Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Response of arboreal rodents to increased availability of nest substrates in young forests

Many forest-dependent animals require complex branch and bole structural features as substrates for nesting, and these features may take decades or centuries to develop. In young forests, lack of suitable nest substrates may limit occurrence and abundance of arboreal rodents. To test this hypothesis, we measured the response of arboreal rodents to installation of 429 artificial nest platforms at 17 young forest sites in the Coast Range of Oregon, United States. We compared the percentage of 100-m2 plots at sites containing nests before and after installation of nest platforms, and examined 5 a priori hypotheses of spatial patterns of use using logistic regression. One year after installation, we observed a 5.8-fold increase (95% CI = 2.4–9.2) in plots containing nests of red tree voles (Arborimus longicaudus) and a 2.9-fold increase (95% CI = 1.3–4.4) of tree squirrels (Glaucomys oregonensis, Tamiasciurius douglasii). In addition, we captured 37 adult red tree voles (30 females, 7 males). Presence of conspecific nests < 75 m away increased the odds of use by red tree voles but not by tree squirrels. Our results support the hypothesis that lack of suitable nest substrates limits occurrence of red tree voles in young forests, but results were ambiguous for tree squirrels. Increasing the availability of nest substrates via installation of nest platforms may increase abundance of red tree voles in young forests. However, we do not know if this will allow red tree voles to persist in young forests that are subjected to repeated commercial thinning and clear-cut harvesting.
A Numerical Study of the Influence of Channel-Scale Secondary Circulation on Mixing Processes Downstream of River Junctions

A rapid downstream weakening of the processes that drive the intensity of transverse mixing at the confluence of large rivers has been identified in the literature and attributed to the progressive reduction in channel scale secondary circulation and shear-driven mixing with distance downstream from the junction. These processes are investigated in this paper using a three-dimensional computation of the Reynolds averaged Navier Stokes equations combined with a Reynolds stress turbulence model for the confluence of the Kama and Vishera rivers in the Russian Urals. Simulations were carried out for three different configurations: an idealized planform with a rectangular cross-section (R), the natural planform with a rectangular cross-section (P), and the natural planform with the measured bathymetry (N), each one for three different discharge ratios. Results show that in the idealized configuration (R), the initial vortices that form due to channel-scale pressure gradients decline rapidly with distance downstream. Mixing is slow and incomplete at more than 10 multiples of channel width downstream from the junction corner. However, when the natural planform and bathymetry are introduced (N), rates of mixing increase dramatically at the junction corner and are maintained with distance downstream. Comparison with the P case suggests that it is the bathymetry that drives the most rapid mixing and notably when the discharge ratio is such that a single channel-scale vortex develops aided by curvature in the post junction channel. This effect is strongest when the discharge of the tributary that has the same direction of curvature as the post junction channel is greatest. A comprehensive set of field data are required to test this conclusion. If it holds, theoretical models of mixing processes in rivers will need to take into account the effects of bathymetry upon the interaction between river discharge ratio, secondary circulation development, and mixing rates.
A Theory of Change for promoting coexistence between dingoes and livestock production

Achieving conservation goals, such as coexistence between wildlife and humans, requires an evidence‐based understanding of the factors that shape conservation contexts. For addressing conflict between humans and wildlife, this means understanding the barriers and opportunities to changing human behaviors toward wildlife. Here, we develop a Theory of Change (ToC) to promote coexistence between livestock producers and dingoes in Australia. The ToC is based on behavior change principles and interdisciplinary research identifying four key stakeholder groups who may influence dingo management. It employs four overlapping strategies to address these barriers: (a) a media campaign to promote public awareness of dingo management practices, which may result in pressure upon governments to restrict lethal control; (b) promoting more inclusive decision‐making processes, specifically including Aboriginal Australians; (c) monitoring and evaluation of the effects of dingo management on livestock and ecosystems to identify opportunities for nonlethal dingo management; (d) campaign to encourage adoption of nonlethal management methods by livestock producers based on an understanding of sociopsychological factors that shape behaviors. The framework is a tool for conservation advocates and policymakers to implement and monitor change that facilitates both wildlife conservation and thriving rural communities.
Developmental Offending Patterns: Female Offending Beyond the Reference Category

Compared with young men, justice-involved young women are often characterized by a greater array of risk factors, yet show a more limited pattern of offending. This paradox may be related to risk factors functioning differently not only for male versus female adolescents but also among female adolescents involved in offending. Data were used on 284 girls from the Incarcerated Serious and Violent Young Offender Study to address whether risk factors varied across different offending trajectories modeled between ages 12 and 23. Risk factors measured from self-report interviews were compared across the three trajectories identified. Individual, family, and school risk factors varied across trajectory groups, but not always in ways anticipated. Female offending does not appear to fit neatly within existing developmental criminology theory. Theoretical models should be adapted, or new models developed, to account for the complexities of female offending patterns.
Conceptual Framework of Connectivity for a National Agroecosystem Model Based on Transport Processes and Management Practices

There is a critical need for a national agroecosystem model for conservation policy and environmental planning, driven by issues including harmful algal blooms, water scarcity, flooding, and other weather‐related extremes. In this study, we illustrate the feasibility of a national agroecosystem model that will downscale processes to individual fields and first‐order channels. We propose to conceptually divide the conterminous United States (U.S.) into process domains as a framework for simulating processes and management at relevant scales. Specifically, we are proposing five domains: field (1–50 ha), transition (0.2–2.0 km2), headwater (1–15 km2), tributaries (15–150 km2), and main river (>150 km2). The proposed conceptual framework hydrologically connects fields across the U.S. using the National Hydrography Dataset (NHDPlus version 2). Parameterizing the Soil and Water Assessment Tool for the national agroecosystem model resulted in 4,880,000 agricultural fields, 2,250,000 non‐agricultural hydrologic response units, and 7,130,000 transition, 1,610,000 headwater, 591,000 tributary, and 432,400 main channels. Application of this framework was shown for Hydrologic Unit Code 07120002 in central Illinois and Indiana to demonstrate the feasibility of the approach using data that is readily available across the U.S. The new connectivity framework has the potential to dramatically improve national conservation and environmental assessments performed by U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
AoI Minimization for UAV-to-Device Underlay Communication by Multi-agent Deep Reinforcement Learning

In this paper, we consider a cellular Internet of UAVs, where the sensory data can be transmitted either to the base station via cellular links, or to the mobile devices by underlay UAV-to-Device communications. To evaluate the freshness of the sensory data, the age of information (AoI) is adopted, in which a lower AoI implies fresher data. Since UAVs’ AoIs are determined by their trajectories during sensing and transmission, we aim to minimize the AoIs of UAVs by designing their trajectories. This problem is a Markov decision problem with an infinite state-action space, and thus, we propose a multi-UAV trajectory design algorithm by leveraging multi-agent deep reinforcement learning to solve it. Simulation results show that our proposed algorithm outperforms both a greedy algorithm and a policy gradient algorithm.
Towards a More Robust Non-Rigid Robotic Joint

The following paper presents an improved, low cost, non-rigid joint that can be used in both robotic manipulators and leg-based traction robotic systems. This joint is an improvement over the previous one presented by the same authors because it is more robust. The design iterations are presented and the final system has been modeled including some nonlinear blocks. A control architecture is proposed that allows compliant control to be used under adverse conditions or in uncontrolled environments. The presented joint is a cost-effective solution that can be used when normal rigid joints are not suitable.
Behavioral Visibility: A new paradigm for organization studies in the age of digitization, digitalization, and datafication

The digitization, digitalization, and datafication of work and communication, coupled with social and technical infrastructures that enable connectivity, are making it increasingly easy for the behaviors of people, collectives, and technological devices to see and be seen. Such digital connectivity gives rise to the important phenomenon of behavioral visibility. We argue that studying the antecedents, processes, and consequences of behavioral visibility should be a central concern for scholars of organizing. We attempt to set the cornerstones for the study of behavioral visibility by considering the social and technological contexts that are enabling behavioral visibility, developing the concept of behavioral visibility by defining its various components, considering the conditions through which it is commonly produced, and outlining potential consequences of behavioral visibility in the form of three paradoxes. We conclude with some conjectures about the kinds of research questions, empirical foci, and methodological strategies that scholars will need to embrace in order to understand how behavioral visibility shapes and is shaped by the process of organizing as we catapult, swiftly, into an era where artificial intelligence, learning algorithms, and social tools are changing the way people work.
Investigation of the Interactional Aerodynamics of the XV-15 Tiltrotor Aircraft

The high fidelity computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tool CREATE™-AV HELIOS is used to investigate the interactional aerodynamics of the XV-15 tiltrotor in this work. The full vehicle is studied in a quasi-static manner with various airspeeds, nacelle angles, and vehicle attitudes to simulate hover-to-forward flight transition. The rotor is trimmed using CFD/CSD coupling with CAMRADII. Significant wing-on-rotor interactions are observed where the thickness and loading effects of the wing create an impulsive doublet loading on the rotor as it passes over the wings. Furthermore, the wing is shown to alter the blade-vortex interactions of the rotor at high nacelle angles. The rotor in turn noticeably alters the lift and drag characteristics of the wing. At moderate to low nacelle angles, the rotor downwash enhances the dynamic pressure primarily on the upper surface of the wing, increasing the wing lift by up to 13%. The effect on the drag varies depending on the nacelle angle. At high nacelle angles, the rotor is shown to decrease the both lift and drag of the wing by 15%. Overall, this work serves to illuminate and quantify some of the complex aerodynamic interactions that occur during the conversion maneuver of tiltrotor aircraft.
Pediatric Emergency Medicine ECHO (Extension for Community Health Care Outcomes): Cultivating Connections to Improve Pediatric Emergency Care

An Extension for Community Health Care Outcomes (ECHO) provides the opportunity for specialists at academic medical centers (AMCs) and frontline community generalists to engage in bidirectional learning. Specialists provide generalists with the current best evidence, and generalists share the local challenges applying this evidence to their practice. All ECHO participants strategize how to navigate these challenges together. Pediatric emergency medicine (PEM) may benefit from this knowledge translation strategy because most children seek emergency care from generalists in community emergency departments (CEDs) where variations in care between the AMC and the CED have been reported.
The dependence structure between equity and foreign exchange markets and tail risk forecasts of foreign investments

Motivated by the importance of the dependence structure between equity and foreign exchange rates in international financial markets, we investigate whether modelling the dependence structure can help forecast the tail risk of foreign investments. We propose a new time-varying asymmetric copula for modelling the dependence structure and forecasting the tail risk. We conduct backtesting on our tail risk forecasts for 12 major developed and emerging markets. We find that modelling the dependence structure can improve the tail risk forecast and make risk management of foreign investments more robust.
Boolean Valued Representation of Random Sets and Markov Kernels with Application to Large Deviations

We establish a connection between random set theory and Boolean valued analysis by showing that random Borel sets, random Borel functions, and Markov kernels are respectively represented by Borel sets, Borel functions, and Borel probability measures in a Boolean valued model. This enables a Boolean valued transfer principle to obtain random set analogues of available theorems. As an application, we establish a Boolean valued transfer principle for large deviations theory, which allows for the systematic interpretation of results in large deviations theory as versions for Markov kernels. By means of this method, we prove versions of Varadhan and Bryc theorems, and a conditional version of Cramér theorem.
Flies are what they eat : Tailoring nutrition of Black Soldier Fly (Hermetia illucens L.) for larval biomass production and fitness

Black Soldier Fly – BSF; Hermetia illucens L. (Diptera: Stratiomyidae) has been proposed as one of the most suitable insect species to be used as animal feed. Advantages of using BSF that have been identified are their capacity to convert organic waste, to reduce the numbers of certain harmful bacteria and insect pests, to provide potential chemical precursors to produce biodiesel, and to provide high quality protein to be used as feed for a variety of animals. This thesis explores nutritional physiology of BSF and its effect on larval biomass production and fitness. Knowing the physiological mechanisms that BSF employs to deal with different nutrient concentrations, and their impacts on BSF life-history traits and larval body content, may yield valuable insights into the nutritional ecology of BSF. Experiments involving the study of larval densities, total nutrient content, and dietary protein (P) and carbohydrate (C) content and ratio on artificial, semi-artificial and organic residual stream diets were used to unravel their effect on life-history traits, body nutrient content and reproduction of BSF. Results presented in this thesis show that larval density and nutrient content interact at low nutrient content to affect BSF larval performance and body composition, nutrient content overall having a stronger effect. Regarding dietary protein and carbohydrate, I conclude that BSF has post-ingestive mechanisms to deal with imbalanced foods. Carbohydrate-biased P:C ratios positively affect BSF performance, both on the artificial diets and the organic residue stream, P-content being limiting for most of the performance variables. In the experiments throughout this study larval protein content was high and largely independent of dietary protein content, although small differences were found between treatments. However, larval crude fat varied over a wider range depending on dietary macronutrient content, protein content affecting larval crude fat content to a large extent. The data presented in this thesis contribute to our understanding of how nutrition, mainly in terms of protein and carbohydrate content and ratio, affects life-history traits, nutrient body content and reproduction of BSF and how this knowledge can be applied to improve the productive performance and larval body composition in BSF production systems.
Role of size and risk effects in value anomaly: Evidence from the Indian stock market

Abstract Portfolios of companies with high book-to-market (BTM) ratio (low Price-To-Book (PB) ratios, Value firms) outperform those with companies with low BTM ratio (high PB ratios, Growth firms). In literature, this is known as the Value Anomaly. This anomaly is related to the third factor in the three-factor model of Fama and French, and is commonly used to explain the cross section of returns. Studies on the Value Anomaly in the Indian Stock Markets have yielded mixed results. Using a longer span of data and a larger set of companies, this study explores and observes the Value Anomaly in the Indian Stock Market. The contribution of size and systematic risk towards the behaviour of the Value Anomaly is studied. We observe that Value Anomaly exists in India, but with growth portfolios outperforming value. A critical analysis reveals possible linkages to firm size.
Mixture of Birnbaum-Saunders Distributions: Identifiability, Estimation and Testing Homogeneity with Randomly Censored Data

Abstract Random censoring is frequently utilized to analyze lifetime data in life-testing and reliability experiments. However, no published work discussed parameter estimation and testing homogeneity under random censoring for the mixture of Birnbaum-Saunders (BS) distributions, which is a useful model for describing reliability data. In this paper, first the proof of the identifiability of a finite mixture of BS distributions with g components is developed using Laplace transform of BS distributions. Then based on random censoring, parameter estimation and testing homogeneity are discussed. An EM algorithm is proposed to obtain the maximum likelihood (ML) estimates of the mixture model parameters and an EM test is implemented to test for homogeneity in the mixture of BS distributions. A Monte Carlo simulation study is conducted to evaluate the performance of the ML estimates through the bias and mean squared error. Additionally, the performance of the EM test is investigated through its size and power which are calculated by Monte Carlo simulation. Finally, an example of aircraft Windshield data is used to illustrate the estimation and testing procedures.
The impact of renewable energy, trade, economic growth on CO2 emissions in China

ABSTRACT This study examines the linkage of per capita carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, real GDP, renewable and non-renewable energy use and trade (exports and imports) in China covering 1965–2016. Long-run estimates present the invalidation of inverted U-shaped hypothetical environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) in three models based on the equations of import, export, and trade openness (% of trade in GDP), respectively. Long-run Granger causalities exist in the equations of emissions, real GDP, and non-renewable energy, respectively. Non-renewable energy conservation policy not only affects economic activity, but also influences CO2 emissions. The effect of renewable energy policy on CO2 emissions reduction is a long-term process.
Urban Sprawl and Growth Prediction for Lagos Using GlobeLand30 Data and Cellular Automata Model

Urban growth in various cities across the world, especially in developing countries, leads to land use change. Thus, predicting future urban growth in the most rapidly growing region of Nigeria becomes a significant endeavor. This study analyzes land use and land cover (LULC) change and predicts the future urban growth of the Lagos metropolitan region, using Cellular Automata (CA) model. To achieve this, the GlobeLand30 datasets from years 2000 and 2010 were used to obtain LULC maps, which were utilized for modeling and prediction. Change analysis and prediction for LULC scenario for 2030 were performed using LCM and CA Markov chain modeling. The results show a substantial growth of artificial surfaces, which will cause further reductions in cultivated land, grassland, shrubland, wetland, and waterbodies. There was no appreciable impact of change for bare land, as its initial extent of cover later disappeared completely. Additionally, artificial surfaces/urban growth in Lagos expanded to the neighboring towns and localities in Ogun State during the study period, and it is expected that such growth will be higher in 2030. Lastly, the study findings will be beneficial to urban planners and land use managers in making key decisions regarding urban growth and improved land use management in Nigeria.
Structural and Functional Connectivity of Visual Cortex in Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder: A Graph-Theoretic Analysis

Abstract Visual processing abnormalities in schizophrenia (SZ) are poorly understood, yet predict functional outcomes in the disorder. Bipolar disorder (BD) may involve similar visual processing deficits. Converging evidence suggests that visual processing may be relatively normal at early stages of visual processing such as early visual cortex (EVC), but that processing abnormalities may become more pronounced by mid-level visual areas such as lateral occipital cortex (LO). However, little is known about the connectivity of the visual system in SZ and BD. If the flow of information to, from, or within the visual system is disrupted by reduced connectivity, this could help to explain perceptual deficits. In the present study, we performed a targeted analysis of the structural and functional connectivity of the visual system using graph-theoretic metrics in a sample of 48 SZ, 46 BD, and 47 control participants. Specifically, we calculated parallel measures of local efficiency for EVC and LO from both diffusion weighted imaging data (structural) and resting-state (functional) imaging data. We found no structural connectivity differences between the groups. However, there was a significant group difference in functional connectivity and a significant group-by-region interaction driven by reduced LO connectivity in SZ relative to HC, whereas BD was approximately intermediate to the other 2 groups. We replicated this pattern of results using a different brain atlas. These findings support and extend theoretical models of perceptual dysfunction in SZ, providing a framework for further investigation of visual deficits linked to functional outcomes in SZ and related disorders.