Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Relative warp analysis of shape variability of the head and pronotum in selected populations of the rice black bug.

The landmark-based geometric morphometric approach of relative warps (RW) was used to determine the population structures of the rice black bugs (RBB), Scotinophara coarctata, from the Philippines and in one site in Malaysia based on the shapes of the head and pronotum. The symmetric and asymmetric components were used to analyze the direction of shape change for each structure. However, multivariate analyses were conducted only on the symmetric components to infer the relationships among the RBB populations. The results showed that in many cases, the landmark configurations are continuous. Landmark configurations of the pronotum separated the RBB from Omar, Malaysia. Considerable shape differences between populations were also found locally within Luzon, Iloilo, Palawan and Mindanao based from the results of the analyses. The results of the current study strongly suggest the existence of morphological differences in the populations of RBB, which may indicate possible genetic differentiation. Such variability may have direct bearing on the management of the RBB as a pest of rice agroecosystem.
Molecular identification and characterization of rhizospheric bacteria for plant growth pro- moting ability

The objective of this study was to isolate and characterize a rhizospheric bacterium from Sorgastrum nutans, growing around the desert region of Rajasthan (India). Plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) are known to influence plant growth by various direct or indirect mechanisms. Isolated strain was tested for various PGP traits like 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylate (ACC) deaminase activity, phosphate solubilization, indole acetic acid production, production of siderophore, nitrogen fixation and ammonia production. Bio-control ability of isolate was screened by antagonistic activity against certain fungal/bacterial pathogens as well as Hydrogen cyanide HCN production. Isolated test organism was also biochemically characterized. Further identification of isolate was performed by PCR based 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Moreover evaluation of the isolate SNP-18 exhibiting multiple plant growth promoting (PGP) traits on soil/plant system is on-going to uncover their efficacy as effective PGPR.
Publishing and Academic Writing: Experiences of Authors Who Have Published in PROFILE

The increase in the publication of academic journals is closely related to the growing interest of research communities as well as of institutional policies that demand visibility of the work done by their staff through publications in highly-ranked journals. The purpose of this paper is to portray the experiences of some authors who published their articles in the PROFILE journal, which is edited in Colombia, South America. Data were gathered using a survey carried out through the use of a questionnaire. The results indicate the reasons the authors submitted their manuscripts, their experiences along the process of publication, and what the publication of their articles in the journal has meant to them. The authors’ responses and the reflections derived from them also show that despite the difficulties faced, there were achievements and lessons learned as well as challenges ahead to ensure the sustainability of the journal and teachers’ empowerment.
Measurements of isotope shifts and hyperfine structure in Ti II

We have applied fast-ion-beam laser-fluorescence spectroscopy to measure the isotope shifts of 38 transitions in the wavelength range 429–457 nm and the hyperfine structures (hfs) of 22 levels in Ti II. The isotope shift and hfs measurements are the first for these transitions and levels. These atomic data are essential for astrophysical studies of chemical abundances, allowing correction for saturation and the effects of blended lines.
Constructing Indonesian Social Accounting Matrix for Distributional Analysis in the CGE Modelling Framework

The distributional impact of policies analyzed in the CGE modelling framework have been constrained in part by the absence of a Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) with disaggregated households. Since Indonesian official SAM does not distinguish households by income or expenditure size, it has prevented accurate assesment for the distributional impact, such as calculation of inequality or poverty incidence. This paper describes how the Indonesian SAM for the year 2003, with 181 industries, 181 commodities, and 200 households (100 urban and 100 rural households grouped by expenditure per capita centiles) was constructed. The SAM (with the size of 768x768 accounts) constitutes the the most disaggregated SAM for Indonesia at both the sectoral and household level. SAM Construction is an essential part of CGE modeling, and this documentation provides greater transparency as well as replicability for further improvement.
Short-term fate of phytodetritus across the Arabian Sea Oxygen Minimum Zone

The short-term fate of phytodetritus was investigated across the Pakistan margin of the Arabian Sea at water depths ranging from 140 to 1850 m, encompassing the oxygen minimum zone (~100–1100 m). Phytodetritus sedimentation events were simulated by adding ~44 mmol 13C-labelled algal material per m2 to surface sediments in retrieved cores. Cores were incubated in the dark, at in situ temperature and oxygen concentrations. Overlying waters were sampled periodically, and cores were recovered and sampled (for organisms and sediments) after durations of two and five days. The labelled carbon was subsequently traced into bacterial lipids, foraminiferan and macrofaunal biomass, and dissolved organic and inorganic pools. The majority of the label (20 to 100%) was in most cases left unprocessed in the sediment at the surface. The largest pool of processed carbon was found to be respiration (0 to 25% of added carbon), recovered as dissolved inorganic carbon. Both temperature and oxygen were found to influence the rate of respiration. Macrofaunal influence was most pronounced at the lower part of the oxygen minimum zone where it contributed 11% to the processing of phytodetritus.
Fat Tails Quantified and Resolved: A New Distribution to Reveal and Characterize the Risk and Opportunity Inherent in Leptokurtic Data

I report a new statistical distribution formulated to confront the infamous, long-standing, computational/modeling challenge presented by highly skewed and/or leptokurtic ("fat- or heavy-tailed") data. The distribution is straightforward, flexible and effective. Even when working with far fewer data points than are routinely required, it models non-Gaussian data samples, from peak center through far tails, within the context of a single probability density function (PDF) that is valid over an extremely broad range of dispersions and probability densities. The distribution is a precision tool to characterize the great risk and the great opportunity inherent in fat-tailed data.
INFLUENCE OF MECHANICAL ERRORS IN A ZOOM CAMERA

As it is well known, varying the focus and zoom of a camera lens system changes the alignment of the lens components resulting in a displacement of the image centre and field of view. Thus, knowledge of how the image centre shifts may be important for some aspects of camera calibration. As shown in other papers, the pinhole model is not adequate for zoom lenses. To ensure a calibration model for these lenses, the calibration parameters must be adjusted. The geometrical modelling of a zoom lens is realized from its lens specifications. The influence on the calibration parameters is calculated by introducing mechanical errors in the mobile lenses. Figures are given describing the errors obtained in the principal point coordinates and also in its standard deviation. A comparison is then made with the errors that come from the incorrect detection of the calibration points. It is concluded that mechanical errors of actual zoom lenses can be neglected in the calibration process because detection errors have more influence on the camera parameters.
Procrastinación: Una Revisión de su Medida y sus Correlatos

espanolLa procrastinacion consiste en la tendencia generalizada a aplazar el inicio y/o finalizacion de tareas planificadas para ser realizadas en un tiempo determinado. Tal tendencia a la postergacion suele acompanarse de malestar subjetivo y no solo es una cuestion de baja respo nsabilidad y gestion del tiempo, sino que supone un verdadero problema de auto - regulacion a nivel cognitivo, afectivo y conductual. En este articulo de revision se proporciona una vision general de la investigacion realizada sobre procrastinacion en poblac ion espanola organizada en los siguientes apartados: marco conceptual de la procrastinacion, instrumentos de medida, prevalencia y diferencias segun edad, sexo y ocupacion, modelos estructurales, tipos de procrastinacion y correlatos (estilos de personali dad, perspectiva temporal, matutinidad - vespertinidad) EnglishProcrastination is the general tendency to postpone the start and/or end of tasks planned to be performed in a given time. Such a tendency to postpone is usually accompanied by subjective discomfort and not only is it a question of low responsibility and t ime management, but it is a real problem of self - regulation at the cognitive, affective and behavioral levels. In this review an overview of the research carried out on procrastination with Spanish people is provided. The review is organized in the followi ng sections: conceptual framework of procrastination, measurement instruments, prevalence and differences according to age, sex and occupation, structural models, types of procrastination and correlates (personality styles, temporal perspective, morningnes s - eveningness)
Sparse median graphs estimation in a high-dimensional semiparametric model

In this manuscript a unified framework for conducting inference on complex aggregated data in high dimensional settings is proposed. The data are assumed to be a collection of multiple non-Gaussian realizations with underlying undirected graphical structures. Utilizing the concept of median graphs in summarizing the commonality across these graphical structures, a novel semiparametric approach to modeling such complex aggregated data is provided along with robust estimation of the median graph, which is assumed to be sparse. The estimator is proved to be consistent in graph recovery and an upper bound on the rate of convergence is given. Experiments on both synthetic and real datasets are conducted to illustrate the empirical usefulness of the proposed models and methods.
The expectation maximization algorithm as a powerful tool to solve the stellar membership in open clusters: An application to M67

The EM algorithm is a powerful tool to solve the membership problem in open clusters when a mixture density model overlaping two heteroscedastic bivariate normal components is built to fit the cloud of relative proper motions of the stars in a region of the sky where a cluster is supposed to be. A membership study of 1866 stars located in the region of the very old open cluster M67 is carried out via the Expectation Maximization algorithm using the McLachlan, Peel, Basford and Adams EMMIX software.
The interaction between building and users in passive and zero‐energy housing and offices: The role of interfaces, knowledge and user commitment

Purpose – The article's aim is to present user experiences with passive houses and zero‐energy buildings. The focus is on the interaction between the building and the users, specifically on how user interfaces, knowledge, and commitment influence the use of the building and the level of energy consumption awareness.Design/methodology/approach – The study follows an explorative grounded theory approach. This approach generates insights that will be consolidated in follow‐up studies. Qualitative interviews with users of six buildings were conducted. Site inspections applying walk‐through method and other available information complement the data.Findings – Users in general were satisfied with having a new energy efficient building. Several respondents were more concerned about the environment now than before. However, there were concerns about thermal comfort. Misuse or misunderstandings among users in some cases led to lower indoor comfort. New or dissatisfactory design solutions were also responsible for .
Responses to Anonymous Referee # 1 ( in blue ) Manuscript angeo-2018-4 “ Impact of magnetic storms on the global TEC distribution

The study is focused on the analysis of Total Electron Content (TEC) variations during six geomagnetic storms of 10 different intensity: from Dstmin = – 46 nT to Dstmin = -223 nT. The values of TEC deviations from its 27-day median value (δTEC) were calculated during the periods of the storms along three meridians: American, Euro-African and AsianAustralian. The following results were obtained. For the majority of the storms almost simultaneous occurrence of δTEC maximums was observed along all three meridians at the beginning of the storm. The transition from weak storm to superstorm (the increase of magnetic activity) almost does not affect the intensity of δTEC maximum. The seasonal effect 15 was most pronounced at Asian-Australian meridian, less often at Euro-African meridian and was not revealed at American meridian. Sometimes the seasonal effect can penetrate to the opposite hemisphere. The character of averaged δTEC variations for the intense storms was confirmed by GOES satellite data. Though there are some common features of TEC variation revealed during each storm phase, in general no clear dependence of TEC responses on the storm phases was found: the effects were different during each storm at different locations. The behaviour of correlation coefficient (R) 20 between δTEC at three meridians was analyzed for each storm. In general, R>0.5 between δTEC averaged along each meridian. This result is new. The possible reasons for the exceptions (when R < 0.5) were provided: time-shift of δTEC maximum at different latitudes along the American meridian, the complexity of phenomena during the intense storms and discordance in local time of geomagnetic storm beginning at different meridians. Notwithstanding the complex dependence of R on the intensity of magnetic disturbance, in general R decreased with the growth of storm intensity. 25
Design Considerations for Implementing Security in Web Services

The rapid growth in XML and increasing use of World Wide Web allow users to use internet as a platform for document sharing and hosting embedded with certain security features. XML is becoming most prevalent means through which documents and data are encoded for distribution among users on the web. Currently no strict security models and mechanisms are available that can provide specification and enforcement of security policies for XML documents. Such models are crucial in order to facilitate a secure dissemination of XML documents, containing information of different sensitivity levels, among (possibly large) user communities. This paper concentrates on proposing key design considerations to implement the PKI enables security in XML documents, by defining a component model and processing rules that can be shared across applications using common tools, avoiding the need for extensive customisation of applications to add security. The considerations reuses the concepts, algorithms and core technologies of legacy security systems while introducing changes necessary to support extensible integration with XML. This allows interoperability with a wide range of existing infrastructures and across deployments.
Information Security in Data and Storage Grids through GS3

In grid computing infrastructures, the data storage subsystem is physically distributed among several nodes and logically shared among several users. This highlights the necessity of: (i) Availability for authorized users only, (ii) Confidentiality, and (iii) Integrity of information and data: in one term security. In this work we face the problem of data security in grid, by proposing a lightweight cryptography algorithm combining the strong and highly secure asymmetric cryptography technique (RSA) with the symmetric cryptography (Advanced Encryption Standard, AES). The proposed algorithm, we named Grid Secure Storage System (GS 3 ), has been implemented on top of the Grid File Access Library (GFAL) of the gLite middleware, in order to provide a file system service with cryptography capability and POSIX interface. The choice of implementing GS 3 as a file system allows to protect also the file system structure, and moreover to overcome the well-known problem of file rewriting in gLite/GFAL environments. This chapter describes and details both the GS 3 algorithm and its implementation, also evaluating the performance of such implementation and discussing the obtained results.
Conceptual Frameworks for Strategy Implementation: A Literature Review

Strategy implementation is one of the four pillars of strategic management. It has gained considerable attention of a large number of researchers as well as practitioners. This is growing attention due to the publication of scary percentage of limited success of strategy implementation in many worldwide business organizations. This paper presents a literature review of a number of important conceptual frameworks for strategy implementation. This paper is a humble attempt towards proposing a novel conceptual framework which can help in drawing big picture of key factors affecting strategy implementation success.
Some Results on Prime Labeling

In the present work we investigate some classes of graphs and disjoint union of some classes of graphs which admit prime labeling. We also investigate prime labeling of a graph obtained by identifying two vertices of two graphs. We also investigate prime labeling of a graph obtained by identifying two edges of two graphs. Prime labeling of a prism graph is also discussed. We show that a wheel graph of odd order is switching invariant. A necessary and sufficient condition for the complement of Wn to be a prime graph is investigated.
Sample reusability in importance-weighted active learning

Recent advances in importance-weighted active learning solve many of the problems of traditional active learning strategies. But does importance-weighted active learning also produce a reusable sample selection? This thesis explains why reusability can be a problem, how importance-weighted active learning removes some of the barriers to reusability and which obstacles still remain. With theoretical arguments and practical demonstrations, this thesis argues that universal reusability is impossible: because every active learning strategy must undersample some areas of the sample space, classifiers that depend on the samples in those areas will learn more from a random sample selection. This thesis describes several reusability experiments with importance-weighted active learning that show the impact of the reusability problem in practice. The experiments confirm that universal reusability does not exist, although in some cases – on some datasets and with some pairs of classifiers – there is sample reusability. This thesis explores the conditions that could guarantee the reusability between two classifiers.
Türkiye Trakya Bölgesindeki Süt İşletmelerinden Toplanan Fekal ve Çiğ Süt Örneklerinde Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis (MAP) İncelemesi

The Thrace, which is Turkey’s European part as well as the adjoining parts of Southern Bulgaria and north-east Greece has a strategic importance for being a vaccination buffer zone for Europe as declared by FAO in 1999. The objective of the study was to better understand the occurence of MAP in this animal disease free area of Turkey by applying F57 Real time PCR assay and IS900 nested-PCR. In this study, 270 feces samples from the dairy cattles over 2 years old in 30 randomly selected dairy farms, 45 raw milk samples from each of the bulk tanks belonging to these dairy farms and the villages located in Thrace were collected. Nine fecal samples were used to create the pooled fecal sample for a dairy farm before performing DNA extraction. All the samples were initially subjected to a F57-Real time PCR analysis, and subsequently an insertion sequence IS900 nested-PCR was performed to verify the results. However, the results revealed that MAP genom could not be detected in any pooled fecal and milk samples. In conclusion, the occurrence of MAP in this part of Turkey may likely be very lower than the capability of the detection limit of the used Real time PCR assay. Furthermore, the results once more confirmed the difficulty of MAP detection in asymptomatic animals and milk samples by performing PCR technique only.
Coencapsulation of Synbiotics for the evaluation of in vivo antidiabetic activity

Glucose is the main source of energy for the body c ells and different organisms possess different leve ls of glucose levels in their body. Change in levels of blood glu cose leads to either hyperglycemia or hypoglycemia. When the body fails to regulate blood glucose levels correct ly and the levels go beyond the normal range, one b ecomes diabetic. Diabetes is a chronic disease and can ev en lead to death. Synbiotics; a combination of probiotics and prebiotics show beneficial health effects to the ho st and the effects vary with strain of probiotic an d type of prebiotic used. The current study was performed to determine the hypoglycemic potential of the coencapsulated pr ebiotic (lactulose) and probiotic (Lactobacillus casei subs p. casei 17@10 9 cells/ml) in vivo. Encapsulation was done using Sodium Alginate (3.5%) & Calcium Chloride (75mM), r esulting in the formation of calcium alginate beads of synbiotics. Glibenclamide was taken as positive control. Alloxan (150 mg kg -1 b.wt. i.e. 50 mg kg -1 b.wt.) was used to induce diabetes in animals. Acute and subacute stud ies were conducted on alloxan induced diabetic mice . Results showed that encapsulated form of synbiotics were mo re efficient in lowering down the blood glucose lev els as compared to unencapsulated form.
Bunch Arrival-Time Monitoring for Laser Particle Accelerators and Thomson Scattering X-Ray Sources

The ELBE center of high power radiation sources at Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf combines a superconducting CW linear accelerator with Terawattand Petawattlevel laser sources. Figure 1 shows a layout of the facility and an overview of the secondary sources. Key experiments rely on precise timing and synchronization between the different radiation pulses. An online single shot monitoring system has been set up in order to measure the timing between the high-power Ti:Sa laser DRACO and electron bunches generated by the conventional SRF accelerator. This turnkey monitoring system is suitable for timing control of Thomson scattering x-ray sources and external injection of electron bunches into a laser wakefield accelerator.