Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Does the Public Sector Crowd Out the Private Sector in the Higher Education Market?: Theory and Evidence from Japan

Private colleges dominate the higher education market in some countries but not in others. Using Japan as a primary example, we argue that in Japan private colleges lag behind public colleges in social and educational reputation because of heavy government support and controls on tuition at the public colleges. We propose a simple model of the higher education market in which not-for-profit private and public colleges compete for students by choosing tuition and education quality. Our theoretical prediction is that an exogenous increase in quality at and hence demand for the public colleges, caused by increased government subsidies, will lead to lower tuition and quality at private colleges. Using the Japanese cross-sectional data on four-year colleges, we find that private college tuition is lower in prefectures where the quality is higher at the competing public colleges, as our model predicts. JEL classification numbers: H52, I21, I22.
Sweep Sampling Capture Rates for Rangeland Grasshoppers (Orthoptera: Acrididae) Vary During Morning Hours

Abstract Rangeland grasshoppers have long been considered pests of serious economic importance and are key components of grassland food webs. Sampling protocols inform decisions to control grasshoppers. Preliminary observations while sampling rangeland grasshoppers indicated differences in species diversity and numbers captured, depending upon time of day. To test these differences, we used USDA-APHIS sweep-net sampling protocols at various times at four rangeland sites during 2006–2007 and compared mean numbers collected. Sweep sampling every hour from 06: 00 to 12:00 revealed that adult and nymphal grasshopper numbers were significantly higher at 06:00 than either 07:00 or 08:00. Captures were similar throughout the afternoon. These patterns were also observed for adults of the most common species, Melanoplus femurrubrum (DeGeer). The results of this study have important implications for rangeland pest management decisions and ecological studies that estimate insect biomass as an indicator of food availability. Our results indicate that standardized sampling of grasshoppers in mixed-grass prairie rangeland should be conducted between 10:00 and 16:00.
Stabilization strategies in extrusion-based 3D bioprinting for tissue engineering

Three dimensional (3D) printing is a revolutionizing technology, which endows engineers, designers, and manufacturers with the ability to rapidly translate digital sketches into physical objects. The advantages that lie in the high resolution and accuracy of this technique were not concealed from the eyes of tissue engineers that soon harnessed this power for fabrication of complex biological structures. Nevertheless, while the conventional 3D printing scheme is oriented to yield durable and sturdy structures, the delicate nature of the substances used in 3D bioprinting results in fragile and mechanically unstable constructs. This poses a significant restriction that needs to be overcome in order to successfully complete the printing of intact, accurate, and biologically relevant constructs with desirable properties. To address these complications, advanced means of stabilization which are applied during and/or following the printing procedure are constantly being developed. In this review, the rational and principles behind widely used stabilization strategies in extrusion-based bioprinting will be covered. Examples of implementation of these strategies in recently published research in the field of tissue engineering will also be presented and discussed.Three dimensional (3D) printing is a revolutionizing technology, which endows engineers, designers, and manufacturers with the ability to rapidly translate digital sketches into physical objects. The advantages that lie in the high resolution and accuracy of this technique were not concealed from the eyes of tissue engineers that soon harnessed this power for fabrication of complex biological structures. Nevertheless, while the conventional 3D printing scheme is oriented to yield durable and sturdy structures, the delicate nature of the substances used in 3D bioprinting results in fragile and mechanically unstable constructs. This poses a significant restriction that needs to be overcome in order to successfully complete the printing of intact, accurate, and biologically relevant constructs with desirable properties. To address these complications, advanced means of stabilization which are applied during and/or following the printing procedure are constantly being developed. In this review, the rational a.
Echinoderm Larvae and Phylogeny

New robust phylogenies for echinoderms, based on congruent patterns derived from multiple data sets, provide a sound foundation for plotting the evolution of life-history strategies and comparing rates and patterns of larval and adult morphological change. This approach demonstrates that larval morphology has been evolving independently of adult morphology, that larval morphology displays more homoplasy than adult morphology, and that early developmental patterns are remarkably flexible. Larval morphology on its own can mislead phylogenetic analysis, not because of lateral gene transfer among distantly related taxa, but because of massive convergence in the form of nonfeeding larvae brought about by the loss of complex structures and the strong functional constraints on feeding larvae. The degree to which larval tissue is resorbed at metamorphosis is believed to be important in determining adult body plan. Although the correspondence is not precise, it does provide a model for understanding skeletal homol.
ASSESSMENT OF THE STATE OF LAKE MALOE LEBYAZHYE (KAZAN, RUSSIA), BASED ON ZOOPLANKTON, FOR THE PURPOSE OF ECO-REHABILITATION

The work is devoted to the study of zooplankton community structure of Lake Maloe Lebyazhye (Kazan, Russia). Previously, Lake Lebyazhye consisted of 4 lakes, connected by ducts. Over the past decades, there has been a significant reduction in the area of lake, and only the Maloe Lebyazhye has remained. Other lakes of this system dried up. Methods: In 2017, measures were taken to restore the lakes of Bolshoe and Svetloe Lebyazhye: They were deepened to 3 m; the bottom was insulated with bentonitic mats. In October 2017, the lakes were filled with water. For the implementation of water supply, the pressure water conduit was restored to supply water from the nearby Lake Izumrudnoe. The study of the zooplankton community of Lake Maloe Lebyazhye is relevant and necessary to identify changes, occurring after the completion of measures for eco-rehabilitation. Results and Discussion: The article presents the results of studies of the zooplankton community of Lake Maloe Lebyazhye, performed during the growing periods of 2015–2017. In the course of the research, current species composition of zooplankton was revealed, the abundance and biomass were estimated, and the biotic indices were calculated. Conclusions: It is revealed that the zooplankton of the lake is represented by 64 species. The mean values of the abundance and biomass of zooplankton are relatively low and are in the range of values, corresponding to the oligotrophic type of water body.
Who’s Tweeting About the President? What Big Survey Data Can Tell Us About Digital Traces?

Researchers hoping to make inferences about social phenomena using social media data need to answer two critical questions: What is it that a given social media metric tells us? And who does it tell us about? Drawing from prior work on these questions, we examine whether Twitter sentiment about Barack Obama tells us about Americans’ attitudes toward the president, the attitudes of particular subsets of individuals, or something else entirely. Specifically, using large-scale survey data, this study assesses how patterns of approval among population subgroups compare to tweets about the president. The findings paint a complex picture of the utility of digital traces. Although attention to subgroups improves the extent to which survey and Twitter data can yield similar conclusions, the results also indicate that sentiment surrounding tweets about the president is no proxy for presidential approval. Instead, after adjusting for demographics, these two metrics tell similar macroscale, long-term stories about presidential approval but very different stories at a more granular level and over shorter time periods.
Serum concentrations of lipids, vitamins A and E, vitamin D metabolites, and carotenoids in nine primate species at four zoos

The purpose of this work was to measure important nutritional status parameters for captive primates, compare those with published data, and look for a link with diet. The nutritional status of nine captive primate species was examined using biochemical analysis. The species were spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi), colobus monkeys (Colobus guereza), sooty mangabeys (Cercocebus torquatus), Schmidt's monkeys (Cercopithecus ascanius), mandrills (Papio sphinx), baboons (Papio cynocephalus), chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus), and gorillas (Gorilla gorilla). Diet information was collected by survey and the estimated nutritional composition of the diet for each species at each institution was compared with non-human primate nutrient requirements. On the average, the captive primates received diets that met or exceeded recommended dietary guidelines for vitamins A, D, and E for non-human primates. Blood samples were collected from 94 primates held at Brookfield Zoo, Fort Worth Zoo, Lincoln Park Zoological Gardens, and North Carolina Zoological Park and analyzed for lipids, vitamins A and E, D metabolites, and carotenoids. Several species showed differences among zoos for some nutrients, but values from any one zoo were not consistently lower. When monkeys were compared with great apes, monkeys had lower serum total cholesterol, triacylglyceride, and measured LDL cholesterol levels, but significantly higher vitamin D metabolite levels. Species differences were found for serum A, E, and carotenoid levels (with the exception of lycopene). Some differences were seen in serum retinol, retinyl palmitate and γ-tocopherol. The relatively large number of animals contributing to this database and the fact that the data were collected from four zoos provide a substantial base for comparing nutritional status. Comparisons of these serum levels with previously published values for selected primates and humans revealed some differences. Zoo Biol 18:551–564, 1999. © 1999 Wiley-Liss, Inc.
Compact Dual-Polarized Metasurface Antenna with Extended Axial Ratio Beamwidth for S and C-band Applications

This work discusses the design of a triple-band and dualpolarized high gain circularly polarized (CP) antenna based on artificial transmission line (ATL) based metamaterial (MTM) structures. To enhance the gain and extend the axial ratio (AR) beamwidth, a new multi-band artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) based metasurface (MS) is placed below the radiating triple-band antenna. Due to this, the impedance bandwidth (IBW), gain and AR beamwidth is enhanced. The intended antenna provides overall dimensions of $0.36\lambda_{0}\times 0.36\lambda_{0}\times 0.10\lambda_{0}$ at2.57 GHz. Also, the antenna is capable of providing positive gain value and extended AR beamwidth for theta $=\pm 58^{0}$ and $\phi=0^{0}$ to 3600 at 2.45 GHz. Hence the intended antenna is suitable for working in small satellite applications at S and C bands.
Semantic Frame Embeddings for Detecting Relations between Software Requirements

The early phases of requirements engineering (RE) deal with a vast amount of software requirements (i.e., requirements that define characteristics of software systems), which are typically expressed in natural language. Analysing such unstructured requirements, usually obtained from users’ inputs, is considered a challenging task due to the inherent ambiguity and inconsistency of natural language. To support such a task, methods based on natural language processing (NLP) can be employed. One of the more recent advances in NLP is the use of word embeddings for capturing contextual information, which can then be applied in word analogy tasks. In this paper, we describe a new resource, i.e., embedding-based representations of semantic frames in FrameNet, which was developed to support the detection of relations between software requirements. Our embeddings, which encapsulate contextual information at the semantic frame level, were trained on a large corpus of requirements (i.e., a collection of more than three million mobile application reviews). The similarity between these frame embeddings is then used as a basis for detecting semantic relatedness between software requirements. Compared with existing resources underpinned by word-level embeddings alone, and frame embeddings built upon pre-trained vectors, our proposed frame embeddings obtained better performance against judgements of an RE expert. These encouraging results demonstrate the strong potential of the resource in supporting RE analysis tasks (e.g., traceability), which we plan to investigate as part of our future work.
Diet and endogenous carbohydrases in the temperate marine herbivorous fish Kyphosus sydneyanus

Stomach content analysis showed that Kyphosus sydneyanus collected by spearing from coastal reefs near Leigh, north-east New Zealand, is herbivorous throughout its post-settlement life. All size classes collected consumed a wide range of macroalgae, predominantly the phaeophytes Carpophyllum maschalocarpum and Ecklonia radiata, and the rhodophytes Gigartina macrocarpa and Caulacanthus ustulatus. Multivariate analysis of variance and discriminant function analysis showed an ontogenetic diet shift, with gut contents dominated by rhodophytes and chlorophytes in juveniles and by phaeophytes in adults. No significant seasonal variation in diet was apparent for any size class. Amylase and amylopectinase activity was highest in the smaller size classes. Laminarinase activity was relatively low throughout all size classes, and did not correlate with the ontogenetic increase in phaeophyte consumption. The activity of endogenous enzymes hydrolysing starch broadly correlated with rhodophyte consumption in adult specimens of three other species of marine herbivorous fishes: Odax pullus, Girella tricuspidata and Parma alboscapularis; laminarin hydrolysis, however, was negatively correlated with phaeophyte consumption. Overall, the diet and enzyme results suggest that juvenile K. sydneyanus rely mainly on the endogenous digestion of rhodophytes and chlorophytes, while exogenous (microbial) digestion is used to digest the phaeophyte-dominated diet of adults.
The role of pH and ion transport in oligosaccharide-induced proteinase inhibitor accumulation in tomato plants.

Abstract. The induction of proteinase inhibitor (PrI) activity in young tomato plants by wounding and oligosaccharides has been shown to be prevented by pretreatment of the plants with phenolic acids such as aspirin. Aspirin applied over a wide range of concentrations is able to inhibit PrI induction by pectic fragments. The possibility that other weak acids may also inhibit PrI induction was investigated. Isobutyric acid and trimethylacetic acid were shown to be less effective as inhibitors than aspirin, and weak bases were without effect. However, it was demonstrated that various agents known to influence ATPase activity and intracellular pH were able to inhibit PrI induction, and in particular the striking effect of low concentrations of fusicoccin on PrI induction was noted.
A Novel High Performance and Energy Efficient NUCA Architecture for STT-MRAM LLCs With Thermal Consideration

As the speed gap of the modern processor and the off-chip main memory enlarges, on-chip cache capacity increases to sustain the performance scaling. As a result, the cache power occupies a large portion of the total power budget. Spin transfer torque magnetic memory (STT-MRAM) is proposed as a promising solution for the low power cache design due to its high integration density and ultralow leakage power. Nevertheless, the high write power and latency of STT-MRAM become new barriers for the commercialization of this emerging technology. In this paper, we investigate the thermal effect on the access performance of STT-MRAM, and observe that the temperature can affect the write delay and energy significantly. Then, we explore the nonuniform cache access (NUCA) design of the chip-multiprocessors with STT-MRAM-based last level cache (LLC). A thermal aware data migration policy, called “Thermosiphon,” which takes advantage of the thermal property of STT-MRAM, is proposed to reduce the LLC write energy. This policy splits the LLC into different regions dynamically based on the thermal distribution monitored by thermal sensors available on-chip, and adaptively migrates write intensive data among different thermal regions considering the thermal gradient. Compared to the conventional NUCA design, our proposed design can save 41.2% write energy at most and 13.01% on average with negligible hardware overhead.
Digital Pharmaceutical Sciences

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, in particular, have gained significant interest in many fields, including pharmaceutical sciences. The enormous growth of data from several sources, the recent advances in various analytical tools, and the continuous developments in machine learning algorithms have resulted in a rapid increase in new machine learning applications in different areas of pharmaceutical sciences. This review summarizes the past, present, and potential future impacts of machine learning technologies on different areas of pharmaceutical sciences, including drug design and discovery, preformulation, and formulation. The machine learning methods commonly used in pharmaceutical sciences are discussed, with a specific emphasis on artificial neural networks due to their capability to model the nonlinear relationships that are commonly encountered in pharmaceutical research. AI and machine learning technologies in common day-to-day pharma needs as well as industrial and regulatory insights are reviewed. Beyond traditional potentials of implementing digital technologies using machine learning in the development of more efficient, fast, and economical solutions in pharmaceutical sciences are also discussed.
Resistance of chlamydospores of nematophagous fungi to the digestive processes of sheep in Mexico

Abstract Following oral administration to sheep, chlamydospores of a Mexican isolate of Duddingtonia flagrans (FTHO-8) survived passage through the digestive tract and subsequently grew on corn meal agar plates. The fungus was able to catch and destroy free-living nematodes and third-stage larvae of Haemonchus contortus added to these plates. Chlamydospores of Arthrobotrys sp. showed a poor resistance to the digestive processes of sheep, although conidia of A. superba survived following oral inoculation in one of two animals.
Knowledge-Driven Service Offloading Decision for Vehicular Edge Computing: A Deep Reinforcement Learning Approach

The smart vehicles construct Internet of Vehicle (IoV), which can execute various intelligent services. Although the computation capability of a vehicle is limited, multi-type of edge computing nodes provide heterogeneous resources for intelligent vehicular services. When offloading the complex service to the vehicular edge computing node, the decision for its destination should be considered according to numerous factors. This paper mostly formulate the offloading decision as a resource scheduling problem with single or multiple objective function and constraints, where some customized heuristics algorithms are explored. However, offloading multiple data dependence tasks in a complex service is a difficult decision, as an optimal solution must understand the resource requirement, the access network, the user mobility, and importantly the data dependence. Inspired by recent advances in machine learning, we propose a knowledge driven (KD) service offloading decision framework for IoV, which provides the optimal policy directly from the environment. We formulate the offloading decision for the multiple tasks as a long-term planning problem, and explore the recent deep reinforcement learning to obtain the optimal solution. It can scruple the future data dependence of the following tasks when making decision for a current task from the learned offloading knowledge. Moreover, the framework supports the pre-training at the powerful edge computing node and continually online learning when the vehicular service is executed, so that it can adapt the environment changes and can learn policy that are sensible in foresight. The simulation results show that KD service offloading decision converges quickly, adapts to different conditions, and outperforms a greedy offloading decision algorithm.
Conservation status and reproductive ecology of giant babax Babax waddelli (Aves, Timaliinae), endemic to the Tibet plateau

The Lower Risk/near threatened giant babax Babax waddelli is endemic to southern Tibet. The babaxes, living in groups of 3–8 individuals year-round, favoured edge habitats in forest regions where the group encounter rate during the breeding period was 0.35 groups h−1 and population density 0.04 birds ha−1, and in scrub regions they depended on the patches covered with higher bushes in which the group encounter rate and population density were 0.32 groups h−1 and 0.03 birds ha−1 respectively. The global population of the babaxes was estimated to be 120,000 birds. Reproductive and behavioural data were collected from scrub environments in a valley. Egg laying occurred between early May and early June, and clutch size ranged from 2 to 4 eggs, 2.9 on average. Incubation and fledging lasted 16–18 days respectively. Nesting success, measured as the proportion of clutches from which at least one young survives to fledging, was 75%. Some of the babax's nests were cooperatively attended by group members and the others only by both parents. The most preferable nesting areas were in dense bushes more than 1.8 m in height (mainly Rosa sericea, Berberis hemleyana, Cotoneaster divaricatus, Sibiraca angustata and Salix sclerophylla). Such strong dependence on high bushes leaves babaxes more susceptible to vegetation degradation. As a result, the increasing clearance of scrub habitats for firewood is a major current threat to the birds around the mid-Yalong Zangbo River, a region with the densest human population and most rapidly developing economy in Tibet. Their naturally low population density and strongly social grouping behaviour present extra risk factors that have to be taken into account. The importance of vegetation protection for long-term survival of this endemic species is highlighted.