Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of mulching on evapotranspiration, yield and water use efficiency of Swiss chard (Beta vulgaris L. var. flavescens) irrigated with diluted seawater

Increasing scarcity of fresh water for agriculture in the drylands area is necessitating the use of the marginal quality water, including saline water. However, for sustainable agriculture it is necessary that the use of saline water is combined with suitable crop management practices to reduce salinity effect. This study investigated the effect of gravel mulch (GM) and rice-straw mulch (RM) on the soil salinity, crop evapotranspiration (ET) and fresh and dry weight yield and water use efficiency (WUE) of Swiss chard (Beta vulgaris L. var. flavescens) grown on Tohaku clay soil and irrigated with diluted seawater (6.86 dS m -1 ). The experiment was conducted in a greenhouse using a weighing lysimeter system and irrigation was given from below to allow the water table to remain between 50 cm and 80 cm. The ET was determined every 15 minutes by weighing the lysimeter. Soil temperature was monitored at different depths. At the end of the experiment, the electrical conductivity of the soil was measured in four different layers (0-30 cm). The cumulative ET was higher with ‘no mulch’ control (292 mm) than under RM (254.7 mm) and GM (216.6 mm). Mulching generally increased the soil temperature slightly. RM treatment increased fresh matter yield by 76% and GM by 49% over control. Dry matter yield was also the highest under RM followed by that under GM and control. Salt accumulation in the top 25 cm soil layer was higher under control than under mulching and the differences were particularly conspicuous in the top 10 cm soil layer. This contributed to the yield reduction under control as compared to mulching treatments. RM treatment increased WUE by 143 and 10% as compared to control and GM treatment, respectively. Thus, RM is recommended for reducing salinity effect under shallow water table of saline water and improving WUE.
Geographical distribution, climatic variability and thermo‐tolerance of Chagas disease vectors

Fil: de la Vega, Gerardo Jose. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Biodiversidad y Biologia Experimental; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas. Oficina de Coordinacion Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Biodiversidad y Biologia Experimental y Aplicada; Argentina
MORPHOLOGICAL FEATURES OF SYNTHESIZED ECTOMYCORRHIZAE OF ALNUS CRISP A AND A. RUGOSA

SUMMARY The ability of two shrubby alders to form ectomycorrhizae with known species of fungus was investigated. Frankia- inoculated seedlings of Alnus crispa and Alnus rugosa were raised in growth pouches and inoculated with a pure culture inoculum of potential ectomycorrhizal fungi. Ten of the 46 species of fungi used formed ectomycorrhizae with both Alnus species. Only Alpova diplophloeus showed a well distributed Hartig net; others had a net only proximally, while others had none. These patterns are discussed in terms of more or less rapid Hartig net development. The Hartig net was always confined to the epidermal layer of the root, never completely surrounding it. This situation appears to predominate in the Angiosperms. Colonization of young actinorhizae by Alpova diplophloeus led to the formation of ectomycorrhizal structures.
An evaluation of supervised and unsupervised classification techniques for marine benthic habitat mapping using multibeam echosounder data

Marine habitat mapping provides information on seabed substrata and faunal community structure to users including research scientists, conservation organizations, and policy makers. Full-coverage acoustic data are frequently used for habitat mapping in combination with video groundtruth data in either a supervised or unsupervised classification. In this investigation, video ground-truth data with a camera footprint of 1 m2 were classified to level 4 of the European Nature Information System habitat classification scheme. Acoustic data with a horizontal resolution of 1 m2 were collected over an area of 130 km2 using a multibeam echosounder, and processed to provide bathymetry and backscatter data. Bathymetric derivatives including eastness, northness, slope, topographic roughness index, vector rugosity measure, and two measures of curvature were created. A feature selection process based on Kruskal–Wallis and post hoc pairwise testing was used to select environmental variables able to discriminate ground-truth classes. Subsequently, three datasets were formed: backscatter alone (BS), backscatter combined with bathymetry and derivatives (BSDER), and bathymetry and derivatives alone (DER). Two classifications were performed on each of the datasets to produce habitat maps: maximum likelihood supervised classification (MLC) and ISO Cluster unsupervised classification. Accuracy of the supervised habitat maps was assessed using total agreement, quantity disagreement, and allocation disagreement. Agreement in the unsupervised maps was assessed using the Cramer’s V coefficient. Choice of input data produced large differences in the accuracy of the supervised maps, but did not have the same effect on the unsupervised maps. Accuracies were 46, 56, and 49% when calculated using the sample and 52, 65, and 51% when using an unbiased estimate of the population for the BS, BSDER, and DER maps, respectively. Cramer’s V was 0.371, 0.417, and 0.366 for the BS, BSDER, and DER maps, respectively.
No almost simple sporadic group acts primitively on the points of a generalised quadrangle

A generalised quadrangle is a point-line incidence geometry G such that: (i) any two points lie on at most one line, and (ii) given a line L and a point p not incident with L, there is a unique point on L collinear with p. They are a specific case of the generalised polygons introduced by Tits, and these structures and their automorphism groups are of some importance in finite geometry. An integral part of understanding the automorphism groups of finite generalised quadrangles is knowing which groups can act primitively on their points, and in particular, which almost simple groups arise as automorphism groups. We show that no almost simple sporadic group can act primitively on the points of a finite (thick) generalised quadrangle. We also present two new ideas contributing towards analysing point-primitive groups acting on generalised quadrangles. The first is the outline and implementation of an algorithm for determining whether a given group can act primitively on the points of some generalised quadrangle. The second is the discussion of a conjecture resulting from observations made in the course of this work: any group acting primitively on the points of a generalised quadrangle must either act transitively on lines or have exactly two line-orbits, each containing half of the lines.
Dietary effects on the composition and plant utilization of nitrogen in dairy cattle manure

The influence of dairy cattle feed composition on the manure composition and on the dynamics and plant availability of cattle slurry N was studied. Dairy cows were fed seven different forages either with or without supplemental concentrates. The concentration of N in faeces dry matter varied from 18 to 38 g/kg dry matter and increased with increasing digestibility of the feed. Cattle slurries consisting of a mixture of 0·5 faecal N and 0·5 urinary N were stored according to common agricultural practice in Northern Europe. The mineralization of faecal N during slurry storage was very variable (0·09–0·50). The plant availability of N in the slurries originating from cattle fed with known diets was tested in small, framed field plots with spring barley, under conditions with minimal N losses. The nitrogen uptake in barley was determined and the mineral fertilizer equivalent (MFE) of slurry N was calculated. The net release of mineral N and CO2 from the slurries in soil was also measured in a parallel incubation study. The MFE of cattle slurry N varied from 53 to 75%. After correcting for the measured urine-N/faeces-N ratio and expected ammonia emission, the MFE varied from 51 to 78%. The plant availability and net release of cattle slurry N were influenced by forage type and feeding level. The MFE was negatively correlated with the concentration of crude fibre and neutral detergent fibre (NDF) in the diet, and positively correlated with the dietary protein content. The net release of CO2 from the slurries after 12 weeks in soil was significantly influenced by the concentration of crude fibre in the diet. The plant availability of slurry N was significantly correlated with the ammonium content (R2=0·53) and negatively correlated with the slurry C[ratio ]N ratio (R2=0·67) and the dry matter[ratio ]N ratio (R2=0·58). Residual slurry N left in the soil after harvest of the first crop varied from 0·25 to 0·47 of total slurry N. It is concluded that the fibre and the protein content of cattle diets have a significant influence on the plant availability of cattle slurry N and on the amount of residual slurry N remaining in the soil after the first growing season.
Ecology of the Namaqua Dwarf Adder, Bitis schneideri

Species that exhibit extreme traits can provide valuable insight into the evolution of those traits. Bitis schneideri has the smallest body size of all vipers, reportedly reaching a maximum length of 254 mm. We studied size, sexual size dimorphism, and growth in a population of B. schneideri from the Northern Cape Province, South Africa to better understand these traits in the smallest viperid. We weighed and measured 285 snakes (124 males, 101 females, 60 juveniles) over three austral summers. We recorded a maximum body length of 251 mm, and body mass of 38 g. Mean adult female body length (207.4 ± 27.6 mm) was longer than mean adult male body length (191.6 ± 20.2 mm). As predicted, female snakes were heavier bodied than males of the same length, had shorter tails, and had relatively larger heads. Growth rate was rapid and did not appear to differ among the sexes. Individuals reach mean adult body length in approximately 2.2 years, and male snakes are likely to reach reproductively mature size in approximately 10 months. We suggest that sexually dimorphic traits have evolved primarily through fecundity selection for females. Additionally, we propose that the evolution of small body size in B. schneideri is a result of the selective thermoregulatory, foraging, and predator avoidance advantages gained by being small enough to shuffle into sandy substrates.
An Asymptotically Optimal Multi-Armed Bandit Algorithm and Hyperparameter Optimization

The evaluation of hyperparameters, neural architectures, or data augmentation policies becomes a critical model selection problem in advanced deep learning with a large hyperparameter search space. In this paper, we propose an efficient and robust bandit-based algorithm called Sub-Sampling (SS) in the scenario of hyperparameter search evaluation. It evaluates the potential of hyperparameters by the sub-samples of observations and is theoretically proved to be optimal under the criterion of cumulative regret. We further combine SS with Bayesian Optimization and develop a novel hyperparameter optimization algorithm called BOSS. Empirical studies validate our theoretical arguments of SS and demonstrate the superior performance of BOSS on a number of applications, including Neural Architecture Search (NAS), Data Augmentation (DA), Object Detection (OD), and Reinforcement Learning (RL).
Federated Learning's Blessing: FedAvg has Linear Speedup

Federated learning (FL) learns a model jointly from a set of participating devices without sharing each other's privately held data. The characteristics of non-iid data across the network, low device participation, and the mandate that data remain private bring challenges in understanding the convergence of FL algorithms, particularly in regards to how convergence scales with the number of participating devices. In this paper, we focus on Federated Averaging (FedAvg)--the most widely used and effective FL algorithm in use today--and provide a comprehensive study of its convergence rate. Although FedAvg has recently been studied by an emerging line of literature, it remains open as to how FedAvg's convergence scales with the number of participating devices in the FL setting--a crucial question whose answer would shed light on the performance of FedAvg in large FL systems. We fill this gap by establishing convergence guarantees for FedAvg under three classes of problems: strongly convex smooth, convex smooth, and overparameterized strongly convex smooth problems. We show that FedAvg enjoys linear speedup in each case, although with different convergence rates. For each class, we also characterize the corresponding convergence rates for the Nesterov accelerated FedAvg algorithm in the FL setting: to the best of our knowledge, these are the first linear speedup guarantees for FedAvg when Nesterov acceleration is used. To accelerate FedAvg, we also design a new momentum-based FL algorithm that further improves the convergence rate in overparameterized linear regression problems. Empirical studies of the algorithms in various settings have supported our theoretical results.
Interpreting deep learning models for weak lensing

Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) are powerful algorithms that have been proven capable of extracting non-Gaussian information from weak lensing (WL) data sets. Understanding which features in the data determine the output of these nested, non-linear algorithms is an important but challenging task. We analyze a DNN that has been found in previous work to accurately recover cosmological parameters in simulated maps of the WL convergence ($\kappa$). We derive constraints on the cosmological parameter pair $(\Omega_m,\sigma_8)$ from a combination of three commonly used WL statistics (power spectrum, lensing peaks, and Minkowski functionals), using ray-traced simulated $\kappa$ maps. We show that the network can improve the inferred parameter constraints relative to this combination by $20\%$ even in the presence of realistic levels of shape noise. We apply a series of well established saliency methods to interpret the DNN and find that the most relevant pixels are those with extreme $\kappa$ values. For noiseless maps, regions with negative $\kappa$ account for $86-69\%$ of the attribution of the DNN output, defined as the square of the saliency in input space. In the presence of shape nose, the attribution concentrates in high convergence regions, with $36-68\%$ of the attribution in regions with $\kappa > 3 \sigma_{\kappa}$.
Variation in Call Structure and Calling Behavior in Treefrogs of the Genus Scinax

Abstract We investigated calling behavior and call structure for eight species of treefrogs in the genus Scinax, and document noteworthy patterns of interspecific variation that largely reflect habitat and social environment in this report. The five species in the S. ruber clade call in open areas or forest edges near standing water and produce simple calls at relatively high rates and low to moderate frequencies. Species from the S. catharinae clade call from more forested habitats and produce complex, higher frequency calls at relatively low rates. Differences in the range of activity temperatures and habitats among species reflect differences in geographical distribution and spatio-temporal selection of microhabitat during calling. In general, species with high calling rates also had high rates of locomotion during calling activity and were active at warmer temperatures. One exception was S. crospedospilus, which has an extremely high calling rate but exhibits among the lowest rates of locomotion and activity temperatures. Complex calls delivered at lower rates and simple calls produced at high rates represent extremes of the range of calling behavior among these species of Scinax.
Comparing the reflectivity of ungrouped carbonaceous chondrites with those of short-period comets like 2P/Encke

Aims. The existence of asteroid complexes produced by the disruption of these comets suggests that evolved comets could also produce high-strength materials able to survive as meteorites. We chose as an example comet 2P/Encke, one of the largest object of the so-called Taurid complex. We compare the reflectance spectrum of this comet with the laboratory spectra of some Antarctic ungrouped carbonaceous chondrites to investigate whether some of these meteorites could be associated with evolved comets. Methods. We compared the spectral behaviour of 2P/Encke with laboratory spectra of carbonaceous chondrites. Different specimens of the common carbonaceous chondrite groups do not match the overall features and slope of the comet 2P/Encke. By testing anomalous carbonaceous chondrites, we found two meteorites: Meteorite Hills 01017 and Grosvenor Mountains 95551, which could be good proxies for the dark materials that formed this short-period comet. We hypothesise that these two meteorites could be rare surviving samples, either from the Taurid complex or another compositionally similar body. In any case, it is difficult to get rid of the effects of terrestrial weathering in these Antarctic finds, and further studies are needed. A future sample return from the so-called dormant comets could also be useful to establish a ground truth on the materials forming evolved short-period comets. Results. As a natural outcome, we think that identifying good proxies of 2P/Encke-forming materials might have interesting implications for future sample-return missions to evolved, potentially dormant, or extinct comets. Understanding the compositional nature of evolved comets is particularly relevant in the context of the future mitigation of impact hazard from these dark and dangerous projectiles.
Diversity, Seasonal Activity and Habitat Associations of Robber Flies (Diptera: Asilidae) in West-Central Illinois

Abstract Robber fly diversity, seasonal activity and habitat associations were studied in prairie and forest habitats in west-central Illinois from May to Oct. 2005. The greatest numbers of individuals and species were collected in recently burned prairie and forest habitats, although richness in the recently burned prairie was lower than expected based on rarefaction. Six of the eight most abundant species had primarily mid-season or earlier flight activity patterns; the other two species were mid- to late or late season fliers. There was significant variation in robber fly species composition among habitats. Forest habitats had greater within-habitat variation in species composition than did prairie habitats. Three indicator species (Cerotainia macrocera Say, Nerax aestuans (L.) and Promachus hinei Bromley) were found, all for prairie habitats. Two species (Ommatius ouachitensis Bullington & Lavigne and P. hinei) showed significant sex-related variation in habitat associations. These results show that significant variation in robber fly assemblages can occur over relatively small geographic areas and that fire may affect robber fly abundance and diversity.
Investigating insect molecular responses to two plant defense proteins and characterizing a novel insecticidal protein from Arabidopsis

The molecular interaction between plants and insects is dynamic and multifaceted. We are interested in understanding the molecular mechanism that insects utilize to overcome plant defense proteins, as well as discovering novel plant insecticidal proteins. Three projects were developed. First, we evaluated the effects of soybean cysteine protease inhibitor (soyacystatin N, scN) on the growth and development in southern corn rootworm. Both subtractive suppressed hybridization (SSH) and cDNA microarray analyses were used to uncover the changes of gene expression profiles in southern corn rootworm under the scN challenge. The counterdefense-related genes were identified, suggesting that southern corn rootworm deployed several regulatory mechanisms to overcome the dietary scN. Second, to identify and confirm insecticidal properties of vegetative storage protein 2 in Arabidopsis (AtVSP2), the gene was cloned and expressed in E.coli. This protein showed acid phosphatase activity. Feeding assay indicated that AtVSP increased the mortality and delayed the development of two coleopteran and one dipteran insects. Third, to identify the molecular mechanism of this novel insecticidal protein, P element mutagenesis was utilized to generate AtVSP resistant mutants (VRs). Two balanced VR mutants and their revertants were generated, and can be used to further characterize the genetic loci of P element inserted in the mutants.
Graph Connectivity and Single Element Recovery via Linear and OR Queries

We study the problem of finding a spanning forest in an undirected, $n$-vertex multi-graph under two basic query models. One is the Linear query model which are linear measurements on the incidence vector induced by the edges; the other is the weaker OR query model which only reveals whether a given subset of plausible edges is empty or not. At the heart of our study lies a fundamental problem which we call the {\em single element recovery} problem: given a non-negative real vector $x$ in $N$ dimension, return a single element $x_j > 0$ from the support. Queries can be made in rounds, and our goals is to understand the trade-offs between the query complexity and the rounds of adaptivity needed to solve these problems, for both deterministic and randomized algorithms. These questions have connections and ramifications to multiple areas such as sketching, streaming, graph reconstruction, and compressed sensing. Our main results are: * For the single element recovery problem, it is easy to obtain a deterministic, $r$-round algorithm which makes $(N^{1/r}-1)$-queries per-round. We prove that this is tight: any $r$-round deterministic algorithm must make $\geq (N^{1/r} - 1)$ linear queries in some round. In contrast, a $1$-round $O(\log^2 N)$-query randomized algorithm which succeeds 99% of the time is known to exist. * We design a deterministic $O(r)$-round, $\tilde{O}(n^{1+1/r})$-OR query algorithm for graph connectivity. We complement this with an $\tilde{\Omega}(n^{1 + 1/r})$-lower bound for any $r$-round deterministic algorithm in the OR-model. * We design a randomized, $2$-round algorithm for the graph connectivity problem which makes $\tilde{O}(n)$-OR queries. In contrast, we prove that any $1$-round algorithm (possibly randomized) requires $\tilde{\Omega}(n^2)$-OR queries.
AstroSat view of LMC X-2: evolution of broad-band X-ray spectral properties along a complete Z-track

In this paper, we report the first results of the extragalactic Z-source LMC X-2 obtained using the $\sim$ 140 ks observations with {\it Large Area X-ray Proportional Counter (LAXPC)} and {\it Soft X-ray Telescope (SXT)} onboard {\it AstroSat}. The HID created with the {\it LAXPC} data revealed a complete Z-pattern of the source, showing all the three branches. We studied the evolution of the broadband X-ray spectra in the energy range of $0.5-20.0$ keV along the Z-track, a first such study of this source. The X-ray spectra of the different parts of the Z-pattern were well described by an absorbed Comptonized component. An absence of the accretion disc component suggests that the disc is most probably obscured by a Comptonized region. The best fit electron temperature ($kT_e$) was found to be in the range of $1.7-2.1$ keV and optical depth ($\tau$) was found to be in the range of $13.2-17.5$. The optical depth ($\tau$) increased as the source moved from the normal/flaring branch (NB/FB) vertex to the upper part of the FB, suggesting a possible outflow triggered by a strong radiation pressure. The power density spectra (PDS) of HB and NB could be fitted with a pure power-law of index $\alpha$ $\sim$ 1.68 and 0.83 respectively. We also found a weak evidence of QPO (2.8~$\sigma$) in the FB. The intrinsic luminosity of the source varied between $(1.03-1.79)$ $\times$ 10$^{38}$ ergs/s. We discuss our results by comparing with other Z-sources and the previous observations of LMC X-2.