Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Are fungivorous Scarabaeidae less specialist

LaboratUrio de Ecologia de Comunidades, Depto. de Biologia Geral, Univ. Federal de ViAosa, ViAosa, Brazil ABSTRACT. In a tropical forest patch of Southeastern Brazil, adult Scarabaeidae beetles were used to test the hypothesis that fungivorous guilds have a higher proportion of generalist species than either frugivorous, necrophagous or coprophagous ones. No significant differences were found between guilds in relation to either the proportion of generalists or niche breadths of the component species. Only two fungivorous specialist species were sampled. These results indicate that sporocarps eaten by Scarabaeidae are not as rare as literature suggests. Fungi may help maintain high species diversity of Scarabaeidae in tropical forests. (Keywords: mycophagy, fungivory, dung beetles, food resource, rainforest) RESUMEN. Son los escarabeidos fungIvoros menos especialistas? : En un fragmento de bosque tropical en Minas Gerais, sureste de Brasil, se estudiU la proporciUn de generalistas en escarabajos adultos de la familia Scarabaeidae. A partir de los resultados obtenidos, se rechazU la hipUtesis de que el gremio de los fungIvoros de escarabeidos adultos tendrIa una mayor proporciUn de generalistas que los gremios frugIvoro, necrUfago o coprUfago. No se encontraron diferencias significativas entre los gremios, ni en relaciUn a la proporciUn de generalistas, ni en la amplitud de nicho de sus especies componentes. Solo dos especies fungIvoras especialistas se encontraron en este estudio. Aunque se trata de un caso puntual, este resultado indicarIa que los esporocarpos consumidos por miembros de la familia Scarabaeidae no son tan raros como lo sugiere la literatura. Posiblemente, los hongos ayuden al mantenimiento de la diversidad de Scarabaeidae en bosques tropicales americanos, donde no hay abundancia de excrementos de grandes mamIferos. (Palabras clave: micofagIa, fungivorIa, escarabajos estercoleros, recurso alimentario, bosque tropical)
Compact and Broadband Transition of Microstrip Line to Finite-Ground Coplanar Waveguide

In this paper, a compact and broadband transition of microstrip line to finite-ground coplanar waveguide (FGCPW) is proposed. Design rules are presented on the basis of simulation and measurement results. Both electric and magnetic fields are gradually transformed from microstrip line to FGCPW by tapering the signal conductor. The microstrip ground plane on the bottom side of the substrate is directly connected to the grounds of the FGCPW on the top side with metallic vias, providing an RF short-circuit for suppressing parasitic modes. Measured return loss is lower than -10 dB for a back-to-back structure from 0.04 GHz to 24 GHz with a low insertion loss of about 1.5 dB at 20 GHz. This kind of transition can find applications in highly integrated circuits and systems using both FGCPW and microstrip line techniques, and also offer easy and accurate measurements of FGCPW circuits with the help of simple coaxial adapters.
Discovering hypervisor overheads using micro and macrobenchmarks

This paper illustrates an approach for evaluating the performance of open-source virtualization solutions based on the well-known SPEC Web macrobenchmark. Our tests particularly target the virtualization of 64-bit guests over a 64-bit host and the use of hardware virtualization support. Our analysis covers both virtualization overhead of a single virtual machine as well as the overhead of concurrently executing virtual machines. We then integrate the macrobenchmark results with microbenchmarkbased investigation of the impact of virtualization on network, disk and CPU. The results emerging from micro and macrobenchmark analysis show the need for a deeper investigation of virtualization solutions. Current profiling and instrumentation techniques cannot provide a lightweight monitoring of virtualized systems and are therefore unsuitable for online use under heavy workload. We conclude by proposing a virtualization-aware hardware performance counter infrastructure that can help dealing with this problem.
Quantifying patterns and select correlates of the spatially and temporally explicit distribution of a fish predator (Blue Catfish, Ictalurus furcatus) throughout a large reservoir ecosystem

Understanding how and why fish distribution is related to specific habitat characteristics underlies many ecological patterns and is crucial for effective research and management. Blue Catfish, Ictalurus furcatus, are an important concern for many fisheries agencies; however, lack of information about their distribution and habitat use remains a hindrance to proper management. Here, over all time periods and across months, I quantified Blue Catfish distribution and environmental correlates of distribution in Milford Reservoir, the largest reservoir in Kansas. I tested relationships among acoustically tagged Blue Catfish and three groups of variables postulated to influence Blue Catfish distribution in the literature (i. localized microhabitat variables, ii. larger-scale mesohabitat variables, iii. biotic variables). Blue Catfish were consistently aggregated in two locations of the reservoir across five months during summer and fall, 2013. Using multiple linear regression and an information theoretic model selection approach, consistent correlates of distribution included localized, microhabitat variables (i.e., dissolved oxygen, slope) larger-scale, mesohabitat variables (i.e., distance to channel, river kilometer from the dam) and a biotic variable (i.e., Secchi depth). This research identified which 5 of the 12 variables identified in the literature were most influential in determining Blue Catfish distribution. As a guide for future hypothesis generation and research, I propose that Blue Catfish distribution was driven by three ecologically-relevant tiers of influence. First, Blue Catfish avoided extremely low dissolved oxygen concentrations that cause physiological stress. Second, Blue Catfish aggregated near the channel, an area of bathymetric heterogeneity that may offer a foraging advantage. Third, Blue Catfish aggregated near low Secchi depths, shown here to be associated with increased productivity and prey abundance. Building on my results, future research into the distribution and habitat use of Blue Catfish should incorporate aggregated distributions of fish into research designs, focus on how both small and large scale relationships interact to produce patterns of distribution, and explore further the mechanisms, consequences, and interactions among the three tiers of influence identified here.
Evolving a real-world vehicle warning system

Many serious automobile accidents could be avoided if drivers were warned of impending crashes before they occur. Creating such warning systems by hand, however, is a difficult and time-consuming task. This paper describes three advances toward evolving neural networks with NEAT (NeuroEvolution of Augmenting Topologies) to warn about such crashes in real-world environments. First, NEAT was evaluated in a complex, dynamic simulation with other cars, where it outperformed three hand-coded strawman warning policies and generated warning levels comparable with those of an open-road warning system. Second, warning networks were trained using raw pixel data from a simulated camera. Surprisingly, NEAT was able to generate warning networks that performed similarly to those trained with higher-level input and still outperformed the baseline hand-coded warning policies. Third, the NEAT approach was evaluated in the real world using a robotic vehicle testbed. Despite noisy and ambiguous sensor data, NEAT successfully evolved warning networks using both laser rangefinders and visual sensors. The results in this paper set the stage for developing warning networks for real-world traffic, which may someday save lives in real vehicles.
Is 2-EPP good at low rates for a phase-damping channel ?

Recently, we demonstrated that a 2-EPP is superior to a 1-EPP if fifteen entangled states are initially shared via a phase-damping channel. We seek to prove that 2-EPP is superior to 1-EPPs when there is only one kind of error. In the present paper, we show property of exponential bounds on fidelity of EPPs, which correspond to bounds on error exponent in usual information transmission. As a result, an exponential bound for the fidelity of a particular 2-EPP is always higher than that of 1-EPPs, at least at low rates if the channel is assumed to be phase damped.
Pedestrian detection in surveillance videos based on CS-LBP feature

Detecting different categories of objects in an image and video content is one of the fundamental tasks in computer vision research. Pedestrian detection is a hot research topic, with several applications including robotics, surveillance and automotive safety. Pedestrians are key participants in transportation systems, so pedestrian detection in video surveillance systems is of great significance to the research and application of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). Pedestrian detection is a challenging problem due to the variance of illumination, color, scale, pose, and so forth. Extraction of effictive features is a key to this task. In this work, we present the multi-scale Center-symmetric Local Binary Pattern feature for pedestrian detection. The proposed feature captures gradient information and some texture and scale information. We completed the detection task with a foreground segmentation method. Experiments on CAVIAR sequences show that the proposed feature with support vector machines can detect pedestrians in real-time effectively in surveillance videos.
Digitization of Wave Run-Up Using Video Records

Digitization of photographic records of wave run-up has proved a simple and economic alternative to more traditional methods of analyzing fluid motions in the surf zone. In this note, a new digitization technique using video images of wave run-up is described, together with an example from a multiple bar system on the northern coast of Zealand, Denmark.
Occurrence of a Photosystem II polypeptide in non‐photosynthetic membranes of cyanobacteria

Cytoplasmic and thylakoid membranes have been purified from the cyanobacteria Anacystis nidulans R2 and Phormidium laminosum by sucrose density gradient centrifugation. Probing of Western blots of proteins from these purified membrane fractions with antibodies directed against the 33 kDa polypeptide of Photosystem II from pea indicates that this protein is present in both the thylakoid and cytoplasmic membranes, rather than just the thylakoid membranes. This has been confirmed by immunogold labelling of cells. Oxygen evolution assays have been used to show that the 33 kDa polypeptide is not assembled into a functional Photosystem II complex in the cytoplasmic membranes. This may be due to the absence of other Photosystem II components.
Muscarinic Toxin 7 Selectivity Is Dictated by Extracellular Receptor Loops*

Muscarinic toxin 7 (MT7) is a mamba venom protein antagonist with extremely high selectivity for the M1 muscarinic acetylcholine receptor. To map the sites for the interaction of MT7 with muscarinic receptors we have used chimeric M1:M3 receptors and site-directed mutagenesis of the M3 and M4 receptor subtypes. Two Glu residues in M1, one in extracellular loop 2 and one in extracellular loop 3, were found to be important for the high affinity binding of MT7. Substitution of the corresponding Lys residues in the M3 receptor with Glu converted the M3 mutant to an MT7 binding receptor, albeit with lower affinity compared with M1. A Phe → Tyr substitution in extracellular loop 2 of M3 together with the 2 Glu mutations generated a receptor with an increased MT7 affinity (apparent Ki = 0.26 nm in a functional assay) compared with the M1 receptor (apparent Ki = 1.31 nm). The importance of the identified amino acid residues was confirmed with a mutated M4 receptor constructs. The results indicate that the high selectivity of MT7 for the M1 receptor depends on very few residues, thus providing good prospects for future design and synthesis of muscarinic receptor-selective ligands.
MTraceCheck: Validating non-deterministic behavior of memory consistency models in post-silicon validation

This work presents a minimally-intrusive, high-performance, post-silicon validation framework for validating memory consistency in multi-core systems. Our framework generates constrained-random tests that are instrumented with observability-enhancing code for memory consistency verification. For each test, we generate a set of compact signatures reflecting the memory-ordering patterns observed over many executions of the test, with each of the signatures corresponding to a unique memory-ordering pattern. We then leverage an efficient and novel analysis to quickly determine if the observed execution patterns represented by each unique signature abide by the memory consistency model. Our analysis derives its efficiency by exploiting the structural similarities among the patterns observed. We evaluated our framework, MTraceCheck, on two platforms: an x86-based desktop and an ARM-based SoC platform, both running multi-threaded test programs in a bare-metal environment. We show that MTraceCheck reduces the perturbation introduced by the memory-ordering monitoring activity by 93% on average, compared to a baseline register flushing approach that saves the register's state after each load operation. We also reduce the computation requirements of our consistency checking analysis by 81% on average, compared to a conventional topological sorting solution. We finally demonstrate the effectiveness of MTraceCheck on buggy designs, by evaluating multiple case studies where it successfully exposes subtle bugs in a full-system simulation environment.
Parallel Off-Road Perception Processing On The Autonomous Land Vehicle

This paper describes off-road perception techniques developed for the Autonomous Land Vehicle (ALV). Processing is performed on a parallel processor, the Warp Machine, a 100 MFLOPS systolic array computer. An overview of the complete off-road system is presented, followed by detailed descriptions of the parallel perception processing techniques used in classifying outdoor terrain. Range images are used to determine a Cartesian height map representation of the area in front of the ALV. Then one of a number of different methods of classifying terrain regions in the Cartesian map can be used. The resulting traversability map, consisting of 3 categories (traversable, obstacle, or unknown), is used in path planning. The advantages and limitations of the different approaches are exam- ined and results from each are presented.
Streaming current generation in two‐phase flow conditions

Self‐potential (SP) signals that are generated under two‐phase flow conditions could be used to study vadose zone dynamics and to monitor petroleum production. These streaming‐potentials may also act as an error source in SP monitoring of vulcanological activity and in magnetotelluric studies. We propose a two‐phase flow SP theory that predicts streaming currents as a function of the pore water velocity, the excess of charge in the pore water, and the porosity. The source currents that create the SP signals are given by the divergence of the streaming currents, and contributions are likely to be located at infiltration fronts, at the water table, or at geological boundaries. Our theory was implemented in a hydrogeological modeling code to calculate the SP distribution during primary drainage. Forward and inverse modeling of a well‐calibrated 1D drainage experiment suggest that our theory can predict streaming potentials in the vadose zone.
Total variation regularization of shape signals

This paper introduces the concept of shape signals, i.e., series of shapes which have a natural temporal or spatial ordering, as well as a variational formulation for the regularization of these signals. The proposed formulation can be seen as the shape-valued generalization of the Rudin-Osher-Fatemi (ROF) functional for intensity images. We derive a variant of the classical finite-dimensional representation of Kendall, but our framework is generic in the sense that it can be combined with any shape space. This representation allows for the explicit computation of geodesics and thus facilitates the efficient numerical treatment of the variational formulation by means of the cyclic proximal point algorithm. Similar to the ROF-functional, we demonstrate experimentally that ℓ1-type penalties both for data fidelity term and regularizer perform best in regularizing shape signals. Finally, we show applications of our method to shape signals obtained from synthetic, photometric, and medical data sets.
Niche-Dependent Gene Expression Profile of Intratumoral Heterogeneous Ovarian Cancer Stem Cell Populations

Intratumoral heterogeneity challenges existing paradigms for anti-cancer therapy. We have previously demonstrated that the human embryonic stem cells (hESC)-derived cellular microenvironment in immunocompromised mice, enables functional distinction of heterogeneous tumor cells, including cells which do not grow into a tumor in a conventional direct tumor xenograft platform. We have identified and characterized six cancer cell subpopulations each clonally expanded from a single cell, derived from human ovarian clear cell carcinoma of a single tumor, to demonstrate striking intratumoral phenotypic heterogeneity that is dynamically dependent on the tumor growth microenvironment. These cancer cell subpopulations, characterized as cancer stem cell subpopulations, faithfully recapitulate the full spectrum of histological phenotypic heterogeneity known for human ovarian clear cell carcinoma. Each of the six subpopulations displays a different level of morphologic and tumorigenic differentiation wherein growth in the hESC-derived microenvironment favors growth of CD44+/aldehyde dehydrogenase positive pockets of self-renewing cells that sustain tumor growth through a process of tumorigenic differentiation into CD44-/aldehyde dehydrogenase negative derivatives. Strikingly, these derivative cells display microenvironment-dependent plasticity with the capacity to restore self-renewal markers and CD44 expression. In the current study, we delineate the distinct gene expression and epigenetic profiles of two such subpopulations, representing extremes of phenotypic heterogeneity in terms of niche-dependent self-renewal and tumorigenic differentiation. By combining Gene Set Enrichment, Gene Ontology and Pathway-focused array analyses with methylation status, we propose a suite of robust differences in tumor self-renewal and differentiation pathways that underlie the striking intratumoral phenotypic heterogeneity which characterize this and other solid tumor malignancies.
Polypeptide p41 of a Norwalk-Like Virus Is a Nucleic Acid-Independent Nucleoside Triphosphatase

ABSTRACT Southampton virus (SHV) is a member of the Norwalk-like viruses (NLVs), one of four genera of the family Caliciviridae. The genome of SHV contains three open reading frames (ORFs). ORF 1 encodes a polyprotein that is autocatalytically processed into six proteins, one of which is p41. p41 shares sequence motifs with protein 2C of picornaviruses and superfamily 3 helicases. We have expressed p41 of SHV in bacteria. Purified p41 exhibited nucleoside triphosphate (NTP)-binding and NTP hydrolysis activities. The NTPase activity was not stimulated by single-stranded nucleic acids. SHV p41 had no detectable helicase activity. Protein sequence comparison between the consensus sequences of NLV p41 and enterovirus protein 2C revealed regions of high similarity. According to secondary structure prediction, the conserved regions were located within a putative central domain of alpha helices and beta strands. This study reveals for the first time an NTPase activity associated with a calicivirus-encoded protein. Based on enzymatic properties and sequence information, a functional relationship between NLV p41 and enterovirus 2C is discussed in regard to the role of 2C-like proteins in virus replication.
A well‐calibrated ocean algorithm for special sensor microwave / imager

I describe an algorithm for retrieving geophysical parameters over the ocean from special sensor microwave/imager (SSM/I) observations. This algorithm is based on a model for the brightness temperature T(sub B) of the ocean and intervening atmosphere. The retrieved parameters are the near-surface wind speed W, the columnar water vapor V, the columnar cloud liquid water L, and the line-of-sight wind W(sub LS). I restrict my analysis to ocean scenes free of rain, and when the algorithm detects rain, the retrievals are discarded. The model and algorithm are precisely calibrated using a very large in situ database containing 37,650 SSM/I overpasses of buoys and 35,108 overpasses of radiosonde sites. A detailed error analysis indicates that the T(sub B) model rms accuracy is between 0.5 and 1 K and that the rms retrieval accuracies for wind, vapor, and cloud are 0.9 m/s, 1.2 mm, and 0.025 mm, respectively. The error in specifying the cloud temperature will introduce an additional 10% error in the cloud water retrieval. The spatial resolution for these accuracies is 50 km. The systematic errors in the retrievals are smaller than the rms errors, being about 0.3 m/s, 0.6 mm, and 0.005 mm for W, V, and L, respectively. The one exception is the systematic error in wind speed of -1.0 m/s that occurs for observations within +/-20 deg of upwind. The inclusion of the line-of-sight wind W(sub LS) in the retrieval significantly reduces the error in wind speed due to wind direction variations. The wind error for upwind observations is reduced from -3.0 to -1.0 m/s. Finally, I find a small signal in the 19-GHz, horizontal polarization (h(sub pol) T(sub B) residual DeltaT(sub BH) that is related to the effective air pressure of the water vapor profile. This information may be of some use in specifying the vertical distribution of water vapor.
Dendroclimatic reconstruction of precipitation for sites in the southern Canadian Rockies

Seven Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) tree-ring chronologies were developed from sites in Banff and Jasper National Parks, Alberta, and near Cranbrook, British Columbia. The chronologies ranged in length from 191 to 691 years and display a strong precipitation signal. Multiple regression models were developed that calibrate . 50% of the variance in the instrumental records and were used to reconstruct annual (pAugust– July or pJuly–June) precipitation for Banff, Jasper and Cranbrook. Comparison of these reconstructions with records from adjacent areas indicates that periods of reduced precipitation occurred over this region in c. ad 1760–1775, the 1790s, the 1840s–1870s, the 1890s and c. 1920–1945. Periods of significantly greater precipi-tation occurred during the 1880s–1920s and in the latter half of the twentieth century. The Banff reconstruction extends back to ad 1430 and also shows major drier intervals c. 1470–1510, the 1570s and 1615–1660. These reconstructions indicate regionally coherent precipitation patterns that fluctuate on decadal timescales and may be linked to changes in atmospheric circulation patterns.