Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Social Parasitism and Dynamics of Cuticular Hydrocarbons in Paper Wasps of the Genus Mischocyttarus

Abstract Facultative social parasitism has been recorded in several taxa of social insects. Most recently, this phenomenon has been recorded in colonies of the neotropical social wasp Mischocyttarus cerberus (parasitized by Mischocyttarus consimilis). This is the first case of interspecific parasitism described for the genus Mischocyttarus. How social parasites are able to remain in the host colony has been one of the central subjects of studies on this theme. Chemical signals are used by social insects to recognize their nestmates, which suggests that female parasites use a chemical strategy to hide their identity and become accepted as a member in host colonies. This study investigated the dynamics of cuticular hydrocarbons (CHs) of workers of M. consimilis and M. cerberus in both control and host colonies. Fourier Transform Infrared-Photoacoustic Spectroscopy (FTIR-PAS) was used to read the CHs; this technique is somewhat unusual but is quite reliable for this type of study. A stepwise canonical discrimination analysis detected significant differences between the mid-infrared spectra of the two species. This analysis provided a dispersion diagram of the results in order to differentiate the species, in which the first axis explained 61% of the results. These results demonstrated a clear difference in the CHs profile between non-conspecific workers from the control colonies. However, non-conspecific workers from the host colonies underwent a significant modification of CHs in comparison to the workers from the control colonies, and this modification was similar in all the host colonies non-conspecific workers. These data suggest that females of parasitic-specie modify the chemical profile of the host-specie females, and also alter their own profiles in order to be recognized as “nestmates” and to achieve success in parasitism.
Allelic transmission of microsatellites and application to kinship analysis in newly hatched Pacific abalone larvae

: The inheritance mode of six previously published and newly developed microsatellite markers was investigated in newly hatched Haliotis discus hannai larvae from four controlled crosses, and the feasibility of these markers for kinship estimation was also examined. Microsatellite DNA was successfully amplified from H. discus hannai larvae using the Chelex extraction method, and at least 15 microsatellite loci could be analyzed in a single trochophore larva. All six microsatellite loci were compatible with Mendelian inheritance. Neither evidence of sex-linked barriers to transmission nor evidence of major barriers to fertilization between gametes from the parents was shown. One of the six microsatellite loci showed the existence of null alleles in one family, indicating that the loci should be used in population studies with caution. Although the null allele heterozygotes were considered as homozygotes in the calculation of genetic distance, offspring from four full-sib families were unambiguously discriminated in the neighbor-joining dendrogram. The result demonstrates that the microsatellite markers might be capable of discriminating between related and unrelated abalone larvae in the situation where no pedigree information is available.
Full-Genome Analysis of Avian Influenza A(H5N1) Virus from a Human, North America, 2013

Full-genome analysis was conducted on the first isolate of a highly pathogenic avian influenza A(H5N1) virus from a human in North America. The virus has a hemagglutinin gene of clade 2.3. 2.1c and is a reassortant with an H9N2 subtype lineage polymerase basic 2 gene. No mutations conferring resistance to adamantanes or neuraminidase inhibitors were found.
Analysis of sperm and relationship between conventional sperm parameters and hypo-osmotic swelling test/acrylamide penetration assay -crossbred cattle bulls

This study has investigated the relationship between freshly ejaculated sperm (crossbred cattle bull semen) membrane integrity and viability/percent progressive motility and also between acrylamide penetration assay (APA) and membrane integrity/viability/percent progressive motility. Positive correlation was observed with all the tested parameters. APA was objectively analyzed on the basis of both the sperm number that migrates in upper 0.5 cm and the distance penetrated by the spermatozoa up to the peak point. The correlations were positive for HOST and percent progressive motility/viability. However, the parameters HOST and viability correlated well (r = 0.96) when compared to HOST and motility (r = 0.72). In addition, the percent progressive motility, viability (%), HOST (%) correlated with the distance penetrated by spermatozoa in the acrylamide gel (cm/30 min) and the number of sperms penetrated in upper 0.5 cm/30 min. The correlation was positive and significant. Correlation analysis has revealed that the correlation between acrylamide penetration assay and HOST and viability was higher (r = 0.90/0.91, r = 0.94/0.88) than percent progressive motility (r = 0.60/0.73). The assessment of the quality of the semen based on these parameters has indicated that 57.1% of the samples tested were fit for the desired operations
MODEST: a web-based design tool for oligonucleotide-mediated genome engineering and recombineering

Recombineering and multiplex automated genome engineering (MAGE) offer the possibility to rapidly modify multiple genomic or plasmid sites at high efficiencies. This enables efficient creation of genetic variants including both single mutants with specifically targeted modifications as well as combinatorial cell libraries. Manual design of oligonucleotides for these approaches can be tedious, time-consuming, and may not be practical for larger projects targeting many genomic sites. At present, the change from a desired phenotype (e.g. altered expression of a specific protein) to a designed MAGE oligo, which confers the corresponding genetic change, is performed manually. To address these challenges, we have developed the MAGE Oligo Design Tool (MODEST). This web-based tool allows designing of MAGE oligos for (i) tuning translation rates by modifying the ribosomal binding site, (ii) generating translational gene knockouts and (iii) introducing other coding or non-coding mutations, including amino acid substitutions, insertions, deletions and point mutations. The tool automatically designs oligos based on desired genotypic or phenotypic changes defined by the user, which can be used for high efficiency recombineering and MAGE. MODEST is available for free and is open to all users at http://modest.biosustain. dtu.dk.
ICT in Business and the Public Sector The Creation and Integration of a Legal Information Retrieval System without Manual Query Construction

Searching precedence is an error-prone and time-intensive task in the legal ﬁeld. The query construction is diﬃcult since too few search terms result in an abundance of results, but too many increase the chance of missing an important piece. This research follows the question: How should a precedent retrieval system without manual query construction be developed? A queryless system is researched using entire documents as an input. First the best performing scoring functions are tested, followed by research on the best preprocessing steps using the scoring functions from the ﬁrst step. The More Like This query from Elasticsearch and TF–IDF perform better as scoring functions than doc2vec and LDA. The preprocessing research shows that basic preprocessing steps perform well and that data-speciﬁc steps could increase performance. These results are a good starting point for creating a legal search system. To research the integration of a legal information retrieval into the legal ﬁeld lawyers are interviewed to discuss legal search currently, to propose a queryless system with visualizations and retrieve responses to this proposal, and to retrieve suggestions for improvement. The interviews resulted in a clear view on how necessary a well functioning legal search system is, and in many suggestions for development and design choices to integrate the system more easily into the ﬁeld. To ﬁnalize the research described in this thesis, suggestions are proposed on how to improve a legal search engine both in usability and functional terms.
DETECTION OF MYCOBACTERIUM BOVIS IN CAPTIVE SLOTH BEARS (MELURSUS URSINUS) BY POLYMERASE CHAIN REACTION

Diagnosis of Mycobacterial infection is paramount important from the public health perspective since treatment and control measures are very significant, particularly in captive animals. In this diagnostic study of Mycobacterium bovis infection in sloth bears (Melursus ursinus), polymerase chain reaction (PCR) had been used with the primer sequence of pncA-8 (5’-GGTTGGGTGGCCGCCGGTCAG-3’) and pncA-11 (5’-GCTTTGCGGCGAGCGCTCCA-3’) that were specific for Mycobacterium bovis pncA gene. Forty two fresh faecal samples were collected randomly from the apparently healthy sloth bears maintained in captive conditions. The DNA extraction procedure was done as per the manufacturer’s protocol and further subjected to amplification. The amplification profile includes respectively: initial heating of the samples for 5 minutes at 94°C, annealing at 55°C for 1 minute, primer extension at 72°C for 1 minute and final elongation step for 10 minutes at 72°C. Out of 57 samples, 5 samples were yielded on expected amplified PCR product size of 744 bp when electrophoresed in 1.5% agarose gel. A positive control of Mycobacterium bovis DNA procured from Tuberculosis Research Centre and a negative control from a healthy bovine sample were used. These results demonstrated that PCR test will increase the effectiveness of laboratory diagnosis to detect and identifying the Mycobacterium bovis in captive wild animals.
Place Attachment Framework In Preservation Religious Built Environment

Place attachment is a scientific part in studying the relationship between human behavior and the built environment. It is widely used in sciences, especially in environmental psychology. However, only a few researchers are taking part in developing place attachment in a religious built environment, especially religious places. Place Attachment was compiled from various scientific perspectives in order to obtain comprehensive results, where literature review and discussion will describe the importance of this research. This study is expected to be able to examine a relationship between human behavior and built environment holistically in the context of preserving the religious-based built environment through place attachment theory. This paper shows that there is an opportunity for place attachment theory, which supports the preservation of the religious-based built environment with interdisciplinary studies in order to obtain holistic results. Moreover, qualitative, quantitative, and triangulation methods can be used for place attachment framework in preservation religious built environment research.
Towards Analyzing the Influence of Measurement Errors in Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Fluid Flows

Magnet resonance imaging does not only have a large number of applications in the field of medical examinations. In addition, several promising applications were also reported for the measurement of technical fluid flows and for the measurement of temperature fields in technical devices which do not allow for a classical access by either arrays of flow meters on the one hand or by arrays of temperature sensors such as thermocouples on the other hand. Due to the fact that magnet resonance imaging can be performed in a non-invasive manner, it has the advantage to provide relevant data without disturbing the velocity and temperature fields by external sensor devices. Moreover, measurement information can also be obtained for scenarios in which a direct access to the media under investigation is hardly possible due to constructive limitations. To make this kind of measurement applicable also for dynamic scenarios, not only the spatial resolution but also the temporal one needs to be sufficiently accurate. If the temporal resolution is of interest, an acceleration of the measurement process becomes possible by compressed sensing techniques which make use of an undersampling of the so-called $k$-space. However, such compressed sensing approaches require a reconstruction of the original fields of the physical variables to be measured. In this paper, it is shown how interval arithmetic approaches can be employed to solve the necessary optimality criteria for the fluid velocity reconstruction under the assumption of bounded measurement errors.
Defining and diagnosing burning mouth syndrome

Background. The authors conducted a study to ascertain participants’ perceptions of and confidence in their responses regarding the definition and diagnosis of burning mouth syndrome (BMS). Methods. The authors developed an eight-question questionaire with input from several experienced clinicians in the fields of oral medicine (OM) and orofacial pain (OFP) and sent it to directors (n = 20; OM = 10; OFP = 10) of accredited postgraduate training programs in North America. They used descriptive statistics to analyze the results. Results. The response rate was 65 percent (n = 13; OM = 6; OFP = 7). Participants reported a mean of 7.3 cases of BMS in any given three-month period, with 89 percent of these cases managed within the programs. They identified, with a high degree of confidence, overall criteria for establishing a definition and definitive diagnosis of BMS. Conclusions. There were multiple similarities among participants’ responses regarding the elements to be included in the definition and diagnosis of BMS. Practical Implications. These data provide information on current status of definitions and diagnostic guidelines and may assist in development of future consensus statements on BMS that incorporate additional geographical representation and appropriate methodology.
Decomposed Deep Reinforcement Learning for Robotic Control

We study how structural decomposition and interactive learning among multiple agents can be utilized by deep reinforcement learning in order to address high dimensional robotic control problems. We decompose the whole control space of a certain robot into multiple independent agents according to this robot’s physical structure. We then introduce the concept of Degree of Interaction (DoI) to describe the level of dependencies (i
Voting Advise Applications (VAAs) and young voting behavior in European Election (2014)

Young European voters are in the centre of the crisis regarding the low turnout at the European Parliamentary elections. The question guiding this paper is how VAAs may encourage political interest and political participation among young Europeans in the European elections. Our results suggest that filling up the questionnaire may have an effect of activating young users previously disinterested in politics. This activation relies on the previous degree of disinterest of the user and it is correlated with the gender and the political preferences of the user. Furthermore, young users previously disinterested are more likely to declare that they will vote for a political party in the left of the political spectrum according to the two dimensions related with left and right of the Eu-Vox 2014. These effects are different by country and should be contrasted with future research on the political attitudes of Young Europeans.
Not all Mistakes are Equal

In many tasks, classifiers play a fundamental role in the way an agent behaves. Most rational agents collect sensor data from the environment, classify it, and act based on that classification. Recently, deep neural networks (DNNs) have become the dominant approach to develop classifiers due to their excellent performance. When training and evaluating the performance of DNNs, it is normally assumed that the cost of all misclassification errors are equal. However, this is unlikely to be true in practice. Incorrect classification predictions can cause an agent to take inappropriate actions. The costs of these actions can be asymmetric, vary from agent-to-agent, and depend on context. In this paper, we discuss the importance of considering risk and uncertainty quantification together to reduce agents’ cost of making misclassifications using deep classifiers.
DEVELOPMENTAL TIME OF CREONTIADES DILUTUS (STÅL) (HEMIPTERA: MIRIDAE) IN RELATION TO TEMPERATURE

The developmental time of the green mirid Creontiades dilutus (Stål) reared on green bean was examined in relation to 5 temperatures ranging from 19 to 31 ± 1 °C. Using thermal summation and a threshold temperature of 12.3 °C, 280 day‐degrees was estimated for development from egg to adult.
Projecting “The Extended Mind:” Expanding Visual and Interactive Space for Remote Collaboration Experiences in Mobile Mixed Reality

This study investigates how pervasive mobile mixed reality telep-resence can assist users in collaborative tasks, entertainment, and navigation, by expanding their visible and interactive space within a shared mixed reality environment. To address this issue, this work proposes and discusses the Spatial Livestream Composition (SLC) method that combines both directionalized live media streams and photospherical imagery in a single collaborative multiuser environment. The proposed method was implemented in three proof-of-concept applications, and two of them were validated in user studies. The preliminary results have shown decrease in mental workload, increase in spatial and situational awareness, as well as increase in user engagement in comparison with similar applications with regular, non mixed reality, interfaces. The rest of this paper discusses current and future applications of proposed method.
Driving Exploration by Maximum Distribution in Gaussian Process Bandits

The problem of finding optimal solutions of stochastic functions over continuous domains is common in several real-world applications, such as, e.g. , advertisement allocation, dynamic pricing, and power control in wireless networks. The optimization process is customarily performed by selecting input points sequentially and receiving a noisy observation from the function. In this paper, we resort to the Multi-Armed Bandit approach, aiming at optimizing stochastic functions when keeping at a pace the regret ( i.e. , the loss incurred during the learning process) during the learning process. In particular, we focus on smooth stochastic functions, as it is known that any algorithm suffers from a constant per-round regret when the domain is continuous, and the function does not satisfy any kind of regularity. Our main original contribution is the provision of a general family of algorithms, which, under the mild assumption that stochastic functions are a realization of a Gaussian Process, provides a regret of the order of 𝑂 ( (cid:112) 𝛾 𝑇 𝑇 ) , being 𝛾 𝑇 the maximum information gain and 𝑇 the time horizon used for the learning process. Furthermore, we design a specific algorithm of our family, called DAGP-UCB , which exploits the structure of GPs to select the next arm to pull more effectively than the previous algorithms available in the state of the art, thus speeding up the learning process. In particular, we show the superior performance of DAGP-UCB in both synthetic and applicative settings, comparing it with the state-of-the-art algorithms.
Quantum yields of phytoplankton photosynthesis in the Gulf of Aqaba (Elat), Northern Red Sea

The Gulf of Aqaba (Elat) is characterized by oligotrophic waters and low productivity conditions in summer, when the euphotic zone of the stratified water column is severely nutrient-depleted. Winter is moderately productive, when mixing injects nutrients into the lit upper waters. The annual phytoplankton cycle and the bathymetric distribution of biomass and photosynthetic activity in the Gulf are analyzed in conjunction with the harvesting and utilization of light by cells. The harvesting of light energy at any depth is shown as an interaction between the optical properties of cells, a*, and the intensity and spectral distribution of the underwater light field. The efficiency by which phytoplankton cells utilize the absorbed light energy is the quantum yield of the photosynthetic process, Φ. The efficiency of light utilization by phytoplankton depends on the nutrient status of cells, their photoacclimation to ambient light, and the irradiance to which they are exposed. We show that the seasonal and spatial changes in the quantum yield of photosynthesis control the wax and wane of the different phytoplankton assemblages in the Gulf, thereby ultimately determining the flux of energy fueling all of the Gulf's planktonic and benthic biota.
Understanding Large River-Floodplain EcosystemsSignificant economic advantages and increased biodiversity and stability would result from restoration of impaired systems

have modified large river-floodplain ecosystems to the extent that it is difficult to recognize major variables that once regulated the systems and to account for the surviving biota. The natural functions of these systems have practically disappeared, principally because modifications have tended to prevent regular flooding. Studying these and other ecosystems that now have welldefined land/water boundaries has not only produced two classes of ecologists, terrestrial and aquatic, but in aquatic ecology has also given rise to limnologists and stream ecologists whose theories usually presume relatively static water levels (Junk et al. 1989). Forbes (1895) in the United States and Antipa (1911, 1928) in Europe recognized some of the ecological attributes and value of river-flood-
VerSecTis - An Agent based Model Checker for Security Protocols

We present VerSecTis – a new experimental tool for the verification of timed security protocols’ (TSP) modelled by Timed Interpreted Systems (TIS). In addition to the TSP’s time-independent properties, our tool can also examine the time dependencies of the TSP’s executions on which their security depends. The verification method consists of a new TSPs’ modelling method and a translation of the reachability problem for TIS to the Satisfiability Modulo Theories problem. We also deliver nineteen TSPs to verify, and we plan to expand the tool with further protocols.
Seroprevalence of Brucella abortus in buffaloes and wildebeests in the Serengeti ecosystem: a threat to humans and domestic ruminants.

A sero-survey was conducted in buffalo and wildebeests in Ngorongoro Crater and Serengeti National Park (SNP) collectively known as Serengeti ecosystem to establish the level of exposure to Brucella arbortus . Rose Bengal Plate Agglutination test and Competitive ELISA were used serially in the analysis of 205 serum samples. The results indicated that 24% and 17% of buffalo and wildebeest populations respectively are exposed to the bacterium. The difference in the level of exposure of these herbivores to the bacterium in Ngorongoro Crater and SNP was insignificant (P>0.05), suggesting that probably the infection is sustainable in the ecosystem. Because wildlife has high interaction with livestock in Ngorongoro Conservation Area, it is likely that livestock are at risk of exposure to the infection. More studies are recommended to understand its epidemiology and isolate the bacterium for characterization. A close monitoring of the wildlife populations in the two protected areas is important to establish the impact of the infection on the reproductive performance. Furthermore public awareness to the communities in the interface should be strengthened to reduce the risk of human exposure to Brucella infection.