Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Genetic analysis of cultured and wild populations of Mytilus coruscus based on mitochondrial DNA.

DNA sequences from the mitochondrial gene cytochrome oxidase subunit Ⅰ (mtDNA COI) were used to estimate the genetic variability in two wild populations and two cultured populations of the hard shelled mussel, Mytilus coruscus. Thirty haplotypes were identified in the four populations. The cultured populations exhibited a lower number of haplotypes and genetic diversity than those of the wild populations, suggesting that a small number of effective founding breeders contributed to the genetic variation of the cultured populations. No significant differentiation was observed between the cultured population and local wild population, implying that persistent gene flow occurred in these populations. This genetic survey is intended as a baseline for future genetic monitoring of M coruscus aquaculture stocks.
Elementary District Metered Areas design of looped water 1 distribution networks with multiple sources 2

the identification of district metered areas (DMAs ) in existing water distribution 13 networks is a complex problem, whose solution stron gly depends on the type of network. The 14 purpose of the present work is to present a new met hodology to identify isolated DMAs in 15 water distribution network having a large number of water sources, such as autonomous 16 reservoirs (for example supplied by pumping station s) directly connected to the distribution 17 network. The method proposed is based on graph theo ry. Initially, the network is subdivided 18 to the least terms into “elementary” districts, are as of influence of each supply source. In a 19 second step, the resulting elementary areas are con veniently united to form possible layouts of 20 DMAs solutions, respecting the criteria of independ cy, isolation and self-sufficiency. The 21 union process takes into account the size of distri ct and the overall network resilience. The 22
Effects of Personnel Policy on the Public Administration Paradigm Shift: From Merit to Neo-managerial

Abstract The literature in the field of public administration details the factors that have given rise to a new method by which government agencies provide public services. These factors range from a shift in the curriculum of Public Administration graduate programs to the emerging emphasis on global citizenship. This study presents a balanced overview of how these factors have contributed to this paradigm shift, which is a continuous and ongoing transformation. They include an emulation of the private-sector business model, a redirected educational focus of public administration programs, human resource policy changes, reactions to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, decentralization, and the contracting of public services to private providers.
YOLO 4 D : A Spatio-temporal Approach for Real-time Multi-object Detection and Classification from LiDAR Point Clouds

In this paper, YOLO4D is presented for Spatio-temporal Real-time 3D Multi-object detection and classification from LiDAR point clouds. Automated Driving dynamic scenarios are rich in temporal information. Most of the current 3D Object Detection approaches are focused on processing the spatial sensory features, either in 2D or 3D spaces, while the temporal factor is not fully exploited yet, especially from 3D LiDAR point clouds. In YOLO4D approach, the 3D LiDAR point clouds are aggregated over time as a 4D tensor; 3D space dimensions in addition to the time dimension, which is fed to a one-shot fully convolutional detector, based on YOLO v2 architecture. The outputs are the oriented 3D Object Bounding Box information, together with the object class. Two different techniques are evaluated to incorporate the temporal dimension; recurrence and frame stacking. The experiments conducted on KITTI dataset, show the advantages of incorporating the temporal dimension.
Identifying pine-inhabiting Lophodermium species using PCR-RFLP.

Three species of Lophodermium are reported from pine in New Zealand—the previously recorded L. conigenum (Brunaud) Hilitzer and L. pinastri (Schrad.) Chevall. , and the newly reported L. molitoris Minter. All are saprobes with an initial endophytic phase. The North American species L. seditiosum Minter, Staley & Millar is considered a potential threat to New Zealand’s plantation forests. Because these fungi are difficult to distinguish morphologically, a simple molecular method was developed to distinguish the four species. After PCR amplification, the ITS* region is digested using HaeIII and HpaII in a single reaction, resulting in unique RFLP banding patterns for each of the species treated. A phylogenetic analysis based on ITS sequences revealed two genetically distinct groups within L. pinastri, one North American and one European. All the New Zealand isolates of L. pinastri tested were identical to the North American group. Further development of the method described here, so that fungal DNA is targeted directly from infected plant tissue, will provide an effective quarantine tool for New Zealand’s forestry industry.
Can we use rendaku for phonological argumentation?

Abstract This paper addresses the general issue of the quality of phonological data, using rendaku as a case study. Rendaku is a widely-discussed voicing process that accompanies compound formation in Japanese. The issue of the quality of phonological data has been discussed from time to time from various perspectives throughout the history of phonological research, and we are recently witnessing renewed interest in this topic. This paper takes up rendaku as a case study to address this issue. Rendaku has been used to argue for many theoretical devices, but it is rarely acknowledged in the theoretical literature that rendaku involves extensive lexical irregularity. The specific question addressed in this study is whether it is appropriate to use rendaku for phonological argumentation. The answer that this paper proposes is yes, but the more crucial lesson is that theoretical phonology should evaluate the quality of phonological data more explicitly. The current discussion offers a first step toward establishing general guidelines about what kind of evidence can be used to decide whether a pattern under question is phonological or not.
STUDY THE EFFECT OF MYCOPLASMA CONTAMINATION OF EGGS USED IN VIRUS TITRATION AND EFFICACY OF SOME LIVE ATTENUATED POULTRY VIRAL VACCINES

Objective: The study of Mycoplasma gallisepticum (MG) infection is needed, not only to understand the disease process but also to understand the interference with the evaluation of some live viral poultry vaccines. This study aims to investigate the titration and potency of some live attenuated poultry viral vaccines; Newcastle disease, infectious bronchitis, infectious bursal disease, and Reo in both specific pathogen-free (SPF) embryonated chicken eggs (ECEs) and chickens. Methods: Titration of live attenuated viral poultry vaccines in ECEs was carried out by dividing the inoculated eggs into four groups; the pre-, simultaneously-, post-, and non-MG contaminated. MG effect on the potency test was carried out using seventeen groups of SPF chickens (25 chicken/ group) placed into separate isolators. Each live attenuated viral poultry vaccine was inoculated into 4 groups. Results: The highest titer of these vaccines that appeared in MG pre- contaminated ECEs were 10 11, 107.5, 107.9, and 10, respectively. The lowest vaccinetiters that appeared in non-MG contaminated ECEs were 108, 106, 106.8, and 1067.5, respectively. Although the potency of these previous vaccines indicated thatthe highest antibodies titer that appeared in MG pre-infected vaccinated chickens were 7.5 log, 36 enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay unit (EU), and42 EU, respectively; the lowest antibodies titer that appeared in non-MG infected vaccinated chickens were 6.5 log22, 12 EU, 17 EU, and 10 EU, respectively. Conclusion: The present study findings underline the importance of using Mycoplasma -free eggs or chicken for the production of virus vaccines. Keywords: Mycoplasma gallisepticum, Newcastle disease virus, Infectious bronchitis virus, Infectious bursal disease virus, Reo virus, Chicken, Specific pathogen-free eggs. Keywords: M yc oplasma g allisepticum ,Ne w castlediseasevirus,In f ectiousb r onchitisvirus,In f ectiousbursaldiseasevirus, R eovirus,Chic k en,Specific pathogen-f r ee eggs.
Policy conformance in the corporate blog space Conference or Workshop Item

This paper describes part of a solution to the interpretation of human-readable policy documents into semi-automatic conformance checking. Using a socio-cognitively motivated representation of shared knowledge, and applying appropriate inference mechanisms from a normative perspective, a mechanism to automatically detect potentially non-conforming blog entries is detailed. Candidate non-conforming blog entries are flagged for a human to make a judgement on whether they should be published. Analysis of data from a public corporate blog is analysed and results suggest the methodology has merit.
Hindered Rotation in Molecules with Relatively High Potential Barriers

The theory of hindered rotation has been applied to the type of asymmetric molecule in which the hindering barrier is high enough so that the hindered rotation splittings of the energy levels are small compared with the rotational energies but yet large enough to be observable in the microwave spectrum. The specific type of molecule considered consists of a rigid asymmetric component which may undergo a hindered rotation about the symmetry axis of a rigid symmetric component where the symmetric component is in addition assumed to have threefold symmetry and the asymmetric component at least a plane of symmetry containing the symmetry axis of the symmetric component. An example might be the acetaldehyde molecule, CH3CHO.In principle, the theory developed by Burkhard and Dennison can be used directly but in practice the method is difficult to apply to such a molecule since the matrix elements of the Hamiltonian used previously do not degenerate naturally or easily to those for the rigid asymmetric rotator i.
Microbial transformations of substituted benzenes during infiltration of river water to groundwater: Laboratory column studies

The microbial transformations of dimethyl- and dichlorobenzenes have been studied in laboratory aquifer columns simulating saturated-flow conditions typical for a river water/groundwater infiltration system. The behavior of all compounds in the laboratory was qualitatively the same as that observed at a field site. Both dimethyl- and dichlorobenzenes were biotransformed under aerobic conditions, the dimethylbenzenes faster than the chlorinated analogues. Evidence is presented that dimethylbenzenes are degraded by denitrifying bacteria under anaerobic conditions. Dichlorobenzenes were not transformed under these conditions. Significant differences in the rates of transformation between isomers were found. The dimethylbenzenes and p-dichlorobenzene appeared to be utilized by bacteria as sole carbon and energy sources. Transfer of rate constants determined in the laboratory at elevated substrate concentrations to the field was difficult.
Development of multiplex PCR assays for the detection of genetically modified plants

The terms genetically modified (GM) or transgenic plant describes an organism that contains a gene or genes that have been introduced artificially in the genome in order to improve product quality, pest resistance and agronomic traits. The number of cultivated GM crops has been growing in recent years despite the intense discussion about the benefits or damage that these organisms may have on humans and ecosystems. For this reason, there is great interest in developing effective methods for the identification of GM plants in different stages of the chain of cultivation, processing and distribution. The detection of a GM plant in a sample is carried out by targeting the most common genetic elements (promotors, protein-coding regions or terminators) used in GM constructs or inserts. The P35S and the T-nos elements are the typical targets of screening approaches, but a variety of new authorized and unauthorized transgenic plants have been developed without such elements. This work describes the development of multiplex PCR assays for detection of seven transgenic elements that cover almost all known GM plants: P35S, T-nos, bar, ctp2-cp4epsps, P35S-pat, Cry1Ab and FMV35S. We started by testing 20 target regions by singleplex PCR defined by 28 PCR primers collected from the literature or designed by us. The regions that were successfully amplified by singleplex PCR were then combined in five multiplex PCRs, two of them including a chloroplast DNA (cpDNA) trnL gene as internal control for plant DNA. The target regions were designed to yield amplicons with different lengths to be easily discriminated by conventional and capillary electrophoresis. Our multiplex PCRs successfully detected the presence of transgenic elements in 17 reference samples from GM plants. Our method has the advantage of targeting different elements simultaneously, avoiding false-negative results and decreasing the cost of the screening assay. The use of target regions of small length allows the analysis of forensic samples with degraded DNA, as the detection of illegal GMO crops or to verify the labelling of food products.
Diverse hypolithic refuge communities in the McMurdo Dry Valleys

Abstract Hyper-arid deserts present extreme challenges to life. The environmental buffering provided by quartz and other translucent rocks allows hypolithic microbial communities to develop on sub-soil surfaces of such rocks. These refuge communities have been reported, for many locations worldwide, to be predominantly cyanobacterial in nature. Here we report the discovery in Antarctica’s hyper-arid McMurdo Dry Valleys of three clearly distinguishable types of hypolithic community. Based on gross colonization morphology and identification of dominant taxa, we have classified hypolithic communities as Type I (cyanobacterial dominated), Type II (fungal dominated) and Type III (moss dominated). This discovery supports a growing awareness of the high biocomplexity in Antarctic deserts, emphasizes the possible importance of cryptic microbial communities in nutrient cycling and provides evidence for possible successional community processes within a cold arid landscape.
24‐line of Brillouin‐Erbium fiber laser utilizing a Fabry–Pérot cavity in L‐band

In this paper, the generation of a multiwavelength laser source from a Brillouin‐Erbium fiber laser in the long wavelength band (L‐band) region is experimentally demonstrated. The proposed laser system utilizes a Fabry–Pérot cavity formed by fiber‐loop mirrors. Twenty‐four lines of Brillouin–Stokes with line spacings of 10 GHz are obtained in the L‐band region. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 45: 165–167, 2005; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.20758
Recent basal melting of a mid-latitude glacier on Mars

Evidence for past basal melting of young (late Amazonian), debris-covered glaciers in Mars’ mid-latitudes is extremely rare. Thus, it is widely thought that these viscous flow features (VFFs) have been perennially frozen to their beds. We identify an instance of recent, localized wet-based mid-latitude glaciation, evidenced by a candidate esker emerging from a VFF in a tectonic rift in Tempe Terra. Eskers are sedimentary ridges deposited in ice-walled meltwater conduits and are indicative of glacial melting. We compare the candidate esker to terrestrial analogues, present a geomorphic map of landforms in the rift, and develop a landsystem model to explain their formation. We propose that the candidate esker formed during a transient phase of wet-based glaciation. We then consider the similarity between the geologic setting of the new candidate esker and that of the only other candidate esker to be identified in association with an existing mid-latitude VFF; both are within tectonic graben/rifts proximal to volcanic provinces. Finally, we calculate potential basal temperatures for a range of VFF thicknesses, driving stresses, mean annual surface temperatures, and geothermal heat fluxes, which unlike previous studies, include the possible role of internal strain heating. Strain heating can form an important additional heat source, especially in flow convergence zones, or where ice is warmer due to elevated surface temperatures or geothermal heat flux. Elevated geothermal heat flux within rifts, perhaps combined with locally-elevated strain heating, may have permitted wet-based glaciation during the late Amazonian, when cold climates precluded more extensive wet-based glaciation on Mars.
The Need of a Timing Model for the AUTOSAR software standard

Even though recognized as a major challenge in system integration, the recently published AUTOSAR standard lacks aspects of timing and performance. Reasons include mismatch between industry requirements and many –mostly academic– timing analysis approaches. The talk highlights key technical and non-technical challenges for defining a comprehensive timing model for AUTOSAR, and outlines requirements for possible solutions. Examples from practice and a look into the industrial process of designing –and the way of thinking– shall help structuring the discussions.
Convergence Rates of Proximal Gradient Methods via the Convex Conjugate

We give a novel proof of the $O(1/k)$ and $O(1/k^2)$ convergence rates of the proximal gradient and accelerated proximal gradient methods for composite convex minimization. The crux of the new proof is an upper bound constructed via the convex conjugate of the objective function.
Dynamic Optimization of Asset Allocation Strategies under Downside Risk Control: An Application to Futures Markets

We introduce a novel out-of-sample approach to solve a real-time investor's multiperiod portfolio choice problem in a setting with (time-varying) conditional predictability, multiple assets and downside risk control. The method involves defining a discrete set of one-period portfolio allocation policies and choosing among them at portfolio revision dates within a discrete-time stochastic dynamic programming approach so as to maximize an investor's expected utility. Our framing of the portfolio problem overcomes the curse of dimensionality that is associated with time-varying investment opportunity sets and multiple assets. We apply our technique to dynamic investment decision problems in futures markets and demonstrate its feasibility and usefulness.
LC-MS/MS ASSAY FOR IRBESARTAN IN HUMAN PLASMA USING SOLID PHASE EXTRACTION TECHNIQUE: A PHARMACOKINETIC STUDY

Objective: The objective of this research was to develop a novel liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) method for the determination of irbesartan in human plasma. Methods: An analytical method based on liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) has been developed and validated for the quantitative determination of irbesartan in human plasma. The method utilizes irbesartan d4 as internal standard (IS). After solid phase extraction (SPE), analyte and the IS were chromato graphed on a C 18 columns using a isocratic mobile phase composed of methanol–0.2% formic acid (85:15, v/v) pumped at a flow rate of 0.70 mL/min. Results: Precision and accuracy of the method was determined using five analytical batches in the concentration range of 50.0–9982 ng/ml. All the validation experiments were carried out as per the US FDA guidelines and results met the acceptance criteria. Conclusion: The proposed LC–MS/MS assay method is simple, rapid and enough sensitive for the determination of irbesartan in human plasma. A chromatographic run time set at 2.0 min, thus can analyze more than 300 samples in a day. Also, the proposed method was found to be applicable to clinical studies.
The key role of the productive structure in the countercyclical productivity in Spain

One of the most controversial topics of the Spanish economy is the countercyclical behavior of its productivity, both in the expansive years and during the recent financial and economic crisis. Additionally, this countercyclical pattern is unique among the economies of its area. This letter considers one of the likely answers to this fact: the Spanish productive structure, which is characterized by sectors such as construction and some service industries. Â
Executive Compensation in Municipalities

Excerpt] In this paper we are concerned with the salaries of three important municipal officials; citymanagers, police chiefs, and fire chiefs. We present a model that relates the salaries of these officials to a set of explanatory variables, the most important being measures associated with job performance. Two of these measures of performance are developed in the study. Further, the influence of the city-manager form of government on the incentive structure facing police chiefs and fire chiefs, and the interdependence betwen the salaries of police chiefs and fire chiefs is investigated. The model is tested using cross-section data for 1967.
Toward a better quantitative understanding of polar stratospheric ozone loss

Previous studies have shown that observed large O3 loss rates in cold Arctic Januaries cannot be explained with current understanding of the loss processes, recommended reaction kinetics, and standard assumptions about total stratospheric chlorine and bromine. Studies based on data collected during recent field campaigns suggest faster rates of photolysis and thermal decomposition of ClOOCl and higher stratospheric bromine concentrations than previously assumed. We show that a model accounting for these kinetic changes and higher levels of BrO can largely resolve the January Arctic O3 loss problem and closely reproduces observed Arctic O3 loss while being consistent with observed levels of ClO and ClOOCl. The model also suggests that bromine catalysed O3 loss is more important relative to chlorine catalysed loss than previously thought.
Dark matter signals at neutrino telescopes in effective theories

We constrain the effective theory of one-body dark matter-nucleon interactions using neutrino telescope observations. We derive exclusion limits on the 28 coupling constants of the theory, exploring interaction operators previously considered in dark matter direct detection only, and using new nuclear response functions recently derived through nuclear structure calculations. We determine for what interactions neutrino telescopes are superior to current direct detection experiments, and show that Hydrogen is not the most important element in the exclusion limit calculation for the majority of the spin-dependent operators.