Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hot regions of labile and stable soil organic carbon in Germany – Spatial variability and driving factors

Abstract. Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels can be mitigated by sequestering carbon in the soil. Sequestration can be facilitated by agricultural management, but its influence is not the same on all soil carbon pools, as labile pools with a high turnover may be accumulated much faster but are also more vulnerable to losses. The aims of this study were to (1) assess how soil organic carbon (SOC) is distributed among SOC fractions on a national scale in Germany, (2) identify factors influencing this distribution and (3) identify regions with high vulnerability to SOC losses. The SOC content and proportion of two different SOC fractions were estimated for more than 2500 mineral topsoils (< 87 g kg−1 SOC) covering Germany, using near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy. Drivers of the spatial variability in SOC fractions were determined using the machine learning algorithm cforest. The SOC content and proportions of fractions were predicted with good accuracy (SOC content: R2 = 0.87–0.90; SOC proportions: R2 = 0.83; ratio of performance to deviation (RPD): 2.4–3.2). The main explanatory variables for the distribution of SOC among the fractions were soil texture, bulk soil C ∕ N ratio, total SOC content and pH. For some regions, the drivers were linked to the land-use history of the sites. Arable topsoils in central and southern Germany were found to contain the highest proportions and contents of stable SOC fractions, and therefore have the lowest vulnerability to SOC losses. North-western Germany contains an area of sandy soils with unusually high SOC contents and high proportions of light SOC fractions, which are commonly regarded as representing a labile carbon pool. This is true for the former peat soils in this area, which have already lost and are at high risk of losing high proportions of their SOC stocks. Those “black sands” can, however, also contain high amounts of stable SOC due to former heathland vegetation and need to be treated and discussed separately from non-black sand agricultural soils. Overall, it was estimated that, in large areas all over Germany, over 30 % of SOC is stored in easily mineralisable forms. Thus, SOC-conserving management of arable soils in these regions is of great importance.
Autonomous Adaptive Modification of Unstructured Environments

We present and validate a property-driven autonomous system that modifies its environment to achieve and maintain navigability over a highly irregular 3-dimensional terrain. In our approach we use decision procedures that tie building actions to the terrain model, giving rise to adaptive and robust building behavior. The building algorithm is driven by continuous evaluation and reaction to terrain properties, rather than relying on a structure blueprint. This capability is essential in robotic systems that operate in unstructured outdoor or remote environments, either on their own or as part of a team. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach by running a lowcost robot system that can build with compliant bags in a variety of irregular terrains.
Sacri ce , Bene t , and Reciprocity : Evidence from a Trust Game

Social preferences have generated much interest in recent economic literature. While reciprocity has been closely examined by several economists using gift exchange and other games, much of their focus is on the e ect of intentions and motivations. Instead, I focus on two strictly outcome-based factors in the context of a trust game: sacri ce made by the giver and bene t received by the recipient. I attempt to isolate these in uences by varying the multiplier across variations of the trust game to create comparison groups that di er in one of these factors, but not both. Unable to control for all expected sources of bias, I use two di erent speci cations that I suspect to have negative and positive signs of bias. I nd that both sacri ce and bene t seem to matter, meaning that the recipient of a gift seems to account for both the cost and the value of the gift. Speci cally, I estimate $1 of additional sacri ce to increase reciprocal giving by $0.35 under the rst speci cation and $0.57 under the second, and that $1 of additional bene t from a gift increases reciprocal giving by $0.28 and $0.34 under the rst and second speci cation, respectively. Robustness checks incorporating other data such as order e ects, session e ects, and demographic and personality type controls raise some room for doubt, but do not provide a strong refutation of my qualitative results. *mirco.dinelli@yale.edu, Yale University
Reversibility of Diabetic Cardiac Changes in Albino Rats by Insulin Glargine Treatment

Diabetes mellitus (DM), a condition of chronic hyperglycemia, represents one of the greatest concerns to modern global health. DM is a well-recognized cause of cardiomyopathy and left ventricular dysfunction. It is accompanied by impaired antioxidant defenses including nitric oxide (NO). Aim of work was to; (1) evaluate the microscopic changes in the heart of diabetic rats, (2) study the possible reversibility of these diabetic-induced cardiac changes by insulin glargine. Forty male albino rats were divided into; control group, non treated diabetic group and diabetic group treated with insulin glargine. DM was induced by intra-peritoneal alloxan injection. The experiment continued for six weeks. Heart tissues were prepared and stained with H&E, PAS and immunostained against e NOS. Heart tissue of diabetic rats revealed myocardial degeneration, disarray of myocardial fibers, mononuclear cellular infiltration; decreased e NOS immunoexpression in cardiomyocytes as well as endothelial cells and smooth muscles of cardiac blood vessels. Administration of insulin glargine improved these diabetic changes to great extent and increased e NOS immunoexpression. Insulin has to be given as early as possible for insulin dependent diabetics to control diabetic cardiac complications. NO is important for cardiac functions. Insulin has a role in cardiac e NOS expression.
Blind restoration of aerial imagery degraded by spatially varying motion blur

This paper deals with deblurring of aerial imagery and develops a methodology for blind restoration of spatially varying blur induced by camera motion caused by instabilities of the moving platform. This is a topic of significant relevance with a potential impact on image analysis, characterization and exploitation. A sharp image is beneficial not only from the perspective of visual appeal but also because it forms the basis for applications such as moving object tracking, change detection, and robust feature extraction. In the presence of general camera motion, the apparent motion of scene points in the image will vary at different locations resulting in space-variant blurring. However, due to the large distances involved in aerial imaging, we show that the blurred image of the ground plane can be expressed as a weighted average of geometrically warped instances of the original focused but unknown image. The weight corresponding to each warp denotes the fraction of the total exposure duration the camera spent in that pose. Given a single motion blurred aerial observation, we propose a scheme to estimate the original focused image affected by arbitrarily-shaped blur kernels. The latent image and its associated warps are estimated by optimizing suitably derived cost functions with judiciously chosen priors within an alternating minimization framework. Several results are given on the challenging VIRAT aerial dataset for validation.
Chemical Composition and in vitro Antibacterial Activity of the Essential Oils of the Leaves, Resin and Stem-Barks of Dacryodes edulis (G. Don) H. J Lam growing in Cameroon on Diarrhea Associated Strains

The aim of this work was to determine the chemical profile and assess in vitro the antibacterial activity of the leaves, resin and stem-barks of Dacryodes edulis. The essential oils were analyzed simultaneously by Gas Chromatography and Gas Chromatography coupled to Mass Spectrometry. Agar diffusion well and microdilution methods were used to assay the antibacterial activity. The resin essential oil contained p-cymene (30.32%), αthujene (28.58%), α-phellandrene (27.14%) and β-phellandrene (10.16%) as the main components; the stembarks essential oil had as abundant components p-cymene (35.14%), trans-carveol (22.60%), α-thujene (14.86%), β-phellandrene (8.65%) and β-elemene (5.22%). The leaves essential oil was distinct with elemol (29.22%), caryophyllene oxide (15.26%), trans-carveol (11.80%) and spathulenol (6.28%) as major components. The leaves essential oil was the most active with MIC and MBC value of 18.75 mg/mL on B. cereus; the most susceptible strain. The stem-barks essential oil had a MIC of 50 mg/mL and MBC of 100 mg/mL on all the strains meanwhile the resin essential oil had a bacteriostatic effect at 200 mg/mL. Based on these results, it emanates that the essential oils of D. edulis represent a potential source of antibacterial substances.
Influences of a-tocopherol on cholesterol metabolism and fatty streak development in apolipoprotein E-deficient mice fed an atherogenic diet

Although the role of oxidized lipoproteins is well known in atherogenesis, the role of vitamin E supplementation is still controversial. There is also little information about cholesterol metabolism (hepatic concentration and fecal excretion) in the new models of atherosclerosis. In the present study, we evaluated the effect of moderate vitamin E supplementation on cholesterol metabolism and atherogenesis in apolipoprotein E (apo E)-deficient mice. Apo E-deficient mice were fed an atherogenic diet containing 40 or 400 mg/kg of a-tocopherol acetate for 6 weeks. Total cholesterol in serum and liver and 3-OHa sterols in feces, and fecal excretion of bile acids were determined and histological analyses of aortic lesion were performed. A vitamin Erich diet did not affect body weight, food intake or serum cholesterol. Serum and hepatic concentrations of cholesterol as well as sterol concentration in feces were similar in both groups. However, when compared to controls, the a-tocopherol-treated mice showed a reduction of about 60% in the atherosclerotic lesions when both the sum of lesion areas and the average of the largest lesion area were considered. These results demonstrate that supplementation of moderate doses of a-tocopherol was able to slow atherogenesis in apo E-deficient mice and to reduce atherogenic lipoproteins without modifying the hepatic pool or fecal excretion of cholesterol and bile acids. Correspondence
Scouting for a Tomboy: Gender-Bending Behaviors in Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird

In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird , Scout Finch challenges gender stereotypes in her determination to remain a tomboy. Scout interacts with five parental characters (Atticus, Calpurnia, Aunt Alexandra, Miss Maudie, and Boo Radley), who offer models for Scout’s behaviors. Though primarily unconventional in terms of gender, these parental figures fluctuate between ideals, demonstrating that gender is an unstable standard that alters according to each individual. Lee depicts characters who resist conforming to the paradigms of masculinity and femininity and instead fill middle positions between the stereotypes, as Scout’s tomboyism exemplifies. After encountering different models, Scout consistently exhibits these gender-bending inclinations. Scout’s exploration of her identity as a tomboy functions as her coming-of-age journey.
No oscillations in the Michaelis-Menten approximation of the dual futile cycle under a sequential and distributive mechanism

Protein phosphorylation and dephosphorylation are important intracellular processes. The main object of study in this paper is the dual futile cycle, a phosphorylation system that describes the dualsite phosphorylation of a protein by a kinase/phosphatase pair in a sequential and distributive mechanism. Here, we analyze the 2D Michaelis-Menten (M-M) approximation of this system. It has been previously shown that this system is bistable and that it converges to a steady state. Here we show that the 2D M-M version of the dual futile cycle has a non-oscillatory behavior. Understanding its behavior could help us understand the mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPK) system which has recently been shown to have oscillations.
A Lightweight Stemmer for Hindi

Stemming is an operation that conflates morphologically similar terms into a single term without doing complete morphological analysis. Stemming is used in information retrieval systems to improve performance. Additionally, this operation reduces the number of terms in the information retrieval system, thus decreasing the size of the index files. This paper presents a lightweight stemmer for Hindi, which conflates terms by suffix removal. The proposed stemmer is both computationally inexpensive and domain independent. The paper discusses the systematic manner in which the suffix list was developed, and provides the linguistic rationale behind including various suffixes in the list. Similar techniques can be used to build stemmers for other Indian languages such as Marathi, Gujarati, and Punjabi. The stemmer has been evaluated by computing understemming and overstemming figures for a corpus of documents. The results are favourable and indicate that the proposed stemmer can be used effectively in IR systems.
“Flying Geese” Paradigm: Review, Analytical Tool, and Application

The “flying geese” (FG) pattern is one of the well-recognized models to be strongly considered in explaining economic development in the East Asian region. This paper scrutinizes the flying geese (FG) pattern in East Asia. Firstly, the evolution of FG concept starting from the original Akamatsu’s concept to the modern one is briefly discussed. Secondly, this paper develops an analytical tool namely “products mapping” which is constructed by combining two fundamental variables derived from the FG concept i.e. comparative advantage and trade balance. Thirdly, this paper applies the analytical tool in the case of Japan and Indonesia
Two new species of the purse-web spider genus Atypus Latreille, 1804 from Hainan Island, China (Araneae, Atypidae)

Abstract Two species of the purse-web spider genus Atypus Latreille, 1804 collected from Hainan Island, China, are diagnosed and described as new to science based on genital morphology, A. baotingensis sp. n. (♂♀) and A. jianfengensis sp. n. (♀). The DNA barcodes of the two species are also provided for future use.
Dominant and Subdominant Types of Nature Resources in Ukraine: Regional Analysis

Geographic specificities of allocation of basic (dominant) and second significant (subdo-minant) types of nature resources of Ukraine are disclosed in the aspect of 278 Ukrainian natural (physic-geographic) rayon. Major territorial combinations of nature resources formed in the state’s natural regions are exposed.
Multiple Vehicle-like Target Tracking Based on the Velodyne LiDAR

Abstract This paper proposes a novel multiple vehicle-like target tracking method based on a Velodyne HDL64E light detection and ranging (LiDAR) system. The proposed method combines multiple hypothesis tracking (MHT) algorithm with dynamic point cloud registration (DPCR), which is able to solve the multiple vehicle-like target tracking in highly dynamic urban environments without any auxiliary information from GPS or IMU. Specifically, to track targets consistently, the DPCR is developed to calculate accurately the pose of the ego-vehicle for the transformation of raw measurements taken in the moving coordinate systems into a static absolute coordinate system; while in turn, MHT helps to improve the performance of DPCR by discriminating and removing the dynamic points from the scene. Furthermore, the proposed MHT method is also able to solve the occlusion problem existing in the point cloud. Experiments on sets of urban environments prove that the presented method is effective and robust, even in highly dynamic environments.
Identifying Diagnostic Paths for Undifferentiated Abdominal Pain from Electronic Health Record Data

The diagnostic process is a complex, uncertain, and highly variable process which is under-studied and lacks evidence from randomized clinical trials. This study used a novel visual analytics method to identify and visualize diagnostic paths for undifferentiated abdominal pain, by leveraging electronic health record (EHR) data of 501 patients in the ambulatory setting of a single institution. A total of 63 patients reached diagnoses in the study sample. We illustrate steps in identifying diagnostic paths of the study patients, both individually and collectively, and visually present the diversity in their diagnostic processes. Patients in whom diagnoses were obtained generally had more clinical encounters and health services utilization, although their diagnostic paths were more variable than those of the undiagnosed group. The capability of identifying diagnostic paths demonstrated from this study allows us to study larger data sets to determine diagnostic paths associated with more timely, accurate, and cost-efficient diagnosis processes.
Multi-task Kernel Learning Based on Probabilistic Lipschitzness

In multi-task learning the learner is given data for a set of related learning tasks and aims to improve the overall learning performance by transferring information between them. A typical assumption exploited in this setting is that the tasks share a beneficial representation that can be learned form the joint training data of all tasks. This way, the training data of each task can be utilized to enhance the learning of other tasks in the set. Probabilistic Lipschitzness (PL) is a parameter that reflects one way in which some data representation can be beneficial for a classification learning task. In this work we propose to achieve multi-task learning by learning a kernel function relative to which each of the tasks in the set has a "high level" of probabilistic Lipschitzness. In order to be able to do that, we need to introduce a new variant of PL one that allows reliable estimation of its value from finite size samples. We show that by having access to large amounts of training data in total (possibly the union of training sets for various tasks), the learner can identify a kernel function that would lead to fast learning rates per task when used for Nearest Neighbor classification or in a cluster-based active labeling procedure.
Simulated Tremor Propagation in the Upper Limb: From Muscle Activity to Joint Displacement.

Although tremor is the most common movement disorder, there are few non-invasive treatment options. Creating effective tremor suppression devices requires a knowledge of where tremor originates mechanically (which muscles) and how it propagates through the limb (to which degrees of freedom, DOF). To simulate tremor propagation, we created a simple model of the upper limb, with tremorogenic activity in the 15 major superficial muscles as inputs and tremulous joint displacement in the 7 major DOF as outputs. The model approximated the muscle excitation-contraction dynamics, musculoskeletal geometry, and mechanical impedance of the limb. From our simulations, we determined fundamental principles for tremor propagation: 1) The distribution of tremor depends strongly on musculoskeletal dynamics. 2) The spreading of tremor is due to inertial coupling (primarily) and musculoskeletal geometry (secondarily). 3) Tremorogenic activity in a given muscle causes significant tremor in only a small subset of DOF, though these affected DOF may be distant from the muscle. 4) Assuming uniform distribution of tremorogenic activity among muscles, tremor increases proximal-distally, and the contribution from muscles increases proximal-distally. 5) Although adding inertia (e.g. with weighted utensils) is often used to suppress tremor, it is possible to increase tremor by adding inertia to the wrong DOF. 6) Similarly, adding viscoelasticity to the wrong DOF can increase tremor. Based solely on the musculoskeletal system, these principles indicate that tremor treatments targeting muscles should focus first on the distal muscles, and devices targeting DOF should focus first on the distal DOF.
A Novel Whisker Sensor Used for 3D Contact Point Determination and Contour Extraction

We developed a novel whisker-follicle sensor that measures three mechanical signals at the whisker base. The first two signals are closely related to the two bending moments, and the third is an approximation to the axial force. Previous simulation studies have shown that these three signals are sufficient to determine the three-dimensional (3D) location at which the whisker makes contact with an object. Here we demonstrate hardware implementation of 3D contact point determination and then use continuous sweeps of the whisker to show proof-of principle 3D contour extraction. We begin by using simulations to confirm the uniqueness of the mapping between the mechanical signals at the whisker base and the 3D contact point location for the specific dimensions of the hardware whisker. Multi-output random forest regression is then used to predict the contact point locations of objects based on observed mechanical signals. When calibrated to the simulated data, signals from the hardware whisker can correctly predict contact point locations to within 1.5 cm about 74% of the time. However, if normalized output voltages from the hardware whiskers are used to train the algorithm (without calibrating to simulation), predictions improve to within 1.5 cm for about 96% of contact points and to within 0.6 cm for about 78% of contact points. This improvement suggests that as long as three appropriate predictor signals are chosen, calibrating to simulations may not be required. The sensor was next used to perform contour extraction on a cylinder and a cone. We show that basic contour extraction can be obtained with just two sweeps of the sensor. With further sweeps, it is expected that full 3D shape reconstruction could be achieved.
Climate variability differentially impacts thermal fitness traits in three coprophagic beetle species

While the impacts of extreme and rising mean temperatures are well documented, increased thermal variability associated with climate change may also threaten ectotherm fitness and survival, but remains poorly explored. Using three wild collected coprophagic species Copris elphenor, Metacatharsius opacus and Scarabaeus zambezianus, we explored the effects of thermal amplitude around the mean on thermal tolerance. Using standardized protocols, we measured traits of high- (critical thermal maxima [CTmax] and heat knockdown time [HKDT]) and -low temperature tolerance (critical thermal minima [CTmin], chill coma recovery time [CCRT] and supercooling points [SCPs]) following variable temperature pulses (δ0, δ3, δ6 and δ9°C) around the mean (27°C). Our results show that increased temperature variability may offset basal and plastic responses to temperature and differs across species and metrics tested. Furthermore, we also show differential effects of body mass, body water content (BWC) and body lipid content (BLC) on traits of thermal tolerance. For example, body mass significantly influenced C. elphenor and S. zambezianus CTmax and S. zambezianus HKDT but not CTmin and CCRT. BWC significantly affected M. opacus and C. elphenor CTmax and in only M. opacus HKDT, CTmin and CCRT. Similarly, BLC only had a significant effect for M opacus CTmin. These results suggest differential and species dependent effects of climate variability of thermal fitness traits. It is therefore likely that the ecological services provided by these species may be constrained in the face of climate change. This implies that, to develop more realistic predictions for the effects of climate change on insect biodiversity and ecosystem function, thermal variability is a significant determinant.