Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Breakdown of Obligate Mutualism on a Small Island: An Interspecific Hybridization between Closely Related Fig Species (Ficus pumila and Ficus thunbergii) in Western Japan

Ficus (Moraceae) is a well-known group with specific pollination mutualisms, and hybridization is considered to be rare. Here, we report the presence of interspecific hybrids between Ficus pumila L. and F. thunbergii Maxim. on Okinoshima, a small island offshore of Shikoku, western Japan. AFLP (amplified fragment length polymorphism of genomic DNA) data suggested that more than one-fourth of individuals of morphological F. pumila were assigned as intermediate genotypes, suggesting hybrids. The hybridization between the two species was introgressive and unidirectional from F. thunbergii to F. pumila. The findings of this study, combined with other previous reports, suggest that the breakdown of mutualistic systems can occur in isolated populations such as those on islands.
Travel time derivative , dynamic road toll on QOS — market analysis and pricing issues

In this paper, travel time derivative is introduced as a new form of dynamic road toll to change user behavior, a new funding tool for the traffic projects, a new hedging tool against transportation related risk and a promising investment for investors. The potential market is analyzed and the benefits for hedgers,speculators and providers are enormous. Possible products are designed, possible prediction and pricing methods are introduced. Keyword: Travel time derivative, Travel time index, Travel time Options, High Congestion Days, Low Congestion days. Traffic Default Obligations, No arbitrage pricing,Non-tradable asset,Quality of service(QOS),Traveler behavior,Alternative Risk Transfer(ART)
Social Media Data Analytics for Tourists' Mobility Modeling and Prediction

Understanding and predicting human mobility is currently one of the most interesting and challenging objectives of big data analytics, with many scientific issues and large impact applications. In this context, the mobility of visitors within a touristic area (from small cities to whole countries) represents a very specific yet important case, with its own specificities and high economical and social impact. In this thesis, we aim to study methods and algorithms for modeling tourists’ mobility in urban settings, with the twofold objective of better understanding the choice criteria adopted to plan the visit, and predicting the destinations of visitors, which can be valuable tools for city management and the simulation of what-if scenarios. The approaches considered in this work are tailored around social network data sources providing positioning information about their users, and in particular experimental evaluations are performed on Flickr data. In the first part of the work two main driving criteria for choosing the next visited location of a user are considered: Willingness to move far away vs the popularity of the place to visit. Empirical results on Venice – which is a representative of massively touristic cities – suggest that both play an important role for most visitors, with some minorities almost exclusively driven by only one of them, and virtually nobody moving randomly. In the second and largest part of the thesis, we compare several sequence prediction approaches on the task of predicting the next point-of-interest in a user’s itinerary. The candidate solutions include standard Hidden Markov Models (HMMs), Sequential Rule Mining (SRM), Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) and a Hybrid model that mixes the first two basic methods. Empirical evaluations suggest that HMMs and SRM have a limited accuracy in this kind of task, yet with complementary strengths that are successfully exploited by the Hybrid combination model reaching significant improvements. Finally, RNNs showed the best performances among all the approaches, in spite of the relatively limited size of the training dataset available.
Distribución espacial de impactos de eventos hidrometeorológicos en América Central

Distribución espacial de impactos de eventos hidrometeorológicos en América Central Paula M. Pérez-Briceño1, Eric J. Alfaro1,2,3, Hugo G. Hidalgo1,2 y Francisco Jiménez1 1 Centro de Investigaciones Geofísicas, Universidad de Costa Rica 2 Escuela de Física, Universidad de Costa Rica 3 Centro de Investigación en Ciencias del Mar y Limnología, Universidad de Costa Rica <paula.perez@ucr.ac. cr>, <erick.alfaro@ucr.ac. cr>, <hugo.hidalgo@ucr.ac. cr>, <francisco. jimenez_g@ucr.ac. cr>
Range Image Registration of Specular Objects

We present a method for range image registration of specular objects devoid of salient geometric properties under complex lighting environment. We propose to use illumination consistency on two range images to detect specular highlights, which are used to obtain diffuse reflection components. By using light information estimated from the specular highlights and the diffuse reflection components, we extract photometric features invariant to changes in pose and illumination, even under unknown complex lighting environment. We then robustly register the two range images using these features. This technique can handle various kind of illumination situations and can be applied to a wide range of materials. Our experiments using synthetic data show the effectiveness, the robustness and the accuracy of our proposed method.
Stereotactic Radiosurgery -A Review

The concepts for neurosurgeons and radio-oncologists have been changed during the last decade and have also transformed neurosurgery. Stereotactic radiosurgery is related to the history of “radiotherapy” and “stereotactic neurosurgery”. The gamma knife and the stereotactically modified linear accelerator (LINAC) are radiosurgical equipments to treat predetermined intracranial targets through the intact skull without damaging the surrounding normal brain tissue. Histological determination by stereotactic biopsy remains the basis for any otherwise undefined intracranial lesion. The impact of radiosurgery is presented for the management of gliomas, metastases, brain stem lesions, benign tumours and vascular malformations and selected functional disorders such as trigeminal neuralgia. In AVM’s it can be performed as part of a multimodality strategy including resection or endovascular embolisation. Finally, the technological advances in radiation oncology as well as stereotactic neurosurgery have led to significant improvements in radiosurgical treatment opportunities. The combination of both, the neurosurgical and the radio-oncological expertise, will help to minimize the risk for the patient while achieving a greater treatment success.
Do Internal Controls Mitigate Employee Theft in Chain Organizations

Employee theft is a major problem affecting most U.S. businesses every year. This problem is particularly severe for the retail industry, as it results in an estimated $26 billion in losses every year. In this study, we examine the extent to which internal controls mitigate employee theft. Specifically, we investigate the effectiveness of two types of internal controls: formal monitoring and mutual (peer) monitoring. We analyze store-level and chainlevel data from the convenience store industry and find that: Mutual monitoring alleviates employee theft directly, whereas formal monitoring mitigates employee theft indirectly by reducing the strength of the relationship between employee turnover and employee theft. We also find a complementary effect between formal and mutual monitoring. Our study adds to a stream of literature that examines the effects of control mechanisms in reducing agency problems.
Quantitative compositional analysis of sedimentary materials using thermal emission spectroscopy: 2. Application to compacted fine‐grained mineral mixtures and assessment of applicability of partial least squares methods

Fine‐grained sedimentary deposits on planetary surfaces require quantitative assessment of mineral abundances in order to better understand the environments in which they formed. One way that planetary surface mineralogy is commonly assessed is through thermal emission (~6–50 µm) spectroscopy. To that end, we characterized the TIR spectral properties of compacted, very fine‐grained mineral mixtures of oligoclase, augite, calcite, montmorillonite, and gypsum. Nonnegative linear least squares minimization (NNLS) is used to assess the linearity of spectral combination. A partial least squares (PLS) method is also applied to emission spectra of fine‐grained synthetic mixtures and natural mudstones to assess its applicability to fine‐grained rocks. The NNLS modeled abundances for all five minerals investigated are within ±10% of the known abundances for 39% of the mixtures, showing the relationships between known and modeled abundance follow nonlinear curves. The poor performance of NNLS is due to photon transmission through small grains over portions of the wavelength range and multiple reflections in the volume. The PLS method was able to accurately recover the known abundances (to within ±10%) for 78–90% of synthetic mixtures and for 85% of the mudstone samples chosen for this study. The excellent agreement between known and modeled abundances is likely due to high absorption coefficients over portions of the thermal infrared (TIR) spectral range, and thus, combinations are linear over portions of the range. PLS can be used to recover abundances from very fine‐grained rocks from TIR measurements and could potentially be applied to landed or orbital TIR observations.
EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES OF THE BEHAVIOUR OF PRESSURISED RELEASES OF CARBON DIOXIDE

A large Research and Development programme has been initiated by National Grid to determine the feasibility of transporting carbon dioxide (CO2) by pipeline. As part of this programme, National Grid has commissioned a series of experimental studies to investigate the behaviour of releases of CO2 and mixtures in the gaseous and the liquid (or dense) phase. These experiments are being carried out both to understand the outflow and dispersion behaviour and to provide data that can be used in related mathematical modelling studies, in the development and validation of particular models, for example. In this paper, an overview of the experimental programme is provided. In addition, further details are provided on two of the experimental programmes that have been completed.
CARBON COATED MONOLITS AS CARRIERS FOR ENZYME IMMOBILIZATION

Immobilized enzymes are increasingly used as catalysts in fine chemical and specialty chemical production. Although activity usually decreases slightly upon immobilization, they possess important advantages over dissolved enzymes, e.g. the possibility of recovery and reuse, simple operation, and improved stability. Many supports have been studied for enzyme immobilization, including polymers and resins [1,2], silica and silicaalumina composites [3,4], and carbonaceous materials [5,6]. These materials are mostly used in the form of powders, beads, or chips. These systems are often severely diffusion limited, leading to a considerable fraction of unused enzymatic activity [7]. Carbon is a well-known material in adsorption and catalytic processes. Carbon is stable in acidic and basic media and the textural properties and chemical characteristics of carbonaceous materials can easily be tailored. Hence, these materials have a wide range of applications in different areas, including catalysis and pollutant removal. The main drawback of using carbon as catalyst support is the low mechanical strength; this can be improved by applying a thin layer of carbon on a suitable ceramic carrier.
Self-diffusion in germanium isotope multilayers at low temperatures

Self-diffusion in intrinsic single crystalline germanium was investigated between 429 and 596 °C using G70e/Gnate isotope multilayer structures. The diffusivities were determined by neutron reflectometry from the decay of the first and third order Bragg peak. At high temperatures the diffusivities are in excellent agreement with literature data obtained by ion beam sputtering techniques, while considerably smaller diffusion lengths between 0.6 and 4.1 nm were measured. At lower temperatures the accessible range of diffusivities could be expanded to D≈1×10−25 m2 s−1, which is three orders of magnitude lower than the values measured by sputtering techniques. Taking into account available data on Ge self-diffusion, the temperature dependence is accurately described over nine orders of magnitude by a single Arrhenius equation. A diffusion activation enthalpy of 3.13±0.03 eV and a pre-exponential factor of 2.54×10−3 m2 s−1 for temperatures between 429 and 904 °C are obtained. Single vacancies are considered to.
FREE 5 FACTIONS ON 2-CONNECTED NINE-MANIFOLDS(')

In this paper a classification of free S3-actions on 2-connected 9-manifolds is obtained by examining the corresponding principal S'-bun- dles. The orbit spaces that may occur are determined and it is proved that there are exactly two homotopy classes of maps from each of these spaces into the classifying space for principal 53-bundles. It is shown that the total spaces of the corresponding bundles are distinct, yielding the main result that for each nonnegative integer k, there exist exactly two 2-connected 9-manifolds which admit free 5'-actions and, furthermore, the actions on each of these manifolds are unique.
New high-performance complementary bipolar technology featuring 45-GHz NPN and 20-GHz PNP devices

A new high performance silicon complementary bipolar technology is introduced. In addition a novel process 'enhancement' technique based on a local oxidation is described and demonstrated and NPN devices with cut-off frequencies up to 45GHz and PNP devices of 20GHz have been fabricate. We propose that the technique we have used will allow specific transistors within a circuit to be optimized, as required.
The Replication Crises and the Trustworthiness of Empirical Evidence ∗

The primary aim of this paper is to call into question the presumption by the literature on the replication crises that replicability ensures the trustworthiness of empirical evidence. It is argued that the current focus of this literature on the abuse of significance testing as the main culprit is rather misplaced. This abuse is only a part of a much broader problem relating to the mechanical application of statistical methods without real understanding of their assumptions, limitations, proper implementation and interpretation of their inferential results. The abuse and misinterpretation of the p-value is just a symptom of the same mechanical implementation that can also render untrustworthy evidence replicable, when the same recipe-like implementation of statistical methods is followed by uninformed practitioners. A case is made in this paper that the three most important sources of untrustworthy evidence in empirical modeling are: (i) statistical misspecification: invalid probabilistic assumptions imposed on the particular data, (ii) deficient understanding and implementation of frequentist testing, and (iii) unwarranted evidential interpretations of the p-values and accept/reject results.
What Is Web 2.0 Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software

marked a turning point for the Web. Many people concluded that the Web was over hyped, when in fact bubbles and consequent shakeouts appear to be a common feature of all technological revolutions.1 Shakeouts typically mark the point at which an ascendant technology is ready to take its place at center stage. The pretenders are given the bum’s rush, the real success stories show their strength, and there begins to be an understanding of what separates one from the other.
Role of Spirulina platensis in the control of glycemia in DM2 rats

1 Abstract—It is well documented that oxidative stress is a basic mechanism behind the development of diabetic state. The current study was undertaken to elucidate the hypoglycemic role of Spirulina platensis in comparison with the antidiabetic drug glibenclamide. Male Wistar rats weighing 250 ± 50 g were made diabetic by injection with a single i.p. dose of streptozotocin (STZ) (60 mg/kg body weight). Serum glucose level significantly elevated (> 300, p ≤ 0.05), Diabetic group was orally adminis- tered for 45 days with crude extract of Spirulina platensis (15mg/kg) . Another group was orally treated daily with glibenclamide drug (5 mg/kg) for 45 days. Blood and tissue samples were collected at day 3 post STZ injection (from diabetic group), and at day 45 post-treatment in other groups. Liver function enzymes, blood glucose level, lipid profile, nitric oxide (NO), malondialdehyde (MDA), phosphoenol pyruvate carboxykinase (PEPCK) were significantly increased, while superoxide dismutase (SOD), glutathione (GSH), total protein, lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), pyruvate kinase (PK) and hexokinase (HK) were inhibited after STZ treatment. Kidney function, showed significant elevation in total urea and creatinine in STZ diabetic rats, while significant amelioration in Spirulina platensis treated diabetic rats. Histological examination of diabetic liver and kid- ney showed degenerative changes of hepatocytes. Proliferation of mesangial cells and matrix of glumeroli, thickened arteriole and Tubular dilatation of nephrocytes. Treatment of diabetic rats with ethanol extract of Spirulina platensis blunted the incre- ment in serum glucose induced by STZ, preserved liver architecture and ameliorated all the previous mentioned biochemical parameters. It could be concluded that, the oral administration of ethanol extract of Spirulina platensis in STZ diabetic rats clearly indicated the beneficial effects of it in controlling hyperglycemia.
Micromorph thin-film silicon solar cells with transparent high-mobility hydrogenated indium oxide front electrodes

We investigate the performance of hydrogenated indium oxide as a transparent front electrode for micromorph thin-film silicon solar cells on glass. Light trapping is achieved by replicating the morphology of state-of-the-art zinc oxide electrodes, known for their outstanding light trapping properties, via ultraviolet nanoimprint lithography. As a result of the high electron mobility and excellent near-infrared transparency of hydrogenated indium oxide, the short-circuit current density of the cells is improved with respect to indium tin oxide and zinc oxide electrodes. We assess the potential for further current gains by identifying remaining sources of parasitic absorption and evaluate the light trapping capacity of each electrode. We further present a method, based on nonabsorbing insulating silicon nitride electrodes, allowing one to directly relate the optical reflectance to the external quantum efficiency. Our method provides a useful experimental tool to evaluate the light trapping potential of novel photonic nanostructures by a simple optical reflectance measurement, avoiding complications with electrical cell performance.
Terahertz imaging via electrooptic effect

In this paper, we describe and discuss three electrooptic-based terahertz imaging systems: the point scanning system, a two-dimensional charge-coupled device (CCD) system and a one-dimensional spatio-temporal chirped pulse imaging system. A complete comparison between the scanning system and CCD systems is given. We emphasize the CCD systems that provide high acquisition speed by taking unique advantage of parallel measurement. Possible improvements are also discussed.
Heavy‐tailed travel distance in gravel bed transport: An exploratory enquiry

[1] Bed load transport, where particles move intermittently in frequent contact with the bed, is the dominant mode of particle transport in gravel bed rivers and streams. Complex fluid/particle and particle/particle interactions lead to a broad distribution of transport behaviors under the same set of flow conditions. In this paper, we investigate the plausibility of heavy-tailed movements for particles in bed load transport using carefully controlled flume experiments and theoretical analysis. In our experimental setting, we find travel distances for particles of a given size follow an exponential distribution whose mean varies with grain size. Building on previous work of Stark et al. (2009), we then develop a probability model to show how heavy-tailed distributions of travel distance can emerge from a mixture of particle sizes. Heavy-tailed travel distance can lead to anomalous diffusion in bed load transport, modeled by fractional derivatives in the transport equation.
occidioidal cerebral abscess with peripheral estricted diffusion bcès cérébral coccidioidal avec diffusion restreinte périphérique

n conventional magnetic resonance imaging (cMRI), the ppearance of a cerebral abscess is non-specific, and ecent studies suggest that diffusion-weighted imaging DWI) is more sensitive than cMRI in distinguishing abscesses rom necrotic tumor and other cystic lesions [1—4]. Such ifferentiation is an important factor in treatment deciions. Due to their variable nature and typical association with mmunosuppression, cMRI features of fungal abscesses can ange from a typical ring-enhancing pattern similar to that f pyogenic abscess to patchy or punctate lesions with or ithout enhancement [5]. With DWI, various patterns were
Can magnetar spin-down power extended emission in some short GRBs?

Extended emission gamma-ray bursts are a subset of the ‘short’ class of burst which exhibit an early time rebrightening of gamma emission in their light curves. This extended emission arises just after the initial emission spike, and can persist for up to hundreds of seconds after trigger. When their light curves are overlaid, our sample of 14 extended emission bursts show a remarkable uniformity in their evolution, strongly suggesting a common central engine powering the emission. One potential central engine capable of this is a highly magnetized, rapidly rotating neutron star, known as a magnetar. Magnetars can be formed by two compact objects coalescing, a scenario which is one of the leading progenitor models for short bursts in general. Assuming that a magnetar is formed, we gain a value for the magnetic field and late-time spin period for nine of the extended emission bursts by fitting the magnetic dipole spin-down model of Zhang and M´´ aros. Assuming that the magnetic field is constant, and the observed energy release during extended emission is entirely due to the spin-down of this magnetar, we then derive the spin period at birth for the sample. We find that all birth spin periods are in good agreement with those predicted for a newly born magnetar.
Coupling of morphology to surface transport in ion-beam irradiated surfaces: Oblique incidence

We propose and study a continuum model for the dynamics of amorphizable surfaces undergoing ion-beam sputtering (IBS) at intermediate energies and oblique incidence. After considering the current limitations of more standard descriptions in which a single evolution equation is posed for the surface height, we overcome (some of) them by explicitly formulating the dynamics of the species that transport along the surface and by coupling it to that of the surface height proper. In this, we follow recent proposals inspired by ``hydrodynamic'' descriptions of pattern formation in aeolian sand dunes and ion-sputtered systems. From this enlarged model and by exploiting the time-scale separation among various dynamical processes in the system, we derive a single height equation in which coefficients can be related to experimental parameters. This equation generalizes those obtained by previous continuum models and is able to account for many experimental features of pattern formation by IBS at oblique incidence, such as the evolution of the irradiation-induced thin amorphous layer, transverse ripple motion with nonuniform velocity, ripple coarsening, onset of kinetic roughening, and others. Additionally, the dynamics of the full two-field model is compared with that of the effective interface equation.