Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Black Hole Masses of Weak Emission Line Quasars Based on the Continuum Fit Method

We studied optical-ultraviolet spectral energy distribution of 10 weak emission-line quasars (WLQs) that lie at redshifts z = 0.19 and 1.43 < z < 3.48. The theoretical models of their accretion disk continua are created based on the Novikov–Thorne equations. It allows us to estimate masses of their supermassive black holes ( ) and accretion rates. We determined the virial factor for WLQs and note its anticorrelation with the FWHM of the Hβ emission line ). By comparison with the previously estimated BH masses, the underestimation of is noticed with a mean factor of 4–5, which depends on the measured full width. We proposed a new formula to estimate in WLQs based on their observed (Hβ) and luminosities at 5100 Å. In our opinion, WLQs are also normal quasars visible in a reactivation stage.
Political Change and Informality: Evidence from the Arab Spring

This paper examines informality during the political and economic turmoil that accompanied the Arab Spring revolution in Egypt. The paper focuses on unprotected employment and the extent to which it changed by educational level right after the January Uprising of 2011. We find that over time and particularly after the revolution, informal employment has increased for both high- and low-educated workers however, through different paths: high educated were more likely to be stuck in informality, whilst low-educated formal workers were more likely to lose their contracts. The results suggest a high level of rigidity in the Egyptian labor market even in the wake of the Arab Spring.
Recent multiple introductions of the gall‐forming aphid Pemphigus bursarius into Japanese islands

Recently, the number of collection records of Pemphigus galls from Populus nigra has been increasing in Japan. To identify the galls on P. nigra, mitochondrial COI sequences were analyzed from galling aphid samples collected on P. nigra in Tokyo and Hokkaido. From the BLAST search and neighbor‐joining (NJ) analysis, the aphid samples were identified as Pemphigus bursarius, which has not been recorded from Japan. Two samples from Tokyo and Hokkaido showed a genetic difference of 0.30%. This result suggests that different strains of P. bursarius might have been introduced into the Japanese islands at least twice.
Uréia em dietas para bovinos: consumo, digestibilidade dos nutrientes, ganho de peso, características de carcaça e produção microbiana

The objective of this trial was to evaluate the effects of replacing soybean meal with urea on performance, carcass traits, and intake and digestibility of nutrients in steers. Microbial protein synthesis and efficiency were also measured in this trial. Sixteen steers averaging 286 kg of BW were assigned to a completely randomized design with a 2x2 factorial approach: two protein sources (soybean meal and urea) and two levels of concentrate (0.75 and 1.25% of BW); four replicates per treatment were used and the experiment lasted 63 days. Diets were isonitrogenous (12% of CP) with the forage portion composed by elephant grass silage and sorghum silage in the ratio of 80:20. Efficiency of microbial protein synthesis was not affected by treatments. Intakes of DM, OM, EE, NDF, NFC and TDN and apparent total tract digestibilities of DM, OM, EE and TDN all increased linearly when the proportion of concentrate was increased in the diet. Except for EE, the protein sources did not affect the intake and digestibility of all remaining nutrients. Feeding high concentrate diets to steers increased energy intake and improved performance. Replacing soybean meal with urea did not change the average daily gain of steers with expected BW gain varying from 1.1 to 1.2 kg/day.
Occurrence of the introduced Xylosandrus germanus (Blandford, 1894) in Hungary - a genetic evidence (Coleoptera: Scolytidae)

In June 2005 Xylosandrus germanus (BLANDFORD, 1894), a new ambrosia beetle for Hungary was found close Nagymate, County Baranya. The adults were excavated from freshly felled logs of Quercus and Tilia, and reared from these attacked trees in light eclector respec- tively. The prepared specimens are deposited at the Hungarian Natural History Museum (Coleoptera Collection) and at the Institute of Sylviculture and Forest Protection, University of West-Hungary. In its natural distribution X. germanus is considered as an important pest, while in Europe - where the species was introduced more than 60 years ago - no remarkable damage was reported. Genetic analyses - a comparison of the 400bp fragment of the mitochondrial COI gene - of Hungarian and German individuals were performed to confirm the species' sta- tus. The investigated populations can be considered identical (0.25% divergence, 2 haplotypes: GenBank accession numbers: HT-1 EF433438 and HT-2 EF433439). As outgroup for the anal- yses sequence data of Xylosandrus mancus (BLANDFORD, 1894) from the GenBank (AF187143) was used.
Adult Sex Ratio of a Population of the Japanese Salamander, Hynobius tokyoensis (Caudata: Hynobiidae)

Abstract: Adult sex ratio is considered to be a key factor in understanding sexual selection, mating behavior, life history and population dynamics. Following Fisher (1930), a general consensus was formed that sex ratio tends to be largely balanced. However, gainsaying this, large variations in sex ratio have been reported among populations and species of amphibians. There is little information on sex ratio in natural populations of Japanese hynobiid salamanders. To help fill this gap, we conducted a long-term census of a population of Hynobius tokyoensis from 1976 to 1985 and estimated the adult sex ratio (the proportion of males within the population) at 0.578 from data gathered during eight non-breeding seasons. The bootstrap 95% confidence interval was 0.516–0.641. The study showed that the adult sex ratio was significantly biased toward males in the population studied; it was nearly 1.5:1 (males:females). Age at first reproduction is 1 year later in females, which suggests that the most likely factor driving the unbalanced sex ratio is the differential maturation rate between the sexes.
Freshwater conservation planning: the case for systematic approaches

We review recent advances in systematic conservation planning in fresh waters. Most modern systematic planning approaches are based on the CARE principles: comprehensiveness, adequacy, representativeness and efficiency. Efficiency is usually provided by a complementarity-based strategy, aiming to select new conservation areas in the light of previously protected features. These strategies have to be modified to account for the connected nature of rivers. 2. Choice of surrogates for conservation features depends on the scale of the assessment, as well as the available expertise and resources. Ideally, real information about taxa or processes - extrapolated by models - ensures that target features are protected. Where this is not feasible, it is critical that the choice of environmental surrogates is informed by target biota or processes. 3. Setting adequacy targets - the most challenging aspect in planning - needs to be evaluated in a freshwater- specific context, as species-area relationships and the distribution of diversity differ in dendritic networks. Adequately designed conservation plans also need to consider upstream land use and catchment disturbances. Recent studies have largely addressed longitudinal connectivity either by setting rules to protect adjacent subcatchments (or even the entire catchment upstream), or by considering the magnitude of disturbance upstream of selected planning units. Very few studies have addressed lateral and vertical connectivity in a systematic way. 4. To implement freshwater conservation plans, we recommend adopting a recently proposed hierarchical protection strategy, from 'freshwater focal areas' that contain the actual features to be protected to mixed- use 'catchment management zones'. Stakeholder involvement is crucial, especially in the large multi-use areas upstream and in the surrounding catchment. 5. We conclude that conservation planning using CARE principles is the only efficient way forward. This special issue shows significant efforts are under way to adapt freshwaterspecific adequacy, connectivity and implementation issues in conservation planning. However, a more holistic research investment is required to link freshwater, terrestrial and marine ecosystems.
Ceramides in Adipose Tissue

Adipose tissue is a key nutrient-sensing depot that regulates excess energy storage and consumption. Adipocytes, the key components of the adipose tissue, have unique ability to store excess energy in the form of triglycerides, sense systemic energy demands, and secrete factors (lipids, peptides, cytokines, and adipokines) to regulate other metabolic tissues. The presence of various types of adipocytes (white, brown, and beige) characterized by the number/size of lipid droplets, mitochondrial density, and thermogenic capacity, further highlights how intricate is the communication of these cell-types with other metabolic tissues to sense nutrients. In obesity the inherent capacity of adipose tissue to store and sense nutrients is compromised, causing spillover of the intermediate lipid metabolites into circulation and resulting in their ectopic deposition in tissues not suitable for lipid storage, a phenomenon known as lipotoxicity. This results in a spectrum of cellular dysfunction, that underlies various metabolic diseases. Of the numerous lipid classes implicated in eliciting lipotoxicity, sphingolipid: ceramides are among the most deleterious as they modulate signaling pathways involved in regulating glucose metabolism, triglyceride synthesis, apoptosis, and fibrosis. Notably, recent experimental studies have strongly implicated ceramides in the development of numerous metabolic diseases such as insulin resistance, diabetes, cardiomyopathy, hepatic-steatosis, and atherosclerosis. Herein we discuss and summarizes recent findings that implicate ceramides as a key contributor to adipocyte dysfunction underlying metabolic diseases and how depletion of ceramides can be exploited to improve metabolic health.
Poverty and Informal Economy Participation. Evidence from Romania

This paper uses a household survey of the Romanian informal economy to analyse the effects of poverty on informal economy participation. We begin by developing a simple theoretical model, which shows that the participation is driven by low income and the gap between desired and actual income level. We then estimate the determinants of households' participation in the informal economy. Empirical findings are consistent with the theoretical prediction. In addition, a positive association between husbands and wives working in the informal economy implies the deep poverty faced by a family whose head participates in the informal economy.
Nodding Syndrome (NS) in Northern Uganda: A Probable Metabolic Disorder

Aims: To conduct an epidemiological study to establish the association between malnutrition , metabolic disorder and Onchocerciasis to Nodding Syndrome (NS) in Northern Uganda. Study Design: Case-control study design. Place and Duration of Study: Odek and Atiak sub counties in Gulu and Amuru districts between 10 th to 20 th
Methods for studying the energetics of freely diving animals

Advances in instrumentation and labeled water methodologies are providing new insights into at-sea behavior and energetics of freely diving animals. Used concurrently, these approaches can add significantly to our understanding of the physiological ecology of diving animals. In this paper I review existing information on at-sea behavior and free-ranging metabolism of diving mammals and birds, and discuss the methods available to assess at-sea diving food consumption, energy expenditure, and behavior. Finally, using the limited available data for northern fur seals, I present approaches for the analysis of concurrently collected data on at-sea metabolism and diving behavior. These include estimation of prey capture success per dive, rate of energy acquisition per dive, time–energy budget analysis, and diving metabolic rate derived from regression analysis. I hope that this discussion will stimulate interest in a potentially powerful method of understanding the physiology and ecology of freely diving animal.
Design research for participatory policies: Paradoxes, Themes, Futures

In keeping with the participatory turn, the current work discusses how a double-layered design approach can bring participatory design principles to the policy domain, illustrated by our experiences in a design project for the municipality of Delft, the Netherlands. More precisely, the approach described is double layered in nature, comprising of the Double Diamond design process, which aims to provide structure to the process, while the inclusion of the Frame Innovation method, aims to provide inspiration. First, this elaborate method is motivated in the context of the municipality of Delft, supported by current streams of literature on participatory design. Next, we present findings highlighting three pivotal moments experienced as a result of using this approach. By engaging in a reflective practice, key learnings and insights gained from the implementation of the approach are presented, as well as conclusions and recommendations for the field of design research within participatory design.
Flexible Redundancy Generation for Virtual Network Embedding with an Application to Smart Grids

Embedding applications consisting of interconnected logical function blocks, denoted Virtual Network Requests (VNR), onto physical compute and communication networks, denoted Substrate Networks (SN), allows for the automatic generation of a variable degree of redundancy. The need for this feature arises for instance in smart power distribution grids with many decentral devices. Their heterogeneous communication interconnections often feature low reliability and face frequently changing conditions. At the same time, high service reliability is required for critical applications such as voltage control. In this work, we show how to detect potential voltage violations in a medium voltage feeder with high probability at low monitoring cost. We employ a probabilistic power flow model to determine the time-dependent required reliability for the links of voltage monitoring VNRs and embed it onto a SN consisting of a mix of plausible smart grid communication technologies. We use a novel approach based on chance-constrained mixed integer linear programming to generate a minimal, but sufficient degree of redundancy. This allows for optimal resource usage of the SN, flexibility to adapt the embedding in case of changes of the VNR or SN parameters, and reduced design efforts in comparison to manual redundancy planning. Compared with a static redundancy setup, the operational communication costs can be more than halved in our simulation experiments.
Structure-Function Analysis of Lyn Kinase Association with Lipid Rafts and Initiation of Early Signaling Events after Fcɛ Receptor I Aggregation

ABSTRACT The first step in immunoreceptor signaling is represented by ligand-dependent receptor aggregation, followed by receptor phosphorylation mediated by tyrosine kinases of the Src family. Recently, sphingolipid- and cholesterol-rich plasma membrane microdomains, called lipid rafts, have been identified and proposed to function as platforms where signal transduction molecules may interact with the aggregated immunoreceptors. Here we show that aggregation of the receptors with high affinity for immunoglobulin E (FcɛRI) in mast cells is accompanied by a co-redistribution of the Src family kinase Lyn. The co-redistribution requires Lyn dual fatty acylation, Src homology 2 (SH2) and/or SH3 domains, and Lyn kinase activity, incis or in trans. Palmitoylation site-mutated Lyn, which is anchored to the plasma membrane but exhibits reduced sublocalization into lipid rafts, initiates the tyrosine phosphorylation of FcɛRI subunits, Syk protein tyrosine kinase, and the linker for activation of T cells, along with an increase in the concentration of intracellular Ca2+. However, Lyn mutated in both the palmitoylation and myristoylation sites does not anchor to the plasma membrane and is incapable of initiating FcɛRI phosphorylation and early signaling events. These data, together with our finding that a constitutively tyrosine-phosphorylated FcɛRI does not exhibit an increased association with lipid rafts, suggest that FcɛRI phosphorylation and early activation events can be initiated outside of lipid rafts.
Mapping Deep Neural Networks on SpiNNaker2

SpiNNaker is an efficient many-core architecture for the real-time simulation of spiking neural networks. To also speed up deep neural networks (DNNs), the 2nd generation SpiNNaker2 will contain dedicated DNN accelerators in each processing element. When realizing large CNNs on SpiNNaker2, layers have to be split, mapped and scheduled onto 144 processing elements. We describe the underlying mapping procedure with optimized data reuse to achieve inference of VGG-16 and ResNet-50 models in tens of milliseconds.
Designing Participedia: A Collaborative Research Platform

A transformation of democratic governance is occurring as public participation empowers citizens to have their voices heard beyond the vote. Participedia is a research community and online crowdsourcing platform designed to document and share emerging knowledge about participatory democracy. Participedia's women-led Design & Technology (D&T) team used participatory design (PD) and feminist human computer interaction (HCI) strategies to evaluate Participedia's formerly proprietary website and design and build a new, open source platform. By shifting Participedia to an open source technological approach, the D&T team deliberately created opportunities for women and students and initiated new collaborations through channels like Github. Key design improvements, such as improved accessibility and reducing bias in the data model of Participedia, further align the project with feminist values of equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI). The D&T team is part of a new generation of designers and developers contributing to interdisciplinary research through design and technology for social good.
Cultivating Creative Coexistence(s): towards a critical education for creativity praxis to construct fairer human coexistences

Creative education is a central theme in a world where the division between human and intelligent machines produces new work and social relationships. Many researchers and educators reproduce a controversial discourse where being creative is mandatory to ”succeed” professionally and personally in the Creative Society. Situated in a participatory action research project conducted with socioeconomically vulnerable young people and their social educators in Brazil, we draw on learned lessons from this project to challenge such a discourse by introducing the notion of Creative Coexistence(s). We introduce this notion and discuss four pillars that sustain it and give people a base to promote creativity as a means to produce fairer human coexistence(s). By developing a critical discussion on the literature, and by presenting five scenarios on creative coexistence(s) activities, we elaborate and discuss the four pillars to cultivate creative coexistence(s): 1.Questioning the Creative Society, 2.Freirean-Papertian praxis, 3.Young people as (re)makers, and 4.Coexistence-centered experiences.
Assessment of growth and yield of some high-and low-cyanide cassava genotypes in acid ultisols of south eastern Nigeria

Thirty-eight high and low cyanide cassava genotypes were evaluated for growth and yield. The experiment was fitted in a randomized complete block design with three replications. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed significant difference (P ≤ 0.05) in growth and yield parameters, indicating strong genetic variations among the genotypes. Significant (P ≤ 0.05) highest average storage root weight of 1.5 and 1.8 kg were obtained from TMS 94/0035 (high cyanide cassava genotype) and TMS 98/0505 (low cyanide cassava genotype), respectively. Correlation analyses indicated significant (P ≤ 0.05) and positive associations between number of storage roots per plant, average storage root weight and root yield in the two types of cassava genotypes tested, indicating that the parameters are good indices that can be improved upon during breeding and selection to enhance root yield. Four high cyanide cassava genotypes (TMS 99/2123, TMS 96/1642, TMS 98/0068 and TMS 94/3200﴿ were outstanding in fresh root yield performance. To improve fresh root yield in cassava, the inter-relationships among the various agronomic character of the cassava genotypes demands appropriate attention. The study gives more information on the improvement of fresh storage root yield of cassava. Keywords: High cyanide cassava genotypes, low cyanide cassava genotypes, correlations, growth, yield African Journal of Biotechnology , Vol. 13(5), pp. 651-656, 29 January, 2014
Efficacy of Dissotis rotundifolia on Trypanosoma brucei brucei infection in rats

; they are unicellular and transmitted by the bite of tsetse fly as the vector of sleeping sickness in humans and related diseases in animals (Warren, 1988; Kuzoe, 1993). Up to 80% of the Nigerian land mass is infested by the vector of the parasite, tsetse fly (genus, Glossina). Presently, the disease in cattle has been on the increase due to the menace of the vector, drug resistance and the presence of other haematophagous flies (Holmes, 2000). In the chemotherapy of African trypanosomiasis, each of the drugs in use has its drawbacks (Kuzoe, 1993; Onyeyili and Egwu, 1995). The search for vaccination against African trypanosomiasis remains elusive and effective treatment is beset with problems of drug resis-tance and toxicity (Aldhous, 1994; Gutterridge, 1985;
Machine Learning for Data-Driven Indicators Applied to Power Distribution System

Indicators play an important role as they offer a quick overview of the system performance. However, obtain each indicator for each component of the power distribution system is cumbersome using classical approaches because the number of devices and data that must be studied is extensive. The main purpose of this work is to take advantage of machine learning algorithms to: (i) learn patterns from our data, and (ii) compute prediction-based indicators (we called data-driven indicators), that can be used to understand and improve distribution network performance. Our proposed methodology, used a long short-term memory (LSTM) auto-encoder architecture as a feature extractor in order to reduce the dimensionality, and then we used an LSTM forecaster network to make a daily prediction using smart-meters measurements. Finally, we employed the predicted values to compute the standardized indicators and ranked them based on the critical state. We carried out this analysis using real-world data collected at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP). Our findings suggest that our proposed methodology can be suitable for power distribution networks where we faced with the problem of modeling unbalanced three-phase systems and with low X/R ratios.