Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The effects of moonlight on microhabitat use by Antechinus agilis (Marsupialia : Dasyuridae)

This study investigates the effect of lunar illumination on microhabitat use of Antechinus agilis, an insectivorous, semi-arboreal species of dasyurid marsupial. The study was conducted in tall open forest near Melbourne, Australia, from April to August 1997. Microhabitat was investigated by use of live trapping and fluorescent pigment tracking. The influence of light on spatial and temporal activity was investigated by comparing microhabitat use in the field at two extremes of moonlight intensity, full and new moon, and by manipulating light intensity in the field. Antechinus agilis were trapped in and tracked through dense microhabitats in a greater proportion than was available, although this pattern was evident only in the vegetation stratum below one metre from the ground. Furthermore, animals did not respond to the microhabitat at the point of capture, but responded to a larger microhabitat scale radiating 10 m from the trap. However, light intensity appears to have little influence on the spatial or temporal activity of A. agilis at this site. Therefore A. agilis appear not to differentially use denser microhabitats in relation to light intensity. Habitat complexity, prey availability, interspecific competition and predation are discussed as possible reasons why A. agilis differentially use denser microhabitats.
Trust Management in Cloud Computing

- Cloud computing has pulled in light of a legitimate concern for the numerous specialists, each – inside the instructive world and in this manner, the business - in light of the fact that it is giving numerous chances to associations by giving changed figuring administrations. For cloud computing to wind up wide embraced by each the undertakings and individuals, numerous issues must be constrained to be settled. [1] A key issue that needs exceptional consideration is security of trust, and trust administration is a key some portion of cloud security. Amid this paper, the creators cross-check what trust is and the way trust has been connected in appropriated registering. Trust models anticipated for fluctuated circulated framework has then been condensed. The trust administration frameworks anticipated for cloud computing are explored with unique weight on their ability, congruity in sensible heterogeneous cloud setting and implementabilty. At last, the anticipated models/frameworks are contrasted
EMG DRIVEN ACTIVE PROSTHESIS : SIGNAL ACQUISITION SYSTEM DESIGN AND INITIAL EXPERIMENTAL STUDY (selected from CEMA’15 Conference)

A multi-channel EMG amplifier and acquisition system is proposed. The system is composed of portable signal amplifier and dedicated real-time signal processing software. The system is intended to be used with myoelectric prostheses, therefore there is an emphasis on the multichannel real-time acquisition, portability, current consumption and connectivity features. The goal of the design is to implement the latest low-power high speed technologies available on the market today and also the system is intended to test EMG signal processing algorithms. This document covers the EMG signal all the way from the muscle through the amplifier, the Driven Right Leg (DRL) noise suppressor, filtering, digitalization, PC communication, the signal processing algorithm and the real-time visualization of the results. The article includes complete schematics, analysis and tests of the device.
Autoantibody Reactivity in a Case of Schnitzler’s Syndrome: Evidence for a Th1-Like Response and Detection of IgG2 Anti-FcεRIα Antibodies

Schnitzler’s syndrome is a rare disease characterized by chronic urticaria, monoclonal IgM, and clinical and laboratory signs of inflammation. In a subset of patients, the urticarial lesions cause pruritus. However, the pathophysiology of the disease and the biochemical basis of urticaria are not known. We describe a female patient with Schnitzler’s syndrome suffering from chronic urticaria associated with pruritus. The patient’s serum was found to contain IgG antibodies recognizing cellular components of the microvasculature. In particular, IgG3 antibodies directed against proteins (14–100 kD) expressed in cultured dermal microvascular endothelial cells and mast cells, were found by immunoblotting. Moreover, IgG2 antibodies specific for the α-chain of the FcεRI were detectable. However, the autoantibodies did not mediate histamine release in mast cells or basophils. In patients with IgM paraproteinemia who did not have Schnitzler`s syndrome, antibodies against endothelial/mast cells or FcεRI were not detectable. In summary, we describe subclass-specific IgG reactivity against microvascular endothelial cells and mast cells indicating Th1 autoimmunity in a patient with Schnitzler’s syndrome. Whether such autoantibodies are recurrently produced in patients with Schnitzler’s syndrome and play a role in the pathophysiology of the disease remains to be determined.
Linking taxonomical and functional biodiversity of saproxylic fungi and beetles in broad‐leaved forests in southern Italy with varying management histories

Abstract The fundamental ecological significance of deadwood decomposition in forests has been highlighted in several reviews, some conclusions regarding silviculture being drawn. Old‐growth forests are natural centres of biodiversity. Saproxylic fungi and beetles, which are vital components of these ecosystems, occupy a variety of spatial and trophic niches. Fungal and beetle diversity on coarse woody debris (CWD) was analysed in 36 forest sites in the Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park, Italy. The data were analysed by DCA and Spearman’s rank correlation. The results provide empirical evidence of the existence of a pattern of joint colonization of the woody substrate by fungi and beetles, which includes an assemblage of reciprocal trophic roles within fungal/beetle communities. These organisms act together to form a dynamic taxonomical and functional ecosystem component within the complex set of processes involved in wood decay. The variables most predictive of correlations between management‐related structural attributes and fungal/beetle species richness and their trophic roles for old‐growth forest are: number of logs, number of decay classes and CWD total volume. Deadwood spatio‐temporal continuity should be the main objective of forest planning to stop the loss of saproxylic fungal and insect biodiversity.
Identification of Differentially Expressed Genes in Ducks in Response
 to Avian Influenza A Virus Infections

Avian influenza (AI) viruses are highly contagious viruses that infect many bird species and are zoonotic. Ducks are resistant to the deadly and highly pathogenic avian influenza virus (HPAIV) and remain asymptomatic to the low pathogenic avian influenza virus (LPAIV). In this study, we identified common differentially expressed genes (DEGs) after a reanalysis of previous transcriptomic data for the HPAIV and LPAIV infected duck lung cells. Microarray datasets from a previous study were reanalyzed to identify common target genes from DEGs and their biological functions. A total of 731 and 439 DEGs were identified in HPAIVand LPAIV-infected duck lung cells, respectively. Of these, 227 genes were common to cells infected with both viruses, in which 193 genes were upregulated and 34 genes were downregulated. Functional annotation of common DEGs revealed that translation related gene ontology (GO) terms were enriched, including ribosome, protein metabolism, and gene expression. REACTOME analyses also identified pathways for protein and RNA metabolism as well as for tissue repair, including collagen biosynthesis and modification, suggesting that AIVs may evade the host defense system by suppressing host translation machinery or may be suppressed before being exported to the cytosol for translation. AIV infection also increased collagen synthesis, showing that tissue lesions by virus infection may be mediated by this pathway. Further studies should focus on these genes to clarify their roles in AIV pathogenesis and their possible use in AIV therapeutics. (
Cut-edge corrosion study on painted aluminum rich metallic coated steel by scanning vibrating electrode and micro-potentiometric techniques

Aluminium-rich metallic coated steels were found to be especially sensitive to cut-edge corrosion in various climates for both painted and unpainted material. The aim of this work is to study the corrosion process in the cut-edge and the effect of aluminium presence in the metallic coating. In this frame, painted zinc metallic coated steel samples with different amount of Al were studied by scanning vibrating electrode technique coupled with a scanning ion-selective electrode technique (SVET/SIET). SVET and micro-potentiometric pH measurements were performed quasi simultaneously. The experiments were performed in continuous immersion in 0.05 M NaCl. As a result, differences in pH and activity for the eywords: ut-edge corrosion ainted Zn–Al metallic coated steel VET
Potential of Acclimated Earthworm (Eisenia Andrei) for Detoxification of Olive Mill Wastewater

The present study was conducted to evaluate the potential of acclimated and unacclimated earthworm (Eisenia andrei) for decomposition and detoxification of olive mill wastewater (OMWW). Although, they stimulate biological reactions at low concentrations, OMWW are toxic to earthworms and microorganisms at moderate concentrations and can cause negative effects on the vermicomposting processes. After two months of laboratory vermicomposting, the growth rate (21.83±0.01 mg worm-1 day-1) of earthworms and phenols reduction (72%), were higher with acclimated earthworms. However, unacclimated earthworms showed lower growth rate (4.67±0.01 mg worm-1day-1) and phenols reduction (41%). Moreover, the vermicompost produced with acclimated earthworm is characterized by alkaline pH (9.9), optimal electrical conductivity (78.20 dS cm-1), optimal C/N ratios (17.40-18.00) and an increase in total nitrogen (1.7-2.0 %). The data reveal that the acclimated earthworms are well adapted in the moderate OMWW concentration and their utilization in vermicomposting process could be a promising alternative for OMWW detoxification. Additionally, vermicomposting can be a suitable technology for olive mill wastewater treatment.
A unified account of visual search using a computational model

Visual Search is a task ubiquitously performed by humans in everyday life. In the laboratory, to understand more about this process, experiments have characterised the time that humans need to locate a particular target object amongst others. Based on this search time’s dependence on the number of objects in the image, it is believed that two kinds of search take place. Feature search, where the target pops-out of the search image and is instantly found using a parallel search mechanism, and conjunction search, with more complex objects where the search is serial and the search time increases with the number of objects. In this work, we use a computational model to propose a unified process that can result in feature or conjunction search characteristics depending on the precision of the attention guidance mechanism. We show that the search performance can be partly explained by the precision or capacity of the encoding of distinct features that is used to guide attention during the search process.
***** PRELIMINARY DRAFT. PLEASE DO NOT CITE WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE AUTHORS. COMMENTS WELCOME. ***** School Personnel and Student Outcomes: The Role of Support Staff In North Carolina’s Elementary and Middle Schools

This paper takes a new look at a perennial question in education: Do resources matter and, if so, which ones? In contrast to other studies, we focus directly on staffing levels rather than on funding levels or teacher quality. We do so in the context of variation in staffing levels over the period 2001-2013 in North Carolina’s elementary and middle schools. Using variation in state allocations of staffing slots at the district level to generate plausibly causal estimates at the school level, we find that staffing in the form of regular teachers, teaching assistants, and health care providers have positive effects on student test scores and on some behavioral outcomes. Clearest and most consistent are the findings for teaching assistants. The evidence indicates that teaching assistants contribute to higher student test scores overall but especially so in schools serving disadvantaged students, and that they also lead to lower absentee rates in elementary schools. In addition, a larger number of regular teachers per student, which translates into smaller class sizes, generates effects similar in size to many other studies of class size effects. Although we find some positive effects of health providers on student test scores, data limitations keep us from making broad statements about that staffing category. *Contact author; Adrienne Jones and Winnie Biwott provided excellent research assistance for this project. The authors thank the Center for the Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research (CALDER) funded by the U.S. Department of Education (#R305C120008) for financial support.
Risk Factors of Severe Healthcare-Associated Adverse Events in a Tunisian Hospital: Results of a Case-Control Study

DOI: 10.21276/sjm.2018. 3.8. 14 Abstract: Adverse events (AE) are an ongoing challenge in healthcare. Apart from having a significant impact on patient morbidity and mortality, AE also result in increased healthcare costs due to longer hospital stays. However, little is known about AE occurrence and their risk factors in Tunisian healthcare system. To determine the incidence of severe adverse events (SAEs) and identify risk factors associated with SAE during hospitalization in a Tunisian University Hospital. A case-control study with incident cases was conducted including all patients hospitalized in the Teaching Hospital Farhat Hached within a one-month period in 13 clinical units. Medical records for caseswere selected by using stratified random sampling. The sample size was proportional to the number of admissions in each of 13 clinical departments. Controls were matched by the service and the duration of hospitalization preceding the appearance of SAE. Risk factors were collected and analyzed by conditional stepwise logistic regression. Overall, 304 controls were matched to cases, totalizing 456 patients. Multivariate conditional stepwise logistic regression analysis showed that night-time admission, hospitalization in the last six months, difficulty of communication, longer surgical operation, biopsy, presence of at least two medical devices, exposure to peripheral venous catheter, exposure to more than four medications and blood transfusion were considered as independent risk factors of SAE occurrence. Our results highlighted care-related risk factors such as catheters, blood transfusion and polymedication, which underlined the need to strengthen the care safety by focusing efforts especially in the field of hospital hygiene and infection control as well as pharmacovigilance.
A NEW MODIFICATION FOR MENEZES-VANSTONE ELLIPTIC CURVE CRYPTOSYSTEM

Information security algorithms are widely used in the recent times to protect data and messages over internet. Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) is one of the most efficient techniques that are used for this issue, because it is difficult for the adversary to solve the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem to know the secret key that is used in encryption and decryption processes. A new efficient method has been proposed in this paper to improve the Menezes-Vanstone Elliptic Curve Cryptography (MVECC). This modification reduces the running time needed for encryption and decryption processes compared with the original method and another two methods. In the modified method, only addition and subtraction operations are used, and no inversion or multiplication operations because it consumes a long time comparing with addition and subtraction, and this makes the proposed algorithm faster in computations and running time than the original and other methods. Moreover, the modified method uses the hexadecimal ASCII value to encode each character in the message before encryption, which makes the algorithm more secure and complicated to resist the adversaries.
IDENTITY BASED ATTACK DETECTION AND MANIFOLD ADVERSARIES LOCALIZATION IN WIRELESS NETWORKS

Wireless spoofing attacks are easy to launch in wireless network due to openness of wireless network. Although the identity of a node can be detected through cryptographic authentication, conservative security approaches are not always possible because of their overhead requirements. Source sends a Data to the destination, Data is forwarded to the intermediate nodes in between source and destination, with respect to Received Signal Strength(RSS). In this paper to detect the identity based attacks and multiple adversaries as well as localizing the adversaries. Detect the position of multiple adversaries even when the adversaries vary their transmission power level. We propose to use the spatial correlation of received signal strength(RSS) inherited from wireless nodes to detect the attacks. We are also using primary key and encrypting the data packets during transmission for security purpose. By encrypting the data packets the intermediate nodes are not able to view the data presented in the data packets. Experiments using an 802.11 (Wi-Fi) network, We use network simulation to analyse the performance of the results.
Studies in Intelligence

Editor’s Note: By distilling a list of the variables that affect analytic reasoning, the author aims to move the tradecraft of intelligence analysis closer to a science. A carefully prepared taxonomy can become a structure for heightening awareness of analytic biases, sorting available data, identifying information gaps, and stimulating new approaches to the understanding of unfolding events, ultimately increasing the sophistication of analytic judgments. The article is intended to stimulate debate leading to refinements of the proposed variables and the application of such a framework to analytic thinking among intelligence professionals.
Coping Strategies, Their Relationship to Weight Status and Food Assistance Food Programs Utilized by the Food-Insecure in Belize

Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. Food insecurity is a phenomenon that occurs not only in developing countries but also in developed countries and is recognized as a major public health concern. According to the Global Hunger Index, a measure of food insecurity, Belize is still considered a moderate hunger country. This study assessed the most common coping mechanisms of food insecure in Belize using validated indexes and evaluated the relationships between coping mechanisms, food insecurity level and body weight. Further, an assessment of food assistance programs available in the community was also conducted. This study found a high prevalence of food insecurity, 56%, in the Cayo District of Belize. The coping mechanisms utilized to increase food supply included incorporating dense food, pooling resources with family and relatives, divine intervention and purchasing discount foods. There were marked differences in the coping strategies employed by low food-insecure (LFS) families versus very low, food-insecure (VLFS) families; specifically, VLFS families utilized more irreversible, nutritionally-negative coping mechanisms. Differences in coping strategies may contribute to differences found in overweight and obesity percentages. Additionally, these coping strategies may predict prevalence and management of chronic diseases such as diabetes. Government and NGO food assistance programs need to be expanded and incorporate foods and education to improve health status.
Running head: VERBAL ENCODING AND SCENE PROCESSING 1 When scenes speak louder than words: Verbal encoding does not mediate the relationship between scene meaning and visual attention

The complexity of the visual world requires that we constrain visual attention and prioritize some regions of the scene for attention over others. The current study investigated whether verbal encoding processes influence how attention is allocated in scenes. Specifically, we asked whether the advantage of scene meaning over image salience in attentional guidance is modulated by verbal encoding, given that we often use language to process information. In two experiments, 60 subjects studied scenes (N1 = 30, N2 = 60) for 12 seconds each in preparation for a scene recognition task. Half of the time, subjects engaged in a secondary articulatory suppression task concurrent with scene viewing. Meaning and saliency maps were quantified for each of the experimental scenes. In both experiments, we found that meaning explained more of the variance in visual attention than image salience did, particularly when we controlled for the overlap between meaning and salience, with and without the suppression task. Based on these results, verbal encoding processes do not appear to modulate the relationship between scene meaning and visual attention. Our findings suggest that semantic information in the scene steers the attentional ship, consistent with cognitive guidance theory.
Description of a new species of Microglanis (Siluriformes: Pseudopimelodidae) from the Amazon basin, Amazonas State, Brazil

The first species of Microglanis from the rio Amazonas, Amazonas State, Brazil is described. This species differs from all congeners by the forked caudal fin, and color pattern of the supraoccipital region consisting of two elliptical and juxtaposed pale spots, besides a combination of morphometrics characters.
Building a tool for detecting code smells in Android application code

: In recent years, quality of the code behind the presentation layer has become increasingly important since a high number of applications are in maintenance mode. Maintaining complex applications is hard and modifying code that is difﬁcult to understand may introduce new bugs. Poor design or implementation choices that contribute to technical debt are called code smells. Static analyzers are tools used to detect code smells and other vulnerabilities inside software applications. In this paper, we analyze static analysis tools and also develop an alternative, which tries to overcome the shortcomings of the previous tools by providing more code smell detection rules. As a result, we developed a plugin for SonarQube that analyzes applications written in Java programming language. Finally, we veriﬁed our tool by performing an empirical study on a selected corpus of applications.
Modeling on Body Delay Tolerant Network Sink Locality of Wireless Body Area Networks for Different Body Postures

Due to the recent advancements in the field of wireless communication and Wireless Sensor Networks, the Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) have become an area of concern for researchers. In military operations, patient monitoring, sports field, among other wireless body area networks is used for real time monitoring and smart sensing for eHealth operations.In these WBAN, disconnections between the body sensors occur quite often and sometimes of significant duration due to the postural mobility nature of the human. These consequently affects the efficiency of the entire network hence the need for Delay Tolerant Network (DTN). The DTN minimizes delays and adapts itself to cope with long delays if they occur. One of the vital mechanisms that can be employed to enhance the efficiency of the network is to determine the optimal postural locality of the sink node.