Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of ecological factors on fine-scale patterns of social structure in African lions.

Environmental variations can influence the extent to which individuals interact with other individuals by changing the value of grouping. It is well known that many species can form and disband groups, often in response to the distribution and abundance of resources. While previous studies showed that resources influence the broad-scale structure of animal groups, knowledge gaps remain on whether they affect fine-scale patterns of association among individuals within groups. We quantify association patterns in African lions while simultaneously monitoring the abundance and distribution of prey. We test how social and ecological factors, including individual trait (age, sex, reproductive state) similarity and prey availability (prey abundance, dispersion, herd size and body size) affect within-pride social structure in African lions. We found that individual decisions about associates depended on resource availability with individuals associating equally across all members of the pride when prey herds were scarce, aggregated or large bodied, and associating more exclusively (in subgroups of preferred associates) when prey herds were abundant, dispersed or small bodied. Individuals within lion prides seemed to be buffering against changes in prey availability by modulating their strength and density of connections with conspecifics when prides split into subgroups. The strength and density of connections among individuals within subgroups was greater when prey herds were large and lower when prey herds were dispersed or large bodied. Our findings suggest that individual lions are making social decisions at both the subgroup level and the pride level, with decisions representing putatively fitness-enhancing strategies. Individuals were typically shifting between having few strong connections and having many weaker connections depending on prevailing ecological conditions, with prey abundance, dispersion and body size having the greatest impact on decisions about splitting into subgroups. The maintenance of connections within prides and subgroups in the face of ecological change suggests that the fission-fusion nature of lion prides might be essential for the long-term maintenance of social connections even when short-term conditions do not allow them. More broadly, our study reveals how fission-fusion dynamics and ecological factors can simultaneously have an effect on animals across multiple levels of sociality.
Factors Influencing Health of the Santals: A Study of Selected Villages of Birbhum

Abstract The study discusses the influence of social, economic and cultural factors on health-seeking behaviours of the Santals living in six villages of Birbhum district in West Bengal, India. By employing both qualitative and quantitative methods, data were collected for the study. The analysis shows the link between educational, social, economic and cultural factors and health-seeking behaviour. Lack of economic freedom was found as the predominant indicator in restricting access to better health-care facilities. Poor occupational standards, low levels of income and less investment in maintaining health influence the health-seeking behaviour of Santals in the studied area. The study argues that the existing services are inadequate and often inappropriately implemented. The findings have implications for enhancing the role of education and improving the quality and quantity of services.
Weed-suppressive effects of maize–legume intercropping in organic farming

In organic agriculture, intercropping is receiving increasing attention as it offers potential advantages for increasing sustainability in crop production. However, intercropping can increase competition between crops and weeds. In this study, we analyzed the effects of maize–legume intercrops on the weed community in an organic cropping system. We were concerned only with competition between crops and weeds for light. We recorded a statistically significant negative correlation between the fraction of photosynthetically active radiation (F int PAR) intercepted by the canopy, and both weed density and weed dry matter. Maize–legume intercropping led to a higher soil canopy cover (leaf area index) than sole crops. The lowest values for F int PAR were received in sole crops. Thus, in maize–legume intercrops the decrease in available light for weeds led to a reduction of weed density and dry matter, compared to sole crops. Intercropping maize and legumes considerably reduced the weed density in the intercrop compared with the maize pure stand. Weed suppression by crops was also greater on a low-productivity site than on a high-productivity site. Our results indicate that intercropping could be useful for weed suppression in organic row-crops such as maize and cotton.
Variation in essential oils to study the biodiversity in Satureja montana L.

Albania has a very diverse climate from subtropical to continental and high relief variation, has a very rich flora. The Albanian flora comprises 3250 plant species or about 30% of the European flora, with about 30 endemic and 180 subendemic species. More than 300 species are aromatic or medicinal plants, which are very important economic natural resources. Further, they play an important role in everyday life. Of all these species, 68 species are endangered (EN). The employment of the new data analysis technique and statistical software provide a good support to conduct research in the field of medicinal and aromatic plants.
Glutamine synthetase polypeptides in the roots of 55 legume species in relation to their climatic origin and the partitioning of nitrate assimilation

Glutamine synthetase (GS) exists as two main isoforms in plants, a cytosolic form (GSI) and a chloroplast or plastidie form (GS2). Fifty-five species of legume, representing a phylogenetically diverse group of tropical and temperate species, were screened by western blotting for the presence of GS2 in their roots. A remarkably strong correlation was found between the climatic origin of the species and the presence or absence of a GS2-like polypeptide in the root. Root GS2 was found in all 31 temperate species examined (30 papilionoids, one caesalpinoid), but was not detected in any of the 17 tropical papilionoid species. It was also absent in the roots of four out of seven tropical non-papil-ionoid species. The ‘in vivo’ NR activities of roots, stems and leaves of 46 of the legume species were analysed to establish their major site of nitrate reduction, and the ratio of nitrate: reduced N in the xylem sap was determined for some species, but no clear correlation between possession of a root GS2 and a preference for root nitrate assimilation was found. We discuss the possibility that expression of GS2 in the root was part of a more extensive physiological adaptation to root nitrate assimilation that evolved in temperate species to suit the alkaline, nitrate rich soils found in the centres of origin in temperate latitudes.
Molar-Incisor Hypomineralisation and Allergic March

Background Molar-incisor hypomineralisation is a disturbance in dental development that involves first permanent molars as well as permanent incisors with a prevalence that ranges from 2.5% to 40%. Aim The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of atopic diseases on the development of molar-incisor hypomineralisation. Material and methods The study was based on the review of the medical records of a group of 102 children whose age was between eight and 12 years and 11 months and who had previously been diagnosed with MIH. Results An association (χ2, p≤0.05) has been found between molar-incisor hypomineralisation in children's mouths and the existence of: atopic dermatitis (OR=2.504; 1.54-4.05 CI 95%), food allergies (OR=2.171; 1.03-4.56 CI 95%), allergic rhinitis (OR=0.17; 0.02-1.27 CI 95%), and asthmatic bronchitis/asthma (OR=1.707; 1.05-2.76 CI 95%). When analyzing the pathologies by location, we found that atopic dermatitis, food allergies, allergic rhinitis and asthma were more frequent in children who had (p≤0.05) #12, #11, #21, #22, #36, #31, #41 and #42 affected. Conclusions The association between molar-incisor hypomineralisation and the presence of atopic diseases in the first 36 months of life underlines the convenience of approaching this problem from a multidisciplinary perspective.
On intellectual capital efficiency and shariah governance in Islamic banking business model

This paper empirically investigates whether intellectual capital (IC) and shariah governance jointly affect the economic performance of Islamic banks (IBs). In contrast to prior research, this paper disaggregate IC and corporate governance features and examine whether the two are jointly related to economic performance. These relationships are further explored before, during and after the financial crisis based on a sample of 64 Islamic banks operating in different regions during the period 2007-2014. The required data to calculate different constituents of IC efficiency and governance mechanism is hand collected from 512 annual reports. After controlling for other corporate governance and bank-specific characteristics (operational type, bank size, listing status, risk, type of auditor, accounting standard and region), we find both intellectual capital efficiency and shariah governance proxies (size and dominance of prominent scholars of shariah supervisory board) to have a significant positive relationship with accounting measure of performance. However, based on market performance measure, only one proxy for shariah governance mechanism i.e. prominent scholars on SSB, is found to be significant but in the negative direction. These results provide important insights into the relationship between IC efficiency, corporate governance and performance in Islamic banking business model and have policy and practical implications.
Bridging the Gap: Providing Post-Hoc Symbolic Explanations for Sequential Decision-Making Problems with Inscrutable Representations

As increasingly complex AI systems are introduced into our daily lives, it becomes important for such systems to be capable of explaining the rationale for their decisions and allowing users to contest these decisions. A significant hurdle to allowing for such explanatory dialogue could be the vocabulary mismatch between the user and the AI system. This paper introduces methods for providing contrastive explanations in terms of user-specified concepts for sequential decisionmaking settings where the system’s model of the task may be best represented as a blackbox simulator. We do this by building partial symbolic models of the task that can be leveraged to answer the user queries. We empirically test these methods on a popular Atari game (Montezuma’s Revenge) and modified versions of Sokoban (a well known planning benchmark) and report the results of user studies to evaluate whether people find explanations generated in this form useful.
TheDiaTo (v1.0) – A new diagnostic tool for water, energy and
entropy budgets in climate models

Abstract. This work presents Thermodynamic Diagnostic Tool (TheDiaTo), a novel diagnostic tool for studying the thermodynamics of the climate systems with a wide range of applications, from sensitivity studies to model tuning. It includes a number of modules for assessing the internal energy budget, the hydrological cycle, the Lorenz Energy Cycle and the material entropy production, respectively. The routine receives as inputs energy fluxes at surface and at the Top-of-Atmosphere (TOA), for the computation of energy budgets at Top-of-Atmosphere (TOA), at the surface, and in the atmosphere as a residual. Meridional enthalpy transports are also computed from the divergence of the zonal mean energy budget fluxes; location and intensity of peaks in the two hemispheres are then provided as outputs. Rainfall, snowfall and latent heat fluxes are received as inputs for computing the water mass and latent energy budgets. If a land-sea mask is provided, the required quantities are separately computed over continents and oceans. The diagnostic tool also computes the Lorenz Energy Cycle (LEC) and its storage/conversion terms as annual mean global and hemispheric values. In order to achieve this, one needs to provide as input three-dimensional daily fields of horizontal wind velocity and temperature in the troposphere. Two methods have been implemented for the computation of the material entropy production, one relying on the convergence of radiative heat fluxes in the atmosphere (indirect method), one combining the irreversible processes occurring in the climate system, particularly heat fluxes in the boundary layer, the hydrological cycle and the kinetic energy dissipation as retrieved from the residuals of the LEC. A version of these diagnostics has been developed as part of the Earth System Model eValuation Tool (ESMValTool) v2.0a1, in order to assess the performances of CMIP6 model simulations, and will be available in the next release of the tool. The aim of this software is to provide a comprehensive picture of the thermodynamics of the climate system as reproduced in the state-of-the-art coupled general circulation models. This can prove useful for better understanding anthropogenic and natural climate change, paleoclimatic climate variability, and climatic tipping points.
Ribosomal DNA spacer‐length polymorphisms in three samples of wild and cultivated barleys and their relevance to the origin of cultivated barley

This study was conducted to provide additional data for evaluating two important issues surrounding the origin of cultivated barley: (i) the level of genetic diversity of the two-rowed wild barley from Tibet, and (ii) the distribution of rDNA allele 104 in wild and cultivated barleys in the Occidental region. A total of 198 accessions consisting of three distinct samples were used: 82 entries of two-rowed wild barley from Tibet, 57 accessions of two-rowed wild barley from 8 countries with a broad range of representation of two-rowed wild barley in the world, and 59 landrace accessions from four countries representing a part of the barley-growing areas in the Middle East. These were assayed for rDNA spacer-length variants (slvs). In all, 27 rDNA space length pheno types were detected, from which 10 slvs were identified as alleles at the two rDNA loci. The two-rowed wild barley samples from Tibet had the lowest level of genetic variation as evaluated by rDNA polymorphism. Together with results of previous studies, the two wild forms (two-rowed and six-rowed) from Tibet could not account for the large genetic diversity observed in the cultivated barley of this region, suggesting that Tibet is unlikely a centre of origin for cultivated barley. In samples from the Occidental region, allele 104 of Rm2 was very rare in wild barley, but occurred at the highest frequency in cultivated barley, while the reverse is the case for allele 107, which is consistent with previous results. The implications of such a contrasting distribution of these rDNA alleles between wild and cultivated barleys in the origin and evolution of cultivated barley were discussed.
The role of residence time distribution in the continuous steady-state MSMPR crystallization of glycine

In this work, a vacuum-driven intermittent transfer technique has been implemented to solve transfer line blockage issues and facilitate steady-state cooling crystallization studies of α-glycine in a singleand 2-stage MSMPR crystallizer. Experimental residence time distribution (RTD) analysis of the stirred tank MSMPR cascade is performed using an imperfect pulse method of the axial dispersion model to benchmark the mixing performance against that of tubular crystallizers and determine the influence of RTD on steady-state size distribution of α-glycine product. Process analytical technology (PAT) is used to monitor and understand crystallization process dynamics, and the effect of MSMPR operating temperature, mean residence time, and number of MSMPR stages on mean particle size, crystal size distribution, and yield is studied. Results show the significance of nucleation and growth mechanisms alongside RTD in determining steady-state size distribution, and the need for optimum control of supersaturation to benefit from improved RTDs provided by multistage MSMPR crystallizers.
Dispersal-Vicariance Analysis: A New Approach to the Quantification of Historical Biogeography

Quantification in historical biogeography has usually been based on the search for a single branching relationship among areas of endemism. Unlike organisms, however, areas rarely have a unique hierarchical history. Dispersal barriers appear and disappear and may have differ- ent effects on different species. As a result, the biota of an area may consist of several components with separate histories, each of which may be reticulate rather than branching. In an attempt to address these problems, I present a new biogeographic method, dispersal-vicariance analysis, which reconstructs the ancestral distributions in a given phylogeny without any prior assumptions about the form of area relationships. A three-dimensional step matrix based on a simple biogeo- graphic model is used in the reconstruction. Speciation is assumed to subdivide the ranges of widespread species into vicariant components; the optimal ancestral distributions are those that minimize the number of implied dispersal and extinction events. Exact algorithms that find the optimal reconstruction(s) are described. In addition to their use in taxon biogeography, the in- ferred distribution histories of individual groups serve as a basis for the study of general patterns in historical biogeography, particularly if the relative age of the nodes in the source cladograms is known. (Cladistic biogeography; comparative phylogeography; dispersal; extinction; historical biogeography; optimization; vicariance; widespread species.) In historical biogeography, whether fo- cused on patterns below the species level (comparative phylogeography) or above the species level, there is a need for quan- titative methods to assess the likelihood of alternative hypotheses. Most methods used today are based on the assumption that there is a single branching pattern among areas of endemism caused by vi-
A Multi-Carrier-Frequency Random-Transmission Chirp Sequence for TDM MIMO Automotive Radar

The collocated time-division multiplexing (TDM) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technique and frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) chirp sequence are widely used in automotive radar because of the low hardware complexity and the high-accurate range and velocity measurements. In conventional TDM chirp sequences, the transmitters are switched according to their natural spatial order (referred to as a fixed sequential order), thereby inducing space-Doppler frequency coupling and a relatively low unambiguous Doppler interval. In this paper, a new FMCW chirp sequence and corresponding signal processing method for TDM MIMO automotive radar are proposed. The novel waveform adopts the concept of random transmission to distort the linear phase relationship between space and Doppler, therefore, overcoming the coupling problem. Then, via compressed sensing processing, the scheme can suppress the sidelobe pedestal arisen in the conventional matched filter for targets detection. Besides, based on multiple-frequency observations of the same targets, the velocity ambiguity can be adequately resolved. Compared with conventional chirp sequence, the proposed scheme simultaneously overcomes the typical TDM MIMO chirp sequence problems, thereby avoiding a reduction in the data rate. Also, the scheme significantly reduces the mutual interference between adjacent systems. The simulations and experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed chirp sequence scheme.
Human Amniotic Membrane Positioning in the Surgical Treatment of Temporomandibular Joint Degenerative Disorder

Background Temporomandibular joint (TMJ) arthritis is a degenerative pathology that may cause pain and dysfunction. Nonsurgical therapy is the traditional treatment of TMJ diseases but if ineffective, TMJ surgery can be performed and may include arthroplasty with interposition of autograft. The encouraging results reported with the use of human amniotic membrane (HAM) in different surgical fields have highlighted its potential, but approaches providing the positioning of HAM within the intra-articular space of arthritic TMJs have never been investigated. Case Presentation A 48-year-old woman was presented with limited mouth opening and pain with palpation at the left joint. A severe TMJ degeneration was diagnosed, and a surgical treatment was necessary. In the present case report, the authors describe the application of a cryopreserved HAM patch within the joint space as a disc-replacing film during major surgeries for discectomy and arthroplasty. Three months after the intervention, the patient reported an overall improvement in chewing efficiency as well as the absence of pain. Conclusions According to the regenerative effects of HAM, the design of trials on the topic should be encouraged for its possible inclusion within the field of TMJ disease practice.
Reduced arbuscular mycorrhizal root colonization in Tropaeolum majus and Carica papaya after jasmonic acid application can not be attributed to increased glucosinolate levels

Summary The plant signal compounds jasmonic acid or salicylic acid were applied as abiotic elicitors to leaves of glucosinolate-containing members of the Tropaeolaceae (Tropaeolum majus) and Caricaceae (Carica papaya) and to leaves of the glucosinolate-free plant cucumber. Both compounds are known to induce the accumulation of glucosinolates in Brassica plants. In roots of glucosinolate-containing plants the two compounds enhanced glucosinolate levels or new glucosinolates were accumulated. In all plants treated with jasmonic acid a reduction of root colonization by the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus Glomus mosseae was observed. No such effect occurred after the salicylic acid treatment. In addition, members of the glucosinolate-containing Tropaeolaceae family were inoculated with the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus (AMF), and later on the glucosinolate content was determined in roots of mycorrhizal and in roots of non-mycorrhizal plants. Root colonization by the AMF resulted in a large increase of the glucosinolate content, however, the glucosinolate levels in mycorrhizal and in non-mycorrhizal plants showed no effect on root colonization by the AMF. From our results we concluded that the glucosinolate levels can not generally be linked to the nonhost status of glucosinolate-containing plants, however, a role of specific glucosinolates in the expression of the non-host status of glucosinolate-containing plants can not be excluded. Moreover, we found that the application of jasmonic acid highly suppresses mycorrhization and this suppression is not a glucosinolate-dependent mechanism.