Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Determination Of The Summer Origins Of American Kestrels (Falco Sparverius) Wintering In Northern And Central Illinois

The seasonal and interannual movements of the American Kestrel (Falco sparverius) are not fully understood. Although one of the most widespread and abundant raptors found in North America, information on where many populations summer and overwinter is lacking. We used stable hydrogen isotope values obtained from feathers (δHf) of known origin to create agespecific calibration functions for juvenile and adult American Kestrels. We then used these calibration functions to determine the most likely summer origins of the American Kestrels that wintered in northern and central Illinois during 2015-16, classified these individuals as yearround residents or wintering migrants, and validated these predictions with a test dataset of known origin birds withheld from calibration function creation. The latitudinal band stretching from ~44.20°N to ~48.00°N, which runs from central Wisconsin to northern Minnesota when
Biogeographic patterns of blood parasitism in the Aegean Wall Lizard across the cycladic islands

The biogeography of host-parasite dynamics is an area that has received little attention in studies of island ecology. While a few studies have shed insight on patterns of parasitism in insular host populations, more empirical evidence is needed to ascertain how isolation impacts parasites. Biogeography generally theorizes that the physical size of islands and the duration of each island’s isolation can be driving geographic factors controlling species interactions and populations dynamics. To test this, we assessed the effect of island structure and population isolation on the endemic insular lizard Podarcis erhardii and its native hemogregarine parasite (Apicomplexa: Adeleorina) in the Cyclades (Aegean Sea). We analyzed the relationships of prevalence and parasitemia of hemogregarine infection with several factors concerning the island (size, time of isolation, spatial isolation, population density) and host (body size) levels using regression and structural equation models, respectively. Regressions indicate that islands with greater host density and islands which have been isolated for shorter timespans tend to have higher hemogregarine prevalences; structural equation models suggest a similar pattern for parasitemia. We hypothesize this may be driven by insular density compensation. Hosts on islands that are more temporally and spatially isolated also tend to have higher prevalence and parasitemia of hemogregarines. Our results indicate that island area, island isolation, and host population density are likely to be significant drivers of changes in host-parasite interactions in fragmented populations.
Rehabilitation of a Severely Worn Dentition with Partial Lithium-disilicate Glass Ceramic Restorations: A Case Report

Rehabilitation of worn dentition is a challenging task because several predisposing factors may be included in the pathogenesis. The treatment options and process should be carefully considered based on the clinical condition and patients’ requirements. This case report represents the esthetic rehabilitation of a 68-year-old patient who exhibited severely worn teeth caused by attrition and erosion. After clinical evaluation, 3 mm increase in occlusal vertical dimension was planned with partial lithium-disilicate ceramic restorations as laminate veneers for anterior teeth and vonlays (onlays with veneer extentions) for posterior teeth in maxilla. The adaptation of the patient to the increased occlusal vertical dimension was tested for 1 month by provisional direct composite restorations. As the patient did not show any discomfort, definitive restorations were completed. The patient was satisfied with the esthetics and functionality of her new dentition.
Registration-Is-Evaluation: Robust Point Set Matching With Multigranular Prior Assessment

Point set registration is one of the challenging tasks in remote sensing image processing and analysis. Its critical step is to find the corresponding relationships between the fixed scene point set and the moving model point set that undergo different sorts of transformations. Existing algorithms primarily utilize different types of prior information to improve the registration performance, such as spatial consistency, local similarity, and uniform outliers. However, due to the lack of active evaluation on the prior and intermediate information during the registration process, these strategies are susceptible to large data transformations. In order to enhance the robustness and accuracy for point set registration, we propose in this article a novel framework, namely Registration-is-Evaluation (RisE). Based on a multigranular probability model, our method exploits and utilizes both prior and posterior information to dynamically evaluate the matching status. What is more, instead of adding an extra uniform prior, we unified the outliers, noise, missing points, and heavily warped points into our registration evaluation model and address them simultaneously. We also apply a novel point set descriptor, called local polar relative geometry (LPRG), to have a more robust local similarity measurement. It adopts the local polar coordinate to perform multiscale pooling and relative geometric computation. Based on our proposed method, the matching relationships and the spatial transformations can be actively evaluated to provide useful contextual guidance for the registration process. Experimental results on multiple data sets show that our algorithm outperforms the state-of-the-art methods, in terms of both accuracy and robustness under large data degradations.
Grand Challenges in Image Processing

The field of image processing has been the subject of intensive research and development activities for several decades. This broad area encompasses topics such as image/video processing, image/video analysis, image/video communications, image/video sensing, modeling and representation, computational imaging, electronic imaging, information forensics and security, 3D imaging, medical imaging, andmachine learning applied to these respective topics. Hereafter, we will consider both image and video content (i.e. sequence of images), and more generally all forms of visual information. Rapid technological advances, especially in terms of computing power and network transmission bandwidth, have resulted in many remarkable and successful applications. Nowadays, images are ubiquitous in our daily life. Entertainment is one class of applications that has greatly benefited, including digital TV (e.g., broadcast, cable, and satellite TV), Internet video streaming, digital cinema, and video games. Beyond entertainment, imaging technologies are central in many other applications, including digital photography, video conferencing, video monitoring and surveillance, satellite imaging, but also in more distant domains such as healthcare and medicine, distance learning, digital archiving, cultural heritage or the automotive industry. In this paper, we highlight a few research grand challenges for future imaging and video systems, in order to achieve breakthroughs to meet the growing expectations of end users. Given the vastness of the field, this list is by no means exhaustive.
Defluoridation studies with synthesized magnesium-incorporated hydroxyapatite and parameter optimization using response surface methodology

AbstractThe severe impact of consumption of excess fluoride on human health has raised concerns for development of reliable materials for defluoridation of drinking water. This study deals with the synthesis of magnesium-incorporated hydroxyapatite (M-i-HAP) and evaluation of its defluoridation potential. Characterization studies revealed the bonding patterns, phase characteristics, and other microstructural details of the adsorbent synthesized, and the surface area was found to be 46.62 m2/g. Response surface methodology was used for optimization of fluoride adsorption on the adsorbent and development of the predictive model. The optimum conditions evaluated using central composite statistical design for fluoride removal were found to be 303 K, pH 7, 180 min contact time, and 10 g/L of M-i-HAP for treating fluoride solution of 10 mg/L. At these conditions, the actual removal experimentally achieved was 94.5% which was very close to the maximum removal predicted by the model (94.60%). The process followed.
Cobalt Spinel at Various Redox Conditions: DFT+U Investigations into the Structure and Surface Thermodynamics of the (100) Facet

Periodic spin unrestricted DFT-PW91+U calculations together with ab initio thermodynamic modeling were used to study the structure, defects, and stability of different terminations of the (100) surface of cobalt spinel under various redox conditions imposed by different oxygen partial pressure and temperature. Three terminations containing under-stoichiometric (100)-O, stoichiometric (100)-S, and overstoichiometric (100)-R amount of cobalt ions were analyzed, and their atomic and defect structure, reconstruction, and stability were elucidated. For the most stable (100)-S and (100)-O facets, formation of cationic and anionic vacancies was examined, and a surface redox state diagram of possible spinel (100) terminations in the stoichiometry range from Co2.75O4 to Co3O3.75 was constructed and discussed in detail. The results revealed that the bare (100)-S surface is the most stable at temperatures and pressures of typical catalytic processes (T ∼ 200 °C to ∼500 °C, pO2/p° ∼ 0.001 to ∼1). In more reducing con.
Design and Development of Energy Efficient Single Phase Induction Motor For Ceiling Fan Using Taguchi's Orthogonal Arrays

The conventional single phase induction motor (SPIM)-based ceiling fans are difficult to design using the analytical procedure because of inherent nonlinearities in the electromagnetic construction. The high skewing of rotor bars to eliminate low-order harmonics makes the analytical solution based on a 2D magnetic circuit, which is quite inaccurate. This article deals with the systematic design and experimental validation of the energy-energy efficient SPIM for ceiling fan application. A systematic approach starting from the existing SPIM motor is presented for improvement in the efficiency of the motor using 2D finite element analysis (FEA). The process involves the design validation of the existing ceiling fan motor followed by a set of experiments (2D multislice time-stepping transient FEA) to obtain the energy-efficient motor. Taguchi's orthogonal arrays are used for the improvement in the performance of the motor. Finally, the achieved optimal design is developed and tested for the improvement in the performance.
Graph-Based Embedding Smoothing for Sequential Recommendation

In real-world scenarios, a user's interactions with items could be formalized as a behavior sequence, indicating his/her dynamic and evolutionary preferences. To this end, a series of recent efforts in recommender systems aim at improving recommendation performance by considering the sequential information. However, impacts of sequential behavior on future interactions may vary greatly in different scenarios. Additionally, semantic item relations underlying item attributes have not been well exploited in sequential recommendation models, which could be crucial for measuring item similarities in recommendation. To deal with the above problems, this paper provides a general embedding smoothing framework for sequential recommendation models. Specifically, we first construct a hybrid item graph by fusing sequential item relations derived from user-item interactions with semantic item relations built upon item attributes. Second, we perform graph convolutions on the hybrid item graph to generate smoothed item embeddings. Finally, we equip sequential recommendation models with the smoothed item representations to enhance their performances. Experimental results demonstrate that with our embedding smoothing framework, the state-of-the-art sequential recommendation model, SASRec, achieves superior performance to most baseline methods on three real-world datasets. Moreover, the results show that most mainstream sequential recommendation models could benefit from our framework.
Breeding birds of the upper Mississippi River floodplain forest: One community in a changing forest, 1994 to 1997

Floodplain forest on the upper Mississippi River (UMR), a unique habitat in the Midwest that is important for many bird species, has been reduced and is undergoing continued reduction and changes in structure and species diversity because of river engineering and invasive species. Hydrological changes are causing tree diversity to decline favoring Acer saccharinum (silver maple) and Fraxinus pennsylvanica (green ash). Invasive Phalaris arundinacea (reed canary grass, Phalaris ) threatens tree regeneration, and recent Agrilus planipennis (emerald ash borer) arrival threatens to decimate the important ash component of the forest canopy. During the 1990s, virtually no information was available about breeding songbird species and abundances on the UMR floodplain forest from along many river miles and a broad range of forest situations (for example, mainland, island, edge, interior). From 1994 to 1997, we surveyed breeding birds and sampled vegetation at 391 random points on UMR floodplain forest along a latitudi nal gradient from Red Wing, Minnesota, to Clinton, Iowa, to characterize bird assemblages and associations with gradients in forest structure at survey points (local scale) and land cover composition within a 200-meter radius of survey points (landscape scale). Eighty-six bird species were detected during the study, but 28 species comprised 90 percent of all detections. Species that are typically associated with woodland edge or are tolerant of fragmentation were the most common: Setophaga ruticilla (American Redstart), Troglodytes aedon (House Wren), Turdus migratorius (American Robin), Quiscalus quiscula (Common Grackle), and Vireo gilvus (Warbling Vireo). Species typically associated with large forest patches— Setophaga cerulea (Cerulean Warbler), Hylocichla mustelina (Wood Thrush), and Dryocopus pileatus (Pileated Woodpecker)—were rare. components analyses consistently described local habitat gradients related to canopy cover and Phalaris presence and described landscape gradients related to forest area and areas of open land cover types. However, nonmetric multidimensional scaling revealed no pattern in bird assemblages. Canonical correspondence analyses with local habitat variables for each year revealed that bird assemblages were affected by canopy cover, the presence of Phalaris, and the number of tree species. Four bird species were consistently associated with Phalaris presence or negatively with canopy cover, and no species were associated with the number of tree species variable. Although landscape variables were signifi cantly related to the bird assemblage in canonical correspondence analyses, no bird species were consistently related to any landscape variable. These results indicate that there is one assemblage of forest birds on the UMR composed mainly of edge-tolerant species. Species associated with lower canopy cover and Phalaris presence may be favored to increase in abundance as canopy cover opens as trees die and Phalaris becomes more prevalent.
The Density of Liquid Lead and of Dilute Solutions of Nickel in Lead

The densities of liquid lead and of liquid nickel-lead solutions containing up to about 3.5 atomic per cent nickel were measured as a function of temperature using a modified Archimedean method. It was found that the densities of the nickel-lead solutions were greater than that of pure liquid lead and increased with increase in nickel content. Partial molal volumes for nickel and lead were then determined by the method of intercepts. The results indicate that for the composition region investigated the partial molal volume of lead does not differ significantly from the molal volume of lead and the partial molal volume of nickel approaches a value of zero at high dilution. (auth)
Survival analysis for tumor growth model with stochastic perturbation

In this paper, we investigate the dynamical behavior of extinction and survival in tumor growth model with immunization under stochastic perturbation. Firstly, the model describing the growth of cancer cells monitored by immune cells is established. Then, the steady probability distribution of tumor cells for different noise intensities and immune parameter intensities, and necessary conditions for extinction and different survival of cancer cells are obtained by numerical and theoretical method. Besides, it is found that the extinction and survival of cancer cells rely on the state of immunization and noise. Finally, stochastic simulations are taken to test the theoretical analytical results. The results of our work are beneficial to discover the evolution mechanism and design effective immunotherapy of tumor.
Effect of zinc and boron on growth, yield and economics of linseed (Linum usitatissimum L.) under medium land of Jharkhand

An experiment was conducted during Rabi 2018-19 and 2019-20 at Research Farm of Birsa Agricultural University, Kanke, Ranchi, Jharkhand to study “The effect of Zinc and Boron on growth, yield and economics of Linseed (Linum usitatissimum L.) under medium land of Jharkhand”. The experiment was laid out in randomized block design with three replications. The treatments comprised soil application of Zn @ 5 kg/ha, foliar application of ZnSO4 @ 0.5% at 45 DAS, soil application of Zn @ 5 kg/ha + foliar application of ZnSO4 @ 0.5% at 45 DAS, soil application of B @ 1.5 kg/ha, foliar application of Borax @ 0.3% at 45 DAS, soil application of B @ 1.5 kg/ha + foliar application of Borax @ 0.3% at 45 DAS, foliar application of ZnSO4 @ 0.5% + foliar application of Borax @ 0.3% at 45 DAS, soil application of Zn @ 5 kg/ha + soil application of B @ 1.5 kg/ha compared with control treatment along with RDF (40:20:20 kg NPK/ha) common to all treatments. Foliar application of ZnSO4 @ 0.5% + foliar application of borax @ 0.3% at 45 DAS found superior in terms of maximum plant height (53.75 cm and 55.14 cm), plant stand (201 and 216), dry matter accumulation (3.66 g/plant and 3.70 g/plant) yield attributing characters viz., number of capsules per plant (29.02 and 38.67), number of seeds per capsule (6.00 and 8.57), 1000 seed weight (7.59 g and 7.64 g), seed yield (12.99 q/ha and 13.35 q/ha), net return (₹ 33230/ha and ₹38201/ha) and B:C ratio (1.82 and 2.19) in both years respectively.
Optimal Selection of Hybrid Renewable Energy System Using Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Algorithms

: Several models of multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) have identified the optimal alternative electrical energy sources to supply certain load in an isolated region in Al-Minya City, Egypt. The load demand consists of water pumping system with a water desalination unit. Various options containing three different power sources: only DG, PV-B system, and hybrid PV-DG-B, two different sizes of reverse osmosis (RO) units; RO-250 and RO-500, two strategies of energy management; load following (LF) and cycle charging (CC), and two sizes of DG; 5 and 10 kW were taken into account. Eight attributes, including operating cost, renewable fraction, initial cost, the cost of energy, excess energy, unmet load, breakeven grid extension distance, and the amount of CO 2 , were used during the evaluation process. To estimate these parameters, HOMER ® software was employed to perform both the sim-ulation and optimization process. Four different weight estimation methods were considered; no priority of criteria, based on a pairwise comparisons matrix of the criteria, CRITIC-method, and entropy-based method. The main findings (output results) confirmed that the optimal option for the case study was hybrid PV-DG-B with the following specification: 5 kW DG, RO-500, and load following control strategy. Under this condition, the annual operating cost and initial costs were $ 5546 and $ 161022, respectively, whereas the cost of energy was 0.077 $/kWh. The excess energy and unmet loads were 40998 and 2371 kWh, respectively. The breakeven grid extension distance and the amount of CO 2 were 3.31 km and 5171 kg per year, respectively. Compared with DG only, the amount of CO 2 has been sharply reduced by 113939 kg per year.
Internet Addiction, Locus of Control and Resilience

The study investigates the difference in the Locus of Control and Resilience with respect to different levels of Internet Addiction as well as their impact on Internet Addiction among emerging adults. It assesses Internet Addiction levels, investigates the association between Internet Addiction, Locus of Control and Resilience and analyses gender difference. Internet Addiction Test by Young, Locus of Control (LOC-Scale) Scale developed by Rotter (1966) and The Brief Resilience Scale were used. Pearson’s product-moment correlation analysis was used to evaluate the association between Internet Addiction, Locus of Control and Resilience. An independent t-test was used to test whether there is a statistical difference between gender and internet addiction at different levels. One-way ANOVA was used to investigate the gender difference in Internet Addiction, Locus of Control and Resilience respectively. The research findings show that there is a significant relationship between Internet Addiction, Locus of Control and Resilience as well as significant gender difference in Internet Addiction. A significant difference in Resilience among the different levels of Internet Addiction was also found in the study.
Reduced Dielectric Screening and Enhanced Energy Transfer in Single- and Few-Layer MoS[subscript 2]

We report highly efficient non-radiative energy transfer from cadmium selenide (CdSe) quantum dots to monolayer and few-layer molybdenum disulfide (MoS 2 ). The quenching of the donor quantum dot photoluminescence increases as the MoS 2 flake thickness decreases, with the highest efficiency (>95%) observed for monolayer MoS 2 . This counterintuitive result arises from reduced dielectric screening in thin layer semiconductors having unusually large permittivity and a strong in-plane transition dipole moment, as found in MoS 2 . Excitonic energy transfer between a 0D emitter and a 2D absorber is fundamentally interesting and enables a wide range of applications including broadband optical down-conversion, optical detection, photovoltaic sensitization, and color shifting in light-emitting devices.
Preparation of fine, spherical copper particles by spray-pyrolysis technique.

高温のH2還元雰囲気中にCu(NO3)黛水溶液を噴霧して,Cu微粒子の製造を試みt反応条件と生成粒子の性状との関係を調べた。 得られた球形Cu微粒子については,導電厚膜材料としての特性を調べた. 加熱に電気炉を用いた場合,H2-N2気流中の璃濃度が平衡論的な必要量の約3倍以上で. 酸化物を含まないCu微粒子が得られた。 その粒子形状は反応温度によって変化し,粒子がCuのmp以上の温度で約0. 1秒以上加熱されて一度溶融状態を経るとき球形粒子が得られ,粒子の溶融が起こらない携食には形状は不規則であっお。 加熱にrf-プラズマ炎を用い・反応温度が約2000℃ 以上の場合には,Cu蒸気からの超微細なCu粒子の生成が見られた籍電気炉法で生成した球形Cu粒子のメジアン径は0. 3～1. 3μmで,原料溶液のCu(NO3)2濃度の1/3乗に比例して変化した。 球形Cu粒子のペーストをアルミナ基板に印刷,900℃ で焼成して,膜厚2. 5μmで,シート抵抗値11mΩ ・square-1抵抗率2. 5μ Ω ・cmの低抵抗な膜が作製できた.
Application of artificial neural networks in settlement prediction of shallow foundations on sandy soils

This paper presents an application of artificial neural networks (ANNs) in settlement prediction of a foundation on sandy soil. In order to train the ANN model, a wide experimental database about settlement of foundations acquired from available literatures was collected. The data used in the ANNs model were arranged using the following five-input parameters that covered both geometrical foundation and sandy soil properties: breadth of foundation B, length to width L/B, embedment ratio Df/B, foundation net applied pressure qnet, and average SPT blow count N. The backpropagation algorithm was implemented to develop an explicit predicting formulation. The settlement results are compared with the results of previous studies. The accuracy of the proposed formula proves that the ANNs method has a huge potential for predicting the settlement of foundations on sandy soils.