Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Examining Head-shape Differences and Ecology in Morphologically Similar Salamanders at Their Zone of Contact

Studying morphological features in addition to ecological characteristics of co-occurring species can provide insight into interactions between species. Determining factors that influence interactions between species provides a framework for understanding evolution in natural environments. Plethodontid salamanders are model taxa frequently used to study species interactions in regard to competition, coexistence, and exclusion. Past studies have suggested that P. ventralis and P. websteri exhibit character displacement in color and may competitively interact when in sympatry. We studied P. ventralis and P. websteri at a sympatric location in Jefferson County, Alabama and compared this population to allopatric populations of each species to identify whether these species differed in morphology and diet, which are indicators for interspecific competition. We found that P. ventralis and P. websteri differed in head shape, in general, and that head shape differed among populations within species. However, we did not find significant shifts within species between allopatric and sympatric locations, which would have indicated character displacement or convergence. Furthermore, species did not differ in diet at any of the studied locations. Interestingly, we discovered that variation in head shape among locations of both species, regardless if the location was allopatric or sympatric, was significant. This result reiterates the importance of including population variation in the context of character displacement and competition. Results of this study can be placed in a robust theoretical context developed from numerous studies of salamander interactions and, thus, lead to a greater understanding of population variation, competition, and species interactions between ecologically similar species.
Technical Report 2020-3 EVALUATING SWIMMING BEHAVIOR AND PERFORMANCE OF UPSTREAM MIGRATING PACIFIC LAMPREY USING EXPERIMENTAL FLUMES

Radio-telemetry studies have revealed that bottlenecks and high turn-around rates in fishways contribute to low passage success of Pacific lamprey at Columbia River dams. Structural and operational modifications to fishways and installation of lamprey-specific passage structures have improved fishway entrance and dam passage efficiencies, but conditions in the upper fishways continue to be passage obstacles. In particular, lamprey turnaround rates are high at Bonneville Dam serpentine weirs (n = 12), which are characterized by high water velocity and hydraulic complexity. Approximately one quarter to one third of lampreys that reach the serpentine weirs fail to pass the dam. While previous research has demonstrated that most lamprey readily pass a single challenge with high water velocity (2.4 m/sec), fatigue during passage of multiple weirs may be problematic. We manipulated exercise histories of adult Pacific lamprey prior to a weir passage challenge in an experimental flume (11.6-m long × 1.2-m wide × 2.4-m high). Treatments were applied using a 2 × 2 factorial design with two exercise velocities (1.0 m/s and 1.4 m/s) and two exercise durations (1 x 20 min and 2 x 20 min with a 10 min recovery interval) in addition to an unexercised control. Six replicates were run of each treatment with six lamprey/replicate. Passage success was then evaluated at a 1-m long vertical weir having 2.2 m/sec water velocity. We found that passage success declined with increasing velocity and duration of exercise. Lamprey passage success was lowest (53%) during the high-velocity, long-duration treatment as compared to the control (89%) (2 = 22.3, P < 0.001). Dorsal distance, after accounting for body length, was the only morphological covariate associated with passage success; dorsal distance increased the odds of successful passage. Lamprey that were characterized as ‘late’ run were more likely to fail compared to those earlier in the season. This effect was particularly noticeable for the high-velocity treatments. The results indicate that the exercise history of lamprey affects their passage success. This is consistent with the hypothesis that lamprey reach an endurance threshold or lose motivation when passing multiple high velocity obstacles in succession.
Surface Composition of a Highly Active Pt3Y Alloy Catalyst for Application in Low Temperature Fuel Cells

Currently, platinum is the most widely used catalyst for low temperature proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC). However, the kinetics at the cathode are slow, and the price of platinum is high. To improve oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) kinetics at the cathode, platinum can be alloyed with rare earth elements, such as yttrium. We report that Pt3Y has the potential to be over 2 times more active for the ORR compared with Pt inside a real fuel cell. We present detailed photoemission analysis into the nature of the sputtered catalyst surface, using synchrotron radiation photoelectron spectroscopy (SRPES) to examine if surface adsorbates or impurities are present and can be removed. Pretreatment removes most of the yttrium oxide in the surface leaving behind a Pt overlayer which is only a few monolayers thick. Evidence of a substochiometric oxide peak in the Y 3d core level is presented, this oxide extends into the surface even after Ar+ sputter cleaning in‐situ. This information will aid the development of new highly active nanocatalysts for employment in real fuel cell electrodes.
Light Extraction Efficiency Enhancement in AC Driven OLEDs by Optimizing Layers Order and Thickness

In this study, refractive index and thickness optimization for each layer of Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) are performed to provide light extraction efficiency for Alternating Current (AC) driven OLEDs. Firstly, the layer added on the active layer and defined as a hole injection layer is decided as polystyrene-block-poly methyl methacrylate (PS-PMMA). In the following, 13% enhancement of far field power, from 30% to 43%, is observed by setting the most proper thickness value. In addition, selection of suitable electron transport layer (ETL) and hole transport layer (HTL) increases the ratio of far field power to 65%. Finally, the thickness of indium tin oxide (ITO), selected as anode layer is optimally adjusted and total normalized power percentage is achieved as 67%. Particularly, enhancement of 13% in far field power by choosing the hole injection layer as PSPMMA is pointed out in this paper.
NONLINEAR OPTICAL PROCESSES MANIFESTING AS ANDERSON LOCALIZATION OF LIGHT IN MESOSCOPIC MATERIALS

Abnormal anti-Stokes Raman emission (AASRE) is defined by an anti-Stokes/Stokes intensity ratio much greater than expected on the basis of the equilibrium population of excited vibration states provided by the Boltzmann law. AASRE can be observed both in materials with intrinsic nonlinear optical properties as LiNbO3 or materials in which the nonlinear optical properties are induced by resonant optical excitation, as carbon nanotubes. Using a surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) device, consisting from single wall carbon nanotubes deposited on a rough Au or Ag support and LiNbO3 in form of powder, we demonstrate that under continuous single beam excitation they present AASRE whose properties are similar to a single beam pumped Coherent Anti-Stokes Raman Scattering. AASRE is usually accompanied by a coherent backscattering, it can be considered as Anderson localization of light that results from a wave-mixing mechanism of the incident laser light with a Stokes shifted Raman light produced by a spontaneous Raman light scattering process. The transport of the light inside of sample, giving rise to AASRE and coherent backscattering, is done by an elastic light scattering mechanism.
Bodyweight Management and Relationship to Health in the Horse (Equus caballus)

Bodyweight maintenance can change in horses of advanced age. Pituitary pars intermedia dysfunction (PPID) is a neurodegenerative disease of the par pituitary intermedia that affects older horses. The objective of the present study was to determine if body condition score (BCS) is related to the number and type of common symptoms associated with PPID. The hypothesis was that horses with high (7+) and low (< 4) BCS have more early and advanced symptoms of PPID, respectively. Additionally, I investigated if PPID symptoms were more prevalent in some breeds. Body conditions of geriatric horses (n=143, mean age 27.7±4.6 y) at a Florida retirement facility were scored, followed by evaluating common PPID symptoms. The BCS of each horse was determined by averaging scores of five body regions with values between 1 and 9 (emaciated to obese). Common indications of PPID were scored as present (1), semipresent (0.5), or absent (0) for six early and ten advanced symptoms. A negative correlation was evident between BCS and age (r = -0.36). No strong relationships were present between BCS ranges and likelihood of PPID, but there were mild correlations between individual symptoms and BCS. The outcomes of the present study may assist in the providing care for geriatric horses. 2.
Multiphase buffer theory explains contrasts in atmospheric aerosol acidity

Water content and mass matter more than composition for the acidity of atmospheric aerosols in ammonia-buffered regions. A multiphasic effect Aerosols exert a primary influence on atmospheric chemistry. One of the main controls on their internal chemistry is their acidity, so understanding what determines aerosol pH is fundamental for determining their environmental effects. Zheng et al. considered how buffering capacity in a multiphase aerosol system differs from bulk solution and found an important role for water content in determining pH in ammonia-buffered regions. Their conclusions underscore the important influence of ammonia emissions in the Anthropocene. Science, this issue p. 1374 Aerosol acidity largely regulates the chemistry of atmospheric particles, and resolving the drivers of aerosol pH is key to understanding their environmental effects. We find that an individual buffering agent can adopt different buffer pH values in aerosols and that aerosol pH levels in populated continental regions are widely buffered by the conjugate acid-base pair NH4+/NH3 (ammonium/ammonia). We propose a multiphase buffer theory to explain these large shifts of buffer pH, and we show that aerosol water content and mass concentration play a more important role in determining aerosol pH in ammonia-buffered regions than variations in particle chemical composition. Our results imply that aerosol pH and atmospheric multiphase chemistry are strongly affected by the pervasive human influence on ammonia emissions and the nitrogen cycle in the Anthropocene.
School for Mechanical and Electrical Engineering “Goša” Smederevska Palanka, Serbia Milica Lajbenšperger National Employment Service Serbia Žarko Mijajlović University of Belgrade Faculty of Mathematics Serbia DIGITAL CATALOGUE OF CULTURAL MONUMENTS IN SERBIA 2012 – 2013: OVERVIEW AND HIGHLIGHTS

The website Cultural Monuments in Serbia presents a digital catalogue which contains documentation on cultural monuments and sites of the Republic of Serbia. It was created with the goal to preserve and present a valuable part of the national heritage, which has not been well-preserved in digital form. The paper shows how the results of the examination of users’ expectations (high school students and teachers) were used for technical improvement of the digital catalogue. It analyzes, through the latest results in the development of the digital catalogue of Cultural Monuments in Serbia (2012 – 2013), the significant role of the 1) cultural and research institutions, 2) “fund-help”, as well as 3) users in digitization of the humanity’s shared heritage.
Design of Interactive Visualizations for Next-Generation Ultra-Large Communication Networks

With the increasing size and complexity of next-generation communication networks, it is critical to utilize interactive visualizations to support the monitoring, planning, and management of networks. Effectively visualizing large-scale networks is difficult with traditional methods because of the high link density and complex node relationships. Given the limited screen space, to assist Internet Service Provider’s (ISP) network planning and management activities, investigating how to present ultra-large-scale network data efficiently is crucial. This paper presents a real-time interactive visualization system that combines the design strategies of progressive disclosure and multiple panels to elegantly visualize the large-scale networks and avoid the information-overload problem. The system also visualizes the configuration of the network elements and provides the network performance information, including the port-level Quality of Service (QoS) metrics. Furthermore, the system enables navigation through the port-level connection and provides different modes for multiple purposes.
THE EFFECT OF PHYCOCYANIN FROM Spirulina platensis ON THE GROWTH OF HUMAN LEUKAEMIA CELL

The effects of phycocyanin from Spiralina platensis on growth of sevetal humen leukaemia cell (HL-60, K-562, U-937) were studied by semi-solid agarese culture and MTT methods assays. The high concentration of phycocyanin(8Oμg/ ml) could markedly inhibit the growth of these three cancerous cells.
Learning Intrinsically Motivated Options to Stimulate Policy Exploration

A Reinforcement Learning (RL) agent needs to ﬁnd an optimal sequence of actions in order to maximize rewards. This requires consistent exploration of states and action sequences to ensure the policy found is optimal. One way to motivate exploration is through intrinsic rewards, i.e. agent-induced rewards to guide itself towards interesting behaviors. We propose to learn from such intrinsic rewards through exploration options , i.e. additional temporally-extended actions to call separate policies (or ”Explorer” agents) associated to an intrinsic reward. We show that this method has several key advantages over the usual method of weighted sum of rewards, mainly task-transfer abilities and scalability to multiple reward functions.
Uganda’s Electricity Sector Reforms: Lessons and Challenges

Uganda is one of many developing countries to have undertaken electricity sector reforms. The reforms were intended to improve sector performance. The paper employed descriptive data analysis methods augmented by empirical estimations of least square dummy variable models to estimate whether the reforms are on track to meet their intended objectives. The results indicate that progress has been slow in achieving the objectives of the reforms.
Assessing participation of CAREC countries in Global and Regional Value Chains

In a world of offshoring, outsourcing and vertical specialization, production of a single good may involve inputs from and manufacturing in many different countries around the world. The participation of developing countries in Global and Regional Value Chains (GVCs and RVCs) creates new opportunities for firms (and even countries) to specialize in tasks and business functions rather than specific products, fully employ their production potential and become a part of the international production networks. The exercise of mapping GVC and RVC participation of particular countries and/or country groups is therefore an essential tool for understanding the structure and the driving forces behind global and regional trade for particular countries, as well potential areas for policy interventions. While many studies measure the GVC and RVC participation indices for OECD and some non-OECD countries, the CAREC (Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation Program) countries were until now never studied as a separate group. Nevertheless, the global growth slowdown forced many developing economies and emerging markets to look for growth opportunities beyond the traditional links with large developed countries’ markets and seek out growth opportunities in regional production and trade collaboration. This policy paper is the first one to create a comprehensive mapping of the GVCs and RVCs for CAREC region by using the inter-country input-output matrices. It contributes to the empirical literature on RVC by assessing the trade linkages between countries in this group and further defines the methodology to compare RVC and GVC participation on the industry level to identify the areas for potential policy intervention to strengthen the value-chain contribution of any given country. In addition, this paper presents case studies of particular industries in order to explain and supplement the empirical findings. The findings of the paper will be particularly useful for evidence-based trade policy of the CAREC countries.
Hate and Toxic Speech Detection in the Context of Covid-19 Pandemic using XAI: Ongoing Applied Research

As social distancing, self-quarantines, and travel restrictions have shifted a lot of pandemic conversations to social media so does the spread of hate speech. While recent machine learning solutions for automated hate and offensive speech identiﬁcation are available on Twitter, there are issues with their inter-pretability. We propose a novel use of learned feature importance which improves upon the performance of prior state-of-the-art text clas-siﬁcation techniques, while producing more easily interpretable decisions. We also discuss both technical and practical challenges that remain for this task.
A TEST OF SPATIAL SPILLOVER WITH ECONOMIC CONCENTRAYTION ON CHINA'S SMOG POLLUTION

The National Development and Reform Commission clearly pointed out in the "Key Tasks of New Urbanization Construction in 2019" to accelerate the development of urban-rural composition and narrow the gap between urban and rural development. At the same time, the rapid urbanization process has also led to a series of environmental problems. Population agglomeration and economic concentration have caused increasingly serious smog pollution, posing a major threat to human health. Analysis of the factors affecting the degree of smog pollution in the process of economic development has practical significance for the control of haze. Our paper adopts the spatial panel data measurement model. Based on PM2.5 concentration data in 27 provinces of China from 2007 to 2016, and taking into account direct effect and spatial spillover effect of smog pollution. We have innovatively added the Theil index as a measure of economic concentration to study the relationship between regional development imbalances and smog pollution due to regional economic concentration.
Deep fusion of multiple term-similarity measures for biomedical passage retrieval

Passage retrieval is an important stage of question answering systems. Closed domain passage retrieval, e.g. biomedical passage retrieval presents additional challenges such as specialized terminology, more complex and elaborated queries, scarcity in the amount of available data, among others. However, closed domains also offer some advantages such as the availability of specialized structured information sources, e.g. ontologies and thesauri, that could be used to improve retrieval performance. This paper presents a novel approach for biomedical passage retrieval which is able to combine different information sources using a similarity matrix fusion strategy based on convolutional neural network architecture. The method was evaluated over the standard BioASQ dataset, a dataset specialized on biomedical question answering. The results show that the method is an effective strategy for biomedical passage retrieval able to outperform other state-of-the-art methods in this domain.
Local Geometric Phase and Quantum State Tomography in a Superconducting Qubit

We investigate quantum state reconstruction of a superconducting qubit threaded by an AharonovBohm flux, with particular attention to the local geometric phase. A state reconstruction scheme is introduced with a proper account of the local geometric phase generated by Faraday’s law of induction. Our scheme is based on measurement of three complementary quantities, that is, the extra charge and two local currents. Incorporating time-reversal symmetry and the Faraday’s law, we show that the full density matrix can be reconstructed without ambiguity in the choice of gauge. This procedure clearly demonstrates that the quantum Faraday effect plays an essential role in the dynamics of a quantum system that involves Aharonov-Bohm flux.
Moderation of treatment effects by parent-adolescent conflict in a randomised controlled trial of Attachment-Based Family Therapy for adolescent depression

Abstract Background: Conflict with parents is frequent in adolescent depression, and has been shown to predict poor treatment outcomes. Attachment Based Family Therapy (ABFT) is a manualised treatment for adolescent depression that may be robust to parent-adolescent conflict. Objective: To evaluate the hypothesis that parent-adolescent conflict moderates the outcome of Attachment-Based Family Therapy compared with treatment as usual. Methods: Data were obtained from a randomised trial comparing 16 weeks of ABFT to treatment as usual, in Norwegian Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services. Sixty adolescents with moderate to severe depression and their parents were recruited. Change in Grid-Hamilton Depression Rating Scale scores from baseline to week 16 was modelled using linear mixed models, and a three-way interaction of time, treatment allocation and a continuous measure of parent-adolescent conflict was fitted to estimate a moderator effect. The moderator model was compared to simpler models using leave-one-out cross-validation. Results: Better outcomes were predicted for Attachment-Based Family Therapy at high levels of mother-adolescent conflict, and for treatment as usual at low levels of mother-adolescent conflict, giving preliminary support to the moderator hypothesis. Findings for father-adolescent conflict were mixed. Cross-validation did not clearly support the moderator model over a simple effect of time, indicating that the replicability of these findings is uncertain. Conclusion: The results suggest that parent-adolescent conflict should be further studied as a moderator of outcome in Attachment-Based Family Therapy. The trial did not meet its recruitment target and had high attrition, limiting the conclusions that may be drawn.
Effects of taurine on the change of apoptosis induced by IL-1β, TNF-α and IFN-γ in rat pancreatic islet cells

AIM: To investigate the changes of apoptosis in isolated pancreatic islet cells, insulin secretion, expression of Bcl-xL and Bax induced by combination of IL-1β, TNF-α and IFN-γ, and effects of taurine on them. METHODS: Isolated pancreatic islet cells from Wistar rat were incubated in monolayer in vitro. NO-2/ NO-3 production, NOS activity, insulin secretion, the protein expression of Bcl-xL and Bax, percentage of islet cell apoptosis and DNA fragmentation in pancreatic islet cells incubated with combination of IL-1β, TNF-α and IFN-γ were measured, and the effects of taurine on the changes of them were further investigated. RESULTS: Combination of IL-1β, TNF-α and IFN-γ induced a significant increase in percentage of pancreatic islet cell apoptosis, NO-2/ NO-3 production and NOS activity, DNA ladder appearance, a decrease in insulin content, up-regulation in the protein expression of Bax and down-regulation in the protein expression of Bcl-xL (P0.01), which were blocked by addition of taurine (P0.01). These effects occurred in a dose dependent manner.CONCLUSION: Taurine attenuates β cell apoptosis induced by IL-1β, TNF-α and IFN-γ. The mechanism of which may be the inhibition of NOS activity and the decrease of NO production as well as the downregulation of Bax/Bcl-xL proportion.