Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Miniature scarabs of the genus Haroldius on Sulawesi, with notes on their relatives (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae)

genus Haroldius Boucomont, 1914 and their direct relatives are miniature, generally smooth, globular or oval scarabs, varying in length between about 1.5 and 4.5 mm. Earlier authors positioned Haroldius in the tribe Alloscelini (first proposed as Alloscelides by Janssens 1946, suffix changed in 1949b; Balthasar 1963), but since the transfer of the type-genus Alloscelus Boucomont, an African associate of driver ants, to the Onthophagini, and the consequent complete dissolution of the tribe, a position in the Canthonini seems more appropriate (Paulian 1985, Branco 1997). This tribal position may be correct, but no explicit justification has been given so far, and the Canthonini as currently conceived may not be monophyletic; it seems that Haroldius remained absent from recent Scarabaeinae phylogeny discussions (for instance, Philips et al. 2004). Although over 30 species have now been placed in Haroldius, little of substance is known about their biology and ecology; larvae are unknown. In Asia, adult Haroldius appear to be soil-surface, litter-inhabiting beetles, flying in forest environments. They may be saprophagous or mycophagous (Scheuern 1995), and some have long been found in association with ants, possibly also with termites (see remarks in Paulian 1985, and notice that termite mounds usually also harbour ant nests); some individuals we saw appear to be nibbled at (by ants? ). Whatever their precise ecological relationship, the smooth, loricate structure of Haroldius, including the characteristically broadened and flattened tibiae, suggests that the association of these beetles with social insects is not accidental. Specimens of Haroldius remain rare – or poorly sampled: the total number in collections may still not exceed one hundred. From around 1980 most individuals seem to have been collected by litter sifting, or in flight interception traps (so are, by the way, the analogous, also non-coprophilous ‘smoothies’ usually placed in the Onthophagini, such as the Southeast Asian Cyobius Sharp and Anoctus Sharp; cf. Krikken 1971, Krikken & Huijbregts unpublished, and below, in the list of taxa, under Larhodius Balthasar, 1963). Most of the Haroldius used in this study come from the Southeast Asian islands of Borneo and Sulawesi, the latter island being a significant range extension, particularly as five species can be distinguished, all new to science. The majority of the Haroldius species inhabit the Oriental Region; already more than 50 years ago three species were described from Central Africa, in Afroharoldius Janssens (1949a, 1953) – nothing has been reported since.
The use of chorioallantoic membranes as predictors of egg organochlorine burden

The distribution of organochlorine pollutants between yolks, embryos, and chorioallantoic membranes (CAMs) in pipping eggs of Audouin's gulls from the Ebro Delta was determined to assess the usefulness of CAMs as surrogates for predicting whole egg pollutant burdens. The reliability of predictions was checked using a concordance analysis based on four different parameters. The most abundant pollutants found were PCBs and DDTs, whereas levels of HCHs were much lower. Generally, the largest concentrations of contaminants were found in yolk sacs, followed by embryos and CAMs. The latter contained only 1.21% of the total concentration of organochlorines detected. Results show that CAMs could provide good predictions only for those pollutants being almost completely excreted to the CAM (e.g., hexachlorocyclohexanes, PCB52, and DDD). In the other organochlorines tested, the prediction obtained is too weak to recommend the use of CAMs for the estimation of their total burden in the eggs of Audouin's gull. This suggests that the reliability of CAMs as surrogates should be tested for each chemical and species, prior to their use in nonlethal monitoring programs.
Regulated Expression of the Arabidopsis G Protein α Subunit Gene GPA1

Heterotrimeric GTP-binding (G) proteins are important signaling molecules found in many eukaryotic organisms. In Arabidopsis thaliana, GPA1 is the only known gene that encodes a G protein α subunit. Results from previous experiments indicate that the GPA1 mRNA is found in both vegetative and floral organs of Arabidopsis. To gain insight into the function of GPA1, we sought to obtain detailed information about the distribution of the GPA1 gene product. To this end, we have constructed a translational fusion between the GPA1 genomic DNA and the bacterial reporter gene uidA, encoding β-glucuronidase (GUS), and introduced it into Arabidopsis by Agrobacterium-mediated transformation. Histochemical analysis of the GPA1-uidA transgenic plants shows that GPA1 is expressed throughout development from early seedling to the mature flowering plant. During seedling development, GPA1 is first expressed in and near root tips, later also in cotyledons, developing leaves, and much of the roots. In adult plants, GPA1 continues to be expressed in rosette and cauline leaves, floral stems, and roots. The GPA1 expression in these vegetative organs is higher in the vascular tissues, as well as the newly formed portions of roots including root tips and elongation zone. In mature flowers, carpels exhibit strong GUS staining, whereas sepals and stamens have lower GPA1 expression, most of which is in the vascular tissues. Finally, GPA1 is also expressed in developing seeds, but the expression diminishes gradually to undetectable levels as the seeds mature. Our results on GPA1 expression indicate that it may be involved in a number of processes including cell growth, differentiation, and nutrient transport.
Chironomidae (Insecta: Diptera) Collected from Hydrilla verticillata (Hydrocharitaceae) and Other Submersed Aquatic Macrophytes in Lake Bisina and Other Ugandan Lakes

ABSTRACT A survey of the aquatic weed Hydrilla verticillata was conducted in selected Kenyan and Ugandan lakes, and emerging chironomid adults were collected from samples of Hydrilla and seven other aquatic macrophytes. Hydrilla was absent from Lake Victoria, in sites where it previously occurred. Hydrilla was found in four of nine lakes examined in Uganda, i.e. Bisina, Kyoga, Bunyonyi and Mutanda. From 7424 collected chironomid adults, 43 species were identified, 21 (49%) representing new Ugandan records. Thirty-nine (91%) of the species were found on Hydrilla. Three species represent probable undescribed taxa. At our primary site, Lake Bisina, the genera Tanytarsus and Dicrotendipes dominated the chironomid community, comprising 76% of emerged adults. A species accumulation curve for chironomid species associated with Lake Bisina macrophytes suggested that further plant sampling would uncover additional species. Polypedilum wittei, formerly considered for possible biological control of Hydrilla, was not specific to that plant, emerging from six of the seven other species of submersed macrophytes we sampled. A second candidate Polypedilum species, P. dewulfi, was not found in Uganda. No insectrelated damage to Hydrilla was observed. Chironomid data were compared between Uganda collections and those from a concurrent, similar study in lake Tanganyika. Alpha- and β-diversity values indicated that the chironomid communities on aquatic plants from Lake Bisina and Lake Tanganyika (Burundi) were markedly different. Studies of chironomids and other invertebrates associated with macrophytes in other African lakes will add significantly to knowledge of the natural history of these important aquatic environments.
Reproductive Capacity of Dragraked and Non-Dragraked Irish Moss (Chondrus crispus Stackhouse) Beds in the Southern Gulf of St. Lawrence

A non-dragraked bed of Chondrus crispus Stackhouse (Rustico) showed a greater year-round carposporangial reproductive capacity than a dragraked bed (Miminegash). The former had a lower frond density but larger fronds which were the major sources of reproduction. Although carposporangial sori had a greater area and were more frequently full in Miminegash, reproductive capacity was higher in Rustico due to higher sorus densities per frond and sample unit. All the studied parameters did not show significant (P = 0.05) differences between the study sites for tetrasporophytes, resulting in similar overall tetrasporangial reproductive capacities. Reproductive capacity peaked in Miminegash prior to the harvesting season. Class 4 and 5 fronds (largest fronds) have the greatest reproductive capacity. To protect this source of spores and thus improve bed reproductive potential, a 1-mo delay in the present season opening date is suggested. The much higher tetrasporophyte reproductive capacity over that of carposporo.
Life cycle, abundance and transport of Calanus finmarchicus in Faroese waters

Abstract Calanus finmarchicus is the dominant copepod in the open ocean around the Faroe Islands. Measurements from 1990-93 showed that C. finmarchicus in the Atlantic Water outside the Faroe Shelf has two annual generations.The overwintering individuals migrate towards the surface in March-April and their spawning usually peaks in May.The majority of the individuals of this generation reaches stage CV in mid-summer.Some of the overwintering individuals remain in the upper layer and a small number of them spawn again in late summer.To the north of the Iceland-Faroes Front, C. finmarchicus has only one generation the overwintering individuals of which migrate towards the surface later than in the Atlantic Water and have their peak spawning in June.The individuals of this generation reach stages CIV and CV in August-September, when they migrate downwards.The phytoplankton biomasses in spring were higher north of the Iceland-Faroes Front than south of it.Therefore the delay of maturation and spawning north o.
Effect of Tillage on Common Waterhemp (Amaranthus Rudis) Emergence and Vertical Distribution of Seed in The Soil

Abstract Field studies were conducted in 2001 and 2002 to determine the effect of tillage on the emergence of common waterhemp from the soil seedbank. Emergence of common waterhemp was three times greater in no-till than chisel-till cultivation. Tillage did not affect the initial time of emergence; however, the time to 50% emergence was longer in no-till than chisel till. Duration of emergence did not differ among tillage systems. Common waterhemp seed was concentrated near the soil surface in no-till plots, whereas seed in the chisel-till plots were primarily found between 9 and 15 cm. The delayed and increased emergence in no-till cultivation may contribute to the greater problems in managing common waterhemp in no-till plots compared with plots where tillage is used. Nomenclature: Common waterhemp, Amaranthus rudis Sauer AMATA
Caching Policies for Transient Data

This work focuses on designing caching policies for transient data, i.e., data which can be used to serve requests only for a finite duration of time after which it becomes redundant. We first characterize the fundamental limit on the performance of caching policies for transient data and characterize the performance of traditional caching policies like LRU for this setting. Traditional caching policies often make decisions based on the popularity of the data being cached. We propose a new caching policy which uses both the popularity and the residual life-time (time remaining before the data becomes redundant) to make caching decisions. We show that in the setting where data being cached is transient, our policy outperforms traditional caching policies.
The Performance Complex

Musicians, dancers, and actors perform. Politicians, doctors, and teachers do also. Millions perform their everyday selves on social media. And while some perform, others keep score. We live in a performance society, saturated with performances of many and various kinds, with a wide range of attendant capacities, techniques, and creativities—but also anxieties. This chapter introduces the book’s central focus; the assemblage of metrics, networks, and their attendant emotional pathologies referred to as the performance complex. It takes the reader through the general structure and elaborates on the broad themes of the book, outlining the important distinctions between competition and competitions, ratings and rankings, and performances and performance.
Robust Event-Triggered Dynamic Average Consensus Against Communication Link Failures With Application to Battery Control

Dynamic average consensus (DAC) has found applications in various systems. The existing event-triggered DAC algorithms have not well addressed the issue of key communication link failures that lead to the separation of the initial communication topology. This article presents a modified event-triggered DAC algorithm that is independent of its initial conditions. As a result, it is robust against key communication link failures. In this algorithm, each agent decides locally when to transmit signals to its neighbors. In this way, the communication burden among the neighboring agents is reduced. A numerical example is provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. Moreover, the proposed algorithm is applied to a state-of-charge balance control problem of batteries in energy systems, and both simulations and hardware-in-the-loop tests are provided to demonstrate the control performance.
Sitakunda Botanical Garden and Eco-park, Chittagong, Bangladesh: Its impacts on a rural community

The Sitakunda Botanical Garden and Eco-park was established, under a five-year (2000–2004) development project, as a means to enrich and conserve biodiversity, and develop ecotourism facilities in the region. This study explores to what extent the authority achieves these objectives and the impacts of the park on adjacent villagers. More specifically, it highlights park-people relationships and people dependency on park resources. Findings indicate that, as the project was implemented, the area was enriched, with natural regeneration, new plantations and infrastructure development. It has become a new destination for visitors, and nature-based tourism. Tourism provides revenue to the park authority and income to local people. Even though the park is a good instrument for biodiversity conservation, ignoring the dependence of local people on park resources created conflicts between local communities and the park authority. Prohibition on the extraction of forest products from the park, and restriction on use of park roads to enter adjacent forests make the livelihoods of surrounding villagers vulnerable. The park establishment has created some job opportunities, but local people feel that these are inadequate. Suggestions are made to overcome the existing conflicts and to develop an eco-friendly park which would conserve biodiversity and, at the same time, benefit local communities.
Revisiting Hidden Representations in Transfer Learning for Medical Imaging

While a key component to the success of deep learning is the availability of massive amounts of training data, medical image datasets are often limited in diversity and size. Transfer learning has the potential to bridge the gap between related yet different domains. For medical applications, however, it remains unclear whether it is more beneficial to pre-train on natural or medical images. We aim to shed light on this problem by comparing initialization on ImageNet and RadImageNet on seven medical classification tasks. Our work includes a replication study, which yields results contrary to previously published findings. In our experiments, ResNet50 models pre-trained on ImageNet tend to outperform those trained on RadImageNet. To gain further insights, we investigate the learned representations using Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA) and compare the predictions of the different models. Our results indicate that, contrary to intuition, ImageNet and RadImageNet may converge to distinct intermediate representations, which appear to diverge further during fine-tuning. Despite these distinct representations, the predictions of the models remain similar. Our findings show that the similarity between networks before and after fine-tuning does not correlate with performance gains, suggesting that the advantages of transfer learning might not solely originate from the reuse of features in the early layers of a convolutional neural network.
Effects of freshwater and seawater mixing on virio- and bacterioplankton in a tropical estuary

1. Estuaries are interesting sites to examine virus-bacteria interactions since they may vary gradually or abruptly in salinity, which presumably requires physiological, genetic and ecological adaptations. To explore such adjustments in tropical areas, freshwater and seawater samples were collected in the estuarine system of the River Senegal and experimentally subjected to abrupt mixing of seawater with freshwater and vice versa. 2. Production rates of freshwater bacteria (measured by the tritiated thymidine incorporation method) and of viruses (measured by the dilution method) sharply declined immediately after seawater addition, which was followed by a spectacular recovery of the surviving bacterial and viral populations within 24 and 48 h, respectively. 3. Conversely, neither marine bacteria nor viruses were significantly affected by mixing with freshwater. This suggests that the turbulent front between ascending tidal sea water and outwelling fluvial freshwater is a more favourable environment for marine bacterioplankton, which may take advantage of massive bursts of freshwater cells resulting from osmotic shock. 4. In both mixing experiments, the dynamics of virioplankton production followed that of the bacteria within 24 h, suggesting that viruses can rapidly respond to dramatic shifts in the abundance and community composition of bacterial hosts.
Is site preparation necessary for bur oak receiving post-planting weed control?

Le labourage et le hersage sont recommandes avant l'etablissement de plantations d'especes feuillues de haute valeur sur des terres agricoles abandonnees et envahies par des especes herbacees competitrices. Toutefois, il n'est pas toujours possible d'effectuer la preparation mecanique du sol. L'utilisation de traitements de repression post-plantation des herbacees pourrait permettre de reduire l'effort de preparation du site. L'etude compare trois methodes de preparation du site (labour et hersage ; labour, hersage et herbicide simazine ; un temoin), dont les parcelles ont ete separees en deux pour recevoir l'un ou l'autre de deux traitements post-plantation (herbicide glyphosate, paillis de plastique noir) appliques par bandes de 120 cm sur la rangee de plants de chenes a gros fruits (Quercus macrocarpa Michx). Apres 5 ans de traitements de repression des herbacees, la preparation du site par le labourage et hersage n'a pas produit des resultats de croissance superieurs relativement au temoin. Toutefois, la croissance etait superieure lorsque la preparation mecanique etait combinee a l'application de l'herbicide simazine. La hauteur et le diametre des plants de chenes etaient superieurs avec l'utilisation de paillis de plastique en comparaison a l'application de glyphosate. Ces resultats permettent d'envisager le reboisement en especes feuillues sur des sites ou la preparation mecanique du sol est impraticable, si des traitements de repression des herbacees sont appliques apres la plantation.
The Analysis of the Relative Growth Gradients and Changing Form of Growing Organisms: Illustrated by the Tobacco Leaf

TH E size and shape of plants and animals distinguish them from each other, and from these differences derives much. of classification, comparative biology and even the recognition of individuals. Some organisms-attain the proportions of the adult configuration early, others change slowly from the infantile pattern into the adult form. Claws, antlers, or other parts may grow larger and out of proportion to the rest of the body. Regressioll ill form often denotes the effect of an adverse environment and senility involves change of form as well as function. The analysis of the form changes is essential to an understanding of the growth of organisms. This paper presents a method for this analysis which relates the transformed coordinate method with the allometric expression of growth gradients.
Larger seeds in tropical floras: consistent patterns independent of growth form and dispersal mode

Many species of tropical moist forests have large seeds compared to those found in temperate floras. This could be attributed to a prevalence of woody growth forms, or adaptation to dispersal by vertebrates, or the dense shade of a closed canopy, rather than to an intrinsic tropical v. temperate difference. We compared tropical v. temperate seed mass data at two geographic scales; firstly within Australia between tropical, subtropical and temperate open woodlands, then between six tropical and temperate datasets from five continents. Within Australia we found that seed mass increased with decreasing latitude in ten out of eleven growth form‐dispersal mode combinations: only wind‐dispersed graminoids showed no significant effect. While the pattern of generally larger seeds in the tropical flora was associated with tropical families tending to have larger seeds than temperate families, we also found that tropical species had larger seeds than temperate cofamilials. As a preliminary test of the generality of these findings we included a further four tropical and temperate data sets in a second analysis. Average tropical seed masses were larger than temperate seed masses in all testable growth form‐dispersal mode combinations, and statistically larger in five out of seven cases: unassisted, vertebrate‐ and wind‐dispersed woody species, and unassisted and vertebrate‐dispersed forbs. No difference was found for wind‐dispersed forbs or for graminoids lacking dispersal structures. That an effect was found in these combinations rules out explanations based solely on characteristics of tropical v. temperate dispersers, although this may be a contributing factor. Instead we suggest that some aspect of tropical systems, for example higher metabolic costs of seedling production, has selected for a general increase in seed mass among tropical taxa.
The Role of Sucrose and Fructosylsucrose in Fructosan Metabolism

Explants of mature dormant tubers of Helianthus tuberosus were grown in a glucose medium. The explants were able to initiate a de novo synthesis of fructosans. Initiation of this synthesis depends on the level of sucrose and fructosylsucrose. Sucrose synthetase level in the tissue can be altered by 2, 4-D. Fructosylsucrose synthetase seems to be induced by sucrose.
Perte de rendement due aux maladies cryptogamiques sur blé tendre d'hiver. Construction et validation d'un modèle de l'effet du système de culture

Avec l'objectif de concevoir, pour le ble tendre d'hiver, des itineraires techniques a bas niveau d'intrants, nous avons elabore un modele lineaire simple d'estimation de la perte de rendement due aux maladies d'origine cryptogamique, en l'absence de traitement fongicide. Les effets d'elements du systeme de culture et de l'annee climatique sur les degâts dus aux maladies sont quantifies. Nous presentons ici le modele elabore a partir de 454 essais fongicide des regions Haute-Normandie et Picardie, de 1978 a 1991, sa validation et son interet pour la conception d'itineraires techniques a bas niveau d'intrants fongicide