Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Is resting metabolic rate related to reproductive output in an orb‐web spider, Argiope radon?

1. Resting metabolic rate (RMR) is a fundamental feature of animal biology that reflects the baseline level of energy expenditure. There are two main strategies that can address energy demands; animals can reallocate energy from maintenance by reducing RMR to meet energy demands (compensation model) or they can increase intake rate by increasing metabolic activities (performance model).
Biogeography and ecology of geographically distant populations of sibling Cryptocephalus leaf beetles

Abstract Different populations of two closely related species, Cryptocephalusflavipes and C. bameuli, from western (Alps, Apennines and Pyrenees) and central Europe (Poland, Ukraine and Pannonia) were analysed. On the basis of DNA sequences from two genes, cox1 and ef1-α, distinctiveness of both species was confirmed. Nevertheless, possible hybrids were identified in Carpathian mountains. We found a significant genetic differentiation among populations of C. flavipes and C. bameuli from distant regions but a high genetic similarity between populations of C. bameuli from north and south of the Carpathians. Demographic estimates suggest a past population expansion in the case of C. bameuli and a recent one for C. flavipes, possibly occurred during Pleistocene and Holocene, respectively. Distribution modelling showed that C. flavipes is typically present in the mountain systems, whereas C. bameuli is associated with hilly areas of central and eastern Europe. Based on the present data, Last Glacial Maximum refugia of both species were located in the Alpine region and Black Sea coasts, but on different elevations. The characterization of the insect diet, through a DNA metabarcoding approach targeting the trnL plant intron, demonstrated a significant differentiation of food preferences between the two species, as well as between geographic populations within the species.
Species list of the European herpetofauna – 2020 update by the Taxonomic Committee of the Societas Europaea Herpetologica

The last species list of the European herpetofauna was published by Speybroeck, Beukema and Crochet (2010). In the meantime, ongoing research led to numerous taxonomic changes, including the discovery of new species-level lineages as well as reclassifications at genus level, requiring significant changes to this list. As of 2019, a new Taxonomic Committee was established as an official entity within the European Herpetological Society, Societas Europaea Herpetologica (SEH). Twelve members from nine European countries reviewed, discussed and voted on recent taxonomic research on a case-by-case basis. Accepted changes led to critical compilation of a new species list, which is hereby presented and discussed. According to our list, 301 species (95 amphibians, 15 chelonians, including six species of sea turtles, and 191 squamates) occur within our expanded geographical definition of Europe. The list includes 14 non-native species (three amphibians, one chelonian, and ten squamates).
Design of high-manganese nanostructured austenitic steel with particle swarm optimization

ABSTRACT Austenitic steels with high manganese content exhibit various deformation mechanisms depending on their stacking fault energies. Here we present a novel approach of combining the algorithm of particle swarm optimization with thermodynamic modeling, to design high-manganese steels with desired stacking fault energies. Implementation of this method is demonstrated for nanostructured austenitic steels, where composition, grain size, and temperature are used as the tunable parameters. The results show that for a given value of fault energy, the proposed method yields multiple solutions, which may offer valuable guidelines for designing the alloy. In contrast with the coarse-grained steels, the design parameters of the nanostructured alloys are shown to depend on the austenitic grain size.
Endophytic fungi in evergreen shrubs in western Oregon: A preliminary study

Endophytic fungi were isolated from five species of broad-leaved evergreen shrubs from 16 sites in western Oregon. Rates of infection were 76% for Mahonia nervosa, 44% for Arctostaphylos uva-ursi, 37% for Gaultheria shallon, 29% for Mahonia aquifolium, and 25% for Umbellularia californica. Incidence of leaf infections by more than one fungal taxon was 20–56%, 72–90% of which had only two infections. Rates of overall infection were higher in samples taken from densely wooded sites than in samples taken from more open sites. A pattern of species dominance is seen where the most common endophyte of a given host is isolated less frequently from other hosts; less commonly isolated endophytes appear to be less host specific. The most commonly isolated endophytes include Phyllosticta pyrolae on A. uva-ursi and G. shallon, Leptothyrium berberidis on M. nervosa, Septogloeum sp. on M. nervosa and U. californica, and Phomopsis sp. , predominantly on M. aquifolium, but present on all hosts. Some of the fungi isolated .
NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES DETERMINANTS OF DISPARITIES IN COVID-19 JOB LOSSES

We make several contributions to understanding how the COVID-19 epidemic and policy responses have affected U.S. labor markets, benchmarked against two previous recessions. First, monthly Current Population Survey (CPS) data show greater declines in employment in April 2020 (relative to February) for Hispanics, workers aged 20 to 24, and those with high school degrees and some college. Second, we show that job loss was larger in occupations that require more interpersonal contact and that cannot be performed remotely. Pre-epidemic sorting into occupations with more potential for remote work and industries that are currently essential explain a large share of gaps in recent unemployment for key racial, ethnic, age, and education sub-populations. However, there is a larger unexplained component to the gender employment gaps. We also address measurement issues known to have affected the March and April 2020 CPS. In particular, non-response increased dramatically, especially among the incoming rotation groups. Some of the increase appears non-random, but is not likely to be driving our conclusions. We also demonstrate the importance of tracking workers who report having a job but being absent, in addition to tracking employed and unemployed workers. We conclude with a discussion of policy priorities implied by the disparities in labor market losses from the COVID-19 crisis that we identify. Laura Montenovo Indiana University 2451 E. 10th Street Bloomington, IN 47408 lmonten@iu.edu Xuan Jiang The Ohio State University 1945 N High St Columbus, OH 43210 jiang.445@osu.edu Felipe Lozano Rojas Indiana University 2451 E. 10th Street Bloomington, IN 47408 flozanor@indiana.edu Ian M. Schmutte Terry College of Business University of Georgia Athens, GA 30602 schmutte@uga.edu Kosali I. Simon O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs Indiana University 1315 East Tenth Street Bloomington, IN 47405-1701 and NBER simonkos@indiana.edu Bruce A. Weinberg Department of Economics Ohio State University 410 Arps Hall 1945 North High Street Columbus, OH 43210 and NBER weinberg.27@osu.edu Coady Wing Indiana University 1315 E 10th St Bloomington, IN 47401 cwing@indiana.edu
Accelerating Liquid Simulation With an Improved Data‐Driven Method

In physics‐based liquid simulation for graphics applications, pressure projection consumes a significant amount of computational time and is frequently the bottleneck of the computational efficiency. How to rapidly apply the pressure projection and at the same time how to accurately capture the liquid geometry are always among the most popular topics in the current research trend in liquid simulations. In this paper, we incorporate an artificial neural network into the simulation pipeline for handling the tricky projection step for liquid animation. Compared with the previous neural‐network‐based works for gas flows, this paper advocates new advances in the composition of representative features as well as the loss functions in order to facilitate fluid simulation with free‐surface boundary. Specifically, we choose both the velocity and the level‐set function as the additional representation of the fluid states, which allows not only the motion but also the boundary position to be considered in the neural network solver. Meanwhile, we use the divergence error in the loss function to further emulate the lifelike behaviours of liquid. With these arrangements, our method could greatly accelerate the pressure projection step in liquid simulation, while maintaining fairly convincing visual results. Additionally, our neutral network performs well when being applied to new scene synthesis even with varied boundaries or scales.
Early Induction of Spawning of Tautogs and Comparison of Growth Rates of Larvae from Early and Normally Spawned Broodstocks

Abstract A reliable broodstock of spawning fish must be available year-round for finfish aquaculture to be a commercially viable venture. Two independent laboratory trials were conducted at Milford, Connecticut, and Narragansett, Rhode Island, to investigate spawning adult tautogs Tautoga onitis outside their normal spawning season by manipulating temperature and photoperiod. The spawning date for adult tautogs was successfully advanced by 2 months in each trial. Egg production rates were similar between the two trials, the peak numbers of eggs produced per day occurring between 5 and 8 d after spawning began. Although the methods used were slightly different at each laboratory, the results were similar, viable embryos being successfully hatched and cultured in each trial. Larval growth from the Rhode Island early-spawned fish was similar to that of larvae from fish spawned during the normal spawning season. The results of both trials indicate the possibility of maintaining multiple broodstocks and induci.
Selection and Characterization of an RNA Decoy for Transcription Factor NF-κB†

Despite their chemical similarity, DNA and RNA sequences typically adopt very different structures within cells and are recognized by different proteins. However, a few interesting examples of proteins with dual specificity for DNA and RNA have previously been noted. These observations raise the possibility that RNA surrogates might be identified for many transcription factors that normally bind DNA. As an initial test of this novel concept, we used in vitro selection to isolate a small RNA aptamer that binds with nanomolar affinity to human transcription factor NF-κB, a key regulator of inflammation, HIV-1 gene expression, and apoptosis. Selected RNAs contain a 31-nucleotide core domain that was shown by mutation and deletion analyses to be necessary and sufficient for NF-κB binding. Neither DNA nor 2‘-O-methyl RNA analogues of the aptamer bound NF-κB. The results of competition experiments demonstrate that binding of the RNA aptamer blocks the ability of NF-κB to bind duplex DNA. Expression of this apta.
Comparison of green leaf eucalypt spectra using spectral decomposition

Vegetation function and dynamics are key parameters in terrestrial carbon-cycle models. The strong linkages between biochemical constituents in foliage with photosynthetic capacity and ecosystem productivity makes the development of methods to characterise patterns of foliage biochemistry a potentially powerful approach for estimating leaf function and carbon fluxes at a variety of scales. Eucalypt foliage spectra were obtained over a range of species and locations in southern New South Wales, covering a significant productivity and climatic gradient. We applied a spectral decomposition technique, based on multivariate factor analysis, which allows inter-correlations of underlying factors affecting a set of variables to be assessed. A small number of factors capture virtually all of the variation observed in the foliage spectra and each factor contains significant information relating to species and plot variation over the region. Factor analysis indicated that key chlorophyll, nitrogen, protein and water absorption features could be accurately identified across the spectra. In addition, significant correlations existed between factor loadings and environmental data of the region, including mean annual rainfall and a soil fertility index.
Biodiversity conservation and vegetation clearing in Queensland: principles and thresholds

Clearing of native vegetation is a major threat to biodiversity in Australia. In Queensland, clearing has resulted in extensive ecosystem transformation, especially in the more fertile parts of the landscape. In this paper, we examine Queensland, Australian and some overseas evidence of the impact of clearing and related fragmentation effects on terrestrial biota. The geographic locus is the semi-arid regions. although we recognise that coastal regions have been extensively cleared. The evidence reviewed here suggests that the reduction of remnant vegetation to 30% will result in the loss of 25-35% of vertebrate fauna, with the full impact not realised for another 50-100 years, or even longer. Less mobile, habitat specialists and rare species appear to be particularly at risk. We propose three broad principles For effective biodiversity conservation in Queensland: (i) regional native vegetation retention thresholds of 50910: (ii) regional ecosystem thresholds of 30%: and (iii) landscape design and planning principles that protect large remnants, preferably > 2000 ha, as core habitats. Under these retention thresholds. no further clearing would be permitted in the extensively cleared biogeographic regions such as Brigalow Belt and New England Tablelands. Some elements of the biota. however, will require more detailed knowledge and targeted retention and management to ensure their security. The application of resource sustainability and economic criteria outlined elsewhere in this volume should be applied to ensure that the biogeographic regions in the north and west of Queensland that are largely intact continue to provide extensive wildlife habitat.
Study of Merchant Adoption in Mobile Payment System Based on Ensemble Learning

To explore the influencing factors of the adoption of mobile payment systems from the perspective of merchants, this study builds a data analysis model based on three different ensemble learning algorithms, Adaboost model, random forest and XGBoost model, where static social-economic attributes, dynamic trading behavior and clustering effect variables of merchants are used as independent variables. Moreover, this paper establishes the prediction models and analyzes the prediction accuracy of different models. The results of the study indicate that: 1) Merchants in the housing industry, health hospitals and retail industries are more willing to adopt mobile payment systems; 2) The average daily transaction volume and the average amount of each consumer significantly affect the merchant mobile payment adoption behavior; 3) The adoption of mobile payment systems by neighboring merchants significantly positively affected the adoption behavior of merchants; 4) On the basis of the social-economic attributes of merchants, the hit rate and accuracy of the prediction model were greatly improved after adding transaction data.
Infecção natural por Trypanosoma evansi em cães

The present paper describes cases of natural infection by Trypanosoma evansi in dogs that eventually died in Uruguaiana, in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. The animals from the rural zone were admitted to the Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUC-RS) Veterinary Hospital presenting the following clinical signs: apathy, fever and enlargement of the submandibular lymphonodes. Flagellated forms in the blood films were identified as belonging to the species T. evansi. The discovery of these cases raises an allert to the presence of the disease in the area, emphasizing the need for further investigation of the epidemiology of the infection and also the study of prophylathic measures to prevent new cases.
Osmolality and composition of the extender during the cold storage of Prochilodus lineatus (Characiformes: Prochilodontidae) sperm

This study evaluates the effects of extender osmolality and composition on the cooling of Prochilodus lineatussperm. Sperm was diluted in six extenders: two compositions (powdered coconut water(tm) = ACP; Beltsville Thawing Solution(tm) = BTS) x three osmolalities (285, 325, and 365 mOsm/kg) plus an undiluted control, and stored at 6-8°C. Motility rate and velocities (curvilinear, straight line, and average path) were determined every other day. Osmolality did not affect the quality of cooled sperm, thus data were pooled. Motility was higher on d 0 compared to the other days and diluted samples (85-90%) yielded higher motility than control (75%). On d 2, motility was higher in BTS-diluted samples and control, but on d 4 and 6, control yielded the highest motility. Velocities decreased from d 0 to 6 in diluted samples, but not in control. On d 0, velocities were higher in BTS-diluted sperm, but, on d 2, 4, and 6, control yielded higher velocities despite of the large variation among males. Thus P. lineatussperm should be stored in BTS or without dilution, for a maximum of two days at 6-8°C. Extender osmolality between 285 and 365 mOsm/kg does not affect sperm quality during cold storage.
Some characteristics of polyphenol oxidase purified from edible yam (Dioscorea cayenensis-rotundata cv. Longbô) cultivated in Côte d’Ivoire

Polyphenol oxidase (PPO Y ) of edible yam (Dioscorea cayenensis-rotundata cv. Longbo) cultivated in Cote d'Ivoire was purified to homogeneity by a procedure that included ion exchange chromatography, ammonium sulphate fractionation, gel filtration and hydrophobic chromatography using dopamine as a substrate. The relative molecular weight of the PPO Y was estimated to be 94.75 ± 0.63 and 151.56 ± 2.75 kDa by SDS-PAGE and gel filtration on Sephacryl S100 HR, respectively, indicating this PPO Y as a multimer. Maximal PPO Y activity occurred at 30 °C and pH 6.6. The enzyme was stable at 25 °C and its pH stability was in the range of 6.0-7.0. The values V max /K m showed that the enzyme had the greatest reactivity towards dopamine among the substrates used. PPO Y showed no activity toward the monophenols and was completely inhibited by beta-mercaptoethanol, sodium thiosulphate, L -ascorbic acid, sodium bisulphite and L -cysteine. Data generated by this study might help to better prevent edible yam browning.
Multi-Task Learning U-Net for Single-Channel Speech Enhancement and Mask-Based Voice Activity Detection

In this paper, a multi-task learning U-shaped neural network (MTU-Net) is proposed and applied to single-channel speech enhancement (SE). The proposed MTU-based SE method estimates an ideal binary mask (IBM) or an ideal ratio mask (IRM) by extending the decoding network of a conventional U-Net to simultaneously model the speech and noise spectra as the target. The effectiveness of the proposed SE method was evaluated under both matched and mismatched noise conditions between training and testing by measuring the perceptual evaluation of speech quality (PESQ) and short-time objective intelligibility (STOI). Consequently, the proposed SE method with IRM achieved a substantial improvement with higher average PESQ scores by 0.17, 0.52, and 0.40 than other state-of-the-art deep-learning-based methods, such as the deep recurrent neural network (DRNN), SE generative adversarial network (SEGAN), and conventional U-Net, respectively. In addition, the STOI scores of the proposed SE method are 0.07, 0.05, and 0.05 higher than those of the DRNN, SEGAN, and U-Net, respectively. Next, voice activity detection (VAD) is also proposed by using the IRM estimated by the proposed MTU-Net-based SE method, which is fundamentally an unsupervised method without any model training. Then, the performance of the proposed VAD method was compared with the performance of supervised learning-based methods using a deep neural network (DNN), a boosted DNN, and a long short-term memory (LSTM) network. Consequently, the proposed VAD methods show a slightly better performance than the three neural network-based methods under mismatched noise conditions.
Becoming a Reflexive Practitioner: Exploring Music Therapy Students’ Learning Experiences with Participatory Role-Play in a Norwegian Context

ABSTRACT The objective of this qualitative study was to explore music therapy students' learning experiences of participatory role-play in the context of the integrated music therapy master's program at the University of Bergen in Norway. Role-play is one type of experiential learning that initiates an interaction between students in a simulated scenario, thus producing concrete experiences as the basis for reflection. Empirical data were collected in two focus group interviews with 13 alumni who had attended role-play classes. We applied a thematic and interpretative hermeneutical strategy to data analysis. We identified five continua of learning experiences: (i) one's personality & becoming a professional, (ii) being spontaneous & being prepared, (iii) feedback from self-experience & from others, (iv) experiential learning & theoretical learning, (v) music therapy as a discipline & in interdisciplinary contexts. The continua highlight empathy, reflexivity, and person-centeredness as core learning assets for becoming a health-care practitioner.
Evaluation of solvents extractors of rutin from Dimorphandra Gardneriana (leguminosae) and in vitro antioxidant tests

Dimorphandra gardneriana, popularly known as fava d'anta, is a typical tree from the Brazilian cerrado of large extractive use, due to its fruits being rich sources of the flavonoid rutin, which has pharmacological properties of commercial interest, especially vasodilator and antioxidant. In the present study, rutin was extracted by heating the extractor medium containing D. gardneriana fruits, where the use of different solvents, methanol, ethanol, ethanol/water and water were evaluated. The presence of rutin was analyzed by Thin Layer Chromatography and High Performance Liquid Chromatography. The antioxidant activity of rutin was evaluated at low concentrations using the following methods: DPPH free radical scavenging activity; reaction with thiobarbituric acid ; Fe2+ chelation; degradation of deoxyribose; and iron reduction. Quercetin was used as a positive control for the antioxidant test. The yield of the extracts were: 19.13 % (Methanol), 18.23 % (Ethanol), 26.27 % (Ethanol/water) and 13.14 % (water). In the extraction processes, the rutin yield was equivalent for all extractions except for the one with water. Thus, it is concluded that methanol, the main solvent used in the extraction, can be replaced with ethanol or ethanol/water without compromising the rutin efficiency or purification degree. With the exception of the iron chelation test, in the other tests quercetin and rutin had a statistically significant relationship with the antioxidant potential. The efficiency of rutin and quercetin in low concentrations in in vitro antioxidant tests can justify the use of these substances in in vivo test or as positive control in in vitro test. controle positivo o teste antioxidante. Os rendimentos dos extratos foram: 19,13% (metanol), 18,23% (etanol), 26,27% (etanol / água) e 13,14% (água). Nos de