Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Status of, and conservation recommendations for, the Critically Endangered crested black macaque Macaca nigra in Tangkoko, Indonesia

Abstract The crested black macaque Macaca nigra, endemic to Sulawesi, Indonesia, is categorized as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List and its population in the Tangkoko Nature Reserve is probably the only viable one within its native range. Earlier studies suggested that this population suffered a decline of 75% during 1978–1994. To evaluate its current status we conducted a line transect survey in the Reserve and assessed effects of ecological and anthropogenic variables on macaque abundance and distribution. We estimated a density of 44.9 individuals km-2 (95% confidence interval, CI, 25.6–78.8) and a total population of 1,951 individuals (CI 1,113–3,421). This estimate of density is 35% lower than that of 68.7 individuals km-2 in 1994. There were moderate to strong correlations between macaque abundance and vegetation structure (basal area and canopy tree density). We observed illegal logging in the area and therefore habitat quality for macaques may be indirectly affected by illegal human activities. If our population estimate is projected linearly M. nigra could become extinct in Tangkoko within 46 years, highlighting the urgent need to improve management of illegal hunting and logging in the Reserve.
Genome-wide association study for mild-salt tolerance in rice

Salt stress is one of the environmental constraints that affect crop cultivation worldwide, since more than 800 Mha of land throughout the world suffer from salinization problems. Among cereals, rice (Oryza sativa L.) is one of the most sensitive to salt stress, although cultivars can differ in their response to salinity. In Europe, due to scarce water availability and the rise in sea levels, there is a clear tendency toward salinization in the river deltas where rice is grown. Thus, the identification of rice cultivars tolerant to salt stress and the dissection of salt stress tolerance mechanisms are of high interest for European rice breeding. Plant response to salt stress is a complex trait, depending on the combination of many genes and metabolic pathways, and thus difficult to control and engineer. Exploiting natural variation occurring in worldwide genotypes may be a powerful approach to discover new traits to tolerate high salinity conditions. In this context, a phenotyping activity has been performed to study the natural variation of a worldwide japonica rice collection in response to mid-salt stress. A greenhouse experiment was carried out on 281 japonica rice cultivars subjected to salt stress and the measurement of physiological traits (i.e. seedlings emergence rate, plant growth, chlorophyll fluorescence, flowering delay) was assessed. A genome wide association study (GWAS) highlighted the presence of significant loci involved in salt tolerance. Analysis of candidate genes significantly associated to these loci is in progress.
Heart Rate and Perceptual Responses to Graded Leg and Arm Ergometry in Healthy College-Aged Saudis: Effects of Gender and Exercise Mode

Objective: To assess gender differences in heart rate (HR) and perceptual responses during leg versus arm ergometry among healthy college-aged Saudis. Methods: Forty healthy college-age Saudis (20 males) performed, in a random cross-over design, two maximal graded exercise leg (LE) and arm ergometry (AE). HR was continuously monitored/recorded during resting and throughout exercise period. Participants rated their perceived exertion (RPE), using Borg scale, at the end of each two-minute stage. Lactate from capillary blood was measured before and one minute after each test. Results: Females had significantly (p<0.01) higher resting HR and lower resting blood pressure than males. There were significant ( p<0.05) gender by exercise mode interactions in most of the parameters. Peak HR (bpm) was significantly ( p<0.001) higher during LE than AE in males (181±12 vs 172±21) and females (176±9 vs 162±16), without significant gender difference. Males had significantly ( p<0.015) higher values than females in absolute peak work load (WL) and exercise time and lower HR and RPE at absolute sub-maximal exercise. Peak arm/leg WL ratio was significantly ( p=0.006) higher among females (54.6±12.7%) compared with males (45.1±6.9%). Gender differences in HR and RPE at 50% of peak WL were significant at LE.
STUDY OF THE ANTIHYPERLIPIDEMIC, ANTIOXIDATIVE AND ANTIATHEROGENIC ACTI VITY OF TRITICUM AESTIVUM LINN. IN RABBIT RECEIVING HIGH FAT DIET

The aim was to study of the antihyperlipidemic, antioxidative and antiatherogenic activity of Triticum aestivum Linn. in rabbit receiving high fat diet. Twenty rabbit s of either sex were taken and divi ded into four groups five in each as - Normal Control - received normal diet, Hyperlipidemic control - received high fat diet, Test drug group - received high fat diet plus ethanolic extract of Triticum aestivum 500 mg/Kg / day orally and Standard Drug group - received high fat diet plus Atorva statin 2.1 mg/Kg /day orally for 12 weeks and then animals were sacrificed. B lood sample were collected and lipid profile , c a talase , superoxide dismutase and m alondialdehyde levels were measured . The antiatherogenic effect was examined by histopathology of aorta. Data were statistically analysed by one way ANOVA foll owed by Dunnett’s multiple comparison test . Triticum aestivum significantly decreased serum lipi ds towards normal levels. It also increases catalase and superoxide dismutase activity and decreases m alondialdehyde level and histopathological examination revealed prevention of atherosclerosis. Triticum aestivum has anti hyperlipidemic , antioxidant and a nti atherogenic effects .
Return of Fire as a Restoration Tool: Long‐Term Effects of Burn Severity on Habitat Use by Mexican Fox Squirrels

After decades of suppression, fire is returning to forests of the western United States through wildfires and prescribed burns. These fires may aid restoration of vegetation structure and processes, which could improve conditions for wildlife species and reduce severe wildfire risk. Understanding response of wildlife species to fires is essential to forest restoration because contemporary fires may not have the same effects as historical fires. Recent fires in the Chiricahua Mountains of southeastern Arizona provided opportunity to investigate long‐term effects of burn severity on habitat selection of a native wildlife species. We surveyed burned forest for squirrel feeding sign and related vegetation characteristics to frequency of feeding sign occurrence. We used radio‐telemetry within fire‐influenced forest to determine home ranges of Mexican fox squirrels, Sciurus nayaritensis chiricahuae, and compared vegetation characteristics within home ranges to random areas available to squirrels throughout burned conifer forest. Squirrels fed in forest with open understory and closed canopy cover. Vegetation within home ranges was characterized by lower understory density, consistent with the effects of low‐severity fire, and larger trees than random locations. Our results suggest that return of low‐severity fire can help restore habitat for Mexican fox squirrels and other native wildlife species with similar habitat affiliations in forests with a historical regime of frequent, low‐severity fire. Our study contributes to an understanding of the role and impact of fire in forest ecosystems and the implications for forest restoration as fire returns to the region.
Ion-Implanted Glass Waveguides A Review

As a well-known technique for material modification, ion implantation has become an effective method to fabricate waveguide in optical glasses. The guiding structures can be accurately controlled by the adjustment of the species, energies and fluences of the implanted ions. In the present work, we review the results of up-to-date research on the fabrication, characterization and applications of the ion-implanted waveguides in various optical glasses. The ion-implanted glass waveguides have shown good guiding performance as well as properties with respect to the bulks, suggesting promising potential for many aspects of photonics.
Relationship between Insulin Levels and Coronary Atherosclerosis in Newly Diagnosed Diabetes Mellitus and Impaired Glucose Tolerance

Background: While some therapies implemented for newly diagnosed Diabetes Mellitus (DM) or impaired Glucose Tolerance (IGT) are effective in preventing cardiovascular events, investigations of coronary plaque in patients with newly diagnosed DM or IGT are lacking. Methods: We evaluated 96 patients with acute coronary syndrome. The External Elastic Membrane (EEM), Lumen Cross-Sectional Area (CSA), plaque CSA, and plaque burden in the Left Anterior Descending (LAD) artery proximal to the lesion, diagnosed as normal by Coronary Angiography (CAG), were measured using Intravascular Ultrasound (IVUS). Patients were divided according to DM status (DM=35, non-DM=61). Non-DM patients underwent a 75g Oral Glucose Tolerance Test (OGTT) and were further divided into abnormal glucose tolerance (AGT; n=29) and Normal Glucose Tolerance (NGT) groups (n=32). Results: Quantitative Coronary Angiography (QCA) showed no significant differences in EEM or vessel diameter between groups. However, the lumen CSA was significantly smaller in the DM group than in the NGT group. The plaque CSA and plaque burden were significantly greater in the DM and AGT groups than in the NGT group. Total insulin and glucose values and insulin and glucose values at 120 min after the OGTT correlated with plaque CSA; insulin values at 120 min after the OGTT showed the strongest correlation (R=0.505, P<0.01). Conclusions: Coronary plaque was identified among newly diagnosed DM or IGT patients even when the CAG appeared normal, suggesting that preventive measures against atherosclerosis should be initiated prior to DM development.
Rediscovering an extraordinary vanishing bug: Llaveia axin axin

The "aje" (Llaveia axin axin) is a parasitic hemipteran of various tree species in tropical dry forests of Mexico and Guatemala. Females produce fatty extracts used since pre-hispanic times (i.e., traditional medicine and as raw material to produce handcrafts). However, very little is known about its biology and conservation status. In Michoacan and Guerrero States (Mexico), fifteen localities with historical reports of "aje" were visited 4 times (2006-2007). The incidence, seasonal abundance and distribution, host species, tree size and section preference, were determined. Only 3 populations in 2 localities were found at low altitudes (< 300 m asl), close to water sources, with only 1 host tree, Acacia cochliacantha. Females were mostly found at the base of the trunk, but showed no preference for any tree size. July (2007) was the month with greater abundance. The "aje" seems highly threatened with local extinction, due to their fragmented relict populations and rapid destruction of its habitat and host species, which is considered as a weed. More basic information on its biology and population dynamics is urgently needed to implement any conservation strategy. In addition, the management of the "aje" should take into consideration biological, pharmacological and cultural connotations.
6 Scalar Turbulence within theCanopy Sublayer

The exchange of scalars between the biosphere and the atmosphere has direct bearing on a large number of problems such as climate change, air and water quality, agricultural management and food security, landscape ecology, and decision making for environmental compliances and policy formulation. Near the canopy-atmosphere interface, turbulent fluctuations in scalar concentrations exhibit complex dynamic behaviour that shows some parallels with the transporting turbulent velocity field. However, the statistical properties of scalar turbulence within and just above the canopy can also be partly decoupled from those of the transporting velocity. Here, a unifying framework is proposed that accounts for vertical variations in scalar sources and sinks within the canopy volume, the lack of equilibrium between production and dissipation terms in second-order scalar budget equations, the rapid changes in turbulent kinetic energy dissipation rate inside canopies, the relative importance of ejections and sweeps, the role of thermal stratification, and the ‘near-field’ effects of the scalar source on gradient-diffusion theories. Ways in which these same phenomena modify the scalar spectra and scalar-vertical velocity co-spectra within the inertial subrange above the canopy and at scales finer than the wake generation region within the canopy are presented. Finally, the origin of organized eddy structure connected with surface renewal that leads to scalar ramps is briefly discussed. The work draws upon a large number of flume, wind tunnel, and field experiments, and offers novel theoretical scaling arguments as to how coherency in the flow field impacts scalar spectra and scalar-velocity co-spectra at scales smaller than the shear production scales.
Learning Robust Control Policies from Simulations with Perturbed Parameters

Deep reinforcement learning has a lot of potential to solve robotics motor tasks. However, deep learning algorithms suffer from a high sample complexity, thus training on the real robot is unfeasible. Training in simulated environments has been successful, but transferring the learned policies to the real robot is difficult. Recent research has focused on learning robust policies which can be transferred successfully. In this thesis, we developed a framework to learn robust policies and evaluate them on environments with varied physics parameters. The simulation was implemented using the Rcs framework, developed by Honda Research Institute Europe, which can control both simulated and real-world robots. The applied learning algorithms are based on the rllab framework. In order to allow using Rcs-based environments, we wrote RcsPySim as a bridge. Throughout the thesis, we used RcsPySim to evaluate and compare the robust learning algorithms Ensemble Policy Optimization (EPOpt) and Robust Adversarial Reinforcement Learning (RARL) with each other and with a baseline policy trained using the standard policy optimization algorithm Trust Region Policy Optimization (TRPO). The policies were trained and evaluated on the ball-on-plate task, where a robot has to stabilize the ball at the center of the plate which is mounted on the robot’s end-effector. We varied different physics parameters in order to analyze the robustness of the learned policies against these changes. Furthermore, we performed a sensitivity analysis of the parameters. The obtained results show that the relevant physics parameters for the ball-on-plate task are the balls friction properties and mass distribution, whereas the ball’s mass and radius do not have a significant influence. Moreover, we observed that the baseline policy, trained solely on the nominal physics world, is already quite robust. Both RARL and EPOpt increase the robustness for some parameter ranges, but reduce it in others. EPOpt does not perform as well as expected. Generally, EPOpt always prefers the more cautious approach, which means it can deal better with more unstable simulations, but it will not be able to solve the task in a setup with strong friction. The solution trained by RARL is more aggressive, making it well suited for solving cases with higher friction, but less attractive for more unstable environments with lower friction. All laerned policies could be transferred to the real world. The policy learned by EPOpt should be preferred as it is the most cautious. Since EPOpt doesn’t work well with friction values higher then the nominal parameters, choosing their values to be higher then the measured mean would likely increase the robustness over the whole parameter space.
Gaussian Process based Passivation of a Class of Nonlinear Systems with Unknown Dynamics

The paper addresses the problem of passivation of a class of nonlinear systems where the dynamics are unknown. For this purpose, we use the highly flexible, datadriven Gaussian process regression for the identification of the unknown dynamics for feed-forward compensation. The closed loop system of the nonlinear system, the Gaussian process model and a feedback control law is guaranteed to be semipassive with a specific probability. The predicted variance of the Gaussian process regression is used to bound the model error which additionally allows to specify the state space region where the closed-loop system behaves passive. Finally, the theoretical results are illustrated by a simulation.
How is Learning Fluctuating? FutureLearn MOOCs Fine-Grained Temporal Analysis and Feedback to Teachers

Data-intensive analysis of massive open online courses (MOOCs) is popular. Researchers have been proposing various parameters conducive to analysis and prediction of student behaviour and outcomes in MOOCs, as well as different methods to analyse and use these parameters, ranging from statistics, to NLP, to ML, and even graph analysis. In this paper, we focus on patterns to be extracted, and apply systematic data analysis methods in one of the few genuinely large-scale data collection of 5 MOOCs, spread over 21 runs, on FutureLearn, a UK-based MOOCs provider, that, whilst offering a broad range of courses from many universities, NGOs and other institutions, has been less evaluated, in comparison to, e.g., its American counterparts. We analyse temporal quiz solving patterns; specifically, the less explored issue on how the first number of weeks of data predicts activities in the last weeks; we also address the classical MOOC question on the completion chance. Finally, we discuss the type of feedback a teacher or designer could receive on their MOOCs, in terms of fine-grained analysis of their material, and what personalisation could be provided to a student.
POLARIZATION MEASUREMENTS OF HOT DUST STARS AND THE LOCAL INTERSTELLAR MEDIUM

Debris discs are typically revealed through the presence of excess emission at infrared wavelengths. Most discs exhibit excess at mid- and far-infrared wavelengths, analogous to the solar system’s Asteroid and Edgeworth-Kuiper belts. Recently, stars with strong (∼1%) excess at near-infrared wavelengths were identified through interferometric measurements. Using the HIgh Precision Polarimetric Instrument, we examined a sub-sample of these hot dust stars (and appropriate controls) at parts-per-million sensitivity in SDSS g′ (green) and r′ (red) filters for evidence of scattered light. No detection of strongly polarized emission from the hot dust stars is seen. We, therefore, rule out scattered light from a normal debris disk as the origin of this emission. A wavelength-dependent contribution from multiple dust components for hot dust stars is inferred from the dispersion (the difference in polarization angle in red and green) of southern stars. Contributions of 17 ppm (green) and 30 ppm (red) are calculated, with strict 3-σ upper limits of 76 and 68 ppm, respectively. This suggests weak hot dust excesses consistent with thermal emission, although we cannot rule out contrived scenarios, e.g., dust in a spherical shell or face-on discs. We also report on the nature of the local interstellar medium (ISM), obtained as a byproduct of the control measurements. Highlights include the first measurements of the polarimetric color of the local ISM and the discovery of a southern sky region with a polarization per distance thrice the previous maximum. The data suggest that λmax, the wavelength of maximum polarization, is bluer than typical.
Arbitrary 3D Object Extraction from Cluttered Laser Scans Using Local Features

Determination of construction performance metrics requires intensive processing of large amounts of data collected on construction sites including cluttered laser scans. For example, for quality control of construction components using 3D laser scans, the acquired point cloud should be cleaned and the object-of-interest should be extracted for measuring the incurred deviations. Such a procedure is tedious, time consuming and inaccurate due to intensive manual user operations. Although automatic extraction of rough and simple 3D shapes and features is performed by applying techniques such as Hough transform, automatic extraction of construction components with complex geometry is a challenging research need that must be addressed for fully automated modelling and processing. This paper presents a framework for automated extraction of 3D objects with arbitrary shapes and geometry. A new local feature set, which is globally invariant, is created in order to represent 3D models. The feature space created is then searched for in the cluttered laser scan by hashing from a hash table created for the 3D model. The best match is then extracted automatically by applying a post-processing RANSAC loop. The framework is then followed by an ICP-based registration in order to refine the best match identified. The results show that the method is sufficiently robust and quick to be applied for effective and efficient post processing of the laser scans acquired on construction sites.
Enhanced lifetimes of spin chains coupled to chiral edge states

We consider spin relaxation of finite-size spin chains exchanged coupled with a one-dimensional (1D) electron gas at the edge of a quantum spin Hall (QSH) insulator. Spin lifetimes can be enhanced due to two independent mechanisms. First, the suppression of spin-flip forward scattering inherent in the spin momentum locking of the QSH edges. Second, the reduction of spin-flip backward scattering due to destructive interference of the quasiparticle exchange, modulated by kFd, where d is the inter-spin distance and kF is the Fermi wavenumber of the electron gas. We show that the spin lifetime of the S = 1/2 ground state of odd-numbered chains of antiferromagnetically coupled S = 1/2 spins can be increased more than 4 orders of magnitude by properly tuning the product kFd and the spin size N, in strong contrast with the 1D case. Possible physical realizations together with some potential issues are also discussed.
THE STUDY OF SINGLE PHASE DIODE RECTIFIERS WITH HIGH POWER FACTOR AND LOW TOTAL HARMONIC DISTORTION

The mains current in an ac/dc converter contains periodic current pulses due to the action of rectifier and output filter capacitor. The high current peaks cause harmonic distortion of the supply current and low power factor. This results in a poor power quality, voltage distortion, poor power factor at input ac mains, slowly varying rippled dc output at load end and low efficiency. Many input wave shaping methods have been proposed to solve the problem of poor power factor which can be classified as active and passive methods. The main focus of this study is to review various existing wave shaping methods in terms of their efficiency, total harmonic distortion and power factor. Among the passive wave shaping techniques, the improved passive current wave shaping method and the novel method are analyzed and are simulated in ORCAD software. The active method which uses a MOSFET switch driven by the rectangular pulses of continuously varying duty cycle over a period of supply voltage is analyzed. The relevant theoretical design parameters and the simulated results are presented.