Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Species-specific imprint of the phytoplankton assemblage on carbon isotopes and the carbon cycle in Lake Kinneret, Israel

Abstract Lakes undergoing major changes in phytoplankton species composition are likely to undergo changes in carbon (C) cycling. In this study we used stable C isotopes to understand how the C cycle of Lake Kinneret, Israel, responded to documented changes in phytoplankton species composition. We compared the annual δ13C cycle of particulate organic matter from surface water (POMsurf) between (1) years in which a massive spring bloom of the dinoflagellate Peridinium gatunense occurred (Peridinium years) and (2) years in which it did not (non-Peridinium years). In non- Peridinium years, the spring δ13C–POMsurf maxima were lower by 3.3‰. These spring δ13C maxima were even lower in POM sinking into sediment traps and in zooplankton (lower by 6.8 and 6.9‰, respectively). These differences in the isotopic composition of the major organic C components in the lake represent ecosystem-level responses to the presence or absence of the key blooming species P. gatunense. When present, the intensive, almost monospecific bloom lowers the concentrations of CO2(aq), causing a reduction in the isotopic fractionation of the algae (higher δ13C of POMsurf) and massive precipitation of calcium carbonate (CaCO3). In non-Peridinium years, the phytoplankton cannot deplete CO2(aq) to similar levels; the algae maintain higher isotopic fractionation, leading to lower δ13C maxima. These changes are reflected higher up in the food web (zooplankton) and in sedimenting organic matter. The consequences for the ecosystem in non-Peridinium years are lower export of both organic and inorganic C.
Children's perceptions of the factors that led to their enrolment in advanced, middle-school science programmes

ABSTRACT Toward the end of 6th grade, some bright and highly motivated science-oriented Israeli students and their parents are required to make a decision: whether or not to enrol in a non-mandatory advanced science programme for 7th graders (≈12 year olds) upon entering middle-school. In other words, for many students, entry into the STEM pipeline begins at an earlier age than previously reported and, to date, reasons for doing so are unknown. The aim of this study was to identify and model the factors that contributed to enrolment. Data collected from 7th graders in three Israeli middle-schools (N = 615) included self-efficacy and interest in STEM learning, perceived parental encouragement to learn STEM, perceived peer interest in STEM, recollections of STEM learning in primary schools and participation in informal STEM programmes. Path analysis showed that ‘self-efficacy’, ‘parents’, ‘peers’ and ‘participation’ directly predicted enrolment. Self-efficacy mediated the effects of environmental variables on academic choice. The significant effect of participation in informal STEM programmes points toward an even earlier entry into the STEM pipeline. Quantitative content analysis was used to categorise the reasons for enrolling in the advanced science programmes (N = 179). Unexpectedly, students overwhelmingly cited practical importance (‘utility value’) vis-à-vis short, medium and long-term goals.
Evaluation of Features Derived from High-Resolution Multispectral Imagery and LiDAR Data for Object-Based Support Vector Machine Classification of Tree Species

Abstract Remote sensing can play a key role in understanding the make-up of urban forests. This study analyzes how high-resolution Geoeye-1 multispectral imagery and LiDAR point clouds allow for improved classification of urban tree species using object-based and support vector machine classification (SVM). Five common urban trees are classified: Acer platanoides; Acer platanoides ‘Schwedleri’; Picea pungens; Gleditsia triacanthos; and Tilia cordata. Numerous features are used for classification: index derived from imagery reflectance; texture of imagery; LiDAR height and intensity; and a LiDAR-generated normalized digital surface model. Classification is performed to evaluate the contribution of individual features, groups of features, and the combination of features from both imagery and LiDAR data. Classification results in an overall accuracy of 85.08% when features from both data sources are combined, compared with 77.73% when using only LiDAR features, and 71.85% when using only imagery features.
Can changes in social behaviour help to explain house mouse plagues in Australia

House mouse plagues in the grain-growing areas of eastern Australia are a graphic illustration of the failure of social mechanisms of population control that are postulated by the self-regulation hypothesis to prevent unlimited increase in numbers. Yet house mice are well known for the strength and variety of social interactions and are clearly capable of regulating their own numbers through social mortality. Most of the research on house mouse plagues has assumed that extrinsic agencies predators, diseases, food supplies, and weather determine when and where mouse plagues will occur. Some aspects of these plagues cannot, however, be explained that easily, among them the low phase, which may persist for 1-3 years. We focus here on the low phase of plagues and the trigger that flips a population from the low into the increase phase of a plague. Can social factors in house mouse populations explain the low phase, and is a change in social organization a necessary condition for generating a plague? Two possible models are presented to suggest predictions to be tested by further studies of social mechanisms of population limitation in feral house mice.
Topological Space Knowledge Distillation for Compact Road Extraction in Optical Remote Sensing Images

Road extraction from optical remote sensing images has drawn much attention in recent decades and has a wide range of applications. Most of the previous studies rarely take into account the unique topological characteristics of the road. It is the most apparent feature of linear structure that describes the variety of connection relationships of the road. However, designing a particular topological feature extraction network usually results in a model that is too heavy and impractical. To address the problems mentioned above, in this paper, we propose a lightweight topological space network for road extraction based on knowledge distillation (TSKD-Road). Specifically, (1) narrow and short roads easily influence topological features extracted directly in optical remote sensing images. Therefore, we propose a denser teacher network for extracting road structures; (2) to enhance the weight of topological features, we propose a topological space loss calculation model with multiple widths and depths; (3) based on the above innovations, a topological space knowledge distillation framework is proposed, which aims to transfer different kinds of knowledge acquired in a heavy net to a lightweight net, while significantly improving the lightweight net’s accuracy. Experiments were conducted on two publicly available benchmark datasets, which show the obvious superiority and effectiveness of our network.
Negative correlation between caspase-3 and COX-2 expression in colon cancer: an immunohistochemical study

Aim of the study The aim of this study was to assess, using immunohistochemistry, the expression of cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) and caspase-3 in colon cancer and their possible correlation with different clinicopathological parameters; the correlation between the expression of both proteins was also studied. Materials and methods This study included 32 patients with previously diagnosed colonic carcinoma at the Pathology Laboratory of Suez Canal University Hospital. Immunohistochemical expressions of caspase-3 and COX-2 were examined on formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissues for each patient. Results Caspase-3 and COX-2 were expressed in 43.7 and 84.4% of the patients with colon cancer studied. Loss of caspase-3 expression and increased COX-2 expression were found in recurrent and metastatic liver tumors. Increased expression of COX-2 was observed in high-stage tumors and in cases with positive lymph node metastasis, as indicated by a significant correlation between the percentage of staining of COX-2 and tumor stage (P=0.008) and lymph node metastasis (P=0.006). No statistically significant relationship was found between both epitopes and other parameters. However, a statistically significant inverse relationship was found between the expressions of both oncoproteins (P=0.03). Conclusion The negative correlation between COX-2 and caspase-3 expression shows the role played by COX-2 in inhibiting apoptosis by loss of caspase-3; COX-2 and caspase-3 also play a role in tumor recurrence and the metastatic potential of patients with colonic cancer. This led us to study the role of COX-2 inhibitors and caspase-3 initiators in therapeutic approaches for these patients.
Intra-Field Canopy Nitrogen Retrieval from Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Imagery for Wheat and Corn Fields

Abstract Crop nitrogen (N) needs to be accurately predicted to allow farmers to effectively match the N supply to the crop N demand during crop growth in order to minimize environmental impacts as excess N could seep into the water supplies around the field. The objective of this study is to use Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) multispectral MicaSense imagery validated with ground hyperspectral measurements to predict canopy nitrogen weight (g/m2) of wheat and cornfields in Ontario. A simple linear regression was established to predict the canopy nitrogen weight from various vegetation indices (VI). Ratio Vegetation Index (RVI) performed the best out of all the tested vegetation indices, with an R 2 of 0.93 for the wheat fields and 0.83 for the corn fields. RVI estimation was also consistent throughout the growing season, which is optimal in precision agriculture. Once applied the RVI-based regression model to the UAV imagery, the best RMSE was 0.95 g/m2 for the wheat McColl field using the image of May 24th and 0.66 g/m2 for the corn Jack North field using the image of June 7th. Such information for accurately predicting nitrogen is important for farmers as it will lead to a more efficient fertilizer application program.
Managing complex projects and systems: a literature synthesis

ABSTRACT This paper provides a comprehensive synthesis of the seminal literature in complex systems to identify a group of key complex systems parameters and models relevant to both systems engineering and construction project management. The key research question addressed is whether the traditional practice of engineering, particularly as applied to project management and systems engineering projects, would benefit from recognising the large body of work of complex adaptive systems. A conceptual framework, which applies to both complex construction projects and systems engineering projects is presented to assist your system engineers and project managers in dealing with project complexity. Adaptivity is required in complex projects and this responsibility needs to be at the enterprise level of programs and portfolios. Complex adaptive systems models such as Ashby’s law of requisite variety, fractals and Power Laws, emergence, self-organisation and dynamic systems could benefit project based enterprises and system engineers. A group of complex systems tools, which are often neglected, such as mindfulness, preoccupation with failure, normalising deviance and humility are highlighted. A group of non-functional requirements for systems engineering projects is also proposed.
Modeling River Discharge Using Automated River Width Measurements Derived from Sentinel-1 Time Series

Against the background of a worldwide decrease in the number of gauging stations, the estimation of river discharge using spaceborne data is crucial for hydrological research, river monitoring, and water resource management. Based on the at-many-stations hydraulic geometry (AMHG) concept, a novel approach is introduced for estimating river discharge using Sentinel-1 time series within an automated workflow. By using a novel decile thresholding method, no a priori knowledge of the AMHG function or proxy is used, as proposed in previous literature. With a relative root mean square error (RRMSE) of 19.5% for the whole period and a RRMSE of 15.8% considering only dry seasons, our method is a significant improvement relative to the optimized AMHG method, achieving 38.5% and 34.5%, respectively. As the novel approach is embedded into an automated workflow, it enables a global application for river discharge estimation using solely remote sensing data. Starting with the mapping of river reaches, which have large differences in river width over the year, continuous river width time series are created using high-resolution and weather-independent SAR imaging. It is applied on a 28 km long section of the Mekong River near Vientiane, Laos, for the period from 2015 to 2018.
Retesting a prediction of the River Continuum Concept: autochthonous versus allochthonous resources in the diets of invertebrates

The River Continuum Concept (RCC) predicts that food webs (and, in particular, invertebrates) of rivers in temperate, forested drainages should exhibit a longitudinal gradient from reliance on terrestrially derived organic matter (e.g., seasonally shed leaves) in the headwaters to autochthonous sources (e.g., algae) in the mid-orders, to suspended material in larger rivers. This prediction has been evaluated by longitudinal comparisons of macroinvertebrate communities in terms of functional feeding groups (FFGs), but such an approach yields only indirect evidence regarding actual food use. To retest this prediction, we investigated invertebrate diets from the Salmon River, Idaho, by examining the gut contents of archived specimens from the longitudinal set of sites sampled in the original 1976 RCC study and by collecting invertebrates from these same sites in 2009. We detected no apparent shifts in diets over the ∼30-y time span. The importance of allochthonous materials in invertebrate diets differed significantly among sites along the longitudinal gradient. As predicted, it was greatest at the 2nd-order headwater site (30–42% of gut contents, on average) and decreased longitudinally to 10 to 20% at the most downstream site. However, invertebrates at the 2nd-order site also consumed large percentages of autochthonous materials (35–45%), and diets contained from 35 to 75% autochthonous resources across all sites. The shredder (Yoraperla) with the highest density at the most upstream 2nd-order site had gut contents composed of 52 to 81% diatoms depending on season, illustrating the importance of autochthonous resources in the headwaters. Our findings show that measuring shifts in FFG alone without examining actual food resources present in macroinvertebrate diets may lead to erroneous inferences regarding patterns of resource use by macroinvertebrates in food webs.
Characterizing the Error and Bias of Remotely Sensed LAI Products: An Example for Tropical and Subtropical Evergreen Forests in South China

Leaf area is a key parameter underpinning ecosystem carbon, water and energy exchanges via photosynthesis, transpiration and absorption of radiation, from local to global scales. Satellite-based Earth Observation (EO) can provide estimates of leaf area index (LAI) with global coverage and high temporal frequency. However, the error and bias contained within these EO products and their variation in time and across spatial resolutions remain poorly understood. Here, we used nearly 8000 in situ measurements of LAI from six forest environments in southern China to evaluate the magnitude, uncertainty, and dynamics of three widely used EO LAI products. The finer spatial resolution GEOV3 PROBA-V 300 m LAI product best estimates the observed LAI from a multi-site dataset (R2 = 0.45, bias = −0.54 m2 m−2, RMSE = 1.21 m2 m−2) and importantly captures canopy dynamics well, including the amplitude and phase. The GEOV2 PROBA-V 1 km LAI product performed the next best (R2 = 0.36, bias = −2.04 m2 m−2, RMSE = 2.32 m2 m−2) followed by MODIS 500 m LAI (R2 = 0.20, bias = −1.47 m2 m−2, RMSE = 2.29 m2 m−2). The MODIS 500 m product did not capture the temporal dynamics observed in situ across southern China. The uncertainties estimated by each of the EO products are substantially smaller (3–5 times) than the observed bias for EO products against in situ measurements. Thus, reported product uncertainties are substantially underestimated and do not fully account for their total uncertainty. Overall, our analysis indicates that both the retrieval algorithm and spatial resolution play an important role in accurately estimating LAI for the dense canopy forests in Southern China. When constraining models of the carbon cycle and other ecosystem processes are run, studies should assume that current EO product LAI uncertainty estimates underestimate their true uncertainty value.
A Comparison of the Components and Biological Activities of the Ethanol Extracts of Achyranthes japonica Nakai and Achyranthes bidentata Blume

In the course of a study for the development of functional foods utilizing Woosul (Achyranthis radix), the components and various biological activities of Korean Woosul (AJN: Achyranthes japonica Nakai) and Chinese Woosul (ABB: Achyranthes bidentata Blume) were compared. Woosul in Korea, including AJN and ABB, are regulated and part of the Korean Pharmacopoeia. From AJN and ABB, ethanol extracts and their subsequent organic solvent fractions were prepared and their in-vitro antimicrobial, antioxidant and anti-diabetes activities were evaluated. Although AJN and ABB have no clear distinction in terms of usage in Korea, our results suggest that AJN has higher quantities of lipid-soluble components and lower amounts of water-soluble sugars than does ABB. ABB also appears to possess greater amounts of flavonoid and polyphenol substances than AJN. Analyses of biological activities showed that the fractions of AJN were more active as antibacterial agents, and possessed more pronounced -glucosidase inhibitory activities than those of the ABB fractions. However, the antioxidant activities of the ABB fractions, as determined by DPPH anion-, ABTS cation-, nitrite-scavenging activity and reducing power, were higher than those of the AJN fractions. Our results suggest that the components and bioactivity of the extracts and subsequent fractions of AJN and ABB are different. Therefore, usage of either AJN or ABB should be carefully considered, as regards their individual properties, when the active fractions of Woosul are employed in the development of functional foods or novel plant-derived medicines.
Disease duration in autosomal dominant familial Alzheimer disease

Objective To use survival modeling to estimate disease duration in autosomal dominant familial Alzheimer disease (ADAD) and ascertain whether factors influencing age at onset also affect survival. Methods Symptomatic mutation carriers (201 presenilin 1 [PSEN1] and 55 amyloid precursor protein [APP]) from ADAD families referred to the Dementia Research Centre, between 1987 and 2019, were included. Survival was assessed with respect to age at onset, year of birth, APOE ε4 status, cognitive presentation, and sex using multilevel mixed-effects Weibull survival models. The contribution of mutation and family to variance in age at onset and duration was also assessed. Results Estimated mean survival was 11.6 (10.4–12.9) years and was similar for APP and PSEN1 mutations. Sixty-seven percent of the variance in age at onset was explained by mutation and 72% by mutation and family together. In contrast, only 6% of the variance in disease duration was explained by mutation specificity and 18% by family membership. Irrespective of gene, survival appeared longer for successive generations and in individuals with atypical presentations. Older age at onset was associated with longer duration within PSEN1 and shorter duration within APP mutation carriers. No differences in survival time were found between sexes or between mutations located before or beyond codon 200 within PSEN1. Conclusions Survival is influenced by mutation to a much lesser extent than age at onset. Survival time has increased over time and is longer in atypical presentations. These insights may inform the interpretation of disease-modifying therapy trials in ADAD.
Protective role of ornithine decarboxylase(ODC)/polyamines system in the myocardium induced by ischemic preconditioning in rats

AIM:To explore the protective role of ornithine decarboxylase (ODC)/polyamines system in the myocardium induced by ischemic preconditioning in rats.METHODS:The experiment model of simulating myocardial ischemia-reperfusion was replicated by Langendorff perfused rat heart. The hearts were randomly divided into six groups:control group,ischemic-reperfusion group (IR),weak ischemic preconditioning group (IPCw),strong ischemic preconditioning groups (IPCs) and inhibitor groups (DF-EG-IPCw and DF-EG-IPCs). The expression of ODC was quantified by Western blotting analysis. The contents of polyamines (putrescine,spermidine,spermine) in cardiac tissue were detected with high performance liquid chromatography. The hemodynamics was obtained using the PowerLab 8/SP TM data acquisition system. The infarct size was measured using triphenyltetrazolium chloride (TTC) staining and the apoptosis cardiomyocytes were observed under optic microscope after TUNEL method treatment. RESULTS:In contrast with control group,in IR group the putrescine contents increased,the expression of ODC was down-regulated,the contents of spermine and the total polyamine pool decreased (P0.05). At the same time,the cardiac function declined,with an increase in myocardium infarct size and the apoptosis rate of cardiomyocytes (P0.05). When compared with IR group in terms of LVDP,HR and CF,both IPCw and IPCs groups had significant improvements in cardiac functions (P0.05). These two groups also had smaller myocardium infarct size (P0.01) and apoptosis rate of cardiomyocytes (P0.01). When compared with IR group,the expression of ODC,the contents of spermine and the total polyamine pool increased in both IPCw (P0.05) and IPCs groups (P0.01),but the putrescine contents declined. In the respective inhibitor groups of the weak and ischemic preconditioning,the expression of ODC and the levels of putrescine,spermidine,spermine and the total polyamine pool decreased remarkably (DF-EG-IPCw vs IPCw,P0.05; DF-EG-IPCs vs IPCs,P0.01),while the myocardium infarct size and apoptosis rate of cardiomyocyte were relatively bigger in both inhibitor groups (P0.05). Also,the heart function decreased significantly in terms of LVDP,HR and CF compared to their matched ischemic preconditioning group (P0.05). CONCLUSION:Ischemic preconditioning significantly up-regulates the ODC / polyamines system in Langendorff perfused rat hearts and provides protective effects on myocardium with ischemia/reperfusion injury. Inhibition of bio-synthesis of polyamine abolishes the cardiac function improvement and the decreases the infarct size and apoptosis rate induced by ischemic preconditioning. It reveals that the ornithine decarboxylase (ODC) /polyamines system may be involved in the protection of myocardium induced by IPC in rats.
The Evolution of Stars and Astrophysics

Ambartsumian published this article in Russian 75 years ago. In this work, he showed for the first time that star formation was not interrupted in the past, but continues in our cosmological time. His conclusion was that at the same time as the old stars, such as the Sun, there are also much younger ones, which are only a few tens of millions of years old. Another important conclusion was that stars are born in groups. The author called the groups of young stars stellar associations. Actually, by publishing this article, Ambartsumian established a new, so-called ”Byurakan concept” of the formation of space objects.