Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A New Snake of the Genus Helicops Wagler, 1830 (Dipsadidae, Xenodontinae) from Brazil

Abstract: We describe a new species of Helicops from the southern Amazon Basin in the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil. It differs from all congeners by having dorsal scales in 21/21/19 rows in males and 23/21/19 rows in females, subcaudal keels, a banded dorsal color pattern, and 14–19 ventral blotches. Besides presenting information on the lepidosis and morphometric variation, we also describe the hemipenis and discuss the known distribution of the new species.
Classification of Hydroacoustic Signals Based on Harmonic Wavelets and a Deep Learning Artificial Intelligence System

This paper considers two approaches to hydroacoustic signal classification, taking the sounds made by whales as an example: a method based on harmonic wavelets and a technique involving deep learning neural networks. The study deals with the classification of hydroacoustic signals using coefficients of the harmonic wavelet transform (fast computation), short-time Fourier transform (spectrogram) and Fourier transform using a kNN-algorithm. Classification quality metrics (precision, recall and accuracy) are given for different signal-to-noise ratios. ROC curves were also obtained. The use of the deep neural network for classification of whales’ sounds is considered. The effectiveness of using harmonic wavelets for the classification of complex non-stationary signals is proved. A technique to reduce the feature space dimension using a ‘modulo N reduction’ method is proposed. A classification of 26 individual whales from the Whale FM Project dataset is presented. It is shown that the deep-learning-based approach provides the best result for the Whale FM Project dataset both for whale types and individuals.
Molecular inference of dominant picocyanobacterial populations by denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis of PCR amplified 16S rRNA gene fragments

Quantitative accuracy based on the fluorescent intensity of bands in a denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) profile of polymerase chain reaction (PCR)‐amplified 16S rRNA gene fragments was evaluated for the molecular inference of dominant populations using a cyanobacterial primer pair in a picocyanobacterial community. A serial dilution technique of the template prior to PCR of extracted nucleic acids allowed for elimination of minor strains (less than 10% of the whole cell number) using a cell mixture of three known cultured Synechococcus species with different ratios. When the most abundant strain among the three accounted for more than 80% of the cells, the single band derived from the most abundant one was detected exclusively after the template dilution. In the case of two or three strains evenly distributed in the sample, all strains remained as bands after template dilution. The technique used in the present study was also applied to lake water samples collected from depths of 1 and 5 m on 27 August 1999. The same dominant Synechococcus population was detected in both samples. Thus, the template‐dilution technique prior to PCR is useful to determine dominant picocyanobacterial populations in the DGGE profiling.
Zyflamend, a Polyherbal Preparation, Inhibits Invasion, Suppresses Osteoclastogenesis, and Potentiates Apoptosis Through Down-Regulation of NF-κ B Activation and NF-κ B–Regulated Gene Products

Abstract Zyflamend, a polyherbal preparation, was designed based on constituents that exhibit antiproliferative, antiinflammatory, antioxidant, antiangiogenic, and apoptotic activities through a mechanism that is not well defined. Because the nuclear factor (NF)-κ B has been shown to regulate proliferation, invasion, and metastasis of tumor cells, we postulated that Zyflamend modulates the activity of NF-κ B. To test this hypothesis, we examined the effect of this preparation on NF-κ B and NF-κ B–regulated gene products. We found that Zyflamend inhibited receptor activator of NF-κ B ligand–induced osteoclastogenesis, suppressed tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-induced invasion, and potentiated the cytotoxicity induced by TNF and chemotherapeutic agents, all of which are known to require NF-κ B activation. Zyflamend suppressed NF-κ B activation induced by both TNF and cigarette smoke condensate. The expression of NF-κ B–regulated gene products involved in antiapoptosis (inhibitor-of-apoptosis protein 1/2, Bcl-2, Bcl-x L , FADD-like interleukin-1βconverting enzyme/caspase-8 inhibitory protein, TNF receptor-associated factor-1, and survivin) and angiogenesis (vascular endothelial growth factor, cyclooxygenase-2, intercellular adhesion molecule, and matrix metalloproteinase-9) was also down-regulated by Zyflamend. This correlated with potentiation of cell death induced by TNF and chemotherapeutic agents. Overall, our results indicate that Zyflamend suppresses osteoclastogenesis, inhibits invasion, and potentiates cytotoxicity through down-regulation of NF-κ B activation and NF-κ B–regulated gene products.
Identifying the parameters of a hydro-mechanical model for internal erosion occurring in granular soils by using an enhanced backtracking search algorithm

Abstract Due to the complexity of the hydro-mechanical behaviour of soils subjected to internal erosion, a high number of parameters are usually required for the erosion models and the constitutive models. This aspect makes it difficult to determine by trial-error their relevant values from laboratory tests. To address this issue, an efficient optimisation-based procedure for identifying the parameters of a recently developed hydro-mechanical model for internal erosion using an enhanced backtracking search algorithm (so-called MBSA-LS) has been proposed. The MBSA-LS incorporates two points: (1) modifying the mutation of the original Backtracking Search Algorithm (BSA) and (2) incorporating an efficient differential evolution (DE) as a local search to improve the optimisation performance. A mono-objective framework with six different criteria has been proposed to identify the parameters related to the interlocking effect and the erosion process. The proposed procedure was successfully applied to identify the parameters from the erosion tests of Hong Kong-Completely Decomposed Granite mixture (HK-CDG). All results demonstrated that coupling the MBSA-LS and the hydro-mechanical erosion model could efficiently solve the issue of parameter identification accounting for both the mechanical behaviour and internal erosion.
Ecological strategies in the ancient asexual animal group Darwinulidae (Crustacea, Ostracoda)

SUMMARY 1. We investigated the relationship between geographical distribution and ecological tolerance within the ancient asexual family Darwinulidae. Distribution maps were compiled based on data from the literature, the Non-marine Ostracod Distribution in Europe database and personal collections. Ecological tolerance was assessed experimentally by exposing individual ostracods to a combination of eight different salinities (range from 0 to 30 g L )1 ) and three different temperatures (10, 20 and 30 � C). 2. The type species of the family, Darwinula stevensoni, is ubiquitous and cosmopolitan; the two species Penthesilenula brasiliensis and Microdarwinula zimmeri also have an intercontinental distribution. Two other darwinulid species tested here (Vestalenula molopoensis and P. aotearoa) are known only from their type localities. The latter is also true for most extant darwinulids. 3. Darwinula stevensoni and P. brasiliensis had a broad salinity tolerance, tolerating distilled water and also salinity up to 25–30 g L )1 , whereas the maximum salinity tolerance of V. molopoensis was 12 g L )1 and of P. aotearoa ,2 0 gL )1 . 4. The results indicate that both ecological specialists and generalists, as well as intermediate forms, exist in the Darwinulidae and that taxa with the broadest ecological tolerance also have the widest distribution.
LARVAL NUTRITION AFFECTS FEMALE NECTAR AMINO ACID PREFERENCE IN THE MAP BUTTERFLY (ARASCHNIA LEVANA)

Preference for nectar amino acids varies between different groups of pollinators. Females of several butterfly species have shown a clear preference for nectar mimics containing amino acids over nectar void of amino acids. This investigation examined how larval conditions affect nectar amino acid preferences of butterflies. Larvae of Araschnia levana were raised on low and high food quality diets. Female butterflies raised on the low quality larval diet were smaller and showed a significant preference for the nectar mimic with amino acids, whereas females raised on the high quality diet were larger and showed no preference. Larval food quality did not affect male mass, and male butterflies were indifferent to nectar amino acids. Consequently, female butterflies may compensate for poor larval nutrition by selectively feeding on nectar containing amino acids. These results demonstrate the nutritional plasticity of holometabolous insects and the potential evolutionary significance of nectar amino acids for both plants and their pollinators.
What Does ‘every’ Mean to Young ESL Learners?

Investigation of sentences that have multiple quantifications like the ones with a combination of a universal quantifier every preceding an existential quantifier a/an (e.g., Every boy is on a tractor ) have led to qualitatively different conclusions about children’s linguistic knowledge. This study with young Indian ESL learners was undertaken to understand their knowledge on one universal quantifier every in combination with the existential quantifier ‘a/an’ in sentential context. A picture-based truth-value judgment task was used to ascertain knowledge of abstract generalizations quantifying expressions hold over objects and the properties they refer to (Chierchia & Ginet, 2000). Picture cues were constructed to make the task felicitous and fulfill ‘Condition of Plausible Dissent’ (Crain et al. 1996) 1 . The findings suggest that children’s knowledge of every runs deep and shows the positive impact of task conditions on generating almost adult-like interpretations. In other words, the findings reveal that even at early stages of second language acquisition, as long as the sentences are presented in felicitous contexts with picture support, children’s interpretation of multiple quantifications appears to be UG governed. A pedagogical implication of this study would be that if young ESL/EFL learners show knowledge of interpretation of quantifiers in English, then their ability to mathematize or compute numerical figures would be easy to achieve in word problems. Therefore, if teachers use contextually rich tasks to help learners notice and arrive at multiple interpretations of quantifiers as presented through different syntactic combinations, then the learnability issue of multiple interpretations of quantifiers would be well addressed.
CaptionNet: A Tailor-made Recurrent Neural Network for Generating Image Descriptions

Image captioning is a challenging task of visual understanding and has drawn more attention of researchers. In general, two inputs are required at each time step by the Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) network used in popular attention based image captioning frameworks, including image features and previous generated words. However, error will be accumulated if the previous words are not accurate and the related semantic is not efficient enough. Facing these challenges, a novel model named CaptionNet is proposed in this work as an improved LSTM specially designed for image captioning. Concretely, only attended image features are allowed to be fed into the memory of CaptionNet through input gates. In this way, the dependency on the previous predicted words can be reduced, forcing model to focus on more visual clues of images at the current time step. Moreover, a memory initialization method called image feature encoding is designed to capture richer semantics of the target image. The evaluation on the benchmark MSCOCO and Flickr30K datasets demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed CaptionNet model, and extensive ablation studies are performed to verify each of the proposed methods. The project page can be found in https://mic.tongji. edu.cn/3f/9c/c9778a147356/page.htm.
Bayesian analysis of the p-order integer-valued AR process with zero-inflated Poisson innovations

In recent years, there has been a considerable interest to study count time series with a dependence structure and appearance of excess of zeros values. Such series are commonly encountered in diverse disciplines, such as economics, financial research, environmental science, public health, among others. In this paper, we propose a stationary p-order integer-valued autoregressive process with zero-inflated Poisson innovations, called the ZINAR(p) times series model. We study some of its theoretical properties and develop a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm for inferring parameters from Bayesian perspectives. Finally, we demonstrate the utility of proposed ZINAR(p) model through simulated and real data examples.
Pre‐ and post‐maturation survival in adults of the damselfly Pyrrhosoma nymphula (Zygoptera: Coenagrionidae)

The technique of mark-release-recapture was used to study survival before and after sexual maturity in adults of the damselfly Pyrrhosoma nymphula (Sulzer). Fewer females were recaptured upon return to water to breed despite no differences in dispersal or daily survival rate between the sexes over the immature period. Because females took longer to mature than males, their poorer recapture rate was attributed to greater overall mortality during their longer maturation phase. Survivorship curves for tenerals marked at emergence suggested that overall survival of immature adults was similar to, if not better than, that of mature adults. The reasons for this are discussed. Jolly's model was used to estimate daily survival rates for mature adults. The assumptions of the model were tested rigorously. Estimates for females were statistically less reliable than those for males. Mean reproductive spans for males and females were 6.8 and 6.6 days, respectively, giving mean total adult lifespans of 19.4 days and 21.6 days for individuals surviving the maturation period. Because neither sex visited the breeding site every day, sampling exclusively at water resulted in underestimation of mean reproductive spans for both sexes. Female reproductive spans were underestimated to a greater extent; because females remain away from water longer between visits, there is a greater chance that they will die before being recaptured. Mean reproductive spans were also underestimated when only a sub-section of the habitat was sampled. Females were significantly more mobile than males and this increased the likelihood that they would move out of the study area, resulting in more severe underestimation. The importance of obtaining accurate estimates of mature lifespan for females is discussed.
The Old World Roccella species outside Europe and Macaronesia: taxonomy, evolution and phylogeny

With this paper the genus Roccella is complete and fully revised. The genus contains 24 species of which eight species from the Old World in Asia and Africa are here treated in detail, Roccella applanata, R. babingtonii, R. balfourii, R. boryi, R. minuta (newly described here), R. montagnei, R. phycopsioides (newly described here) and R. sinensis. Roccella tinctoria with a predominantly Macaronesian distribution has some outpost localities in south western Africa is also included in this treatise. A full species phylogeny is presented based on data from four molecular markers, RPB2, nuLSU, ITS 1 and 2 and an anonymous locus. The African–Asian species together with three Macaronesian species (R. allorgei, R. fuciformis, R. maderensis) form a poorly supported monophyletic clade. The sister group to that clade is the significantly supported group containing the American and European–Macaronesian species. Roccella montagnei is the most widespread of all Roccella species ranging from Australia, around the Indian Ocean and further on along the west coast of Africa up north to the Cape Verde Islands. It is a genetically variable species, but morphologically, anatomically and chemically distinct and it is here maintained as one species. The distribution of roccellic acid among the samples within the monophyletic species group Roccella applanata, R. babingtonii, R. boryi, R. montagnei was surprising: sorediate specimens contain roccellic acid whereas fertile specimens, except for four samples, lack roccellic acid.
Damage in Rubble Mound Breakwaters. Part II: Review of the Definition, Parameterization, and Measurement of Damage

Damage in rubble mound breakwaters has been addressed for more than 80 years and, as reported in “Part I: Historical review of damage models”, a considerable number of hydraulic instability models have been proposed up to date. Most of them were developed from small-scale physical tests, based on damage descriptors not always parameterized nor measured in the same way, which indeed complicates the comparison and reproducibility from different experimental data sources. The latter is increased by the lack of a standardized methodological approach inside an experimental and measuring process that involves many sources of uncertainty. Currently, the latest innovations applicable to damage measurement, together with the growing demand of reliable decision-making tools for conservation/maintenance strategies and structural/operational risk management, venture an upcoming proliferation of prototype monitoring, as well as new approaches aimed to characterize the stochastic nature of damage evolution. In this context, this paper is meant to review the concept of damage in rubble mound breakwaters, the different proposals for its parameterization, the past and present measuring techniques, and main challenges in the near future.
Condições microclimáticas em cultivo de café conilon a pleno sol e arborizado com nogueira macadâmia

Microclimatic measurements (photosynthetically active radiation - PAR, temperature and relative humidity of air and wind speed) were made in a Conilon coffee crop (Coffea canephora Pierre), grown in two different conditions: shaded by macadamia nut trees (Macadamia integrifolia Maiden & Betche) and unshaded. The experiment was carried out at Sâo Mateus, Espirito Santo State, Brazil (18°43'S; 39°54'W; 39m), between September 2008 and June 2009, aiming to show the effects of shading crop system into the microclimate. The obtained results had inside shown differences in the transmission of PAR in the shaded crop, with variations of 18 to 88% and 17 to 87% when compared the two sampling episodes . The average transmission of PAR caused by macadamia nut trees varied of 65 to 59% during the sampling episodes. The wind speed was reduced by 72% at the shaded crop. The differences in the transmission of PAR and the incidence of winds produced different values of temperature and relative humidity of the air with the greatest effect during day-light values period and at the sampling nearest point to macadamias nut trees, where the average maximum temperature was up to 2.2°C lower than the unshaded ones.
Phylogenetic relationships of fish leeches (Hirudinea, Piscicolidae) based on mitochondrial DNA sequences and morphological data

Utevsky, S. Y. & Trontelj, P. (2004). Phylogenetic relationships of fish leeches (Hirudinea, Piscicolidae) based on mitochondrial DNA sequences and morphological data. — Zoologica Scripta, 33, 375–385.
Assessment of Microbiological Indoor Air Quality in Cattle Breeding Farms

ABSTRACT This study, which was conducted on a farm in central Poland from February till April 2019, aimed to evaluate microbiological threats on cattle breeding premises by counting and identifying the microorganisms (via culturing and high-throughput sequencing), assessing the endotoxin concentrations (via gas chromatography-mass spectrometry [GC-MS]) and analysing the secondary metabolites (including mycotoxins) in the air and sedimented dust (via liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry [LC-MS/MS]) in six barns. In addition, the cytotoxicity of the dust to the human epithelial lung cell line was determined by using the MTT [3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide] assay. The concentrations of the total dust in the barns ranged from 0.175 to 0.351 mg m–3, with the dominant fraction (67.4–96.4%) displaying an aerodynamic diameter of < 1 µm. The bacterial and fungal concentrations fell between 7.14 × 103 and 3.88 × 104 CFU m–3, and 5.53 × 101 and 1.30 × 104 CFU m–3, respectively. The microbial population measured in the air and that in the settled dust exhibited a linear relationship, with an R2 of 0.8349–0.9471. We detected 172 and 210 bacterial/archaeal genera and 89 and 43 fungal genera in the dust and in the air, respectively. The dust samples were found to contain endotoxin concentrations of 98.98–178.31 nmol LPS mg–1 and a cytotoxicity of 5.66–13.99 mg mL–1. High-throughput sequencing revealed extensive biodiversity in the microorganisms, which hitherto has not been reported for cattle farms. Of the identified species, those belonging to the genera Bacteroides, Corynebacterium, Staphylococcus, Ruminococcus, Aspergillus and Cladosporium potentially affect human and cattle health. Furthermore, the dust contained 113 chemical compounds, including characteristically fungal metabolites, bacterial metabolites, phytoestrogens and antibiotics. Future research should focus on the epidemiology of farmer exposure to the harmful biological agents discovered in this study.
Experimental Comparison of Features and Classifiers for Android Malware Detection

Android platform has dominated the smart phone market for years now and, consequently, gained a lot of attention from attackers. Malicious apps (malware) pose a serious threat to the security and privacy of Android smart phone users. Available approaches to detect mobile malware based on machine learning rely on features extracted with static analysis or dynamic analysis techniques. Different types of machine learning classifiers (such as support vector machine and random forest) deep learning classifiers (based on deep neural networks) are then trained on extracted features, to produce models that can be used to detect mobile malware. The usually-analyzed features include permissions requested/used, frequency of API calls, use of API calls, and sequence of API calls. The API calls are analyzed at various granularity levels such as method, class, package, and family.In the view of the proposals of different types of classifiers and the use of different types of features and different underlying analyses used for feature extraction, there is a need for a comprehensive evaluation on the effectiveness of the current state-of-the-art studies in malware detection on a common benchmark. In this work, we provide a baseline comparison of several conventional machine learning classifiers and deep learning classifiers, without fine tuning. We also provide the evaluation of different types of features that characterize the use of API calls at class level and the sequence of API calls at method level. Features have been extracted from a common benchmark of 4572 benign samples and 2399 malware samples, using both static analysis and dynamic analysis.Among other interesting findings, we observed that classifiers trained on the use of API calls generally perform better than those trained on the sequence of API calls. Classifiers trained on static analysis-based features perform better than those trained on dynamic analysis-based features. Deep learning classifiers, despite their sophistication, are not necessarily better than conventional classifiers, especially when they are not optimized. However, deep learning classifiers do perform better than conventional classifiers when trained on dynamic analysis-based features.