Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Improving our understanding of demographic monitoring: avian breeding productivity in a tropical dry forest

The ratio of juvenile to adult birds in mist‐net samples is used to monitor avian productivity, but whether it is a “true” estimate of per capita productivity or an index proportional to productivity depends on whether capture probability is not age‐dependent (true estimate) or age difference in capture probability is consistent among years (index). Better understanding of the processes affecting age‐ and year‐specific capture probabilities is needed to advance the application of constant‐effort mist‐netting for monitoring and conservation, particularly in many tropical settings where capture rates are often low. We ranked members of the avian community by capture frequencies, determined if temporary emigration influenced the availability of birds to be captured, and assessed the distribution of birds relative to mist‐nets and the parity between capture‐based productivity estimates and number of fledglings in nest plots in a tropical dry forest in Puerto Rico in 2009 and 2010. Few captures characterized the community of 25 resident species and, when estimable, capture probabilities were low, particularly for juveniles (typically < 0.1). Negative trends in capture probability, temporary emigration, and the distribution of birds suggest that avoidance of mist‐nets influenced capture rates in our study. Increasing mist‐net coverage or moving mist‐nets between sampling periods could increase capture rates. The number of fledglings observed in nest plots (25 ha/plot) did not correlate well with capture‐derived estimates (20 ha/net stations), suggesting the presence of immigrants or failure to find all nests. Our results suggest that indices of breeding productivity from mist‐netting data may track temporal changes in productivity, but such data likely do not reflect “true” productivity in most cases unless age‐specific differences in capture probability are incorporated into estimates. Pilot studies should be conducted to evaluate capture rates and the spatial extent sampled by mist‐nets to improve sampling design and inferences before informing decisions.
Potency Analysis for Agro Science Techno Park Area Development Plan in Gorontalo Province

Global competitiveness index report in 2015 has put Indonesia in the 30th rank on one of the research collaboration performance between university and industry as innovation pillar. This indicates that there is still lack of synergy between higher education institutions and industry to develop research output. As the answer to this challenge, the Indonesian government initiated the establishment of Science Techno Park (hereafter, STP) as business technology incubator to stimulate and to manage the flow of knowledge and technology in universities, research and development institutions, industry, and government. However, among eight existing STP and 78 more that were planned to be built, Gorontalo, as an agricultural province with the potential to develop agro STP, was not among them. This study is aimed at examining the area potentials, potential commodities, and agro-industry potentials that are feasible for developing a pilot area for agro STP in Gorontalo province as a basis for implementation of agro-industry cluster policy to strengthen the regional innovation system in Gorontalo province. The data were collected from survey and focus group discussion (FGD). The data were analyzed by using Location Quotient Method and Exponential Comparison Method. The results reveal three potential agro-industry regency areas; Gorontalo Regency, Boalemo Regency, and Gorontalo Utara Regency as well as seven leading commodities for these potential areas; corn, coconut, marine fisheries, cocoa, beef cattle, cassava, and chili. Further, for agro-industry, the most dominant potentials to be developed are flour, beef floss, chips, handicraft, and animal feed.
A distributed framework for extracting maritime traffic patterns

ABSTRACT All the modern surveillance systems take advantage of the Automatic Identification System (AIS), a compulsory tracking system for many types of vessels. Ships that carry AIS transponders on board transmit their position and status in order to alert nearby vessels and ground stations, but this information can well be used to identify events of interest and support decision making. The detection of anomalies (i.e. unexpected sailing behavior) in vessels’ trajectories is such an event, which is of utmost importance. Approaches for detecting such anomalies vary from extracting normality models to searching for individual cases, such as AIS switch-off or collision avoidance maneuvers. The current research work follows the former method; it employs sparse historic AIS data and polynomial interpolation in order to extract shipping lanes. It modifies the DB-Scan clustering algorithm in order to achieve more coherent trajectory clusters, which are then composed to create the shipping lanes. The proposed approach implements distributed processing on Apache Spark in order to improve processing speed and scalability and is evaluated using real-world AIS data collected from terrestrial AIS receivers. The evaluation shows that the biggest part (i.e. more than 90%) of any future vessel trajectory falls within the extracted shipping lanes.
Dengue and Chikungunya among Febrile Outpatients in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo: a cross-sectional study

Background Pathogens causing acute fever, with the exception of malaria, remain largely unidentified in sub-Saharan Africa, given the local unavailability of diagnostic tests and the broad differential diagnosis. Methodology/Principal Findings We conducted a cross-sectional study including outpatient acute febrile syndromes in both children and adults, between November 2015 and June 2016 in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. Serological and molecular diagnostic tests for arboviral infections were performed on blood, including PCR and NS1-RDT for acute, and ELISA and IFAT for past infections. Conclusions/Significance Among 342 patients, aged 2 to 68 years, 45.3% tested positive on malaria Rapid Diagnostic Test. However, 87.7% received antimalarial and 64.3% antibacterial treatment. Further investigation among 235 fever cases revealed 19 (8.1%) acute dengue and 2 (0.9%) acute chikungunya infections, with an important proportion of participants already exposed to flaviviridae (possibly dengue) and alphaviridae (possibly chikungunya) in the past, namely 30.2 % and 26.4% respectively. We found no evidence of exposure to Zika nor yellow fever virus. Author Summary Sam Proesmans is a medical doctor, currently doing a fellowship in internal medicine at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. He holds a Master of Public Health from Columbia University, New York City, USA. His primary research interest lies in infectious diseases, from a public health point of view and he believes that this study is proof that the differential diagnosis should include arboviral infection, given the hitherto unseen evidence of high arbivirus infection rates in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in that they are mostly misdiagnosed as malaria or bacterial infections.
Tragedy or over-achievement: a media analysis of spinal cord injury in Australia

Spinal cord injury has evolved from a condition not to be treated, to one that is treated and rehabilitated. People with spinal cord injury now live longer active lives; however, barriers to participation such as attitudes and misunderstandings of spinal cord injury still exist. Acknowledging that media can shape attitudes and understanding of disability, primary aim of this study was to explore how spinal cord injury has been framed in Australian media through a newspaper content analysis. A secondary aim was to understand how framing changed overtime. Findings show consistent traditional news frames, with emphasis on disability and hardship. Progressive framing emerged in later years. Thematic analysis revealed two contrasting narratives tragedy and over-achievement, and a third financial burden. Traumatic spinal cord injury was most reported. This coverage, and exclusion of stories in between, has potential implications towards attitudes and understanding of spinal cord injury, and the lived experience.
Asset‐Liability
 Management and bank profitability: Statistical cost accounting analysis from an emerging market

This paper employs the Statistical Cost Accounting (SCA) model to examine the relationship between profit and Asset-Liability Management (ALM) structure of 27 banks in Ghana over the period 2007 – 2015. The findings confirm the central hypothesis of the SCA model and provide evidence that profitability is linked to balance sheet items in Ghana. It also documents evidence that domestic banks have higher rate of return on assets than foreign banks over the study period. In addition, high profit banks were observed to have higher rate of return on assets as well as higher rate of cost on liabilities than low profit banks. These findings provide useful insights to bank management through the identification of the assets items that generate highest return on bank profitability.
PERAN MEDIA SOSIAL DALAM PENGEMBANGAN HOMESTAY DI DESA TERONG KABUPATEN BELITUNG

This research is motivated by how the influence of employee discipline in improving work performance. With a variety of problems that become critical to the lack of discipline of employees in their performance. Where this can be seen from the results of the partial test (Test-t) which shows that employee discipline has a positive and significant effect on employee performance. Simple linear regression analysis using the SPSS for Windows version 16.0 program obtained a value of 7.533 and a b value of 0.868. From the test results obtained by R is 0.939 or 93.9% which is positive, this number shows that there is a closeness between employee discipline variables towards work performance variables. And the value of R2 (coefficient of determination) is used to influence the influence of independent variables (employee discipline) on changes in the dependent variable (work performance). The purpose of this study is the extent to which the influence of discipline and management is expected to really maintain and improve employee discipline because discipline is very influential on work performance
Gender preference among pregnant women in Nepal

Background: Nepalese society is traditionally patriarchal and son-preferred with increasing numbers of sex-selective abortions. In this context, this study aims to assess the gender preference and associated factors among pregnant women visiting the antenatal care ward of a large public maternity hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal. Methods: A hospital-based cross-sectional study was carried out among 821 antenatal women. Data was collected via face to face interview with structured questionnaire, and gender preference was assessed using Coombs’ scale. Results: At the first instance, more than half 56.2% respondents wished to have two sons and one daughter if they were to have only three children. On asking further questions as per the Coombs’ scale, about 40% of the respondents had son preference falling in IS scale 7-5, 33% had balanced IS-4, and 27% had daughter preference (IS 3-1). The respondent characteristics significantly associated with gender preference were ecological region (p=0.007), education (p=0.009), marital duration (p=0.044) and parity 0.32. Conclusions: The wish to have son is prevalent among the respondents followed by a mixed gender of children. Educational status, ecological region, and parity explain this differential wish. Women’s education and autonomy are the areas to tackle with sex bias of offspring.
Wild Soybeans: An Opportunistic Resource for Soybean Improvement

Reduced genetic diversity in cultivated soybean coupled with changing dietary expecta- tions, climate change, and increase in population demands expansion of current gene pool. Wild soybeans are an opportunistic resource and a rational choice to discover novel genes and gene families for alternative crop production systems and to improve soybean. Multiple agronomic traits, lineage-specific genes, and domestication-related traits have been studied in wild soybeans in contrast to cultivated soybeans, and it has been proved that wild soybeans are an essential genomic resource containing unique and useful genetic resources that have been lost during domestication to expand the gene pool in order to improve soybean. Wild soybean is very often a plant of disturbed habitats of Southeast Asia. The vul- nerability of these habitats to agriculture systems and urban expansion causes a reduction in the area of distribution and hence the diversity. To capture the wild soybean genetic diversity in its main distribution areas, a unique and comprehensive germplasm collection, characterization, and conservation platform is direly needed. Chung’s Wild Legume Germplasm Collection is preserving and maintaining a representative wild soybean germplasm collection guided by the principles of conservation genetics. These wild legumes and particularly wild soybean is a promising genetic resource for soybean
Tumor-associated macrophage is correlated with survival and SOCS protein expression in canine mammary carcinoma

ABSTRACT: The inflammatory infiltrate in the tumor microenvironment, particularly in mammary tumors, has aroused great interest in oncology, to play different roles in the progression or tumor regression dependent on the types and cell subsets involved. The present study aimed to evaluate (1) the occurrence and intensity of macrophage infiltration in the mammary carcinoma microenvironment, (2) the expression of SOCS1 and SOCS3 proteins in tumor associated macrophages, (3) any association between these parameters and tumor development, as well as survival rates in female dogs. Twenty-two female dogs diagnosed as carcinoma arising in a mixed tumor (CMT) by histopathology were divided into two groups following mastectomy: dogs without metastasis (CMT(-)=11) and those with metastasis (CMT(+)=11). The following parameters were analyzed: tumor size, lymph node metastasis, clinical stage, histological grade, distribution and intensity of inflammatory infiltrate, tumor macrophage quantification by immunohistochemical analysis of SOCS1 and SOCS3 expression, and immunophenotyping of peripheral blood leukocytes by flow cytometry. Dogs with the higher proportions of macrophages in the inflammatory infiltrate (≥400/tumor) also had higher survival rates in comparison with dogs with less macrophages. Immunostaining revealed higher proportions of SOCS3-positive macrophages in dogs without lymph node metastasis, while SOCS1-positive macrophages were predominant in dogs with metastasis (p<0.05). Multivariate analysis found associations between survival rate and clinical staging (p=0.025), histological grade (p=0.007), and the expression of MHC-CI in circulating monocytes (p=0.018). Higher SOCS3 expression in activated macrophages within the inflammatory infiltrate were considered indicative of an antitumor immune response, improved clinicopathological parameters and longer survival, whereas SOCS1-related activation was associated with tumor progression, metastasis development and reduced survival in female dogs with mammary carcinomas.
Finite elements method based on Galerkin’s formulation for predicting the sand bars position

Abstract The accurate knowledge of the location and movement of the sand bars is important for the coastal manager to establish correctly the coastal defence elements. This work applies a numerical model of finite elements based on Galerkin's formulation for predicting the location of the start, crest and end of the outer bar. The model that shows the best results is the one that combines the variables wave height, period and median sediment size. The mean errors are less than 10 m in the distance to the shoreline and 17 cm in the depth, while in the formulations proposed by other authors the errors are more than 100 m in the distance to the shoreline and 2 m in the depth. Thus, the proposed model significantly improves the calculation of the sand bars position. This will allow a better location of the coastal defence elements, and therefore an improvement in their effectiveness and optimisation of the materials to be used in their construction, the key to sustainable coastal management. Furthermore, although the model was developed for the area of Valencia (Spain), the model can be used in any area with similar characteristics (open sandy beach), and the methodology (variables and process) could be applied worldwide.
Flocking for Multiagent Systems with Partial Information Exchange Based on Inclusion Principle

This paper investigates the flocking problem of multi-agents with partial information exchange, which means that only part, but not all, of the agents are informed of the group objective. A distributed flocking model based on the inclusion principle is provided to simplify the design and analysis of multi-agent systems. Furthermore, to reduce the communication energy consumption, an improved flocking algorithm based on the model is proposed to achieve stable flocking for all the agents. The stability of the multi-agent system is then established, with the help of the Lyapunov stability theorem and LaSalle’s invariance principle. Especially, considering the individual heterogeneity in both nature and engineering applications, we also investigate the flocking problem of multi-agents with different sensing radiuses and equilibrium distances. Finally, two kinds of simulation results are presented to demonstrate the validity of the proposed results. This work provides an insight not only into the properties of the different species of individual flocking, but also into the theoretical framework for the engineering design of multi-agent systems considering individual heterogeneity.
Early Handwriting Ability Predicts the Growth of Children’s Spelling, but Not Reading, Skills

ABSTRACT This study examined the longitudinal relationship between early handwriting skills and the growth of spelling and reading skills in a large sample (N = 569) of 5- to 6-year-old children unselected for ability. The quality of children’s handwriting was assessed using five indicators (letter form, slant, rhythm, ability, general appearance). Children also completed a wide range of tasks measuring reading, spelling and literacy-related skills (letter-sound knowledge, phoneme awareness, rapid automatized naming). A latent variable path model showed that variations in handwriting skills, but not generic fine motor skills, accounted for unique variance in the growth of spelling, but not reading. Theoretically, these findings suggest that writing words may lead to the creation of motoric representations of spelling patterns that support the development of children’s orthographic knowledge. From an applied perspective, our findings suggest that practice writing words may help children to learn to spell them.
Sex Differences in Telomere Length Are Not Mediated by Sex Steroid Hormones or Body Size in Early Adolescence

Telomere length is a biomarker of cell aging that is hypothesized to contribute to women’s greater longevity. Although most previous studies have found no sex difference in telomere length at birth, it is well established that females have longer average telomere length than males during adulthood. Proposed biological mechanisms underlying sex differences in adult telomere length include differences in sex steroid hormones and body size, which emerge during the pubertal transition. The purpose of this study was to examine the total effect of sex on telomere length during early adolescence and to examine estradiol, total testosterone, and body surface area (BSA; a measure of body size) as potential mediators of sex differences in telomere length. Data were from a population-based sample of 126 female and 109 male Hispanic adolescents aged 8 to 14 years from the Early Life Exposures in Mexico to ENvironmental Toxicants (ELEMENT) study. Relative telomere length (T/S ratio) was measured by the quantitative polymerase chain reaction method; sex steroid hormones were measured using an automated chemiluminescent immunoassay, and BSA was calculated using measured height and weight. Adjusting for age and pubertal status, we found that girls had significantly longer telomeres than boys (β = .13; P < .01), but there were no significant indirect effects of sex on telomere length through any of the proposed mediators. We conclude that sex differences in telomere length are evident during early adolescence but are not explained by cross-sectional differences in sex steroid hormones or body size.
Epidemiological and molecular insights into Human Papillomavirus-related head and neck squamous cell carcinomas

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Deuterium retention in tungsten irradiated by different ions

Tungsten was irradiated with different ion species (H, D, He, Si, Fe, Cu, W) at energies between 0.3 and 20.3 MeV to two different calculated damage levels of 0.04 dpa and 0.5 dpa. Samples were exposed to a low-temperature deuterium (D) plasma at 370 K to decorate the radiation defects. D retention was studied by nuclear reaction analysis using the D(3He, p)α reaction and by thermal desorption spectroscopy. For tungsten irradiated by light ions (H, D, He) the depth profiles as well as D desorption spectra show clear differences. On the other hand, tungsten irradiated by medium- to high-mass ions (Si, Cu, Fe, W) to identical dpa values shows similar D depth profiles and nearly identical D desorption spectra, i.e. the D retention is comparable. Since the large differences in the primary recoil energy distribution due to different incident energies of the different ions (Si, Cu, Fe, W) do not result in a different D retention, we assume that neutron irradiation of tungsten in a future fusion reactor will result in a similar D retention as in tungsten damaged by medium- to high-mass ions. Irradiation with ions with a mass of 28 amu (Si) or higher seems to be a suitable proxy for investigating the influence of displacement damage by neutrons on D retention.