Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Use of near Infrared Spectroscopy to Discriminate between and Predict the Nutrient Composition of Different Species and Parts of Bamboo: Application for Studying Giant Panda Foraging Ecology

Giant pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) are specialist feeders, dependent upon bamboo as their main dietary resource. Due to the difficulty of many captive facilities to meet the natural qualitative diet changes in bamboo species and plant parts consumed seasonally by giant pandas, it is important to understand the nutritional quality of this forage and the differences among plant parts for improved husbandry. Near infrared (NIR) reflectance spectroscopy has been used as a tool to measure forage quality for both domestic and free-ranging species. The objective of this study was to determine the capability of NIR spectroscopy to: (1) discriminate between bamboo parts, (2) discriminate between bamboo species and (3) to predict the nutrient composition of bamboo. All bamboo samples were received from the Memphis Zoo Bamboo Farm (Memphis, TN, USA), dried at 60°C and ground to pass through a 1 mm screen before analysis. Discrimination between a total of 722 branch, culm and leaf samples resulted in an R2 of 0.88 and SECV of 0.18. Spectra from a total of 756 samples of four different species were used to create a discriminant equation among bamboo species. This resulted in an R2 of 0.47 and SECV of 0.29. Validation sets were correctly predicted at the following rates: (part) branch 94%, culm 100% and leaf 100%; (species) Phyllostachys aurea 10%, P. aureosulcata 98%, P. glauca 80% and Pseudosasa japonica 73%. Calibration equations for crude protein (CP), neutral detergent fibre (NDF), acid detergent fibre (ADF) and organic matter (OM) were created using all bamboo samples. For each nutritional constituent, the calibration R2 values exceeded 0.96. The average SEP across all constituents was 0.21% for CP, 2.35% for NDF, 3.62% for ADF, 0.84% for DM and 0.25% for OM. NIR spectroscopy was used to predict nutrient characteristics and discriminate between bamboo plant parts and species. The inability to discriminate among bamboo species is most likely due to a close physiological similarity between at least two of the species. Results suggest that NIR spectroscopy can be used to analyse bamboo forage quality which may have applications to captive giant panda husbandry.
The Food and Agriculture Organization, in its Reykjavik Declaration on Responsible Fisheries in the Marine Ecosystem in 2001, emphasized the need for including ecosystem considerations in fisheries management

Declaration on Responsible Fisheries in the Marine Ecosystem in 2001, emphasized the need for including ecosystem considerations in fisheries management (FAO 2003). Although the structure and functioning of the southern Benguela ecosystem are known in terms of trophic flows (Jarre-Teichmann et al. 1998, Shannon et al. 2003), there is a need for accurate and quantitative information on the geographical distribution of marine species to improve the modelling of the ecosystem and therefore its understanding. The Benguela Current off the south-western coast of Africa (15–37°S) is one of the world’s four major eastern-boundary current systems, along with the Humboldt Current off Peru and Chile (4–40°S), the Californian Current off the west coast of the USA (28–42°N) and the Canary Current off North-West Africa (12–25°N). In all these systems, large populations of pelagic and demersal fish are supported by strong coastal upwelling and intense plankton production (Carr 2002). However, in contrast to the other upwelling ecosystems, the southern part of the Benguela is influenced by the warm water of the Agulhas Current, which flows and meanders along the Agulhas Bank, invades part of the Bank and is partly retroflected along the west coast of South Africa through mesoscale processes (Harris et al. 1978, Lutjeharms 1981, Penven et al. 2001). For the purposes of the present study, the southern Benguela is assumed to extend seawards to the 2 000 m isobath (except for the high seas fisheries on tuna species), from 29°S (in the vicinity of the Orange River mouth) southwards along the west coast of South Africa and eastwards to 28°E (East London), covering an area of 360 000 km2. It therefore incorporates the south and west coasts of South Africa and the Agulhas Bank (Shannon et al. 2003). The important offshore fish resources of the southern Benguela spawn over various parts of the Agulhas Bank, and depend to a greater or lesser extent on the equatorward jet current between Cape Point and Cape Columbine to transport the early stages to the West Coast, where most recruitment takes place (Hutchings et al. 2002). Most pelagic recruits return to the Agulhas Bank in the poleward counter-current close to the coast. Species that become more demersal with age, such as Cape hake Merluccius spp. and horse mackerel Trachurus trachurus capensis tend to move into deeper Ecosystem Approaches to Fisheries in the Southern Benguela Afr. J. mar. Sci. 26: 115–139 2004 115
Completing the neo‐Darwinian synthesis with an event criterion

Willi Hennig conceptualized the systematic character as an inherited transformation event whereas he operationalized it in terms of the similarity of objects. A causal evolutionary explanation underlies his conceptualization; however, the operational definition is denied that explication because similarity is an abstraction—the similarity of objects is a function of their intensionally defined properties. These opposing treatments of evidence involve other problems that affect the coherence of systematics. For example, the uses of similarity, and the taxonomic relationships it defines, lead to category errors when the particulars of evolution are inferred. Not only is there no requirement in evolutionary theory that similarity relations be explained as homologs, reification occurs when the similarity defined class or set of organisms is claimed to be a part of lineage system history. Also worth noting, it is the transcendentalism put forward in the early nineteenth century by Étienne Geoffroy Saint‐Hilaire, and not the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin, that provides the theoretical justification for using object similarities in comparative biology. All of these problems are removed by considering the transformation event, instead of the object, as the thing being explained in the operational definition of character. Ostension or description of objects by extension are consistent with evolutionary theory, and may be used in phylogenetic practice, as when delimiting the accompanying states of a particular transformation series event. In addition to a coherent evolutionary epistemology being achieved with this operational redefinition of character, event hypotheses as evidence provide severe and critical objective tests of phylogenetic relationships. With this redefinition, morphology is expected to retake its place among the most rigorous theoretical sciences. This reconsideration of the systematic character, the elimination of all prescriptive references to object similarity and its accompanying transcendentalism, is also seen as a significant step towards completing the neo‐Darwinian synthesis of evolution.
Advene: active reading through hypervideo

Active reading and hypermedia usage are an integral part of scholar daily practices, but the full exploitation of their potentialities still lies far ahead. In the search for new methods and tools, we focus in this article on the use of audiovisual material in a scholar context. One of the results of active reading applied to audiovisual material can be hypervideos, that we define as views on audiovisual documents associated with an annotation structure. The notion of hypervideo is useful to analyse existing video-based hypermedia systems as well as building new systems. The Advene project proposes an implementation of hypervideos through a framework that allows experimentations of new visualisation and interaction modalities for enriched videos.
Evolutionary trends within bivalve prey of chesapeake group naticid gastropods

Five genera of Miocene bivalves evolved antipredatory adaptations in response to predation by drilling naticid gastropods. I examined the evolution of two traits affecting predator‐prey interaction, prey shell thickness (TH) and internal volume (IV). Thickness controls predation costs by determining drilling time, and internal volume influences the benefit derived by the predator. Internal volume showed no consistent pattern of temporal change among the taxa studied. IV fluctuated nondirectionally during the history of most genera, though both increasing and decreasing trends occurred within species ofAstarte. In contrast, all five genera exhibited significant thickness increases (from 8–157%) during the three‐million‐year interval. Both gradual intraspecific and interspecific directional changes occurred. Taxa with the greatest predation intensities displayed the most change, suggesting that predation selected for the thickness increases. Increased thickness apparently reduced predation; a significant ne.
STUDENT ACADEMIC IDENTITY AND EARLY CHILDHOOD FIELD- BASED INITIAL TEACHER EDUCATION

This overall aim of this paper is to report on PhD (Education) research critically examining the nature and significance of academic identity for students in early childhood field based initial teacher education (FBITE) in Aotearoa New Zealand. Student academic identity is defined as the appropriation of academic values and practices within a sense of self, reflecting the willingness and commitment to the practices of the academic community. Student academic identity was identified as consisting of five elements: selftheory, achievement indicators, agency-beliefs, motivation and dispositions. An interpretive qualitative research design was used with data gathered from students, Teacher Educators and Associate Teachers. Data collection involved open-ended questionnaires interviews, and documentary analysis. Data was analysed using the principles of thematic analysis. The findings show that, for students in FBITE programmes, academic identity development is complex, intertwined with emerging professional identities, and influenced by learning contexts and the conflicting roles and commitments held in addition to being a student. This research is significant due to the limited research presenting a holistic view of+ student academic identity, examining all of these five elements, and the lack of literature focusing specifically on this issue for students in FBITE.
Accuracy of merging scans of definitive fixed prosthodontic impressions to obtain single, accurate digitized master casts.

PURPOSE Many elastomeric impressions sent to commercial laboratory dental technicians may include marginal defects. To fabricate accurate restorations, digital technology may be used to merge digital files of defective impressions into a single standard tessellation language (STL) file free of errors. This would save clinicians and patients time and may improve clinical care. The purpose of this study was to compare the accuracy of digital master casts reconstructed from merged STL files of defective impressions with the file of the original defect-free preparations. MATERIAL AND METHODS Ivorine teeth on a dentoform were prepared to receive a posterior fixed dental prosthesis (FDP) with complete coverage preparations. An impression was made in a stock tray using polyvinyl siloxane (PVS) impression material and an extraoral scanner (E3, 3Shape, Denmark) was used to digitize the impression; this was the reference cast. Wax was used to create defects on the buccal and lingual margins of the preparations. Fifteen PVS impressions were made of the FDP preparations with defects in the mesial and distal margins; another set of 15 PVS impressions was made of FDP preparations with defects in the buccal and palatal margins for a total of 30 impressions. All impressions were digitized using the same extraoral scanner (E3, 3Shape, Denmark). Corresponding STL files were paired and merged, and a master cast was created by eliminating the defects using the scanned data. This master cast was compared to the reference cast using reverse engineering software (Geomagic, Morrisville, NC, USA). The results were expressed as average errors and standard deviations in the master casts relative to the reference cast. To account for the presence of positive and negative values in the data set, in terms of errors, the root mean square (RMS) value was calculated for each sample. RESULTS The mean average error in the sample was -0.4 μm. The average upper limit of 95% confidence interval was +36.5 μm, while the average lower limit of 95% confidence interval was -37.3 μm. The mean RMS of the errors found was 18.9 μm. CONCLUSIONS The results of this study indicated that merging digitized definitive impressions to correct marginal defects resulted in master casts with a high level of accuracy relative to the reference cast. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
MJBS 17(1).indd

Remote sensing has grown exponentially in the last 20 years, enabling scientists to study ecological phenomena with methods previously unavailable. Freely available satellite imagery in fi ner resolutions has increased, making it possible and more economical to analyze and monitor the Earth’s ecosystems. Software and on-line platforms make it easier to investigate conservation areas of concern. Yet, remote areas such as Mongolia do not have freely available data, such as land cover and climate variables, at a fi ne scale in a Geographic Information System (GIS). Scientists depend on individual eff orts and products produced for remote areas and the sharing of these data. In this paper, we report our fi ndings in using Random Forest, a machine learning tree classifi er, to categorize vegetative communities in the southern portion of Ikh Nart Nature Reserve in Mongolia. Our results produced 6 diff erent vegetation community classes from a Landsat 8 image using 7 bands and collected on September 13, 2013. The vegetation communities are: ephemeral water, dense rock, low-density shrub/short grasses and forbs, short grasses and forbs, semi-shrub, and tall grasses. Our results provide a foundation for ecological studies in the region, such as those focusing on habitat selection by wildlife, and can inform broader-scale landscape
Teachers’ Attitudes towards Inclusive Education: The Role of Job Stressors and Demographic Parameters

The pedagogy of inclusion is the current trend for the education of persons with disabilities. This study investigated teachers’ attitudes towards inclusive education in relation to demographics (gender and age) and their occupational stress levels. The research involved 208 primary and secondary school teachers, working in urban and suburban areas of five prefectures of Greece. Two scales were used for data collection: a) The Opinions Relative to the Integration of Students with Disabilities (ORI), which examines the attitudes of teachers towards the inclusion of students with disabilities in mainstream schools and b) a questionnaire with regard to Teachers’ Occupational Stress, which detects specific sources of stress in the workplace. Teachers’ gender, age and occupational stress served as independent variables. Teachers demonstrated marginally positive attitudes towards inclusion, which were correlated with their age. Specifically, younger teachers expressed more positive attitudes than their older colleagues. However, no differences were detected between men and women. Furthermore, relatively high levels of stress were observed, while the specific stressors were detected. Finally, teachers’ attitudes were partly correlated to occupational stress, as less positive attitudes towards inclusive education were associated with increased levels of stress.
A Null Model to Explain Zooplankton Species Associations in Saline Lakes of the South American Altiplano (14-27°S)

Zooplankton diversity in shallow salt lakes of the Andean countries in South America is low and distribution is highly dependent on salinity, which varies from moderate to high. At salinities lower than 90 g/l, the halophilic copepod Boeckella poopoensis (Marsh, 1906) predominates, whereas above that level the anostracan Artemia franciscana (Kellogg, 1912) is the exclusive component of the habitat. This constitutes, however, fragmentary information only. A review of the available literature for Andean saline lakes in Bolivia, Chile, and Peru, confirms that presence and distribution of both species is significantly driven by salinity levels. The results of a species co-occurrence null model analysis, indicates that species associations are not random, and these results are supported by the correlation analysis, which indicates a significant, inverse correlation between species number and salinity, and a significant direct relation of species number with surface of the habitat. The low species diversity characteristically seen in these habitats and their dependence on salinity changes effectuated by weather conditions, provide a good model-system for monitoring weather change. La diversidad del zooplankton en lagos salinos poco profundos de Sudamerica es baja y su distribucion depende altamente de la salinidad, la cual varia de moderada a alta. A salinidades menores a 90 g/l predomina el copepodo halofilico Boeckella poopoensis (Marsh, 1906), mientras que a salinidades superiores a ese nivel, el anostraco Artemia franciscana (Kellogg, 1912) es el componente exclusivo de los habitats. Esto constituye sin embargo una informacion parcial. En una revision de la literatura disponible para lagos salinos Andinos en Bolivia, Chile y Peru se confirma que la presencia y distribucion de ambas especies esta significativamente regulada por el nivel de la salinidad. Los resultados del modelo nulo de co-ocurrencia de especies indican que las asociaciones de especies no son aleatorias, y estos resultados estan respaldados por el analisis de correlacion, el cual indica una relacion inversa significativa entre numero de especies con salinidad, y hubo relaciones directas significativas entre numero de especies con la superficie del habitat. El bajo numero de especies que es caracteristico de estos habitats y su dependencia con los cambios de salinidad efectuado por las condiciones climaticas provee un buen modelo de sistema de monitoreo de cambios climaticos.
Description of new Ceratitis MacLeay (Diptera, Tephritidae) species from Africa

As an addition to earlier published systematic revisions of the genus Ceratitis MacLeay, five new species are hereby described: Ceratitis (Pardalaspis) millicentae sp. n. , C. (Ceratalaspis) oraria sp. n. , C. (C.) perisae sp. n. , and C. (C.) perseus, sp. n. all from Kenya, and C. (C.) ealensis sp. n. from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Their relationship with closely allied species within the respective subgenera is discussed and differentiating characters given.
Exploring the deﬁnition of art through deep net visualization

The deﬁnition of art has been debated for more than 2000 years and continues to be a puzzle. While scientiﬁc investigations offer hope that we might resolve this puzzle, machine learning classiﬁers that discriminate art from non-art images generally do not provide an explicit deﬁnition, and brain imaging and psychological theories are at present too coarse to provide a formal characterization. In this work, rather than approaching the problem using a machine learning approach trained on existing artworks, we hypothesize that art can be deﬁned in terms of preexisting properties of the visual cortex. Speciﬁcally, we propose that a broad subset of visual art can be deﬁned as patterns that are exciting to a visual brain. Resting on the ﬁnding that artiﬁcial neural networks trained on visual tasks can provide predictive models of processing in the visual cortex, our deﬁnition is operationalized by using a trained deep net as a surrogate “visual brain”, where “exciting” is deﬁned as the activation energy of particular layers of this net. We ﬁnd that this deﬁnition easily discriminates a variety of art from non-art, and further provides a ranking of art genres that is consistent with our subjective notion of “visually exciting”. By applying a deep net visualization technique, we can also validate the deﬁnition by generating example images that would be classiﬁed as art. The images synthesized under our deﬁnition resemble visually exciting art such as Op Art and other human-created artistic patterns.
Numerical Study of the Flow inside the A250 Diffuser Tube

The tube connecting the exit of the compressor to the inlet of the combustion chamber of the Allison 250 gas turbine has been investigated using the ANSYS CFX Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes (URANS) Shear-Stress Transport model (SST). The geometry of this tube consists of a conical divergent that transitions into a constant diameter S-shaped duct. The numerical model was validated using data collected on an in-house test rig. The calculated A250 S-shaped diffuser flow features were then compared to those in a constant diameter S-shaped tube with the same inlet cross-sectional area and offset. The A250 S-shaped diffuser was shown to correspond to a more distorted profile of the streamwise velocity and, most importantly, less friction losses, and a significantly higher pressure recovery capability than the S-shaped constant diameter tube. The flow in the A250 Sshaped diffuser tube was also simulated at different Reynolds numbers, showing a continuous decrease of the friction coefficient and an increase of the pressure coefficient as the Reynolds number was increased.
Detecting turbulent structures on single Doppler lidar large datasets: an automated classification method for horizontal scans

Abstract. Medium-to-large fluctuations and coherent structures (mlf-cs's) can be observed using horizontal scans from single Doppler lidar or radar systems. Despite the ability to detect the structures visually on the images, this method would be time-consuming on large datasets, thus limiting the possibilities to perform studies of the structures properties over more than a few days. In order to overcome this problem, an automated classification method was developed, based on the observations recorded by a scanning Doppler lidar (Leosphere WLS100) installed atop a 75 m tower in Paris's city centre (France) during a 2-month campaign (September–October 2014). The mlf-cs's of the radial wind speed are estimated using the velocity–azimuth display method over 4577 quasi-horizontal scans. Three structure types were identified by visual examination of the wind fields: unaligned thermals, rolls and streaks. A learning ensemble of 150 mlf-cs patterns was classified manually relying on in situ and satellite data. The differences between the three types of structures were highlighted by enhancing the contrast of the images and computing four texture parameters (correlation, contrast, homogeneity and energy) that were provided to the supervised machine-learning algorithm, namely the quadratic discriminant analysis. The algorithm was able to classify successfully about 91 % of the cases based solely on the texture analysis parameters. The algorithm performed best for the streak structures with a classification error equivalent to 3.3 %. The trained algorithm applied to the whole scan ensemble detected structures on 54 % of the scans, among which 34 % were coherent structures (rolls and streaks).
Invariant Labeling of Links and Detection of Isomorphism of Kinematic Chains

A new structural invariant based on link-link distances has been developed for a kinematic chain. Each link of kinematic chain is assigned a unique label using the invariant. The set of link labels are combined to form a numerical label of kinematic chain, called kinematic chain label (KCL). KCL is proposed as unique identifier for detection of isomorphism among kinematic chains. Method is tested successfully on several cases of single degree of freedom planar kinematic chains with simple joints.