Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A generalized pollination system in the tropics: bats, birds and Aphelandra acanthus.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS A number of different types of flower-visiting animals coexist in any given habitat. What evolutionary and ecological factors influence the subset of these that a given plant relies on for its pollination? Addressing this question requires a mechanistic understanding of the importance of different potential pollinators in terms of visitation rate (pollinator 'quantity') and effectiveness at transferring pollen (pollinator 'quality') is required. While bat-pollinated plants typically are highly specialized to bats, there are some instances of bat-pollinated plants that use other pollinators as well. These generalized exceptions tend to occur in habitats where bat 'quantity' is poor due to low or fluctuating bat densities. METHODS Aphelandra acanthus occurs in tropical cloud forests with relatively high densities of bat visitors, yet displays a mix of floral syndrome characteristics, suggesting adaptation to multiple types of pollinators. To understand its pollination system better, aspects of its floral phenology and the 'quantity' and 'quality' components of pollination by its floral visitors are studied here. KEY RESULTS Flowers were found to open and senesce throughout the day and night, although anther dehiscence was restricted to the late afternoon and night. Videotaping reveals that flowers are visited nocturnally by bats and moths, and diurnally by hummingbirds. Analysis of pollen deposition shows that bats regularly transfer large amounts of conspecific pollen, while hummingbirds occasionally transfer some pollen, and moths rarely do so. CONCLUSIONS Hummingbirds and bats were comparable in terms of pollination 'quantity', while bats were the most effective in terms of 'quality'. Considering these components together, bats are responsible for approx. 70 % of A. acanthus pollination. However, bats also transferred remarkably large amounts of foreign pollen along with the conspecific grains (three of four grains were foreign). It is suggested that the negative effects of interspecific pollen transfer may decrease bat 'quality' for A. acanthus, and thus select for generalization on multiple pollinators instead of specialization on bats.
The X-ray luminosity function and number counts of spiral galaxies

We discuss the X-ray luminosity function and number counts of normal spiral galaxies. A detailed comparison is performed of the LFs compiled at infrared, radio and optical wavelengths and converted into XLFs using available relations in the literature with the XLF directly estimated in the 0.5-2 keV energy band from X-ray surveys. We find that the XLF from the local sample of IRAS galaxies provides a good representation of all available data samples; pure luminosity evolution of the form (1 + z) η , with η < 3, is favoured over pure density evolution. We also find that the local X-ray luminosity density is well defined, 3 × 10 37 ± 30% erg s −1 Mpc −3 . We discuss different estimates of the galaxies Log N−Log S , selected from the Chandra Deep Field surveys with different selection criteria, and find that these have similar slopes, but normalisations scattered within a factor ∼ 2( which is not far from the Poissonian error on the number counts). We then compare the observed galaxies Log N−Log S with the counts predicted by the integration of our reference z = 0 XLF. From the analysis of number counts alone, it is not possible to discriminate between density and luminosity evolution; however, the evolution of galaxies must be stopped in both cases at a redshift z ∼ 1−2. The contribution of galaxies to the cosmic X-ray background is found to be in the range 6%−12%. By means of a complementary analysis with cosmic star formation models, we also find that the observed X-ray number counts might be not compatible with very high star formation rates at z ∼ 3 as suggested by sub-mm observations. Concerning the content of current and, possibly, future X-ray surveys, we determine the fraction of normal galaxies around the current flux limit. At ∼3 × 10 −17 erg s −1 cm −2 in the 0.5−2.0 keV band, the normal galaxies in the Chandra Deep Field surveys are about the (30 ± 12)% of the total number of objects. At fainter fluxes the fraction of galaxies will probably rise, and exceed the counts from AGN at fluxes <10 −17 erg s −1 cm −2 .
Bistatic Radar Imaging of the Marine Environment—Part I: Theoretical Background

We describe in detail the theoretical and practical implementation aspects of a simulation for marine radars which can, in particular, be used in multistatic configurations. Since the simulator is intended to deliver pseudoraw signals, it can be used later as a tool to benchmark and improve postprocessing algorithms such as bistatic synthetic aperture radar focusing algorithms and ship wake detection algorithms. The work is divided into two parts. This paper reviews and recalls theoretical prerequisites necessary in implementing such a simulator. Included are the full derivation of the bistatic radar equation from the transmitter to the receiver, accounting also for the transmit-receive time, a description of the sea state phenomenology, a review of the theory of electromagnetic scattering from the sea surface, and the presentation and validation of the method used in the simulation. A companion paper discusses the practical implementation aspects of the simulator as well as an analysis of our results.
Variable Density Based Genetic Clustering

From the existing clustering techniques, spatial density-based ones register one of the most promising results in detecting arbitrary shaped data, being robust to outliers and not restricted by various data distributions. The existing literature contains a plethora of density based algorithms but in all cases one or multiple global parameters need to be set, parameters that are seldom easy to set requiring in depth knowledge about the analyzed data. This paper proposes a parameter-free novel genetic clustering algorithm with an original method for encoding clustering solutions relying on density based clustering parameters. Within each clustering solution genotype, gene position, defined by several density based clustering attributes, plays a key role for recovering the encoded partition. Each gene defined density-based cluster can only attract object not already attracted by previously defined clusters. The proposed encoding scheme allows for always valid crossover results, with great offspring variations even when using simple crossover operators. While not requiring any input parameters, experiments involving multiple clustering validation indices as fitness criteria, across both synthetic and real data sets, show comparable results with existing density-based clustering techniques.
Aligned Across Difference: Structural Injustice, Sex Work, and Human Trafficking

Abstract:Feminist scholars and activists engage in meaningful, contentious debates about the relationships among sex, gender, power, and society. One of the most recent iterations of these arguments reinscribes the pleasure of sex positivity and danger of patriarchal exploitation onto new subjects: sex work and human trafficking. This paper brings together two separate empirically based research projects, one working with sex workers and the other working with members of the anti-trafficking community. As scholars working across these topics, we provide new normative propositions that may bridge these different approaches to resilience, survival, danger, and risk. We find that the real threat identified by our participants was the wide reach of the carceral state onto migrating, working, and trafficked bodies. Our projects find unexpected commonality in shared perceptions of pleasure, agency, and danger among sex workers, human trafficking survivors, and service providers working with trafficked persons. Current debates ignore the lived experiences of our participants, who attempt to find pleasure in context-specific agency and survival, and who locate danger in the looming forces of the security state, criminality, and structural inequalities.
Metamorphic HEMT amplifier for K- and Ka-band applications

This paper presents an integrated high gain two-stage amplifier covering frequency range from 18 GHz to 40 GHz. The chip was manufactured using a commercially available 0.15 /spl mu/m GaAs based metamorphic HEMT technology and the chip size is 2.1 mm /spl times/ 1.1 mm. Parallel resistive feedback is used for obtaining a broadband and flat gain response and for stabilizing the amplifier. We measured in on-wafer tests for the amplifier a small-signal gain of 22.5 /spl plusmn/ 2.5 dB at K- and Ka-bands. The measured 1 dB output compression point is better than +13 dBm at K-band and better than +9.5 dBm at Ka-band using a low 2.5 volts supply. In addition, we measured 10 amplifier chips to verify the performance variation from chip to chip. The measurements showed a maximum of 2 dB deviation in small-signal gain.
Transfer joint embedding for cross-domain named entity recognition

Named Entity Recognition (NER) is a fundamental task in information extraction from unstructured text. Most previous machine-learning-based NER systems are domain-specific, which implies that they may only perform well on some specific domains (e.g., Newswire) but tend to adapt poorly to other related but different domains (e.g., Weblog). Recently, transfer learning techniques have been proposed to NER. However, most transfer learning approaches to NER are developed for binary classification, while NER is a multiclass classification problem in nature. Therefore, one has to first reduce the NER task to multiple binary classification tasks and solve them independently. In this article, we propose a new transfer learning method, named Transfer Joint Embedding (TJE), for cross-domain multiclass classification, which can fully exploit the relationships between classes (labels), and reduce domain difference in data distributions for transfer learning. More specifically, we aim to embed both labels (outputs) and high-dimensional features (inputs) from different domains (e.g., a source domain and a target domain) into a unified low-dimensional latent space, where 1) each label is represented by a prototype and the intrinsic relationships between labels can be measured by Euclidean distance; 2) the distance in data distributions between the source and target domains can be reduced; 3) the source domain labeled data are closer to their corresponding label-prototypes than others. After the latent space is learned, classification on the target domain data can be done with the simple nearest neighbor rule in the latent space. Furthermore, in order to scale up TJE, we propose an efficient algorithm based on stochastic gradient descent (SGD). Finally, we apply the proposed TJE method for NER across different domains on the ACE 2005 dataset, which is a benchmark in Natural Language Processing (NLP). Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of TJE and show that TJE can outperform state-of-the-art transfer learning approaches to NER.
Joining by Number: Military Intervention in Civil Wars

Abstract Understanding why and when states militarily intervene in civil wars is crucial. Intervention can increase civil wars’ severity and the strategies employed in civil wars are shaped by the possibility of military intervention. This article argues that potential military interveners react to information revealed about warring parties’ intentions and relative power. Without revealed information, potential military interveners are unlikely to reconsider their initial decision to remain out of the war. Revealed information causes non-belligerent states to update their expectations about the trajectory of the civil war causing them, at times, to change their calculus about the benefits of belligerency and thus intervene. This helps explain why civil wars spread and when they do so. This explanation is tested using generalised estimating equations on a new data-set of unexpected events for the civil wars in the Correlates of War Intrastate War and PRIO Armed Conflict data-sets.
WAP: Wormhole Attack Prevention Algorithm in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

In wireless ad hoc networks, nodes compromise to forward packets for each other to communicate beyond their transmission range. Therefore, networks are vulnerable to wormhole attacks launched through compromised nodes because malicious nodes can easily participate in the networks. In wormhole attacks, one malicious node tunnels packets from its location to the other malicious node. Such wormhole attacks result in a false route with fewer. If source node chooses this fake route, malicious nodes have the option of delivering the packets or dropping them. It is difficult to detect wormhole attacks because malicious nodes impersonate legitimate nodes. Previous algorithms detecting a wormhole require special hardware or tight time synchronization. In this paper, we develop an effective method called wormhole attack prevention (WAP) without using specialized hardware. The WAP not only detects the fake route but also adopts preventive measures against action wormhole nodes from reappearing during the route discovery phase. Simulation results show that wormholes can be detected and isolated within the route discovery phase.
Massive Changes in Genome Architecture Accompany the Transition to Self-Fertility in the Filamentous Fungus Neurospora tetrasperma

A large region of suppressed recombination surrounds the sex-determining locus of the self-fertile fungus Neurospora tetrasperma. This region encompasses nearly one-fifth of the N. tetrasperma genome and suppression of recombination is necessary for self-fertility. The similarity of the N. tetrasperma mating chromosome to plant and animal sex chromosomes and its recent origin (<5 MYA), combined with a long history of genetic and cytological research, make this fungus an ideal model for studying the evolutionary consequences of suppressed recombination. Here we compare genome sequences from two N. tetrasperma strains of opposite mating type to determine whether structural rearrangements are associated with the nonrecombining region and to examine the effect of suppressed recombination for the evolution of the genes within it. We find a series of three inversions encompassing the majority of the region of suppressed recombination and provide evidence for two different types of rearrangement mechanisms: the recently proposed mechanism of inversion via staggered single-strand breaks as well as ectopic recombination between transposable elements. In addition, we show that the N. tetrasperma mat a mating-type region appears to be accumulating deleterious substitutions at a faster rate than the other mating type (mat A) and thus may be in the early stages of degeneration.
Supervised Adaptive-Transfer PLSA for Cross-Domain Text Classification

Cross-domain learning is a very promising technique to improve classification in the target (testing) domain whose data distributions are very different from the source (training) domain. Many cross-domain text classification methods are built on topic modeling approaches. However, topic model methods are unsupervised in nature without fully utilizing the label information of the source domain. In addition, almost all cross-domain learning approaches utilize the knowledge of source domain in the later stage of the training process, and this limits the knowledge transfer. In this paper, we propose a model named Supervised Adaptive transfer Probabilistic Latent Semantic Analysis (SAtPLSA) for cross-domain text classification aiming to deal with the above two issues. The proposed model extends the original PLSA to a supervised learning paradigm. By defining the common labeled information from each term across domains, we transfer knowledge in source domain to assist classifying text in target domain. In addition, we adaptively modify the weight value controlling the proportion of the usage of knowledge from source domain in the model learning process. At last, we conducted experiments on nine benchmark datasets in cross domain text classification to compare the performance of our proposed algorithm with two classical supervised learning methods and five state-of-art transfer learning approaches. The experimental results have shown the effectiveness and efficiency of our proposed SAtPLSA algorithm.
Monetary Value of Diet Is Associated with Dietary Quality and Nutrient Adequacy among Urban Adults, Differentially by Sex, Race and Poverty Status

Objective The association between monetary value of the diet (MVD, $/day) with dietary quality was examined using a large sample of urban US adults, differentially by socio-demographic factors. Methods This was a cross-sectional study of 2,111 participants, aged 30–64y, using data from the Healthy Aging in Neighborhoods of Diversity across the Life Span Study. Dietary quality indices included Healthy Eating Index–2010 (HEI–2010) and Mean Adequacy Ratio (MAR), (two 24-hr recalls). A national food price database was used to estimate MVD. Multiple linear/logistic regression analyses were conducted stratifying separately by sex, race and poverty status. Results Women had significantly higher HEI-2010 scores than men (43.35 vs 41.57 out of 100, respectively), whereas MAR scores were higher for men (76.8 vs 69.9, out of 100), reflecting energy intake gender differentials. Importantly, a $3/day higher MVD (IQR: $3.70/d (Q1) to $6.62/d (Q4)) was associated with a 4.98±0.35 higher total HEI-2010 and a 3.88±0.37 higher MAR score, after energy-adjustment and control for key confounders. For HEI-2010 and MAR, stronger associations were observed among participants above poverty and among women, whilethe MVD vs. HEI-2010 association was additionally stronger among Whites. Sex and poverty status differentials were observed for many MAR and some HEI-2010 components. Conclusions Despite positive associations between measures of dietary quality and MVD, particularly above poverty and among women, approaching compliance with the Dietary Guidelines (80 or more for HEI-2010) requires a substantially higher MVD. Thus, nutrition education may further improve people’s decision-making regarding food venues and dietary choices.
Preference Markets: Organizing Securities Markets for Opinion Surveys with Infinite Scalability

Preference markets address the need for scalable, fast and engaging market research. The Web 2.0 paradigm, in which users contribute numerous ideas that may lead to new products, requires new methods of filtering those ideas for their marketability, and preference markets offer just such a mechanism. For faster new product development decisions, we implement a flexible prioritization methodology for product features and concepts, one that scales up in the number of testable alternatives, limited only by the number of participants. Preferences are measured by trading stocks whose prices are based upon share of choice of new products and features. We develop a conceptual model of scalable preference markets, and test it experimentally. We find that benefits of the methodology include speed (less than one hour per trading experiment), scalability (question capacity grows linearly in the number of traders), flexibility (features and concepts can be tested simultaneously), and respondent enthusiasm for the method.
Spatial data infrastructure management: lessons from corporate GIS development

It is argued that a corporate GIS is the lowest level in a hierarchy of spatial data infrastructures (SDIs) worldwide. Therefore, SDI development can benefit from a good understanding of the nature and dynamics of development of a corporate GIS. To facilitate this cross-fertilisation, existing definitions of GIS are briefly reviewed in the context of the organisational setting of a corporate GIS. A high level perspective which describes a corporate GIS as making up of GIS modules that play the roles of either an infrastructure or a business process is presented in the paper. The modules are termed infrastructure GIS and business process GIS respectively, with the former supporting the latter. The patterns of GIS development and some long term characteristics of a corporate GIS are identified in a study of the dynamics of GIS development in the Department of Natural Resources and Environment in the State Government of Victoria. These two aspects of the nature of a corporate are also applicable to SDIs and their development. Based on the experience of SDI development in Australia, particularly Victoria, the implications of the observed nature of SDI relationships on SDI management are discussed.
Using Networks of Workstations for Database Query Operations

Performance of database systems can be improved by applying parallel processing techniques. Several commercial parallel database systems are available but these are expensive. In the parallel processing area, there is a trend to use networks of workstations as a virtual parallel machine. The obvious advantage of such systems is their low cost. The availability of public domain software (such as PVM and MPI) to configure a parallel virtual machine over a network of workstations has led several researchers to study performance issues in this area. In this paper, we propose the use of network of workstations to improve the performance of database queries. We present analysis of a four-way join operation to demonstrate the feasibility of our proposal. However, using networks of workstations for database processing poses its own problems. These problems have to be solved before we can profitably employ networks of workstations for database applications. We provide a discussion of the issues involved and pointers for further research.
Towards a Methodology for Named Entities Annotation

Today, the named entity recognition task is considered as fundamental, but it involves some specific difficulties in terms of annotation. Those issues led us to ask the fundamental question of what the annotators should annotate and, even more important, for which purpose. We thus identify the applications using named entity recognition and, according to the real needs of those applications, we propose to semantically define the elements to annotate. Finally, we put forward a number of methodological recommendations to ensure a coherent and reliable annotation scheme.