Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
EFFECTS OF THE POTATO APHID MACROSIPHUM EUPHORBIAE (THOMAS) (HOMOPTERA: APHIDIDAE) ON OILSEED FLAX, AND STAGE-SPECIFIC THRESHOLDS FOR CONTROL

Abstract The potato aphid, Macrosiphum euphorbiae (Thomas), infests oilseed flax, Linum usitatissimum L. , when the crop is flowering and developing seeds. Field studies in cages, open plots, and commercial fields showed that the aphid can cause yield losses of 20% or more, but reduces the weight of individual seeds only slightly and has no effect on oil quality. A single application of a foliar insecticide at full bloom or the green boll stage will control the potato aphid until harvest. The yield loss of flax is 0.021 t/ha per aphid per plant for crops sampled at full bloom and 0.008 t/ha per aphid per plant for crops sampled at the green boll stage. The economic threshold for the potato aphid in flax is three aphids per plant at full bloom and eight aphids per plant at the green boll stage, based on crop prices and control costs from 1990 to 1992. Aphids should be controlled as soon as the economic threshold is exceeded. If control is not warranted at full bloom, aphid densities should be assessed again at the green boll stage. The effective use of growth-stage-specific sampling and economic thresholds will maximize the benefits of insecticide use for producers and minimize unnecessary or ineffectively timed applications. Résumé Le Puceron de la pomme de terre, Macrosiphum euphorbiae (Thomas) infeste les champs de lin Linum usitatissimum L. au cours de la floraison et du développement des graines. Des expériences au moyen de cages sur le terrain, dans des terrains ouverts et dans des cultures commerciales, ont démontré que l’insecte peut entraîner des pertes de plus de 20% de la récolte, mais ne réduit que très peu la masse des graines et n’affecte pas la qualité de l’huile. Une application unique d’un insecticide foliaire au moment de la floraison ou au moment où les capsules des graines sont vertes peut maîtriser les infestations jusqu’à la récolte. Les pertes sont évaluées à 0,021 t/ha par puceron par plant lorsque les échantillonnages ont lieu au plus fort de la floraison, et de 0,008 t/ha par puceron par plant lorsque les échantillons sont recueillis au moment où les capsules des graines sont encore vertes. Le seuil économique est de trois pucerons par plant à la floraison maximale et de huit pucerons par plant lorsque les capsules sont vertes; ces chiffres sont basés sur la valeur marchande des récoltes et sur les coûts reliés au contrôle tels qu’évalués au cours de la période 1990–1992. Les pucerons devraient être traités aussitôt que le seuil économique est dépassé. Si le contrôle s’avère superflu au moment de la floraison maximale, la densité des pucerons devraint être évaluée de nouveau au moment où les capsules sont vertes. La planification de l’échantillonnage en fonction du stade de développement et des seuils économiques maximise les effets bénéfiques des insecticides et minimise les risques d’applications superflues ou mal synchronisées. [Traduit par la Rédaction]
Carabid beetle (Coleoptera: Carabidae) richness and functional traits in relation to differently managed grasslands in the Alps

Summary Species richness, composition, and functional traits of carabid beetle assemblages (Coleoptera: Carabidae) were studied in relation to different grassland management. Carabid beetles were sampled during the summers 2008 and 2009 by 165 traps located in 11 sites in the central-eastern Italian Alps. Using mixed effect models to account for potential spatial bias, we found that mown grasslands had significantly more species, a lower proportion of wingless species and a lower proportion of species with long larval development than grazed and natural grasslands. Within grazed and mown grasslands, neither cattle density nor number of cuts had any significant effect neither on species richness nor on any of the traits. The influence of grassland management can be summarised as follows: (1) grazing does not change community structure and functional traits compared to natural grasslands; (2) mowing negatively affects the carabid beetle assemblages; (3) the intensity of grazing and of cutting may not affect the structure of species assemblages of ground beetles. Our results support the hypothesis that agroecosystem practices in alpine grasslands influence carabid beetle communities. Specifically, the species with traits typical of undisturbed habitats (low dispersal abilities and long larval development) are more sensitive to perturbations (e.g. cutting). Our suggestion for agricultural and environmental planning and for conservation schemes is that the preservation of natural grasslands (e.g. forest gaps) and the implementation of grazing should be promoted during the planning of agroecosystem mosaics.
Learning how to modify training rates in scene-recognition CNNS

In this Master’s Thesis, we pretend to ﬁnd a measure that allows modifying the value of the learning rate of each individual neuron in a convolutional neural network. Speciﬁcally, we aim to handle the eﬀect of the phenomenon known as Catastrophic Forgetting . Starting from a network trained for a source task, this concept refers to the loss in performance that the network undergoes for the source task, when it is trained for a new target task. To this aim, we begin by adapting a neural networks visualization tool to draw conclusions about the behavior and activity of neurons. Using this information, we hypothesize that those neurons with higher activity along the data-set images may be considered useful for the source task and those with lower activity are prone to be treated as free space for the network to learn the target task. To quantitative account for this activity, we leverage on the entropy of the distribution of the neurons’ activities to design weighting functions to dynamically adapt the learning rate of each neuron according to it. In the evaluation section, we compare the results of these functions against a classical ﬁne-tuning strategy focusing on obtaining networks whose joint performance for the source task and the target task is as close as possible to the performance obtained by two diﬀerent networks fully-trained for each task separately. Obtained results suggest that all of the proposed functions perform better than the ﬁne-tuning strategy in this scope, and some of them perform close to the fully-training paradigm.
Fishes as indicators of environmental and ecological changes within estuaries: a review of progress and some suggestions for the future

Estuarine habitats, and the fish assemblages associated with them, are potentially impacted upon by many anthropogenic influences which can have a direct influence on the food resources, distribution, diversity, breeding, abundance, growth, survival and behaviour of both resident and migrant fish species. The direct and indirect coupling between ichthyofaunal communities and human impacts on estuaries reinforces the choice of this taxonomic group as a biological indicator that can assist in the formulation of environmental and ecological quality objectives, and in the setting of environmental and ecological quality standards for these systems. This review examines the rationale and value of selecting fishes as bio-indicators of human induced changes within estuaries, using examples from both the northern and southern hemispheres. The monitoring of estuarine ' health ' using fish studies at the individual and community level is discussed, with an emphasis on the potential use of estuarine fishes and their monitoring and surveillance in national and international management programmes. In illustrating the above concept, examples are presented of the way in which fishes are threatened by anthropogenic impacts and of the way in which teleosts can contribute to a monitoring of estuarine ecosystem health.
Differential Interactions of Promoter Stress Responses of the Arabidopsis Elements in Adh Gene

The Adh (alcohol dehydrogenase, EC 1.1.1.1.) gene from Arabi- dopsis thaliana (1.) Heynh. can be induced by dehydration and cold, as well as by hypoxia. A 1-kb promoter fragment (CADH: -964 to +53) is sufficient to confer the stress indudion and tissue-specific developmental expression characteristics of the Adh gene to a 8-glucuronidase reporter gene. Deletion mapping of the 5‘ end and site-specific mutagenesis identified four regions of the promoter essential for expression under the three stress conditions. Some sequence elements are important for response to all three stress treatments, whereas others are stress specific. The most critical region essential for expression of the Arabidopsis Adh promoter under all three environmental stresses (region I V -172 to -141) contains sequences homologous to the CT motif (-160 to -152) and the CC motif (-147 to -144) of the maize Adhl anaerobic responsive element. Region 111 (-235 to -172) contains two regions shown by R.J. Ferl and B.H. Laughner ([1989] Plant MOI Biol 12: 357-366) to bind regulatory proteins; mutation of the C-box-1 region (5’-CCACCTCC-3‘, -216 to -209) does not affed expression under uninduced or hypoxic conditions, but significantly reduces indudion by cold stress and, to a lesser extent, by dehy- dration stress. Mutation of the other C-box-like
Diversity, distribution and phenology of Lygus species (Hemiptera: Miridae) in relation to vegetable greenhouses in the lower Fraser Valley, British Columbia, and southwestern Ontario

Lygus spp. were collected from near and inside vegetable greenhouses during three years in the lower Fraser Valley, British Columbia (BC) and in Leamington, Ontario (ON). In BC, the dominant species was Lygus shulli , followed in abundance by L. elisus and L. hesperus ; L. lineolaris was not collected in the lower Fraser Valley. In ON, only L. lineolaris was collected. In BC, L. shulli was generally distributed throughout the region, whereas L. hesperus was captured in sweep net samples only in coastal areas. Lygus hesperus appeared to be univoltine in BC. All other species in ON and BC were apparently bivoltine. In ON, numbers of adults collected outside of greenhouses correlated with numbers collected inside greenhouses whereas this was not the case in BC. Differences in flight behaviour, abundance and greenhouse construction may account for this latter difference. Our results highlight the need for different approaches to IPM of pest Lygus species in the ON and BC greenhouse industries.
A Chicken3-Actin GeneCanComplement a Disruption ofthe Saccharomyces cerevisiae ACT)Gene

Recently itwas demonstrated that,-actin can beproduced inSaccharomyces cerevisiae byusingthe expression plasmid pYfiactin (R.Karlsson, Gene68:249-258, 1988), andseveral site-specific mutants arenow being produced inaprotein engineering study. Toestablish asystemwithwhichrecombinant actin mutants can betested invivo andthusenable acorrelation tobemadewithfunctional effects observed invitro, ayeast strain lacking endogenous yeast actin andexpressing exclusively (3-actin was constructed. Thisstrain isviable buthas an altered morphology anda slow-growth phenotype andistemperature sensitive tothepoint oflethality at 3TC. Actin isthemajor component ofthemicrofilament system ineucaryotic cells, inwhichitformsnumerous supramoleculararrangements thatareundertheregulation ofmany actin-interacting proteins (24). TheyeastSaccharomyces cerevisiae hasoneactin geneperhaploid genome, ACTI+(7, 20), whichisessential forviability (26), andtheaminoacid sequence ofthis actin shows90%homology withthatof human0-actin (7,20). Inyeast cells, filamentous actin is present inbundles running parallel totheaxesofbudgrowth andincortical patches that accumulate atthelocation ofbud growthandseptumformation, suggesting thattheyeast microfilament system takes partindeposition ofchitin and direction ofbudgrowth (14). Inaddition, theisolation of nonfilamentous actin inacomplex withprofilin suggests that S.cerevisiae, likehigher eucaryotes, arranges partofits actin inamonomeric pool(3a,8). Thepresence ofother actin-binding proteins suchasmyosinandtropomyosin further suggests thattheorganization andfunction ofthe yeast microfilament system exhibit features similar tothose ofhigher eucaryotes (17, 30). Thecombination ofmolecular andclassical genetics whichenables precise genereplacementsandexpression ofrecombinant proteins inyeast cells istherefore likely tobeapowerful approach tostudy the molecular mechanisms bywhichthemicrofilament system functions, notonlyinyeast cells butalsoinhigher eucaryotes. Recently itwasshownthatS.cerevisiae canbeusedto produce heterologous actin (12), andwearenowexploring that system toproduce site-specific actin mutants forinvitro studies (3a). Hereweshowthat theendogenous actin inS. cerevisiae canbereplaced witha vertebrate nonmuscle actin, ,-actin, without loss ofviability, resulting inayeast strain that canbeusedtostudy functional effects ofrecombinant actin mutants invivo.
Efficient Compilation and Execution of JVM-Based Data Processing Frameworks on Heterogeneous Co-Processors

This paper addresses the fundamental question of how modern Big Data frameworks can dynamically and transparently exploit heterogeneous hardware accelerators. After presenting the major challenges that have to be addressed towards this goal, we describe our proposed architecture for automatic and transparent hardware acceleration of Big Data frameworks and applications. Our vision is to retain the uniform programming model of Big Data frameworks and enable automatic, dynamic Just-In-Time compilation of the candidate code segments that benefit from hardware acceleration to the corresponding format. In conjunction with machine learning-based device selection, that respect user-defined constraints (e.g., cost, time, etc.), we enable dynamic code execution on GPUs and FPGAs transparently to the user. In addition, we dynamically re-steer execution at runtime based on the availability of resources. Our preliminary results demonstrate that our approach can accelerate an existing Apache Flink application by up to 16.5x.
Detecting context-dependent sentences in parallel corpora

In this article, we provide several approaches to the automatic identification of parallel sentences that require sentence-external linguistic context to be correctly translated. Our long-term goal is to automatically construct a test set of context-dependent sentences in order to evaluate machine translation models designed to improve the translation of contextual, discursive phenomena. We provide a discussion and critique that show that current approaches do not allow us to achieve our goal, and suggest that for now evaluating individual phenomena is likely the best solution.
A study on IMU-Based Human Activity Recognition Using Deep Learning and Traditional Machine Learning

Human Activity Recognition (HAR) has been an increasingly popular range to do researches which stems from the ubiquitous computing. And lately, identifying activities during daily life has become one of more and more challenges. Subsequently, more and more methods can be used in the recognition of human activities such as Support Vector Machine (SVM), Random Forests (RF) which are the representatives of Traditional Machine Learning (TML) and also some Deep Learning (DL) methods like Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) and Recurrent Neural Network (RNN). However, neither TML nor DL is suitable for all kinds of situations and various datasets. As a result, we would like to explore more about such consequences. In this paper, we discover a discrepancy and phenomenon that different sizes of collected HAR datasets may produce influences on the effectiveness of traditional machine learning methods as well as the deep learning architectures. We conduct experiments on two kinds of different datasets USC-HAD and WISDM with the best accuracy nearly 90% in DL and 87% in TML. Due to the consequences of the experiments we give a conclusion on the individual heterogeneity problems of the HAR datasets–when dealing with the HAR datasets of small scales, the TML structures are more suitable. However, conversely, when the datasets have large amount of datasets. Specifically, DL approaches such as CNN and LSTM are more sensible choices.
Using intermediate sinks to increase the lifetime of wireless sensor networks

— Recent advancements in electronic and wireless telecom have provided ability of design and produce sensors with low consumption, small size, appropriate price, and variant functionalities. These small sensors which are able to do operations such as receiving different environmental information according to the type of the sensor, processing and sending that information have led to an idea to emerge and develop networks called wireless sensor networks. These sensors also have some limitations in their processing power, memory capacity, power supply, and etc. these limitations cause problems which are the origin of many research issues raised in this area. From important issues in this area is to increase network lifetime in order to better use of available resources. Appropriate routing can be a solution to decrease network’s energy consumption and also increase network lifetime. In this research, we have studied routing algorithms in wireless sensor networks and also have analyzed the impact of the number of network’s intermediate sinks on increasing the network lifetime.
SSH and FTP brute-force Attacks Detection in Computer Networks: LSTM and Machine Learning Approaches

Network traffic anomaly detection is of critical importance in cybersecurity due to the massive and rapid growth of sophisticated computer network attacks. Indeed, the more new Internet-related technologies are created, the more elaborate the attacks become. Among all the contemporary high-level attacks, dictionary-based brute-force attacks (BFA) present one of the most unsurmountable challenges. We need to develop effective methods to detect and mitigate such brute-force attacks in realtime. In this paper, we investigate SSH and FTP brute-force attack detection by using the Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) deep learning approach. Additionally, we made use of machine learning (ML) classifiers: J48, naive Bayes (NB), decision table (DT), random forest (RF) and k-nearest-neighbor (k-NN), for additional detection purposes. We used the well-known labelled dataset CICIDS2017. We evaluated the effectiveness of the LSTM and ML algorithms, and compared their performance. Our results show that the LSTM model outperforms the ML algorithms, with an accuracy of 99.88%.
Application of the Alamar blue assay to determine the susceptibility to anti-tuberculosis pharmaceuticals

1 Facultad de Ciencias Quimicas, Unidad Gomez Palacio. Universidad Juarez del Estado de Durango (UJED). Av. Articulo 123 s/n Colonia Filadelfia CP 35010; AP No. 51, Gomez Palacio, Dgo. , Mexico. 2 Laboratorio de Asesores Especializados de la Laguna. Juarez 142, Col. Centro. CP 35000. Gomez Palacio, Dgo. , Mexico. 3 Departamento de Inmunologia. Escuela Nacional de Ciencias Biologicas. Instituto Politecnico Nacional (IPN). Carpio y Plan de Ayala, Col. Santo Tomas 11340, Mexico. 4 Facultad de Ciencias Quimicas, Unidad Durango. Universidad Juarez del Estado de Durango (UJED). Av. Veterinaria s/n, Circuito Universitario, Col. Valle del Sur. CP 34200. Durango, Dgo. , Mexico. 5 Unidad Regional Universitaria de Zonas Aridas. Universidad Autonoma Chapingo. Bermejillo, Dgo. , Mexico. 6 Departamento de Genetica y Medicina Molecular. Centro de Investigacion Biomedica. Universidad Autonoma de Coahuila (UA de C). Torreon, Coahuila. , Mexico.
Transient Behaviour of a Network Router

The broader use of Software Defined Network (SDN) controllers creates periodic changes in topology and traffic rates at routers that adapt the network to changes in network conditions. Thus the transient behaviour of network components, and in particular routers, is becoming of great interest. Since standard queueing models are difficult to analyze under time-varying conditions, we propose a tractable diffusion approximation for both the transient and steady-state behaviour of a network router. In particular, the analysis provides the steady-state and transient delay and packet loss probability as a function of traffic load and other characteristics. Using these results, we show that when SDN routers change the paths of flows frequently, the network’s behaviour may often be far from its steady-state behaviour. Therefore any network optimization conducted with the help of SDN should not be based on steady-state behaviour, but rather on some metrics related to the time-dependent network behaviour.
Crop Yield Estimation in the Canadian Prairies Using Terra/MODIS-Derived Crop Metrics

We evaluated the utility of Terra/MODIS-derived crop metrics for yield estimation across the Canadian Prairies. This study was undertaken at the Census Agriculture Region (CAR) and the Rural Municipality (RM) of the province of Saskatchewan, in three prairie agro-climate zones. We compared MODIS-derived vegetation indices, gross primary productivity (GPP), and net primary productivity (NPP) to the known yields for barley, canola, and spring wheat. Multiple linear regressions were used to assess the relationships between the metrics and yield at the CAR and RM levels for the years 2000 to 2016. Models were evaluated using a leave-one-out cross validation (LOOCV) approach. Results showed that vegetation indices at crop peak growing stages were better predictors of yield than GPP or NPP, and EVI2 was better than NDVI. Using seasonal maximum EVI2, CAR-level crop yields can be estimated with a relative root-mean-square-error (RRMSE) of 14–20% and a Nash–Sutcliffe model efficiency coefficient (NSE) of 0.53–0.70, though the exact relationship varies by crop type and agro-climate zone. LOOCV showed the stability of the models across different years, although interannual fluctuations of estimation accuracy were observed. Assessments using RM-level yields showed slightly reduced accuracy, with NSE of 0.37–0.66, and RRMSE of 18–28%. The best performing models were used to map annual crop yields at the Soil Landscapes of Canada (SLC) polygon level. The results indicated that the models could perform well at both spatial scales, and thus, could be used to disaggregate coarse resolution crop yields to finer spatial resolutions using MODIS data.
Iheyaspira bathycodon new species (Vetigastropoda: Trochoidea: Turbinidae: Skeneinae) from the Von Damm Vent Field, Mid-Cayman Spreading Centre, Caribbean

Iheyaspira bathycodon sp. nov. is described from the Von Damm Vent Field on the world's deepest spreading centre, the Mid-Cayman Spreading Centre (MCSC), Caribbean, at 2300 m depth. The new species is defined and illustrated from 11 specimens, with brief notes on habitat and known distribution. Molecular phylogenetic data from partial COI mDNA, 16S rDNA and nuclear 18S rDNA regions are used to analyse the species’ phylogenetic position and its morphology is compared with previously described skeneid and vent taxa. The new species is distinguished from the most closely allied vent species, Iheyaspira lequios Okutani, Sasaki & Tsuchida, 2000 by morphological differences in radula diagnosis and appendage structure of the head-foot. Iheyaspira bathycodon sp. nov. is the tenth turbinid to be described from a hydrothermal-vent environment and the second species to be named from recently discovered hydrothermal vents on the MCSC. Determining the faunal composition of assemblages at the vent fields of the MCSC will help to elucidate the vent biogeography of the region.