Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evidence of female preference for odor of distant over local males in a bat with female dispersal

Geographic variation of sexually selected male traits is common in animals. Female choice also varies geographically and several studies found female preference for local males, which is assumed to lead to local adaptation and, therefore, increases fitness. As females are the nondispersing sex in most mammalian taxa, this preference for local males might be explained by the learning of male characteristics. Studies on the preference of females in female-dispersing species are lacking so far. To find out whether such females would also show preferences for local males, we conducted a study on greater sac-winged bats (Saccopteryx bilineata), a species where females disperse and males stay in their natal colony. Male greater sac-winged bats possess a wing pouch that is filled with odoriferous secretion and fanned toward females during courtship display. In a combination of chemical analysis and behavioral preference tests, we analyzed whether the composition of wing sac secretion varies between two geographically distinct populations (300 km), and whether females show a preference for local or distant male scent. Using gas chromatography, we found significant differences in the composition of the wing sac odors between the two geographically distinct populations. In addition, the behavioral preference experiments revealed that females of both populations preferred the scent of geographically distant males over local males. The wing sac odor might thus be used to guarantee optimal outbreeding when dispersing to a new colony. This is—to our knowledge—the first study on odor preference of females of a species with female-biased dispersal.
Methane oxidation on supported gold catalysts

Methane (CH4), a major compound of natural gas, has been suggested as a future energy carrier. However, it is also known to be a strong greenhouse gas. The use of CH4 obtained from crude oil as an associated gas is often uneconomical, and it is thus burned off. Avoiding flaring and making the energy stored in the molecule available, is a major research challenge. In this PhD thesis, CH4 oxidation on nanoparticular gold is studied both experimentally and theoretically. In the course of this PhD project, CH4 oxidation was experimentally found more likely to form CO2 and H2O than other low index hydrocarbon oxygenates, even at mild conditions (p = 1 bar, θ ≤ 250○C). This has been taken as an indication that CH4 oxidation proceeds along a pathway of full combustion. Thus, it was decided to study the tail of the CH4 oxidation pathway, which is given by CO and H2 oxidation, in more detailed. Extensive steady-state activity measurements were performed to obtain the reaction rates for CO and H2 oxidation. These reactions were studied on three different gold particle sizes using either O2 or N2O as oxidation agents. Using particle size distributions obtained from TEM analysis, it was found that the CO oxidation rates follow the d−3 relationship proposed in [Nano Today 2, 14 (2007)]. To corroborate the experimental findings, density functional theory (DFT) calculations on the Au{532} surface and a Au12 cluster, which model corner sites, were used in a microkinetic model. This model reproduced the apparent activation energies for CO oxidation by both O2 and N2O. Interestingly, the apparent activation energy for small particles (< 5 nm) is independent on both particle size and oxidation agent. CH4 oxidation was studied comprehensively on nanoparticular gold under mild conditions (p = 1 bar, 30○C – 250○C). Different apparent activation energies lead to suggest that the barrier for CH4 oxidation is dependent on the particle size. High-resolution TEM images clearly show that irrespectively to the particles size of the catalysts used, the gold particles adhere to the support via their (111) facet. In a similar fashion, CH4 oxidation was studied with respect to a support effect. From both steady-state activity measurements and high-resolution TEM investigations on the particle’s stability, TiO2 was found to be the most appropriate support material for nanoparticulate gold. The experimental results are corroborated by further DFT calculations investigating the thermodynamics of CH4 oxidation an a stepped Au{211} surface.
Switchable Resonator Based Reconfigurable Bandpass / Bandstop Microstrip Filter

ABSTRACT This paper presents a reconfigurable loop-based filter performing compound reconfiguration. The designed filter is capable of functioning as a bandstop or bandpass filter by a simple approach of cascading the resonator to the transmission line connecting source and load. Shifting of operating frequencies is characterised by switching between a loop and a C-shaped resonator. To demonstrate the working of the proposed concept, a compound reconfigurable filter operating at 1.5 GHz and 1.6 GHz is developed. The filter is developed on a compact layout of size 0.27 × 0.12 λg 2. The proposed prototype is fabricated and measured for real-time validation.
Reactivity of N-Methylidenemalonates of 3-Arylaminoindoles and p-Dimethylamino-N-Phenylaniline in the Course of Their Analysis by Electrospray Ionization Mass Spectrometry

The behavior of N-methylidenemalonates of 3-arylaminoindoles and p-dimetylamino-N-phenylanyline (M = ANa) was studied during their analysis with ESI mass spectrometer operated in negative (NI) and positive (PI) ion modes. Anions [A] and both [M + H]+ and [M + Na]+ were recorded under conditions of the NI-ESI and PI-ESI, respectively. The fragmentation processes of [A] and [M + H]+ were found that probably occurred as “insource collusion induced dissociation”. The main paths for [A] proved to be elimination of CO2 and breakage of the N-methylidenemalonate bond. A route [A]- - CO2 - ROH (R = Me or Et) was less expressed and occurred for the indolyl-containing compounds with the NH bond only. Experiments employing heavy water demonstrated the isotope exchange to occur involving the hydrogen atom of this bond. This and other facts evidenced that the last fragmentation included abstraction of just this atom. Quantum-chemical calculations allowed picking out a structure for the product ion from the possible ones. The calculations also indicated that the protonation of M occurred at the anionic oxygen atom of the malonate moiety. The fragmentation of [M + H]+ ions included elimination of two water molecules that was supported by their MS2 spectra. A common feature of the NI- and PI-ESI mass spectra was the presence of oligomeric ions, up to tetramers and trimers for the NI- and PI-ESI ones, respectively. The oligomers were formed by interaction of the corresponding ions with neutral molecules. When ions contained extra hydrogen atoms, they were introduced by hydrolysis.
Remediating Agricultural Legacy Nutrient Loads in the Baltic Sea Region

The Baltic Sea is considered the marine water body most severely affected by eutrophication within Europe. Due to its limited water exchange nutrients have a particularly long residence time in the sea. While several studies have analysed the costs of reducing current nutrient emissions, the costs for remediating legacy nutrient loads of past emissions remain unknown. Although the Baltic Sea is a comparatively well-monitored region, current data and knowledge is insufficient to provide a sound quantification of legacy nutrient loads and much less their abatement costs. A first rough estimation of agricultural legacy nutrient loads yields an accumulation of 0.5–4.0 Mt N and 0.3–1.2 Mt P in the Baltic Sea and 0.4–0.5 Mt P in agricultural soils within the catchment. The costs for removing or immobilising this amount of nutrients via deep water oxygenation, mussel farming and soil gypsum amendment are in the range of few tens to over 100 billion €. These preliminary results are meant as a basis for future studies and show that while requiring serious commitment to funding and implementation, remediating agricultural legacy loads is not infeasible and may even provide economic benefits to local communities in the long run.
Labor's Capital and Worker Well-Being: Do US Pension Funds Benefit Labor Interests?

Abstract:Since the 1980s, the shareholder value revolution has undermined the position of workers and organized labor within US firms. At the same time, workers have paradoxically become one of the largest classes of shareholders through labor pension funds (LPF), including state public employee funds and private sector unionaffiliated funds. Does workers' concentrated ownership of capital in LPF represent a mechanism to advance worker interests against the prevailing wage, benefit, and jobs squeeze in publicly traded firms? This article links data on US state pension funds' investments and shareholder activism to firm-level data on work and employment outcomes from 2001–2016. LPF shareholder proposals targeting large firms have declined over time. However, panel regression models show that intra-firm mobilization by LPF in the form of shareholder proposals is associated with modestly improved worker outcomes. There is no evidence that greater ownership share by public pension funds (PPF) is associated with more labor-friendly outcomes. This null association obtains even when focusing only on ownership by the most socially activist funds, or those from Democrat-controlled states. Nor does PPF ownership buffer workers from the negative impact of extractive hedge funds. Together, the results help reconcile contending accounts of pension fund capitalism's effects on worker well-being. The analysis contributes to the sociological study of financialization, corporate governance, work and employment, and labor movements.
Modeling Control and Robustness Assessment of Multilevel Flying-Capacitor Converters

When performing AC/DC-DC/AC power conversions, multilevel converters provide several advantages as compared to classical two-level converters. This paper deals with the dynamic modeling, control, and robustness assessment of multilevel flying-capacitor converters. The dynamic model is derived using the Power-Oriented Graphs modeling technique, which provides the user with block schemes that are directly implementable in the Matlab/Simulink environment by employing standard Simulink libraries. The performed robustness assessment has led to the proposal of a divergence index, which allows for evaluating the voltage balancing capability of the converter using different voltage vector configurations for the extended operation of the converter, namely when the number of output voltage levels is increased for a given number of capacitors. A new variable-step control algorithm is then proposed. The variable-step control algorithm safely enables the converter extended operation, which prevents voltage balancing issues, even under particularly unfavorable conditions, such as a constant desired output voltage or a sudden load change. The simulation results showing the good performances of the proposed variable-step control as compared to a classical minimum distance approach are finally provided and commented in detail.
Air Pollution Monitoring

Max Planck Scientists strike new paths in nanoanalysis and data storage with infrared light. Scientists of the Nano-Photonics Group at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry have developed a new infrared-optical nanotechnology based on the excitation of lattice vibrations in polar crystals (phonons). The technology, called phonon photonics, opens up entirely new applications of infrared light: non-destructive chemical and structural analysis of crystals at a resolution better than 1/10000 mm, infrared data storage providing storage densities better than DVD, nanoscopic infrared-sensors or waveguides and switches for the development of future infrared-optical supercomputers.
Soil mineral nitrogen dynamics following repeated application of dairy slurry

Repeated applications of animal slurry to soil can lead to residual nitrogen (N) effects from mineralization of organic N carried over from the previous year and from remineralization of previously immobilized N. We studied the effect of repeated slurry applications on soil mineral N (SMNt: nitrate‐N plus soluble, exchangeable and non‐exchangeable ammonium‐N) dynamics in a simplified, aerobic laboratory incubation. The experiment evaluated the effects of up to four applications (84‐day intervals) of two different liquid cow slurries, ammonium sulphate and water (unfertilized control, CON) to sandy loam and clay loam soils. The slurries came from heifers (HEI) and lactating dairy cows (COW). Both soil types showed net N mineralization in HEI during each 84‐day interval after application (3–6% of slurry‐N), whereas decomposition of COW induced net N immobilization at 16% of slurry‐N. The effect observed for COW might have come from its larger C to organic‐N ratio. After each application to the clay loam soil, 36–64% of the ammonium applied was not recoverable at day 0 because of ammonium fixation by clay minerals, and an average of 20% of fertilizer‐N was measured as non‐exchangeable ammonium at day 84. Recovery of N applied with both HEI and COW at day 84 increased significantly with subsequent applications to clay loam soil, but not to sandy loam soil. Residual effects in clay loam soil ranged from 2 to 11% of applied N, which probably resulted from slow mineralization of recalcitrant organic fractions in the slurry and partial stabilization of microbial by‐products within the soil.
Pop-net: A self-growth network for popping out the salient object in videos

It is a big challenge for unsupervised video segmentation without any object annotation or prior knowledge. In this article, we formulate a completely unsupervised video object segmentation network which can pop out the most salient object in an input video by self ‐ growth, called Pop ‐ Net. Specifically, in this article, a novel self ‐ growth strategy which helps a base segmentation network to gradually grow to stick out the salient object as the video goes on, is introduced. To solve the sample generation problem for the unsupervised method, the sample generation module which fuses the appearance and motion saliency is proposed. Furthermore, the proposed sample optimization module improves the samples by using contour constrains for each self ‐ growth step. Experimental results on several datasets (DAVIS, DAVSOD, VideoSD, Segtrack ‐ v2) show the effectiveness of the proposed method. In particular, the state ‐ of ‐ the ‐ art methods on completely unfamiliar datasets (no fine ‐ tuned datasets) are performed.
Environmental drivers of benthic fish assemblages and fish‐habitat associations in offshore areas of a very large river

Fish‐habitat associations are poorly known in offshore areas of very large rivers. We examined physical habitat structure and its effect on habitat use and assemblage formation of benthic fishes in the main channel of the Danube River, Hungary. Principal component analysis of physical variables showed that sample unit (i.e., 500 m long reaches) and cross‐channel transect‐level data of corresponding reaches were highly correlated. We found clear gradients in physical variables from areas with high velocity and higher proportion of hard substratum (pebble and cobble) to areas with low velocity, high mean depth and finer substratum (mainly sand) composition. Variation in velocity was coupled with variation in both mean depth and substratum composition (i.e., Shannon diversity of sediment composition) and higher proportion of silt material. Differences in physical habitat structure (flow, substrate) also manifested among river segments. Classification and regression tree analyses (CART) and fish abundance – occupancy patterns in the PCA template revealed that many species showed clear responses to environmental heterogeneity (barbel, Barbus barbus; schraetser, Gymnocephalus schraetser; Danube streber, Zingel streber; whitefinned gudgeon, Romanogobio vladikovy; round goby, Neogobius melanostomus) while others (white bream, Blicca bjoerkna) showed very elusive habitat use patterns. Multivariate regression tree analysis confirmed the results of CART and indicated that transect‐level substratum composition was the most important determinant in the formation of benthic assemblages. These results on habitat use can contribute to the more effective conservation management of offshore fish assemblages, which is important due to increasing inland navigation in the Danube River.
Prototyping and Usability Evaluation of Road Safety Education Courseware for Primary Schools in Malaysia

The increasing number of road accidents and deaths among children in Malaysia is a concern. One of the main causes stems from lack of knowledge and skills in dealing with the complexity and condition of the road system. Recognizing the significance of road safety among students, road safety education has been introduced to primary schoolsby the Ministry of Education in 2008. Initially it was blended into the Malay language subject with the goal to equip the children withthe knowledge and skills about road safety.However, road safety teaching and learning still uses the conventional methods without the use of specialized tools. This paper introduces ROSE courseware, a specialized learning tool developed to meet the needs of the Malaysian primary school curriculum for road safety education. Its learning environment is a blend of virtual reality, augmented reality and interactive multimedia, which enables children to understand and acquire skills related to road safety through interactive, real-time and immersive learning tool. In order to receive the children’s feedbacks pertaining to their experience in interacting with the ROSE courseware, a usability evaluation was conducted. The results show that the children strongly agreed on the usefulness, information quality and interface quality of the ROSE courseware.
Activity and functional diversity of microbial communities in long-term hydrocarbon and heavy metal contaminated soils

Abstract The impacts of long-term polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and heavy metal pollution on soil microbial communities functioning were studied in soils taken from an old coke plant. The concentrations of PAHs in the tested soils ranged from 171 to 2137 mg kg-1. From the group of tested heavy metals, concentrations of lead were found to be the highest, ranging from 57 to 3478 mg kg-1, while zinc concentrations varied from 247 to 704 mg kg-1 and nickel from 10 to 666 mg kg-1. High dehydrogenase, acid and alkaline phosphatase activities were observed in the most contaminated soil. This may indicate bacterial adaptation to long-term heavy metal and hydrocarbon contamination. However, the Community Level Physiological Profiles (CLPPs) analysis showed that the microbial functional diversity was reduced and influenced to a higher extent by some metals (Pb, Ni), moisture and conductivity than by PAHs.
“A new understanding and appreciation for the marvel of growing things”: exploring the college farm’s contribution to transformative learning

ABSTRACT Campus farms and gardens can play a vital role in offering experiential and transformative learning opportunities for students in higher education. Many faculty believe that experiential education in food systems can establish students’ commitment to sustainability and social justice. In this paper, I evaluate the impact that experiential learning on a college farm has on achieving a course’s learning outcomes as well as the goal of encouraging students to transform the food system. Students in the course Food & Sustainability labored in the food system, and they recorded their activities and reflections in a farm journal. Using qualitative coding, I developed themes from their farm journals to determine if and how students achieved specific learning outcomes as well as transformative thinking. Analysis of their journals demonstrates that experiential learning augments theoretical learning, and it also includes unexpected benefits such as interpersonal connections with natural worlds and community. On the other hand, transformative thinking and action were more limited in students’ reflections, thus corroborating previous research on critical food literacy, food citizenship, and food justice studies. This study suggests that if faculty aim for transformative education, they must make transformation a specific learning outcome and integrate it into course requirements.
A Set-Theoretic Approach to Modeling Network Structure

Three computer algorithms are presented. One reduces a network N to its interior, I. Another counts all the triangles in a network, and the last randomly generates networks similar to N given just its interior I. However, these algorithms are not the usual numeric programs that manipulate a matrix representation of the network; they are set-based. Union and meet are essential binary operators; contained_in is the basic relational comparator. The interior I is shown to have desirable formal properties and to provide an effective way of revealing “communities” in social networks. A series of networks randomly generated from I is compared with the original network, N.
A photo-based quality assessment model for the estimation of PM2.5 concentrations

Rapid economic growth has caused severe environmental pollution, which has aroused great concern. This pollution affects public health and impairs visibility, therefore, it should be given greater consideration. In this paper, a photo-based PM2.5 concentration predictor is proposed based on the natural scene statistics without artiﬁcial assistance or extra information. Given that the quality of PM2.5 concentration images is determined by many factors, three types of inﬂuencing factors are analysed: the colourfulness, the structural degradation and the contrast. The ﬁrst feature consists of the hue, saturation and colour descriptors, which measure the colourfulness of the PM2.5 concentration images. The second feature is determined based on the contrast can effectively portray the quality of PM2.5 concentration in the images. The third feature is extracted based on the natural scene statistics model, which measures the local and global structural degradation information and the naturalness of the PM2.5 concentration images. Finally, the three features are used to train a random forest model that can be used to predict the concentration of PM2.5. Experimental results illustrate that the performance of the proposed model is better than those of popular competitors on AQID.
Randomized Controlled Study to Evaluate Prophylactic Properties of Ayurvedic Treatment Protocol in Refractory and Chronic Migraine Patients

Background: Migraine is a disorder marked by recurrent episodes of headache. There is a subset of migraine patients who remain refractory to the conventional prophylactic and abortive therapies. This study aimed to assess the therapeutic role of an ayurvedic treatment protocol in patients who had chronic/ refractory migraine. Methods: This single-center, open label, randomized, controlled clinical trial compared the efficacy of ayurvedic treatment protocol to conventional treatment. Included patients were 18-65 years of age and met the diagnostic criteria for chronic/ refractory migraine. The patients were randomized in a 1:1 ratio to the ayurvedic treatment or conventional therapy at the baseline and were followed at regular intervals for 360 days. The primary outcome was reduction in the number of headache days in the last 3 months and the secondary outcomes were a reduction in the visual analog scale (VAS) score and migraine disability assessment score (MIDAS) as compared to the baseline. Results: Patients (n=154) were randomized to the two treatment groups with similar baseline demographic and clinical characteristics. The patients in ayurvedic treatment group had a greater reduction in the number of headache days, VAS score and MIDAS score at day 360 (p<0.05). Further, there were no reported medication-related adverse effects in either group. Conclusion: Ayurvedic treatment protocol is well tolerated and is associated with significant improvement in symptoms of chronic refractory migraine.