Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Environmental acoustic cues guide the biosonar attention of a highly specialised echolocator

ABSTRACT Sensory systems experience a trade-off between maximizing the detail and amount of sampled information. This trade-off is particularly pronounced in sensory systems that are highly specialised for a single task and thus experience limitations in other tasks. We hypothesised that combining sensory input from multiple streams of information may resolve this trade-off and improve detection and sensing reliability. Specifically, we predicted that perceptive limitations experienced by animals reliant on specialised active echolocation can be compensated for by the phylogenetically older and less specialised process of passive hearing. We tested this hypothesis in greater horseshoe bats, which possess morphological and neural specialisations allowing them to identify fluttering prey in dense vegetation using echolocation only. At the same time, their echolocation system is both spatially and temporally severely limited. Here, we show that greater horseshoe bats employ passive hearing to initially detect and localise prey-generated and other environmental sounds, and then raise vocalisation level and concentrate the scanning movements of their sonar beam on the sound source for further investigation with echolocation. These specialised echolocators thus supplement echo-acoustic information with environmental acoustic cues, enlarging perceived space beyond their biosonar range. Contrary to our predictions, we did not find consistent preferences for prey-related acoustic stimuli, indicating the use of passive acoustic cues also for detection of non-prey objects. Our findings suggest that even specialised echolocators exploit a wide range of environmental information, and that phylogenetically older sensory systems can support the evolution of sensory specialisations by compensating for their limitations. Summary: Sensory specialisations, such as echolocation, usually improve perception, but often come with costs. Echolocating bats can trade off these costs by combining two types of acoustic information, active echolocation and passive hearing.
Prevalence and causes of vision loss in high-income countries and in Eastern and Central Europe in 2015: magnitude, temporal trends and projections

Background Within a surveillance of the prevalence and causes of vision impairment in high-income regions and Central/Eastern Europe, we update figures through 2015 and forecast expected values in 2020. Methods Based on a systematic review of medical literature, prevalence of blindness, moderate and severe vision impairment (MSVI), mild vision impairment and presbyopia was estimated for 1990, 2010, 2015, and 2020. Results Age-standardised prevalence of blindness and MSVI for all ages decreased from 1990 to 2015 from 0.26% (0.10–0.46) to 0.15% (0.06–0.26) and from 1.74% (0.76–2.94) to 1.27% (0.55–2.17), respectively. In 2015, the number of individuals affected by blindness, MSVI and mild vision impairment ranged from 70 000, 630 000 and 610 000, respectively, in Australasia to 980 000, 7.46 million and 7.25 million, respectively, in North America and 1.16 million, 9.61 million and 9.47 million, respectively, in Western Europe. In 2015, cataract was the most common cause for blindness, followed by age-related macular degeneration (AMD), glaucoma, uncorrected refractive error, diabetic retinopathy and cornea-related disorders, with declining burden from cataract and AMD over time. Uncorrected refractive error was the leading cause of MSVI. Conclusions While continuing to advance control of cataract and AMD as the leading causes of blindness remains a high priority, overcoming barriers to uptake of refractive error services would address approximately half of the MSVI burden. New data on burden of presbyopia identify this entity as an important public health problem in this population. Additional research on better treatments, better implementation with existing tools and ongoing surveillance of the problem is needed.
Assessment of Host-Associated Genetic Differentiation among Phenotypically Divergent Populations of a Coral-Eating Gastropod across the Caribbean

Host-associated adaptation is emerging as a potential driver of population differentiation and speciation for marine organisms with major implications for ecosystem structure and function. Coralliophila abbreviata are corallivorous gastropods that live and feed on most of the reef-building corals in the tropical western Atlantic and Caribbean. Populations of C. abbreviata associated with the threatened acroporid corals, Acropora palmata and A. cervicornis, display different behavioral, morphological, demographic, and life-history characteristics than those that inhabit other coral host taxa, indicating that host-specific selective forces may be acting on C. abbreviata. Here, we used newly developed polymorphic microsatellite loci and mitochondrial cytochrome b sequence data to assess the population genetic structure, connectivity, and demographic history of C. abbreviata populations from three coral host taxa (A. palmata, Montastraea spp., Mycetophyllia spp.) and six geographic locations across the Caribbean. Analysis of molecular variance provided some evidence of weak and possibly geographically variable host-associated differentiation but no evidence of differentiation among sampling locations or major oceanographic regions, suggesting high gene flow across the Caribbean. Phylogenetic network and Bayesian clustering analyses supported a hypothesis of a single panmictic population as individuals failed to cluster by host or sampling location. Demographic analyses consistently supported a scenario of population expansion during the Pleistocene, a time of major carbonate reef development in the region. Although further study is needed to fully elucidate the interactive effects of host-associated selection and high gene flow in this system, our results have implications for local and regional community interactions and impact of predation on declining coral populations.
Multiperspective Image Stitching and Regularization via Hybrid Structure Warping

Distortions such as shape changes, ghosting, seam lines, and missing edges often occur in multiperspective image stitching. The authors describe a content-preserving image stitching and completion method based on hybrid structure warping to restrain these distortions. Experiments showed that the proposed approach significantly reduced ghosting and distortion, and when compared to existing methods, displayed a superior visual effect.
Tactile Sensing for Manipulation

Tactile sensing technology has achieved much progress in last decades. Recently developed tactile sensing systems have been utilized for implementation of bodily-aware robots, enhancement of robotic hand's dexterous manipulation, development of wearable devices for facilitating the human robot interaction, and so on. While tactile sensing has resulted in many possibilities in robotic research, robot's manipulation is still far from that of its counterpart-human-in term of dexterity. To overcome this issue, we are considering the following three aspects that need to be tackled: - Available tactile sensing technology is struggling to meet the capabilities of humans’ sense of touch; - Tactile data processing algorithms and data-driven learning technology are still immature; - General and robust robot manipulation control frameworks are missing
The Attentional Window Modulates Capture by Audiovisual Events

Visual search is markedly improved when a target color change is synchronized with a spatially non-informative auditory signal. This “pip and pop” effect is an automatic process as even a distractor captures attention when accompanied by a tone. Previous studies investigating visual attention have indicated that automatic capture is susceptible to the size of the attentional window. The present study investigated whether the pip and pop effect is modulated by the extent to which participants divide their attention across the visual field We show that participants were better in detecting a synchronized audiovisual event when they divided their attention across the visual field relative to a condition in which they focused their attention. We argue that audiovisual capture is reduced under focused conditions relative to distributed settings.
Nitrogen Balance in and Export from an Agricultural Watershed

Surface water nitrate (NO 3 - ) pollution from agricultural production is well established, although few studies have linked field N budgets, NO 3 - loss in tile drained watersheds, and surface water NO 3 - loads. This study was conducted to determine field sources, transport, and river export of NO 3 - from an agricultural watershed. The Embarras River watershed at Camargo (48 173 ha) in east-central Illinois was investigated. The watershed is a tile-drained area of fertile Mollisols (typical soil is Drummer silty clay loam, a fine-silty, mixed mesic Typic Haplaquoll) with primary cropping of maize (Zea mays L.) and soybean (Glycine max L.). Agricultural field N sources and sinks, tile drainage NO 3 - concentrations and fluxes, and river NO 3 - export were estimated for the entire watershed. Large pools of inorganic N were present following each harvest of maize and soybean (average of 3670 Mg N yr -1 over a 6-yr period). The source of most of the inorganic N was divided between N fertilizer and soil mineralized N. High concentrations of NO 3 were found in four monitored drainage tiles (5-49 mg N L '), and tile concentrations of NO 3 - were synchronous with Embarras River NO 3 - concentrations. High flow events contributed most of the yearly NO 3 - loss (24.7 kg N ha -1 yr -1 ) from tile drained fields in the 1995 water year (1 Oct, 1994 through 30 Sept. 1995) where high rainfall events occurred in a low overall precipitation year (in one tile 21% of the annual load was exported in 1 d). During the 1996 water year, NO 3 - export in tiles was much higher (44.2 kg N ha -1 yr -1 ) due to greater precipitation, and individual days were less important. On average, about 49% (average of 1688 Mg N yr ' over a 6-yr period) of the field inorganic N pool was estimated to be leached through drain tiles and seepage and was exported by the Embarras River, although depending on weather and field N balances this ranged from 25 to 85% of the field N balance over the 6-yr period. It seems likely that agricultural disturbance (high mineralization inputs of N) and N fertilization combined with tile drainage contributed significantly to NO, export in the Embarras River.
Silicon Avalanche Based Light Emitting Diodes and Their Potential Integration into CMOS and RF Integrated Circuit Technology

As a rapid growing field in worldwide science and technology, silicon nano-photonics has become one of the most promising photonics integration platforms in the last decade. This is mainly due to the combination of a very high index contrast and the availability of silicon complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) fabrication technology, which allows the use of electronics fabrication facilities to make photonic circuitry. Unfortunately, the indirect band-gap of silicon leads to low efficiency and slow efficiency that is unexpected. The rate of electron-hole recombination in silicon material is too low to produce emitted photons in forward biased silicon p-n junctions, but light emission observed from reverse-biased silicon p-n junctions under high electric field was already reported in 1955 by Newman [1]. The radiative transition between hot carriers emits photons larger than the energy gap. Hence the luminescence during avalanche breakdown is characterized by a broad emission spectrum. An example of the high-energy edges of avalanche-breakdown luminescence is shown in Fig. 1. The low-energy edge of the emission spectrum, on the other hand, extends to energies lower than the gap energy, due to the tunneling-assisted photon emission [2].
Trait independence primes convergent trait loss

The repeated, independent evolution of traits (convergent evolution) is often attributed to shared environmental selection pressures. However, developmental dependencies among traits can limit the phenotypic variation available to selection and bias evolutionary outcomes. Here, we determine how changes in developmentally correlated traits may impact convergent loss of the tympanic middle ear, a highly labile trait within toads that currently lack adaptive explanation. The middle ear's lability could reflect evolutionary trade‐offs with other skull features under selection, or the middle ear may evolve independently of the rest of the skull, allowing it to be modified by active or passive processes without pleiotropic trade‐offs with other skull features. We compare the skulls of 55 species (39 eared, 16 earless) within the family Bufonidae, spanning six hypothesized independent middle ear transitions. We test whether shared or lineage‐specific changes in skull shape distinguish earless species from eared species and whether earless skulls lack other late‐forming skull bones. We find no evidence for pleiotropic trade‐offs between the middle ear and other skull structures. Instead, middle ear loss in anurans may provide a rare example of developmental independence contributing to evolutionary lability of a sensory system.
Nonlinear dynamics of discrete‐time circuits: A survey

Methods of nonlinear dynamics have gained increasing prominence within the field of circuits and systems over the past two decades, but only a small proportion of the research in this area has focused on discrete‐time circuits. The aim of this paper is to provide a brief survey of some results concerning the nonlinear dynamical behaviour of discrete‐time circuits. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Effect of Porosity and Grain Size on the Microwave Dielectric Properties of Sintered Alumina

The real part of the permittivity (E') and the tan δ of sintered alumina (Al 2 O 3 ) at about 9 GHz have been measured. The dielectric properties have been examined as a function of purity, pore volume, and sintered grain size. The tan δ is found to depend very strongly on the pore volume, purity, and grain size. e' is far less sensitive to impurities and grain size. The dependence of e' on porosity can be described by simple mixture models as expected. A model of losses in single crystals cannot be extended easily to these materials where extrinsic factors such as porosity, random crystal orientation, grain boundaries, microcracks, and impurities dominate. These factors have been studied in an attempt to describe the tan δ and e' of sintered polycrystalline alumina. In this work, the tan δ for alumina has been studied in near-theoretical density ranges between 9.1 x 10 -5 and 2.4 x 10 -5 depending on grain size.
Linking Job-Relevant Personality Traits, Transformational Leadership, and Job Performance via Perceived Meaningfulness at Work: A Moderated Mediation Model

By integrating the fundamental principles of the theory of purposeful work behavior (TPWB; Barrick, Mount, & Li, 2013) with cognitive-affective personality system (CAPS) theory (Mischel, 1977; Mischel & Shoda, 1995), we examine how and when salespeople’s job-relevant personality traits relate to their performance. We argue that individuals with personality traits that fit outdoor sales jobs (i.e., conscientious, extraversion, openness to experience) will perceive their work as more meaningful and as a result achieve heightened performance. Moreover, drawing from TPWB and CAPS theory, we expect that as an important element of the social context, transformational leadership moderates the indirect effect of salespeople’s job-relevant personality traits on their job performance via enhanced perceptions of meaningfulness at work. Results based on data from 496 outdoor salespeople and their 218 supervisors and regional managers provide support for the hypotheses pertaining to conscientiousness and openness, but not extraversion. Specifically, the conditional indirect effects of conscientiousness or openness on performance through perceived meaningfulness are more positive under low, rather than high, levels of transformational leadership. Implications for research and practice are discussed along with study limitations and future research directions.
Interacting Effects of Phenotypic Plasticity and Evolution on Population Persistence in a Changing Climate

Abstract: Climate change affects individual organisms by altering development, physiology, behavior, and fitness, and populations by altering genetic and phenotypic composition, vital rates, and dynamics. We sought to clarify how selection, phenotypic plasticity, and demography are linked in the context of climate change. On the basis of theory and results of recent empirical studies of plants and animals, we believe the ecological and evolutionary issues relevant to population persistence as climate changes are the rate, type, magnitude, and spatial pattern of climate‐induced abiotic and biotic change; generation time and life history of the organism; extent and type of phenotypic plasticity; amount and distribution of adaptive genetic variation across space and time; dispersal potential; and size and connectivity of subpopulations. An understanding of limits to plasticity and evolutionary potential across traits, populations, and species and feedbacks between adaptive and demographic responses is lacking. Integrated knowledge of coupled ecological and evolutionary mechanisms will increase understanding of the resilience and probabilities of persistence of populations and species.
Information structures to secure control of rigid formations with leader-follower architecture

This paper is concerned with rigid formations of mobile autonomous agents that have leader-follower architecture. In a previous paper, Baillieul and Suri gave a proposition as a necessary condition for stable rigidity. They also gave a separate theorem as a sufficient condition for stable rigidity. This paper suggests an approach to analyze rigid formations that have leader-follower architecture. It proves that the third condition in the proposition given by Baillieul and Suri is redundant, and it proves that this proposition is a necessary and sufficient condition for stable rigidity. Simulation results are also presented to illustrate rigidity.
Modulating Role of Ang1-7 in Control of Blood Pressure and Renal Function in AngII-infused Hypertensive Rats

BACKGROUND Indirect evidence suggests that angiotensin 1-7 (Ang1-7) may counterbalance prohypertensive actions of angiotensin II (AngII), via activation of vascular and/or renal tubular receptors to cause vasodilation and natriuresis/diuresis. We examined if Ang1-7 would attenuate the development of hypertension, renal vasoconstriction, and decreased natriuresis in AngII-infused rats and evaluated the mechanisms involved. METHODS AngII, alone or with Ang1-7, was infused to conscious Sprague-Dawley rats for 13 days and systolic blood pressure (SBP) and renal excretion were repeatedly determined. In anesthetized rats, acute actions of Ang1-7 and effects of blockade of angiotensin AT1 or Mas receptors (candesartan or A-779) were studied. RESULTS Chronic AngII infusion increased SBP from 143 ± 4 to 195 ± 6 mm Hg. With Ang1-7 co-infused, SBP increased from 133 ± 5 to 161 ± 5 mm Hg (increase reduced, P < 0.002); concurrent increases in urine flow (V) and sodium excretion (UNaV) were greater. In anesthetized normotensive or AngII-induced hypertensive rats, Ang1-7 infusion transiently increased mean arterial pressure (MABP), transiently decreased renal blood flow (RBF), and caused increases in UNaV and V. In normotensive rats, candesartan prevented the Ang1-7-induced increases in MABP and UNaV and the decrease in RBF. In anesthetized normotensive, rats intravenous A-779 increased MABP (114 ± 5 to 120 ± 5 mm Hg, P < 0.03) and urine flow. Surprisingly, these changes were not observed with A-779 applied during background Ang1-7 infusion. CONCLUSIONS The results suggest that in AngII-dependent hypertension, Ang1-7 deficit contributes to sodium and fluid retention and thereby to BP elevation; a correction by Ang1-7 infusion seems mediated by AT1 and not Mas receptors.
Intra‐cerebral and intra‐nasal melanocortin‐4 receptor antagonist blocks withdrawal hyperalgesia in alcohol‐dependent rats

Humans diagnosed with alcohol use disorder are more sensitive to painful stimuli during withdrawal, which suggests that excessive alcohol drinking worsens pain outcomes. Alcohol‐dependent rats exhibit increases in nociceptive sensitivity during withdrawal. Data from animal models suggest that brain melanocortin‐4 receptors (MC4Rs) mediate alcohol drinking and nociception. Here we tested: (1) the effect of alcohol dependence on thermal nociception in rats, and (2) the ability of acute alcohol and (3) MC4R antagonists to reverse hyperalgesia during withdrawal in alcohol‐dependent rats. Rats were trained to self‐administer operant alcohol and were tested for baseline thermal nociception. Half of the rats were made dependent on alcohol, then all rats were cannulated in the lateral ventricle. We tested the effects of acute alcohol drinking, acute fixed‐dose alcohol, intra‐ventricular agouti‐related protein (endogenous MC4R antagonist), intra‐ventricular HS014 (synthetic MC4R antagonist) and intra‐nasal HS014 on hyperalgesia during withdrawal in alcohol‐dependent rats, relative to non‐dependent drinkers and alcohol‐naïve controls. Alcohol‐dependent rats exhibit thermal hyperalgesia that is abolished by alcohol drinking, bolus alcohol and intra‐ventricular and intra‐nasal MC4R antagonists. These manipulations did not affect thermal nociception in non‐dependent drinkers and alcohol‐naïve controls, suggesting that alcohol dependence produces neuroadaptations in brain MC4R systems. These results suggest that brain MC4R systems may be an effective therapeutic target for reducing nociception in the alcohol‐dependent organism.
Survival and Success Rates of Short Straumann Implants Placed in the Mandible: A Retrospective Study with up to 5 Year Follow-Up

Aims: The purpose of this retrospective, non-interventional, open cohort study is to report on short implants (8 mm’s and less) as used to treat severe atrophic ridges in absence of bone graft. Materials and Methods: Retrospectively all Straumann implant implants of length 6 and 8 mm that were placed in the posterior mandible with no bone graft were evaluated (N= 720). Implant restorations were all splinted together. Bone levels were evaluated at 12 months then at 1-2 year intervals up to 5 years. Results: Among the 720 implants placed, the overall 5-year survival rate was 100%. The overall cumulative success rate of all implants was 95.8% at 3 years and 93.4% at 5 years, respectively. Success rates of the 6 mm implants were 92.3% and 90.5% at 3 and 5 years, respectively. Success rates for the 8 mm implants were found to be 97.2% and 94.6% at 3 and 5 years, respectively. There was no statistically significant difference in the success rates of 6 and 8 mm implants. Conclustion: Short multiple splinted implants are an effective treatment modality in the resorbed mandible and may provide alternative to bone grafting or nerve transposition.
Enhancing the electronic conductivity of Lignin-sourced, sub-micron carbon particles

This paper presents electronic conductivity measurements from three different types of sub-micron scale carbon nanoparticles, each of which is sourced from Lignin. The particles are synthesized using a combination of hydrothermal and high-temperature processing steps involving suitable catalysts. The synthesis parameters are found to have an impact on the extent of graphitization within the carbon particles. Furthermore, an increasing graphitic content is found to result in higher electronic conductivities, which is an essential attribute in their potential application as environmentally-friendly lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery anodes.