Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
DIGESTIVE AND FEEDING BEHAVIOR DIFFERENCES BETWEEN LAPPET-FACED VULTURES (TORGOS TRACHELIOTOS) AND GRIFFON VULTURES (GYPS FULVUS) EX SITU

Abstract: Appropriate diets for ex situ wildlife are essential for animal health and welfare and yet ex situ facilities are often constrained by feed ingredient availability when attempting to replicate natural diets. In obligate carnivores such as vultures, digestive strategies are likely to have evolved alongside feeding behaviors, which may differ between even sympatric species. To begin to understand the digestive strategies of two Old World vulture species (lappet-faced vulture Torgos tracheliotos, n = 3, and griffon vulture Gyps fulvus, n = 4) of similar body size but divergent feeding habits, their feeding and digestion strategies on a diet of whole rats were compared. The food intake, color of excreta, excreta consistency, and carbon and nitrogen excretion were measured. Mean retention time of the digesta was analyzed using titanium dioxide as an inert marker in a diet of chicken carcass. Lappet-faced vultures consumed significantly greater quantities of food than griffon vultures and were less selective. Lappet-faced vultures primarily produced brown excreta while griffon vultures primarily produced green excreta, with much higher carbon and nitrogen concentrations. The consistency of excreta and the mean retention time did not differ between the species but may have been too variable to detect differences. A strong positive correlation was found between food intake per metabolic weight and the proportion of brown excreta, and both were negatively correlated with green excreta, as well as excreta concentrations of nitrogen and carbon. These findings align with their reported feeding ecology, with lappet-faced vultures showing adaptations to less-digestible carcass material compared with griffon vultures. Despite their similar size and overlapping natural habitat, these results suggest a need for differentiated feed provisioning for these species when under human care.
RECTAL PROLAPSE IN THE SULAWESI CRESTED BLACK MACAQUE (MACACA NIGRA): MORBIDITY, MORTALITY, AND RISK FACTORS

Abstract: Empirical data suggest that rectal prolapse (RP) is common in captive Sulawesi crested black macaques (Macaca nigra) in Europe, resulting in the euthanasia of animals that experience repeat occurrences. However, the prevalence, etiology, and risk factors of RP remain unidentified. The aims of this retrospective study were to assess the morbidity and mortality of RP, to provide an overview of management practices, and to identify risk factors for RP in this species. A questionnaire was sent to all European Ex situ Programme institutions that housed M. nigra between 01 January 2014 and 31 December 2020. Zoological Information Management System medical records and the studbook were used to obtain additional information. The questionnaire had a response rate of 65%, accounting for 204 animals. Of these animals, 25 (12.3%) suffered from at least one RP event during the study period and recurrence was noted in 72%. The majority of prolapses reverted naturally, but 28% of afflicted animals were euthanized for this ailment. Institutions with M. nigra with high frequencies of diarrhea (P= 0.035), those that provided diets of ≥90% vegetables and high-fiber pellet (P < 0.001), and those with more male than female M. nigra (P < 0.001) had increased odds of RP. Institutions that provided fruits daily (P < 0.002) had reduced odds of having RP cases. Although correlation of RP with diet was identified, confounding cannot be excluded, and a detailed dietary analysis needs to take place before altering feeding practices. Acute stressors and detection of protozoa in fecal samples were common findings before an RP event. Demographic analysis indicated that aged females, young males, and subordinate individuals were most affected by this condition. Where tested during an RP intervention, animals had low serum levels of vitamin D. Pedigree analysis hinted at genetic predisposition in this species and requires further investigation.
Bidirectional Transformer GAN for Long-term Human Motion Prediction

The mainstream motion prediction methods usually focus on short-term prediction, and their predicted long-term motions often fall into an average pose, i.e., the freezing forecasting problem [27]. To mitigate this problem, we propose a novel Bidirectional Transformer-based Generative Adversarial Network (BiTGAN) for long-term human motion prediction. The bidirectional setup leads to consistent and smooth generation in both forward and backward directions. Besides, to make full use of the history motions, we split them into two parts. The first part is fed to the Transformer encoder in our BiTGAN while the second part is used as the decoder input. This strategy can alleviate the exposure problem [37]. Additionally, to better maintain both the local (i.e., frame-level pose) and global (i.e., video-level semantic) similarities between the predicted motion sequence and the real one, the soft dynamic time warping (Soft-DTW) loss is introduced into the generator. Finally, we utilize a dual-discriminator to distinguish the predicted sequence at both frame and sequence levels. Extensive experiments on the public Human3.6M dataset demonstrate that our proposed BiTGAN achieves state-of-the-art performance on long-term (4s) human motion prediction, and reduces the average error of all actions by 4%.
Impedance technique for measuring dielectrophoretic collection of microbiological particles

Measurement of the impedance change resulting from the collection of microbiological particles at coplanar electrodes is shown to be an effective and potentially quantitative method of detecting dielectrophoresis. Strong correlations between the frequency-dependent dielectrophoretic collection characteristics measured by impedance change and those observed using an established counting method based on image analysis have been obtained for Escherichia coli. In addition it is shown that the new electrical method can be used to sense dielectrophoretic collection of 19 nm diameter latex beads, particles too small to be resolved by conventional optical detection systems.
LSR: Energy-Efficient Multi-Modulation Communication for Inhomogeneous Wireless IoT Networks

In many real-world wireless IoT networks, the application dictates the location of the nodes and therefore the link characteristics are inhomogeneous. Furthermore, nodes may in many scenarios only communicate with the Internet-attached gateway via multiple hops. If an energy-efficient short-range modulation scheme is used, nodes that are reachable only via high-path-loss links cannot communicate. Using a more energy-demanding long-range modulation allows connecting more nodes but would be inefficient for nodes that are easily reachable via low-path-loss links. Combining multiple modulations is challenging, as low-power radios usually only support the use of a single modulation at a time. In this article, we present the Long-Short-Range (LSR) protocol which supports low-power multi-hop communication using multiple modulations and is suited for networks with inhomogeneous link characteristics. To reduce the inherent redundancy of long-range modulations, we present a method to determine the connectivity graph of the network during regular data communication without adding significant overhead. In simulations, we show that LSR allows for reducing power consumption significantly for many scenarios when compared to a state-of-the-art multi-hop communication protocol using a single long-range modulation. We demonstrate the applicability of LSR with an implementation on real hardware and a testbed with long-range links.
Study of a cumulative gas phenomenon in plasma focus discharge

A cumulative phenomenon of nitrogen gas at a pressure of 3.3 torr in a 1.2 kJ coaxial plasma focus discharge device was investigated experimentally. Variations of nitrogen gas density in the axial phase along the inter-electrode region were estimated experimentally from the plasma current sheath (PCS) dynamics in terms of its velocity, acceleration as well as axial magnetic force data. An inclination angle of PCS with the axial distance was estimated. Investigations of the ratios of radial and axial magnetic force as well as the magnetic pressures coupled to PCS were studied. The variation of the trapping fraction η with the axial distance was computed theoretically based on a snow-plow model and was compared with experimental results.
Ionization Fractions of Slow Ions in a Plasma with Kappa Distributions for the Electron Velocity

The interpretation of a wide variety of astrophysical observations requires an understanding of how ionization fractions depend on plasma parameters. Observations have indicated that electron velocity distributions in space plasmas generally have enhanced high-energy tails. Instead of a Maxwellian distribution, they are better described by a kappa distribution, characterized by the kinetic temperature, T, and a parameter, κ, that quantifies the deviation from a Maxwellian. We calculate and tabulate the equilibrium ionization fractions of N, O, Ne, Mg, S, Si, Ar, Ca, Fe, and Ni, based on a balance of ionization and recombination processes, for 104 K ≤ T ≤ 108 K (or up to 109 K for Fe and Ni) and for various Maxwellian and kappa distributions. For a Maxwellian distribution of electrons, the mean charge as a function of temperature is characterized by plateaux corresponding to closed-shell charge states, with transitions over narrow ranges of log T. However, for kappa distributions, which are more realistic models of the observed electron distributions in coronal or space plasmas, those transitions are substantially broader. We find that a lower κ value (more suprathermal electrons) frequently leads to a higher mean charge, especially for low temperatures, but can also lead to a lower mean charge in certain temperature ranges; these effects are associated with the sharp energy thresholds and resonances of ionization and dielectronic recombination cross sections, respectively. The results provide information for various applications in which observed ionization fractions are used as diagnostics of astrophysical plasmas.
Enhanced extreme wave statistics of irregular waves due to accelerating following current over a submerged bar

Abstract We present experimental results of irregular long-crested waves propagating over a submerged trapezoidal bar with the presence of a background current in a wave flume. We investigate the non-equilibrium phenomenon (NEP) induced by significant changes of water depth and mean horizontal flow velocity as wave trains pass over the bar. Using skewness and kurtosis as proxies, we show evidence that an accelerating following current could increase the sea-state non-Gaussianity and enhance both the magnitude and spatial extent of the NEP. We also find that below a ‘saturation relative water depth’ $k_p h_2 \approx 0.5$ ($k_p$ being the peak wavenumber in the shallow area of depth $h_2$), although the NEP manifests, the decrease of the relative water depth does not further enhance the maximum skewness and kurtosis over the bar crest. This work highlights the nonlinear physics according to which a following current could provoke higher freak wave risk in coastal areas where modulation instability plays an insignificant role.
Vibration induced by active nematics

Abstract Active elements in active nematics can impose forces on immersed bodies and move them accordingly. We numerically investigate the vibrational motion of a cantilever beam placed in active nematics. The continuous energy transfer from vortices to the beam results in beam oscillation, whose direction and amplitude depend on the vortex strength, size and position. Referring to the kinetic-energy spectrum, we indicate that both the large- and small-scale vortices are the primary mechanism for the energy transfer between the fluid and beam, leading to the beam oscillatory motion, with the contribution from the large-scale vortices being higher. We investigate the effect of fluid properties such as activity, viscosity and elastic constant on the oscillation frequency. We show that the intensification of the activity increases peak frequency, and there is a linear correlation between the peak frequency and activity. We further demonstrate the reciprocal relationship between viscosity and peak frequency. Subsequently, we relate the increase and decrease in the peak frequency to the energy injection/dissipation by activity/viscosity. Moreover, we reveal the negligibly small dependency of beam peak frequency on the elastic constant and discuss free energy's role in accounting for this behaviour. The findings clearly demonstrate that active fluids can impose an oscillatory motion on flexible bodies, which might be used as a novel method for measuring the critical properties of active nematics.
The Electronic Petitions of the Russian Social Initiative Portal (2013–2017): What the Trend in Social Priorities Says

5 As they insert themselves into the realm of politics, the new information and communications technologies [ICT] are not only qualitatively altering old concepts, attitudes, and stereotypes in the area of political communications but are also altering many forms of behavior and models of relationships between political institutions and individuals. Electronic democracy 10 is any democratic political system in which ICT are used to perform the most important functions of the democratic process as well as to explore the public’s interests and adopt decisions. Electronic democracy is associated with the use of ICT to support democratic processes, adopt political decisions, to broadly involve citizens in these processes, and to strengthen 15 representative democracy. The major mechanisms through which ICT can support electronic democracy are access to the Internet through various channels (home internet and/or access to the web in public places), mobile phones, and interactive (formerly cable, now digital) television. The concept of electro20 nic/digital democracy rethinks the structure of communications between “the people and the government”; it is considered not merely a new stage in the development of democratic institutions that is capable of giving citizens the ability to interact conveniently with government bodies but also a way to reframe the issue of democracy. 25 According to the Recommendations of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe adopted in February 2009, electronic democracy encompasses a variety of concepts: e-parliament, e-legislation, e-justice, e-mediation, e-initiative, e-elections, e-referendum, e-voting, e-consultation, e-petitioning, e-campaigning, e-polling, and e-surveying.
Off-Policy Policy Gradient with Stationary Distribution Correction

We study the problem of off-policy policy optimization in Markov decision processes, and develop a novel off-policy policy gradient method. Prior off-policy policy gradient approaches have generally ignored the mismatch between the distribution of states visited under the behavior policy used to collect data, and what would be the distribution of states under the learned policy. Here we build on recent progress for estimating the ratio of the state distributions under behavior and evaluation policies for policy evaluation, and present an off-policy policy gradient optimization technique that can account for this mismatch in distributions. We present an illustrative example of why this is important and a theoretical convergence guarantee for our approach. Empirically, we compare our method in simulations to several strong baselines which do not correct for this mismatch, significantly improving in the quality of the policy discovered.
Spatial distribution and dynamics of the galactic globular cluster system

Des ensembles de donnees complets de la litterature sont utilises pour explorer la repartition spatiale et la distribution des vitesses de la population galactique des amas globulaires. La distribution globale apparait circulairement symetrique autour du Centre Galactique, mais les amas riches en metaux sont aplatis en direction du plan galactique. Le meilleur ajustement de la vitesse de rotation decroit aux rayons eleves, mais les donnees sont compatibles avec une rotation constante ou une decroissance keplerienne. Les amas riches en metaux montrent une legere tendance vers une rotation plus rapide et possedent une dispersion des vitesses inferieure a la population moyenne. L'ellipsoide des vitesses apparait isotrope dans le rayon solaire mais cet effet pourrait etre du a des erreurs de distances. Des modeles de la dispersion des vitesses conduisent a des vitesses circulaires galactiques d'environ 180 a 220 kms −1 au rayon solaire
Session-based Recommendation with Dual Graph Networks

Session-based recommendation task aims at predicting the next item an anonymous user might click. Recently, graph neural networks have gained a lot of attention in this task. Existing models either construct a directed graph or a hypergraph and learn item embedding using some form of graph neural networks. We argue that constructing both directed and undirected graphs for each session may outperform either method since for some sessions the sequence of interaction may be relevant while for others it may not be relevant. In this paper, we propose a novel Session-based Recommendation model with Dual Graph Networks (SR-DGN). SR-DGN constructs a directed and an undirected graph from each session and learns both sequential and non-sequential item representation using sequential and non-sequential graph neural networks models respectively. Using shared learnable parameters, SR-DGN learns global and local user preferences for each network and uses the network with the best scores for recommendation. Experiments conducted on three real-world datasets showed its superiority over state-of-the-art models.
Summary of the Sierra Rotors Project wave and rotor events

This study summarizes wave and rotor events observed during the Sierra Rotors Project (SRP). This summary is on the basis of numerical model simulations of SRP events. The events are classified according to the lee‐side maxima of vertical and horizontal velocities. Generally, the above classification agrees with the classification on the basis of the obstacle‐perpendicular ridge‐top winds. The updraft maxima are found to preferentially lie within the leading‐edge updraft of a lee wave in the immediate lee and near the crest height of the Sierra Nevada. Simulated waves and lower turbulence zones are illustrated with the wave and rotor structures in two of the strongest SRP events. Copyright © 2008 Royal Meteorological Society
Generalized confidence intervals on the variance component in mixed linear models with two variance components

The paper deals with construction of confidence intervals for the variance component in the family of distributions using generalized p-values. Unfortunately, when W has more than two different eigen values, the nonuniqueness of the appropriate test variable occurs. This was illustrated by Zhou and Mathew [Zhou, L. and Mathew, T. , 1994, Some tests for variance components using generalized p-values. Technometrics, 36, 394–402. ] on an example of a generalized test variable dependent on positive constants c i and as Zhou and Mathew mentioned, it is not clear which test variable is preferred in this situation. In the paper, we make a choice of c i inspired by some known test statistics used for testing the nullity of . Also another test variable, which cannot be derived from Zhou’s and Mathew’s, is stated and all mentioned test variables are compared.
Preparation of Freestanding GaN Wafers by Hydride Vapor Phase Epitaxy with Void-Assisted Separation

We have developed a novel technique for preparing large-scale freestanding GaN wafers. Hydride vapor phase epitaxy (HVPE) growth of thick GaN layer was performed on a GaN template with a thin TiN film on the top. After the cooling process of the HVPE growth, the thick GaN layer was easily separated from the template by the assistance of many voids generated around the TiN film. As a result, a freestanding GaN wafer was obtained. The wafer obtained had a diameter of 45 mm, and a mirror-like surface. The-full-width-at-half-maximum (FWHM) of (0002) and (1010) peaks in the X-ray rocking curve profile were 60 and 92 arcsec, respectively. The dislocation density was evaluated at 5×106 cm-3 by etch pit density measurement.
Developing a noise-aware AI system for change risk assessment with minimal human intervention

Introducing changes to a system in production may sometimes result in failures, and eventual revenue loss, for any industry. Therefore, it is important to monitor the “risk” that each such change request may present. Change risk assessment is a sub-field in operations management that deals with this problem in a systematic manner. However, a manual or even a human-centered AI system may find it challenging to meet the scaling demands for a big industry. Accordingly, an automated system for change risk assessment is highly desired. There are a few commercial solutions available to address this problem but those solutions lack the ability to deal with highly noisy data, which is quite a possibility for such systems. There are literature which proposed methods to integrate the feedback of domain experts into the training process of a machine learning model to deal with noisy data. Even though some of these methods produced decent risk prediction accuracy of the model but such an arrangement to collect feedback from the domain experts continuously has practical challenges due to the limitation in bandwidth and availability of the domain experts at times. Therefore, as part of this work, we explore a way to take the transition from a human-centered AI system to a near-autonomous AI system, which minimizes the need of intervention of domain experts without compromising with the prediction accuracy of the model. Initial experiments with the proposed AI system exhibit 10% improvement in risk prediction accuracy in comparison with the baseline which was trained by integrating the feedback of domain experts in the training process.
Experimental Investigation of the Defrosting Process on Domestic Refrigerator Finned Tube Evaporators

Frost formation is an important problem for household refrigerator and air conditioning equipment manufacturers. When frost accumulates on the evaporator surface, it acts as a thermal insulator and reduces heat flow. Therefore, frost negatively affects evaporator performance. The purpose of this study is to decrease energy consumption and increase the efficiency of the defrosting process. In the first part of the experiment, frost formation on a no-frost refrigerator evaporator at real operating conditions was investigated. The ambient temperature was maintained at a constant 23°C. It was observed that when the evaporation temperature reaches –35°C, the frost formation on the evaporator exhibits a rather dense structure that is unlike the needle-type structure observed at higher temperatures. In the second part of the experiment, the defrosting process was observed with an endoscopic camera, and the initial melting points were investigated. The experiment revealed that although the heater density is higher on the lower rows, the frost on the higher rows of the evaporator melts faster. On the theoretical side, we prepared an analytical model that calculates the melting time of the frost on the fin. The experimental and theoretical results are within 5%.