Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Environmental variables predict timing of breeding in the polygynous Eurasian bittern Botaurus stellaris

Abstract. The timing of clutch initiation in migratory birds is determined by many factors and affects fitness. In polygynous species the date of egg laying may also be determined by mating status. In order to identify the habitat factors enabling Eurasian bittern females to breed early, a study was carried out on nine fishpond complexes in eastern Poland during 2003–2009. The habitat characteristics of the nesting sites, including fish stock type and the breeding success were recorded for 48 monogamous, 31 primary, 30 second and 12 third or fourth females. The analysis showed that early nesting females preferred a higher density of old reed stems and chose less attractive ponds with poorer food resources. Monogamous and primary females laid first eggs eight days earlier on average and had higher breeding success than the second, third and fourth females. The relationship between the fate of broods and the breeding success of neighbouring nests was found for second females. Our results suggest that Eurasian bittern females benefit from early nesting, provided they can find appropriate vegetation at the nesting site.
Complexity Estimation for Load Balancing of 360-Degree Intra Versatile Video Coding

The ever increasing demand for image and video content poses new requirements to support higher resolutions and richer representation formats, creating new challenges in coding algorithms. The forthcoming Versatile Video Coding (VVC) standard aims to increase the coding efficiency of existing algorithms and it is particularly suitable for Ultra-High Definition (UHD) resolutions and 360° video. However, since coding efficiency gains are obtained at the cost of increased complexity, fast computational approaches are needed to cope with realtime requirements, such as parallel processing. Thus, this work presents a contribution towards efficient parallel encoding of 360° video, based on coding complexity estimation and nonuniform data-level splitting (slice-based) for load balancing across multiple processors. A machine learning approach is proposed to estimate the complexity of intra coding VVC, using uncorrelated features, obtained through Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Extremely Randomised Trees (ERT). Then, a complexity-balanced slice partition is devised, taking advantage of the clustered complexity inherent to Equirectangular Projection (ERP). It is shown that coding complexity is estimated with an accuracy of 92.25%, and the encoding time is reduced by 8.50%, when compared to the case where the 360° frames are evenly split.
Nodosilinea chupicuarensis sp. nov . (Leptolyngbyaceae, Synechococcales) a subaerial cyanobacterium isolated from a stone monument in central Mexico

Microorganisms of subaerial biofilms, which develop on the surface of stone monuments, have been widely studied due to their impact on Cultural Heritage deterioration. Nevertheless, these extremophile microorganisms are poorly characterised. In this study, a cyanobacterial strain isolated from an archaeological zone in north-central Mexico was characterised through a polyphasic study based on ecological, morphological, and molecular data. Phylogenetic analyses were done using sequences of the 16S rRNA gene and the 16S-23S ITS region. Based on the polyphasic data, a new species corresponding to the genus Nodosilinea is described. This alkaliphilic species has optimum growth at pH of 9. Its fatty acid profile indicates that C18:1, 9 E and C16:0 are its most abundant fatty acids. Extracellular polymeric substance production was verified on this strain. Only a few species of the genus Nodosilinea have been documented and described, and this is the first report of their presence in central Mexico. Hence the name Nodosilinea chupicuarensis sp. nov. is proposed.
Morphological variability of choanocyte kinetids supports a novel systematic division within Oscarellidae (Porifera, Homoscleromorpha)

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. Morphological variability of choanocyte kinetids supports a novel systematic division within Oscarellidae (Porifera, Homoscleromorpha) Pozdnyakov Igor, Sokolova Agniya, Karpov Sergey, Cesar Ruiz, Pérez Thierry, Ekimova Irina, Alexander Ereskovsky
Dynamics of Human Immunodeficiency Virus-1 Genetic Diversification During Acute Infection

Abstract We analyzed human immunodeficiency virus envelope diversity in 98 acute infections. The within-host genetic diversity, divergence from transmitted/founder (T/F) strain, and the observed frequency of multiple T/F infections increased with Fiebig stage. These data identify rapid viral dynamics during acute infection with implications for clinical trials conducted in this setting.
ROLE OF CLOSTRIDIUM PERFRINGENS IN PATHOGENICITY OF SOME DOMESTIC ANIMALS

Clostridium perfringens, is an anaerobic, gram-positive, pathogenic and spore-forming bacillus and broadly gave out in our territory. This bacterium has spore formation capability and creating gangrene and gastrointestinal disease, for example food poisoning and necrotic enteritis in human, whilst in other animals, gastrointestinal and enterotoxemic diseases more happening. Prevalence of necrotic enteritis, created by C. perfringens, has been often stated in sheep, chickens and ostrich throughout the world. The most critical problem for epidemiological investigations and vaccines improvement is accurate recognition of C. perfringens variants. Moreover, Small ruminants, especially native breed types, play an important role to the livelihoods of a considerable part of human population in the tropics from socio-economic aspects. Therefore, integrated attempt in terms of management and genetic improvement to enhance production is of crucial importance. Poultry provide humans with companionship, food and fiber in the form of eggs, meat and feathers. Many people love to raise and show chickens and other poultry species at fairs and other poultry shows. Others just love to raise them for backyard pets and for fresh eggs every day. In the last few years, ostrich farming has progressed dramatically and the world ostrich industry has achieved some economic stability. There is considerable scope for improvement in the areas of artificial incubation, chick nutrition, environmental requirements and selective breeding. Hence, the aim of this paper was to study role of Clostridium perfringens in pathogenicity of sheep, broilers and Ostrich. In conclusion, recognition of toxins producing by C. perfringens is very momentous because their toxin types are related to particular gastric and intestinal animal sickness and PCR has become an essential research and diagnostic tool, being a powerful technique with a vast and increasing range of applications. Hence, it is better that animal breeders identify different types of C. perfringens using PCR technique to prevent the damage caused by this bacterium.
Heterogeneous Demand and Supply for an Insurance‐linked Credit Product in Kenya: A Stated Choice Experiment Approach

We employ a discrete choice experiment to elicit demand and supply side preferences for insurance- linked credit, a promising market-based tool for managing agricultural weather risks and providing access to credit for farmers. We estimate preference heterogeneity using primary data from smallholder farmers and managers of lenders/insurers combined with household socio-economic survey data in Kenya. We analyse the choice data using maximum simulated likelihood and Hierarchical Bayes estimation of a mixed logit model. Although there are some similarities, we find that there is conflicting demand and supply side preferences for credit terms, collateral requirements, and loan use flexibility. We also analyse willingness to buy and willingness to offer for farmers and suppliers, respectively for the risk premium for different attributes and their levels. Identifying the preferred attributes and levels for both farmers and financial institutions can guide optimal packaging of insurance and credit providing market participation and adoption motivation for insurance-bundled credit product.
Mathematic Modeling and Circuit Implementation on Multi-Valued Memristor

Memristors have great application in many fields such as neural networks, non-volatile memory and nonlinear circuits by virtue of the nanoscale and non-volatile characteristics. Multi-valued devices possess significant meaning in digital logic circuit, chaos control and synapse networks. In this paper, the concept of multi-valued memristors is proposed, and the ternary flux-controlled memristor is taken as an example investigated concretely. Moreover, the specific ternary mathematical model is given and a series of numerical analyses have been studied. After that, a ternary flux-controlled memristor emulator is realized by off-the-shelf circuit components, both Multisim simulations and hardware experiments are performed to verify its effectiveness and the results shows that the theoretical analysis based on the mathematical model is in good agreement with the simulation and experimental results, which laid the theoretical foundation for the construction of multi-valued digital logic and other multi-valued applications.
Recent Advances in Laser-Induced Surface Damage of KH2PO4 Crystal

As a hard and brittle material, KDP crystal is easily damaged by the irradiation of laser in a laser-driven inertial confinement fusion device due to various factors, which will also affect the quality of subsequent incident laser. Thus, the mechanism of laser-induced damage is essentially helpful for increasing the laser-induced damage threshold and the value of optical crystal elements. The intrinsic damage mechanism of crystal materials under laser irradiation of different pulse duration is reviewed in detail. The process from the initiation to finalization of laser-induced damage has been divided into three stages (i.e., energy deposition, damage initiation, and damage forming) to ensure the understanding of laser-induced damage mechanism. It is clear that defects have a great impact on damage under short-pulse laser irradiation. The burst damage accounts for the majority of whole damage morphology, while the melting pit are more likely to appear under high-fluence laser. The three stages of damage are complementary and the multi-physics coupling technology needs to be fully applied to ensure the intuitive prediction of damage thresholds for various initial forms of KDP crystals. The improved laser-induced damage threshold prediction can provide support for improving the resistance of materials to various types of laser-induced damage.
Top‐oil temperature modelling by calibrating oil time constant for an oil natural air natural distribution transformer

: Integration of low carbon technologies poses a technical challenge on distribution transformers due to the dynamic loading and potentially frequent overloading scenarios. Transformer dynamic thermal rating is hence required, which is the most economical approach to tackle this challenge and ensure the safe operation. To reach the aim, it is important to enhance the accuracy of the dynamic thermal model, where the top oil temperature is a key thermal parameter. In this paper, a wide range of constant load temperature rise tests were carried out on an 11/0.433 kV distribution transformer to study the dynamic thermal behaviour of the top-oil temperature. A model based on the IEC 60076-7 thermal model but with an improved oil time constant calibration was deduced for top oil temperature modelling. The oil time constant calibration was inspired by IEEE C57.91 and verified by 8 temperature rise tests with load factors ranging from 0.7 pu to 1.4 pu. In addition, the improved top-oil temperature modelling was further verified in experiments under multiple load profiles.
Discussion on Occurrence Regularity of Cis - peptide

In order to investigate the occurrence of cis-peptide bond, the study counted the incidence of different cis-peptide bonds from a non-redundant data set containing 1591 protein PDBs. Then, 20 different amino acid residues were used to replace β -catenin S246 residues and transferred into HepG2 cells and observed the variation of the storage of different mutants in the nucleus and the interaction with APC. The results showed that the cis-peptide bond of 82.30% (703/854) was distributed in XP X is an arbitrary amino acid residue, P is a proline residue) site of the protein polypeptide chain, and different cis-peptide The incidence of different, which when X is tyrosine, tryptophan and other residues XP has the highest incidence of cis-peptide Bond; and X is leucine, methionine and other residues XP has the lowest results of the interaction between APC and β-catenin was weak when S246 mutated into tyrosine and tryptophan residues, and the interaction of APC with β-catenin was weak. When S246 mutates into leucine and methionine residues, the interaction between APC and β-catenin is relatively enhanced. It is suggested that the change of β-catenin function is related to the change of cis-peptide bond In the X246P site. The results of this study are expected to provide new strategies for genetic disease prediction, genetic diagnosis, and protein modification.
Non-Viral Mediated Physical Approach for Gene Delivery

Non-viral mediated physical approach for gene delivery is becoming popular for the therapeutic treatment of genetic diseases. Non-viral physical methods of gene therapy such as microinjection, hydrodynamics, biolistic, electroporation, sonoporation etc are more preferred than viral vectors because of its simplicity and rapid gene transfer rate.
Natal philopatry in young Cape Vultures Gyps coprotheres

In 2010, 14 Cape Vulture Gyps coprotheres chicks were ringed as nestlings on the cliffs at the Skeerpoort Cape Vulture colony in the Magaliesberg mountains, South Africa. Observations made during the 2014 and 2015 breeding colony censuses confirm two individuals returned to the Magaliesberg to breed. One female bred at Skeerpoort while another female settled in the Nooitgedacht colony situated 25 km from her natal nest. Breeding attempts occurred at four years old for both individuals, the youngest on record for wild Cape Vultures. One individual successfully raised a fledgling.
Does the Stringency of State Tax and Expenditure Limitations Discourage Political Manipulation in Fiscal Reserves?

Does the Stringency of State Tax and Expenditure Limitations Discourage Political Manipulation in Fiscal Reserves? 1 Abstract: This article examines how state tax and expenditure limitations (TELs) affect the size of fiscal reserves over election cycles. Using a panel data set of 47 U.S. states from 1986 to 2013, we find that the persistent pattern of electoral cycles in general fund balances (GFBs) disappears in states with stricter TELs. Regarding a budget stabilization fund balances (BSFs), the preelection and election downward effect diminishes and becomes statistically insignificant while the postelection upward effect increases and becomes significant in states with stricter TELs. Our findings reveal that the stringency of TELs not only eliminates electioneering’s impact on GFBs but also coincides with increases in BSFs, particularly in postelection years. Consistent with the principal–agent theory, politicians tend to use a budget stabilization fund (BSF) as a secondary saving account to circumvent stronger TELs and save more BSFs after elections.
Robust control for one‐sided Lipschitz non‐linear systems with time‐varying delays and uncertainties

For a class of one-sided Lipschitz systems with time-varying delays and parameter uncertainties, the robust control problem of the system based on state observer is elaborated in detail. By constructing Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional for closed-loop augmented system and combining one-sided Lipschitz condition and quadratically inner-bounded condition, the synthesis condition of observer design is derived, which makes the closed-loop augmented system asymptotically stable and satisfies the H ∞ performance index. Furthermore, bilinear matrix inequalities are transformed into a set of linear matrix inequalities by means of some special derivatives, which can be solved in one step. By using the mature Matlab LMI toolbox, the inequality is solved, thus the gain matrices of the controller and the observer are obtained at the same time. Finally, numerical examples are used to verify the correctness and superiority of the proposed theory.
Evaluation of gene expression responses to colchicine in Dactylis smithii at different tissues

Evaluation of gene expression responses to colchocine in Dactylis smithii at different tissues By Maggie Scarrow Environmental stresses have had a major impact on gene expression and evolutionary adaptation as a whole. What has been discovered is that polyploids have a genetic advantage compared to their diploid relatives in allele selectivity. Naturally occurring polyploids can occur through allopolyploids where two species hybridize their genomes, but more commonly autopolyploidy occurs when either chromosomes within an organism fail to separate during cell division, or when fertilization occurs, gametes do not separate correctly. What has been recently discovered is that diploids can be artificially doubled into polyploids using colchicine. Colchicine is an antimitotic agent that stops microtubules from separating chromosome sets during cell division in an organism. In this study, colchicine was used to treat diploid Dactylis smithii roots from two different accessions (UK and Spain). qPCR was then used to differentiate gene activity between the root and leaf samples and then compared with the RNA sequence transcriptome provided by Zhou et al. (2017). The comparison showed some similarities in upand downregulation for all areas, but also provided insight on trends where the expression of a gene changed between 5 and 24 hours after treatment. Future research could look at a comparison between another known autopolyploid and compare the gene activity between the two.
Stereo Disparity Estimation via Joint Supervised, Unsupervised, and Weakly Supervised Learning

We propose SUW-Stereo, a deep-learning framework with joint supervised learning (S), unsupervised learning (U), and weakly-supervised learning (W) for disparity estimation. The supervised learning module optimizes a disparity estimation network by knowledge based on the ground-truth disparity. In contrast, the unsupervised learning module has no knowledge of the ground-truth disparity, but optimizes the disparity estimation network by predicting the current right image from the left image and estimated disparity. The weakly supervised learning uses other expert information to derive some information about the disparity, without using ground-truth disparity knowledge either. SUW-Stereo trains the deep-learning networks end-to-end with joint optimization of the desired SUW objectives. We demonstrate that SUW-Stereo can even improve the accuracy of current state-of-the-art networks such as AMNet or GANet.
Innovative technologies in on-line construction production management

The article considers the problem of using on-line programming and management programs in the organization and construction technology. The introduction substantiates the importance and significance of the on-line construction management problem, reports on the universal model development of such management. The methods and study section give an idea of the on-line construction management methods. A visual diagram of the control model is proposed. The results and discussion section explore the prospects for using the programs based on this technology. The application areas of innovative software in construction are proposed. A review of such systems’ real application examples in the large construction companies’ practice is given. In conclusion, it is concluded that there is a significant reduction in human factors to ensure high quality construction, reducing time and labor costs when applying the proposed method of construction management and the merits of the model developed by the authors.
Machine learning for digital soil mapping: Applications, challenges and suggested solutions

Abstract The uptake of machine learning (ML) algorithms in digital soil mapping (DSM) is transforming the way soil scientists produce their maps. Within the past two decades, soil scientists have applied ML to a wide range of scenarios, by mapping soil properties or classes with various ML algorithms, on spatial scale from the local to the global, and with depth. The wide adoption of ML for soil mapping was made possible by the increase in data availability, the ease of accessing environmental spatial data, and the development of software solutions aided by computational tools to analyse them. In this article, we review the current use of ML in DSM, identify the key challenges and suggest solutions from the existing literature. There is a growing interest in the use of ML in DSM. Most studies emphasize prediction and accuracy of the predicted maps for applications, such as baseline production of quantitative soil information. Few studies account for existing soil knowledge in the modelling process or quantify the uncertainty of the predicted maps. Further, we discuss the challenges related to the application of ML for soil mapping and suggest solutions from existing studies in the natural sciences. The challenges are: sampling, resampling, accounting for the spatial information, multivariate mapping, uncertainty analysis, validation, integration of pedological knowledge and interpretation of the models. Overall, the current literature shows few attempts in understanding the underlying soil structure or process using the predicted maps and the ML model, for example by generating hypotheses on mechanistic relationships among variables. In this regard, several additional challenging aspects need to be considered, such as the inclusion of pedological knowledge in the ML algorithm or the interpretability of the calibrated ML model. Tackling these challenges is critical for ML to gain credibility and scientific consistency in soil science. We conclude that for future developments, ML could incorporate three core elements: plausibility, interpretability, and explainability, which will trigger soil scientists to couple model prediction with pedological explanation and understanding of the underlying soil processes.
Multi-Image Blind Deblurring Using a Smoothed NUV Prior and Iteratively Reweighted Coordinate Descent

A new method for blind image deblurring is proposed that relies on a smoothed-NUV (normal with unknown variance) prior for images, which promotes piecewise smooth images with crisp edges. The proposed method can use multiple blurred versions of the same image.The variational representation of the prior allows the joint estimation of the image and the blurring kernel(s) to be decomposed into descent steps in reweighted least-squares problems and nonlinear scalar updates of the individual variances of the prior. Specifically, we propose an iteratively reweighted coordinate descent algorithm that has no parameters. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed approach compares favorably to state-of-the-art methods.