Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
GROWTH AND PRODUCTION OF LAMINARIA LONGICRURIS (PHAEOPHYTA) POPULATIONS EXPOSED TO DIFFERENT INTENSITIES OF WATER MOVEMENT 1

Blade elongation was compared in two populations of Laminaria longicruris de la Pylaie in Shag Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada; one population was exposed to and the other sheltered from high intensity water movement. The maximum and minimum elongation rates were similar for the two populations, but the sheltered coast plants grew more rapidly during 8 mo of the year. Measurements of internal inorganic nitrogen (NO3−+ NO2−) reserves and dry organic weight indicated that low concentrations of dissolved nutrients in summer and low levels of illumination in fall and winter were more limiting to growth at the exposed site than the sheltered site. Transplant experiments provided evidence that morphological differences between the exposed and sheltered coast plants accounted at least partially for their different responses to varying nutrient conditions and light levels. It is concluded that lower productivity of the exposed coast population is the result of adaptation to high intensity water movement.
PARASITE‐INDUCED CHANGES IN BEHAVIOR AND COLOR MAKE GAMMARUS PULEX MORE PRONE TO FISH PREDATION

The acanthocephalan parasite Pomphorhynchus laevis is transmitted by crustaceans such as Gammarus pulex to its paratenic or final hosts, fish. The conspicuous orange-yellow parasite is visible through the transparent cuticle of G. pulex. Infected gammarids are significantly less photophobic than uninfected ones. When hungry three-spined sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus), one of the hosts of this parasite, were offered equal numbers of uninfected and infected prey, G. pulex infected with P. laevis were eaten significantly more often. We tested experimentally whether parasite color and parasite-induced changes in host behavior affected the predation rate of G. pulex. Color effects were tested with uninfected G. pulex by painting an orange spot on their cuticle that simulated infection. Behavioral effects were tested with infected G. pulex by covering the place through which the orange parasite was visible with inconspicuous brown paint. We showed for the first time that both parasite color and changed intermediate host behavior promote the transmission of P. laevis to its next host. The evolution of orange parasite color, and why sticklebacks do not avoid infected prey, are discussed.
Evaluación precoz de la producción de miera en Pinus pinaster Ait

El presente trabajo analiza la eficacia de la minirresinacion en arboles injertados de Pinus pinaster para evaluar la seleccion de arboles grandes productores de miera realizada en campo, asi como estimar la heredabilidad clonal de la produccion de miera. La minirresinacion se realizo en 69 ramets de 17 clones de arboles grandes productores de miera y en 10 arboles controles (arboles no injertados, de produccion normal) situados en el banco clonal de Carbonero (Segovia). La tecnica consistio en picas cuadradas de 2,5 cm de lado durante los tres meses de maxima produccion de miera (junio-agosto). Se dieron en total seis picas, una cada 15 dias con posterior aplicacion de estimulante (acido sulfurico en forma de pasta). La produccion media de los arboles seleccionados es de 183 g, frente a una media de 107 g para los arboles control. Se han obtenido correlaciones positivas entre la produccion de miera con la altura total del arbol evaluado (r = 0,45, & = 0,01) y con su diametro (r = 0,43, & = 0,01). Existe un efecto significativo del clon en la produccion de miera. La heredabilidad clonal (o repetibilidad) tiene un valor de 0,501 para la produccion de resina, tras ajustar la produccion mediante las covariables de altura y diametro de cada uno de los arboles evaluados. La alta correlacion (r = 0,63; " = 0,05) entre la superioridad del ortet (arbol seleccionado en monte, medida por su intensidad de seleccion) y la produccion media de sus ramets (evaluados mediante minirresinacion) demuestra la eficacia de ambos metodos de evaluacion en los programas de mejora de la especie Pinus pinaster
Medium-sized and large mammals from Quedas do Rio Bonito Ecological Park, Minas Gerais, Brazil

Information about the occurrence of medium-sized and large mammals in the Cerrado and the Atlantic Forest is essential for monitoring the conservation status of these species in such biodiversity hotspots. This study presents the results of a survey of medium-sized and large mammals from Quedas do Rio Bonito Ecological Park, located in an ecotone between Cerrado and Atlantic Forest in Southeastern Brazil. Four sampling methods were used: sand plots, camera traps, line transects and tomahawk traps. We recorded 20 species belonging to 12 families and 7 orders, with a high occurrence of Carnivora (50%). We highlight the occurrence of five endangered species: Chrysocyon brachyurus, Leopardus pardalis, L. guttulus, Puma yagouaroundi and P. concolor . The species with the highest frequencies of occurrence were P. concolor (27%), C. brachyurus (17%), and Sylvilagus brasiliensis (13%). Our results confirm that, despite their small size, forest fragments are essential for “top-of-the-chain” species conservation in the region.
Maximum-and-Concatenation Networks

While successful in many fields, deep neural networks (DNNs) still suffer from some open problems such as bad local minima and unsatisfactory generalization performance. In this work, we propose a novel architecture called Maximum-and-Concatenation Networks (MCN) to try eliminating bad local minima and improving generalization ability as well. Remarkably, we prove that MCN has a very nice property; that is, \emph{every local minimum of an $(l+1)$-layer MCN can be better than, at least as good as, the global minima of the network consisting of its first $l$ layers}. In other words, by increasing the network depth, MCN can autonomously improve its local minima's goodness, what is more, \emph{it is easy to plug MCN into an existing deep model to make it also have this property}. Finally, under mild conditions, we show that MCN can approximate certain continuous functions arbitrarily well with \emph{high efficiency}; that is, the covering number of MCN is much smaller than most existing DNNs such as deep ReLU. Based on this, we further provide a tight generalization bound to guarantee the inference ability of MCN when dealing with testing samples.
Taphonomic modifications produced by modern brown bears (Ursus arctos)

Actualism has been a fundamental tool in taphonomy. The knowledge of accumulation patterning of modern faunal allows us to interpret the activity of different actors in the archaeological record and to reconstruct the behaviour of preterit animals and humans in which we are interested. However, until now, there are few works that include bone modifications made by bears amongst those made by carnivores. Most data about bone modifications made by bears have been obtained from the archaeo-palaeontological record. In most of these assemblages, the presence of bears is related to their period of hibernation. Therefore, in these contexts, the changes documented on recovered bear bones are associated only with cannibalism. In this paper, we present an actualistic study about modifications on bones made by modern brown bears. These animals can cause damage similar to those produced by other large carnivores. Generally, bear activity leaves slight damage, mainly on large-sized animal bones. However, on bones of small-sized animals and those of greater fragility, the bears can produce abundant damage. Though not usual, bears can break long bones and consume the complete epiphysis. This study suggests that bears have the potential to be agents of bone modification in fossil assemblages. Consequently, they should be considered as a possible agent of modification of faunal remains in the fossil record. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Climate change and sea turtles: a 150‐year reconstruction of incubation temperatures at a major marine turtle rookery

Sea turtles show temperature dependent sex determination. Using an empirical relationship between sand and air temperature, we reconstructed the nest temperatures since 1855 at Ascension Island, a major green turtle (Chelonia mydas) rookery. Our results show that inter‐beach thermal variations, previously ascribed to the albedo of the sand, which varies hugely from one beach to another, have persisted for the last century. Reconstructed nest temperatures varied by only 0.5 °C on individual beaches over the course of the nesting season, while the temperature difference between two key nesting beaches was always around 3 °C. Hence inter‐beach thermal variations are the main factor causing a large range of incubation temperatures at this rookery. There was a general warming trend for nests, with a mean increase in reconstructed nest temperatures for different months of between 0.36 and 0.49 °C for the last 100 years.
A Class Imbalance Loss for Imbalanced Object Recognition

The class imbalance problem exists widely in vision data. In these imbalanced datasets, the majority classes dominate the loss and influence the gradient. Hence, these datasets have a significantly negative impact on the performance of many state-of-the-art methods. In this article, we propose a class imbalance loss (CI loss) to handle this problem. To distinguish imbalanced datasets in accordance with the extent of imbalance, we also define an imbalance degree that works as a decision index factor in the CI loss. Because the minority classes with fewer samples probably lose chances in descending the gradient in the training process, CI loss is introduced to make these minority classes descend further than the majority classes. In view of the imbalanced distribution of data in few-shot learning, a method for generating an imbalanced few-shot learning dataset is presented in this article. We conducted a large number of experiments in the MiniImageNet dataset, which showed the effectiveness of an algorithm for model-agnostic metalearning for rapid adaptation with CI loss. In the problem of detecting 15 ship categories, our loss function is transplanted to a rotational region convolutional neural network detection method and a cascade network architecture and achieves higher mean average precision than focal loss and cross-entropy loss. In addition, the Mixed National Institute of Standards and Technology dataset and the Moving and Stationary Target Acquisition and Recognition dataset are sampled to imbalance datasets to verify the effectiveness of CI loss.
Purification and Characterization of Two Isoenzymes of DL-Glycerol-3-phosphatase from Saccharomyces cerevisiae

The existence of specific DL-glycerol-3-phosphatase (EC) activity in extracts of Saccharomyces cerevisiae was confirmed by examining strains lacking nonspecific acid and alkaline phosphatase activities. During purification of the glycerol-3-phosphatase, two isozymes having very similar molecular weights were isolated by gel filtration and anion exchange chromatography. By microsequencing of trypsin-generated peptides the corresponding genes were identified as previously sequenced open reading frames of unknown function. The two genes, GPP1 (YIL053W) and GPP2 (YER062C) encode proteins that show 95% amino acid identity and have molecular masses of 30.4 and 27.8 kDa, respectively. The intracellular concentration of Gpp2p increases in cells subjected to osmotic stress, while the production of Gpp1p is unaffected by changes of external osmolarity. Both isoforms have a high specificity for DL-glycerol-3-phosphate, pH optima at 6.5, and KG3Pm in the range of 3-4 mM. The osmotic induction of Gpp2p is blocked in cells that are defective in the HOG-mitogen-activated protein kinase pathway, indicating that GPP2 is a target gene for this osmosensing signal transduction pathway. Together with DOG1 and DOG2, encoding two highly homologous enzymes that dephosphorylate 2-deoxyglucose-6-phosphate, GPP1 and GPP2 constitute a new family of genes for low molecular weight phosphatases.
Thalassemia Intermedia Associated with Complex Interaction of Hb Beijing [α16(A14)Lys→Asn] and Hb E [β26(B8)Glu→Lys] with a Deletional α-Thalassemia-1 in a Thai Family

A Thai family with a complex thalassemia syndrome caused by α- and β-globin defects is described. The proband was a 14-year-old boy who had chronic hypochromic microcytic anemia. Hemoglobin (Hb) and DNA analyses demonstrated that he carried Hb Beijing [α16(A14)Lys→Asn], Hb E [β26(B8)Glu→Lys] and α-thalassemia-1 (α-thal-1). Interaction of the αBeijing with the βE globin chains in the proband leads to a new Hb variant, namely Hb EBeijing with different characteristics to both Hb E and Hb Beijing. Family studies showed that his father carried Hb Beijing and Hb E, whereas his mother was a simple α-thal-1 carrier. The genotype-phenotype relationship observed in this Thai family with complex hemoglobinopathies is presented and a simple DNA assay based on allele specific polymerase chain reaction (ASPCR) for detection of Hb Beijing is described.
CHARACTERISTICS OF SPORT MANAGERS AND CHALLENGES FACING SPORT ORGANISATIONS

This paper aims to research into the opinions of future employees of sport organisations regarding needed knowledge and skills of sport managers. The sample consisted of fourth year students of the Faculty of Kinesiology University of Zagreb enrolled into subject Economics and Management of Sport. In total 537 questionnaires were collected in the last five academic years (from 2013/2014 until 2017/2018). The research revealed that majority of students (82%) find that sport managers in their work dominantly need people skills (communication and teamwork). In addition, a list of 12 various specific individual competencies was provided and students were asked to choose five they find most important for sport managers’ work. Willingness to take risks was chosen most often (by 62,7% of students), followed by the ability to organise work (60%), sport managers’ expertise (58,6%), entrepreneurial abilities and knowledge (56,6%), etc. However, sport managers’ expertise (knowledge) needed for his/her position was most commonly awarded first rank (by 18,6% of all interviewees).
A method for the attachment of miniature radio tags to small fish

An attachment technique which gives good tag retention, minimal damage to fish and prevents entanglement with weed is described. Fish carrying transmitters were monitored in semi-natural conditions and appeared to exhibit the same behaviour as untagged fish. Median condition factors of dummy-tagged fish did not differ from those of untagged fish over a 10-week period. Examples of movement patterns obtained using radio tags attached to dace, Leuciscus leuciscus (L.) are given.
Wilms Tumor Suppressor WTX Negatively Regulates WNT/ß-Catenin Signaling

Aberrant WNT signal transduction is involved in many diseases. In colorectal cancer and melanoma, mutational disruption of proteins involved in the degradation of β-catenin, the key effector of the WNT signaling pathway, results in stabilization of β-catenin and, in turn, activation of transcription. We have used tandem-affinity protein purification and mass spectrometry to define the protein interaction network of the β-catenin destruction complex. This assay revealed that WTX, a protein encoded by a gene mutated in Wilms tumors, forms a complex with β-catenin, AXIN1, β-TrCP2 (β-transducin repeat–containing protein 2), and APC (adenomatous polyposis coli). Functional analyses in cultured cells, Xenopus, and zebrafish demonstrate that WTX promotes β-catenin ubiquitination and degradation, which antagonize WNT/β-catenin signaling. These data provide a possible mechanistic explanation for the tumor suppressor activity of WTX.
Germination of primed, pelleted, and film-coated lettuce seeds before and after storage.

Under high temperatures, lettuce (Lactuca sativa L.) germination can be erratic or completely inhibited in commercial cultivars. However, priming seeds circumvents thermodormancy, facilitating germination at higher temperatures. 'Green Towers' and 'Desert Storm' were primed, pelleted, or film-coated by four different seed treatment companies to determine the effects of treatment on germination at 20 and 3(FC before and after storage for 9 months. Most of the seeds, regardless of treatment, germinated above 90% at 20pC before and after storage. At 30 C nonprimed seeds of 'Desert Storm' germinated at 57% and 'Green Towers' at 67%, while primed seeds germinated above 96% regardless of company treatment. After 9 months storage, germination at 30 C of control seeds was as low as 2% for 'Green Towers', while germination of primed seeds was near 100%. Although there were some variations among the seed companies' techniques for priming, pelleting and film-coating, germination at 20 C was similar among treatments to the control. Pelleting and film-coating resulted in reduced germination at 30°C, especially after storage. Pelleted-primed seeds of 'Desert Storm' however germinated at the same rate as primed seeds after 9 months storage at 30°C. Vigor, measured as germination rate, and radicle length were similarly negatively affected by pelleting and film-coating. Seed priming, regardless of company, did not affect seed viability or seed vigor after 9 months storage of both lettuce genotypes, but germination at 30°C of pelleted and film-coated seeds lacking the priming treatment was reduced before and after 9 months storage. Under conditions of high temperature during germination, use of film-coated seeds or pelleted seeds without priming should be avoided.
Drug decriminalization policy. Literature review: models, implementation and outcomes.

The report aims to identify legal frameworks, models, and implementation practices of the decriminalization policies and to assess their empirical results. Statistics show that the prevalence of drug use has increased for decades all around the world despite all the strict measures taken. Decriminalization policy has emerged as a response to unbalanced prohibitionist drug policy, which creates not only social injustices at the individual level but also public health problems and high social costs at the macro level. On the other hand, decriminalization is a complex framework and is generally used as an umbrella term representing contemporary strategy. Governments have tailored this framework according to their priorities and expectations. The report categorizes models, implementations, and outcomes to evaluate results. Besides, by providing overall results from three European countries (Portugal, Czech Republic and Denmark), we aim to assess the impact of the contextual factors and variation of the results. We hope the report will contribute to the discussion of developing better policy models managing drug problems.
Trophic relationships between two gurnards Trigla lucerna and Aspitrigla obscura from the western Mediterranean

The feeding habits of Trigla lucerna L. (1758) and Aspitrigla obscura L. (1764) (Pisces: Triglidae), off the coast of the Gulf of Valencia (Spain), were investigated between October 1989 and January 1991. The two species examined in this study appear to have distinct feeding types, based on the species composition of prey and the frequency of occurrence of major food items. Tub gurnard had a more diverse diet and fed mainly on crustaceans (mysids and decapods), teleosts and molluscs, whilst long fin gurnard were less piscivorous and fed mainly on mysids and natantids. No significant differences were found in the annual variation of vacuity coefficient for either species. Diet composition in these species did not show great changes with either season and size of fish. There was little dietary overlap between these two species.
How Important Is Each Dermoscopy Image?

Deep neural networks (DNNs) have revolutionized the field of dermoscopy image analysis. Systems based on DNNs are able to achieve impressive diagnostic performances, even outperforming experienced dermatologists. However, DNNs strongly rely on the quantity and quality of the training data. Real world data sets, including those related to dermoscopy, are often severely imbalanced and of reduced dimensions. Thus, models trained on these data sets typically become biased and fail to generalize well to new images. Sample weighting strategies have been proposed to overcome the previous limitations with promising results. Nonetheless, they have been poorly investigated in the context of dermoscopy image analysis. This paper addresses this issue through the extensive comparison of several sample weighting methods, namely class balance and curriculum learning. The results show that each sample weighting strategy influences the performance of the model in different ways, with most finding a compromise between correctly classifying the most common classes or biasing the model towards the less represented classes. Furthermore, the features learned by each model differ significantly, depending on the training strategy.
Semi-Automatic Definition of Attribute Semantics for the Purpose of Ontology Integration

By ontology, we understand a knowledge structure which well reflects the complexity of a real world. Ontologies are built to store and process knowledge about objects and dependencies between them. Thus, ontologies not only structure raw data, but also contain the meaning of those data. So far, ontology developers have been forced to provide the semantics of modeled objects and relations between them manually. The goal of this paper is to address some still unresolved problems related to providing meanings in ontologies. A typical ontology consists of concepts with attributes, relations between them, and instances. In our research, we focus on concepts level where attributes must be interpretable because they are the primary carriers of the meaning of the entire ontology. In other words, we need to assign semantics for each attribute within a concept. For this purpose, we have proposed a semi-automatic method for defining attribute semantics based on WordNet. The attribute semantics designated by human experts and based on WordNet does not affect the integration result. However, the developed method allows reducing the time for preparing an ontology to the integration process. What is more, it is less sensitive to the subjective evaluations done by experts.
The effect of red wood ant abundance on feeding damage by the pine weevil Hylobius abietis

Red wood ants (Formica rufa group) are the dominant ant species in European forests that can affect the abundance of other arthropods (e.g. herbivorous insects in tree canopies or beetles on the forest floor). Notably, ants can prevent pine weevils (Hylobius abietis) from feeding on conifer seedlings supplied with food sources for ants. This is a potentially important observation because the weevil is a serious pest in forest regeneration areas. We hypothesized that frequent encounters between red wood ants and pine weevils on the ground may decrease the weevils' feeding on conifer seedlings. To test this hypothesis, we compared feeding damage caused by pine weevils on spruce seedlings in areas with high and low abundance of red wood ants. Despite a four‐fold difference in the numbers of ants in pitfall trap samples, there were no significant differences between areas with high and low ant abundance in terms of feeding‐scar areas, proportions of attacked seedlings or proportions of killed seedlings. Thus, in contrast to previously documented deterrent effects on ground‐dwelling beetles, high abundance of ants on the ground did not influence the feeding activity of pine weevils on the spruce seedlings. We conclude that the mechanisms underlying seedling protection by ants are probably mainly related to the ants' protection of food sources, whereas the frequency of encounters elsewhere has less effect on the weevils' feeding.