Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Genome-wide association study of meat quality traits using whole-genome sequence data in a multi-breed sheep population

Cooperative Research Centre for Sheep Industry Innovation, Armidale, NSW 2351, Australia nduijves@une.edu. au (Corresponding Author) 2 School of Environmental and Rural Science, University of New England, Armidale, NSW 2351, Australia Agriculture Victoria Research, AgriBio Centre, Bundoora, VIC 3083, Australia Animal Genetics and Breeding Unit, University of New England, Armidale, NSW 2351, Australia Department of Agricultural, Food and Nutritional Science, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada School of Applied Systems Biology, La Trobe University, Bundoora, VIC 3086, Australia 7Department of Animal Science, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA
Common Source LNA Design Space Exploration in All Inversion Regions

This work presents a design space exploration procedure valid in all inversion regions, from weak to strong, applied to the design of a CMOS CS-LNA. The exploration is done in terms of current consumption, gain and noise figure in the design space (ID, gm ID ) providing insight into the trade-offs in the selection of the inversion level of the main LNA transistor. Finally comparisons between the MATLAB design space exploration and BSIM3v3 simulations using Spectre-RF are done, through the design example of a 900MHz CS-LNA implemented in a 0. 35μm CMOS technology.
Late Pleistocene Potential Distribution of the North African Sengi or Elephant-Shrew Elephantulus rozeti (Mammalia: Macroscelidea)

The Sahara Desert was recently proposed as the agent of vicariant speciation in the North African elephant-shrew (order Macroscelidea, Elephantulus rozeti). Based on evidence from molecular dating, however, this speciation event was estimated as having occurred in the Miocene, an early date of origin for an extant species, predating the dramatic climatic fluctuations of the Pleistocene. Here, we explore the possibility of more recent connections of populations of this species across the Sahara Desert that would have facilitated faunal exchange through the Last Glacial Maximum. We used ecological niche modelling based on current climatic datasets and known occurrence points to develop models of present-day potential distributions of E. rozeti and related taxa. Given that the Miocene scenario was proposed based on a single set of evidence, we here provide a partial test based on an independent analysis of present and past potential distributions. Our results corroborate the idea of vicariance, but indicate that distributional patterns and ecological characteristics are consistent with a more recent, post-Pleistocene vicariance across an increasingly arid Sahara. We emphasize the importance of multiple sets of evidence to be brought to bear on complex biogeographical questions, and offer models of palaeoclimatic and palaeoecological distributions and independent sources of such information to complement molecular systematic studies.
Is Latency to Test Deadline a Predictor of Student Test Performance?

When students are given a period or window of time to take an exam, is taking an exam earlier in the window (high latency to deadline) related to test scores? In Study 1, students (n = 236) were given windows of time to take online each of 13 quizzes and 4 exams. In Study 2, students (n = 251) similarly took 4 exams online within a test window. In both studies, latency to deadline was significantly correlated to exam score. Higher scoring students took the exam earlier in the test window. We explore possible explanations of these relationships and map out directions for further study.
Effective Use of Context in Noisy Entity Linking

To disambiguate between closely related concepts, entity linking systems need to effectively distill cues from their context, which may be quite noisy. We investigate several techniques for using these cues in the context of noisy entity linking on short texts. Our starting point is a state-of-the-art attention-based model from prior work; while this model’s attention typically identifies context that is topically relevant, it fails to identify some of the most indicative surface strings, especially those exhibiting lexical overlap with the true title. Augmenting the model with convolutional networks over characters still leaves it largely unable to pick up on these cues compared to sparse features that target them directly, indicating that automatically learning how to identify relevant character-level context features is a hard problem. Our final system outperforms past work on the WikilinksNED test set by 2.8% absolute.
Seabed Mapping in Coastal Shallow Waters Using High Resolution Multispectral and Hyperspectral Imagery

Coastal ecosystems experience multiple anthropogenic and climate change pressures. To monitor the variability of the benthic habitats in shallow waters, the implementation of effective strategies is required to support coastal planning. In this context, high-resolution remote sensing data can be of fundamental importance to generate precise seabed maps in coastal shallow water areas. In this work, satellite and airborne multispectral and hyperspectral imagery were used to map benthic habitats in a complex ecosystem. In it, submerged green aquatic vegetation meadows have low density, are located at depths up to 20 m, and the sea surface is regularly affected by persistent local winds. A robust mapping methodology has been identified after a comprehensive analysis of different corrections, feature extraction, and classification approaches. In particular, atmospheric, sunglint, and water column corrections were tested. In addition, to increase the mapping accuracy, we assessed the use of derived information from rotation transforms, texture parameters, and abundance maps produced by linear unmixing algorithms. Finally, maximum likelihood (ML), spectral angle mapper (SAM), and support vector machine (SVM) classification algorithms were considered at the pixel and object levels. In summary, a complete processing methodology was implemented, and results demonstrate the better performance of SVM but the higher robustness of ML to the nature of information and the number of bands considered. Hyperspectral data increases the overall accuracy with respect to the multispectral bands (4.7% for ML and 9.5% for SVM) but the inclusion of additional features, in general, did not significantly improve the seabed map quality.
Particle size distribution of nitrated and oxygenated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (NPAHs and OPAHs) on traffic and suburban sites of a European megacity: Paris (France)

Abstract. The size distribution of particulate nitrated and oxygenated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (NPAHs and OPAHs) was determined during two field campaigns at a traffic site in summer 2010 and at a suburban site during the MEGAPOLI (Megacities: Emissions, urban, regional and Global Atmospheric POLlution and climate effects, and Integrated tools for assessment and mitigation) experiment in summer 2009. Both, OPAHs and NPAHs were strongly associated (>85%) to fine particles ( D p D p = 0.14 and 1.4 μm) were observed, while the particle size distributions were more scattered at the suburban site, especially for OPAHs. Bimodal particle size distribution observed at traffic site for the NPAH could be assigned to the vehicle emissions and the particle resuspension. Broadest distribution observed at the suburban site could be attributed to the mass transfer of compounds by volatilization/sorption processes during the transport of particles in the atmosphere. Results also showed that the combination of the study of particle size distributions applied to marker compounds (primary: 1-nitropyrene; secondary: 2-nitrofluoranthene) and to NPAH or OPAH chemical profiles bring some indications on their primary and/or secondary origin. Indeed, 1,4-anthraquinone seemed only primary emitted by vehicles while 7-nitrobenz[a]anthracene, benz[a]antracen7,12-dione and benzo[b]fluorenone seemed secondarily formed in the atmosphere.
Factors Limiting Small-Scale Farmers’ Access and Use of Tractors for Agricultural Mechanization in Abuja, North Central Zone, Nigeria

The importance of tractor and its implements in agricultural mechanization necessitated this study. The main objective is to identify factors limiting small-scale farmers’ access and use of tractors for farm mechanization in Abuja, Nigeria. To effectively cover the study area, a simple random technique was adopted for sample selection while semi-structured questionnaires were used for data collection. A total of 337 farmers were randomly selected from four local government areas (Kule, Kwali, Abaji, Gwagwalada) and used for the study. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Results indicated that the major factors limiting the farmers from using tractors to work on their farms were high cost of tractor hiring services (64.09%) and inadequate sources of hiring points (19.29%) resulting in poor access to tractors and its implements. The farmers that hired tractors spent an average of N11,543 on land tillage alone hence majority (49.85%) of them adopted local implements like hoes, spades and shovels for land tillage while 10.39% planted without land tillage (zero tillage). In addition to land tillage, majority of the farmers (62.31%) indicated that, they also hired tractors for the transportation of their farm produce. Private ownership (NGO, Cooperative societies and private individuals) were the major (67.95%) sources of tractor for hiring while only 13.65% of the farmers accessed government- owned tractors. Based on the findings, the paper recommended that more tractor hiring points should be established in the study area and, in addition, the cost of hiring tractor should be regulated by government in order to encourage farm mechanization. Key words: Cost of tractor hiring, land tillage operation, transportation of farm produce, sources of tractor hiring
Some Analytic Expressions for the Capacitance and Profiles of the Electric Double Layer Formed by Ions Near an Electrode

Abstract The electric double layer, which is of practical importance, is described. Two theories that yield analytic results, the venerable Poisson-Boltzmann or Gouy-Chapman-Stern theory and the more recent mean spherical approximation, are discussed. The Gouy-Chapman-Stern theory fails to account for the size of the ions nor for correlations amoung the ions. The mean spherical approximation overcomes, to some extent, these deficiencies but is applicable only for small electrode charge. A hybrid description that overcomes some of these problems is presented. While not perfect, it gives results for the differential capacitance that are typical of those of an ionic liquid. In particular, the differential capacitance can pass from having a double hump at low concentrations to a single hump at high concentrations.
Helmholtz and the Velocity Gauge

In 1870, Helmholtz published an article [40] (see also [41]) that was one of the first to cite Maxwell’s great paper of 1865 [35], and which also considered the electrodynamics of F. Neumann [19, 23], Weber [20, 24, 28, 29], Kirchhoff [30, 31] and C. Neumann [38, 39]. Here, we emphasize that Helmholtz used the electromagnetic potentials φ and A = (U, V, W ) as a way of comparing these different visions, noting that these potentials can be subject to the (gauge) condition, eq. (3), p. 80 of [40],
Physique Characterisation of textured surfaces under a laminar flow by Optical Coherence Tomography

textured surfaces are present everywhere in nature and in our daily life, interacting constantly with a flow. In this report, we focus on how a textured surface with pillars responds to a laminar flow inside a confined channel. The study is mainly focused on the measurements of the bending of the pillars and of the velocity field, using optical coherence tomography. The potential of this technique, which is not very common in microfluidics, is explored here to characterise our system and its limits are discussed. The measurements of the bending and of the velocity field allow to get the value of the Young modulus of the pillars and to quantify the penetration of the flow inside the system. A qualitative observation of the system with different phases is also performed.
To what extent do we process the nondominant object in a morphed figure? Evidence from a picture–word interference task

To investigate to what extent response candidates are processed during visual object categorisation, two picture–word interference tasks were conducted in which the effects of different types of distractor words on object naming were examined. Distractor words were related to the dominant or the nondominant object in a morphed figure. We assume both the dominant and nondominant object to be response candidates during response competition. The distractor words were identical (dog-dog), semantically related (cow-dog), or unrelated (spoon-dog) to the dominant or nondominant object. It was found that in relation to the dominant object in a morphed figure identical distractors facilitated naming, whereas semantically related distractors caused interference indicating a general semantic interference effect. Moreover, in relation to the nondominant object identical words interfered with naming, whereas semantically related words only interfered with naming when they were response set members. Therefore, identical words in general influenced the activation of the nondominant response candidate, whereas semantically related words only did so under restricted conditions. The latter will be discussed in terms of short-term memory load. Overall, we conclude that the nondominant response candidate is processed up to the perceptual level.
A statistical assessment of seismic models of the U.S. continental crust using Bayesian inversion of ambient noise surface wave dispersion data

We present a new approach for evaluating existing crustal models using ambient noise data sets and its associated uncertainties. We use a transdimensional hierarchical Bayesian inversion approach to invert ambient noise surface wave phase dispersion maps for Love and Rayleigh waves using measurements obtained from Ekström (2014). Spatiospectral analysis shows that our results are comparable to a linear least squares inverse approach (except at higher harmonic degrees), but the procedure has additional advantages: (1) it yields an autoadaptive parameterization that follows Earth structure without making restricting assumptions on model resolution (regularization or damping) and data errors; (2) it can recover non‐Gaussian phase velocity probability distributions while quantifying the sources of uncertainties in the data measurements and modeling procedure; and (3) it enables statistical assessments of different crustal models (e.g., CRUST1.0, LITHO1.0, and NACr14) using variable resolution residual and standard deviation maps estimated from the ensemble. These assessments show that in the stable old crust of the Archean, the misfits are statistically negligible, requiring no significant update to crustal models from the ambient noise data set. In other regions of the U.S., significant updates to regionalization and crustal structure are expected especially in the shallow sedimentary basins and the tectonically active regions, where the differences between model predictions and data are statistically significant.
Fabrication, polarization, and characterization of PVDF matrix composites for integrated structural load sensing

The focus of this work is to evaluate a new carbon fiber reinforced composite structure with integrated sensing capabilities. In this composite structure, the typical matrix material used for carbon fiber reinforced composites is replaced with the thermoplastic polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF). Since PVDF has piezoelectric properties, it enables the structure to be used for integrated load sensing. In addition, the electrical conductivity property of the carbon fabric is harnessed to form the electrodes of the integrated sensor. In order to prevent the carbon fiber electrodes from shorting to each other, a thin Kevlar fabric layer is placed between the two carbon fiber electrode layers as a dielectric. The optimal polarization parameters were determined using a design of experiments approach. Once polarized, the samples were then used in compression and tensile tests to determine the effective d33 and d31 piezoelectric coefficients. The degree of polarization of the PVDF material was determined by relating the effective d33 coefficient of the composite to the achieved d33 of the PVDF component of the composite using a closed form expression. Using this approach, it was shown that optimal polarization of the composite material results in a PVDF component d33 of 3.2 pC N−1. Moreover, the Young’s modulus of the composite structure has been characterized.
Liquid crystal waveguides: new devices enabled by >1000 waves of optical phase control

A new electro-optic waveguide platform, which provides unprecedented voltage control over optical phase delays (> 2mm), with very low loss (< 0.5 dB/cm) and rapid response time (sub millisecond), will be presented. This technology, developed by Vescent Photonics, is based upon a unique liquid-crystal waveguide geometry, which exploits the tremendous electro-optic response of liquid crystals while circumventing their historic limitations. The waveguide geometry provides nematic relaxation speeds in the 10's of microseconds and LC scattering losses that are reduced by orders of magnitude from bulk transmissive LC optics. The exceedingly large optical phase delays accessible with this technology enable the design and construction of a new class of previously unrealizable photonic devices. Examples include: 2-D analog non-mechanical beamsteerers, chip-scale widely tunable lasers, chip-scale Fourier transform spectrometer (< 5 nm resolution demonstrated), widely tunable micro-ring resonators, tunable lenses, ultra-low power (< 5 microWatts) optical switches, true optical time delay devices for phased array antennas, and many more. All of these devices may benefit from established manufacturing technologies and ultimately may be as inexpensive as a calculator display. Furthermore, this new integrated photonic architecture has applications in a wide array of commercial and defense markets including: remote sensing, micro-LADAR, OCT, FSO, laser illumination, phased array radar, etc. Performance attributes of several example devices and application data will be presented. In particular, we will present a non-mechanical beamsteerer that steers light in both the horizontal and vertical dimensions.
Designing wearable joystick and performance comparison of EMG classification methods for thumb finger gestures of joystick control

Surface electromyography is often used in the control of some devices, especially in the control of the prostheses. In this work, surface electromyography (EMG) is used to perform the function of a drone’s remote control joystick. To design a wearable joystick and select the best classification algorithm, the system first learns thumb finger movements when moving a joystick forward, backward, right, left, and neutral, and then classifies new thumb movements as learned by different classifiers. The data set was obtained with our own EMG device. Autoregressive (AR) modelling, mean absolute deviation, waveform length, entropy, integrated absolute amplitude, mode, percentile and interquartile are used as the feature extraction. Various classification algorithms such as neural networks (NN), discriminant analysis (DA), k-nearest neighbour (KNN), support vector machine (SVM) and Naive Bayes have been used and compared. The performance of each classifier algorithm is defined as the ratio of correctly classified samples to the total number of samples. According to experimental results, LDA gives the highest correct classification ratio and KNN is the most robust classifier.
Modular RFID parking management system based on existed gate system integration

In this paper, a Modular RFID Parking Management System that integrates the existed gate system and RFID is proposed. This system includes Modular Gate-PC Controller and Embedded Gate Hardware, RFID System, Modular Parking Management Platform. Most systems in Modular RFID Parking Management System are modulated and can be substituted for any other similar system or hardware. The proposed Modular Parking Management Platform is independent of the operation system on PC and can be embedded in any other modulated parking system or hardware. The real test and verification proves that the proposed Modular RFID Parking Management System can certainly reduce the total cost of RFID parking system infrastructure without re-modifying the existed hardware.
Use of Fermented Azolla in Diet of Tilapia Fry (Oreochromis niloticus)

The present study was undertaken to evaluate the effect of fermented azolla as fish meal substitute in the tilapia fry diet (Oreochromis niloticus) on growth performance, survival and feed utilization. In the experiment, the fry length initially ranging between (2.160±0.090 cm and 2.540±0.060 cm) and weight initially ranging between (0.190±0.010 g and 0.210±0.010 g) were fed on practical basal diet (30% crude protein) in the form of pellet during rearing period of 60 days. The fermented azolla were incorporated in the experimental diet at various levels such as 0% azolla, 10% fermented azolla, 20% fermented azolla and 30% fermented azolla to formulate four different test diets along with control diet. (Basal diet, without incorporation of fermented azolla, was used as control diet). The experimental fishes were fed with the experimental diet at of 7% of the body weight twice a day. Among the experimental treatments, the treatment 20% fermented azolla showed significantly higher growth parameters such as length gain (178.586±11.313%), weight gain (1346.770±70.251%), specific growth rate (4.449±0.083%), average daily growth (2.840±0.057%) and survival (95.556±2.222%). The feed utilization in terms of feed conversion ratio (1.236±0.030%) was significantly lower in 20% fermented azolla than control group, whereas protein efficiency ratio (4.145±0.169) in 20% fermented azolla showed significantly higher than that of other treatments.
Revalorization of cactus pear (Opuntia spp.) wastes as a source of antioxidants

Recently, an increased interest in antioxidant activity and health-improving capacity of cactus pear has been registered. The antioxidant capacity of the pulp of cactus-pear fruits has been previously assessed. In this work, total phenolics, flavonoids and tannins of peel and seeds of four cactus pear cultivars were examined as well as their antioxidant capacity. Tannins were the major phenolics in cactus pear seeds accounting for almost fifty percent for all cultivars. Analysis of variance revealed that ripeness, cultivar, and its interaction had highly significant effect on the total phenolics, tannin, and flavonoid contents of cactus pear peel. With regard to the seeds, only the stage of ripeness and interaction (ripeness stage x cultivar) were significant on total phenolics and tannins contents. The flavonoid content in seeds was not affected by any of the factors or their interactions. The antioxidant capacity was higher in the peel than in the seeds. Generally, fruits with light-green or yellow-brown peel have higher antiradical activity and Trolox equivalent antioxidant capacity (TEAC) values compared with those with red-purple peel. Cactus pear by-products can indeed be exploited as a good and cheap source of natural antioxidants.