Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of enhanced UV‐B radiation on production‐related properties of a Sphagnum fuscum dominated subarctic bog

1. The aim of the study was to investigate effects of enhanced UV-B radiation on the balance between biomass production and decay in an ombrotrophic bog which is dominated by one species of Sphagnum (S. fuscum). This paper concerns production. 2. Enhanced UV-B radiation (simulating 15% ozone depletion under clear sky conditions) was applied by means of fluorescent tubes during two growing seasons. 3. In S. fuscum, shoot density, mass relations and length increment over time were measured and productivity was estimated. Pigment concentration, rates of dark respiration and maximum net photosynthesis were recorded. 4.Sphagnum fuscum productivity was not changed by enhanced UV-B radiation while properties determining production were highly influenced although in opposite directions. 5. Height increment was decreased by 20% in the first growing season and by 31% in the second growing season under enhanced UV-B radiation. After two growing seasons spatial shoot density was decreased by 8% by enhanced UV-B radiation. The shoots became stunted as capitulum dry mass and stem dry mass per unit length were increased by 21 and 17%, respectively, under enhanced UV-B radiation. 6. Dark respiration was significantly decreased by 31% after growth under enhanced UV-B radiation. 7. The UV-B induced change in shoot biometry together with the reduced spatial shoot density involve potential long-term effects on peat structure with possible feedback on productivity, decomposition and the strength of the system as a carbon sink.
Effects of Interacting with a Crowd of Emotional Virtual Humans on Users’ Affective and Non-Verbal Behaviors

In this contribution we examined the effects on users during interaction with a virtual human crowd in an immersive virtual reality environment. We developed an agent-based crowd model with rich properties including eye gaze, facial expression, body motion, and verbal and non-verbal behaviors. The scenario was a virtual market in which the users needed to gather specific items. In a betweensubjects design, users interacted with a virtual human crowd that showed opposite valenced emotional expressions. There are four conditions in the between-subjects design. These includes different affective virtual crowds namely, Positive, Negative, Neutral, and a Mix condition. The Mix group is defined by a combination of Positive, Negative and Neutral emotional expressive characters. Depending on the specific condition, the virtual humans showed specific verbal and non-verbal behaviors. During the experiment we collected objective measures such as skin electrodermal activity, total time in the simulation, the number of interactions with the agents and performance measures. The subjective measures were the differential emotional survey (DES), and a user experience survey. We reported our findings with an in-depth analysis.
Bactra spp. in Pakistan and their Potential as Biocontrol Agents of Cyperus rotundus

Abstract Observations on distribution, abundance, phenology, host spectrum, biology and damage of Bactra venosana and B. minima are reported. Morphological differences between larvae and pupae of the two species for field identification are given. Oviposition and larval feeding tests were carried out and showed that oviposition is indiscriminate but larvae have a strong preference for Cyperus rotundus though they also feed on some other Cyperus spp. In laboratory experiments 72% of plants damaged by B. venosana and 65% by B. minima failed to regenerate. The ecological preferences of B. venosana and B. minima are also discussed and as a result both species are recommended for simultaneous introduction for the control of C. rotundus in areas where other Cyperus spp. are not economically important.
Phenotypic variability of fertility traits of pure breed sows in first three farrowings

Investigation of the phenotypic variability of fertility traits was performed on Swedish Landrace sows (926 sows) deriving from single herd in Serbia. Data was processed by method of least squares (Harvey, 1990), and following fixed factors were included into the model: sire, season, litter genotype and order of farrowing, as well as regression effect of age at first farrowing, duration of lactation and number of reared (raised) piglets per litter. Traits of litter size varied (P<0.01) under the influence of sire and order of parities (first two parities). Number of still born as well as reared piglets per litter depended on the litter genotype (P<0.01). Year and season had no effect on variation of litter size traits except LWW (first two and three parities). Age of sows at first farrowing demonstrated linear effect (P<0.01) on size of their litter at farrowing (first three parities). Litter size and weight at weaning were under regression effect of lactation duration as well as corrected litter size (CLS) or number of weaned piglets (NW).
Differentiation of Cultured and Wild Sturgeon (Acipenser oxyrinchus desotoi) Based on Fatty Acid Composition

Sturgeon species have attracted interest for aquaculture due to high value of the flesh, caviar and wild stock depletion. Lipid was extracted from sturgeon muscle using the Bligh and Dyer procedure. Fatty acids from total lipid were methylated using boron-trifluoride in methanol. Fatty acid methyl esters were analyzed by gas chromatography as weight %. The fatty acid profiles of lipids were different between cultured and wild sturgeon. Wild sturgeon had higher levels of 16 :0, 16 :1ω7, 18 :1ω9, 22 : 4ω6 and 22 :5ω6. Cultured fish had higher levels of 18 :2ω6, C20 and C22 monoenes, 20 :5ω3 and 22 :6ω3. Stepwise discriminant analysis (SDA) was used to develop a mathematical model to distinguish the two populations ; the levels of 16 :2ω6, 22 :5ω6 and phytanic acid accurately identified the two fish populations.
Small mammal species diversity and abundance in Žagarė Regional Park

The trapping of small mammals in eight natural or semi-natural habitats in 2008–2010 yielded 13 species, three of which (root vole, pygmy field mouse and northern birch mouse) were registered in the territory of the Žagarė Regional Park for the first time. Striped field mouse dominated in natural meadows (32.9% of all trapped individuals), yellow-necked mouse in re-growing clearcuts, shrubby meadows and abandoned farmsteads (18.2%, 32% and 67.5%, respectively), and bank vole in forest meadows, forest wetlands, planted young forests and mixed forests (30.7%, 43.9%, 51.1% and 60.5%, respectively). The diversity of small mammals was significantly lower in forest habitats (compared by diversity ordering using Renyi index family) than in open areas. Compared to investigation done in 1975, species numbers and diversity in 2008–2010 were significantly higher (10 vs. 13 species, and Shannon’s H = 1.67 vs. 2.59, respectively), while relative abundance was lower (25.4 ± 2.12 vs. 56.1 ± 8.03 individuals per 100 trap.
A study of the surface structure of the brain of the whale (balaenoptera physalus and physeter catodon)

Several years ago one of us had the opportunity of studying the central nervous system of the porpoise Tursiops truncatus (Langworthy, '32). hiore recently, through the kindness of Dr. E. 31. K. Geiling and the generosity of the National Research Council, the brains of several whales have been made available for examination and comparison with the porpoise material. The present paper describes only the structures which may be seen upon the surface of the nervous system. The first expedition brought two brains of the finback whale (Ralaenoptera physalus). This is a whalebone whale. One was an adult, the other a fetal brain. The preservation of the adult brain was poor, and the cranial nerves had been torn away from the base. This material demonstrated the plan of the cerebral convolutions. Wkcn the fetal head was dissected, the cranial nerves were observed in relation to the base of the skull and particularly to the ear. These two brains were discussed briefly in another place (Langworthy, '35). The fetal brain will be considered more fully in this paper. I n the following year we received eight brains of the sperm whale (Physeter catodon). This is a toothed whale.
Wire Explosion in Vacuum

This article presents a review of experimental and theoretical studies devoted to the processes that occur during explosions of wires in vacuum when the current densities in the wire are of the order of 108 A/cm2 and the current density rise rates are no less than 1015 A/(cm $^{2}\cdot \text {s}$ ). The theoretical background is focused on the transformation of the wire metal into ionized plasma. In particular, the basic physical notions used to describe wire explosions (WEs; state diagram, current action integral, and metal conductivity changes in phase transitions) are given; magnetohydrodynamic equations are described which are used to simulate WEs, and the simulation predictions are discussed together with their reliability. Extensive experimental data on WEs in vacuum are presented which made it possible to describe the corona and core formation and the development of electrothermal instabilities in the core. The data on the energy deposited in a wire exploding in vacuum reported by different authors are compared. In conclusion, problems are discussed that require additional experimental investigations, namely, the role of metastable states in a WE and the mechanism by which the core is shunted.
Early Prediction of Dropout and Final Exam Performance in an Online Statistics Course

Higher education students who either do not complete the courses they have enrolled on or interrupt their studies indefinitely remain a major concern for practitioners and researchers. Within each course, early prediction of student dropout helps teachers to intervene in time to reduce dropout rates. Early prediction of course achievement helps teachers suggest new learning materials aimed at preventing at-risk students from failing or not completing the course. Several machine learning techniques have been used to classify or predict at-risk students, including tree-based methods, which, though not the best performers, are easy to interpret. This study presents two procedures for identifying at-risk students (dropout-prone and non-achievers) early on in an online university statistics course. These enable us to understand how classifiers work. We found that student dropout and course performance prediction was only determined by their performance in the first half of the formative quizzes. Nevertheless, other elements of participation on the virtual campus were initially considered. The classifiers will serve as a reference for intervention, despite their moderate performance metrics.
Students Disruption in Business Computer at the University of Phayao, Thailand

The empirical objective of this research is to study an overview of the impact that business computer programs have been affected by student dropout. Data collected was 1,985 business computer students from the academic year 2001-2019 at the School of Information and Communication Technology, the University of Phayao, Thailand. This research is a quantitative analytical research to study the period of the most dropout students and find the cause of the dropout of the students. According to the research results, the researcher found that the academic results had a significant influence on dropout, which the most time that students leave is 1st Year level in every educational program. From these findings, concerned parties should pay special attention to and focus on the problems in order to formulate strategic solutions in the future. For researchers, in the future can use data analysis technology and machine learning technology to further develop and solve problems.
Comparing Motion-based Versus Controller-based Pseudo-haptic Weight Sensations in VR

This work examines whether pseudo-haptic experiences can be achieved using a game controller without motion tracking. For this purpose, we implemented a virtual hand manipulation method that uses the controller’s analog stick. We compared the method’s pseudo-haptic experience to that of the conventional approach of using a hand-held motion controller. The results suggest that our analog stick manipulation can present pseudo-weight sensations in a similar way to the conventional approach. This means that interaction designers and users can also choose to utilize analog stick manipulation for pseudo-haptic experiences, as an alternative to motion controllers.
Unsupervised K-Means Clustering Algorithm

The k-means algorithm is generally the most known and used clustering method. There are various extensions of k-means to be proposed in the literature. Although it is an unsupervised learning to clustering in pattern recognition and machine learning, the k-means algorithm and its extensions are always influenced by initializations with a necessary number of clusters a priori. That is, the k-means algorithm is not exactly an unsupervised clustering method. In this paper, we construct an unsupervised learning schema for the k-means algorithm so that it is free of initializations without parameter selection and can also simultaneously find an optimal number of clusters. That is, we propose a novel unsupervised k-means (U-k-means) clustering algorithm with automatically finding an optimal number of clusters without giving any initialization and parameter selection. The computational complexity of the proposed U-k-means clustering algorithm is also analyzed. Comparisons between the proposed U-k-means and other existing methods are made. Experimental results and comparisons actually demonstrate these good aspects of the proposed U-k-means clustering algorithm.
Degradation of Off-Phase Leakage Current of FinFETs and Gate-All-Around FETs Induced by the Self-Heating Effect in the High-Frequency Operation Regime

In this article, the influence of the self-heating effect (SHE) on fin-shaped field-effect transistors (FinFETs) and gate-all-around field-effect transistors (GAAFETs) was investigated. The AC analysis with the input of a square pulse at the gate electrode was implemented to estimate the effect of SHE on the leakage current characteristics. The high-frequency operating region from 500 MHz to 50 GHz was simulated for the comparison at each different operating frequency. The high operating frequency indicates that there is not enough time to relieve the heat generated by SHE during the off-phase of the pulse. Thus, as the operating frequency increases, the off-state leakage current induced by SHE increases accordingly. The so-called thermal time constant (τTH) was examined for both FinFETs and GAAFETs by comparing the thermal resistance (RTH) and thermal capacitance (CTH) to minimize SHE on leakage current in the simulation environment.
The biology of some Phyllonorycter species (Lepidoptera: Gracillariidae) mining leaves of oak and beech

Summary The oak leaf miners P. quercifoliella and P. harrisella were encountered at first generation densities of 40 and 48 mines per 1000 leaves in 1968 and 1969 and second generation densities of 179 and 211 mines per 1000 leaves. The 1969 densities for the two generations of P. maestingella on beech were 54 and 118 mines per 1000 leaves. The mines on oak were found to be aggregated on certain trees but the reason for this was not discovered. There was also aggregation on certain leaves within a tree. The moths had two generations of adults per year at Dunham, the first generation mines appearing on the leaves in June and the second generation mines in August. P. maestingella seemed to be slightly in advance of the oak species. The sampling data provided estimates of the mortality through 1969. Larval interference and mine damage caused negligible mortality. Death due to unknown factors figured prominently in the early instars but in the later instars, especially during the second generation, parasitism.
WordChange: Adversarial Examples Generation Approach for Chinese Text Classification

As an important carrier for disseminating information in the Internet Age, the text contains a large amount of information. In recent years, adversarial example attacks against text discrete domains have been received widespread attention. Deep neural network (DNN) produces opposite predictions by adding small perturbations to the text data. In this paper, we present “WordChange”: an adversarial examples generation approach for Chinese text classification based on multiple modification strategies, and we evaluate the effectiveness of the method in sentiment analysis dataset and spam dataset. This method effectively locates important word positions by designing a keyword contribution algorithm. We first propose a “word-split” strategy to substitute keywords thatare designed by the structure and semantic property of Chinese texts. We also first apply “swap” and “insert” strategies on Chinese texts to generate adversarial examples. We further discuss the influence of multiple Chinese Word Segmentation tools and different text lengths on the proposed method, as well as the diversification of Chinese text modification strategies. Finally, the adversarial texts based on the long short-term memory network (LSTM) can be successfully transferred to other text classifiers and real-world applications.
Morphological Observations and Essential Oils of Sage (Salvia officinalis L.) Under Cultivation

ABSTRACT Sage plants (Salvia officinalis L.), seed-grown from wild populations, collected along the Adriatic coast, were cultivated. The morphological features, essential oil content and composition of these plants were found to be similar to plants growing in the wild. Therefore, it appears that the herbal characters are under genetic control. This means that genetic variability could be used for selection and breeding purposes.
QTL analysis on plant height and flowering time in Brassica napus

To identify quantitative trait loci (QTL) controlling plant height (PH) and flowering time (FT), a high stalk/later bloom Brassica napus line '2091' was crossed with a dwarf/early bloom mutant '99CDAM'. A segregating population with 145 F 2:3 lines was constructed and grown in field for 2 years. Based on this population, a linkage map consisting of 199 amplified fragment length polymorphism and 42 simple sequence repeat loci was constructed. The LOD threshold of 3.0 was used for declaring the existence of putative QTL. In total, seven QTL related to PH were identified, accounting for 8.5-28.6% of phenotypic variation, respectively, of which two QTL were identified in both years. Six QTL for FT were detected, accounting for 8.1-30.4% of phenotypic variation individually, of which two QTL were identified in both years. The main QTL of PH and FT were both mapped on linkage group 13, with overlapped creditable regions. QTL ph17 and ft17 existed at the same location. These might be the genetic base for the significant correlation observed between PH and FT.
Comparison of traps and lures for Rhagoletis fausta and R. cingulata.

Various types of traps and baits were tested for attractiveness to cherry fruit fly, Rhagoletis cingulata (Loew), and the black cherry fruit fly, R. fausta (Osten Sacken). Yellow panels were generally most effective for both species. Panels folded into a 45° angle with the adhesive outside were equally as effective as a standard vertical flat rectangle and considerably more selective. Spheres baited with a 50% ammonium acetate solution were attractive to R. cingulata , but not to R. fausta . The relative effectiveness of different lures varied when they were tested with different traps. Baited panels were more effective than unbaited panels for R. cingulata but not for R. fausta . A 50% ammonium acetate and 5% soy hydrolysate solution was the best lure in Sectar® traps for R. fausta while the ammonium acetate alone was most effective with panels for R. cingulata .
Convolutional Neural Networks for Risso’s Dolphins Identification

Photo-identification is one of the best practices to estimate the abundance of cetaceans and, as such, it can help to obtain the biological information necessary to decision-making and actions to preserve the marine environment and its biodiversity. The Risso’s dolphin is one of the least-known cetacean species on a global scale, and the distinctive scars on its dorsal fin proved to be extremely useful to photo-identify single individuals. The main novelty of this paper is the development of a new method based on deep learning, called Neural Network Pool (NNPool), and specifically devoted to the photo-identification of Risso’s dolphins. This new method also includes the unique function of recognizing unknown vs known dolphins in large datasets with no interaction by the user. Moreover, the new version of DolFin catalogue, collecting Risso’s dolphins data and photos acquired between 2013-2018 in the Northern Ionian Sea (Central-eastern Mediterranean Sea), is presented and used here to carry out the experiments. Results have been validated using a further data set, containing new images of Risso’s dolphins from the Northern Ionian Sea and the Azores, acquired in 2019. The performance of the NNPool appears satisfying and increases proportionally to the number of images available, thus highlighting the importance of building large-scale data set for the application at hand.
The colours of the ocean plastics.

Characterisation of the colour is often included in studies on plastic pollution. However, the comparability and relevance of this information is limited by methodology or observer subjectivity. Based on the analysis of thousands of floating plastic fragments from a global collection, here we propose a systematic semi-automatic method to analyse colours by using a reference palette of 120 Pantone colours. The most abundant colours were white and transparent/translucent (47 %), yellow and brown (26 %) and blue-like (9 %). The white colour increased in the smallest pieces (< 5 mm) and far from coastal sources (> 500 km). Both fragmentation and discolouration of ocean plastics may occur because of longer exposure time to sunlight in nature. In addition, yellow items peaked at around 1 cm and brown colours at around 1 mm, supporting the notion that yellowing precedes tanning in the aging process, which is paralleled by fragmentation. Apart from the effects of the weathering, our results suggest a second-order modulation of the colour distributions of marine plastic microplastics by the selective action of visual predators. The present work provides methodological tools and a wide empirical background to further the interpretation and applicability of the colour information on ocean plastics.
Exenatide inhibits NF-κB and attenuates ER stress in diabetic cardiomyocyte models

Exenatide is used to treat patients with type-2 diabetes and it also exerts cardioprotective effects. Here, we tested whether Exenatide attenuates hyperglycemia-related cardiomyocyte damage by inhibiting endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress and the NF-κB signaling pathway. Our results demonstrated that hyperglycemia activates the NF-κB signaling pathway, eliciting ER stress. We also observed cardiomyocyte contractile dysfunction, inflammation, and cell apoptosis induced by hyperglycemia. Exenatide treatment inhibited inflammation, improved cardiomyocyte contractile function, and rescued cardiomyocyte viability. Notably, re-activation of the NF-κB signaling pathway abolished Exenatide’s protective effects on hyperglycemic cardiomyocytes. Taken together, our results demonstrate that Exenatide directly reduces hyperglycemia-induced cardiomyocyte damage by inhibiting ER stress and inactivating the NF-κB signaling pathway.