Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mapping Species Distributions with MAXENT Using a Geographically Biased Sample of Presence Data: A Performance Assessment of Methods for Correcting Sampling Bias

MAXENT is now a common species distribution modeling (SDM) tool used by conservation practitioners for predicting the distribution of a species from a set of records and environmental predictors. However, datasets of species occurrence used to train the model are often biased in the geographical space because of unequal sampling effort across the study area. This bias may be a source of strong inaccuracy in the resulting model and could lead to incorrect predictions. Although a number of sampling bias correction methods have been proposed, there is no consensual guideline to account for it. We compared here the performance of five methods of bias correction on three datasets of species occurrence: one “virtual” derived from a land cover map, and two actual datasets for a turtle (Chrysemys picta) and a salamander (Plethodon cylindraceus). We subjected these datasets to four types of sampling biases corresponding to potential types of empirical biases. We applied five correction methods to the biased samples and compared the outputs of distribution models to unbiased datasets to assess the overall correction performance of each method. The results revealed that the ability of methods to correct the initial sampling bias varied greatly depending on bias type, bias intensity and species. However, the simple systematic sampling of records consistently ranked among the best performing across the range of conditions tested, whereas other methods performed more poorly in most cases. The strong effect of initial conditions on correction performance highlights the need for further research to develop a step-by-step guideline to account for sampling bias. However, this method seems to be the most efficient in correcting sampling bias and should be advised in most cases.
Radio images of four luminous blue variable stars

We have used the Australia Telescope Compact Array to image four southern luminous blue variable stars: AG Car, He3-519, HR Car and WRA 751, at wavelengths of 3 and 6 cm, and resolutions of 1 and 2 arcsec respectively. With the partial exception of HR Car, all radio images show an unresolved stellar core surrounded by a large ionized gaseous nebula, and agree well with published Hα and [N ii] optical images. The image of WRA 751 shows a stellar torus or disc. HR Car's radio image is unusual, and seems best explained by the presence of a hot binary companion.
Highly thermally conductive and mechanically strong graphene fibers

A superior mix of big and small Graphene is often described as an unrolled carbon nanotube. However, although nanotubes are known for their exceptional mechanical and conductivity properties, the same is not true of graphene-based fibers. Xin et al. intercalated small fragments of graphene into the gaps formed by larger graphene sheets that had been coiled into fibers. Once annealed, the large sheets provided pathways for conduction, while the smaller fragments helped reinforce the fibers. The result? Superior thermal and electrical conductivity and mechanical strength. Science, this issue p. 1083 Intercalated graphene sheets form compact, ordered fibers with enhanced thermal conductivity and mechanical properties. Graphene, a single layer of carbon atoms bonded in a hexagonal lattice, is the thinnest, strongest, and stiffest known material and an excellent conductor of heat and electricity. However, these superior properties have yet to be realized for graphene-derived macroscopic structures such as graphene fibers. We report the fabrication of graphene fibers with high thermal and electrical conductivity and enhanced mechanical strength. The inner fiber structure consists of large-sized graphene sheets forming a highly ordered arrangement intercalated with small-sized graphene sheets filling the space and microvoids. The graphene fibers exhibit a submicrometer crystallite domain size through high-temperature treatment, achieving an enhanced thermal conductivity up to 1290 watts per meter per kelvin. The tensile strength of the graphene fiber reaches 1080 megapascals.
The Design of a Sonically-Enhanced Interface Toolkit

This paper describes the design of a user-interface toolkit composed of sonically-enhanced widgets. Research has shown that the addition of sound can improve the usability of human-computer interfaces. However, sonically-enhanced widgets are difficult to create. The motivation for this work is the same as that which motivated the creation of graphical interface toolkits: To simplify their construction; to allow designers who are not sound experts to create such interfaces; to make sure the sonically-enhanced widgets are effective and improve usability; and to make sure the widgets use sound in a clear and consistent way across the interface. This paper describes the design of the audio feedback for several of the widgets in the toolkit, specifically the design of buttons, menu, scrollbars and windows.
Refactoring Detection based on UMLDiff Change-Facts Queries

Refactoring is an important activity in the evolutionary development of object-oriented software systems. Several IDEs today support the automated application of some refactorings; at the same time, there is substantial on-going research aimed at developing support for deciding when and how software should be refactored and for estimating the effect of the refactoring on the quality requirements of the software. On the other hand, understanding the refactorings in the evolutionary history of a software system is essential in understanding its design rationale. Yet, only very limited support exists for detecting refactorings. In this paper, we present our approach for detecting refactorings by analyzing the system evolution at the design level. We evaluate our method with case studies, examining two realistic examples of object-oriented software
Inhibitory Effect and Possible Mechanism of Action of Patchouli Alcohol against Influenza A (H2N2) Virus

In the present study, the anti-influenza A (H2N2) virus activity of patchouli alcohol was studied in vitro, in vivo and in silico. The CC50 of patchouli alcohol was above 20 µM. Patchouli alcohol could inhibit influenza virus with an IC50 of 4.03 ± 0.23 µM. MTT assay showed that the inhibition by patchouli alcohol appears strongly after penetration of the virus into the cell. In the influenza mouse model, patchouli alcohol showed obvious protection against the viral infection at a dose of 5 mg/kg/day. Flexible docking and molecular dynamic simulations indicated that patchouli alcohol was bound to the neuraminidase protein of influenza virus, with an interaction energy of –40.38 kcal mol–1. The invariant key active-site residues Asp151, Arg152, Glu119, Glu276 and Tyr406 played important roles during the binding process. Based on spatial and energetic criteria, patchouli alcohol interfered with the NA functions. Results presented here suggest that patchouli alcohol possesses anti-influenza A (H2N2) virus properties, and therefore is a potential source of anti-influenza agents for the pharmaceutical industry.
Overview of the EVALITA 2009 Part-of-Speech Tagging Task

We report on the Evalita 2009 PoS Tagging task, an initiative for the evaluation of automatic PoS Taggers for Italian. The challenge of this year' task consisted in dealing with a large tag set, including morphological traits, and the fact that the training data were extracted from a newspapers corpus while the test data were from a different domain, the Italian Wikipedia. Considering these difficulties, the performance of the participating systems is quite high, compared with state of the art taggers for other languages, with small differences in accuracy between the systems.
Intermediates in monensin biosynthesis: A late step in biosynthesis of the polyether ionophore monensin is crucial for the integrity of cation binding

Summary Polyether antibiotics such as monensin are biosynthesised via a cascade of directed ring expansions operating on a putative polyepoxide precursor. The resulting structures containing fused cyclic ethers and a lipophilic backbone can form strong ionophoric complexes with certain metal cations. In this work, we demonstrate for monensin biosynthesis that, as well as ether formation, a late-stage hydroxylation step is crucial for the correct formation of the sodium monensin complex. We have investigated the last two steps in monensin biosynthesis, namely hydroxylation catalysed by the P450 monooxygenase MonD and O-methylation catalysed by the methyl-transferase MonE. The corresponding genes were deleted in-frame in a monensin-overproducing strain of Streptomyces cinnamonensis. The mutants produced the expected monensin derivatives in excellent yields (ΔmonD: 1.13 g L−1 dehydroxymonensin; ΔmonE: 0.50 g L−1 demethylmonensin; and double mutant ΔmonDΔmonE: 0.34 g L−1 dehydroxydemethylmonensin). Single crystals were obtained from purified fractions of dehydroxymonensin and demethylmonensin. X-ray structure analysis revealed that the conformation of sodium dimethylmonensin is very similar to that of sodium monensin. In contrast, the coordination of the sodium ion is significantly different in the sodium dehydroxymonensin complex. This shows that the final constitution of the sodium monensin complex requires this tailoring step as well as polyether formation.
Capturing Regular Human Activity through a Learning Context Memory

A learning context memory consisting of two main parts is presented. The rst part performs lossy data compression, keeping the amount of stored data at a minimum by combining similar context attributes o the compression rate for the presented GPS data is 150:1 on average. The resulting data is stored in an appropriate data structure highlighting the level of compression. Elements with a high level of compression are used in the second part to form the start and end points of episodes capturing common activity consisting of consecutive events. The context memory is used to investigate how little context data can be stored containing still enough information to capture regular human activity.
Rate-constrained relaying: achievable rates and protocol comparisons

In this paper, the impact of limited resources on achievable rates in relay channels is investigated. Resource limitation is modeled (as previously proposed) by (Rmacr) which constrains the rate at which a relay can reliably decode or encode data. With this constraint in hand, the achievable rates for two commonly studied protocols, decode-and-forward and estimate-and-forward are derived and_compared. In particular, the case of severe resource limitation (Rmacr rarr 0) is considered. While decode-and-forward is the superior protocol for most relay locations (topologies) under no rate constraints, estimate-and forward almost always offers superior performance when relaying with strong rate constraints
How to specify the participant group size for usability studies: a practitioner's guide

Using secondary literature, this article helps practitioners to specify the participant group size for a usability study. It is also designed to help practitioners understand and articulate the basis, risks, and implications associated with any specification. It is designed to be accessible to the typical practitioner and covers those study scenarios that are common in commercial contexts.
On the crucial features of a single‐file transport model for ion channels

It has long been accepted that the multiple-ion single-file transport model is appropriate for many kinds of ion channels. However, most of the purely theoretical works in this field did not capture all of the important features of the realistic systems. Nowadays, large-scale atomic-level simulations are more feasible. Discrepancy between theories, simulations and experiments are getting obvious, enabling people to carefully examine the missing parts of the theoretical models and methods. In this work, it is attempted to find out the essential features that such kind of models should possess, in order that the physical properties of an ion channel be adequately reflected.
The CCA-end of P-tRNA Contacts Both the Human RPL36AL and the A-site Bound Translation Termination Factor eRF1 at the Peptidyl Transferase Center of the Human 80S Ribosome

We have demonstrated previously that the E-site specific protein RPL36AL present in human ribosomes can be crosslinked with the CCA-end of a P-tRNA in situ. Here we report the following: (i) We modeled RPL36AL into the structure of the archaeal ortholog RPL44E extracted from the known X-ray structure of the 50S subunit of Haloarcula marismortui. Superimposing the obtained RPL36AL structure with that of P/E tRNA observed in eukaryotic 80S ribosomes suggested that RPL36AL might in addition to its CCA neighbourhood interact with the inner site of the tRNA elbow similar to an interaction pattern known from tRNA•synthetase pairs. (ii) Accordingly, we detected that the isolated recombinant protein RPL36AL can form a tight binary complex with deacylated tRNA, and even tRNA fragments truncated at their CCA end showed a high affinity in the nanomolar range supporting a strong interaction outside the CCA end. (iii) We constructed programmed 80S complexes containing the termination factor eRF1 (stop codon UAA at the A-site) and a 2’,3’-dialdehyde tRNA (tRNAox) analog at the P-site. Surprisingly, we observed a crosslinked ternary complex containing the tRNA, eRF1 and RPL36AL crosslinked both to the aldehyde groups of tRNAox at the 2’- and 3’-positions of the ultimate A. We also demonstrated that, upon binding to the ribosomal A-site, eRF1 induces an alternative conformation of the ribosome and/or the tRNA, leading to a novel crosslink of tRNAox to another large-subunit ribosomal protein (namely L37) rather than to RPL36AL, both ribosomal proteins being labeled in a mutually exclusive fashion. Since the human 80S ribosome in complex with P-site bound tRNAox and A-site bound eRF1 corresponds to the post-termination state of the ribosome, the results represent the first biochemical evidence for the positioning of the CCA-arm of the P-tRNA in close proximity to both RPL36AL and eRF1 at the end of the translation process.
Can Citation Indexing Be Automated ?

The main characteristics of conventional language-oriented indexing systems are itemized and compared to the characteristics of citation indexes. The advantages and disadvantages arc discussed in relation to the capability of the computer automatically to simulate human critical proccaws reflected in the act of citation. It is shown that a considerable standardization of document presentations will be necessary and probably not achievable for many years if we are to achieve automatic referencing. On the other hand, many citations, now fortuitously or otherwise omitted, might be supplied by computer analyses of text.
Market Guide for Network Sandboxing

Choosing a network sandboxing solution is challenging due to the wide array of options available from established security vendors and new entrants. This market guide will help network security managers understand the range of sandboxing technology and deployment options. The market for network sandboxing consists of three categories: (1) stand-alone (solutions that have no dependencies on existing security infrastructure); (2) sandboxing as a feature of firewalls, intrusion prevention systems (IPSs) and unified threat management (UTM) devices; and (3) sandboxing as a feature of secure Web gateways and/or secure email gateways. ■ The number of sandboxing vendors has grown quickly due to low barriers to entry and high demand. Several vendors have licensed sandboxing technology from OEM providers, and some have added very basic sandboxing capabilities. ■ The network sandboxing market is far from mature, and solutions vary widely in functionality (for example, the types of objects that can be analyzed), efficacy and pricing. Recommendations Security leaders: ■ Implement sandboxing technology if you need to improve perimeter-based inbound malware detection capabilities. ■ Evaluate sandboxing-as-a-feature options from your strategic security vendors. ■ Evaluate one or more network sandboxing solutions in the stand-alone category. These sandboxes are implemented independently of other security products and services. ■ Maximize the breadth of sandboxing coverage allowed by your budget by implementing solutions that analyze a broad set of suspicious objects (for example, executables, files and Web objects) and monitor both Web and email channels.
Acquiring volatile operating system data tools and techniques

The current approach to forensic examination during search and seizure has predominantly been to pull the plug on the suspect machine and subsequently perform a post mortem examination on the storage medium. However, with the advent of larger capacities of memory, drive encryption and anti-forensics, this procedure may result in the loss of valuable evidence. Volatile data may be vital in determining criminal activity; it may contain passwords used for encryption, indications of anti-forensic techniques, memory resident malware which would otherwise go unnoticed by the investigator. This paper emphasizes the importance of understanding the potential value of volatile data and how best to collate forensic artifacts to the benefit of the investigation, ensuring the preservation and integrity of the evidence. The paper will review current methods for volatile data collection, assessing the capabilities, limitations and liabilities of current tools and techniques available to the forensic investigator.
BOUNDARY REFLECTION COMPENSATION IN GUIDED WAVE BASELINE‐FREE IMAGING

Guided ultrasonic waves are frequently used for both structural health monitoring and nondestructive testing of metallic plate‐like structures. Signals resulting from waves generated by one or more fixed piezoelectric transducers can be recorded around the periphery of an area of interest using a non‐contact approach such as a scanning laser vibrometer. It is desired to determine the location of a possible flaw from this recorded data without using any baseline information. Prior work has employed delay‐and‐sum imaging after applying a source removal algorithm, but this process did not consider the effects of boundary reflections. While these effects may be sufficiently small to neglect in a large plate, in smaller structures boundary effects are significant and can completely obscure small flaws. Proposed here is an iterative method to perform baseline‐free imaging of damage in a rectangular plate with edge reflections. Results are shown for simulated data to evaluate the efficacy of the proposed method.
How the Plant Temperature Links to the Air Temperature in the Desert Plant Artemisia ordosica

Plant temperature (Tp) is an important indicator of plant health. To determine the dynamics of plant temperature and self-cooling ability of the plant, we measured Tp in Artemisia ordosica in July, in the Mu Us Desert of Northwest China. Related factors were also monitored to investigate their effects on Tp, including environmental factors, such as air temperature (Ta), relative humidity, wind speed; and physiological factors, such as leaf water potential, sap flow, and water content. The results indicate that: 1) Tp generally changes in conjunction with Ta mainly, and varies with height and among the plant organs. Tp in the young branches is most constant, while it is the most sensitive in the leaves. 2) Correlations between Tp and environmental factors show that Tp is affected mainly by Ta. 3) The self-cooling ability of the plant was effective by midday, with Tp being lower than Ta. 4) Increasing sap flow and leaf water potential showed that transpiration formed part of the mechanism that supported self-cooling. Increased in water conductance and specific heat at midday may be additional factors that contribute to plant cooling ability. Therefore, our results confirmed plant self-cooling ability. The response to high temperatures is regulated by both transpiration speed and an increase in stem water conductance. This study provides quantitative data for plant management in terms of temperature control. Moreover, our findings will assist species selection with taking plant temperature as an index.
Finding Popular Friends in Social Networks

The emergence of social computing enables users to intersect social behaviour with computing systems and to create social conventions as well as social contexts through the use of software and technology. Social networking sites have become popular to facilitate collaboration and knowledge sharing between users. A rich set of information is embedded in these social media data. In this paper, we propose a data mining algorithm to help users to find popular friends in social networks. This can be considered as an application of data mining and social computing.
Multi-Objective Optimal Design of High-Speed Surface-Mounted Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor for Magnetically Levitated Flywheel Energy Storage System

This paper presents a multi-objective optimized design for a 75 kW, 24 000 r/min high-speed surface-mounted permanent magnet synchronous motor (SMPSM) for a magnetically levitated flywheel energy storage system. The main goal of the optimization process is to determine the optimal motor geometry, and thus obtain maximum efficiency, minimum weight, and minimum torque ripple in the SMPSM. To achieve this goal, three objective functions are used. The first function is used to obtain maximal output torque, and thus produce highest efficiency; the second function is used to minimize materials utilization to realize the lowest possible production cost; and the third function is used to achieve minimal torque ripple, and thus constrain the motor’s vibration and noise. The optimization process uses an ant colony algorithm with continuous domains. The optimized motor parameters can be selected from the Pareto solution set obtained. A comparison of the results calculated using the optimization algorithm with the results obtained using finite-element analysis software shows a good agreement.