Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Least Tern (Sternula antillarum) Population Response to Water Levels on Cheyenne River and Oahe Reservoir, South Dakota, USA

Abstract. Consideration of annual population count data, stream flows, water levels, and nesting habitat availability over a 29-year period suggest that Least Terns (Sternula antillarum athalossos) nesting along the Cheyenne River and Oahe Reservoir in South Dakota, USA, select areas primarily in response to reservoir water levels early in the breeding season. Generalized linear models were selected in an information-theoretic framework and showed important relationships between adult Least Tern numbers and reservoir levels, as well as a negative long-term temporal trend in both survey areas. Reservoir levels alone could not account for the temporal trend. The number of adult Least Terns on the Cheyenne River was positively correlated (R = 0.668) with mean May reservoir water levels—a more important relationship than that between adult numbers and river levels. The number of adults on the Oahe Reservoir was negatively correlated (R = -0.573) with mean May reservoir water levels. Numbers of adults on the Cheyenne River and on Oahe Reservoir were negatively correlated (R = -0.684), suggesting that birds may interact as one population across the two areas. This information should help managers to consider ecological relationships among segments of the Least Tern population on the Missouri River and its tributaries and options for managing Least Terns on the Cheyenne River, Oahe Reservoir, and elsewhere on the Missouri River system.
Effect of climate data on simulated carbon and nitrogen balances for Europe

In this study, we systematically assess the spatial variability in carbon and nitrogen balance simulations related to the choice of global circulation models (GCMs), representative concentration pathways (RCPs), spatial resolutions, and the downscaling methods used as calculated with LPJ‐GUESS. We employed a complete factorial design and performed 24 simulations for Europe with different climate input data sets and different combinations of these four factors. Our results reveal that the variability in simulated output in Europe is moderate with 35.6%–93.5% of the total variability being common among all combinations of factors. The spatial resolution is the most important factor among the examined factors, explaining 1.5%–10.7% of the total variability followed by GCMs (0.3%–7.6%), RCPs (0%–6.3%), and downscaling methods (0.1%–4.6%). The higher‐order interactions effect that captures nonlinear relations between the factors and random effects is pronounced and accounts for 1.6%–45.8% to the total variability. The most distinct hot spots of variability include the mountain ranges in North Scandinavia and the Alps, and the Iberian Peninsula. Based on our findings, we advise to conduct the application of models such as LPJ‐GUESS at a reasonably high spatial resolution which is supported by the model structure. There is no notable gain in simulations of ecosystem carbon and nitrogen stocks and fluxes from using regionally downscaled climate in preference to bias‐corrected, bilinearly interpolated CMIP5 projections.
Ost-West-Migrationspotenzial: Wie groß ist es? / East-West-Migration Potential: How many will go West?

Zusammenfassung Wie viele Menschen aus den mittel- und osteuropäischen Ländern (MOEL) werden von dem mit dem EU-Beitritt verbundenen Recht auf Freizügigkeit Gebrauch machen und nach Westen in die „alten" EU-Länder wandern? Die vorgestellten Simulationen ergeben eine Bandbreite für das Ost-West-Migrationspotenzial in der Größenordnung von brutto jährlich 0,2 % bis 0,4 % der mittel- und osteuropäischen Bevölkerung, die bei einer Nettobetrachtung (unter Einbezug der Rückwanderungen) auf rund 0,1 % der Bevölkerung schmilzt. Hochgerechnet auf eine erste EU-Erweiterungswelle, ergibt sich für die MOEL-8 (Slowenien, Tschechien, Ungarn, Slowakei, Polen, Estland, Litauen, Lettland) ein Ost-West-Migrationspotenzial, das in 15 Jahren brutto etwa 3 % - 4 % und netto etwa die Hälfte, nämlich 1½ % - 2 % der Bevölkerung der MOEL- 8 erreicht. Dies sind rund 3 Millionen Menschen (brutto) bzw. 1 - 1½ Millionen Menschen (netto). Anders herum gesehen, entsprechen diese drei Millionen Menschen gerade einmal 0,8 % der EU-Bevölkerung. Mit Blick auf die zu erwartende Schrumpfung der Bevölkerung in den heutigen EU-15 Ländern und dem damit einhergehenden Alterungsprozess dürften diese Zuwanderungsbewegungen kaum negativ ins Gewicht fallen. Von einer „Völkerwanderung" kann also keine Rede sein! Summary How many people from Central and Eastern Europe (CEEC) will go West making use of the free movement of people after the EU East enlargement? An extrapolation of the empirical experience of the EU South enlargement shows that the emigration potential might reach a corridor between 0.2 % to 0.4 % of total CEEC-population per year. Annual net migraton (including return migration) might be about 0.1 % of total CEEC-population. If we assume that in a first wave 8 countries from CEEC will become EU members (i. e. Slovenia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovk Republic, Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia), the East-West migration potential will be about 3 % - 4 % (gross) and 11/2 % - 2% (net) of the total CEEC-population within the first 15 years after accession. This is about 3 million people (gross) resp. 1 to 1.5 million people (net) or about 0.8. % of the total EU population. Therefore, fears of "mass migration" seem highly exaggerated. Muchmore, with regard to the decline of the EU population and the ageing of the society the expected East-West-migration potentials will generate rather positive consequences.
Internal and External QA in HE LA Tools and Self-Evaluation Report Preparation

Learning Analytics (LA) and tools for intelligent analysis of data accumulated in the information systems used in higher education institutions (HEIs) allow quality experts to increase the effectiveness of processes for monitoring, quality assurance and evaluation of training. The paper presents LA model and a correspondent software tool designed for the needs of quality experts in Bulgarian higher education institutions. The tool allows them to monitor and improve the learning process. However, the experiments presented here show that the tool can also significantly assist in the preparation of selfassessment reports for internal and external quality assessment in HE. Research and experiments with the model and the LA tool under consideration are conducted on the basis of the information infrastructure of a typical Bulgarian university – University of Plovdiv “Paisii Hilendarski”. Keywords—Learning Analytics, Intelligent Data Analysis, Decision Making, Self-evaluation Report, Higher Education.
The Lower Main Zone in the Northern Limb of the Bushveld Complex—a >1·3 km Thick Sequence of Intruded and Variably Contaminated Crystal Mushes

The lower Main Zone (LMZ) in the Northern Limb of the Bushveld Complex as intersected by the 1563·02 m deep Moordkopje (MO-1) drill hole shows very little large-scale differentiation as exemplified by parameters such as the An% of plagioclase, the Mg# of pyroxene and the modified differentiation index over a vertical interval in excess of 1·3 km. These features, coupled with the late entry of pigeonite (now inverted to orthopyroxene), are suggestive of the repeated intrusion of magma into the magma chamber of the Northern Limb during the early stages of the development of the Main Zone. Importantly, the lower Main Zone (LMZ) exhibits significant Sr isotopic disequilibrium between coexisting plagioclase (Sri 0·708) and orthopyroxene (Sri up to 0·711) in certain samples, a feature that has not previously been described for the Main Zone. Many of the features of the lower Main Zone (e.g. bulk compositions of LMZ cumulates unsuitable for the crystallization of plagioclase þ two pyroxenes; poorly developed layering; non-cotectic proportions of plagioclase and pyroxene; decoupling of the differentiation trends of plagioclase and pyroxene over short vertical intervals) in the Northern Limb may be explained if it was intruded not as repeated influxes of aphyric magma, but instead by the repeated intrusion of crystal mushes from a deeper, sub-compartmentalized, crustal staging chamber. The model proposed is an alternative to previous models suggesting the loss of extrusive components from the Bushveld Complex, which were developed to explain compositional paradoxes within the Bushveld Complex.
Split-DHFR as a protein complementation assay for localisation and interactions of yeast mitochondrial proteins

Protein complementation assays (PCAs) utilising two fragments of a reporter protein – fused to two potentially interacting proteins of interest – are a common method of analysing protein-protein interactions (PPIs). This approach, using split dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR) as a reporter protein, has been previously carried out for cytosolic Saccharomyces cerevisiae proteins. The focus of this study was to establish a split-DHFR assay specifically for use in analysing yeast mitochondrial PPIs in the intermembrane space (IMS), which has not been done before. A strategy to overcome the problem endogenous DHFR activity had to be developed using a modified strain of S. cerevisiae for the specific application here. Further, plasmids containing two positive control proteins, Tim9 and Tim10 (two well-known interacting proteins of the IMS) were cloned for transformation into yeast strain BY4741. Several other plasmids bearing various control proteins were designed and some of them cloned, although we required more time to have the full set of tools to establish the assay.
Classification of agricultural fields using time series of dual polarimetry TerraSAR-X images

Due to its special imaging characteristics, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) has become an important source of information for a variety of remote sensing applications dealing with environmental changes. SAR images contain information about both phase and intensity in different polarization modes, making them sensitive to geometrical structure and physical properties of the targets such as dielectric and plant water content. In this study we investigate multi temporal changes occurring to different crop types due to phenological changes using high-resolution TerraSAR-X imagers. The dataset includes 17 dual-polarimetry TSX data acquired from June 2012 to August 2013 in Lorestan province, Iran. Several features are extracted from polarized data and classified using support vector machine (SVM) classifier. Training samples and different features employed in classification are also assessed in the study. Results show a satisfactory accuracy for classification which is about 0.91 in kappa coefficient.
VERIFICATION OF BIGEYE TUNA LENGTH AND CATCH DATA CONSISTENCY FOR TAIWANESE LONGLINE FISHERY IN THE ATLANTIC

SUMMARY The fishing types are investigated in terms of number of hooks between floats for Taiwanese longline fleets in the Atlantic, and annual mean weight that obtained from different methods is estimated to verify the length frequency and catch data. The results obtained shows that 10 or more hooks between floats could be classified as deep longline fishing type and target tropical species; and that 9 or less hooks between floats as regular longline fishing type and target albacore as usual. Annual mean weight estimated from length frequency sampled is much more coincident to the total catch reported in TASK I, in contrast, mean weight estimated from TASK II reported previously shows discrepancies and fluctuation in comparison with those from length frequency. This verify that the length frequency sample and catch estimation from those length frequency sound accurate and could be used in the stock assessment.
Trial design of a dome roof for an church

The paper describes some construction solutions for a metalic dome roof of an orthodox church. The authors describe three alternative variants (with different structural diagrams) of designing its dome framework. The paper introduces ribbed ring-shaped, grid and webbed geodesic dome constructions which are aimed to be used in the same operation conditions. The researchers calculated structural design, strength, proportioning of members and weight index as well as geometrically arranged elements of each dome design structure. Then their general total economic parameters were compared.
OMNIgene®•GUT enables reliable collection of high quality fecal samples for gut microbiome studies

OMNIgene®•GUT is an all-in-one system for easy self-collection and stabilization of microbial DNA from feces for gut microbiome profiling. In this paper we demonstrate that OMNIgeneGUT allows for reliable and reproducible self-collection of fecal sample. The design of the kit ensures consistent sample input, while the stabilization liquid and mixing properties of the kit ensure that the sample is homogenized and liquefied at the point of collection to simplify handling in the laboratory. DNA extraction from OMNIgeneGUT delivers consistent amounts of high quality DNA sufficient for multiple high-throughput metagenomic analyses. Importantly, the chemical properties of the OMNIgeneGUT stabilization liquid are compatible with commercial processing methods, maintain a neutral profile and do not introduce any bias into downstream applications. These properties simplify workflows in the laboratory, increase efficiency and reduce overhead.
X-ray and UV observations of V751 Cyg in an optical high state

Aims: The VY Scl system (anti-dwarf nova) V751 Cyg is examined following a claim of a super-soft spectrum in the optical low state. Methods: A serendipitous XMM-Newton X-ray observation and, 21 months later, Swift X-ray and UV observations, have provided the best such data on this source so far. These optical high-state datasets are used to study the flux and spectral variability of V751 Cyg. Results: Both the XMM-Newton and Swift data show evidence for modulation of the X-rays for the first time at the known 3.467 hr orbital period of V751 Cyg. In two Swift observations, taken ten days apart, the mean X-ray flux remained unchanged, while the UV source brightened by half a magnitude. The X-ray spectrum was not super-soft during the optical high state, but rather due to multi-temperature optically thin emission, with significant (10^{21-22} cm^-2) absorption, which was higher in the observation by Swift than that of XMM-Newton. The X-ray flux is harder at orbital minimum, suggesting that the modulation is related to absorption, perhaps linked to the azimuthally asymmetric wind absorption seen previously in H-alpha.
Current Directions in Biomedical Engineering

Minimally invasive surgery is increasingly utilized for mitral valve repair and replacement. The intervention is performed with an endoscopic field of view on the arrested heart. Extracting the necessary information from the live endoscopic video stream is challenging due to themoving camera position, the high variability of defects, and occlusion of structures by instruments. During such minimally invasive interventions there is no time to segment regions of interest manually. We propose a realtime-capable deep-learning-based approach to detect and segment the relevant anatomical structures and instruments. For the universal deployment of the proposed solution, we evaluate them on pixel accuracy as well as distance measurements of the detected contours. The U-Net, Google’s DeepLab v3, and the Obelisk-Net models are cross-validated, with DeepLab showing superior results in pixel accuracy and distance measurements.
Current Directions in Biomedical Engineering

In endoscopy, depth estimation is a task that potentially helps in quantifying visual information for better scene understanding. A plethora of depth estimation algorithms have been proposed in the computer vision community. The endoscopic domain however, differs from the typical depth estimation scenario due to differences in the setup andnature of the scene. Furthermore, it is unfeasible to obtain ground truth depth information owing to an unsuitable detection range of off-the-shelf depth sensors and difficulties in settingupadepth-sensor in a surgical environment. In this paper, an existing self-supervised approach, called Monodepth [1], from the field of autonomous driving is applied to a novel dataset of stereo-endoscopic images from reconstructivemitral valve surgery.While it is already known that endoscopic scenes are more challenging than outdoor driving scenes, the paper performs experiments to quantify the comparison, anddescribe thedomaingapandchallenges involved in the transfer of these methods.
Current Directions in Biomedical Engineering

Intraoperative brain deformation, so-called brain shift, affects the applicability of preoperative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data to assist the procedures of intraoperative ultrasound (iUS) guidance during neurosurgery. This paper proposes a deep learning-based approach for fast and accurate deformable registration of preoperativeMRI to iUS images to correct brain shift. Based on the architecture of 3D convolutional neural networks, the proposed deep MRI-iUS registration method has been successfully tested and evaluated on the retrospective evaluation of cerebral tumors (RESECT) dataset. This study showed that our proposed method outperforms other registration methods in previous studies with an average mean squared error (MSE) of 85. Moreover, thismethod can register three 3D MRI-US pair in less than a second, improving the expected outcomes of brain surgery.
Current Directions in Biomedical Engineering

Dysphagia, the difficulty in swallowing, is one of the most common and, at the same time, most heterogeneous symptom of the upper digestive tract. Due to its lifetime prevalence of about 5%, every 19th person is affected on average, especially with increasing age. Dysphagia occurs in both benign and malignant diseases of the esophagus and the oropharyngeal tract as well as in neuromuscular diseases. Even dysphagia caused by benign diseases can lead to significantly reduced quality of life. The diagnostics of the actual underlying disease in patients with dysphagia is commonly conducted using a combination of endoscopy, esophageal manometry, functional assessments and radiologic means, e.g. X-rayfluoroscopy. As these examinations are typically performed in sequential order, it remains to the physicians to combine the relevant information from each modality to form a conclusion. We argue that this is neither an intuitive, nor a standardized form of presenting the findings to the physician. To address this, we propose a novel approach for fusing time-synchronized manometric and X-ray data into a single view to provide a more comprehensive visualizationmethod as a novel means for diagnosing dysphagia.
Current Directions in Biomedical Engineering

Automatic recognition of surgical phases is an important component for developing an intra-operative context-aware system. Prior work in this area focuses on recognizing short-term tool usage patterns within surgical phases. However, the difference between intraand interphase tool usage patterns has not been investigated for automatic phase recognition. We developed a Recurrent Neural Network (RNN), in particular a state-preserving Long Short TermMemory (LSTM) architecture to utilize the long-term evolution of tool usage within complete surgical procedures. For fully automatic tool presence detection from surgical video frames, a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) based architecture namely ZIBNet is employed. Our proposed approach outperformed EndoNet by 8.1% on overall precision for phase detection tasks and 12.5% on meanAP for tool recognition tasks.
Inter-firm credit and industrial links.

This thesis addresses two fundamental puzzles about trade credit: why does it appear to be so expensive. and why do input suppliers engage in the business of lending money. Both questions are answered analysing the interaction between the financial and the industrial aspects of the supplier-customer relationship. In the first part of the thesis we present a model where, in a context of limited enforceability of contracts, suppliers have a comparative advantage over banks in lending to their customers because they hold the extra threat of stopping the sup-ply of intermediate goods. Suppliers also act as lenders of last resort, providing insurance against liquidity shocks that may endanger the survival of their cus-tomers. The relatively high implicit interest rates of trade credit result from the existence of default and insurance premiums. The two necessary elements for these two roles of suppliers are the existence of some relationship surplus that is split between suppliers and customers, and an environment where debt repayment is difficult to enforce. Then we extend the analysis to suppliers who are themselves financially con-strained. Under certain assumptions, the optimal financial contract that arises is similar to a standard factoring contract. The interest rates paid by suppliers and customers in this contract depend on their own creditworthiness, but also on the characteristics of their commercial relationship. Finally the implications of the basic model are examined empirically using both parametric and non-parametric techniques on a panel of UK firms. The results show some regularities that had not been identified in previous literature and that support the role of suppliers as debt collectors and insurance providers of the basic model. In particular these results are consistent with the idea of trade credit being related to the existence of either some degree of technological specificity or a relationship surplus that takes time to build. Evidence is also found of the support of suppliers to their customers experiencing some form of liquidity shock.
Impact of deep convection in the tropical tropopause layer in West Africa: in-situ observations and mesoscale modelling

Abstract. We present the analysis of the impact of convection on the composition of the tropical tropopause layer region (TTL) in West-Africa during the AMMA-SCOUT campaign. Geophysica M55 aircraft observations of water vapor, ozone, aerosol and CO2 during August 2006 show perturbed values at altitudes ranging from 14 km to 17 km (above the main convective outflow) and satellite data indicates that air detrainment is likely to have originated from convective cloud east of the flights. Simulations of the BOLAM mesoscale model, nudged with infrared radiance temperatures, are used to estimate the convective impact in the upper troposphere and to assess the fraction of air processed by convection. The analysis shows that BOLAM correctly reproduces the location and the vertical structure of convective outflow. Model-aided analysis indicates that convection can influence the composition of the upper troposphere above the level of main outflow for an event of deep convection close to the observation site. Model analysis also shows that deep convection occurring in the entire Sahelian transect (up to 2000 km E of the measurement area) has a non negligible role in determining TTL composition.
Estimate for GLAST LAT Milky Way Dark Matter WIMP Line Sensitivity

The LAT Dark Matter and New Physics Working group has been developing approaches for the indirect astrophysical detection of annihilation of dark matter. Our work has assumed that a significant component of dark matter is a new type of Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP). The annihilation of two WIMPs usually results in the production of many high energy gamma rays (>1 GeV) that can be well measured in the GLAST LAT if present. There is also the possibility to observe γ lines from annihilation into γγ and or γZ final states. In popular SUSY theories these line decays occur at the 10−4 to 10−2 branching fraction level. Estimates of LAT sensitivity (at 5σ above background) and upper limits (upper limit at the 95% confidence level) to these WIMP lines will be presented. These sensitivities are given in photons/cm2/sec/sr and so do not depend on the WIMP models. However, they do depend on the diffuse background model. The latter is derived from GALPROP based on EGRET and other data in the EGRET energy .