Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Taxonomic Reassessment of Clarkia Calientensis and Clarkia Tembloriensis

Abstract The taxonomic relationships of Clarkia calientensis were re-evaluated in light of information accumulated subsequent to its designation as C. tembloriensis subsp. calientensis. Closeness of relationship between C. calientensis and C. tembloriensis was based on ease of crossing and on cytological pairing configurations in intertaxon hybrids. These interpretations require the assumptions that closely related species are easy to cross, and that maximum cytological configurations are known. However, extensive crossing data show that sympatric, closely related species of Clarkia are very difficult to cross but allopatric species cross rather readily. Furthermore, the cytological data are incomplete as maximum configurations are seldom observed, and some hybrids have not been produced. In both cases, the required assumptions are not tenable. Sterile hybrids between these two easily crossed taxa are strong evidence that they are not conspecific. Consequently, C. calientensis should be recognized as an independent species. Examination of floral variation in C. tembloriensis led to the recognition of large-flowered, protandrous forms as a new subspecies: C. tembloriensis subsp. longistyla.
On the growth and reproductive Biology of asp, Aspius vorax, population from the middle reaches of Euphrates River

Endemic asp, Aspius vorax, from the middle section of the Euphrates River flowing through eastern Syria were studied to determine the main characteristics of their population structure, morphological parameters and reproductive biology. Samples ranged between 0+ and 4+ years of age and were dominated by 2+ years old group. Total length (TL) ranged between 19 and 70 cm corresponding with 46 to 2824.5 g weight, respectively. Fish growth has isometric pattern and the overall sex ratio was unbiased. Seasonal changes in the condition factor were related with the water temperature as well as t he spawning season. Annual cycle of gonadosomatic index (GSI) readings indicated that spawning season occur around March when fish longer than 36 cm can mate. Average pre-spawning GSI was greater in individuals older than 2 years. Meanwhile, female fecundity was highly related to TL and weight. These findings did not always concur with previous observations from other asp populations, mainly in southern and northern Mesopotamia. Our results highlighted basic biological aspects of the local population and indicated differences between populations which can assist in fisheries management, conservation and commercial culture of the investigated species.
The effect of natural zeolite on nutrient digestibility, carcass traits and performance of Holstein steers given a diet containing urea

The objective of this study was to evaluate effects of natural zeolite (clinoptilolite) on nutrient digestibility, carcass attributes and performance of Holstein steers given a diet containing urea. Forty-five Holstein steers (309 (s.d. 11·2) kg) were given diets as follows: control diet based on maize and soya-bean meal (SBM); treatment 2 (T2), control diet (without SBM) containing 20 g/kg urea; treatment 3 (T3), control diet (without SBM) containing 20 g/kg urea and 30 g/kg zeolite. Just before feeding, ruminal ammonia levels were low in all treatments. At 2·5 h post feeding, steers given T2 and T3 diets had higher ( P P P P >0·05) were observed in dry-matter intake among treatments. Live-weight gain and gain: food ratio were highest ( P P >0·05) between steers given T2 and T3 diets. Including zeolite in a diet containing urea had no effect ( P >0·05) on total tract digestibility coefficients of dry matter, organic matter and crude protein but increased ( P P P >0·05) were found in longissimus muscle area and fat thickness over longissimus muscle among treatments. Including 30 g/kg of zeolite in a diet containing 20 g/kg of urea decreased ruminal ammonia nitrogen concentration, plasma urea nitrogen level and increased fibre digestibility but its effect on feedlot performance was negligible.
Assessment of combining ability for various quantitative traits in summer urdbean

Line x tester analysis was carried out involving four lines and three testers in summer urdbean for assessing combining ability for grain yield and its component traits. The relative estimates of variance due to specific combining ability (sca) were higher than variance due to general combing ability (gca) for plant height, number of pods per plant and grain yield per plant indicating the pre-dominance of non-additive gene action for these traits. The parents Mash 391, Mash 1008 and Mash 218 were good general combiners for number of primary branches, number of pods per plant and grain yield per plant and hence can be used in urdbean yield improvement programme through pedigree selection method. The hybrid combination; KUG 391 x Mash 1008 recorded highly significant sca effects as well as high per se performance for plant height, number of branches per plant, number of pods per plant and grain yield per plant suggesting that this cross could be further exploited to obtain transgressive segregants in the breeding programme.
Seasonal and diel patterns in sedimentary flux of krill fecal pellets recorded by an echo sounder

We used a moored upward‐facing 200 kHz echo sounder to address sedimentation of fecal pellets (FPs) from dielly migrating Meganyctiphanes norvegica. The echo sounder was located on the bottom at 150 m depth in the Oslofjord, Norway, and was cabled to shore for continuous measurements during winter and spring. Records of sinking pellets were for the first time observed with an echo sounder. Seasonal patterns of sedimentation of krill FPs were strongly correlated with data from continuous measurement of fluorescence, which illustrate the development of the spring bloom. Sedimenting particles were first observed as fluorescence values started to increase at the end of February and continued to increase until the bloom suddenly culminated at the end of March. This collapse of the bloom was detected on the echo sounder as a pulse of slowly sinking acoustic targets over a 2 d period. Prior to this event, there was a strong diel pattern in sedimentation, which correlated, with some time lag, with the diel migration of krill foraging at night near the surface. Pellet average sinking speeds ranged between 423 m d−1 and 804 m d−1, with a strong relation to pellet target strength, which is an acoustic proxy for size. This novel approach shows that echo sounders may be a valuable tool in studies of vertical pellet flux and, thereby, carbon flux, providing temporal resolution and direct observation of the sedimentation process, which are not obtained from standard methods.
Effect of bee pollen on the immunity and tibia characteristics in broilers

This study was carried out to evaluate the effect of bee pollen (BP) levels on the IgG and IgM titers, weight of lymphoid organs, and on the tibia morphometric measures and mineralization in broilers at 21 and 42 days of age. Four hundred birds were used in an entirely randomized design with four treatments (0, 0.5, 1 and 1.5% of BP feed inclusion) and five replicates. At 21 and 42 days of rearing, blood samples were collected for IgG and IgM analysis, as well as lymphoid organs (bursa, thymus and spleen) and the tibiae. There was no effect (p>0.05) of the BP inclusion on IgG titers, bursa and spleen weights, tibia morphometric measures and mineralization at 21 and 42 days, IgM titer at 42 days or thymus weight at 21 days. However, IgM titers at 21 days and the thymus weight at 42 days linearly increased with BP dietary inclusion. It was concluded that up to 1.5% BP can be included in broiler feeds until 21 days of age to enhance bird immunity.
Ballooning activity of Chilo partellus larvae in relation to size of mother, egg batches, eggs and larvae and age of mother

The ballooning behaviour of first instar larvae of Chilo partellus (Swinhoe) (Lepidoptera:Pyralidae) was studied using a wind tunnel. About 55% of the newly hatched larvae left the young maize plants on silk threads within two hours after their release. No significant correlations were found between spinning‐off activity and mother weight, egg weight and number of eggs per batch. Ballooning and non‐ballooning larvae were of the same size. Time of oviposition did not influence the ballooning behaviour. There was significant variation in spinning‐off activity between offspring from different individual females, however, which suggests that maternal factors other than those measured play an important role in larval dispersal.
The Essential Role of Empirical Validation in Legislative Redistricting Simulation

ABSTRACT As granular data about elections and voters become available, redistricting simulation methods are playing an increasingly important role when legislatures adopt redistricting plans and courts determine their legality. These simulation methods are designed to yield a representative sample of all redistricting plans that satisfy statutory guidelines and requirements such as contiguity, population parity, and compactness. A proposed redistricting plan can be considered gerrymandered if it constitutes an outlier relative to this sample according to partisan fairness metrics. Despite their growing use, an insufficient effort has been made to empirically validate the accuracy of the simulation methods. We apply a recently developed computational method that can efficiently enumerate all possible redistricting plans and yield an independent sample from this population. We show that this algorithm scales to a state with a couple of hundred geographical units. Finally, we empirically examine how existing simulation methods perform on realistic validation datasets.
Spin-polarized superconductivity: Order parameter topology, current dissipation, and multiple-period Josephson effect

We discuss transport properties of fully spin-polarized triplet superconductors, where only electrons of one spin component (along a certain axis) are paired. Due to the structure of the order parameter space, wherein phase and spin rotations are intertwined, a configuration where the superconducting phase winds by $4\pi$ in space is topologically equivalent to a configuration with no phase winding. This opens the possibility of supercurrent relaxation by a smooth deformation of the order parameter, where the order parameter remains non-zero at any point in space throughout the entire process. During the process, a spin texture is formed. We discuss the conditions for such processes to occur and their physical consequences. In particular, we show that when a voltage is applied, they lead to an unusual alternating-current Josephson effect whose period is an integer multiple of the usual Josephson period. These conclusions are substantiated in a simple time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau model for the dynamics of the order parameter. One of the potential applications of our analysis is for moire systems, such as twisted bilayer and double bilayer graphene, where superconductivity is found in the vicinity of ferromagnetism.
Reproductive variation and adult size in two co‐occurring grasshopper species

ABSTRACT. 1. Egg sizes and clutch sizes of the grasshoppers Chorthippus brunneus (Thunb.) and Myrmeleotettix maculatus (Thunb.) were compared among three years and among three sites less than 1.3 km apart. Relationships between these reproductive traits and date of egg laying, body size and body condition were sought.
Are geothermal streams important sites of nutrient uptake in an agricultural and urbanising landscape (Rotorua, New Zealand)?

Summary 1. Lakes in the Rotorua region of New Zealand are affected by eutrophication from urbanisation and agricultural land use. Some lake tributaries contain geothermally influenced waters, and it is currently unknown whether geothermal tributaries are active sites of nutrient cycling or represent point sources of nutrients to the lakes. 2. Using government data sets, we characterised the physicochemical conditions of geothermal and non-geothermal streams. We then measured ecosystem metabolism and reach-scale uptake of nitrate (), ammonium () and phosphate () in summer 2010 (n = 8 streams). Finally, we used government data to compare annual nutrient flux from geothermal and non-geothermal surface water inputs to Lake Rotoiti. 3. As expected, geothermal streams had higher temperature, conductivity and nutrient concentrations and lower pH. However, primary production, community respiration and uptake rates in geothermal streams were not different from those in their non-geothermal counterparts. Uptake rates of were higher in geothermal streams, and uptake was below detection in geothermal streams, probably due to the saturation by naturally high concentrations. 4. A comparison of Lake Rotoiti inputs suggested that geothermal streams are not significant sources of and , while geothermal inputs of represent an average of 46% of total flux from Lake Rotoiti tributaries. 5. Despite their high temperature and low pH, geothermal streams are active sites of photosynthesis, respiration and and cycling, indicating dynamic biofilm communities. 6. Management options for geothermal streams, if any, should focus on retention (e.g. uptake or coupled nitrification and denitrification) but could prove challenging given the persistent, naturally occurring high flux.
Seasonal Movements of the Winter Flounder, Pseudopleuronectes americanus, in Two Contrasting Inshore Locations in Newfoundland

Abstract Seasonal movements of the winter flounder, Pseudopleuronectes americanus (Walbaum), were examined in a protected inlet and an exposed cove in Conception Bay, Newfoundland. Winter flounders remained at both sites except to feed in summer and to avoid extremes of turbulence and ice scouring from fall to spring. In general, winter flounders remain inshore in summer where water temperatures and food are suitable. With gonad ripening in the fall and early winter, they remain in, or move into, shallow water where they will spawn that winter (southern habitats) or spring (northern habitats). During winter in northern habitats, winter flounders will move to deeper water to avoid extremes of turbulence and ice scouring. The evidence indicates that there is no avoidance of cold temperatures in winter.
Multi-Source Unsupervised Hyperparameter Optimization

How can we conduct efficient hyperparameter optimization for a completely new task? In this work, we consider a novel setting, where we search for the optimal hyperparameters for a target task of interest using only unlabeled target task and somewhat relevant source task datasets. In this setting, it is essential to estimate the ground-truth target task objective using only the available information. We propose estimators to unbiasedly approximate the ground-truth with a desirable variance property. Building on these estimators, we provide a general and tractable hyperparameter optimization procedure for our setting. The experimental evaluations demonstrate that the proposed framework broadens the applications of automated hyperparameter optimization.
Bayesian elastic net based on empirical likelihood

We propose a Bayesian elastic net that uses empirical likelihood and develop an efficient tuning of Hamiltonian Monte Carlo for posterior sampling. The proposed model relaxes the assumptions on the identity of the error distribution, performs well when the variables are highly correlated, and enables more straightforward inference by providing posterior distributions of the regression coefficients. The Hamiltonian Monte Carlo method implemented in Bayesian empirical likelihood overcomes the challenges that the posterior distribution lacks a closed analytic form and its domain is nonconvex. We develop the leapfrog parameter tuning algorithm for Bayesian empirical likelihood. We also show that the posterior distributions of the regression coefficients are asymptotically normal. Simulation studies and real data analysis demonstrate the advantages of the proposed method in prediction accuracy.
Mathematical Modeling of an Induction Motor for Vehicles

It has been proposed, in order to model an induction motor for vehicles, to employ a system of differential equations recorded in the «inhibited coordinates». To improve the algorithm robustness, the number of the system's equations was reduced by expressing the phase currents through the phase flux linkage. The parameters of the prototype engine have been defined in line with the classical procedure. An algorithm has been constructed in order to account for the mechanical losses and power losses in the engine steel. An induction motor with symmetrical windings has been simulated in the MATLAB programming environment. The basic technical parameters for the engine were determined using the simulation model. The simulation results have been compared with the results of classic calculations. The error in determining the parameters based on the model and those calculated did not exceed 7 %. This indicates a high convergence between the simulation results and the results of calculations. It has been proposed, in order to study an induction motor with the asymmetrical stator windings, to apply the algorithm that implies accounting for a change in the mutual inductance at a change in the integrated resistance in the single or several phases of engine windings. The proposed algorithm for managing the asymmetric regime of stator windings could make it possible, without changing the structure of the model, to investigate the dynamic processes in an induction motor in case of the asymmetry of stator windings phases when they are damaged. Taking into consideration the losses of power in steel, as well as the mechanical losses, would improve the reliability of the results obtained. The error of determining the parameters of an induction motor at asymmetrical stator windings, obtained at modeling, and acquired experimentally, did not exceed 3 %, which testifies to the adequacy of the model.That would make it possible to apply the proposed simulation model of an induction motor when studying the dynamic processes in the engines used in the transportation infrastructure, in case of such a defect as the interturn short circuit in the stator windings
Callus induction and plant regeneration of Sarawak rice (Oryza sativa L.) variety Biris

Sarawak Biris rice is a strong aromatic rice variety which can thrive well in rice fields prone to flood, drought and other soil constraints. Tissue culture of Biris rice is important in producing planting materials and conducting genetic improvement work. The present study was conducted to induce callus from Biris rice seed and assess its regeneration ability. Dehusked mature seeds were used as starting materials for callus induction. Sterilized seeds were cultured onto Murashige and Skoog medium containing various concentrations of 2, 4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2, 4-D). The optimum 2, 4-D concentration for callus induction was 2.0 mg/L with a frequency as high as 97%. The calli produced were of desired features (creamy in colour, globular) and relatively bigger in size as compared to other treatments. The calli produced were further tested with plant growth regulator, naphthaleneacetic acid (NAA) in combination with kinetin (Kn) for plant regeneration ability. All uncontaminated calli were found to regenerate. Up to nine shoots were induced by a callus treated with 0.5 mg/L NAA in combination with 1.0 mg/L Kn. The present study should be noted as the first attempt to induce callus and regenerate plants from seeds of Biris rice.
Use of in-the-wild images for anomaly detection in face anti-spoofing

The traditional approach to face anti-spoofing sees it as a binary classification problem, and binary classifiers are trained and validated on specialized anti-spoofing databases. One of the drawbacks of this approach is that, due to the variability of face spoofing attacks, environmental factors, and the typically small sample size, such classifiers do not generalize well to previously unseen databases. Anomaly detection, which approaches face anti-spoofing as a one-class classification problem, is emerging as an increasingly popular alternative approach. Nevertheless, in all existing work on anomaly detection for face anti-spoofing, the proposed training protocols utilize images from specialized anti-spoofing databases only, even though only common images of real faces are needed. Here, we explore the use of in-the-wild images, and images from non-specialized face databases, to train one-class classifiers for face anti-spoofing. Employing a well-established technique, we train a convolutional autoencoder on real faces and compare the reconstruction error of the input against a threshold to classify a face image accordingly as either client or imposter. Our results show that the inclusion in the training set of in-the-wild images increases the discriminating power of the classifier significantly on an unseen database, as evidenced by a large increase in the value of the Area Under the Curve. In a limitation of our approach, we note that the problem of finding a suitable operating point on the unseen database remains a challenge, as evidenced by the values of the Half Total Error Rate.
Competitive Policy Optimization

A core challenge in policy optimization in competitive Markov decision processes is the design of efficient optimization methods with desirable convergence and stability properties. To tackle this, we propose competitive policy optimization (CoPO), a novel policy gradient approach that exploits the game-theoretic nature of competitive games to derive policy updates. Motivated by the competitive gradient optimization method, we derive a bilinear approximation of the game objective. In contrast, off-the-shelf policy gradient methods utilize only linear approximations, and hence do not capture interactions among the players. We instantiate CoPO in two ways:(i) competitive policy gradient, and (ii) trust-region competitive policy optimization. We theoretically study these methods, and empirically investigate their behavior on a set of comprehensive, yet challenging, competitive games. We observe that they provide stable optimization, convergence to sophisticated strategies, and higher scores when played against baseline policy gradient methods.
A Group I Intron in the SSUrDNA of Some Naegleria spp. Demonstrated by Polymerase Chain Reaction Amplification

ABSTRACT. The small subunit ribosomal DNA (SSUrDNA) of all described Naegleria spp. was amplified by polymerase chain reaction with universal primers. In all strains of N. andersoni andersoni, N. andersoni jamiesoni, N. australiensis italica and two related strains, and one out of four clusters of N. gruberi, a band of approximately 3.3 kb was obtained. All other strains displayed a band with the expected DNA length of 2.0 kb. This means the former have a 1.3 kb intron in the SSUrDNA. Restriction analysis demonstrated that the intron is between two conserved Pst I sites at the 5′ end of the SSUrDNA It also suggested the introns might not be identical in each species or subspecies. The Pst I fragment of SSUrDNA containing the 1.3 kb insert in N. andersoni andersoni was cloned and sequence. The 1,296‐nucleotide insert is situated in helix 19 of the SSUrDNA, which is an area of conserved primary and secondary structure. Sequence and secondary structure analyses of the insert revealed it is a group I intron. This group I intron is very large and contains an open reading frame that could serve to encode a polypeptide of 139 amino acids in size.