies to reach their final position. While pyramidal cells are born in the ventricular zone of the dorsal telencephalon, interneurons originate in the ganglionic eminences and migrate longer distances to populate the cortex. Since disruption in the migration of GABAergic interneurons leads to defects in the organization of the adult cortex, understanding the mechanisms that control the guided migration of cortical interneurons from their origin to their final location is fundamental to improve our knowledge of the cerebral cortex in health and disease. The mechanisms regulating the tangential migration of interneurons from their subpallial origin to the developing cortex have been extensively elucidated. In contrast, the processes and molecules controlling their distribution and final integration within the cerebral cortex remain unidentified. Here, we have investigated the mechanisms regulating the entry of interneurons into the developing cortical plate, in which pyramidal cells are being organized into specific layers. We have used a candidate approach to unravel the mechanisms that regulate the switch in the mode of migration of interneurons from tangential to radial. We searched for significant differences in a set of genes that play a role in cell migration, adhesion, and axon guidance and that are expressed in the developing cortical plate at relevant stages. We found that Neuregulin-3 (Nrg3), a member of the neuregulin family of genes, is highly expressed in pyramidal cells in the developing cortical plate since its inception, and is maintained in pyramidal cells as they mature. Our experiments revealed that Nrg3 is a potent short-range chemoattractant for MGE-derived interneurons, which therefore contribute to their normal allocation within the cortex. Gain and loss of function studies are consistent with this notion, reinforcing the idea that the timed entry of interneurons in the developing cortical plate is required for their normal lamination. To shed some light into the mechanisms controlling the final laminar position of MGE-derived interneurons, we took an unbiased approach through gene profiling analyses in whole genome Affimetrix® arrays. We identify a set of genes that are differentially expressed before and after interneurons allocate into their final position in the cortex. Functional analysis of one of these candidates, the chemokine Cx3cl1, revealed that this factor does not seem to be fundamental for the regulation of this process.
A Checklist of the Bees (Hymenoptera: Apoidea) of St. Louis, Missouri, USA

Abstract Concern over the declines of pollinator populations during the last decade has resulted in calls from governments and international agencies to better monitor these organisms. Recent studies of bee diversity in urban environments suggest that cities may contain significant amounts of bee species, even greater than surrounding agricultural areas, and in some occasions comparable to natural habitats. We conducted a three-year survey of bees in the city of St. Louis, MO. Like many other post-industrial cities in the United States, St. Louis is considered a shrinking city, with many vacant lots and unoccupied structures, mostly in the urban core. We sampled a broad range of habitats throughout the growing seasons of 2013 to 2016, e.g., vacant lots, city parks, community gardens, and urban farms, using aerial netting. This resulted in over 7,700 specimens. Data from other surveys, e.g., BioBlitz, and personal collections was also utilized in developing the species list. These data were supplemented with inspections of entomological collections from institutions in the state and the scientific literature. We identified a total of 198 species of bees from five different families that occur in the city. Only nine of the bee species present in the city are non-natives. The city of St. Louis currently hosts nearly 45% of the bee diversity of the state, likely making it one of most species-rich cities relative to its state's total bee fauna in the country. This represents a great natural resource that must be better understood, and has potential conservation implications.
EFL teachers� beliefs and practices about digital learning of English

The last two decades have been the witness of many studies reporting the disparity between EFL teachers� beliefs and practices in technology integration around the world. Notwithstanding the enormous studies on EFL teachers� beliefs and perceptions of digital technology use for language classroom, the literature has still been silent on the relation between Indonesian EFL teachers� beliefs and practices. The present study thus sheds some light on 15 EFL teachers� beliefs and practices about digital learning of English in Indonesia. Drawing on data from the written reflections and semi-structured interviews, the findings revealed that these EFL teachers were well equipped with the importance and objective of teaching English by means of digital devices, but appeared hesitant and lacked of preparation in their teaching practices. The semi-structured interview further depicted that their unconfident and lack of preparation was not only a result of inadequate training but also of limited resources and digital facilitation. The institutional supports influenced by environmental readiness also affected their efficacy for digital learning of English. The findings contribute to the realm of English language teaching with regards to offering literature of EFL teachers� professional development.
Evaluation of hearing threshold in type 1 diabetic children

Objective: To assess the auditory function in a group of children with diabetes mellitus type 1 and to study the association between hearing loss and disease related factors: duration of the disease, metabolic control and diabetic complications.Patients and Methods: Sixty-two diabetic patients below the age of 16 attending AL- Salam Teaching Hospital, Mosul, Iraq from May 2017 to June 2018 were evaluated and compared with equal number (same gender &age) of non-diabetic controls. Pure-tone audiometric tests were performed. Both air and bone conduction were tested at frequencies between 250-8000 Hz.Results: The hearing level was lower in diabetic children than in the control group in all tested frequencies, but the differences was statistically significant only at mid and high frequencies. The hearing loss was bilateral, symmetrical and affects both sexes. HbA1c concentration, age of diabetes and microangiopathic complications showed positive association with the elevated hearing thresholds, while, age at disease onset, dose of insulin, number of hypoglycemic and DKA episodes and presence of neuropathy were not.Conclusions: Hearing impairment may occurs early in diabetic children and is related to the disease duration and the stage of metabolic control. Careful & accurate glycemic control help prevent or delay this complication.
Defining critical habitat conditions for the conservation of three endemic and endangered cyprinids in a Mediterranean intermittent river before the onset of drought

Identifying key factors in species' habitat requirements can be of use in defining critical habitats for their conservation, as well as in assisting the prioritization of habitat restoration actions. So far, most studies on habitat use by freshwater fishes have been focused on widespread and economically important species (e.g. salmonids). This study aimed to identify the early summer habitat use (i.e. before the start of the drought period) of three endemic and endangered Greek cyprinids – the Evrotas chub Squalius keadicus, the Spartian minnowroach Tropidophoxinellus spartiaticus and the Evrotas minnow Pelasgus laconicus, with regard to depth, water velocity, substrate and macrophyte cover. In the case of the chub, habitat use by juvenile and adult fish was assessed separately. Data were collected for each fish group from four habitat types (riffles, runs, glides, pools) by using a modified point-abundance sampling with an electrofishing device. In total, 120 sampling points were sampled, in two near-reference perennial reaches of the Evrotas River (southern Greece) in early summer 2014, when there was continuous flow and full connectivity between habitats. All three target species had their highest densities in deeper habitats with low water velocities and depositional substrates such as pools and runs. A high overlap in habitat use was evident for the three species. Habitat use curves based on microhabitat data were created for all species. Μinnowroaches, minnows and large chubs actively selected deep habitats. Minnowroaches and minnows favoured slow-flowing, vegetated habitats with fine substrate located close to the river bank, while chubs had no clear affinity for particular velocities or substrate types. However, size class comparisons in chub indicated differences in both water depth and velocity. Overall, the results of this study provide the first detailed report of the habitat use of these endangered fish species. These patterns of habitat use highlight the importance of deep habitats that must be preserved as refugia while the drought events progress.