Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Local and Temporal Effects on Ant Richness, Recruitment and Resource Dominance in Two Cerrado Areas

Ecological interactions and environmental conditions are associated with community structuring, where the resource quality and availability, in addition to interspecific competition, determine potential local interactions. Using ground-dwelling ant species as a methodological tool model, we evaluated how three different daily periods affected species richness, recruitment, and resource dominance (baits) within two Cerrado (Brazilian savanna) phytophysiognomies. We found a total of 34 ant species and significant differences in species composition between the cerrado areas. Camponotus and Pheidole genera were the most abundant in both studied areas in which several species shared baits. Ant richness did not vary between the cerrado areas, but ant recruitment was affected by observation periods: in both areas, the hottest period (afternoon) reflected the lowest recruitment, while the coolest period (morning) had the highest recruitment. We observed that the ant species that first found baits had a 29% chance of being the only species observed using the resource, while those that arrived after other species had only 7%. Both areas promote the coexistence of ant species by shaping their interactions. We suggest that environmental structuring promotes niche partitioning in both spatial and temporal scales, providing possibilities of microhabitats that allow species to explore the environment and forage.
Using Implementation Science to Promote the Use of the G8 Screening Tool in Geriatric Oncology

Evidence supports the integration of geriatric assessment in the care of older adults with cancer. The G8 screening tool is a validated instrument to target a geriatric assessment. Use of the G8 tool in clinical practice, however, is suboptimal. We systematically analyzed the barriers and facilitators to G8 tool use in oncology clinics and selected interventions tailored to the local context to enhance its uptake.
Accelerated Myocardial Viability Imaging Using Both Simultaneous Multi-Slice and Partially Parallel Acquisition

Phase-sensitive inversion recovery (PSIR) has been a powerful cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CMRI) method to assess myocardial viability, which can eliminate the background phase and preserve the sign of the desired magnetization during inversion recovery (IR). However, the conventional PSIR may bring heavy burdens to patients due to the long acquisition time and required breath-holds (BHs). In this study, we proposed a method to integrate simultaneous multi-slice (SMS) into PSIR without performing separate calibration scan to reduce the acquisition time and number of BHs. The acquired reference data in PSIR was also utilized to evaluate spatial coil sensitivity so that slice separation can be completed. Additionally, we also implemented this method with partially parallel acquisition (PPA) to further improve the acquisition efficiency, where the same reference data can be utilized for PPA, SMS and PSIR. Phantom and in-vivo experiments were performed to confirm that applying SMS without separate calibration scan is able to significantly reduce acquisition time without compromising image quality or limiting diagnosis. The proposed method can be a practical and efficient method for the assessment of myocardial viability.
DM2-ECOP

Mobile Edge Computing is a promising paradigm that can provide cloud computing capabilities at the edge of the network to support low latency mobile services. The fundamental concept relies on bringing cloud computation closer to users by deploying cloudlets or edge servers, which are small clusters of servers that are mainly located on existing wireless Access Points (APs), set-top boxes, or Base Stations (BSs). In this article, we focus on computation offloading over a heterogeneous cloudlet environment. We consider several users with different energy—and latency-constrained tasks that can be offloaded over cloudlets with differentiated system and network resources capacities. We investigate offloading policies that decide which tasks should be offloaded and select the assigned cloudlet, accordingly with network and system resources. The objective is to minimize an offloading cost function, which we defined as a combination of tasks’ execution time and mobiles’ energy consumption. We formulate this problem as a Mixed-Binary Programming. Since the centralized optimal solution is NP-hard, we propose a distributed linear relaxation-based heuristic approach that relies on the Lagrangian decomposition method. To solve the subproblems, we also propose a greedy heuristic algorithm that computes the best cloudlet selection and bandwidth allocation following tasks’ offloading costs. Numerical results show that our offloading policy achieves a good solution quickly. We also discuss the performances of our approach for large-scale scenarios and compare it to state-of-the-art approaches from the literature.
Toward Entrainment Thresholds in Fluvial Plucking

Plucking of blocks is an important, but understudied component of erosion in steep bedrock rivers. With the goal of developing realistic entrainment thresholds for use in bedrock channel evolution models, we re‐formulate the block entrainment problem. We derive the force and torque balances representing sliding and toppling of blocks occupying backward‐facing steps in the channel floor. We employ a computational fluid dynamics package to calculate the pressures and shear stresses on all faces of such a block, therefore explicitly representing the horizontally directed drag force and vertically directed lift force. We find that the pressure difference between the upstream and downstream block faces can significantly impact the force and torque balances. At typical flows, downstream pressure becomes ∼1%–2% lower than total upstream pressure, reflecting the reduction in fluid pressures in the recirculation zone. This pressure difference scales with the block Reynolds number squared and dramatically increases if the block protrudes above the plane of the upstream ledge. The resulting net downstream‐directed force both adds to the forces promoting sliding and provides a torque about the lower downstream corner of the block. Armed with the full set of forces on a block, we explore the roles of block geometry, flow velocity and depth, toppling pivot point location, and bed slope in facilitating sliding and toppling. Incorporating the small pressure difference between upstream and downstream faces greatly lowers the threshold for plucking, and suggests that blocks on river channel floors should move at lower and hence more frequent discharges than previously thought.
Viability, behavior, and color expression in the offspring of matings between common wall lizard Podarcis muralis color morphs

Abstract Color polymorphisms are widely studied to identify the mechanisms responsible for the origin and maintenance of phenotypic variability in nature. Two of the mechanisms of balancing selection currently thought to explain the long-term persistence of polymorphisms are the evolution of alternative phenotypic optima through correlational selection on suites of traits including color and heterosis. Both of these mechanisms can generate differences in offspring viability and fitness arising from different morph combinations. Here, we examined the effect of parental morph combination on fertilization success, embryonic viability, newborn quality, antipredator, and foraging behavior, as well as inter-annual survival by conducting controlled matings in a polymorphic lacertid Podarcis muralis, where color morphs are frequently assumed to reflect alternative phenotypic optima (e.g., alternative reproductive strategies). Juveniles were kept in outdoor tubs for a year in order to study inter-annual growth, survival, and morph inheritance. In agreement with a previous genome-wide association analysis, morph frequencies in the year-old juveniles matched the frequencies expected if orange and yellow expressions depended on recessive homozygosity at 2 separate loci. Our findings also agree with previous literature reporting higher reproductive output of heavy females and the higher overall viability of heavy newborn lizards, but we found no evidence for the existence of alternative breeding investment strategies in female morphs, or morph-combination effects on offspring viability and behavior. We conclude that inter-morph breeding remains entirely viable and genetic incompatibilities are of little significance for the maintenance of discrete color morphs in P. muralis from the Pyrenees.
An exploration of the relationship between recruitment communication and foraging in stingless bees

Abstract Social information is widely used in the animal kingdom and can be highly adaptive. In social insects, foragers can use social information to find food, avoid danger, or choose a new nest site. Copying others allows individuals to obtain information without having to sample the environment. When foragers communicate information they will often only advertise high-quality food sources, thereby filtering out less adaptive information. Stingless bees, a large pantropical group of highly eusocial bees, face intense inter- and intra-specific competition for limited resources, yet display disparate foraging strategies. Within the same environment there are species that communicate the location of food resources to nest-mates and species that do not. Our current understanding of why some species communicate foraging sites while others do not is limited. Studying freely foraging colonies of several co-existing stingless bee species in Brazil, we investigated if recruitment to specific food locations is linked to 1) the sugar content of forage, 2) the duration of foraging trips, and 3) the variation in activity of a colony from 1 day to another and the variation in activity in a species over a day. We found that, contrary to our expectations, species with recruitment communication did not return with higher quality forage than species that do not recruit nestmates. Furthermore, foragers from recruiting species did not have shorter foraging trip durations than those from weakly recruiting species. Given the intense inter- and intraspecific competition for resources in these environments, it may be that recruiting species favor food resources that can be monopolized by the colony rather than food sources that offer high-quality rewards.
Trust‐aware secure routing protocol for wireless sensor networks

A trust‐aware secure routing protocol (TSRP) for wireless sensor networks is proposed in this paper to defend against varieties of attacks. First, each node calculates the comprehensive trust values of its neighbors based on direct trust value, indirect trust value, volatilization factor, and residual energy to defend against black hole, selective forwarding, wormhole, hello flood, and sinkhole attacks. Second, any source node that needs to send data forwards a routing request packet to its neighbors in multi‐path mode, and this continues until the sink at the end is reached. Finally, the sink finds the optimal path based on the path's comprehensive trust values, transmission distance, and hop count by analyzing the received packets. Simulation results show that TSRP has lower network latency, smaller packet loss rate, and lower average network energy consumption than ad hoc on‐demand distance vector routing and trust based secure routing protocol.
A synthesis framework of constructivist via gamification-based learning environments model to enhance self-regulation for undergraduate students

The purpose of study was a synthesis framework of constructivist via gamification-based learning environments model to enhance self-regulation for undergraduate students. Research designs were document analysis and survey. This study was based on developmental research in phase 1 was model development. The target groups were the 13 experts reviewed document and design framework, the 145 students in Computer Education, Faculty of Education, Nakhon Phanom University. The studies were document analysis and survey method. Data were analyzed by analyzing and summary interpreting. So, the results from this analyzed was the theoretical framework that consist of 5 foundation bases revealed the following; 1) Context base 2) Psychological base 3) Technology and media base and 4) Learning environment with gamification base. The designing framework consisted of 4 crucial bases as the following: 1) The activation of cognitive structure and enhance self-regulation 2) The support for adjusting cognitive conflict and enhance self-regulation 3) The support for extending the cognitive structure and enhance self-regulation and 4) The support and enhance self-regulation.
Plant leaf classification and retrieval using multi‐scale shape descriptor

Plant leaf classiﬁcation is a signiﬁcant and challenging research problem in computer vision area. In this study, an original multi-scale shape descriptor is presented to perform leaf classiﬁcation and retrieval. Firstly, a novel iterative rule is proposed as scales generation method, which is parameter free. Secondly, leaf contour points are represented by angle information which is calculated using their neighbour points under each scale. The angle information representation is invariant to image rotation, translation and scaling. More importantly, it can describe leaf in a hierarchical way by capturing leaf features from global to local variations. Then Fast Fourier Transform operation is applied to make the representation more compact and independent from starting point. Subsequently, for leaf retrieval the dissimilarity of each pair of leaf under each scale is computed using city block metric. And support vector machine is used as classiﬁer for leaf classiﬁcation. Finally, experiments and comparisons with multiple state-of-the-art approaches are performed. The classiﬁcation accuracy was 96.85% and 93.56% respectively on Swedish and Flavia leaf datasets. The mean average precision score was 66.42%, 76.69% and 44.14% respectively on Flavia, Swedish and MEW2012 leaf datasets. The results demonstrate that the proposed method has excellent performance.
A spatial text query scheme based on semantic-aware

In some application scenarios, the strategy based on text similarity cannot accurately find the spatial text data that users need. Therefore, we propose a spatial text query scheme based on semantic-aware. We name this scheme as SSA. We study spatial text queries based on semantic-aware. We improve LDA algorithm to filter out some worthless candidate data. The experimental results show that our scheme has good basic attributes and query accuracy.
Modifier Gene Candidates in Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease Type 1A: A Case-Only Genome-Wide Association Study

Background: Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease type 1A (CMT1A) is caused by a uniform 1.5–Mb duplication on chromosome 17p, which includes the PMP22 gene. Patients often present the classic neuropathy phenotype, but also with high clinical variability. Objective: We aimed to identify genetic variants that are potentially associated with specific clinical outcomes in CMT1A. Methods: We genotyped over 600,000 genomic markers using DNA samples from 971 CMT1A patients and performed a case-only genome-wide association study (GWAS) to identify potential genetic association in a subset of 644 individuals of European ancestry. A total of 14 clinical outcomes were analyzed in this study. Results: The analyses yielded suggestive association signals in four clinical outcomes: difficulty with eating utensils (lead SNP rs4713376, chr6 : 30773314, P = 9.91×10–7, odds ratio = 3.288), hearing loss (lead SNP rs7720606, chr5 : 126551732, P = 2.08×10–7, odds ratio = 3.439), decreased ability to feel (lead SNP rs17629990, chr4 : 171224046, P = 1.63×10–7, odds ratio = 0.336), and CMT neuropathy score (lead SNP rs12137595, chr1 : 4094068, P = 1.14×10–7, beta = 3.014). Conclusions: While the results require validation in future genetic and functional studies, the detected association signals may point to novel genetic modifiers in CMT1A.
Person-Centered Interactive Self-Management Support in Primary Health Care for People with Type 2 Diabetes: Protocol for a Randomized Controlled Trial

Background Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is increasing as the population ages. The development of new medical treatments is promising and important, but the basic treatment remains self-management, even if adherence to lifestyle advice is low. Electronic health (eHealth) or mHealth interventions can increase empowerment among people living with T2D and may compensate for the lack of professional resources and geographical distances. The interactive self-management support (iSMS) project aims at including digital tools to support people living with T2D in their self-management and facilitating their interaction with diabetes specialist nurses (DSNs). This protocol outlines a study with the purpose of developing and evaluating an intervention where people living with T2D can increase self-efficacy and empowerment through digital self-monitoring and interaction with DSNs. Objective To develop and evaluate a person-centered iSMS intervention in primary health care for people with T2D in addition to their usual diabetes care. Methods This study is a 12-month, 3-armed, nonblinded randomized controlled trial (RCT), which will be conducted in 6 primary health care centers (HCCs) in northern Sweden. Eligible participants will be randomized to either an intervention group (n=46), a control group (n=46), or an external group (n=46) for comparison. The intervention group will receive the mobile app, and the control group will receive a minimal intervention (diabetes brochure) and the usual standard of care. Changes in glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) will be the primary outcome measure. Results This trial is currently open for recruitment. The first results are expected to be submitted for publication in Autumn 2019. Conclusions This study, with its focus on iSMS, will provide insights regarding suitable ways to promote and develop a person-centered intervention. If successful, the intervention has the potential to become a model for the provision of self-management support to people with T2D. International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID) DERR1-10.2196/10250
Nonphosphorylatable Src Ser75 Mutation Increases Ethanol Preference and Consumption in Mice

Abstract Src is highly expressed in CNS neurons and contributes not only to developmental proliferation and differentiation but also to high-order brain functions, such as those contributing to alcohol consumption. Src knock-out mice exhibit no CNS abnormalities, presumably due to compensation by other Src family kinases (SFKs), but have a shortened lifespan and osteopetrosis-associated defects, impeding investigations of the role of Src on behavior in adult mice. However, the Unique domain of Src differs from those in other SFKs and is phosphorylated by cyclin-dependent kinase 1 (Cdk1) and Cdk5 at Ser75, which influences its postmitotic function in neurons. Therefore, ethanol consumption in mice harboring nonphosphorylatable (Ser75Ala) or phosphomimetic (Ser75Asp) Src mutants was investigated. Mice harboring the Ser75Ala Src mutant, but not the Ser75Asp mutant, had a higher preference for and consumption of solutions containing 5% and 10% ethanol than wild-type mice. However, plasma ethanol concentrations and sensitivities to the sedative effects of ethanol were not different among the groups. In mice harboring the Ser75Ala Src mutant, the activity of Rho-associated kinase (ROCK) in the striatum was significantly lower and Akt Ser473 phosphorylation was significantly higher than in wild-type mice. These results suggest that Src regulates voluntary ethanol drinking in a manner that depends on Ser75 phosphorylation.
SOML Read: Rethinking the Read Operation Granularity of 3D NAND SSDs

NAND-based solid-state disks (SSDs) are known for their superior random read/write performance due to the high degrees of multi-chip parallelism they exhibit. Currently, as the chip density increases dramatically, fewer 3D NAND chips are needed to build an SSD compared to the previous generation chips. As a result, SSDs can be made more compact. However, this decrease in the number of chips also results in reduced overall throughput, and prevents 3D NAND high density SSDs from being widely-adopted. We analyzed 600 storage workloads, and our analysis revealed that the small read operations suffer significant performance degradation due to reduced chip-level parallelism in newer 3D NAND SSDs. The main question is whether some of the inter-chip parallelism lost in these new SSDs (due to the reduced chip count) can be won back by enhancing intra-chip parallelism. Motivated by this question, we propose a novel SOML (Single-Operation-Multiple-Location) read operation, which can perform several small intra-chip read operations to different locations simultaneously, so that multiple requests can be serviced in parallel, thereby mitigating the parallelism-related bottlenecks. A corresponding SOML read scheduling algorithm is also proposed to fully utilize the SOML read. Our experimental results with various storage workloads indicate that, the SOML read-based SSD with 8 chips can outperform the baseline SSD with 16 chips.
Split-CNN: Splitting Window-based Operations in Convolutional Neural Networks for Memory System Optimization

We present an interdisciplinary study to tackle the memory bottleneck of training deep convolutional neural networks (CNN). Firstly, we introduce Split Convolutional Neural Network (Split-CNN) that is derived from the automatic transformation of the state-of-the-art CNN models. The main distinction between Split-CNN and regular CNN is that Split-CNN splits the input images into small patches and operates on these patches independently before entering later stages of the CNN model. Secondly, we propose a novel heterogeneous memory management system (HMMS) to utilize the memory-friendly properties of Split-CNN. Through experiments, we demonstrate that Split-CNN achieves significantly higher training scalability by dramatically reducing the memory requirements of training algorithms on GPU accelerators. Furthermore, we provide empirical evidence that splitting at randomly chosen boundaries can even result in accuracy gains over baseline CNN due to its regularization effect.
Assessing the potential environmental factors affecting cladoceran assemblage composition in arsenic-contaminated lakes near abandoned silver mines

Silver mining in Cobalt (Ontario, Canada) has a long history that has left a complex environmental legacy where many lakes are contaminated with arsenic-rich mine tailings. In this exploratory survey, we examined subfossil Cladocera remains in the surface sediments of 22 lakes in the abandoned mining region to assess which environmental variables may be influencing the recent assemblage structure. Further, using a “top-bottom” paleolimnological approach, we compared the recent (top) and older (bottom) assemblages from a subset of 16 lakes to determine how cladoceran composition has changed in these lakes. Our regional survey suggests that the cladoceran assemblages in the Cobalt area are primarily structured by differences in lake depth, while site-specific limnological characteristics, including those related to past mining activities, may have limited roles in shaping the recent cladoceran compositions. The top-bottom paleolimnological analysis suggests that the cladoceran assemblages have changed in most lakes around Cobalt, however the magnitude and nature of changes varied across the study sites. As with most regional biological surveys, the responses to historical mining activities were not uniform across all sites, which further emphasizes the importance of considering site-specific limnological characteristics and multiple environmental stressors when assessing the impacts of mining pollution. Corresponding author: branaavan.sivarajah@gmail.com Edited by: Diego Fontaneto, CNR-IRSA Water Research Institute, Verbania, Italy.