Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Genetic Alterations in Pesticide Exposed Bolivian Farmers

Background Pesticides are of concern in Bolivia because of increasing use. Frequent intoxications have been demonstrated due to use of very toxic pesticides, insufficient control of distribution and sale and little knowledge among farmers of protective measures and hygienic procedures. Method Questionnaires were applied and blood tests taken from 81 volunteers from La Paz County, of whom 48 were pesticide exposed farmers and 33 non-exposed controls. Sixty males and 21 females participated with a mean age of 37.3 years (range 17–76). Data of exposure and possible genetic damage were collected and evaluated by well known statistical methods, controlling for relevant confounders. To measure genetic damage chromosomal aberrations and the comet assay analysis were performed. Results Pesticide exposed farmers had a higher degree of genetic damage compared to the control group. The number of chromosomal aberrations increased with the intensity of pesticide exposure. Females had a lower number of chromosomal aberrations than males, and people living at altitudes above 2500 metres seemed to exhibit more DNA damage measured by the comet assay. Conclusions Bolivian farmers showed signs of genotoxic damage, probably related to exposure to pesticides. Due to the potentially negative long term health effects of genetic damage on reproduction and the development of cancer, preventive measures are recommended. Effective control with imports and sales, banning of the most toxic pesticides, education and information are possible measures, which could help preventing the negative effects of pesticides on human health and the environment.
Nest survival of birds in an urban environment in New Zealand

We compared nest survival of three urban bird species over two seasons in Dunedin City: silvereyes (Zosterops lateralis), a recent self-introduced native that is very abundant; blackbirds (Turdus merula), an abundant exotic species; and fantails (Rhipidura fuliginosa), a native species that occurs in relatively low numbers in some urban habitats. We also used artificial nests to compare nest predation rates between residential gardens and bush fragments isolated within a residential matrix. Silvereye nests had highest survival (daily survival probability = 0.98), with early nests and nests situated higher in trees having higher survival. Blackbird nest survival was lower (0.966); higher nests had better survival. Fantail nest survival varied significantly between years (0.908 in 2006-07 and 0.987 in 2007-08). Predation was a major cause of fantail nest failure, despite fantail nests being highest off the ground (mean = 4.2 m cf. 2.8 m for blackbirds and 2.2 m for silvereyes). Mortality of fantails during the week following fledging was high (41%). Low nest and juvenile survival may result in low abundance of fantails in Dunedin City. Predation of artificial nests was unaffected by nest placement (central or peripheral in the tree/shrub) and was the same in gardens as in bush fragments, with rats (Rattus rattus), possums (Trichosurus vulpecula) and possibly mice (Mus musculus) identified as nest predators.
Experiments on Phyllotaxis. I. The Effect of Isolating a Primordium

Theories concerning the causes of phyllotaxis may be divided conveniently into two groups. According to those of the first group, the arrangement of the leaves depends upon some unknown properties of the stem or the stem-apex. According to those of the second group, the positions in which the leaf-primordia arise are determined by the positions of the older primordia with which they make contact, or of any other members below them with which they may be in contact, such as cotyledons. Among the theories of the first group is that of SCHIMPER and BRAUN, who suggested that spiral sequences were due to a spiral growth impulse which travelled up the stem, the leaves arising at regular intervals along the course of this spiral
Speed Index

Given the increased emphasis on transportation system operations, transportation agencies require effective operations performance measures. The purpose of the present research effort was to develop and explore the utility of a simple system operations performance measure that meets the following criteria: (a) it is measurable given current sensor deployment, (b) it is understandable to a wide range of individuals, (c) it is applicable on different functional classes of roadways, (d) it is scalable from the lane level up to a regional or statewide measure, and (e) it is independent of major assumptions or estimation techniques. The measure proposed and explored in this paper, the speed index, can be defined as the volume-weighted percentage of the speed limit at which a roadway location, zone, corridor, or even a region operated for a given time period. This measure was demonstrated to be effective in supporting numerous operations analysis activities, including an analysis of seasonal variations in traffic and an in-depth analysis of a single incident's impact on regional conditions. On the basis of the case study presented, it is concluded that the speed index is a viable measure that can be used to support state operations programs.
New perspectives in vertebrate paleoecology from a recent bone assemblage

Interpretations of vertebrate paleoecology depend on knowledge of taphonomical processes which alter the composition of the preserved fossil assemblage from that of the original community. Study of the potential fossil record of a recent mammal community in Amboseli National Park, Kenya, shows the effects of some of these biasing processes and demonstrates how a bone assemblage on a modern land surface can be a source of past and present ecological information. In the bone assemblage, species presence or absence and relative abundance differ from recorded living species occurrences and population sizes: only 74% of the extant species in the basin are identified in the bone sample, and carcass abundances vary significantly from known population sizes of the major herbivore species. Both biases appear to be strongly correlated to body size, and this results from greater destruction of bones of smaller animals within the weight range from about 1-1000 kg. This size-biasing against small species appears to be due primarily to the greater susceptibility of small bones to destruction by carnivore mastication, breakage through bioturbation (trampling), and physical and chemical processes of weathering. Size-biasing resulting from such primary processes can thus be inherited by buried bone assemblages whatever their final mode of deposition. The bone assemblage also provides information on the spatial distributions of the major herbivore species over six major habitats. Patterns of strong habitat specificity are accurately represented in the bone assemblage. However, the record for certain species is affected by their seasonal and diurnal habitat shifts so that their bone distributions do not match live census data. The Amboseli bone assemblage provides a modern analogue for taphonomical processes which may have affected fossil assemblages derived from paleo-land surfaces prior to fluvial transport. It also helps to define limits of resolution in interpreting paleoecological information from such fossil assemblages.
Low-light image enhancement based on joint convolutional sparse representation

Low-light image enhancement is a challenging problem in the field of computer vision. In order to obtain more pleasing enhancement results, a low-light image enhancement method via joint convolutional sparse representation is proposed. The method is based on the Retinex theory and improves the problem of insufficient constraints. More concretely, when estimating illumination, the joint convolution sparse representation is proposed as structure and texture constraints to obtain a structural image severed as illumination. Then, the adaptive gradient constraint is used to enhance the details of the reflection image. Experiments on a number of challenging low-light images are present to reveal the efficacy of our method and show its superiority over several state-of-the-arts on both subjective and objective assessments.
National Vaccination Campaigns Against Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza Outbreaks in Developing Nations

2 Abstract: Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza Type A H5N1 subtype is a viral zoonotic disease that has infected and killed birds and humans since late 2003. Vaccination is a disease mitigation measure with varying results depending on specific conditions pertaining to the affected locations. Vaccines can decrease viral excretion rates and transmission dynamics, increase infection resistance and reduce clinical disease symptoms. There are 7 critical points to consider in a national vaccination campaign. This measure is applicable after a comprehensive multifactorial situation-based assessment has been performed. These campaigns require well coordinated and properly resourced animal health services, regional and local logistical support and sufficient quantities of high quality, site-specific strain vaccines and trained labour.
Modeling Consumer Preference for Global Positioning System–Based Taxi Dispatching Service

Compared with traditional taxi services, a taxi dispatching service based on the Global Positioning System (GPS) provides a higher level of service and safety in transporting customers. This type of new service, however, requires taxi companies and wireless communication companies to take on return-on-investment risks. Whether this new service induces people to use taxi service more often or attracts new riders will influence significantly the decision to invest in the service. This paper identifies primary factors that affect consumer preference for using the new service in Taichung City, Taiwan, by analyzing consumer responses from a survey conducted in that city. Both cluster analysis and structural equation modeling (SEM) techniques were used to analyze the data. The results of cluster analysis established that GPS-based taxi dispatching service would draw customers who value quality of service. The SEM analysis verified that three constructs—vehicle comfort, convenience, and reliability—had positive relationships with consumers’ choice of taking GPS-based taxicabs. In contrast, the safety construct was related negatively to preference; that is, users did not perceive that taking GPS-based taxicabs was much safer. This finding was just the opposite of that anticipated by the Taiwan government and by academic and business sectors. These results can guide regulators and taxi organizations in improving the quality of taxicab services and public outreach programs. The data also can be used to identify peer cities for further comparison and analysis.
Signals Matter: Understanding Popularity and Impact of Users on Stack Overflow

Stack Overflow, a Q&A site on programming, awards reputation points and badges (game elements) to users on performing various actions. Situating our work in Digital Signaling Theory, we investigate the role of these game elements in characterizing social qualities (specifically, popularity and impact) of its users. We operationalize these attributes using common metrics and apply statistical modeling to empirically quantify and validate the strength of these signals. Our results are based on a rich dataset of 3,831,147 users and their activities spanning nearly a decade since the site's inception in 2008. We present evidence that certain non-trivial badges, reputation scores and age of the user on the site positively correlate with popularity and impact. Further, we find that the presence of costly to earn and hard to observe signals qualitatively differentiates highly impactful users from highly popular users.
A Noise-Immunity-Enhanced Analog Front-End for $36\times64$ Touch-Screen Controllers With 20- $\text{V}_{\text{PP}}$ Noise Tolerance at 100 kHz

This paper describes the design of an analog front-end (AFE) for capacitive touch-screen controllers that provide highly enhanced noise immunity. The proposed AFE mitigates severe noise interference using a multi-channel-driving (MCD) TX scheme and a noise-filtering RX structure. The MCD scheme with a frequency hopping technique modulates mutual capacitances in a touch-screen panel (TSP) using low-offset orthogonal sequences, spreading the noise interference. In the RX sensing block, a pre-filtering differential sensing method is employed to improve touch sensitivity and to reject common-mode noise. An incorporated RX modulation scheme performs the down-conversion of the capacitance signal and the multiplexing of subsequent blocks, which enables an efficient high-order noise filtering. An incremental <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\Delta \Sigma $ </tex-math></inline-formula> analog-to-digital converter is adopted to provide a high resolution and a scalable frame rate. The proposed AFE was fabricated in a 0.18-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu \text{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> CMOS process. The prototype achieves 20-V<sub>PP</sub> noise immunity against the external noise interference and provides 54-dB SNR and 120-Hz frame rate with a <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$36\times 64$ </tex-math></inline-formula> TSP. The prototype supports a supply voltage ranging from 2.7 to 3.3 V and consumes 94.5 mW from a 3.3-V supply.
Effect of species, cultivar and phenological stage of different forage legumes on herbage fatty acid composition

Abstract An experiment was conducted to evaluate the effects of species, cultivar, and phenological stage, on the concentration of fatty acid composition in different forages legumes. Four species and eight cultivars Vicia sativa L. (VS cv. Jose JO, and Nikian NI), Vicia Villosa Roth (VV cv.Haiymaker HA, and Hungivillosa HU) Trifolium incarnatum L. (TI cv. Viterbo VI, and Contea CO), and Trifolium alexandrinum L. (TAX cv Marmilla MA and Sacromonte SA) were compared. Overall the main factors which influence fatty acids (FA) profile appear to be forage species and phenological stage but we need to consider the numerous interaction with these factors; besides the second important FA (C16:0) did not change between different phenological stages whereas linoleic acid increases (about 50% P<0.01) and linolenic acid decreases (about 10% P<0.01) from vegetative to reproductive stage. We observe also a worsening effect (P<0.05) on unsaturated/saturated (UNSAT/SAT) ratio from vegetative to reproductive stage. In conclusion these studies demonstrate a significant genetic component to the level and pattern of fatty acid concentration as well as a key role of the association between phenological stage and cultivars which modulated the amplitude and the trend of fatty acid pattern.
The dark side of light. Light pollution kills leatherback turtle hatchlings

The leatherback turtle is the largest and most migratory of all sea turtles and deepest diving air-breathing animal. It has unique physiology which allows it to adapt to various habitats ranging from sub-polar to equatorial during its migrations. The leatherback turtle is also the only sea turtle where no cases of tumours have been diagnosed. These unique features add to the arguments for preservation of this endangered species. Here we discuss the effect of light pollution on leatherback turtle hatchlings in Tobago and the measures for their protection.
Identification of flanking markers for the stem rust resistance gene Sr6 in wheat.

The wheat (Triticum aestivum L. and T. turgidum L.) stem rust resistance gene Sr6 confers a high level of resistance against a wide range of races of Puccinia graminis Pers. :Pers. f. sp. tritici Eriks. and E. Henn. in North America. In this study, we report the identifi cation of fl anking markers for Sr6. We used a population of 139 recombinant inbred lines from the cross MN99394 × MN98550. A partial linkage map of chromosome 2D comprised Xgwm484, Xcfd77, Xcfd43, Xwmc453, Sr6, XwPt_4381, XwPt_0330, Xgpw94049, and Xgwm102. Four markers mapped distal to Sr6, while the other four were proximal within distances of 4.8 and 6.5 cM, respectively. Marker-assisted selection and pyramiding of Sr6 with other stem rust resistance genes could benefi t from the availability of Sr6fl anking markers.
Antarctic fish tissues preferentially catabolize monoenoic fatty acids

Tissues of Antarctic marine fishes are very high in lipids, predominantly triacylglycerols (TAG). In addition to conferring static lift to these swimbladderless fishes, these rich lipid stores long have been considered as an important caloric resource to the animals. We have performed in vitro measurements of the rates of oxidation of 14C-labeled carbohydrates and fatty acids by oxidative skeletal muscle and heart ventricle of an Antarctic teleost, Gobionotothen gibberifrons to assess the relative importance of these substrates to aerobic energy metabolism. Capacities for regeneration of ATP calculated from oxidation rates of these fuels clearly indicate that fatty acids are more effective substrates of energy metabolism than either glucose or lactate with both tissues. Substrate competition experiments conducted between the saturated fatty acid palmitate (16:0) and the monoenoic unsaturate oleate (18:1) comparing the oxidation rate of radiolabeled fatty acid in the presence and absence of unlabeled competitor demonstrate a clear preference of both tissue types for catabolism of the monounsaturated substrate. Measurements of maximal activity of the putative flux-generating enzyme of mitochondrial β-oxidation, carnitine palmitoyltransferase (CPT), with a variety of fatty acyl CoA esters also show significant preference for a monoenoic fatty acyl CoA, palmitoleoyl CoA (16:1). The general pattern of results suggests that monounsaturated fatty compounds are the most readily utilized substrates for energy metabolism by oxidation muscle tissues of this Antarctic species. © 1995 Wiley-Liss, Inc.
Fire Modeling: Where Are We? Where Are We Going?

Current trends in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling of fire are discussed, in particular the widening communication gap between model developers, model users, and the larger fire protection engineering community in regard to combustion and turbulence. The paper suggests steps that can be taken by all of these groups to improve the current situation and move forward to develop better fire models. Last year, I visited the Large Fire Lab at NIST to observe an experiment recreating the initial stages of the fire that killed 100 people in a Rhode Island nightclub in February, 2003 (1). One of the aims of the experiment was to test our fire model, the Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS), which was being used in the NIST investigation of the tragedy. I asked one of the technicians who was setting up the experiment, Lauren DeLauter, whether or not he expected to see flames emerge from a door at the rear of the test compartment. He said no, because the polyurethane foam lining the walls would burn rapidly, the compartment would become under-ventilated, and the unburned fuel gases would cool before reaching the exit. Because the mock-up was not designed to duplicate the geometry of the entire club, but rather the area in the immediate vicinity of the stage, his assessment did not contradict what was observed in the Rhode Island fire. Indeed, he was correct, whereas our model was wrong, in that it predicted flames emerging from the exit. Although it appears to many that numerical simulation is the cutting edge of fire protection engineering, many non-modelers are surprised to learn that our ability to reproduce fire phenomena via computer simulation lags our empirical understanding by about 10 years. Indeed, current generation zone and field (computational fluid dynamics or CFD) models address transport phenomena reasonably well, making them useful for many engineering applications. For example, FDS did successfully replicate many of the phenomena associated with the Rhode Island nightclub fire. However, it has not yet reached the point of reliably predicting, for large scale applications, such important phenomena as flame spread, extinction, suppression, and CO and smoke production, all of which demand more detailed chemistry and physics than are currently incorporated in the model. Hindering our efforts to move forward is the increasing level of miscommunication between modelers and experimentalists, scientists and engineers, and even professors and students. For various reasons, those who actually write the computer programs too often cannot or will not explain which algorithms work, which do not, and which have no effect at all on the results. This communication gap leads to unwarranted claims by end users who believe the models are predicting more than they actually are. Moving ahead will require that we bridge these gaps, so that all sectors of the fire and combustion
Biomass and leaf area in contrasting lodgepole pine forests

Bole, branch, foliage, root crown, and lateral root biomass of Pinuscontorta ssp. latifolia (Engelm. ex Wats.) Critchfield forests in southeastern Wyoming were estimated by a combination of aboveground dimension analysis, belowground planar intersect sampling, and soil coring. Total biomass of six stands ≥75 years old ranged from 123 to 180 Mg/ha, and roof:shoot ratios were much higher in two very dense stands than in four more open stands. Average proportions of biomass in boles, branches, foliage, woody roots, and fine roots were 61, 7, 6, 20, and 6%, respectively. Leaf area index ranged from 4.5 to 9.9. Leaf area per unit sapwood area ranged from 0.20 to 0.57 m2/cm2in stands of different densities, ages, and sites. Sapwood area was a more precise predictor of foliage biomass than was basal area for the low to moderate density stands, but was marginally inferior to basal area for two high density stands (>9000 trees/ha).
Synthesis of Application Speciﬁc Heterogeneous Pipelined Multiprocessor Systems

This paper describes a rapid design methodology to create a pipeline of pro-cessers to execute streaming applications. The methodology has two separate phases. The ﬁrst phase uses a heuristic to rapidly search through a large number of processor conﬁgurations (conﬁgurations diﬀer by the base processor, the additional instructions and cache sizes) to ﬁnd the near Pareto front. The second phase utilizes either the above heuristic or an ILP (Integer Linear Programming) formulation to search a smaller design space to ﬁnd an appropriate ﬁnal implementation. By the utilization of the fast heuristic with diﬀering runtime constraints in the ﬁrst phase, we rapidly ﬁnd the near Pareto front. The second phase provides either an optimal or a near optimal solution. Both the ILP formulation and the heuristic ﬁnd a system with the smallest area, within a designer speciﬁed runtime constraint. The system has eﬃciently explored design spaces with over 10 12 design points. We integrated this design methodology into a commercial design ﬂow and evaluated our approach with diﬀerent benchmarks (JPEG Encoder, JPEG De-coder and MP3 Encoder). For each benchmark, the near Pareto front was found in a few hours using the heuristic (took several days for the ILP). The results show that the average area error of the heuristic is within 2.5% of the optimal design points (obtained using ILP) for all benchmarks.