Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Establishment of Peristenus spp. in Northern California for the control of Lygus spp.

Lygus hesperus is native to western United States and is a pest to numerous field and seed crops. In California, it is a key pest of cotton and strawberries, both highly valued crops. Extensive surveys for natural enemies in western United States have found one egg and two nymphal parasitoids attacking Lygus species, primarily L. hesperus. However in central California surveys in alfalfa by ourselves and others have failed to find any nymphal parasitoids. Beginning in the early 1970’s the USDA ARS initiated importation of parasitoids associated with Lygus rugulipennis infesting alfalfa in central Europe. Van Steenwyk and Stern attempted but failed to establish Peristenus stygicus during the mid 70’s in the southern region of the San Joaquin Valley in central California. Importation of nymphal parasitoids into eastern United States during the 1980’s, however, successfully reduced Lygus lineolaris infesting alfalfa, a close relative of L. hesperus. Several populations of Peristenus stygicus and Peristenus digoneutis were released in Sacramento, California in alfalfa managed by CDFA. Parasitoids were collected from southern France, central Italy and Spain by CABI Bioscience and the European Biological Control Laboratory, USDA ARS. Beginning in 1999, parasitoids have been released at several sites in central California, both inland and on the coast. Parasitism has increased each year at our original release site of alfalfa in Sacramento. Three years following our last releases there, we continue to find abundant numbers of both P. stygicus and P. digoneutis. Maximum summer parasitism has increased each year since releases were made, reaching 90% summer 2004. ___________________________________________ Peristenus spp. and Biological Control of Lygus spp. Second International Symposium on Biological Control of Arthropods 117 Parasitized nymphs of L. hesperus and Closterotomus norvegicus have been collected from nearby vacant lots infested with black mustard and wild radish. Identification of adults is pending. Results indicate that these parasitoids are permanently established in the Sacramento region. Over the same period of time, maximum Lygus counts has varied from 3 to 14 per sweep, and appears to be declining. In contrast to results at the first release site in Sacramento, parasitism at our other central California release sites, including one at UC Davis has yet to increase, despite additional releases in 2002 and 2003. However at one of our new central coast sites we recovered parasitoids, as larvae, at a control site 300 m from where they were first released 6 weeks earlier. Only the introduced parasitoids Peristenus stygicus and P. digoneutis were recovered, i.e. no native braconids. Native parasitoids, Peristenus nr. howardi, have been recovered from Closterotomus norvegicus at the same locations.
Application of stretchable strain sensor for pneumatic artificial muscle

Pneumatic artificial muscles have advantages of lightweight, strong force, and electrical power saving for applications to power-assist systems or care support systems. These applications require precise control of artificial muscles. The artificial muscles have non-linear characteristics because they are mainly composed of elastic materials. The characteristics make the precise control difficult. In this paper, we propose a stretchable strain sensor for an application to pneumatic artificial muscles. This strain sensor has the characteristics of stretchability, length measurement, and lightweight, and can directly measure the contraction of the artificial muscle by attaching the sensor on the muscle. We describe the structure of the sensor and the principle, and show the fundamental characteristics. In addition, we confirm the next two characteristics. The sensor stops the contraction of the muscle at an error of 2.1 mm, and has no hysteresis in a loop of contraction and stretch.
Decision making and recognition mechanisms

Determining how individuals adjust their behaviour to maximize reproductive opportunities is fundamental to understanding the adaptive significance of behavioural variations. Such ‘decision makin’ requires recognition mechanisms, whereby an individual evaluates cues that yield information about the potential reproductive outcomes of alternative behaviours. Here, we develop a quantitative model for understanding how individuals evaluate cues. Only when a proximate (immediate) cue predicts reproductive value more reliably than an evolved predisposition, will the cue influence an individua's decision. The model resolves some long–standing controversies in evolutionary biology involving recognition mechanisms and interpretations of behavioural decisions that were observed after manipulations of cues of parentage, kinship and mate quality.
Quantifying Reliability of Solid-State Storage from Multiple Aspects

Reliability and data retention of Solid-State Storage have multiple facets which should be traded off carefully. This paper presents a framework of reliability quantification deployed in Fusion-io ® , allowing us to design Fusion-io ® products more competitively regarding reliability by trading off various reliability aspects. It discloses a comprehensive set of test results with NAND flash parts from a variety of vendors and different NAND technologies (3x nm, 4x nm, and 5x nm). The sample size in our tests is the largest published so far and the set of reliability quantification is one of the most comprehensive in the industry. Based on the test data, exponential growth models are proposed to characterize the impact of P/E cycles and read disturb to Raw Bit Error Rate.
A Curve-Fitting Method for Correcting Radial Distortion

This paper presents a new method for correcting radial distortion. It makes use of a model plane including 3D lines and originally demonstrates that the distorted image of a 3D line is a circular arc. After obtained the circle equation, the distortion parameter and the supposed undistorted image are computed simultaneously. Then the camera model is equivalent to ideal pinhole camera and can be calibrated using conventional plane-based calibration algorithm. This paper successfully decouples the estimation of the radial distortion from the estimation of other camera intrinsic parameters. Experimental results verify the correctness and robustness of our method.
A survey of formal methods in self-adaptive systems

One major challenge in self-adaptive systems is to assure the required quality properties. Formal methods provide the means to rigorously specify and reason about the behaviors of self-adaptive systems, both at design time and runtime. To the best of our knowledge, no systematic study has been performed on the use of formal methods in self-adaptive systems. As a result, there is no clear view on what methods have been used to verify self-adaptive systems, and what support these methods offer to software developers. As such insight is important for researchers and engineers, we performed a systematic literature review covering 12 main software engineering venues and 4 journals, resulting in 75 papers used for data collection. The study shows that the attention for self-adaptive software systems is gradually increasing, but the number of studies that employ formal methods remains low. The main focus of formalization is on modeling and reasoning. Model checking and theorem proving have gained limited attention. The main concerns of interest in formalization of self-adaptation are efficiency/performance and reliability. Important adaptation concerns, such as security and scalability, are hardly considered. To verify the concerns of interest, a set of new properties are defined, such as interference freedom, responsiveness, mismatch, and loss-tolerance. A relevant part of the studies use formal methods at runtime, but the use is limited to modeling and analysis. Formal methods can be applied to other runtime activities of self-adaptation, and there is a need for light-weight tools to support runtime verification.
Increasing Ethnic Diversity Moderates Longitudinal Effects of Individual Differences on Friendship Homophily

This study examined direct and interactive effects of social–emotional adjustment, national and ethnic identification, and school ethnic composition on friendship homophily among 214 ethnic minority and 183 ethnic majority English children, aged between 5 and 11 years. The data came from a longitudinal study, which included 3 time points, spanning a 12-month period. Results of multilevel latent growth curve models showed that among ethnic minority English children (teacher-rated), peer problems and ethnic identity were associated with more friendship homophily, whereas a bicultural identity was not related to more friendship homophily. Among ethnic majority English children, the effects of peer problems and English identity were moderated by school ethnic composition, such that these factors were not associated with more friendship homophily in more ethnically diverse schools. The findings are discussed on the basis of theories of intergroup contact and intergroup threat.
A Dynamic Model of the Impact of Pre-Discovery Licensing on Innovation and Product Market Efficiency : Evidence from the Semiconductor Industry ∗

This study evaluates the impact of pre-discovery licensing on innovation and product market efficiency. Pre-discovery licensing is a form of R&D cooperation between firms, which accounts for more than 95% of all research collaborations. Pre-discovery licensing is pursued independently between firms, i.e., without governmental support. In contrast, in a research joint venture firms cooperate in R&D, as they usually seek protection and support from government enacted laws and programs which gives rise to selection problems. Despite existing work on research joint ventures, there has been little work on pre-discovery licensing. The estimation results of our dynamic count data model show that pre-discovery licensing reduces innovative activity. We continue to estimate a semi-structural model, which provides evidence that pre-discovery licensing agreements increase costs in the product market. Our results show that pre-discovery licensing increased the price of a semiconductor chip by $0.225. Hence, consumers paid a total amount of $1.6 billion more per year due to the fact that pre-discovery licensing agreements increase costs. Our findings stand in contrast to the empirical findings on research joint ventures, emphasizing the notion that selection is a critical argument which causes different results. JEL: L11, L13, L52, O31, O32, O38.
Investigating the Role of Emotion Perception in the Adaptive Functioning of Individuals on the Autism Spectrum

Cognitive functioning has historically been used to predict adaptive outcomes of individuals with autism spectrum disorders; however, research shows that it does not adequately predict these outcomes. Therefore, the current study explored the role of emotion perception in the adaptive functioning of individuals with ASDs. Emotion perception was assessed using the DANVA-2, which has audio and static face stimuli, and the DAVE, dynamic, audio-visual emotion movies. Adaptive functioning was assessed using the Vineland-II Socialization, Communication, and Daily Living domains. Results indicated that individuals with ASDs demonstrated significant impairments in both adaptive functioning and emotion perception compared to typical individuals. Findings did not demonstrate a relationship between emotion perception and adaptive functioning, controlling for IQ. Future research should broaden the approach when investigating possible mechanisms of change for adaptive outcomes to include exploration of social perception more broadly, of which emotion perception is one component, and its relationship with adaptive outcomes. INDEX WORDS: Autism spectrum disorders, Adaptive functioning, Emotion perception, Dynamic emotion stimuli, Social perception INVESTIGATING THE ROLE OF EMOTION PERCEPTION IN THE ADAPTIVE FUNCTIONING OF INDIVIDUALS ON THE AUTISM SPECTRUM
Molecular and Functional Characterization of Thioredoxin 1 from Korean Rose Bitterling (Rhodeus uyekii)

Thioredoxin is a multifunctional antioxidant enzyme that belongs to the reductase family. In this study, we cloned and characterized thioredoxin 1 cDNA from the Korean rose bitterling Rhodeus uyekii (RuTrx). The full-length RuTrx cDNA consists of 674 bp with a 324 nt open reading frame (ORF) encoding a 107 aa protein. The deduced RuTrx amino acid sequence indicated a characteristic redox active site, 31WCGPC35. Pairwise alignment revealed RuTrx amino acid identity (55.1%–83.2%) with orthologs from various species of mammalia, amphibia, fish and bird. Phylogenetic analysis was conducted to determine the evolutionary position of RuTrx. Expression analysis showed that RuTrx transcripts were present in all of the tissues examined, and was high in the hepatopancreas of R. uyekii. During early development, the expression of RuTrx transcripts was increased. Recombinant RuTrx protein (rRuTrx) was tested for its capacity to serve as an antioxidant enzyme using a metal-catalyzed oxidation (MCO) system. The ability of rRuTrx to protect against supercoiled DNA cleavage due to oxidative nicking increased in a dose-dependent manner. In Raw264.7 cells, Dihydroethidium (DHE) staining for ROS production indicated the antioxidant activity of rRuTrx. Together, these findings suggest that RuTrx may play a role in maintaining the redox state balance in Korean rose bitterling R. uyekii.
Solving the Telomere Replication Problem

Telomeres are complex nucleoprotein structures that protect the extremities of linear chromosomes. Telomere replication is a major challenge because many obstacles to the progression of the replication fork are concentrated at the ends of the chromosomes. This is known as the telomere replication problem. In this article, different and new aspects of telomere replication, that can threaten the integrity of telomeres, will be reviewed. In particular, we will focus on the functions of shelterin and the replisome for the preservation of telomere integrity.
Farmers' Attitudes, Perceptions and the Management of Field Boundary Vegetation on Farmland Conference Item Profit Potential of Conservation Management 1 -conservation Pays? Reconciling Environmental Benefits with Profitable Grassland Systems. Farmers' Attitudes, Perceptions and the Management of Fi

Copyright and Moral Rights for the articles on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. For more information on Open Research Online's data policy on reuse of materials please consult the policies page. ABSTRACT Boundary vegetation is an important resource for farmland wildlife, for biodiversity and as a landscape component. However, the management of such areas has been generally neglected over recent years. This paper draws on the findings from two studies of farmers' and others' perceptions of field boundary management, to suggest ways of ameliorating this. The studies used complementary techniques-a detailed questionnaire survey and in-depth interviews. Management of field boundaries varied, depending on the way farmers perceived and valued them and on a range of external influences. While commercial aspects generally dominated field boundary management, both farmers, professionals and the wider public also appreciated hedgerows as landscape or countryside features. The study suggests it may be useful to build on or influence these attitudes to maintain or enhance the conservation value of field boundary vegetation.
Analytic Characterization of the Dynamic Regimes of Quantum-Dot Lasers

We present analytic treatment of the three different dynamic regimes found in quantum-dot laser turn-on and modulation dynamics. A dynamic coupling, and thus density-dependent scattering lifetimes between dots and reservoir, are identified to be crucial for a realistic modeling. We derive a minimal model for the quantum-dot laser dynamics that can be seeded with experimentally accessible parameters, and give explicit analytic equations that are able to predict relaxation-oscillation frequency and damping rate.
Indolent Closure Creation

A closure is a representation of a thread in memory, ready to be executed. The goal of this work is to create portable closures that can be transferred across binary incompatible architectures. Consequently, indolent closures are software-implemented, and rely on a copy mechanism which allows for potential data representation conversion on-the-fly. Indolent closure creation optimizes the current implementation of the algorithmic multithreaded language Cilk. Rather than generating parallelism eagerly by pushing closures on a ready deque whenever a parallel spawn occurs, indolent closures are created only if the ready deque is empty and a steal request occurs. Indolent closure creation is based on the release-andresume transformation, developed for the portable checkpoint compiler porch. Experimental results on various architectures show that indolent closure creation reduces the cost of a parallel spawn to be competitive with the cost of a sequential function call.
Alternative Research-Based Methods for IDEA 2004 Identification of Children With Specific Learning Disabilities

he Individuals with Disabilities EducationImprovement Act (IDEA) of 2004 broughtabout widespread discussion of general andspecial education policies and practices across thecountry. The reverberations of this landmark legis-lation are still being felt today, as state educationdepartments struggle several years later to decipherthe intent of the law and the governing regulations.Although these efforts appear to be well-intentioned,they are more difficult to adopt in daily practice,resulting in considerable challenges for local educa-tion agencies. How these policies are carried outimpacts school psychologists, teachers, and, ofcourse, the children they are meant to serve.In an age of high stakes testing and outcome-based educational decision making, brought aboutby the earlier No Child Left Behind (NCLB; 2001)legislation, IDEA (2004) provided an impetus to adoptnew paradigms and practices for serving all children,including those with specific learning disabilities(SLD). For SLD identification, practitioners are nolonger required to use ability–achievement discrep-ancy (AAD), and instead can use a response-to-inter-vention (RTI) approach. Although widespread bipar-tisan congressional enthusiasm was seen when thislandmark legislative piece was signed into law, con-cerns over implementation surfaced before theproverbial ink had dried, setting in motion a chain ofevents that led to reasonable modifications in theOSERS final regulations.
A Distance-Based Directional Broadcast Protocol for Urban Vehicular Ad Hoc Network

The topology of a vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) changes rapidly due to high-speed movement of vehicles, so traditional mobile ad hoc network (MANET) broadcast protocol may not work efficiently in VANET. This paper proposes a distance-based broadcast protocol called Efficient Directional Broadcast (EDB) for VANET using directional antennas. In EDB, only the furthest receiver is responsible to forward the packet in the opposite direction where the packet arrives. Besides, a directional repeater located at the intersection helps disseminating the packets to the vehicles on other road segments of different directions. We evaluate the performance of EDB based on a real mobility model generated by live GPS data of taxis in the city of Shanghai. The result shows that EDB is effective and favorable for VANET.
Higher dimensional homodyne filtering for suppression of incidental phase artifacts in multichannel MRI

The aim of this paper is to introduce procedural steps for extension of the 1D homodyne phase correction for k-space truncation in all gradient encoding directions. Compared to the existing method applied to 2D partial k-space, signal losses introduced by the phase correction filter is observed to be minimal for the extended approach. In addition, the modified form of phase correction mitigates Incidental Phase Artifacts (IPA) due to truncation. For parallel imaging with undersampling along phase encode direction, the extended homodyne filtering is shown to be effective for minimizing these artifacts when each of the channel k-spaces are truncated along both phase and frequency encode directions. This is illustrated with 2D partial k-space for flow compensated multichannel Susceptibility Weighted Imaging (SWI). Extension of our method to 3D partial k-space shows improved reconstruction of flow information in phase contrast angiography.
On the bursty evolution of online social networks

The high level of dynamics in today's online social networks (OSNs) creates new challenges for their infrastructures and providers. In particular, dynamics involving edge creation has direct implications on strategies for resource allocation, data partitioning and replication. Understanding network dynamics in the context of physical time is a critical first step towards a predictive approach towards infrastructure management in OSNs. Despite increasing efforts to study social network dynamics, current analyses mainly focus on change over time of static metrics computed on snapshots of social graphs. The limited prior work models network dynamics with respect to a logical clock. In this paper, we present results of analyzing a large timestamped dataset describing the initial growth and evolution of a large social network in China. We analyze and model the burstiness of link creation process, using the second derivative, i.e. the acceleration of the degree. This allows us to detect bursts, and to characterize the social activity of a OSN user as one of four phases: acceleration at the beginning of an activity burst, where link creation rate is increasing; deceleration when burst is ending and link creation process is slowing; cruising, when node activity is in a steady state, and complete inactivity.
Phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase and COPII generate LC3 lipidation vesicles from the ER-Golgi intermediate compartment

Formation of the autophagosome requires significant membrane input from cellular organelles. However, no direct evidence has been developed to link autophagic factors and the mobilization of membranes to generate the phagophore. Previously, we established a cell-free LC3 lipidation reaction to identify the ER-Golgi intermediate compartment (ERGIC) as a membrane source for LC3 lipidation, a key step of autophagosome biogenesis (Ge et al., eLife 2013; 2:e00947). We now report that starvation activation of autophagic phosphotidylinositol-3 kinase (PI3K) induces the generation of small vesicles active in LC3 lipidation. Subcellular fractionation studies identified the ERGIC as the donor membrane in the generation of small lipidation-active vesicles. COPII proteins are recruited to the ERGIC membrane in starved cells, dependent on active PI3K. We conclude that starvation activates the autophagic PI3K, which in turn induces the recruitment of COPII to the ERGIC to bud LC3 lipidation-active vesicles as one potential membrane source of the autophagosome. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.7554/eLife.04135. 001