Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Morphological analysis and description of the ovaries of female silky sharks, Carcharhinus falciformis (Müller & Henle, 1839)

This work aims to study the female reproductive tract of silky sharks, Carcharhinus falciformis, captured in the South and Equatorial Atlantic Ocean. Samples were collected between January 2008 and March 2010 through oceanic commercial vessels that targeted tuna and swordfish, with a total of 17 females collected. The methodologies followed for analyzing the ovaries of those females included both macroscopic and histological analysis. Macroscopically, it was possible to determine that the ovaries on these sharks is suspended by mesenteries in the anterior section of the body cavity, heavily irrigated by blood vessels, and contains a wide range of oocytes. Ovaries were found in three distinct maturational stages: Stage I (Immature), Stage II (Maturing) and Stage III (Mature). Immature ovaries were small, with widths ranging from 1.0 to 3.1 cm, and had a gelatinous or granulose internal structure; maturing ovaries were slightly larger, ranging in width between 5.2 and 6.0 cm; mature ovaries ranged in width between 6.5 and 7.8 cm, and had a more rounded shape and the presence of large and well developed oocytes. Under microscopic examination, it was observed that the ovaries were covered with simple epithelial tissue during the early development stages and a simple cubic epithelium in the final stages of maturation. During the initial maturation stages the epigonal organ was not differentiated from the ovary. In mature specimens, the ovary showed a simple cubic epithelium and just below this epithelium there was a layer of dense connective tissue and muscle with the presence of vitellogenic oocytes and fat cells. A thin yolk membrane enclosing the oocytes was also evident. Finally, it was possible to distinguish a zona pellucida, separating the oocytes from the follicle wall and a basal lamina between the granular layers and the teak layer.
Study of Dengue Virus Infection in Kuwait

Kuwait has a workforce of more than one million non-Kuwaitis coming from countries where vectorborne diseases like dengue fever are endemic. This study was aimed at investigating the magnitude of the dengue problem by determining the prevalence of dengue virus-specific antibodies and diagnosing suspected dengue fever cases in Kuwait. The antibody prevalence was determined by testing 909 serum samples from persons of various nationalities resident in Kuwait. In addition, laboratory diagnosis of the dengue virus infection was attempted on samples from 210 patients with the clinical presentation of dengue-like illness. Overall, 48% (436/909) donors had dengue virus-specific IgG antibodies. However, in Kuwaitis the seroprevalence was only 14% (59/425), which was significantly lower than in any group of the non-Kuwaiti residents, (p<0.001). Among the IgG-positive donors, the antibodies were most frequently detected against DEN-1 (55%), followed by DEN-2 (35%) and DEN-3 (10%). None of the 436 positive samples showed IgG antibodies to DEN-4. Moreover, among the 210 clinically suspected patients, IgM detection and RT-PCR confirmed dengue illness was found in 2 patients. Both of these patients were infected with DEN-2 and had visited dengue-endemic areas in the recent past. There was no evidence of the transmission of dengue infection within Kuwait as all of the 47 subjects who had never left Kuwait were found negative for dengue virus antibodies. The absence of Aedes aegypti in Kuwait and the poor vectorial capacity of Aedes caspius appear to be responsible for the absence of local transmission of dengue virus.
Laboratory Development of Permeable Reactive Mixtures for the Removal of Phosphorus from Onsite Wastewater Disposal Systems

Laboratory batch and column studies were conducted to develop permeable reactive mixtures to remove phosphorus from the effluent of onsite wastewater disposal systems. Mixtures can be placed in situ, as horizontal or vertical reactive barriers in sediments receiving wastewater discharge, or can be used in single pass, self-contained treatment modules in alternative treatment systems. Reactive mixtures composed of silica sand, high calcium crushed limestone, and readily available metal oxides were tested to evaluate phosphorus attenuation. Iron/calcium oxides, produced from steel manufacturing, and fine-grained activated aluminum oxide outperformed other oxides tested during batch experiments. These materials removed greater than 99% of PO4 from a 10 mg/L PO4−P solution within 1 h of contact. Long-term attenuation capacities of the mixtures were assessed by continually loading bench-scale columns with a 3.3 mg/L PO4−P solution, at representative groundwater flow rates. A column containing 50 wt % silica sa.
Ju l 2 00 0 AN EXCURSION FROM ENUMERATIVE GEOMETRY TO SOLVING SYSTEMS OF POLYNOMIAL

Solving a system of polynomial equations is a ubiquitous problem in the applications of mathematics. Until recently, it has been hopeless to find explicit solutions to such systems, and mathematics has instead developed deep and powerful theories about the solutions to polynomial equations. Enumerative Geometry is concerned with counting the number of solutions when the polynomials come from a geometric situation and Intersection Theory gives methods to accomplish the enumeration. We use Macaulay 2 to investigate some problems from enumerative geometry. Besides enumerating solutions to the resulting polynomial systems, which include overdetermined, deficient, and improper systems, we address the important question of real solutions to these geometric problems. The text contains evaluated Macaulay 2 code to illuminate the discussion. This is intended as a chapter in a book on applications of Macaulay 2 to problems in mathematics. While this chapter is largely expository, the results in the last section concerning lines tangent to quadrics are new.
Prediction of shipping noise in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea

Shipping noise is one of the most common underwater sounds and a substantial component of ambient noise in the sea. Traveling vessels are sources of low-frequency acoustic waves which propagate efficiently through the water mass and thus affect underwater noise levels at large distances from the major shipping lanes. A prediction model for shipping noise in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea is currently being developed combining real-time ship data (AIS data) provided by the MarineTraffic ship tracking service, typical acoustic emission characteristics, environmental data and acoustic propagation codes. Taking into account prevailing temperature and sound-speed distributions, as well as the exact bathymetry in the area, range-dependent propagation calculations are carried out using a simple ray-theoretic approach combined with sound-speed smoothing to account for low-frequency effects, and the three dimensional distribution of sound intensity is estimated. Results for the distribution of noise level at various depths are presented on a geographical background (map) and periodically updated.
Preferences and Unrestricted Rebut

The work of Caminada & Amgoud presents two possible ways of satisfying the rationality postulates: one using restricted rebut, and one using unrestricted rebut. Subsequent work on ASPIC+ has extended the work of Caminada & Amgoud, for instance by allowing preferences over arguments. However, such extensions have utilised restricted rebut only. In the current paper, we make the case for unrestricted rebut, and provide a formalism (called ASPIC−) that implements preferences between the defeasible rules, in the context of unrestricted rebut while still satisfying the rationality postulates of Caminada & Amgoud
Maximization of energy saving and minimization of insulation cost in a tropical hospital: A case study in Malaysia

-Equatorial region’s climate urges people to use more air conditioners for making cool and dry weather. High consumption of energy by air conditions is the main barrier for reaching energy efficiency in these countries. In any building, most thermal transaction is between external walls and roof of the building. Of course, selection of insulation material and determination of its optimum thickness is one of the prime solutions in energy efficiency in retrofitting projects. The aim of this study is to analyse the energy performance of a hospital in equatorial regions which is working 24 hours per day and 7 days a week and 365 days a year. In this study, for calculating energy consumption, the proposed building was modeled in IESVE software and energy consumption for different insulation material and variety of their thickness was simulated. To find the optimum thickness and material, net saving cost over different lifetime periods was calculated. Polystyrene and mineral wool are two kinds of common and available insulations that were selected as the material options. According to the results, mineral wool is a better material than polystyrene for external walls insulation and also it is found that the optimum thicknesses of mineral wool over 5, 10 and 20 year life times are 4 cm, 8 cm and 10 cm respectively. It is hoped that the result of this research be extended to other hospitals and service buildings in tropical area.
The Nautilus Speaker Characterization Corpus: Speech Recordings and Labels of Speaker Characteristics and Voice Descriptions

The Nautilus Speaker Characterization corpus is presented. It comprises conversational microphone speech recordings from 300 German speakers (126 males and 174 females) made in 2016/2017 in the acoustically-isolated room Nautilus of the Quality and Usability Lab of the Technische Universit¨at Berlin, Germany. Four scripted and four semi-spontaneous dialogs were elicited from the speakers, simulating telephone call inquiries. Additionally, other spontaneous neutral and emotional speech utterances and questions were produced. Interactions between speakers and their interlocutor (who also conducted the recording session) are provided in separate mono ﬁles, accompanied by timestamps and tags that deﬁne the speaker’s turns. One of the recorded semi-spontanous dialogs has been labeled by external assessors on 34 interpersonal speaker characteristics for each speaker, employing continous sliders. Additionally, 20 selected speakers have been labeled on 34 na¨ıve voice descriptions. The corpus labels permit to investigate the speech features that contribute to human perceptions and automatic recognition of speaker social characteristics and interpersonal traits.
How Did the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Impact Deep-Sea Ecosystems?

USAGE Permission is granted to copy this article for use in teaching and research. Republication, systematic reproduction, or collective redistribution of any portion of this article by photocopy machine, reposting, or other means is permitted only with the approval of The Oceanography Society. Send all correspondence to: info@tos.org or The Oceanography Society, PO Box 1931, Rockville, MD 20849-1931, USA. Oceanography THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE OF THE OCEANOGRAPHY SOCIETY
Correlations of total cholesterol content of erythrocyte membranes with plasma cholesterol efflux capacity

The study aimed to detect the total cholesterol Content of Erythrocyte Membranes (CEM) and plasma Cholesterol Efflux Capacity (CEC), and to analyse its correlations with Acute Coronary Syndrome (ACS), in attempt to explore the possible causes of increasing CEM in patients. One hundred and fortyseven patients with Coronary Heart Disease (CHD) were enrolled, while 53 subjects with normal coronary arteriography served as the control group. CEM, CEC, and conventional blood lipid parameters were detected. CEM in the CHD group (138.63 ± 34.92 μg/mg) was significantly higher than the control group (121.29 ± 24.04 μg/mg) (P<0.001). Further analysis revealed that CEM in ACS patients was significantly higher than that in the SAP (Stable Angina Pectoris) group (P<0.001). CEC in the CHD group (1.53 ± 0.40) was significantly lower than the control group (1.67 ± 0.47) (P=0.029). CEC and CEM showed a significant negative correlation (r=-0.257, P<0.001), suggesting that the reduction of CEC might result in an increase in CEM in ACS patients.
Personalization of information retrieval through user profiling

As the amount of data stored on electronic media increases, it becomes imperative to build information search and retrieval systems that provide user access to the right information quickly. When the search and retrieval process is based purely on key words that are devoid of context, it may result in missing potentially important sources or could result in finding too many unrelated sources. This article presents the NARAD distributed agent architecture that collaborates with users to identify their contextual framework for their information requirements. The architecture allows for individual agents to collaborate with each other to assist other agents based on profiles of users with knowledge of the topic in question. This paper describes the overall approach, the architecture, and results of the evaluation.
Qualitative Research on Awareness of Child Sexual Abuse in Parents of Pupils

Objective To understand the awareness of child sexual abuse(CSA) in parents of elementary school students,and to provide reference for CSA prevention program.Methods By using in-depth interview,20 parents of pupils in Jingzhou and Fuxin were interviewed.Results It was found that 18 interviewees had heard of CSA.Fifty percentage interviewees regarded CSA as physical contact CSA,such as rape and touching child's body.All of them believed that the abused experience would have serious effects on mental development of victims.Forty percentage parents had never talked or discussed about the topic of CSA prevention with their children.Most parents thought that the main strategy of CSA prevention should be conducted through school education,which could help students learn CSA prevention knowledge and skills.Conclusion Level of parents' CSA awareness need to be improved.It is essential to strengthen CSA prevention education in community and schools.
An extensive review of nonisolated DC-DC boost-based converters

High voltage step-up is necessary in several applications, especially considering that dc-ac converters must be supplied by high dc voltages. The conventional boost converter is the most popular topology for this purpose, although the conversion efficiency is limited at high duty cycle values. In order to overcome such limitation and improve the conversion ratio, many converter topologies have been proposed so far. Within this context, this work intends to review some of the most important works regarding boost-based dc-dc converters. Some structures are covered and classified basically as converters with and without wide conversion ratio. Some of the main advantages and drawbacks regarding the existing approaches are also discussed. Finally, a proper comparison is established among the most significant converters regarding the voltage stress across the semiconductor elements, number of components, and static gain.
Minimising model ﬁtting objectives that contain spurious local minima by bootstrap restarting

S UMMARY. Objective functions that arise when ﬁtting non-linear models often contain local minima that are of little signiﬁcance except for their propensity to trap minimisation al-gorithms. The standard methods for attempting to deal with this problem treat the objective function as ﬁxed and employ stochastic minimisation approaches, in the hope of randomly jumping out of local minima. This note suggests a simple trick for performing such minimisations which can be employed in conjunction with most conventional non-stochastic ﬁtting methods. The trick is to stochastically perturb the objective function, by bootstrapping the data to be ﬁt. Each bootstrap objective shares the large scale structure of the original objective, but has diﬀerent small scale structure. Minimisations of bootstrap objective functions are alternated with minimisations of the original objective function starting from the parameter values with which minimisation of the previous bootstrap objective terminated. An example is presented, ﬁtting a non-linear population dynamic model to population dynamic data and including a comparison of the suggested method with simulated annealing. Convergence diagnostics are discussed.
The principle of antagonism ensures protein targeting specificity at the endoplasmic reticulum

Sorting out cell sorting The sorting of proteins into appropriate compartments is vital for proper cell function. After its discovery 20 years ago, various potential roles for nascent chain-associated complex (NAC) in the specificity of intracellular protein sorting have been proposed. Until now, no clear phenotypes have been discovered. Gamerdinger et al. explored the role of NAC in protein translocation in Caenorhabditis elegans (see the Perspective by Kramer et al.). They found that NAC prevents the importation of incorrect cargo, such as mitochondrial proteins, into the endoplasmic reticulum. Science, this issue p. 201; see also p. 182 The ribosome-binding complex NAC helps membrane and secretory proteins find their correct home in Caenorhabditis elegans. [Also see Perspective by Kramer et al.] The sorting of proteins to the appropriate compartment is one of the most fundamental cellular processes. We found that in the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans, correct cotranslational endoplasmic reticulum (ER) transport required the suppressor activity of the nascent polypeptide-associated complex (NAC). NAC did not affect the accurate targeting of ribosomes to ER translocons mediated by the signal recognition particle (SRP) pathway but inhibited additional unspecific contacts between ribosomes and translocons by blocking their autonomous binding affinity. NAC depletion shortened the life span of Caenorhabditis elegans, caused global mistargeting of translating ribosomes to the ER, and provoked incorrect import of mitochondrial proteins into the ER lumen, resulting in a strong impairment of protein homeostasis in both compartments. Thus, the antagonistic targeting activity of NAC is important in vivo to preserve the robustness and specificity of cellular protein-sorting routes.
Phenological sensitivity to climate change is higher in resident than in migrant bird populations among European cavity breeders

Many organisms adjust their reproductive phenology in response to climate change, but phenological sensitivity to temperature may vary between species. For example, resident and migratory birds have vastly different annual cycles, which can cause differential temperature sensitivity at the breeding grounds, and may affect competitive dynamics. Currently, however, adjustment to climate change in resident and migratory birds have been studied separately or at relatively small geographical scales with varying time series durations and methodologies. Here, we studied differential effects of temperature on resident and migratory birds using the mean egg laying initiation dates from 10 European nest box schemes between 1991 and 2015 that had data on at least one resident tit species and at least one migratory flycatcher species. We found that both tits and flycatchers advanced laying in response to spring warming, but resident tit populations advanced more strongly in relation to temperature increases than migratory flycatchers. These different temperature responses have already led to a divergence in laying dates between tits and flycatchers of on average 0.94 days per decade over the current study period. Interestingly, this divergence was stronger at lower latitudes where the interval between tit and flycatcher phenology is smaller and winter conditions can be considered more favorable for resident birds. This could indicate that phenological adjustment to climate change by flycatchers is increasingly hampered by competition with resident species. Indeed, we found that tit laying date had an additional effect on flycatcher laying date after controlling for temperature, and this effect was strongest in areas with the shortest interval between both species groups. Combined, our results suggest that the differential effect of climate change on species groups with overlapping breeding ecology affects the phenological interval between them, potentially affecting interspecific interactions.
Solving the Dual Problems of Dynamic Programs via Regression

In recent years, information relaxation and duality in dynamic programs have been studied extensively, and the resulted primal-dual approach has become a powerful procedure in solving dynamic programs by providing lower-upper bounds on the optimal value function. Theoretically, with the so-called value-based optimal dual penalty, the optimal value function could be recovered exactly via strong duality. However, in practice, obtaining tight dual bounds usually requires good approximations of the optimal dual penalty, which could be time consuming if analytical computation is not possible and nested simulation has to be used to estimate the conditional expectations inside the dual penalty. In this paper, we will develop a framework of a regression approach to approximating the optimal dual penalty in a nonnested manner, by exploring the structure of the function space consisting of all feasible dual penalties. The resulted approximations maintain to be feasible dual penalties, and thus yielding valid dual bounds on the optimal value function. We show that the proposed framework is computationally efficient, and the resulted dual penalties lead to numerically tractable dual problems. Finally, we apply the framework to a high-dimensional dynamic trading problem to demonstrate its effectiveness in solving the dual problems of complex dynamic programs.
Processing adjunct control-Rapid use of structural information in reference resolution

Anaphora resolution requires integration of pragmatic, syntactic, and conceptual sources of information [1, 2, 4, 5, 9]. We ask whether it matters to the timing of reference resolution if the surface signal to anaphora is an audible pronoun, like “he” in (a), or a non-finite participial verb, like “eating” in (b). These forms of anaphora differ in two ways. First, only in (a) is the signal to anaphora (‘he’) dedicated to reference to an individual. Second, while in (a) the pronoun in principle allows any salient male to be the eater, in (b) the sentence itself requires that Mickey is the eater, since “eating” is the predicate of a non-finite clause, which generally has its subject role filled anaphorically by the next highest subject. Because of these differences, one might expect the timing of the resolution of the anaphora in (b), often labeled “control” [3], to differ from the resolution of a pronoun [8]. We show in two visual-world eyetracking experiments that listeners are able to use structural information to rapidly resolve the anaphora in (b).
Optimality of binning for distributed hypothesis testing

We study a distributed hypothesis testing problem in which data is compressed distributively and the detector seeks to decide between two possible distributions for the data. The aim is to characterize all achievable encoding rates and exponents of the type 2 error probability when the type 1 error probability is at most a fixed value. For related problems in distributed source coding, schemes based on random binning are useful and often optimal. For distributed hypothesis testing, however, the use of binning is hindered by the fact that the overall error probability may be dominated by errors in binning process. We show that despite this complication, binning is optimal for a class of problems in which the goal is to “test against conditional independence. ” We also use this optimality result to give an outer bound for a more general class of instances of the problem.