Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dingoes affect activity of feral cats, but do not exclude them from the habitat of an endangered macropod

Abstract Context. The loss of large predators has been linked with the rise of smaller predators globally, with negative impacts on prey species (mesopredator release). Recent studies suggest that the dingo, Australia’s top terrestrial predator, inhibits predation on native mammals by the invasive red fox, and therefore reduces mammal extinctions. Feral cats also have negative effects on native mammals, but evidence that dingoes suppress cats remains equivocal. Aims. We sought to examine whether dingoes might spatially or temporally suppress the activity of feral cats at a site containing the sole wild population of an endangered macropod subject to feral cat predation (the bridled nailtail wallaby). Methods. We used camera traps to compare coarse and fine-scale spatial associations and overlaps in activity times of mammals between August 2009 and August 2010. Key results. Dingoes and cats used the same areas, but there was evidence of higher segregation of activity times during wet months. Potential prey showed no spatial avoidance of dingoes. Peak activity times of dingoes and their major prey (the black-striped wallaby) were segregated during the wetter time of year (December to March). We did not find evidence that cats were spatially excluded from areas of high prey activity by dingoes, but there was low overlap in activity times between cats and bridled nailtail wallabies. Conclusions. These findings support the contention that fear of dingoes can sometimes affect the timing of activity of feral cats. However, cats showed little spatial avoidance of dingoes at a coarse scale. Implications. Control of dingoes should not be abandoned at the site, because the potential moderate benefits of reduced cat activity for this endangered and geographically restricted wallaby may not outweigh the detrimental effects of dingo predation.
A Note on Baccaurea courtallensis (Muell.) Arg., (Moottipotti) A Wild Edible Fruit of Western Ghats

Baccaurea courtallensis (Muell.) Arg. known as Moottippotti in Kerala occurs in evergreen and semi-evergreen forests at lower elevations in Western Ghats and bears edible fruits. Exploration and collection of the same in few pockets of Western Ghats and preliminary observation on populations and their fruit characters in situ indicated existence of good amount of genetic heterogeneity within the population. A preliminary attempt to establish the species outside its niche was partially successful but indicated that it may be amenable to conservation, domestication and development as a multi-purpose tree in tropics.
Resistência anti-helmíntica em rebanhos caprinos nos biomas Caatinga e Mata Atlântica¹

The use of anthelmintic drugs for long periods as the main measure control of gastrointestinal nematodes (GINs) has led to the inefficacy of levamisole, benzimidazoles and macrocyclic lactones. This study describes the in vivo anthelmintic activity against natural trichostrongyle nematodes populations in goats. We selected 18 herds from the Caatinga (n=12) and Mata Atlântica (n=6) biomes, Bahia State, Brazil, raised in communal pastures in semiarid region. Groups of 8 to 10 goats were treated with albendazole (ABZ), ivermectin (IVM), levamisole (LEV), moxidectin (MOX), and closantel (CLOS). The results of the Fecal Egg Count Reduction Test indicated simultaneous resistance of Haemonchus sp. and Trichostrongylus spp. genera against albendazole (ABZ), ivermectin (IVM), levamisole (LEV), moxidectin (MOX), and closantel (CLOS). The efficacy percentages ranged from 0 to 92%, 0 to 75%, 0 to 91%, 69 to 97%, and 0 to 85% for ABZ, IVM, LEV, MXD and CLOS respectively in the Caatinga bioma, and 0 to 59% for ABZ and 9 to 59% for IVM in the Mata Atlântica biome. Most herds showed efficacy lower than 95% for anthelmintics, with the exception of one herd in which the efficacy for MOX was 97%. The results indicated the presence of GINs resistant to main anthelmintics classes in goat herds in these biomes.
Evaluation of Nutritional Equivalency of Corn Grain from DAS-Ø15Ø7-1 (Herculex* I) in the Diets of Laying Hens

Grain from transgenic corn line TC1507 (Herculex* I) from Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc. and Dow AgroSciences LLC, which expresses the CrylF protein from Bacillus thuringiensis to provide protection from lepidopteran pests of corn, was compared with its isoline equivalent and 2 conventional corn strains in a 16-wk laying hen feeding trial. Egg production and production efficiency of hens fed the diet formulated with transgenic grain TC1507 were similar to those of hens fed diets formulated with isoline or nontransgenic conventional corns. Hens fed TC1507 had similar egg qualities as those fed nontransgenic grain diets. Diet × phase interactions were noted for Haugh unit and Roche color fan score. Hens fed conventional corn 2 had a poorer Haugh unit score compared with hens fed the other 3 diets. Conventional corn 1 had greater levels of xanthophylls compared with the other corn treatments, resulting in increased Roche color fan score for eggs produced by hens fed this diet. Overall, hens fed the transgenic Herculex* I corn grain containing the Cry 1F protein performed as well as hens fed the isoline equivalent of Herculex* I and hens fed the conventional corn grains.
Predictors of Sexual Decision-Making and Behavior among HBCU Students: Implications for STI/HIV Prevention and Intervention

abstract:Due to their enhanced risk for STIs, including HIV, the need for research to target young Black college students is substantial and there is a significant contribution to be made in understanding factors related to risk in an effort to design prevention interventions are specific to this group. The study included 351 Black students (M=20.42, SD=1.71, range 18–24 years) attending a Historically Black College/University (HBCU). Results reveal alcohol use and condom attitudes were the most significant predictors of sexual decision-making and behavior. The findings, along with implications, signal the need for more research with this population in order to increase prevention efforts.
“Knowing That You’re Pleasing the Other Person Makes It Even Better”: Perceived Pleasure and Motives for Condom Use among Heterosexual Black College Men in the South

abstract:Sexual health requires a holistic approach which includes sexual pleasure. Black men are often stereotyped as hypersexual with a disease research focus. This sex-positive study examined definitions of pleasure and condom use motives of heterosexual Black college men in the South. We conducted three focus groups at three universities. Four themes emerged: dimensions of pleasure, mutual pleasure, pleasure and relationship status, and condom use motives. Participants highlighted intimacy aiding in physical pleasure and emphasized using condoms even with decreased pleasure. More research is needed around young Black men and pleasure to shift negative narratives associated with their sexuality.
Quality of Life of Immigrants in Canada

Abstract:Quality of life research is a key component of policymaking. Research on this topic can embrace two approaches––social or health-related perspectives. With a focus on the social aspect, this study uses cross-sectional data from the Canadian Community Health Survey to explore differences in the level of satisfaction and quality of life of immigrants and non-immigrants. To examine changes over time, recent immigrants are compared with earlier immigrants who are further compared with non-immigrants. Some subjective indicators are selected from the available data and an index of quality of life is computed using the methodology developed by the United Nations Development Program for measuring human development. Findings of the study show that among the three groups, earlier immigrants are least satisfied with life in general but most satisfied with their financial situation. The score on the quality of life index is lowest for earlier immigrants mainly due to deterioration in their health. Non-immigrants enjoy the best quality of life attributed particularly to their higher income and participation in leisure and social activities. Résumé:La recherche sur la qualité de vie est une composante clé de l'élaboration de politiques et s'effectue selon une perspective sociale ou axée sur la santé. Sous une optique sociale, cette étude utilise les données transversales de l'Enquête sur la santé dans les collectivités canadiennes pour explorer les écarts dans le niveau de satisfaction et de qualité de vie entre les immigrants et les non-immigrants. Afin d'examiner l'évolution au fil du temps, les immigrants récents sont comparés aux immigrants antérieurs qui sont ensuite comparés aux non-immigrants. Des indicateurs subjectifs sont choisis parmi les données actuelles et l'indice de la qualité de vie est calculé à l'aide de la méthodologie formulée par le programme des Nations Unies pour mesurer le développement humain. Selon les constatations de l'étude, les immigrants antérieurs sont parmi les trois groupes les moins satisfaits de la vie en général, mais les plus satisfaits de leur situation financière. Les résultats selon l'indice de la qualité de vie sont les plus bas en grande partie à cause de la détérioration de leur santé. Les non-immigrants profitent de la meilleure qualité de vie notamment en raison de leur revenu plus élevé et de leur participation aux activités sociales et de loisir.
Optimizing the nutrition of captive Eurasian otters (Lutra lutra)

An adequate energy supply is essential for animal husbandry in captivity. For optimizing the keeping of the endangered Eurasian otter (Lutra lutra) we measured digestible energy (DE) intake of captive otters and determined the apparent digestibility (AD) of energy for various diets to facilitate diet calculations for keeping institutions. DE intake was measured in 14 otters over periods of several years using a diet consisting of fish, chicken, beef rumen and heart under ad libitum regimen. AD was determined in nine captive Eurasian otters with 8 diets using the marker chromium oxide. The otters were adapted to the appropriate diet for 5 days, followed by a feces collection period of another 5 days. Proximate analyses were performed on the diet and feces to determine AD of energy. The mean AD of energy of all diets was 81 %, differing between diets with a range of 68 % for chicken diet to 86 % for beef rumen. The DE intake was on average 721 kJ/ kg body mass (BM)/d. Seasonal differences occurred with lower intake rates in summer (691 kJ/kg BM/d) than in winter (750 kJ/kg BM/d). Females had a higher DE intake (738 kJ/kg BM /d) than males (698 kJ/kg BM/d). Energy intake in otters was high in comparison to other carnivores. AD of energy differed between diets and should be considered in the ration formulation for Lutra lutra in captivity.
SECREÇÃO DE HORMÔNIO DE CRESCIMENTO DE CAMUNDONGO POR QUERATINÓCITOS HUMANOS PRIMÁRIOS: PERSPECTIVAS PARA UM MODELO ANIMAL DE TERAPIA GÊNICA CUTÂNEA

Keratinocytes are a very attractive vehicle for ex wVo gene transfer and systemic delivery, since proteins secreted by these cells may reach the circulation via a mechanism which mimics the natural process. A n efficient retroviral vector (LXSN) encoding the mouse growth hormone gene (mGH) was used to transduce primary human keratinocytes. Organotypic raft cultures were prepared with these genetically modified keratinocytes and were grafted onto immunodeficient dwarf mice {lit/scid). Transduced keratinocytes presented a high and stable in vitro secretion level of up to 11 |ag mGH/10^cells/day. Conventional epidermal sheets made with these genetically modif ied keratinocytes, however, showed a drop in secretion rates of > 8 0 % simply due to detachment of the epithelium from its substratum. Substitution of conventional grafting methodologies with organotypic raft cultures completely overcame this problem. The stable long-term grafting of such cultures onto immunodeficient dwarf {lit/scid) mice could be fol lowed for more than 4 months, and a significant weight increase (P<0.05) over the control group was observed in the first 40 days. Circulating mGH levels revealed a peak of 21 ng/mL just 1h after grafting, but unfortunately these levels rapidly fell to baseline values ( 2 ng/mL). mGH-secret ing primary human keratinocytes presented the highest in vitro expression and peak circulatory levels reported to date for a form of GH with this type of cells. Together with data showing that excised implants can recover in culture a remarkable fraction of their original in vitro mGH secretion efficiency, the factors that might still hamper the success of this promising model of cutaneous gene therapy are discussed.
Composition chimique et test d’efficacité in vitro des huiles essentielles extraites de feuilles fraîches du basilic commun (Ocimum basilicum) et du basilic tropical (Ocimum gratissimum) sur Salmonella enterica sérotype Oakland et Salmonella enterica sérotype Legon

In the present study we have determined the chemi cal compositions and antimicrobial activities of es sential oils extracted from fresh leaves of Ocimum basilicum and Ocimum gratissimum against Salmonella enterica serotype Oakland et Salmonella enterica serotype Legon, two bacteria implicated in guinea f owl mortality in the North Benin breedings. Extracted by Hydrodistillation and analy sed by Gas Chroamtography (GC) and Gas Chromatography quadruple Mass Spectrometry (GC/MS), the major components are for Ocimum basilicum , estragole (31.3 %), linalol (24.0 %) eugenol (21.7 %) and for Ocimum gratissimum , thymol (43.4 %), para-cymene (12.3 %) and γ-terpinene (12.1 %). The Minimal Inhibitory Concentrations (MIC) and the Minimal Bactericide Concentrations (MBC) determined for these two essentials oils vary respe ctively from 8.10
Evolving Graphical Planner: Contextual Global Planning for Vision-and-Language Navigation

The ability to perform effective planning is crucial for building an instruction-following agent. When navigating through a new environment, an agent is challenged with (1) connecting the natural language instructions with its progressively growing knowledge of the world; and (2) performing long-range planning and decision making in the form of effective exploration and error correction. Current methods are still limited on both fronts despite extensive efforts. In this paper, we introduce the Evolving Graphical Planner (EGP), a model that performs global planning for navigation based on raw sensory input. The model dynamically constructs a graphical representation, generalizes the action space to allow for more flexible decision making, and performs efficient planning on a proxy graph representation. We evaluate our model on a challenging Vision-and-Language Navigation (VLN) task with photorealistic images and achieve superior performance compared to previous navigation architectures. For instance, we achieve a 53% success rate on the test split of the Room-to-Room navigation task through pure imitation learning, outperforming previous navigation architectures by up to 5%.
GloVeInit at SemEval-2020 Task 1: Using GloVe Vector Initialization for Unsupervised Lexical Semantic Change Detection

This paper presents a vector initialization approach for the SemEval2020 Task 1: Unsupervised Lexical Semantic Change Detection. Given two corpora belonging to different time periods and a set of target words, this task requires us to classify whether a word gained or lost a sense over time (subtask 1) and to rank them on the basis of the changes in their word senses (subtask 2). The proposed approach is based on using Vector Initialization method to align GloVe embeddings. The idea is to consecutively train GloVe embeddings for both corpora, while using the first model to initialize the second one. This paper is based on the hypothesis that GloVe embeddings are more suited for the Vector Initialization method than SGNS embeddings. It presents an intuitive reasoning behind this hypothesis, and also talks about the impact of various factors and hyperparameters on the performance of the proposed approach. Our model ranks 12th and 10th among 33 teams in the two subtasks. The implementation has been shared publicly.
Learning Local Complex Features using Randomized Neural Networks for Texture Analysis

Texture is a visual attribute largely used in many problems of image analysis. Currently, many methods that use learning techniques have been proposed for texture discrimination, achieving improved performance over previous handcrafted methods. In this paper, we present a new approach that combines a learning technique and the Complex Network (CN) theory for texture analysis. This method takes advantage of the representation capacity of CN to model a texture image as a directed network and uses the topological information of vertices to train a randomized neural network. This neural network has a single hidden layer and uses a fast learning algorithm, which is able to learn local CN patterns for texture characterization. Thus, we use the weighs of the trained neural network to compose a feature vector. These feature vectors are evaluated in a classification experiment in four widely used image databases. Experimental results show a high classification performance of the proposed method when compared to other methods, indicating that our approach can be used in many image analysis problems.
Control as Hybrid Inference

The field of reinforcement learning can be split into model-based and model-free methods. Here, we unify these approaches by casting model-free policy optimisation as amortised variational inference, and model-based planning as iterative variational inference, within a `control as hybrid inference' (CHI) framework. We present an implementation of CHI which naturally mediates the balance between iterative and amortised inference. Using a didactic experiment, we demonstrate that the proposed algorithm operates in a model-based manner at the onset of learning, before converging to a model-free algorithm once sufficient data have been collected. We verify the scalability of our algorithm on a continuous control benchmark, demonstrating that it outperforms strong model-free and model-based baselines. CHI thus provides a principled framework for harnessing the sample efficiency of model-based planning while retaining the asymptotic performance of model-free policy optimisation.
Train Your Data Processor: Distribution-Aware and Error-Compensation Coordinate Decoding for Human Pose Estimation

Recently, the leading performance of human pose estimation is dominated by heatmap based methods. While being a fundamental component of heatmap processing, heatmap decoding (i.e. transforming heatmaps to coordinates) receives only limited investigations, to our best knowledge. This work fills the gap by studying the heatmap decoding processing with a particular focus on the errors introduced throughout the prediction process. We found that the errors of heatmap based methods are surprisingly significant, which nevertheless was universally ignored before. In view of the discovered importance, we further reveal the intrinsic limitations of the previous widely used heatmap decoding methods and thereout propose a Distribution-Aware and Error-Compensation Coordinate Decoding (DAEC). Serving as a model-agnostic plug-in, DAEC learns its decoding strategy from training data and remarkably improves the performance of a variety of state-of-the-art human pose estimation models with negligible extra computation. Specifically, equipped with DAEC, the SimpleBaseline-ResNet152-256x192 and HRNet-W48-256x192 are significantly improved by 2.6 AP and 2.9 AP achieving 72.6 AP and 75.7 AP on COCO, respectively. Moreover, the HRNet-W32-256x256 and ResNet-152-256x256 frameworks enjoy even more dramatic promotions of 8.4% and 7.8% on MPII with PCKh0.1 metric. Extensive experiments performed on these two common benchmarks, demonstrates that DAEC exceeds its competitors by considerable margins, backing up the rationality and generality of our novel heatmap decoding idea. The project is available at this https URL.
Characterization of Pyrenophora Isolates Associated with Spot and Net Type Lesions on Barley in South Africa

Single-spored isolates of Pyrenophora associated with spot and net type net blotch of barley were compared using total DNA banding patterns, morphological and cultural characteristics, symptomatology and mating studies. Isolates of spot and net type net blotch were found to vary regarding conidium length and cultural growth rate. Mating studies among and between ascospore, spot and net type isolates proved unsuccessful under the conditions studied. Total DNA polymorphisms of the net, spot and ascospore isolates digested with the restriction enzymes HpaII and HaeIII showed that the isolates have similar banding patterns. Random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) showed that the banding patterns of the spot and net type isolates were again similar, but were distinct from outgroups such as P. semeniperda and P. tritici- repentis. The homology in DNA banding patterns of local isolates indicated that the difference in conidium length is insufficient to separate them as two species. It is concluded that spot and net type isolates occurring in South Africa belong to P. teres. Therefore, spot type lesions are caused by P. teres f.sp. maculata, and not by P. japonica as reported previously
ProtTrans: Towards Cracking the Language of Life’s Code Through Self-Supervised Deep Learning and High Performance Computing

Computational biology and bioinformatics provide vast data gold-mines from protein sequences, ideal for Language Models (LMs) taken from Natural Language Processing (NLP). These LMs reach for new prediction frontiers at low inference costs. Here, we trained two auto-regressive language models (Transformer-XL, XLNet) and two auto-encoder models (Bert, Albert) on data from UniRef and BFD containing up to 393 billion amino acids (words) from 2.1 billion protein sequences (22- and 112-times the entire English Wikipedia). The LMs were trained on the Summit supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), using 936 nodes (total 5616 GPUs) and one TPU Pod (V3-512 or V3-1024). We validated the advantage of up-scaling LMs to larger models supported by bigger data by predicting secondary structure (3-states: Q3=76-84, 8-states: Q8=65-73), sub-cellular localization for 10 cellular compartments (Q10=74) and whether a protein is membrane-bound or water-soluble (Q2=89). Dimensionality reduction revealed that the LM-embeddings from unlabeled data (only protein sequences) captured important biophysical properties governing protein shape. This implied learning some of the grammar of the language of life realized in protein sequences. The successful up-scaling of protein LMs through HPC to larger data sets slightly reduced the gap between models trained on evolutionary information and LMs.
PARASITES FROM CALIFORNIA BIGHORN SHEEP IN SOUTHERN BRITISH COLUMBIA

Seven nematode and two tick species were found during postmortem examination of two adult California bighorns at the Ashnola River, British Columbia. Another nematode and a coccidium were extracted from fecal material by zinc sulphate centrifugal flotation. Protostrongylin lungworm larvae were isolated by the Baermann technique from 80% of 101 fresh bighorn droppings. Little variation in frequency of infection with lungworm larvae was noted among yearling, ewe, and ram groups, but lambs appeared to be freer of the parasite than older animals. Both lambs and yearlings appeared to pass considerably fewer lungworm larvae in their droppings than older animals. The earliest date of collection of an infected lamb dropping was July 6, when the lamb was about 8 weeks old. The bighorn sheep is reported as a new host of the abomasal worm Ostertagia ostertagi (Stiles 1892).