Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Growth, Molting Frequency, Heart Beat, Number of Eggs, and Incubation Time in Gammarus Zaddachi Exposed To Different Environments

Gammarus zaddachi from the Kleiner Kiel, Kiel, North Germany, were exposed to different temperature and salinity conditions in the laboratory and the rates of some life processes measured. All tests were performed under standard conditions (food, light, amount of water per individual, quality of water). The rates of growth, molting, heart beat, egg production and embryonic development proved to be similar in the same environment to those of the previously tested G. salinus (Kinne, 1960) from the same habitat. G. zaddachi and G. salinus, however, differ considerably with respect to these rate functions from a third Gammarus species of the Kleiner Kiel, namely G. duebeni. The latter exhibits much slower rates under the same conditions (Kinne, 1952b; 1953a, b). The intervals between subsequent molts are longer in G. zaddachi males than in females. No significant differences were observed in specimens exposed to the salinity levels 5‰, 10‰ and 30‰, respectively. Females kept without males tend to prolong progressively the molting intervals, beginning with the third or fourth interval after isolation. No relationship between body length and rate of heart beat could be established in 17 to 21 mm long males or in 14 to 16 mm long females. Such a relationship does, however, exist over a wider range of body length: the rate of heart contractions is definitely higher in immature specimens of a length of 5 to 6 mm. No significant differences of rates of heart beat in mature specimens were observed in 5‰ or 10‰. The number of marsupium eggs per female of a given length depends on the temperature, being higher at 14° to 16°C than at 18° to 20°C, and on the salinity. There exists a linear relationship between the number of eggs and the volume (cubed length) of the mother animal, except in senile females. In the absence of a male, there is a tendency to reduce progressively the number of eggs laid. A normal number of eggs is usually deposited only subsequent to a transfer of sperm. Along with the functional similarity between G. zaddachi and G. salinus there exists a striking structural similarity (Spooner, 1947; SegerstrAle, 1947; Kinne, 1954, etc.). The information available suggests that G. zaddachi and G. salinus represent two relatively young species which have only recently become genetically independent from each other (see also Spooner, 1947, 1951; and Kinne, 1954). The differences between these two species become apparent in terms of their distribution, ecology and interspecific sterility (Spooner, 1947; SegerstrAle, 1947; Steen, 1951; Kinne, 1954; Forsman, 1956) rather than in terms of the rate functions or morphological expressions studied. The physiological data available at this time are not sufficient for a detailed analysis. More elaborate experiments on the physiological potentialities of G. zaddachi and G. salinus may lead to the discovery of delicate differences and to a better understanding of their ecology and evolution.
Altering sensorimotor simulation impacts early stages of facial expression processing depending on individual differences in alexithymic traits

Simulation models of facial expressions suggest that posterior visual areas and brain areas underpinning sensorimotor simulations might interact to improve facial expression processing. According to these models, facial mimicry, a manifestation of sensorimotor simulation, may contribute to the visual processing of facial expressions by influencing early stages. The aim of this study was to assess whether and how sensorimotor simulation influences early stages of face processing, also investigating its relationship with alexithymic traits given that previous studies have suggested that individuals with high levels of alexithymic traits (vs. individuals with low levels of alexithymic traits) tend to use sensorimotor simulation to a lesser extent. We monitored P1 and N170 ERP components of the event-related potentials (ERP) in participants performing a fine discrimination task of facial expressions and animals, as a control condition. In half of the experiment, participants could freely use their facial mimicry whereas in the other half they had their facial mimicry blocked by a gel. Our results revealed that only individuals with lower compared to high alexithymic traits showed a larger modulation of the P1 amplitude as a function of the mimicry manipulation selectively for facial expressions (but not for animals), while we did not observe any modulation of the N170. Given the null results at the behavioural level, we interpreted the P1 modulation as compensative visual processing in individuals with low levels of alexithymia under conditions of interference on the sensorimotor processing, providing a preliminary evidence in favor of sensorimotor simulation models.
SQuARM-SGD: Communication-Efficient Momentum SGD for Decentralized Optimization

In this paper, we propose and analyze SQuARM-SGD, a communication-efficient algorithm for decentralized training of large-scale machine learning models over a network. In SQuARM-SGD, each node performs a fixed number of local SGD steps using Nesterov’s momentum and then sends sparsified and quantized updates to its neighbors regulated by a locally computable triggering criterion. We provide convergence guarantees of our algorithm for general (non-convex) and convex smooth objectives, which, to the best of our knowledge, is the first theoretical analysis for compressed decentralized SGD with momentum updates. We show that the convergence rate of SQuARM-SGD matches that of vanilla SGD. We empirically show that including momentum updates in SQuARM-SGD can lead to better test performance than the current state-of-the-art which does not consider momentum updates.
A network-based transfer learning approach to improve sales forecasting of new products

Data-driven methods---such as machine learning and time series forecasting---are widely used for sales forecasting in the food retail domain. However, for newly introduced products insufficient training data is available to train accurate models. In this case, human expert systems are implemented to improve prediction performance. Human experts rely on their implicit and explicit domain knowledge and transfer knowledge about historical sales of similar products to forecast new product sales. By applying the concept of Transfer Learning, we propose an analytical approach to transfer knowledge between listed stock products and new products. A network-based Transfer Learning approach for deep neural networks is designed to investigate the efficiency of Transfer Learning in the domain of food sales forecasting. Furthermore, we examine how knowledge can be shared across different products and how to identify the products most suitable for transfer. To test the proposed approach, we conduct a comprehensive case study for a newly introduced product, based on data of an Austrian food retailing company. The experimental results show, that the prediction accuracy of deep neural networks for food sales forecasting can be effectively increased using the proposed approach.
Pump and Dumps in the Bitcoin Era: Real Time Detection of Cryptocurrency Market Manipulations

In the last years, cryptocurrencies are increasingly popular. Even people who are not experts have started to invest in these securities and nowadays cryptocurrency exchanges process transactions for over 100 billion US dollars per month. However, many cryptocurrencies have low liquidity and therefore they are highly prone to market manipulation schemes.In this paper, we perform an in-depth analysis of pump and dump schemes organized by communities over the Internet. We observe how these communities are organized and how they carry out the fraud. Then, we report on two case studies related to pump and dump groups. Lastly, we introduce an approach to detect the fraud in real time that outperforms the current state of the art, so to help investors stay out of the market when a pump and dump scheme is in action.
The universality of skipping behaviours on music streaming platforms

A recent study of skipping behaviour on music streaming platforms has shown that the skip profile for a given song -- i.e. the measure of the skipping rate as a function of the time in the song -- can be seen as some intrinsic characteristic of the song, in the sense that it is both very specific and highly stable over time and geographical regions. In this paper, we take this analysis one step further by introducing a simple model of skip behaviours, in which the skip profile for a given song is viewed as the response to a small number of events that happen within it. In particular, it allows us to identify accurately the timing of the events that trigger skip responses, as well as the fraction of users who skip following each these events. Strikingly, the responses triggered by individual events appears to follow a temporal profile that is consistent across songs, genres, devices and listening contexts, suggesting that people react to musical surprises in a universal way.
Comparison of Information Structures for Zero-Sum Games and a Partial Converse to Blackwell Ordering in Standard Borel Spaces

In statistical decision theory involving a single decision-maker, one says that an information structure is better than another one if for any cost function involving a hidden state variable and an action variable which is restricted to be only a function of some measurement, the solution value under the former is not worse than the value under the latter. For finite probability spaces, Blackwell's celebrated theorem on comparison of information structures leads to a complete characterization on when one information structure is better than another. For stochastic games with incomplete information, due to the presence of competition among decision makers, in general such an ordering is not possible since additional information can lead to equilibria perturbations with positive or negative values to a player. However, for zero-sum games in a finite probability space, Peski introduced a complete characterization of ordering of information structures. In this paper, we obtain an infinite dimensional (standard Borel) generalization of Peski's result. A corollary of our analysis is that more information cannot hurt a decision maker taking part in a zero-sum game in standard Borel spaces. During our analysis, we establish two novel supporting results: (i) a partial converse to Blackwell's ordering of information structures in the standard Borel space setup and (ii) a refined existence result for equilibria in zero-sum games with incomplete information when compared with the prior literature.
The Control of Pouch Vacation in the Tasmanian Bettong, Bettongia-Gaimardi

In continuously breeding marsupials it is possible for successive young to occupy the pouch simultaneously. Although this rarely occurs in nature, it is most likely in some macropodids. Experiments by others have suggested that it is the pouch young which determines the duration of lactation and pouch occupancy. The female Bettongia gaimardi exhibits a precise sequence of events on the night her young vacates the pouch. Initially, the pouch muscle tightens, preventing re-entry by the large young, this is then followed by birth and/or oestrus. When pouch vacation is not followed by birth and/or oestrus, young have stayed in the pouch significantly longer. Experiments in which furred pouch young are replaced by others of different ages have shown that the replacements remain in the pouch until the night of birth and/or oestrus, regardless of their age. This indicates that in this species physiological events in the mother are at least partly responsible for determining the duration of pouch life.
Rates of evolution

For some higher taxa, species can be identified in the fossil record with a high degree of reliability. The great geological durations of species indicate that phyletic evolution is normally so slow that little change occurs within a lineage during 105–107 generations. Failure to recognize sibling species in the fossil record has no bearing on this conclusion because they embody virtually no morphological change. Although slowness is the rule, we have no more precise assessment of morphological rates of phyletic evolution for any major taxon. Morphological data that have been assembled to assess rates of phyletic evolution have been meager, unrepresentative, and predominantly reflective of nothing more than body size. Net selection pressures within long segments of phylogeny—even ones that embrace large amounts of evolution—are infinitesimal and seemingly unsustainable against random fluctuations. This suggests that natural selection operates in a highly episodic fashion. Rates of adaptive radiation and extinction at the species level can be estimated for many taxa and, from them, rates of speciation in adaptive radiation. Species selection should universally tend to increase rate of speciation and decrease rate of extinction, yet these rates are positively correlated in the animal world, apparently because they are linked by common controls: both rate of speciation and rate of extinction seem to increase with level of stereotypical behavior and to decrease with dispersal ability. Only a few “supertaxa” have been able to combine high rates of speciation with moderate rates of extinction.
The digits of n+t

The binary sum-of-digits function $s$ counts the number of $\mathtt 1$s in the base-$2$ expansion of a nonnegative integer. T. W. Cusick defined the asymptotic density \[ c_t=\lim_{N\rightarrow \infty}\frac 1N\#\{0\leq n 1/2$ for all $t$. We prove that indeed $c_t>1/2$ if the binary expansion of $t$ contains at least $K$ blocks of contiguous $\mathtt 1$s, where $K$ is an absolute, effective constant.
Estimating predictive uncertainty for rumour verification models

The inability to correctly resolve rumours circulating online can have harmful real-world consequences. We present a method for incorporating model and data uncertainty estimates into natural language processing models for automatic rumour verification. We show that these estimates can be used to filter out model predictions likely to be erroneous so that these difficult instances can be prioritised by a human fact-checker. We propose two methods for uncertainty-based instance rejection, supervised and unsupervised. We also show how uncertainty estimates can be used to interpret model performance as a rumour unfolds.
Thompson Sampling for Combinatorial Semi-bandits with Sleeping Arms and Long-Term Fairness Constraints

We study the combinatorial sleeping multi-armed semi-bandit problem with long-term fairness constraints~(CSMAB-F). To address the problem, we adopt Thompson Sampling~(TS) to maximize the total rewards and use virtual queue techniques to handle the fairness constraints, and design an algorithm called \emph{TS with beta priors and Bernoulli likelihoods for CSMAB-F~(TSCSF-B)}. Further, we prove TSCSF-B can satisfy the fairness constraints, and the time-averaged regret is upper bounded by $\frac{N}{2\eta} + O\left(\frac{\sqrt{mNT\ln T}}{T}\right)$, where $N$ is the total number of arms, $m$ is the maximum number of arms that can be pulled simultaneously in each round~(the cardinality constraint) and $\eta$ is the parameter trading off fairness for rewards. By relaxing the fairness constraints (i.e., let $\eta \rightarrow \infty$), the bound boils down to the first problem-independent bound of TS algorithms for combinatorial sleeping multi-armed semi-bandit problems. Finally, we perform numerical experiments and use a high-rating movie recommendation application to show the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed algorithm.
The effect of sapling density, heather height and season on browsing by mountain hares on birch

Summary 1 When mammalian herbivores are present at high densities their browsing activity can have a negative effect on establishment or regeneration of native woodlands. The impact on saplings of browsing by herbivores is known to vary in response to sapling density. Until now, experimental tests of the effect of sapling density have usually involved only one tree species and no alternative forages. In this study we used a planting experiment conducted in the field to test the effects of surrounding vegetation height, season and density of downy birch Betula pubescens on the extent of browsing damage by mountain hares Lepus timidus, in the presence of background vegetation that also represents an acceptable food source. 2 The experiment was conducted on heather Calluna vulgaris moorland between March 1998 and October 1999 in north-east Scotland. Birch saplings (n = 6708) were planted in short and tall heather in arrays at low, medium and high sapling density within a 107-ha area from which large herbivores were excluded. The number of saplings browsed was recorded monthly and individual sapling morphological measurements and characteristics of the ground vegetation were noted twice yearly, pre- and post-winter. 3 More saplings were browsed in winter and spring than in summer, especially during the period immediately after planting. Saplings were browsed at a higher rate in short heather, which facilitated easier access by mountain hares. The proportion of saplings that were browsed decreased with planting density in all seasons except winter, when it increased. 4 At the individual sapling level, larger saplings were more likely to be attacked and to have more biomass removed than smaller saplings. 5 Synthesis and applications. This study demonstrates that mountain hares browse birch throughout the year, but browsing is at its most intense during winter and in short heather, and this may potentially suppress tree growth and tree regeneration. This result has important management implications for the uplands of Scotland, where downy birch is used to establish and regenerate native woodlands, often on moorland supporting high densities of mountain hares. Damage to trees by hares can be minimized by planting in tall vegetation where trees are less visible and accessible to hares. Tree planting can be synchronized with temporary hare control; however, effective reduction in hare numbers may be difficult to achieve. Finally, planting density should be low, as during winter, when browsing is most frequent, the rate of browsing increases with increasing tree density.
ImpactCite: An XLNet-based method for Citation Impact Analysis

Citations play a vital role in understanding the impact of scientific literature. Generally, citations are analyzed quantitatively whereas qualitative analysis of citations can reveal deeper insights into the impact of a scientific artifact in the community. Therefore, citation impact analysis (which includes sentiment and intent classification) enables us to quantify the quality of the citations which can eventually assist us in the estimation of ranking and impact. The contribution of this paper is two-fold. First, we benchmark the well-known language models like BERT and ALBERT along with several popular networks for both tasks of sentiment and intent classification. Second, we provide ImpactCite, which is XLNet-based method for citation impact analysis. All evaluations are performed on a set of publicly available citation analysis datasets. Evaluation results reveal that ImpactCite achieves a new state-of-the-art performance for both citation intent and sentiment classification by outperforming the existing approaches by 3.44% and 1.33% in F1-score. Therefore, we emphasize ImpactCite (XLNet-based solution) for both tasks to better understand the impact of a citation. Additional efforts have been performed to come up with CSC-Clean corpus, which is a clean and reliable dataset for citation sentiment classification.
Stereoselective hepatic disposition of a diastereomeric pair of αvβ3 antagonists in rat

1. The study investigated mechanisms underlying the stereoselective hepatic disposition observed in rats of a zwitterionic diastereomeric pair ((3S)-3-{(3R or 3S)-2-oxo-3-[3-(5,6,7,8-tetrahydro-1,8-naphthyridin-2-yl)propyl]pyrrolidin-1-yl}-3-quinolin-3-ylpropanoic acid) with different lipophilicities. 2. In a recirculating isolated rat liver system, the more hydrophilic diastereomer II possessed biliary clearance, CLb, and bile-to-liver concentration ratio higher (about 10–30-fold) than the lipophilic zwitterion I, whereas both I and II exhibited comparably high concentration ratios between liver and perfusate. Although MK-571, a known multidrug resistance protein (MRP) inhibitor, significantly inhibited the CLb of both compounds, it did not inhibit their canalicular transport, as evident by unchanged concentration ratios between bile and liver of either I or II. 3. Following an intravenous infusion of I or II to Sprague–Dawley rats, the biliary clearance calculated either based on plasma (CLb,p) or liver concentration (CLb,l), of II was much higher than that of I (about 5–50-fold). In rats lacking multidrug resistance protein 2 (Mrp2) (Eisai hyperbilirubinemic rat, EHBR), the biliary excretion rate and CLb,p of II were also higher than the corresponding values for I. However, both CLb,p or CLb,l of either I or II were not reduced in EHBR, as compared with control SD rats. 4. In the in vitro rat canalicular membrane vesicle study, I and II exhibited no differences in their inhibitory effect on the Mrp2 mediated ATP-dependent [3H]DNP-SG initial uptake (no inhibition at 10 μM and only about 40% inhibition at 100 μM). 5. Collectively, these results suggested that (1) the difference in the hepatic disposition between the two isomers was due primarily to the difference in their transport mechanism across the canalicular membrane and (2) Mrp2 did not play a major role in the observed differences in the biliary excretion of the diastereomers I and II in rats.
Mixed-species foraging aggregations and heterospecific attraction in boreal bird communities

We investigated whether different species of birds associated with each other while foraging during the breeding season. On average 50% of foraging observations were in mixed-species foraging aggregations, but with extensive interspecific variation. The occurrence of mixed-species foraging aggregations was relatively constant from the end of May until early July, with no indication that the appearance of fledglings increased the frequency of aggregations. These mixed-species foraging aggregations consisted of a wide variety of species in terms of foraging niche : typical flycatchers, specialized arboreal insectivores, and generalists were observed foraging together. The titmice species (Parus spp.) seemed to be preferred as foraging companions. The sites where foraging aggregations were observed did not differ from an equal number of randomly chosen sites with respect to forest vegetation structure. The dispersion of individuals in study areas was analysed using a 50 m x 50 m quadrat as the sampling unit. Altogether, 96 quadrats were surveyed. The dispersion of individual birds with respect to individuals of other species was non-random, and significantly clumped within quadrats. We used two playback experiments to test whether the aggregations were due to active search for heterospecific companions. In the first experiment, 20 randomly assigned sites received two 10-min treatments : willow tit (Parus montanus) song and silence as control. In the second experiment, we had two control treatments at 30 playback sites for the willow tit song, the song of the olive-sided flycatcher (Contopus borealis) and classical music. More species were observed during willow tit song than during any of the controls. This suggests that aggregated dispersion pattern and the existence of mixed-species foraging aggregations were due to active search for heterospecific companions, and also that recognition of neighbouring species was involved. We suggest that birds actively aggregate in mixed-species foraging groups to gain protection against predators and/or enhance feeding efficiency. The results support the view that positive interactions have an importance in structuring northern breeding bird communities.