Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Optimum linear indices for non-linear profit functions

An iterative method is presented, based on the method of Moav and Hill (1966) to derive the optimum linear selection index for any number of traits with linear or non-linear profit functions. For non-linear profit functions the index weights will be functions of the trait means prior to selection and the selection intensity. Using the equations developed, the optimum selection index for three dairy cattle milk production traits was computed. Convergence was obtained after three to four iterations, and was robust to the starting values used for iteration. The ratio of expected genetic gains were only marginally different for selection intensities of 1 and 4 standard deviation units. Differences were greater for the index coefficients. All alternative indices tested gave lower gains in profit than the optimum index. For linear profit functions this index reduces to the standard linear index, and for two uncorrelated traits this index reduces to the index of Moav and Hill (1966).
Effect of gibberellin on vine behavior and crop production in seeded and seedless Vitis vinifera

In 1957, vines of Zinfandel, Red Malaga, Tokay, and Ribier grapes were sprayed, at four developmental stages, with gibberellin in a range of 0 to 25 ppm. In the spring of 1958, certain seeded varieties showed severe injury as a result of the higher concentrations of gibberellin. In 1958 and 1959, therefore, those experiments were followed up with the work reported in the present study, designed to determine the degree of recovery in vines injured by gibberellin. Cropping, vine vigor, and spring foliation were studied as indicators of recovery. Results showed that two seasons were usually required for vines to return to normal crop weights, pruning brush weights, spring foliation, and cluster counts. Experiments with seedless grapes—Thompson Seedless and Black Corinth—showed no injury to these varieties at concentrations of gibberellin as high as 100 ppm. (In one instance, a Thompson Seedless vine was sprayed at 1,000 ppm in two consecutive years, with no apparent damaging effect.) Thus, gibberellin proved very toxic to the seeded grapes studied, but nontoxic to the seedless. Little or no change in percentage of sugar or starch occurred in either seeded or seedless varieties, as determined by carbohydrate analysis of basal portions of canes during dormancy.
Implementation of variable data rates in transceiver for free-space optical LEO to ground link

FSO systems present many advantages like high data rate, license-free bandwidth and tap-proof communication allowing the download of vast amounts of data from LEO satellites. However, the atmospheric channel is quite challenging, because of spurious effects such as absorption, scattering and scintillation that in turn vary the link losses in correspondence to the elevation. In order to maximize the downlink throughput, it should start around 5° elevation. This leads to a design with suboptimal performance for higher elevations when constant data rates are used. Therefore, DLR is developing a system to adjust the data rate according to elevation and atmospheric channel conditions. This data rate variation is achieved by determining the maximum rate for higher elevation and then for lowering the data rates a bit-level repetition is performed. The presented system enables a fast transition between the different data rates. Additionally, this system allows the satellite to transmit data at rates even lower than those nominally supported by the physical transceiver. At the receiver side, the system complexity increases as it should be able to acquire, detect, and filter the signal for different data rates. DLR proposes a system that mirrors the operation of its transmitter counterpart by sampling the acquired signal at the maximum data rate. Then an FPGA processes the signal by majority decision algorithm followed by voting system that filters and detects the intended data rate in real-time. This enables replication and parallelization of the filtering and detection processes enabling the automatic detection of the received data rate. In order to provide noise stability, the transition between data rates is governed by a hysteresis process. This scheme allows the detection and selection of the proper data rate in the range of few microseconds for a system operating between 10 Gbps and 1.25 Gbps in steps of factor of 2, ignoring the propagation delays.
New Halecomorph (Actinopterygii, Neopterygii) from the Nusplingen Lithographic Limestone (Upper Jurassic, Late Kimmeridgian), Germany

ABSTRACT Early Mesozoic halecomorphs are highly diverse, but their taxonomy and phylogenetic relationships are still controversial. We describe here a new halecomorph taxon from the Late Jurassic (Kimmeridgian) Nusplingen Lithographic Limestone, southern Germany. Sanctusichthys rieteri, gen. et sp. nov., is characterized by the peculiar patterns of skull roofing bones and cephalic sensory canals, and a unique squamation made of tiny lepisosteoid-type scales with extremely or completely reduced ganoin layer. Very peculiarly, S. rieteri presents a series of bones placed between the frontals and the anamestic supraorbitals, one of them carrying a portion of the main supraorbital sensory canal between the frontal and nasal bones. These bones, here called parafrontals, are so far unknown in other actinopterygians. The new taxon resembles most closely several Late Jurassic Furo-like halecomorphs, which have been classified in the family Furidae and are currently placed in either of the controversial orders Ophiopsiformes or Ionoscopiformes. The close phylogenetic relationships between these taxa are confirmed in a cladistic analysis that retrieves Sanctusichthys within a broadly defined Ionoscopiformes, including the potentially independent Ophiopsiformes. Interestingly, these Furo-like halecomorphs are highly diverse in the Late Jurassic deposits of southern Germany, and they are especially well represented—with four species accounting for 15% of the actinopterygian taxa—in the Nusplingen quarry, which yields one of the three most diverse Jurassic assemblages of these fishes. The paleoecological significance of this high diversity can only be explored after solving the β-taxonomy and phylogenetic relationships of these Furo-like taxa.
Sex Differences in Human Ankle Stiffness During Standing Balance

The purpose of this study is to quantify sex differences in 2-dimensional (2D) ankle stiffness during upright standing balance and investigate the mechanisms for the differences. A dual-axis robotic platform, capable of perturbing the ankle and measuring the corresponding ankle torques in both the sagittal and frontal planes, was used to reliably quantify the 2D ankle stiffness while healthy young human subjects perform a range of standing balance tasks, specifically, ankle muscle co-contraction tasks, weight-bearing tasks, and ankle torque generation tasks. In all task conditions and in both planes of ankle motion, ankle stiffness in males was consistently greater than that in females. Among all 26 experimental conditions, all but 2 conditions in the frontal plane showed statistically significant sex differences. Further investigation on the normalized ankle stiffness, scaled by weight times height, suggests that while sex differences in ankle stiffness in the sagittal plane could be explained by sex differences in anthropometric factors as well as neuromuscular factors, the differences in the frontal plane are mostly explained by anthropometric factors. This study also demonstrates that the sex differences in the sagittal plane were significantly higher as compared to those in the frontal plane. The results in this study will provide a foundation for not only characterizing sex differences in ankle stiffness during locomotion, but also investigating sex differences in lower body stability and risk of ankle injury.
Identification of Characteristic Genomic Markers in Human Hepatoma HuH-7 and Huh7.5.1-8 Cell Lines

The human hepatoma-derived HuH-7 cell line and its derivatives (Huh7.5 and Huh7.5.1) have been widely used as a convenient experimental substitute for primary hepatocytes. In particular, these cell lines represent host cells suitable for propagating the hepatitis C virus (HCV) in vitro. The Huh7.5. 1-8 cell line, a subline of Huh7.5. 1, can propagate HCV more efficiently than its parental cells. To provide genomic information for cells’ quality control, we performed whole-genome sequencing of HuH-7 and Huh7.5. 1-8 and identified their characteristic genomic deletions, some of which are applicable to an in-house test for cell authentication. Among the genes related to HCV infection and replication, 53 genes were found to carry missense or loss-of-function mutations likely specific to the HuH-7 and/or Huh7.5. 1-8. Eight genes, including DDX58 (RIG-I), BAX, EP300, and SPP1 (osteopontin), contained mutations observed only in Huh7.5. 1-8 or mutations with higher frequency in Huh7.5. 1-8. These mutations might be relevant to phenotypic differences between the two cell lines and may also serve as genetic markers to distinguish Huh7.5. 1-8 cells from the ancestral HuH-7 cells.
Investigating Dark Energy Equation of State With High Redshift Hubble Diagram

Several independent cosmological data, collected within the last 20 years, revealed the accelerated expansion rate of the Universe, usually assumed to be driven by the so called dark energy, which, according to recent estimates, provides now about 70% of the total amount of matter-energy in the Universe. The nature of dark energy is yet unknown. Several models of dark energy have been proposed: a non-zero cosmological constant, a potential energy of some self interacting scalar field, effects related to the non-homogeneous distribution of matter, or effects due to alternative theories of gravity. Recently, it turned out that the standard flat ΛCDM is disfavored (at 4σ) when confronted with a high redshift Hubble diagram, consisting of supernovae of type Ia (SNIa), quasars (QSOs), and gamma ray-bursts (GRBs) (Lusso and Risaliti, 2016; Lusso et al., 2019; Risaliti and Lusso, 2019). Here we use the same data to investigate if this tension is confirmed, using a different approach: actually in Lusso and Risaliti (2016), Lusso et al. (2019), and Risaliti and Lusso (2019), the deviation between the best fit model and the ΛCDM model was noticed by comparing cosmological parameters derived from cosmographic expansions of their theoretical predictions and observed high redshift Hubble diagram. In this paper we use a substantially different approach, based on a specific parametrization of the redshift dependent equation of state (EOS) of dark energy component w(z). Our statistical analysis is aimed to estimate the parameters characterizing the dark energy EOS: our results indicate (at > 3σ level) an evolving dark energy EOS, while the cosmological constant Λ has a constant EOS, wΛ = −1. This result not only confirms the tension previously detected but shows that it is not an artifact of cosmographic expansions.
Cytochemical localization of nuclear actin of sperm and spermatids in urechis unicinctus

Abstract In this study, we found that sperm ball of Urechis unicinctus consisted of a somatic cell and spermatogenic cells. After separation from the sperm ball, individual spermatid floated freely in the coelomic fluid and differentiated into a mature sperm. Because of many nuclear vacuoles, spermatid nucleus was observed to be heterogeneous. Later, the spermatid nucleus condensed into the homogeneous round nucleus of the mature sperm. Perinuclear microtubules could be seen but did not seem to be organized into manchette microtubules. To understand the nature of nuclear condensation during spermiogenesis, the sperm and spermatids (spermiogenic cells) were treated with FITC‐phalloidin, or anti‐actin‐FITC, or labeled with anti‐actin immunogold particles (AAIP; 10 nm) followed by transmission electron microscopy or confocal laser scanning microscopy. The anti‐actin‐FITC and FITC‐phalloidin reactions occurred distinctly in the nuclei of both spermiogenic cells. FITC‐phalloidin reacted more intensely with acrosomes. The AAIP were incorporated mainly into nuclei of both cells sometimes showing local distribution in the nucleus. Nuclear vacuoles of spermatids disappeared progressively with condensation of the nucleus, as the number of incorporated AAIP/μm2 increased. These results suggest that nuclear actin microfilaments might be closely related to nuclear condensation.
Endophytes of Invasive Weeds:Pertinence to Classical Biological Control in India

Suppression of the water weed Salvinia molesta in India and control of the woody-perennial Cryptostegia grandiflora in Australia are two of the finest successes achieved through classical biological control (CBC). There is no guarantee, nevertheless, that CBC should always be successful in every situation. Though the enemy release hypothesis explains why invasive alien species thrive in exotic locations, there has never been a convincing explanation on the poor performance of some introduced natural enemies, in spite of the rigorous screening for their potential. Interestingly, Evans' endophyte-enemy release hypothesis provides enough clarification by implicating the absence of protective coevolved endophytes in weed populations in exotic locations. This review gives an introduction to endophytes and analyses the pertinence of the newly proposed hypothesis to CBC of weeds in India with examples.
Event-Based Robotic Grasping Detection With Neuromorphic Vision Sensor and Event-Grasping Dataset

Robotic grasping plays an important role in the field of robotics. The current state-of-the-art robotic grasping detection systems are usually built on the conventional vision, such as the RGB-D camera. Compared to traditional frame-based computer vision, neuromorphic vision is a small and young community of research. Currently, there are limited event-based datasets due to the troublesome annotation of the asynchronous event stream. Annotating large scale vision datasets often takes lots of computation resources, especially when it comes to troublesome data for video-level annotation. In this work, we consider the problem of detecting robotic grasps in a moving camera view of a scene containing objects. To obtain more agile robotic perception, a neuromorphic vision sensor (Dynamic and Active-pixel Vision Sensor, DAVIS) attaching to the robot gripper is introduced to explore the potential usage in grasping detection. We construct a robotic grasping dataset named Event-Grasping dataset with 91 objects. A spatial-temporal mixed particle filter (SMP Filter) is proposed to track the LED-based grasp rectangles, which enables video-level annotation of a single grasp rectangle per object. As LEDs blink at high frequency, the Event-Grasping dataset is annotated at a high frequency of 1 kHz. Based on the Event-Grasping dataset, we develop a deep neural network for grasping detection that considers the angle learning problem as classification instead of regression. The method performs high detection accuracy on our Event-Grasping dataset with 93% precision at an object-wise level split. This work provides a large-scale and well-annotated dataset and promotes the neuromorphic vision applications in agile robot.
Feasibility of CardioSecur®, a Mobile 4-Electrode/22-Lead ECG Device, in the Prehospital Emergency Setting

Background: This study explores the application of CardioSecur® (CS-ECG), a hand-held 4-electrode/22-lead ECG-device, in comparison with conventional 12-lead electrocardiogram (c12L-ECG) in patients with acute chest pain in the prehospital emergency setting. Methods: CS-ECG systems were provided for two physician-staffed emergency ambulances and parallel recordings of c12L-ECG and CS-ECG were obtained from all patients with acute chest pain. Treating emergency physicians were asked to evaluate the CS-ECG system with a standardized questionnaire. Following study completion, acquired ECGs were analyzed separately by two independent cardiologists blinded to all other medical records. Results: Over a period of 20 months a total of 203 patients were included in our study. According to a standardized questionnaire, 79% of emergency medical professionals preferred application of CS-ECG, with 87% of teams judging CS-ECG to be beneficial for patients. Morover, 79% of physicians reported a reduction in time to definitive diagnosis with implementation of CS-ECG. The majority of professional users attested user-friendliness and feasibility of CS-ECG in terms of easy general handling (94%), application (93%), and placement of electrodes (98%). During prehospital triage, both c12L-ECG and CS-ECG correctly identified 31 (91%) patients with ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). Conclusion: In this first pilot study, implementation of the CardioSecur®-ECG system in the prehospital emergency setting demonstrated feasibility and user-friendliness so that emergency teams generally preferred CS-ECG to c12L-ECG. Diagnostic yield of CS-ECG was similar to c12L-ECG recordings.
Knowledge discovery and management on online social networks and media

Xiaohui Tao a,d,*, Haoran Xie b, Yongrui (Louie) Qin c, Xujuan Zhou d and Yi Cai e a School of Sciences, University of Southern Queensland, Australia E-mail: xiaohui.tao@usq.edu. au b Department of Computing and Decision Sciences, Lingnan University, Hong Kong SAR E-mail: hrxie@ln.edu. hk c School of Computing and Engineering, University of Huddersfield, UK E-mail: y.qin2@hud.ac. uk d School of Management and Enterprise, University of Southern Queensland, Australia E-mail: xujuan.zhou@usq.edu. au e School of Software Engineering, South China University of Technology, China E-mail: ycai@scut.edu. cn
Convective boundary-layer height estimation from combined radar and Doppler lidar observations in VORTEX-SE

The Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment Southeast (VORTEX-SE) provides a wealth of long-duration, high-resolution, vertically pointing observations from active and passive ground-based remote sensing systems enabling characterization of the Atmospheric Boundary Layer (ABL) development over distinct regions that are well known for their relatively high tornado frequency. Application of the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) to BL height estimation in the convective regime (CBLH) of the diurnal cycle from S-band radar reflectivity observations1 has shown to yield accurate results under simple CBL conditions. In this work, we revisit the radar-EKF technique and investigate its main limitations. For example, during daytime clear-sky conditions such as those prevailing in the BL morning transition, weak turbulence leads to very low reflectivity returns, limiting application of this technique. Additionally, turbulent mixing layers capped with a residual layer, and/or multi-layer scenarios can lead the filter to lose track of the BL signature over time. Doppler Wind Lidar (DWL) observations of the vertical wind velocity variance2 provide complementary CBLH estimates to those of the radar-EKF combination, providing potential to disambiguate more complex convective cases. DWL estimates are, however, strongly influenced by the variance threshold selected. The complementarity of radar and DWL for CBLH estimation is studied in reference to radiosoundings.
Convergence Acceleration of Shifted LR Transformations for Totally Nonnegative Hessenberg Matrices

We design shifted LR transformations based on the integrable discrete hungry Toda equation to compute eigenvalues of totally nonnegative matrices of the banded Hessenberg form. The shifted LR transformation can be regarded as an extension of the extension employed in the well-known dqds algorithm for the symmetric tridiagonal eigenvalue problem. In this paper, we propose a new and effective shift strategy for the sequence of shifted LR transformations by considering the concept of the Newton shift. We show that the shifted LR transformations with the resulting shift strategy converge with order 2 − ε for arbitrary ε > 0.
PLASMA BIOCHEMISTRY PROFILES OF JUVENILE GREEN TURTLES (CHELONIA MYDAS) FROM THE BAHAMAS WITH A POTENTIAL INFLUENCE OF DIET

Abstract: Plasma biochemistry profiles aid health assessment of marine turtles, but knowledge of the influence of regional biological factors (e.g., habitat, diet) on marine turtle blood plasma values is limited. To investigate the influence of diet on plasma biochemistry values in juvenile green turtles (Chelonia mydas), we used carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes to provide a quantitative estimate of forage items in green turtles feeding at two distinct areas (Bonefish Hole and South Flats) in Bimini, Bahamas. Plasma samples were obtained from 13 turtles in Bonefish Hole (a mangrove tidal estuary) and 15 turtles in South Flats (an open water seagrass bed) in 2018. All turtles appeared outwardly healthy. Sessile filter feeders contributed the largest proportion of diet in Bonefish Hole, and seagrass contributed the highest proportion of diet in South Flats. Turtles at Bonefish Hole presented significantly lower cholesterol, total protein, phosphorus, triglycerides, and aspartate transaminase compared to South Flats. Across all turtles, those feeding primarily on red algae presented the highest uric acid and alkaline phosphatase, and turtles with a seagrass-dominated diet had the highest cholesterol. Understanding dietary influence on plasma biochemistry may help explain variances seen in local health and nutritional evaluations, and the trends reported can aid the interpretation of plasma analyte values in marine turtles.
POLYPLOIDY IN GYMNOSPERMS

The gymnosperms constitute a primitive group of seed plants which have a considerable evolutionary interest. A substantial amount of literature on the morphology of the group exists, but very little has been written about the various cytogenetic factors responsible for evolution within the group. Our knowledge of such factors is based solely on the studies of the present-day taxa which, indeed, offer but a mere apology for the glorious past of the group as a whole. In this communication the role of one such factor, polyploidy, has been evaluated. Polyploidy is found at three levels in gymnosperms: polyploid seedlings in the progeny of diploid species, isolated polyploid trees in otherwise strictly diploid species and lastly, polyploid species and genera. These will be discussed in turn.