Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A beginners guide to adaptive dynamics

The aim of these notes is to illustrate, largely by way of examples, how standard ecological models can be put into an evolutionary perspective in order to gain insight in the role of natural selection in shaping life history characteristics. We limit ourselves to phenotypic evolution under clonal reproduction (that is, we simply ignore the importance of genes and sex). Another basic assumption is that mutation occurs on a time scale which is long relative to the time scale of convergence to an ecological attractor. We begin by illustrating the idea of interaction via environmental variables through the example of competition for substrate in the chemostat. In this context we explain the trait/strategy substitution sequence, capturing how successful invaders/mutants outcompete the resident and then become the new resident. We also introduce the PIP, the pairwise invasibility plot, as a convenient graphical tool to study the adaptive dynamics of a one-dimensional trait. We high-light the pessimization principle: if the environmental condition is one-dimensional, mutation and natural selection inevitably lead to deterioration/Verelendung. We illuminate the Tragedy of the Commons as well as evolutionary suicide and, while we’re about it, adaptive dynamics as an added feature to a bifurcation diagram (with, possibly, AD-induced branch switching). Then we rewrite the invasion exponent as a function of resident and invader trait, define the selection gradient and turn to the core of the theory: the classification of singular points (where the selection gradient vanishes) in terms of ESS, CSS, mutual invasibility, converging – and diverging dimorphisms and branching points. An extensive collection of allied examples focuses on the timing of reproduction of semelparous organisms. We show how to analyse steady states of structured population models, how fitness measures relate to the dimension of the environmental condition and to the specific form of density dependence and we establish the central role of the ideal free distribution (i.e., the principle of indifference). We also describe the “resident strikes back” phenomenon. In the final section we very concisely sketch the wider perspective, alternative theories and the agenda of AD. An almost identical earlier version of these notes appeared in: Summer School on Mathematical Biology, A. Margheri, C. Rebelo, F. Zanolin (eds.), CIM, Lisboa, Portugal, 2002. 2000 Mathematics Subject Classification: 92D15, 92D25.
Growth in Oral Reading Fluency in a Semitransparent Orthography: Concurrent and Predictive Relations With Reading Proficiency in Norwegian, Grades 2–5

This study investigated an adaptation of the Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) measure of the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills into a European context for the Norwegian language, which has a more transparent orthography than English. Second-order latent growth curve modeling was used to examine the longitudinal measurement invariance of the ORF measure, the growth in oral reading fluency within and across grades 2–5, the relative stability of the ORF measure, and the relationship between the ORF measure and high-stakes national tests of reading proficiency. Results showed that the ORF passages measured the same underlying construct, but some passages stood out regarding the invariance pattern. The oral reading fluency growth curve models demonstrated a linear growth in grades 2 and 3 and a nonlinear growth in grades 4 and 5. Initial individual differences varied more than growth rates, which for all were positive but largest in grades 3 and 4. High relative stability in the ORF measure was found across grades. The concurrent and predictive relations of the ORF measure on the Norwegian national reading tests were moderate to strong (range = .44–.75). Findings indicated that the ORF is a reliable and valid measure of reading in Norwegian grades 2–5 and easy and fast to administer. The ORF measure might contribute to early identification of students at risk for reading difficulties in an orthography more transparent than English. Implications for school practice and future research are discussed.
Unearth Hidden Assets through Community Co-design and Co-production

Abstract This paper discusses main findings of a pilot study, which explored how co-design and co-production could support asset-based community development. Increasingly, community developments have shifted toward an ‘asset-based’ approach, which concentrates on uncovering and mobilising existing assets in a community to create new opportunities. The study experimented with different co-design techniques to investigate how they could help identify unrecognised assets. Four pilot studies were conducted with key stakeholders in four communities. The study brought together researchers and local communities with the objective to co-design, co-develop and co-analyse the pilots. The results suggested that co-design was perceived as empowering. In most cases, it was ‘people’ that were regarded the most important assets in a community. Engaging people in a creative process could help them appreciate their skills, knowledge and creativity, and recognise themselves as assets. This research advanced the knowledge in Social Design by demonstrating how co-design could support community developments.
Testing against a parametric regression function using ideas from shape restricted estimation

A formal likelihood ratio hypothesis test for the validity of a parametric regression function is proposed, using a large-dimensional, nonparametric double cone alternative. For example, the test against a constant function uses the alternative of increasing or decreasing regression functions, and the test against a linear function uses the convex or concave alternative. The proposed test is exact, unbiased and the critical value is easily computed. The power of the test increases to one as the sample size increases, under very mild assumptions { even when the alternative is mis-specied. That is, the power of the test converges to one for any true regression function that deviates (in a non-degenerate way) from the parametric null hypothesis. We also formulate a test for the linear versus partial linear model. Simulations show that our procedure behaves well consistently when compared with other methods. Although the alternative t is non-parametric, no tuning parameters are involved.
Privacy-preserving Multi-hop Locks for Blockchain Scalability and Interoperability ∗

Tremendous growth in cryptocurrency usage is exposing the inherent scalability issues with permissionless blockchain technology. Payment-channel networks (PCNs) have emerged as the most practically deployed solution to mitigate the scalability issues, allowing the bulk of payments between two users to be carried out off-chain. Unfortunately, as reported in the literature and further demonstrated in this paper, current PCNs do not provide meaningful security and privacy guarantees. In this work, we study and design secure and privacypreserving PCNs. We start with a security analysis of existing PCNs, reporting a new attack that applies to all major PCNs, including the Lightning Network, and allows an attacker to steal the fees from honest intermediaries in the same payment path. We then formally define privacy-preserving multi-hop locks (PrivMuLs), a novel cryptographic primitive that serves as a cornerstone for the design of secure and privacy-preserving PCNs. We present several provably secure cryptographic instantiations that make PrivMuLs compatible with the vast majority of cryptocurrencies. In particular, we show that (linear) homomorphic one-way functions suffice to construct PrivMuLs for PCNs supporting such functions in their script language (e.g., Ethereum). We also propose a construction based on ECDSA signatures that does not require scripts, thus solving a prominent open problem in the field. PrivMuLs constitute a generic primitive whose usefulness goes beyond multi-hop payments in a single PCN and we show how to realize atomic swaps and interoperable PCNs from this primitive. Finally, our performance evaluation on a commodity machine finds that PrivMuLs operations can be performed in less than 100 milliseconds and require less than 500 bytes of communication overhead, even in the worst case. In fact, after acknowledging our attack, the Lightning Network developers are right now integrating ∗This is a draft (revision October 23, 2018) †Both authors contributed equally and are considered to be co-first authors. ‡ This work was done while this author was at Purdue University. ECDSA-based PrivMuLs into their PCN. This demonstrates the practicality of our approach and its impact on the security, privacy, interoperability, and scalability of today’s cryptocurrencies.
Constructive Knowledge Management Model and Information Retrieval Methods for Software Engineering

: In this book chapter, we will discuss the two important trends in modern software engineering (SE) regarding the utilization of knowledge management (KM) and information retrieval (IR). Software engineering is a discipline in which knowledge and experience, acquired in the course of many years, play a fundamental role. For software development organizations, the main assets are not manufacturing plants, buildings, and machines, but the knowledge held by their employees. Software engineering has long recognized the need for managing knowledge and that the SE community could learn much from the KM community. We will introduce the fundamental concepts of KM theory and practice and mainly discusses the aspects of knowledge management that are valuable to software development organizations and how can a KM system for such an organization be implemented. In addition to knowledge management, information retrieval (IR) also plays a crucial role in SE. IR is a study of how to efficiently and effectively retrieve a required piece of information from a large corpus of storage entities like documents. As software development organizations grow larger and have to deal with larger numbers (probably millions) of documents of various types, IR becomes an essential tool for retrieving any price of information that a software developer wants within a short time. IR can be used both as a general-purpose tool to improve the productivity of developers or as an enabler tool to facilitate a KM system.
ADHD Symptoms in Adults with Asperger's Disorder: Findings from a Sample

Introduction: DSM-IV and ICD-10 criteria do not allow co-diagnosis of Pervasive Developmental Disorders (PDD) and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), but some researchers have noted that persons with PDD including Asperger's disorder (AS) sometimes have symptoms similar to those of ADHD. The present study evaluated ADHD symptoms in adults with AS using Conner's Adult ADHD Rating Scales screening version (CAARS- S:SV) in a Japanese sample. Methods: The present study evaluated ADHD symptoms in 40 adults with AS and 38 normal adults using CAARS-S:SV, Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ), Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ), and Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ). The AS and the normal control group did not differ significantly in age, sex ratio, or estimated IQ. Results: Total, Inattention/Memory, and Hyperactivity/Restlessness scores of CAARS-S:SV were significantly higher in persons with AS than those in controls. In persons with AS, there was no significant correlation among three CAARS-S: SV scores and AQ. Discussion: These findings indicated that adults with AS have considerable ADHD symptoms, as well as in childhood and adolescence reported in previous reports. The results that in persons with AS total score of AQ was not correlated with CAARS scores indicated that ASD and ADHD have different pathophysiology.
Why children join and stay in sports clubs: case studies in Australian, French and German swimming clubs

This article builds upon research on youth sport clubs conducted from a socio-cultural perspective by reporting on a study that inquired into the reasons why children aged 9–12 joined swimming clubs in France, Germany and Australia. Comprising three case studies it employed a mixed method approach with results considered within the framework of Côté and colleagues' Development Model of Sport Participation (DMSP). It identifies the importance of parents, the social dimensions of experience in the clubs and of appropriate competition in attracting the children to the clubs and keeping them there.
Diagnostics of stellar modelling from spectroscopy and photometry of globular clusters

We conduct a series of comparisons between spectroscopic and photometric observations of globular clusters and stellar models to examine their predictive power. Data from medium-to-high resolution spectroscopic surveys of lithium allow us to investigate first dredge-up and extra mixing in two clusters well separated in metallicity. Abundances at first dredge-up are satisfactorily reproduced but there is preliminary evidence to suggest that the models overestimate the luminosity at which the surface composition first changes in the lowest metallicity system. Our models also begin extra mixing at luminosities that are too high, demonstrating a significant discrepancy with observations at low metallicity. We model the abundance changes during extra mixing as a thermohaline process and determine that the usual diffusive form of this mechanism cannot simultaneously reproduce both the carbon and lithium observations. Hubble Space Telescope photometry provides turn-off and bump magnitudes in a large number of globular clusters and offers the opportunity to better test stellar modelling as function of metallicity. We directly compare the predicted main-sequence turn-off and bump magnitudes as well as the distance-independent parameter $\Delta M_V \, {\rm {MSTO}}_{\rm {bump}}$ . We require 15 Gyr isochrones to match the main-sequence turn-off magnitude in some clusters and cannot match the bump in low-metallicity systems. Changes to the distance modulus, metallicity scale and bolometric corrections may impact on the direct comparisons but $\Delta M_V \, {\rm {MSTO}}_{\rm {bump}}$ , which is also underestimated from the models, can only be improved through changes to the input physics. Overshooting at the base of the convective envelope with an efficiency that is metallicity dependent is required to reproduce the empirically determined value of $\Delta M_V \, {\rm {MSTO}}_{\rm {bump}}$ . (Less)
High-resolution optical spectroscopy of RS Ophiuchi during 2008 -- 2009

AS acknowledges funding from the European Commission under the Marie Curie Host Fellowships Action for Early Stage Research Training SPARTAN programme Contract No MEST-CT- 2004-007512, University of Leicester, UK; the Finnish Graduate School in Astronomy and Space Physics; and Academy of Finland grant 277375. This work is based on observations made with the Nordic Optical Telescope, operated on the island of La Palma jointly by Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, in the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias. The data presented here were obtained in part with ALFOSC, which is provided by the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (IAA) under a joint agreement with the University of Copenhagen and NOTSA. We acknowledge with thanks the variable star observations from the AAVSO International Database contributed by observers worldwide and used in this research.
Gender roles on social networking sites: investigating reciprocal relationships between Dutch adolescents’ hypermasculinity and hyperfemininity and sexy online self-presentations

Abstract Previous research has suggested that adolescents play out stereotypical gender roles in their self-presentations in social media. However, longitudinal research on the relationships between (sexy) online self-presentation and adolescents’ gender role orientation is lacking. The present study investigated whether endorsing a stereotypical gender role orientation (i.e., hypermasculinity for boys, hyperfemininity for girls) predisposes adolescents to engage in sexy self-presentation or to look at others’ sexy self-presentations in social media. In addition, we investigated whether engaging in sexy self-presentation and looking at others’ sexy self-presentation predicted an increased hypergender orientation over time. Using a three-wave short-term longitudinal panel survey among 1467 Dutch adolescents with six-month time intervals between waves, we found that adolescents’ hypergender orientation predicted more frequent sexy self-presentation and exposure to others’ sexy self-presentations in social media. Hypergender orientations were not predicted by these online behaviors and no gender differences were found.
Quantitative measurements of electromechanical response with a combined optical beam and interferometric atomic force microscope

An ongoing challenge in atomic force microscope (AFM) experiments is the quantitative measurement of cantilever motion. The vast majority of AFMs use the optical beam deflection (OBD) method to infer the deflection of the cantilever. The OBD method is easy to implement, has impressive noise performance, and tends to be mechanically robust. However, it represents an indirect measurement of the cantilever displacement, since it is fundamentally an angular rather than a displacement measurement. Here, we demonstrate a metrological AFM that combines an OBD sensor with a laser Doppler vibrometer (LDV) to enable accurate measurements of the cantilever velocity and displacement. The OBD/LDV AFM allows a host of quantitative measurements to be performed, including in-situ measurements of cantilever oscillation modes in piezoresponse force microscopy. As an example application, we demonstrate how this instrument can be used for accurate quantification of piezoelectric sensitivity—a longstanding goal in the electromechanical community.
An Integrative Approach to Understand the Biogeography, Taxonomy and Ecology of the Macroheteroceran Fauna of the Amanos Mountains in Southern Turkey

In 2014 and 2015, Macroheterocera were collected in three altitudinal transects in the Amanos mountains from 0 m up to 1104 m above sea-level. Altogether, 249 specimens were registered. Tissues from 91 selected specimens (42 Noctuidae/Erebidae, 35 Geometridae, 14 others) were submitted to DNA barcoding, partly for identification purposes, partly to investigate zoogeographical questions about the relationships between Anatolian and Levantine populations. The sequencing was very successful (97%, only three failures) and revealed to include 81 BINs, 13 of them new for the BOLD database. Three species (Eublemma cf. gratissima, Erebidae, 3.4% from E. suppuncta; Dyspessa cf. ulula, Cossidae, 9.1% from D. ulula; Cryphia cf. ravula Noctuidae 4.7% from C. ravula) may be new for science and require further taxonomical analysis. All of them differ by more than 3.4% from their nearest neighbours, as currently present on BOLD database. In two other cases (genera Mythimna (Noctuidae) and Zeuzera (Cossidae), we found smaller genetic divergences (1.3-2.0%) from their European relatives, which require further taxonomic investigation. Geometra papilionaria (Linnaeus, 1758) and Macaria notata (Linnaeus, 1758) (Geometridae), previously only known from the Black Sea Region in Turkey, now were reported in the Amanos mountains, thus considerably extending the distribution areas southwards. Moreover, Lomaspilis marginata (Linnaeus, 1758) (Geometridae), is possibly new for Turkey as the only previous literature record (Kocak and Kemal, 2009) is doubtful as no authentic specimens have been traced. We present several cases where the DNA barcodes helped to clear up zoogeographical patterns.
Potentiation of Tumor Necrosis Factor-Induced NF-κB Activation by Deacetylase Inhibitors Is Associated with a Delayed Cytoplasmic Reappearance of IκBα

Previous studies have implicated acetylases and deacetylases in regulating the transcriptional activity of NF-B. Here, we show that inhibitors of deacetylases such as trichostatin A (TSA) and sodium butyrate (NaBut) potentiated TNF-induced expression of several natural NF-B-driven promoters. This transcriptional synergism observed between TNF and TSA (or NaBut) required intact B sites in all promoters tested and was biologically relevant as demonstrated by RNase protection on two instances of endogenous NF-B-regulated gene transcription. Importantly, TSA prolonged both TNF-induced DNA-binding activity and the presence of NF-B in the nucleus. We showed that the p65 subunit of NF-B was acetylated in vivo. However, this acetylation was weak, suggesting that other mechanisms could be implicated in the potentiated binding and transactivation activities of NF-B after TNF plus TSA versus TNF treatment. Western blot and immunofluorescence confocal microscopy experiments revealed a delay in the cytoplasmic reappearance of the IB inhibitor that correlated temporally with the prolonged intranuclear binding and presence of NF-B. This delay was due neither to a defect in IB mRNA production nor to a nuclear retention of IB but was rather due to a persistent proteasome-mediated degradation of IB. A prolongation of IB kinase activity could explain, at least partially, the delayed IB cytoplasmic reappearance observed in presence of TNF plus TSA.
Facing Employers and Customers: What Do Gaze and Expressions Tell About Soft Skills?

Eye gaze and facial expressions are central to face-to-face social interactions. These behavioral cues and their connections to first impressions have been widely studied in psychology and computing literature, but limited to a single situation. Utilizing ubiquitous multimodal sensors coupled with advances in computer vision and machine learning, we investigate the connections between these behavioral cues and perceived soft skills in two diverse workplace situations (job interviews and reception desk). Pearson's correlation analysis shows a moderate connection between certain facial expressions, eye gaze cues and perceived soft skills in job interviews (r ϵ [-30,30]) and desk (r ϵ [20,36]) situations. Results of our computational framework to infer perceived soft skills indicates a low predictive power of eye gaze, facial expressions, and their combination in both interviews (R2 ϵ [0.02,0.21]) and desk (R2 ϵ [0.05,0.15]) situations. Our work has important implications for employee training and behavioral feedback systems.