Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Rocky intertidal macrobenthic communities across a large-scale estuarine gradient

We evaluated relationships between (1) salinity and species richness and (2) frontal zones and community structure for the rocky intertidal macrobenthic community of the Uruguayan coast. A large-scale sampling design (extent ~500 km) covering 9 rocky shores across 3 intertidal levels was performed between September and November 2002. The linear relationship between salinity and species richness (minimum at the freshwater extreme) and the lack of correlation between variation in salinity and richness rejected two previous empirical models, explaining variations in species richness along the salinity gradient. Other factors (e.g. turbidity) may explain this discrepancy. The estuarine front defined two communities—freshwater and estuarine-marine—differing in species composition and richness. The freshwater community was characterised by low richness and few individuals confined to crevices or tide pools, and must be structured by physical processes (e.g. desiccation); the estuarine-marine community, with individuals occupying almost all available substrata, must be structured by both physical and biological processes. A marine front, separating estuarine and marine habitats, had a weak effect on community structure although estuarine and marine assemblages differed according to species characterising different functional groups. We conclude that the position of the estuarine frontal zones is important for explaining large-scale patterns of community structure in the study area.
A Scalable Application for Automatic Internationalization of ISO19139 Metadata in DRDSI

Internationalization is the process of transforming software or digital documents so that they can be accessed automatically in different languages in different countries. In this work, a prototype software application named MT@EC-Wrapper, which internationalizes a corpus of XML documents, transforming them into a multilingual parallel corpus, is implemented within the Danube Reference Data Services and Infrastructure (DRDSI) of the EU’s INSPIRE project. The application integrates document automation technology with the European Commission’s on-line machine translation service MT@EC. This case study achieves the goal of fully automating the transformation process of the DRDSI ISO19139 XML repository into a parallel corpus in the nine official languages of the DRDSI project. The design of this application also addresses the issues of processing performance, control and scalability. The project is compared with similar systems used within the EU institutions; the focus of the analysis is on metadata standards for internationalization and metadata processors.
Data Collection for the Similar Segments in Social Speech Task

Information retrieval systems rely heavily on models of similarity, but for spoken dialog such models currently use mostly standard textual-content similarity. As part of the MediaEval Benchmarking Initiative, we have created a new corpus to support development of similarity models for spoken dialog. This corpus includes 26 casual dialogs among members of two semi-cohesive groups, totaling about 5 hours, with 1889 labeled regions associated into 227 sets which annotators judged to be similar enough to share a tag. This technical report brings together information about this corpus and its intended uses, previously only available on the project website.
Privacy Attacks to the 4G and 5G Cellular Paging Protocols Using Side Channel Information

—The cellular paging (broadcast) protocol strives to balance between a cellular device’s energy consumption and quality-of-service by allowing the device to only periodically poll for pending services in its idle, low-power state. For a given cellular device and serving network, the exact time periods when the device polls for services (called the paging occasion ) are ﬁxed by design in the 4G/5G cellular protocol. In this paper, we show that the ﬁxed nature of paging occasions can be exploited by an adversary in the vicinity of a victim to associate the victim’s soft- identity (e.g., phone number, Twitter handle) with its paging occasion, with only a modest cost, through an attack dubbed ToRPEDO . Consequently, ToRPEDO can enable an adversary to verify a victim’s coarse-grained location information, inject fabricated paging messages, and mount denial-of-service attacks. We also demonstrate that, in 4G and 5G, it is plausible for an adversary to retrieve a victim device’s persistent identity (i.e., IMSI) with a brute-force IMSI-Cracking attack while using ToRPEDO as an attack sub-step. Our further investigation on 4G paging protocol deployments also identiﬁed an implementation oversight of several network providers which enables the adversary to launch an attack, named PIERCER , for associating a victim’s phone number with its IMSI; subsequently allowing targeted user location tracking. All of our attacks have been validated and evaluated in the wild using commodity hardware and software. We ﬁnally discuss potential countermeasures against the presented attacks.
Design of Nonlinear Optimal Controller for moving of Underwater Vehicle in Depth Channel by using Gradient Descent Method with Systematic Step Selection

This paper proposes the design of a nonlinear optimal controller for a submarine with nonlinear model with six degrees of freedom (6-DOF). The control aims includes achieving system stability, reaching the submarine to a desirable point at the end of the maneuver, and choosing the optimal path that are accessible by solution of optimal cost function. The novelty of this paper is the systematic step selection in the gradient descent algorithm that has increased the rate of convergence beyond two times rather than fixed step algorithm. Finally, via some simulations, the robust performance of the designed controller for moving in different depths with considering of parametric uncertainty has been confirmed.
S18-3 Causes of post-mating reproductive isolation in birds

Speciation involves the establishment of both pre-mating and post-mating reproductive isolation between divergent populations. Post-mating barriers have been particularly difficult to study in birds. I review what is known about three main forms of post-mating isolation. The first, intrinsic genetic incompatibility, reflects hybrid infertility and inviability indepen- dent of the environment in which the hybrids are found. They can be studied using data from captive breeding experiments. Results suggest that incompatibilities imposing complete reproductive isolation often arise after the speciation process has been completed. The second, ecological selection against hybrids, results from environmental conditions and/or competition from parental types and has been demonstrated on a few occasions. The third, sexual selection against hybrids, which arises from mate preferences for one or other parental species, may be an important, relatively neglected post-mating isolation process. Hybrid males often show characteristics intermediate to the parental species, and have unusual displays. Some experiments have demonstrated that females show weaker sexual responses to courting hybrid males. Several field studies have implicated both female choice and competition among males for territories in causing hybrid unfitness. Ecological and behav- ioral causes of post-mating isolation may play a major role in speciation but present evidence is too limited to evaluate their importance.
Pre‐Election Positions and Voting Behaviour in Parliament: Consistency among Swiss MPs

This article examines the determinants of positional incongruence between pre-election statements and post-election behaviour in the Swiss parliament between 2003 and 2009. The question is examined at the individual MP level, which is appropriate for dispersion-of-powers systems like Switzerland. While the overall rate of political congruence reaches about 85%, a multilevel logit analysis detects the underlying factors which push or curb a candidate's propensity to change his or her mind once elected. The results show that positional changes are more likely when (1) MPs are freshmen, (2) individual voting behaviour is invisible to the public, (3) the electoral district magnitude is not small, (4) the vote is not about a party's core issue, (5) the MP belongs to a party which is located in the political centre, and (6) if the pre-election statement dissents from the majority position of the legislative party group. Of these factors, the last one is paramount.
How to Create Value for Micro-Businesses Approaching the Green Economy

Based on the result of a survey carried out among a sample of 212 micro-small firms from Italy, the authors explore how the Green Economy is translated into practice and micro-businesses’ perceptions of pressures for engagement with green issues. The aim of the paper is to explain whether opportunities for micro businesses in adopting a green “behavior” could be useful to better address the customers’ needs. The authors gather information on key management issues related to the adoption of sustainable practices and, with specific reference to certain types of businesses, highlight the criticality of the product offering and the formulation and communication of the value proposition. Preliminary findings highlight that often this type of enterprise cannot clearly address customers’ needs in terms of eco-sustainable outcomes as revealed by this study. It is actually very difficult for these firms to formulate an appropriate value proposition and disclose the values of the Green Economy to the market and their customers. This paper contributes to the emerging stream of research that aims to build a theory of sustainable development that is grounded in the experiences of micro-business owner-managers, and takes into account the heterogeneity and characteristics of this sector.
Housing Prices and Robustly Optimal Monetary Policy

We analytically characterize robustly optimal monetary policy for an augmented New Keynesian model with a housing sector. In our setting, the housing stock delivers a service flow entering households’ utility, houses are durable goods that depreciate over time, and new houses can be produced using a concave production technology. We show that shocks to housing demand and to housing productivity have “cost-push” implications, which warrant temporary fluctuations in the inflation rate under optimal policy, even under an assumption of rational expectations, for reasons familiar from the literature on “flexible inflation targeting”. However, under rational expectations optimal monetary policy can still be characterized by commitment to a “target criterion” that refers to inflation and the output gap only, just as in the standard model without a housing sector. Instead, if policy is to be robust to potential departures of (house price and inflation) expectations from model-consistent ones, the target criterion must also depend on housing prices. In the empirically realistic case where the government subsidizes housing, the robustly optimal target criterion requires the central bank to “lean against” unexpected increases in housing prices, in the sense that it should adopt a policy stance that is projected to undershoot its normal targets for inflation and/or the output gap owing to the increase in housing prices, and similarly aim to overshoot those targets in the case of unexpected declines in housing prices. ∗We thank Lars Hansen and Monika Piazzesi for helpful comments, and the European Research Council (Starting Grant no. 284262) and the Institute for New Economic Thinking for research support.
Standard microsource interface for a microgrid

The plug-and-play functionality of a typical microgrid should enable the connection of any microsource at any point without changing the system significantly. To achieve this feature, this paper presents a 'standard' microsource interface concept with embedded with storage in the form of ultracapacitors. The photovoltaic panel, which is the microsource, is connected to the MicroGrid through an inverter and the storage is connected to the dc-link via a bidirectional converter. Simulation results of the complete interface are presented.
The quaternionic Heisenberg group and Heterotic String Solutions with non-constant dilaton in dimensions 7 and 5

New smooth solutions of the Strominger system with non vanishing flux, non-trivial instanton and non-constant dilaton based on the quaternionic Heisenberg group are constructed. We show that through appropriate contractions the solutions found in the $G_2$-heterotic case converge to the heterotic solutions on 6-dimensional inner non-K\"ahler spaces previously found by the authors and, moreover, to new heterotic solutions with non-constant dilaton in dimension 5. All solutions satisfy the heterotic equations of motion up to the first order of $\alpha^{\prime}$.
No watershed for overflow: Recent work on the richness of consciousness

Abstract A familiar and enduring controversy surrounds the question of whether our phenomenal experience “overflows” availability to cognition: do we consciously see more than we can remember and report? Both sides to this debate have long sought to move beyond naïve appeals to introspection by providing empirical evidence for or against overflow. Recently, two notable studies—Bronfman, Brezis, Jacobson, and Usher (2014) and Vandenbroucke, Sligte, Fahrenfort, Ambroziak, and Lamme (2012)—have purported to provide compelling evidence in favor of overflow. Here I explain why the data from both studies are wholly consistent with a “no overflow” interpretation. Importantly, when framed purely in representational or informational terms, this “no overflow” interpretation agrees with the interpretations respectively offered by both Bronfman et al. (2014) and Vandenbroucke et al. (2012). The difference only emerges when additional assumptions are made concerning which representations correspond to elements in conscious experience. The assumptions made by overflow theorists are contentious and poorly motivated. However, challenging them simply reopens the original controversy. The upshot is a sobering moral: we still do not know how to move beyond appeals to naïve introspection in establishing the nature and limits of our ordinary experience.
The in fl uence of pH on barite nucleation and growth

Introduction Barite (BaSO4) scale formation is a problem in many industrial processes, especially in oilfields where mixing sea water with reservoir water can result in solid layers of barite scale that can completely block pipes. Organic compounds (e.g. organophosphonates) have been used as inhibitors for barite precipitation. The effectiveness of these compounds is pH-dependent, usually more effective at high pH where they are highly deprotonated. Thus we need to determine the influence of pH on barite nucleation and growth before the performance of organic additives as barite scale inhibitors can be assessed. Effect of pH on barite growth : AFM study Effect of pH on nucleation
Reality Bites: The Limits of Framing Effects for Salient and Contested Policy Issues*

A large literature argues that public opinion is vulnerable to various types of framing and cue effects. However, we lack evidence on whether existing findings, which are typically based on lab experiments involving low-salience issues, travel to salient and contentious political issues in real-world voting situations. We examine the relative importance of issue frames, partisan cues, and their interaction for opinion formation using a survey experiment conducted around a highly politicized referendum on immigration policy in Switzerland. We find that voters responded to frames and cues, regardless of their direction, by increasing support for the position that is in line with their pre-existing partisan attachment. This reinforcement effect was most visible among low knowledgeable voters that identified with the party that owned the issue. These results support some of the previous findings in the political communication literature, but at the same time also point toward possible limits to framing effects in the context of salient and contested policy issues.
Swarm prevention and spring treatments against Varroa destructor in honey bee colonies

In 2004 and 2005 experiments were carried out to test the efficacy and efficiency of Varroa control combined with swarm prevention methods in spring. Honey bee colonies were split in an artificial swarm and a brood carrier. Hereafter the swarms were treated with oxalic acid and the brood carriers either with formic acid (2004) or Thymovar (2005). Both the oxalic acid and the formic acid were very effective, resulting in an average efficacy of 97% and 96%, respectively. There was some worker bee mortality in both treatments. Thymovar was less effective (71%), but did not cause any worker bee mortality. The results show that the combination of Varroa control and swarm prevention can effectively be used in spring.
SUPERLUMINOUS SUPERNOVA SN 2015bn IN THE NEBULAR PHASE: EVIDENCE FOR THE ENGINE-POWERED EXPLOSION OF A STRIPPED MASSIVE STAR

We present nebular-phase imaging and spectroscopy for the hydrogen-poor superluminous supernova (SLSN) SN 2015bn, at redshift z = 0.1136, spanning +250–400 days after maximum light. The light curve exhibits a steepening in the decline rate from 1.4 mag (100 days)−1 to 1.7 mag (100 days)−1, suggestive of a significant decrease in the opacity. This change is accompanied by a transition from a blue continuum superposed with photospheric absorption lines to a nebular spectrum dominated by emission lines of oxygen, calcium, and magnesium. There are no obvious signatures of circumstellar interaction or large 56Ni mass. We show that the spectrum at +400 days is virtually identical to a number of energetic SNe Ic such as SN 1997dq, SN 2012au, and SN 1998bw, indicating similar core conditions and strengthening the link between “hypernovae”/long gamma-ray bursts and SLSNe. A single explosion mechanism may unify these events that span absolute magnitudes of −22 < MB < −17. Both the light curve and spectrum of SN 2015bn are consistent with an engine-driven explosion ejecting 7–30 M⊙ of oxygen-dominated ejecta (for reasonable choices in temperature and opacity). A strong and relatively narrow O i λ7774 line, seen in a number of these energetic events but not in normal supernovae, may point to an inner shell that is the signature of a central engine.
Building Information Modeling and Integrated Project Delivery: What is the future?

The current state of practice in Building Information Modeling (BIM) has made significant progress over the last decade in integrating the design and construction processes. Current contractual relationships such as Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) arrangements are also making inroads into a more integrated process of combining design and instruction. However, both developments are still in a state of infancy. This paper explores best practices through a current analysis of the state of practice in integrating design and construction through BIM and new contractual arrangements as well as the current limitations to functional integration. The referred limitation comprises an analysis of how aspects such as sustainable/green construction and conservation design can be better integrated into BIM, including lean construction to maximize value reduce waste. This paper explores this process, chiefly addressing issues of liability, particularly as such models gain greater usage by the Owner during the operational and maintenance phases of a facility. It concludes with possible avenues that the construction industry needs to explore in the greater strategic integration of design and construction.
Nucleosynthesis in Massive Stars with Improved Nuclear and Stellar Physics

We present the first calculations to follow the evolution of all stable nuclei and their radioactive progenitors in stellar models computed from the onset of central hydrogen burning through explosion as Type II supernovae. Calculations are performed for Population I stars of 15, 19, 20, 21, and 25 M☉ using the most recently available experimental and theoretical nuclear data, revised opacity tables, neutrino losses, and weak interaction rates and taking into account mass loss due to stellar winds. A novel "adaptive" reaction network is employed with a variable number of nuclei (adjusted each time step) ranging from ~700 on the main sequence to ≳2200 during the explosion. The network includes, at any given time, all relevant isotopes from hydrogen through polonium (Z = 84). Even the limited grid of stellar masses studied suggests that overall good agreement can be achieved with the solar abundances of nuclei between 16O and 90Zr. Interesting discrepancies are seen in the 20 M☉ model and (so far, only in that model) are a consequence of the merging of the oxygen, neon, and carbon shells about a day prior to core collapse. We find that, in some stars, most of the "p-process" nuclei can be produced in the convective oxygen-burning shell moments prior to collapse; in others, they are made only in the explosion. Serious deficiencies still exist in all cases for the p-process isotopes of Ru and Mo.
Reinforcement learning to improve 4-finger-gripper manipulation

In the framework of robotics, Reinforcement Learning (RL) deals with the learning of a task by the robot itself. This work focuses on a recently developed method, Policy Improvement with Path Integrals (PI2), for the case of a 4-finger-gripper manipulator to perform the task of rotating a ball around a desired axis. The scope of the thesis is to design an experiment, in which the algorithm receives feedback of robot performance. The algorithm has also been adapted to cope with periodic movements parametrized as motor primitives. Furthermore, due to the high dimensionality of the problem, certain assumptions have been made in order to limit the state-space to a reliable subset of it. The obtained results illustrate the good performance of the algorithm as the robot is able to perform the task focusing on important aspects previously set by the user, both for simulation and also for the real robot. The main bottleneck of the thesis has been the speed of both software and hardware, as much time was required to perform long run experiments, specifically in the implementation on the robot where manual supervision was needed.
EARLY LUTETIAN PHOSHORITES IN WADI AKASH, WESTERN DESERT, IRAQ

Phosphorites from the Ratga Formation (Eocen e) exposed in Wadi Akash in the Western Desert of Iraq are studied from micropaleontologica l, petrological and geochemical aspects. They are the youngest among the phosphorite deposits of Iraq; index fossils of Middle Eocene (Early Lutetian) were identified in these phosphorites. Th e underlying rocks are composed of nummulitic limestone of Late Ypresian age, whereas the overlyi ng rocks are basinal limestone of Late Lutetian age. The Early Lutetian phosphorites are peloidal in texture with calcareous cement. Detrital fragments are of small amount, composed of quartz grains and fish scales. The phosphorite is of low P 2O5 grade relative to other Iraqi phosphorite deposits , but is similar to most marine phosphorites in having high concentrations of F, Cd , U, V, Y and Zn and being dominated by francolite (carbonate fluorapatite) as the only pho sphorite mineral. The Early Lutetian phosphorites represent the final stage of the Tethy an phosphogenic epoch in Iraq and are comparable in age to several North African deposits .