Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Forest-ungulate interactions: monitoring, modeling and management

An international conference on “Forest Dynamics and Ungulate Herbivory” was held from 3–6 October 2001 in Davos, Switzerland. Two Special Issues of peer-reviewed scientific journals arose from this event. Here, we provide an overview of the papers contained in this Special Issue of Journal for Nature Conservation, which focus on the management of forests and forest-dwelling ungulates, including the methodologies and tools required for implementing successful management strategies. From the papers compiled in this Special Issue as well as the additional papers that were presented at the Davos Conference, the following conclusions emerge: (1) Many interacting factors operate in forest-ungulate systems, and they need to be managed simultaneously. Fixation on a single management factor is often doomed to failure. (2) Forest-ungulate systems are characterised by processes that operate over multiple scales in time and space, from foraging at the leaf level to interactions between ungulate population dynamics and landscape-scale natural disturbances. Therefore, multiple spatial and temporal scales must be considered for successfully managing forest-ungulate systems. (3) Forest dynamics operate over long time scales. Therefore, long-term thinking, long-term research, and long-term management strategies are required. (4) Rigorous programs are required to monitor and measure the interactions in forest-ungulate systems. Because of the many interacting factors and the multiple scales that are involved, we need to be creative in these efforts, including experimental approaches. (5) Because of the many complexities that are characteristic of forest-ungulate systems, management protocols will need to be adaptive, flexible and experimental if they are to be successful. It is imperative that scientists and managers interact closely for developing sustainable management practices. (6) Simulation modeling has an important role for supporting management efforts. The primary value of simulation models in the context of Decision Support Systems may well lie in the modeling process itself, specifically in the formalisation of expert knowledge and in the rigorous exploration of the consequences of scientific hypotheses about driving factors, interactions and feedbacks in forest-ungulate systems. (7) There is growing evidence that sweeping generalisations about the importance of single factors, for any given aspect of ungulate-forest interactions, are not likely to be broadly generalised. No single silvicultural system or management practice presents a “silver bullet” for resolving conflicts between ungulate populations and forest regeneration. A larger collection of conference papers, which focus on expressing the state of the art concerning the science of ungulate-vegetation interactions, can be found in a Special Issue of the journal Forest Ecology and Management.
Helix 69: A Multitasking RNA Motif as a Novel Drug Target

High-resolution structures have shown that helix 69 (H69) of the large ribosomal subunit can assume variable conformational states during translation. Solution studies on small model RNAs, isolated subunits, and complete ribosomes also revealed a variety of H69 conformations. Specific nucleotides of H69 that undergo changes in their relative orientations within the ribosome structure play important roles in both translation and ribosome rescue. Furthermore, the presence of multiple pseudouridines influences the global conformational states of H69, and these highly conserved modifications play a role in regulating the positioning of key functional residues. Helix 69 has recently been identified as a novel antibiotic target site. Small molecules such as aminoglycosides bind to specific conformational states of H69 in bacterial ribosomes and affect the translation process. A variety of techniques have been employed to study H69, ranging from chemical synthesis to X-ray crystallography, highlighting the importance of a detailed evaluation of the underlying principles of RNA conformational dynamics and drug targeting.
Doodle Away: Exploring the Effects of Doodling on Recall Ability of High School Students

Doodling is often misinterpreted as a distraction to students in an academic setting– a hindrance to learning. However, recent research has shown that doodling may be beneficial to learning and memory retention. The current study expands upon previous research by investigating the impact of structured and unstructured doodling on auditory recall. This experiment was designed using a multi-method quantitative approach with an experiment that consisted of a control, structured doodling, and unstructured doodling group, and a questionnaire to assess students’ doodling experience. A group of 39 high school juniors were chosen for this study. In all three conditions, students listened to a history lecture in their normal classroom circumstances and took a quiz over the information afterward. Students doodled in both experimental conditions– they shaded a structured doodling sheet in the first condition and doodled in a blank, white A4 sheet in the second condition. The results indicated that those in the structured and unstructured doodling group performed significantly better than those in the control group, with structured doodling scoring the highest out of the three. The Post Doodling Questionnaire indicated that the majority of students experienced less daydreaming and increased recall while doodling; furthermore, the majority of students reported doodling naturalistically.
Triporate pollen in the Arecaceae

Triapertury is rare in monocotyledons. The well-defined, regularly spaced, circular porate apertures that occur in Arecaceae: Areca klingkangensis from Borneo, and species of the West African genus Sclerosperma, appear to be unique in monocotyledons. There is evidence to suggest that tripory in Arecaceae has been derived from trichotomosulcy, although in Areca equatorial zonosulcy may have an important role. The apical triporate, and zonosulcate pollen of Areca are described, as well as examples of mono- and trichotomosulcate pollen within the genus. The sub-apical distal triporate pollen of Sclerosperma gilletii and S. mannii are described. Notably, in Sclerosperma pollen, aperture position at post-meiotic tetrad stage follows the rare ‘Garside's rule’ (four groups of three apertures), previously only demonstrated for Proteaceae and Olacaceae. Possible reasons for the occurrence of these rare triporate pollen phenomena in palms are considered. The bearing this may have on the transition from the distal polar position of the single sulcus, to the radial symmetry of the triaperturate condition in many dicotyledons is discussed in comparison with other examples of triapertury in monocotyledons.
Ecological determinants of volunteerism among Asian and Latinx immigrants in California, US

ABSTRACT Volunteerism offers various health benefits and increases the level of cohesion among communities. Connectedness to communities may be particularly important for immigrants to promote their integration into the host society. However, research that systematically examines factors that contribute to volunteerism, particularly among immigrants, remains scarce. The purpose of this study is to investigate the associations between the ecological determinants and volunteerism among Asian and Latinx immigrants. The authors used the 2009 California Health Interview Survey Multicultural Discrimination Module, the most recent and state-representative data available, and found the similarities and differences of those associations between Asian and Latinx immigrants. The authors discuss the implications of results and recommend that strategies to promote volunteerism among immigrants should be accompanied by consideration of their race and ethnicity, family, neighbourhood, and life experience.
The Importance of Interactions Between Content Characteristics and Creator Characteristics for Studying Virality in Social Media

Why does a social media post go viral? Two approaches to understand this mystery are content-based research and creator-based research. Both content characteristics and creator characteristics have been examined for their influence on virality. But the relationships between them are rarely discussed. We propose an extension to our existing conceptual framework to study the interactions between content and creator variables. And we demonstrate the significance of the interactions using data from 800,000 tweets. We find that by adding content-–creator interactions, the predictive power of the model improves significantly, which underlines the importance of the interactions for studying virality in social media. We also provide insights for managers on shaping their social media presence and strategy to use social media popularity for marketing and brand building.
Ethanol Extract of Crataeva nurvala Stem Bark Reverses Cisplatin-induced Nephrotoxicity

Generation of free radicals in the kidney cortex plays an important role in the pathogenesis of cisplatin-induced dysfunction of renal proximal tubule cells. Previous studies carried out showed that an alcohol extract of Crataeva nurvala stem bark possessed antioxidant activity in rats, hence the present work aimed at evaluating the possible effect of the alcohol extract of C. nurvala on cisplatin-induced dysfunction model of renal proximal tubule cells by oxidative stress. The alcohol extract was administered orally for ten days at two dose levels of 250 and 500 mg/kg body weight, five days after administration of a single i.p. dose of cisplatin (5 mg/kg). Renal dysfunction was evaluated histologically by light microscopy and biochemically by measuring the concentrations of blood urea nitrogen, serum creatinine, lipid peroxidation, glutathione and catalase activity in the kidney cortex. The results suggest that the plant extract (250 and 500 mg/kg) was effective in significantly altering the indices of cisplatin induced dysfunction of renal proximal tubule cells under oxidative stress by decreasing the concentration of blood urea nitrogen, creatinine and lipid peroxidation. The increased glutathione and catalase activity are indicative of the antioxidant properties of C. nurvala stem bark extract.
Identifying sustainable agricultural commodities in Wajo regency

This research was conducted to identify leading commodities in the three agricultural subsectors, which are plantations, fruits, and horticulture, cultivated by the local people within Wajo Regency. The research method used is Location Quotient (LQ) with criteria for the harvested area, numbers of trees, production quantity, and production value. Secondary data are used in the study and obtained from Wajo in Figures years of 2010 – 2014, Indonesia Statistics years of 2010-2014, South Sulawesi Agriculture Statistics, Regional Development in Figures years of 2010-2014, Agriculture Produce Prices, 2010-2014, Annual Statistic of Indonesian Fruits and Vegetables, and survei. The research shows that, of fourteen plantation commodities, there are four leading commodities generating a competitive advantage, namely cloves, cacao, coconut, and cotton. For fruit plants, of there are eighteen types of fruits cultivated by the local people, of which only four are leading commodities that are sapodilla, durian, banana, and pineapple. With respect to horticultural crops, of thirteen commodities, six of them generate competitive advantage, namely elongated beans, cayenne peppers, eggplants, watermelons, spinach, and cucumbers.
Identification and formation of some selected sulfur-containing flavor compounds in various meat model systems

The volatiles of various meat model systems containing thiamin, cysteine, cystine and various carbohydrates were isolated by simultaneous steam distilllation-extraction. The fraction were analysed by GC-MS. Identifications were focused on sulfur-containing constituents. Individual components were isolated by GC and characterized by MS, IR and NMR spectroscopies. Formation pathways, sensory properties and spectroscopic data of various compounds are described.
Reproduction of the commercial scallop, Pecten fumatus, Reeve, 1852 in Bass Strait, Australia

To examine the reproduction of Pecten fumatus Reeve, 1852, samples were taken monthly from beds off King Island and in Banks Strait, from July 1986 to July 1987. For each sample the mean gonad-free tissue weight and standardized gonad weight were calculated. The percentage of the sample with each of five macroscopically determined reproductive stages was also measured. Changes in the proportion of cell types within the ovarian part of the gonad were determined by histological and stereological methods. A seasonal cycle of gonadal development occurred at each site, commencing at the time of lowest water temperatures and highest nutrient concentrations. This development progressively increased as the nutrient concentrations declined. No correlation was seen between chlorophyll a and gonad condition. A synchrony in gonad condition was present among individuals in samples; this was greatest at Banks Strait where gonads were larger, and phosphate, nitrate and silicate concentrations were significantly greater. There was no reduction in somatic tissue weight with increase in gonad tissue weight. Maximum gonad development preceded spatfall at each site by about one month.
Asian Consumers' Willingness to Buy Locally Grown Ethnic Produce: A Study from East-coast United States

The primary objective of this study is to predict the willingness of Asian consumers' to buy locally grown ethnic produce. The study analyzes the results and compares the effects of Asian consumers' socio-economic characteristics on their willingness to buy locally grown ethnic produce. Based on survey data, a logistic regression model was developed to predict ‘who would be more willing to buy locally grown ethnic produce. ’ The results of this analysis can be useful to policy makers, local produce growers and marketers who target diversified ethnic consumers.
Weight Compression MAC Accelerator for Effective Inference of Deep Learning

SUMMARY Many studies of deep neural networks have reported inference accelerators for improved energy e ﬃ ciency. We propose methods for further improving energy e ﬃ ciency while maintaining recognition accuracy, which were developed by the co-design of a ﬁlter-by-ﬁlter quantization scheme with variable bit precision and a hardware architecture that fully supports it. Filter-wise quantization reduces the average bit precision of weights, so execution times and energy consumption for inference are reduced in proportion to the total number of computations multiplied by the average bit precision of weights. The hardware utilization is also improved by a bit-parallel architecture suitable for granularly quantized bit precision of weights. We implement the proposed architecture on an FPGA and demonstrate that the execution cycles are reduced to 1 / 5.3 for ResNet-50 on ImageNet in comparison with a conventional method, while maintaining recognition accuracy.
3D printing parameters of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene polymer for friction and wear analysis using response surface methodology

This study intends to analyse the coefficient of friction and wear properties of the acrylonitrile butadiene styrene polymer by determining the optimal parameters for 3D printing. The pin specimens were produced using the fused filament fabrication 3D printing. Response surface methodology is used for the multivariate analysis, and Box–Behnken Design is the chosen symmetrical design method. Changes to the dependent variables, coefficient of friction and wear rate, were analysed as a function of the nozzle temperature, layer height and printing pattern. The coefficient of friction and wear rate were measured using a pin-on-disc tribometer. A good agreement between the modelled and measured values of coefficient of friction and wear rate was observed. The study suggests that layer height affecting coefficient of friction and wear rate most significantly. It is determined that a layer height of 0.10 mm and a nozzle temperature of 234℃ using the triangle printing pattern is the optimal set of combination to minimise coefficient of friction and wear rate.
Asparagine in plants

Interest in plant asparagine has rapidly taken off over the past 5 years following the report that acrylamide, a neurotoxin and potential carcinogen, is present in cooked foods, particularly carbohydrate-rich foods such as wheat and potatoes which are subjected to roasting, baking or frying at high temperatures. Subsequent studies showed that acrylamide could be formed in foods by the thermal degradation of free asparagine in the presence of sugars in the Maillard reaction. In this article, our current knowledge of asparagine in plants and in particular its occurrence in cereal seeds and potatoes is reviewed and discussed in relation to acrylamide formation. There is now clear evidence that soluble asparagine accumulates in most if not all plant organs during periods of low rates of protein synthesis and a plentiful supply of reduced nitrogen. The accumulation of asparagine occurs during normal physiological processes such as seed germination and nitrogen transport. However, in addition, stress-induced asparagine accumulation can be caused by mineral deficiencies, drought, salt, toxic metals and pathogen attack. The properties and gene regulation of the enzymes involved in asparagine synthesis and breakdown in plants are discussed in detail.
X-Phi and Impartiality Thought Experiments: Investigating the Veil of Ignorance

This paper discusses “impartiality thought experiments”, i.e., thought experiments that attempt to generate intuitions which are unaffected by personal characteristics such as age, gender or race. We focus on the most prominent impartiality thought experiment, the Veil of Ignorance (VOI), and show that both in its original Rawlsian version and in a more generic version, empirical investigations can be normatively relevant in two ways: First, on the assumption that the VOI is effective and robust, if subjects dominantly favor a certain normative judgment behind the VOI this provides evidence in favor of that judgment; if, on the other hand, they do not dominantly favor a judgment this reduces our justification for it. Second, empirical investigations can also contribute to assessing the effectiveness and robustness of the VOI in the first place, thereby supporting or undermining its applications across the board.
Allocation of resources to male and female functions in hermaphrodites

The question of“how a self-fertile hermaphrodite will distribute the resources that it allocates to reproduction is studied by means of the ESS approach. Different models of the relations between allocation to male function, the male and female fertilities, and the selfing rate, yield different conclusions about how much resource should be allocated to male function. Values below a half are obtained with one model, while another can give values greater than a half. Even with no selfing, values other than a half are usually obtained; with both models studied, the values decrease with increasing selling. If the selfing rate is assumed to be independent of the fraction of resources allocated to male function, it can be shown that the ESS allocation to male function always decreases as selling increases. The types of relations that might be expected in species with different types of breeding biology, and some data on allocation to male function, are reviewed. The implications for the fitness of male- and female-sterility mutations are discussed. It is argued that the concavity or convexity of the curve relating female fertility to male fertility is not a good guide to when hermaphroditism should exist when there is some selfing. Even with a concave relation, male-sterility mutants can have a higher fitness than hermaphrodites, if there is some selling and inbreeding depression. Also, when the selfing rate depends on allocation to male I unction, an hermaphrodite ESS does not always exist when the function is concave (as it does when there is no selfing), and such an ESS may exist when the relation is convex. The fitness of male- or female-sterility mutants may also depend on the existence of ‘fixed costs’. It is shown that these do not ailed the ESS allocation of resources.
Preliminary results on the composition of oviductal fluid in buffalo

Abstract The aim of this study was to determine if qualitative and quantitative differences exist in energy substrates and ionic components of buffalo cow oviductal fluid during dioestrus, pre-ovulatory and ovulatory phases of the oestrous cycle. Ten multiparous Italian Mediterranean Buffalo (Bubalus Bubalis) cows at 15 days in milk were used. Cannulation of oviduct was performed as previously described by Kavanaugh et al.(1992) for cattle, adapting the technique to the smaller dimension of buffalo reproductive tract. We evaluated daily secretion rates, energy substrates and ions concentration during the three phases. Oviductal fluid secretion rates (ml/24h) and glucose concentration were significantly greater in the ovulatory phase (P<0.01) and in the pre-ovulatory phase (P<0.05) than in dioestrus. No significant differences were detected between oestrous phases for the other parameters analyzed.
Improving Session-Based Recommendation Adopting Linear Regression-Based Re-ranking

Due to the increase in the importance of giving real-time recommendation to e-commerce users, session-based recommender systems become more popular. Session-based recommendation systems have the ability to adapt quickly to respond to changes in user interests and newly added items. The ranking is the core part of recommender systems regardless of recommender system type. Re-ranking is applied to recommender systems to have more personalised recommendations by considering context-awareness. In this paper, we proposed an approach to re-rank recommended items by using a linear regression model. In our approach, we use users’ current session features and temporal features of recommended items to measure a user’s interest level on a recommended item. We focus on having better recall and precision scores with fewer recommendations to able to prove the success of our re-ranking strategy. We conduct computational experiments on six real-world datasets and show that after applying re-ranking, we can get higher recall and precision scores. These results confirm that taking user interest level on an item in a session into account can improve the chance of getting correct items in top 5 recommendations.
Digital control strategy for SPWM MPPT of PV system with three-phase NPC three-level converter

This paper is aimed at investigating MPPT of PV system controlled by SPWM which is generated by comparing sinusoidal wave with variable frequency sawtooth wave. Perturb and observe (P&O) method is used for MPPT control of PV system. NPC three-phase three-level converter with LCL filter is designed to produce output voltage with minimum total harmonic distortion (THD) and high efficiency. The simple and fast method to get MPP of PV system with variable irradiation is digital control where the maximum power point is obtained from look-up table for the values of optimum voltage that achieve the maximum power for each irradiance value is used for digital control signal in microcontroller. The output voltage harmonic of multi-level three-phase inverter is controlled using SPWM control. THD of output voltage of multi-level three-phase inverter is 22% of stand-alone and grid-connected PV system. Small rate LCL filter is used to limit voltage harmonics within medium and low voltage limits (5%). THD output voltage of LCL filter is 4.9% and 3.51% of stand-alone and grid-connected PV system respectively.