Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Distance Decay of Tree Species Similarity in Protected Areas on Terra Firme Forests in Colombian Amazonia

In this study, we investigated the pattern of floristic similarity as a function of geographical distances and environmental variability in well‐drained uplands (terra firme) in Colombian Amazonia. The study site comprised three National Natural Parks, Tinigua, Chiribiquete, and Amacayacu, located in different geological units that represent a soil fertility gradient linked to parental materials. Differences in species richness between sites were compared using rarefaction analysis. A clear floristic transition appeared in the east–west direction following a soil fertility gradient along the first PCoA axis. In multiple regression analyses based on distance matrices, both geographical distances and geology explained 64 percent of the total floristic variation. Geographical distances alone accounted for 12 percent of variation in floristic similarities among plots, while geology alone accounted for 1 percent, and the joint effect of both explained 51 percent of the floristic variation. The species richness trend supports the existence of a latitudinal corridor southward of the geographical Equator in the Amazon basin, where tree diversity reaches the maximum expected values. A coupled effect of stochastic dispersal limitation and habitat specialization would certainly appear to be an appropriate explanation for tree species turnover in terra firme forests in Colombian Amazonia, strongly emphasizing that competition and neutrality must be supplementary rather than mutually exclusive processes. This result pinpoints the effect of dispersal on floral mixing as an ongoing active process for structuring tree communities in NW Amazonia, and the size of the reserves as a relevant issue to protect rare species from extinction by chance.
Using Surface Electromyography to Study Cervical Extensor Muscle Activity: An Investigation of Methodological Considerations and the Effects of Age on Fatigue Development and Recovery

JOINES, SHARON MELISSA BENNETT. Using Surface Electromyography to Study Cervical Extensor Muscle Activity: An Investigation of Methodological Considerations and the Effects of Age on Fatigue Development and Recovery. (Under the direction of Carolyn M. Sommerich.) The purpose of this research was to investigate the effects of aging on fatigue onset and recovery associated with low-level exertions of the neck musculature. This investigation into aging and fatigue is unique because the bulk of fatigue research has been performed at high force levels, and/or has not considered the effects of age on fatigue development. Several methodological issues were addressed in three preliminary phases of experimentation to develop a robust electromyography (EMG) collection/processing methodology that is sensitive to low level muscular fatigue. This new methodology was then employed in the investigation of the effects of age on the fatigue response of the neck musculature during low-level exertions. The first phase was an investigation of surface electrode location, using a structured neck marking procedure, and the underlying neck musculature, using ultrasound. The second phase of this investigation, a review of signal processing theory literature and a comparison of an ideal filter with a Butterworth filter, resulted in a set of recommendations for sEMG collection methods. The third phase of this investigation, an evaluation of the effect of neck posture during a maximum volunary contraction on normalized EMG values, showed that, there were significant differences between the sEMG data normalized using the posture specific normalization method and the reference posture normalization method. The final phase of this investigation identified measures for and evaluated the effect of age on fatigue onset and recovery due to a low force, static exertion held until fatigue. Based on the results of this experiment, it was found that:  there are several quantitative measures for identifying fatigue development associated with low-level exertions;  older subjects exhibited different fatigue response patterns compared with younger subjects;  some subjects regardless of age exhibited fatigue resistant characteristics; and  the recovery rate was not significantly affected by age group. USING SURFACE ELECTROMYOGRAPHY TO STUDY CERVICAL EXTENSOR MUSCLE ACTIVITY: AN INVESTIGATION OF METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS AND THE EFFECTS OF AGE ON FATIGUE DEVELOPMENT AND RECOVERY by SHARON MELISSA BENNETT JOINES, M.S. A thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty of North Carolina State University In partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy DEPARTMENT OF INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING
Hygienic quality of cow bulk tank milk depending on the method of udder preparation for milking (short communication)

The investigations were carried out in the year 2001 on 167 Black-and-White cattle farms of Wielkopolska region (West Poland). On the farms included in the study a survey on performing the premilking procedures was conducted and the results were collected concerning analyses of bulk tank milk samples for the somatic cell count (SCC) and total microorganism count (TMC). Herds, in which udders and teats were cleaned with a towel soaked with a disinfectant or washed with water containing a disinfectant, were characterized by lowest logeSCC (12.36 and 12.41, respectively). They were followed by herds in which wiping with a dry towel (12.48) and washing with clean water (12.58) were practiced. The lowest logeTMC was observed in the herds in which udders and teats were cleaned with a dry towel (10.66). This characteristic was similar in the herds where washing with clean water or wiping with a towel soaked with a disinfectant were practiced (10.89 and 11.00, respectively). The highest value of logeTMC was in the herds in which washing with water containing a disinfectant was practiced (11.28). For SCC, a significant interaction was found between both pre-milking procedures. In the case of wiping with either a dry or wet towel, significantly lower values of logeSCC were observed in the herds in which forestripping was performed prior to cleaning. However, in the herds in which udders and teats were washed with water, a better option was to perform forestripping after udder and teat cleaning.
Form Annotation Approach to Long-Tail Process Automation

Simple form of annotations, such as tagging, are proven to be helpful to end-users in organising and managing large amount of resources (e.g., photos, documents). In this paper, we take a ﬁrst step in applying annotation to forms, one of the main artefacts that make up the long-tail of the processes, to explore potential beneﬁts of helping people with little or no technical background to automate the long-tail of the processes. An analysis of real-world forms was conducted to design algorithms for tag recommendations. Our initial evaluation suggests that useful tag recommendation can be generated based on the contents and the metadata of the forms. We also brieﬂy present FormSys + , a framework for supporting form-based processes. The architecture supports an end-to-end lifecycle of forms, starting from its creation, annotation, and ultimately to its execution in a process.
The Reproductive Biology of Kauri (Agathis australis). IV. Late Embryogeny, Histochemistry, Cone and Seed Morphology

The reproductive cycle of kauri (Agathis australis [Lambert] Steud.) is similar to that of most temperate pines, extending over 19-20 mo from pollination in October to seed maturity in February or March. There is a ca. 3-mo winter dormant period from May or June until August or September, when the pollinated cones are at the free nuclear megagametophyte stage with pollen tubes permeating the nucellus. When growth resumes several archegonia differentiate; male gametes form; and fertilization occurs about November. Proembryo and early embryo development occur by early January followed by embryo growth and maturation. Cotyledon initiation begins in January and the embryo quickly fills 65% of the seed. At fertilization the megagametophyte contains no histochemically or ultrastructurally detectable lipid or protein bodies and only small amounts of starch. At the massive embryo stage small lipid bodies appear followed by protein bodies, first in the megagametophyte, then in the embryo. The predominant storage product is lipid found as small droplets throughout the cytoplasm. Protein bodies vary in size with homogeneous matrix proteins and crystalloids. Abundant starch accumulates only in the root cap. Cotyledons and hypocotyl-shoot axis contain primarily lipids and proteins that are similar in ultrastructure but generally smaller than those of the megagametophyte. The bract-scale complex of the megasporangiate strobilus was investigated and found to consist of a bract fused to a very reduced ovuliferous scale. The single median ovule develops one large seed wing and a rudimentary wing. Bractscales abscise when strobili mature and dry, releasing the seed.
A New Framework for Music Education Knowledge and Skill

This study investigates perceptions of secondary school band and orchestra teachers regarding the relative importance of knowledge and skill categories to professional success, using a framework modeled after Schulman (1986, 1987). Band and orchestra teachers in secondary schools (N = 214) complete an anonymous, online survey ranking the relative importance of various knowledge and skill categories. Participants rank pedagogical content knowledge, content knowledge, and general pedagogical knowledge highest. There are no significant differences in the rankings of the categories among various subgroups at the p < . 05 level. Results confirm the applicability of Schulman's model to music education. This framework has implications for undergraduate, graduate, and continuing professional education. Analysis of categories' interaction provides insight into effective classroom instruction.
How the 2016 election made conservative discourse extreme

The 2016 election brought names like Richard Spencer and Steve Bannon into the mainstream and focused attention on the rise of the so-called “altright”. While popular media has decried the growth of right-wing news outlets like Breitbart News, little sustained academic research has examined the spread of alt-right ideas or their apparent influence over modern conservative discourse. This project uses a combination of text-based machine learning techniques to develop models of media trends for both extremist and more mainstream conservative news organizations. By scraping thousands of blog posts from the white supremacist Daily Stormer, and conservative news outlet Breitbart News, we show how the 2016 election created the opportunity for white supremacist rhetoric to begin to influence mainstream conservative discourse. Our findings demonstrate that extremist ideas significantly shaped and influenced conservative news during and after the 2016 election. This project emphasizes the salient nature of right-wing extremism in modern American political discourse.
Physicochemical Characteristics of Date Sap “Lagmi” from Deglet Nour Palm (Phoenix Dactylifera L.)

Physicochemical properties of sap from Deglet Nour date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) were studied. Composition analysis revealed (on a dry-weight basis) a high content of carbohydrates (94.98 g/100 g of dry matter basis) mainly sucrose, 2.72 g/100g (dry matter basis) of proteins and 2.29 g/100 g (dry matter basis) of ash. Date palm sap also contains 7.64 mg gallic acid equivalent/100 ml of total polyphenol. Thus, date palm sap showed antioxidant activity with a percentage inhibition of the DPPH radical value of 47.64%. Surface and foaming properties were also performed by drop volume and bubbling method, respectively. Equilibrium surface tension of fresh sap was 63.51 mN/m. Freeze-drying method preserved surface activity. Native sap showed better foam power (1.03) and foam stability (1150 s) than solutions prepared from lyophilised sap (5–30 g /100g of solution). Results demonstrated that this natural juice could be regarded as functional food due to its high nutritional value, antioxidant activity, surface activity, and foam power.
Balanced and integrated nutrient management for enhancedand economic food production: case study from rainfed semi-arid tropics in India

Soil degradation in the semi-arid tropics (SAT) is mainly responsible for low crop and water productivity. In Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan states in India, the soil analyses of farmers’ fields revealed widespread deficiencies of S (9–96%), B (17–100%) and Zn (22–97%) along with that of P (25–92%). Soil organic C was deficient in 7–84% fields indicating specifically N deficiencies and poor soil health in general. During on-farm evaluations in rainy seasons 2010 and 2011, the soil test based addition of deficient nutrient fertilizers as balanced nutrition (BN) increased crop yields by 6–40% (benefit to cost ratios of 0.81–4.28) through enhanced rainwater use efficiency. The integrated nutrient management (INM), however, decreased the use of chemical fertilizers in BN by up to 50% through on-farm produced vermicompost and recorded yields at par or more than BN with far better benefit to cost ratios (2.26–10.2). Soybean grain S and Zn contents improved with INM. Applied S, B, Zn and vermicompost showed residual benefits as increased crop yields for succeeding three seasons. Hence, results showed INM/BN was economically beneficial for producing more food, while leading to resilience building of SAT production systems.
How Do Adults Praise Children With Low Self-Esteem?

In current Western society, children are often lavished with inflated praise (e.g., “You made an incredibly beautiful drawing! ”). Inflated praise is often given in an attempt to raise children’s self-esteem. An experiment (Study 1) and naturalistic study (Study 2) found that adults are especially inclined to give inflated praise to children with low selfesteem. This inclination may backfire, however. Inflated praise might convey to children that they should continue to meet very high standards—a message that might discourage children with low self-esteem from taking on challenges. Another experiment (Study 3) found that inflated praise decreases challenge seeking in children with low self-esteem and has the opposite effect on children with high self-esteem. These findings show that inflated praise, although well intended, may cause children with low self-esteem to avoid crucial learning experiences.
Comparison of Physical Demands between Possession Games and Matches in Football

The main purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which possession games (POS) are efficient in stimulating the physical and physiological demands of competition and their relationship with the player’s position in competitive matches. A descriptive study was conducted with 19 professional footballers in Argentina (24.7±4.8 years, 74.5±6.2 kg, 176.3±5.3 cm). Load was monitored by GPS and heart rate (HR) of each player in 16 competitive matches (eight observations for each tactical system: 13-4-3 and 1-4-2-1-3) and during three POS formats: 6 vs. 6, 7 vs. 7 and 8 vs. 8 (eight observations for each format). The average (AHR) and maximum (MHR) heart rate and the HSLR (distance travelled >14.9 kph, per minute) and HILR (distance travelled >19.9 kph, per minute) metabolic load rates were analysed. When the sample means were compared, both metabolic rates were significantly lower in POS, but with HSLR values representing 69-75% of the level reached in matches. The AHR value in POS was similar to competition (except 8 vs. 8), while the MHR was significantly lower in POS. When performance between playing positions was compared, no significant differences were observed in the HILR and the HSLR for central defenders and midfielders or in all playing positions for the AHR. In conclusion, possession games could be used to recreate the physical and physiological demands to which players are exposed during competition, significantly influencing their internal-external load. Keyword: physical performance, playing positions, tactical training, metabolic load rate, heart rate. Editor: © Generalitat de Catalunya Departament de la Presidència Institut Nacional d’Educació Física de Catalunya (INEFC)
Pathogen: Using Campaign Intent To Guide Onboard Planning For A Self-Reliant Rover

Previous case studies of the MSL Mars rover mission identified onboard activity planning as a key capability to improve productivity of planetary surface exploration missions. NASA’s transition to non-sun-synchronous relay communications at Mars further magnifies the need for reduced reliance on ground-in-the-loop interaction with future rovers. A new prototype onboard planner called Pathogen was implemented to explore the challenges of effectively conveying operator intent, efficiently producing high-quality plans, and responsively adapting to both challenges and opportunities encountered during execution. In particular, the onboard planner can re-route the mission path as terrain data accumulates as well as incorporate updated objectives provided by in-situ autonomous science analyses. Preliminary field evaluation of the Self-Reliant Rover system by planetary scientists using an MSL-class research rover on Earth to conduct a walkabout science camapign indicated significant increases in mission productivity: 80% decrease in required mission duration and 267% increase in total locations surveyed.
Light Modulation of Ferredoxin mRNA Abundance an Open Reading Frame Requires

Ferredoxin I (Fed-l) mRNA abundance is modulated by an Interna1 light regulatory element that includes sequences both L'and 3'of the translational initiation site. To test the hypothesis that the light response mediated by this element might be coupled to translation, we transformed tobacco plants with gene constructs blocked in translational initiation or elongation. Here, we report that such mutations abollsh the light response ln vivo. A nonsense mutation could be rescued by restorlng the open reading frame with a different sequence, even when the new codon caused an amino acld substitution. Our data establlsh that the light response requires a translatable reading frame and thus pmvide strong circumstantial evidence for post-transcriptional modulation of Fed-1 mRNA levels. The Fed-1 system 1s presently the only higher plant example of a developmentally regulated change in mRNA abundance that requires translation of the affected mRNA.
COMPRESSED SENSING APPLIED TO ULTRASOUND IMAGE RF RAW DATA: EVALUATION OF IMAGE RECONSTRUCTION

In the last few years, compressed sensing (CS) has attracted attention from different research areas, like biomedical image processing, radar technology and seismology. Compressed sensing has found different applications in ultrasound imaging, like 3D imaging, ultrasound computed tomography and in the standard B-Mode imaging. In this work, we evaluate the application of CS to the ultrasound received RF raw-data (prebeamforming RF signal) of each individual channel. Thus, instead of applying CS techniques to the matrix of N channels altogether, we apply it to each nth vector of the matrix (each RF A-line). Prior reported works, to the best of our knowledge, only evaluate the error in each individual vector, not the quality degradation in the resulting reconstructed imaging. In this work, we used the Structural Similarity Index – SSIM to compare the original image to the image built with the data recovered with the lower sampled-rate data. We used Field II cyst phantom example as data input with sampling frequency of 35 MHz (a value close to the sampling frequency of real ultrasound imaging systems) and a transducer with center frequency of 3.5 MHz. Then we undersampled the signal of each channel using a random matrix with normal distribution, recovered the data of each channel using optimization methods and built the B-Mode imaging following the example script provided by Field II. During this evaluation, we used DFT and DCT transforms as representation bases and l1MAGIC MATLAB® toolbox to recover the data. We performed simulations with vectors with lengths equivalent to those we would obtain when using sampling frequencies of 28, 21, 14, 7 and 3.5 MHz and compared the reconstructed images with the reference image (35 MHz sampled data). The best results (higher SSIM) were achieved using DCT transform. We have obtained images visually similar to the original image when their reconstruction uses signals at sampling frequencies above or equal to 14 MHz. These images have a SSIM greater than 0.85. Johannes D. Medeiros Jr, Eduardo T. Costa
The tractus tegmenti medialis and its connection with the inferior olive in the cat

I n a recently published paper (Ogawa and Mitonlo, '35) there was described a bundle of fine niyelinated fibers, running through the greater part of the brain stem just lateral to the raph8. These fibers were seen in Marchi preparations of a dog's brain and appeared to come from the nucleus of Darkschewitsch, the nucleus iiiterstitialis of Cajal and the iincleus of Forel's field, to descend through the most medial part of the tegmentum and to end in the homolateral inferior olive. At that time the opinion was expressed that these fibers correspond to the ' medialc Xittelhirnolivenbahn' discovered by Economo and Karplus in 1909. The name used by these authors does not seem appropriate since the tract takes origin in part from the hypothalamus. The term medial tegmental tract is preferred because it facilitates the association of this with the closely related central tegmental tract. The observations of Economo and Karplus, made on two cats, had received little o r no attentioil prior to 1937 when their observations were confirmed and extended on the rabbit (Ogawa and Xitorno, '37).