Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A machine-learning approach to assign species to ‘unidentified’ entangled whales

Whale entanglements in US west coast fishing gear are largely represented by opportunistic sightings, and some reports lack species identifications due to rough seas, distance from whales, or a lack of cetacean identification expertise. Unidentified entanglements are often ignored in species risk assessments and thus, entanglement risk is underestimated. To address this negative bias, a species identification model was built from random forest (RF) classification trees using 199 identified entanglements (‘model data’). Humpback Megaptera novaeangliae and gray whales Eschrichtius robustus represented 92% of identified entanglements; the remaining 8% were minke whales Balaenoptera acutorostrata, fin whales B. physalus, blue whales B. musculus, and sperm whales Physeter macrocephalus. Predictor variables included year, gear type, location, season, sea surface temperature, water depth, and a multivariate El Niño index. Crossvalidated species classifications were correct in 78% (155/199) of cases, significantly higher (p < 0.001, permutation test) than the 49% correct classification rate expected by chance. The RF model correctly classified 91% of humpback whale cases, 64% of gray whale cases, and 100% of sperm whale cases, but misclassified all minke, blue, and fin whale cases. The cross-validated RF classification-tree species model was used to classify 35 entanglements without species identifications (‘novel data’) and each case was assigned a probability of belonging to each of 6 model data species. This approach eliminates the negative bias associated with ignoring unidentified entanglements in species risk assessments. Applications to other wildlife studies where some detections are unidentified include fisheries bycatch, line-transect surveys, and large-whale vessel strikes.
Modelling and mapping climate change impacts on permafrost at high spatial resolution for an Arctic region with complex terrain

Abstract. Most spatial modelling of climate change impacts on permafrost has been conducted at half-degree latitude/longitude or coarser spatial resolution. At such coarse resolution, topographic effects on insolation cannot be considered accurately and the results are not suitable for land-use planning and ecological assessment. Here we mapped climate change impacts on permafrost from 1968 to 2100 at 10 m resolution using a process-based model for Ivvavik National Park, an Arctic region with complex terrain in northern Yukon, Canada. Soil and drainage conditions were defined based on ecosystem types, which were mapped using SPOT imagery. Leaf area indices were mapped using Landsat imagery and the ecosystem map. Climate distribution was estimated based on elevation and station observations, and the effects of topography on insolation were calculated based on slope, aspect and viewshed. To reduce computation time, we clustered climate distribution and topographic effects on insolation into discrete types. The modelled active-layer thickness and permafrost distribution were comparable with field observations and other studies. The map portrayed large variations in active-layer thickness, with ecosystem types being the most important controlling variable, followed by climate, including topographic effects on insolation. The results show deepening in active-layer thickness and progressive degradation of permafrost, although permafrost will persist in most of the park during the 21st century. This study also shows that ground conditions and climate scenarios are the major sources of uncertainty for high-resolution permafrost mapping.
COMPANG: automated comparison of orientations

A search for similar orientations of a three-dimensional object is a usual task in structure analysis. An example is a comparison of peaks of rotation functions in molecular replacement. An automated comparison of orientations defined as a list or several lists of corresponding Eulerian angles can be performed using the interactive program COMPANG. When calculating the closeness of orientations, this program allows one to take into account the symmetry operations of the space group as well as non-crystallographic symmetry. The similarity of orientations can be considered at a given accuracy, thus allowing a user to identify the groups of close orientations, i.e. their clusters. The size of such clusters can be used as a criterion to choose the correct orientation in difficult cases of molecular replacement.
Evaluating the anti-nutritive effect of non-starch polysaccharides (NSP) correlated with the nutritional, digestive and productive performance indices in broilers

The aim of this experiment was to assess the antinutritive effect of non-starch polysaccharides (NSP) from wheat grains on productive and digestive indices in broilers. The proportion of wheat into the feeding mixture was between 0 and 40%. Also the correlation coefficients between different digestive indices (e.g. intestinal viscosity) and NSPs, NSPi and NSPt as a result from participation in various proportions in the structure of wheat feed (0-40%) were closely analysed. The increase in the NSP content of broiler feed resulted in feed consumption decreases by up to 4.94% in LE2 group who consumed feed containing 30% wheat. Body weight decreases (with 4.1%) following an increase in the NSPi and NSPs content of broiler feed, but the data is not statistically significant. The feed conversion increased at the experimental groups that have consumed feed containing at a level of 2.91%. At 3 weeks of age the intestinal viscosity increased (by 53.07%) at the experimental group, fed with 40% wheat, and at 6 weeks of age the duodenal viscosity increased by 49.04% and the jejuna viscosity increased by 33.15%. At the age of 3 weeks the correlation coefficients between the NSP content and viscosity in the duodenum are positive, the highest correlation coefficient was detected for NSPs (0.995), which shows that the viscosity of the intestinal tract is influenced by the feed content in NSPs. At 6 weeks of age the correlation coefficients between the NSP content and duodenal and jejunal viscosity are positive, the highest correlation coefficient being recorded for NSPs (0.942). Following these experiments we have concluded that wheat incorporation into broilers feed can change the main nutritional, productive and digestive indices especially until the age of 3 weeks, which recommends the need for enzymes incorporation on order to combat the non-nutritive effect of NSP.
DEVELOPMENTAL TRENDS IN THE ADHERENCE OF PERCEPTION TO WEBER’S LAW

Weber’s law, a basic psychophysical principle by which sensitivity to changes along a given physical dimension decreases when stimulus intensity increases, characterizes human adults' perception for virtually all sensory dimensions. Nevertheless, the developmental trajectory of its validity in perception has not yet been tested. Here we investigated how early in childhood perception becomes adherent to Weber’s law (i.e. minimum detectable increment in stimulus magnitude increases proportionally with stimulus magnitude). Children aged 5-10 and adults were asked to perceptually estimate the size of discs varying in radius. The just noticeable difference (JND) for a given size was determined in the method of adjustment by the variance of the estimations. JND increased with object size in accord with Weber’s law at all ages tested. However, while for adults JND increased linearly with stimulus magnitudes, young children exhibited a quadratic trend in the increment in JND with stimulus magnitude. The results thus document a fundamental difference in the way visual information is encoded by the developing perceptual system compared to the matured one, even at a very basic level of processing. We also showed that, similar to adults, visually-guided action in children violated Weber’s law, providing the first clear evidence for an early emergence of the dissociation between vision for perception and vision for action in children.
Age × stage‐classified demographic analysis: a comprehensive approach

Abstract This paper presents a comprehensive theory for the demographic analysis of populations in which individuals are classified by both age and stage. The earliest demographic models were age classified. Ecologists adopted methods developed by human demographers and used life tables to quantify survivorship and fertility of cohorts and the growth rates and structures of populations. Later, motivated by studies of plants and insects, matrix population models structured by size or stage were developed. The theory of these models has been extended to cover all the aspects of age‐classified demography and more. It is a natural development to consider populations classified by both age and stage. A steady trickle of results has appeared since the 1960s, analyzing one or another aspect of age × stage‐classified populations, in both ecology and human demography. Here, we use the vec‐permutation formulation of multistate matrix population models to incorporate age‐ and stage‐specific vital rates into demographic analysis. We present cohort results for the life table functions (survivorship, mortality, and fertility), the dynamics of intra‐cohort selection, the statistics of longevity, the joint distribution of age and stage at death, and the statistics of life disparity. Combining transitions and fertility yields a complete set of population dynamic results, including population growth rates and structures, net reproductive rate, the statistics of lifetime reproduction, and measures of generation time. We present a complete analysis of a hypothetical model species, inspired by poecilogonous marine invertebrates that produce two kinds of larval offspring. Given the joint effects of age and stage, many familiar demographic results become multidimensional, so calculations of marginal and mixture distributions are an important tool. From an age‐classified point of view, stage structure is a form of unobserved heterogeneity. From a stage‐classified point of view, age structure is unobserved heterogeneity. In an age × stage‐classified model, variance in demographic outcomes can be partitioned into contributions from both sources. Because these models are formulated as matrices, they are amenable to a complete sensitivity analysis. As more detailed and longer longitudinal studies are developed, age × stage‐classified demography will become more common and more important.
Improving Data Warehouse Performance Using Filesystem Technology with GZIP, LZJB and ZLE Compression

Data warehouse application is commonly used by many corporations as an analytical platform to develop marketing strategy and give advantage edge to their business. Many times, data warehouse platform need to manage huge amount of data as it needs to extract, load and transform enterprise data from many sources. To improve performance of data warehouse system, compression has been used in various ways, both at database layer or at filesystem layer. Compression brings an other benefit as it reduce storage capacity therefore reduce cost. However compression also add data processing that may impact to overall application response time. In this research, three different compression algorithms which are zle, lzjb and gzip were tested on data warehouse filesystem to understand the performance impact and the capacity saving benefit. Using swingbench as the benchmark tool and oracle database 12c, it shows that zle is the best compression algoritm with performance improvement of 92%, follows by lzjb with 78% performance improvement and gzip with 53% improvement. In terms of compression ratio, gzip can deliver the highest with 3.31 compression ratio, follows by lzjb with 2.17 compression ratio and zle with 1.55 compression ratio. AW.
Luiss Lab on European Economics LLEE Working Document no. 28 Monetary Policy and Stock-Price Dynamics in a DSGE Framework

This paper analyzes a small structural general equilibrium model in which stock prices have direct wealth effects on real activity, to assess what specific role (if any) they play in driving Optimal Monetary Policy. It is shown that in the face of a given swing in stock prices, the optimal policy response of a Central Bank pursuing price stability by controlling a short-term interest rate, depends in principle on the shocks underlying the observed dynamics. If the driving forces are supply shocks like one to technology or the marginal disutility of labor then the real effects of stock prices do not require a dedicated response and the optimal policy-rate dynamics is the same as the one emerging from the standard Representative-Agent (RA) set up, in which stock prices are disregarded by definition, being ineffective. On the contrary, if the driving force is a demand shock like a shock to the marginal utility of consumption, government expenditure or a fad that affects the equity premium, then positive stock-wealth effects require a dedicated response on the part of the Central Bank, more and above the reaction which would result as optimal in the Representative-Agent set up. Moreover, augmenting a standard Taylor Rule to include a reaction to stock-price growth reduces the monetary policy loss up to 65%, while reacting to deviations of real stock prices from a target level only yields minor gains, while making the economy more vulnerable to endogenous instability. (*) Luiss-Guido Carli University, Rome. Address for correspondence: Luiss-Guido Carli University, Via Tommasini 1, room 512, 00162 Rome, Italy. E-mail: snistico@luiss.it; url: http://www.snistico. altervista.org I wish to thank Giorgio Di Giorgio for his trust and friendship and his precious comments on earlier drafts, Peter Ireland for crucial suggestions in terms of notes and MATLAB codes, Lucio Sarno and Jan Woodley for the hospitality at the Warwick Business School. Marco Airaudo, Barbara Annicchiarico, Fabrizio Coricelli, Francesco Lippi, Luigi Marattin, Fabrizio Mattesini, Alberto Petrucci, Alessandro Piergallini, Gustavo Piga, Francesco Sangiorgi and Marco Spallone for very helpful comments and discussions. Any remaining errors are, of course, my sole responsibility. An earlier version of this paper, deeply revised, was circulated under the title “Monetary Policy and Stock Prices in a DSGE Framework", and presented at the conference “Politica Monetaria, Banche e Istituzioni", held at Luiss University on May 21st 2004.
A Perspective on the Consequences for Insect Herbivores and Their Natural Enemies When They Share Plant Resources

Thousands of insect species consume both animal and plant-derived food resources. However, little recognition is given to the fact that omnivory is a general feeding strategy common to all higher trophic levels. Species in multitrophic interactions can all directly rely on the same plant resources. Nonetheless, little is known about the effect of a change in the relative abundance of a shared plant resource on trophic dynamics. Here we describe how a relative change of resource availability can affect multitrophic interactions and we emphasise its importance. Changes in multitrophic interactions can be induced by unequal alterations of individual fitness across trophic levels, possibly leading to changes in population structure of interacting species. At least ten ecological mechanisms can be involved and these are explored here. It is concluded that shared plant resources that are differentially used over several trophic levels have the potential to modify community structure and energy flow within food webs and ecosystems in more complex ways than previously recognised. The synthesis presented here provides an understanding of this complexity and can lead to improved deployment of biodiversity when manipulating food webs to protect ecological communities or to enhance ecosystem services such as biological control of agricultural pests.
OPERATIONALISING CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY (CSR) AND THE DEVELOPMENT DEBATE

A considerable amount of attention has been paid to the construct of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and yet research on the precise measurement of CSR has remained limited. Measures have been hampered by a lack of clarity in theoretical frameworks and empirical methods for the CSR construct. Given that the empirical study of CSR measurement is in an undeveloped state, this research describes efforts to justify and prove the relationship between measurement items and the construct. Based on a study among Malaysian stakeholders, this research conceptualises CSR as a formative construct consisting of eight dimensions: process, policy, values, environment, personal, profit, people and politics. The analyses reveal alternative approaches from a conceptual and methodological standpoint that makes clear the danger of misspecifying formative models as reflective, or vice versa. In this regard, it is proposed that the agenda and scope of CSR, as well as the measures used to implement it, are a manifestation of the formative construct that corporations have to operationalise in order to perform CSR better or more efficiently.
Crime Danger Management in Iran's Criminal Law and Islam's Legal Instructions

Crime danger management is one of the new concepts of the criminal justice domain which has been introduced since the beginning of the 1990s. After the possibility of achievement of the remedial goals of punishments was questioned and the necessity of criminal justice system's expense control was clear, the atmosphere for the appearance of the administrative approaches in criminal justice domain was prepared. In this approach, the crime is considered a common and normal behavior in the society and the criminals are categorized and managed based on the danger rate and the crime repetition possibility. Iran's criminal legislation system, in spite of the lack of the necessary infrastructures for evaluation and management of the crime danger in different rules and regulations, has approached the issue unsystematically. The dangerous state possesses two aspects: the criminal aspect which implies condition produced in the person by the coincidence of the crime factors, and the social compatibility which means one's compatibility and sociability level. But, recently, what inferred from the rules and regulations is the change of the dangerous state concept and act upon this concept in order to manage the crime commitment danger in the different levels of the criminal justice system which intends to manage and control the endangered groups and supply the public security putting aside the diagnosis and treatment of the positivist approach. In Islam's criminal jurisprudence like the other criminal systems, concerning the crime danger management, solutions like increased penalties in case of the reoffending or determining debilitating punishments like execution or life sentence have been predicted.
Modelling for Determination of Fe Uptake by Brassica chinensis Jusl var. parachinensis (Bailey) Tsen & Lee (Flowering White Cabbage)

The study was conducted to determine the best model suitable for the determination of ferrum uptake in Brassica chinensis (flowering white cabbage). A nonlinear regression model was selected to determine the amount of ferrum absorbed by each part of the Brassica chinensis plant namely the leaves, stems and roots. The Levenberg-Marquardt method was used to perform the nonlinear least square fit. This method employs information on the gradients and hence requires specification of the partial derivatives. A suitable model was obtained from the exponential regression model. The polynomial model was found to be appropriate for leaves, the mono-exponential model was suitable for stems and the simple exponential model for roots. The residual plots and the normal probability plots from each of the models indicated no substantial diagnostic problems, so it can be concluded that the polynomial and exponential regression models provide adequate fit to determine data on heavy metal uptake by the flowering white cabbage.
Cloak Encryption in Apache

The tremendous growth of mobile devices has a pre-generated new form of security flaws. The manifest-based permission in Android devices is one of the hefty security threats among all.We propose cloak protocol based encryption. We use exterior apache server for generating CSPRN and also we make use of the session id which will be very helpful in tracking user sessions and it will be difficult for the hackers to crack the file. For multiple user registrations, we define a new way of two-dimensional graphical authentications using a one-time password with the session ID to keep track of users. With this, the user can securely transceiver messages.
Robotic Vision By Using Bee Algorithm

With the development of technologies, robots have played an important role in many fields of the society. They help people to deal with a large amount of work, especially operate in the extremely dangerous environment instead of people. For a robot, effective obstacle avoidance is still a challenge in the development of robot. The existing systems sometimes combine with multi-devices to conquer this challenge so that the expensive cost has been as a negative factor that cumbers the application of robot. For this purpose, find a way with the low equipment requirement but still having the high accuracy is essential. Optic flow as another algorithm coming from bee vision has been used to help robots avoid obstacles for many years. And it owns many advantages. This study presents a system based on the optic flow is developed to avoid obstacle in the view-field of the robot. The main point in this thesis is to show how the system works under an assumed environment for robot navigation, and compare the results to Thomas’ to see whether the low equipment requirement can also achieve the purpose of avoiding obstacles.
A Novel Fingerprint Image Compression Technique Using Run-Length and Entropy Coding

Image compression is currently a prominent topic for both military and commercial researchers. Due to rapid growth of digital media and the subsequent need for reduced storage and to transmit the image in an effective manner Image compression is needed. Image compression attempts to reduce the number of bits required to digitally represent an image while maintaining its perceived visual quality. Biometrics has physiological characteristics means it includes of latent fingerprint recognition and verification and behavioral characteristics means it includes voice and signature. A new fingerprint compression algorithm based on Run-Length Encoding (RLE) with Patch Separation representation is introduced. RLE is based on the idea to replace a long sequence of the same symbol by a shorter sequence and is a good introduction into the image compression field for newcomers. The RLE Finger print compression algorithm first construct a Independent Component Analysis (ICA) Patch Extraction for predefined fingerprint image patches to overcome the dictionary creation. RLE is suited for image compressing any type of Latent fingerprint regardless of its information content, but the content of the data will affect the compression ratio achieved by RLE.