Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Foraging dynamics of bumble bees: correlates of movements within and between plant species

What rules determine whether bumble bee* continue exploiting plants of the species just visited or switch to another species? To tackle this question, we recorded handling times and flight times from bees foraging in a natural meadow containing five plant species. Interand ultra-specific plant distances were quantified. The bee-subjective colors of the five species were determined; two of these species had similar colors and structures, while three species were distinct from all others. The following rules were identified: (1) The decision to switch species was correlated with previous flower handling time, which we assume is a function of the reward amount received at the flower. After short handling times, the probability of switching to another species increased, whereas it decreased after long handling times. This difference became even greater if the bee had had a run of several short or several long handling times. (2) Constant flights (those between flowers of the same species) and transition flights (those between flowers of different species) followed stereotyped temporal patterns independent of the distances between flowers. Constant flights within five plant species consistently had median durations of about 2 seconds, whereas median transition times between species took 3-6 seconds. (3) This temporal rule broke down, however, if the flowers of two species had similar colors, in which case transition flights had equal dynamics as constant flights. (4) Bees switched more frequently from rare than from common species but even more frequently between similar species. We conclude that the bees' choices were determined by a set of rules that guided them to stay with the current plant species as long as flowers were rewarding and available within close distance but to switch to another species if flowers offered low rewards or were not encountered at close range. Kty words: bumble bees, Bombus, flower color, flower constancy, foraging, pollination ecology, switching. (Behav Ecol 8:239-249 (1997)]
Racial and Ethnic Differences in Consumers’ Economic Expectations

Consumers’ expectations about the future of their own finances and the macroeconomy are used to forecast consumption, but forecasts do not typically account for differences by race and ethnicity. In this report, the author asks (1) whether there is consistent racial and ethnic variation in consumers’ economic expectations, (2) if differences can be explained by economic experiences, and (3) how the scope of expectations matters. The author uses the Survey of Consumer Finances to examine variation in the likelihood of positive national and personal economic expectations among individuals who identify as black, white, or Hispanic. The author finds that national expectations have substantial racial and ethnic variation net of economic experiences. For personal expectations, initial racial and ethnic variation in the likelihood of positive expectations disappears once economic experiences are accounted for. These findings have important implications for consumption forecasts, especially as the racial and ethnic composition of the United States changes.
Adapt it

Leveraging bilingualism Work began on Adapt It in mid-November 1999. Released first in 2000 via email attachments to people requesting it, it quickly established itself as a helpful product in the Bible translation movement. Later releases have been from a variety of websites, the main site being at http://adapt-it.org, generously provided to the Adapt It team by Kahunapule Michael Johnson. Adapt It is open source software, distributed to anyone who wants to use it under typical open source licensing schemes, and is free of charge. The intent, from the beginning, was that bilingual citizens anywhere in the world would be able to use the software without being intimidated by complexity. User experience, from the feedback over the last decade, has been very positive. Some have had a few difficulties, but overall, users find Adapt It easy to learn and easy to use. Support for user profiles and better features for collaboration with other Bible translation software, to come out in version 6, will make it even more so. In many parts of the world bilingualism and multilingualism are common. Low cost effective software which leverages this fact did not become available until about a decade ago. People were not unaware of bilingualism, it was just that few people used it as a primary translation resource, and software support was lacking from within Bible agencies. When Adapt It first came on the scene, it was controversial—both within SIL circles and outside them. Many experienced translators and translation consultants felt that, at the very least, standards would drop and the expectation of quality would go unsatisfied. A leader from a major Bible agency, in a 2005 conference, even characterized adaptation technologies, using any software, as “unethical. ” Bilingualism is, however, an enormously important resource for Bible translation. Perceptions, thankfully, have begun to change. After a decade of use, there are now hundreds of projects where Adapt It is the adaptation engine of choice. Other software (for example, Paratext) can now do the same task and adaptation is becoming respectable. A rationale for why it works so well is discussed in a separate paper in this volume.
Sodium Levels in Drinking Water As An Index to Human Health

As a consequence of the general lack of surface water in the Dalmatian region of Southern Croatia, health care institutions and water management authorities have become particularly interested in observing and monitoring water as well as preserv ing its quality. A relational database has been developed for carrying out chemical analyses (sodium), expressed by coefficients K1 and K2, because it is necessary from an informatical aspect to organize and integrate a large number of analytical and ecological health data. The database can serve as a methodological platform for the study of environmental factors influencing human health. The prototype database, consisting of data from investigations conducted by the Water Examination Depart ment of the Public Health Institute of Split Dalmatian County (Croatia), has been used for water quality control. The database currently contains more than 2,000 data.
Ultrastructural Responses of the LichenBryoria fuscescensto Simulated Acid Rain and Heavy Metal Deposition

Abstract Effects of simulated acid rain and heavy metal deposition on the ultrastructure of the lichenBryoria fuscescens(Gyeln.) Brodo and Hawksw. were examined in a field study conducted in northern Finland. Lichens were exposed to simulated rain containing two levels of a mixture of copper (Cu2+) and nickel (Ni2+) ions alone or in combination with acid rain (H2SO4) at pH 3 over 2 months in addition to ambient rainfall. The algal and fungal components responded differently to pH and there was an interaction with metal toxicity. The algal partner was the most sensitive to acid rain and heavy metal combinations and had more degenerate cells than the fungal partner. Damage was apparent in chloroplasts and mitochondria, where thylakoid and mitochondrial cristae were swollen. The fungal partner was the more sensitive to high concentrations of metal ions in the absence of acidity, suggesting an ameliorating interaction between the metals and acidity. For algae, critical metal concentrations in the thallus were >50 μg g−1for Cu and >7 μg g−1for Ni in the presence of acidity, and >20 μ g g−1for Ni in the absence of acidity. Detrimental effects of heavy metals on fungal ultrastructure were seen when thallus metal concentrations exceeded 400 μg g−1for Cu and 100 μg g−1d. wt for Ni. The results suggest that acid wet deposition containing metal ions may reduce survival of lichens in northern environments.
Limb myology and phylogenetic relationships in the superfamily Dipodoidea (birch mice, jumping mice, and jerboas)

Limb muscles were dissected in seven genera, representing all six superfamilies, of dipodoid rodents and myoloic characters were used to construct a phylogenetic hpothesis of relationships within this cfade. Mologic differences among genera suported tie monophyly of the superfamily Dipodoidea reLtive to the outrou taxon and reveaEd thatSicista is the sister group to all other zapodid and dipodid enera. Tkis picement of Sicista differs markedly from its position in previous classifications where it has been regarded merely as a primitive zapodid genus. The phlograrn based on rnyologic characters also indicated that Cardiocranius is not a rimitive dipodid genus; it is the sister group to the subfamily Dipodinae. Although myologic differences among taxa were not sufficient to warrant the continued separation of zaodids and dipodids into two families, a new classification that places Sicista in its own family, ficistidae, and places the remaining zaodids and dipodids in the family Dipodidae, is proposed. Differences in karyology, genitaP morholoy, and postcranial osteological characters among dipodoid rodents are discussed in light or this pjylogeny.
Computational Bayesian Statistics

Meaningful use of advanced Bayesian methods requires a good understanding of the fundamentals. This engaging book explains the ideas that underpin the construction and analysis of Bayesian models, with particular focus on computational methods and schemes. The unique features of the text are the extensive discussion of available software packages combined with a brief but complete and mathematically rigorous introduction to Bayesian inference. The text introduces Monte Carlo methods, Markov chain Monte Carlo methods, and Bayesian software, with additional material on model validation and comparison, transdimensional MCMC, and conditionally Gaussian models. The inclusion of problems makes the book suitable as a textbook for a first graduate-level course in Bayesian computation with a focus on Monte Carlo methods. The extensive discussion of Bayesian software - R/R-INLA, OpenBUGS, JAGS, STAN, and BayesX - makes it useful also for researchers and graduate students from beyond statistics.
A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis of Program Spectra Diagnosability

Current metrics for assessing the adequacy of a test-suite plainly focus on the number of components (be it lines, branches, paths) covered by the suite, but do not explicitly check how the tests actually exercise these components and whether they provide enough information so that spectrum-based fault localization techniques can perform accurate fault isolation. We propose a metric, called DDU, aimed at complementing adequacy measurements by quantifying a test-suite's diagnosability, i.e., the effectiveness of applying spectrum-based fault localization to pinpoint faults in the code in the event of test failures. Our aim is to increase the value generated by creating thorough test-suites, so they are not only regarded as error detection mechanisms but also as effective diagnostic aids that help widely-used fault-localization techniques to accurately pinpoint the location of bugs in the system. We have performed a topology-based simulation of thousands of spectra and have found that DDU can effectively establish an upper bound on the effort to diagnose faults. Furthermore, our empirical experiments using the Defects4J dataset show that optimizing a test suite with respect to DDU yields a 34 percent gain in spectrum-based fault localization report accuracy when compared to the standard branch-coverage metric.
From the Editors’ Desk

Impact factors, double-blind reviews, and other matters of importance to peer-reviewed journals are generating controversy and conversation. We invited Nuno S. Themudo, an ARNOVA member and contributor to NVSQ, who has examined journal impact factors especially as they relate to NVSQ, to write a brief report. His report also examines the influence of NVSQ on current scholarship. Professor Themudo’s analysis presented below certainly suggests the considerable influence of the articles published in NVSQ. The use of the ubiquitous 2-year Impact Factor (IF) metric (Garfield, 2005), which favors the natural science disciplines, is not favorable to NVSQ or most other social science journals. Indeed, in the overall field of all social sciences indexed journals, the top five ranked journals which attracted the highest total citations between January 1, 1997 and August 31, 2007 deal with some aspect of medicine. Using the IF as well as other metrics that are more appropriate for the social sciences, Professor Themudo shows that NVSQ’s overall impact on scholarship has grown over the past decade; when one considers the various other metrics generally used to asses a journal’s impact, NVSQ’s influence tends to increase significantly even as compared with leading disciplinary journals. Below we reproduce excerpts from his report.
Water saving in lowland rice production: an experimental and modeling study

Increasing demand for rice and decreasing water diversions to agriculture, urge for higher water productivity in rice production systems. One way to deal with this challenge is using water-saving regimes on field scale. The main objective of this study was to quantify the effects of water-saving regimes on water productivity, nitrogen use efficiency, and yield by a combined experimental and modeling approach. The role of subsurface hydrology was studied to assess the effects of water saving on the water balance. Field experiments were conducted at three locations: Munoz and Los Banos in the Philippines and Tuanlin in China . In experiments comparing alternate submerged-nonsubmerged (SNS) regimes ¾ soils remained dry for several days before re-irrigation ¾ with continuous submergence (CS), apparent nitrogen recovery and yield were at par and 15 - 18% of irrigation water could be saved thus leading to higher water productivity. Nitrogen supply plays a key role in enhancing water productivity because nitrogen promotes leaf area growth, biomass growth, and yield and reduces evaporative losses. In most of our experiments, the groundwater table depth was shallow ( - 50 kPa, apparent nitrogen recoveries and yields were reduced. In areas with acute water scarcity, the aerobic rice system is an option. In this system, rice is more or less grown as an upland crop. Irrigation water savings in experiments comparing aerobic rice with CS were nearly 40% but yields dropped with around 25%. In general, time and site-specific water management requires a detailed knowledge on crop growth and development, soil hydrological processes, and N cycling in the soil-plant system.
Integrated Test Bed for Save and Efficient Maritime Systems

“Safe voyage from berth to berth”: This is the goal of all e-navigation strains, driven by new technologies, new infrastructures and new organizational structures on bridge, on shore as well as in the cloud. To facilitate these efforts suitable engineering and safety/risk assessment methods have to be applied. Understanding maritime transportation as a sociotechnical system allows system engineering methods to be applied. Formal and simulation based verification and validation of enavigation technologies are important methods to obtain system safety and reliability. The modelling and simulation toolset HAGGIS provides methods for system specification and formal risk analysis. It provides a modelling framework for processes, fault trees and generic hazard specification and a physical world and maritime traffic simulation system. HAGGIS is accompanied by the physical test bed LABSKAUS which implements a reference port and waterway. Additionally, it contains an experimental Vessel Traffic Services (VTS) implementation and a mobile integrated bridge enabling in situ experiments for technology evaluation, testing, ground research and demonstration. This paper describes an integrated seamless approach for developing new e-navigation technologies starting with virtual simulation based assessment and ending in physical real world demonstrations.
Structures intellectuelles

LE dernier ouvrage de R. Blanch6 pose a nouveau le probleme des universaux de pens6e. It int6ressera donc le linguiste et le logicien. La pr6occupation de l’auteur, en effet, est la mise a jour d’une structure &dquo; essentielle &dquo; qui serait commune A de multiples families de concepts et transposable de 1’une a 1’autre. Cette structure prendra appui sur les operations les plus élémentaires : la conjonction et la n6gation. La premiere permet le groupement des termes et, A l’int6rieur du groupe, la constitution de termes complexes. Quant A la seconde, elle commande les oppositions si importantes dans la construction des familles de concepts. La langue quotidienne nous en donne de multiples exemples qui, d’apres les distinctions de la logique, se laissent ranger en trois genres : a) Couple de contraires : blanc vs. noir
Enhancement Approach for Enhancing Image of Changing the Contrast

: This article introduces a new image Enhancement approach suitable for digital cameras. High contrast images are common in the scenes with dark shadows and bright light sources. It is difficult to show the details in both dark and light areas simultaneous on most display devices. For solving this problem, there are many methods of image enhancement proposed to improve the quality of the images. However, most of them often get poor results if the images are high contrast and have wide dynamic range. This method for enhancing the high-contrast digital camera images, which enhances the global brightness and contrast of images while preserving details. It is based on a two-scale decomposition of the image into a base layer, encoding large-scale variations, and a detail layer. The base layer is obtained using an edge preserving filter that is a weighted average of the local neighborhood samples, where the weights are computed based on temporal and radiometric distances between the center sample and the neighboring samples. Only the base layer image is enhanced automatically by using histogram equalization method, thereby preserving detail. The experimental results show the proposed method provides a significant enhancement for the high-contrast images and requires no parameter setting. And also in this work processing cost reduction when the new approach is followed.
Antibacterial activity in marine algae from the coast of Yucatan, Mexico

Abstract Ethanolic and lipid-soluble extracts from 21 marine algal species (10 Chlorophyta, 2 Phaeophyta and 9 Rhodophyta) from the coast of Yucatan, Mexico, were evaluated for antibacterial activity against pathogenic microbes (4 Gram-positive, 5 Gram-negative and one fungus). All species with antibacterial activity (18) were active against the Gram-positive bacteria (Bacillus subtilis, Streptococcus faecalis and Micrococcus luteus), and most of the algal species exhibited activity against B. subtilis (89% in ethanolic soluble extracts and 94% in lipid-soluble extracts). The lipid-soluble extract of Ceramium nitens exhibited the highest activity among the species tested. The results are significant because no antibacterial activity has been found in previous research on this, or any other, species from this genus. The antimicrobial activities associated with extracts from different thallus regions (apical, basal and stolon) of selected Caulerpa species (C. ashmeadii, C. paspaloides and C. prolifera) were also evaluated. Results generally indicate that the stolon of Caulerpa has the highest antibacterial activity.
PROGRESS AND COMPETITION IN MACROEVOLUTION

(4) Evolutionary trends . ( 5 ) Increased effectiveness of adaptation . ( I ) Competition and natural selection . (2) The evolutionary effects of interspecific competition . (3) The effects of interspecific competition on community structure . ( I ) Extinction and competition . (2) The Red Queen . I11 . Competition in microevolution
A note on the conservation characteristics of baled grass silages ensiled with different additives

The effects of contrasting conventional silage additives on chemical composition, aerobic stability and deterioration, and mould development in baled silage were investigated. Herbage from a grassland sward was wilted for 24 h and treated with acid (formic or sulphuric), sugar (molasses), bacterial (Lactobacillus plantarum, L. plantarum + Serratia rubidaea + Bacillus subtilis, or L. buchneri) or sugar + bacterial (molasses + L. plantarum) additives prior to baling and wrapping. Silage made without an additive preserved well and had a low incidence of mould growth, and the effects of additives were minor or absent. It is concluded that little practical benefit was realised when conventional additives were applied to wilted, leafy, easy-to-ensile grass prior to baling and ensilage.
Purification and characterization of a novel exopolygalacturonase from Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. lycopersici

Abstract A novel exopolygalacturonase (EC 3.2.1.15) was purified to apparent homogeneity from cultures of Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. lycopersici on synthetic medium supplemented with polygalacturonic acid, using two steps of purification: preparative isoelectric focusing and cationic exchange chromatography. The enzyme designated PG3 had an apparent Mr of 63 000±3000 Da upon SDS-PAGE and a pI of 7.0. PG3 was active within a broad range of pH from 3.5 to 9. The temperature optimum was 55°C. PG3 hydrolyzed polygalacturonic acid in an exo-manner, as demonstrated by analysis of degradation products. The enzyme was N-glycosylated. The production of PG3 was constitutive at low levels, and synthesis was increased following induction by PGA and partially repressed by glucose.
STRUCTURE-ACTIVITY STUDIES OF THE BINDING OF MODIFIED PEPTIDE NUCLEIC-ACIDS (PNAS) TO DNA

Peptide nucleic acid (PNA) oligomers where one of the repeating backbone units is extended with a methylene group to either N-(2-aminoethyl)-beta-alanine or N-(3-aminopropyl)glycine were prepared. Alternatively, the linker to the nucleobase was extended from methylenecarbonyl to ethylenecarbonyl. The thermal stability of the hybrids between these PNA oligomers and complementary DNA oligonucleotides was significantly lower than that of the corresponding complexes involving unmodified PNA. However, the sequence selectivity was retained. Thymidyl decamers with all N-(2-aminoethyl)-beta-alanine or N-(3-aminopropyl)glycine backbones were prepared and shown to be unable to hybridize to the complementary (dA)(10) oligonucleotides, whereas a PNA decamer containing only ethylenecarbonyl linkers between the nucleobases and the N-(2-aminoethyl)glycine backbone showed weak but sequence-specific affinity for complementary DNA. All hybrids involving homopyrimidine PNA oligomers exhibited (PNA)(2)/DNA stoichiometry, whereas mixed-sequence PNA oligomers formed PNA/DNA duplexes. The preferred binding direction between the modified PNA and DNA in the duplex motifs was antiparallel, as previously reported for complexes involving unmodified PNA.
Sentiment Aware Fake News Detection on Online Social Networks

Messages posted to online social networks (OSN) causes a recent stir due to the intended spread of fake news or rumor. This work aims to understand and analyse the characteristics of fake news especially in relation to sentiments, for the automatic detection of fake news and rumors. Based on empirical observations, we propose a hypothesis that there exists a relation between fake messages or rumours and sentiments of the texts posted online. We verify our hypothesis by comparing with the state-of-the-art baseline text-only fake news detection methods that do not consider sentiments. We performed experiments on standard Twitter fake news dataset and show good improvements in detecting fake news or rumor posts.