Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Spatiotemporal Variation in Precipitation and Water Vapor Transport Over Central Asia in Winter and Summer Under Global Warming

Under the background of global warming, the studies of quantitative water vapor transport characteristics in arid and semi-arid Central Asia are rare. We examine the spatiotemporal variation of precipitation in Central Asia from 1979 to 2017 based on Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) and circulation reanalysis data. We simulate the sources and transport of water vapor in different regions of Central Asia in winter and summer using the Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (HYSPLIT) model. The seasonal variation in precipitation over the whole region of Central Asia shows a single minimum in September, with little change in the amount of precipitation in other months; however, there are clear regional and seasonal differences in precipitation in western (region I) and eastern (region II) Central Asia. In region I, the maximum and minimum amounts of precipitation are observed in winter and summer, respectively, whereas in region II, the maximum amount of precipitation occurs in summer and the minimum in winter. The amount of precipitation in winter increased significantly more than the amount of precipitation in summer in both regions I and II from 1979 to 2017. Quantitative calculations of water vapor transport show that Europe and the North Atlantic Ocean are the largest sources of water vapor for regions I and II and contribute > 50% of the transport of water vapor in both winter and summer. The contribution of water vapor from other sources varies greatly in different seasons. For region I, the second highest contribution to water vapor in winter is transport from the South Atlantic Ocean, while in summer is from the Arctic Ocean and northern Asia. For region II, water vapor from the local area (Xinjiang) makes an important contribution in summer. These differences in the transport of water vapor are related to seasonal adjustments in the atmospheric circulation system. In winter, straight westerly winds can bring large amounts of water vapor from the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean and Caspian seas. In summer, the northerly currents from the Arctic Ocean are strong due to the anticyclonic circulation maintained in Central Asia. The water vapor flux budget across each border and the net budget in region I are higher than those in region II in winter. The response of water vapor transport to global warming in Central Asia shows a north shift during past 40 years.
FastFE: Accelerating ML-based Traffic Analysis with Programmable Switches

Modern traffic analysis applications are usually designed to identify malicious behaviors by inferring sensitive information with machine learning (ML) techniques from network traffic, and they are of great importance to security with the growing use of encryption and other evasion techniques that make classic content-based analysis infeasible. However, with the soaring throughput of networks reaching hundreds of Gbps, it becomes more and more challenging for traffic analysis applications to keep up with today's high-speed large-volume network traffic. In particular, existing feature extractor components in traffic analysis are suffering from undesirable communications, storage, and computation bottleneck. To this end, this paper presents FastFE, a high-speed feature extractor that leverages the capability of new-generation programmable switches to generate desired traffic features flexibly and efficiently. We provide a set of general, easy-to-use, and expressive interfaces for operators to express which traic features they desire, and a policy enforcement engine that can effectively translate these policies into underlying primitives in programmable switches and commodity servers. Our case study on a state-of-the-art ML-based traffic analysis application, Kitsune, demonstrates the significant advancement of FastFE and its low overheads. As an ongoing work, we are working on a full prototype design and implementation, and hope FastFE can serve as a crucial build block for future ML-based traffic analysis applications.
Interactive Alignment and Lexical Triggering of Code-Switching in Bilingual Dialogue

When bilingual speakers use two languages in the same utterance, this is called code-switching. Previous research indicates that bilinguals’ likelihood to code-switch is enhanced when the utterance to be produced (1) contains a word with a similar form across languages (lexical triggering) and (2) is preceded by a code-switched utterance, for example from a dialogue partner (interactive alignment/priming of code-switching). Both factors have mostly been tested on corpus data and have not yet been studied in combination. In two experiments, we therefore investigated the combined effects of interactive alignment and lexical triggering on code-switching. In Experiment 1, Dutch-English bilinguals described pictures to each other in a dialogue game where a confederate’s code-switching was manipulated. The participants were free to use either Dutch, English, or a combination of Dutch and English in describing the pictures, so they could voluntarily code-switch or not. The pictures contained a cognate [e.g., roos (rose)], a false friend [e.g., rok (skirt, false friend with rock)], or a control word [e.g., jas (coat)]. Participants code-switched more often when the confederate had just code-switched (indicating interactive alignment). They also code-switched more often when cognates were involved, but only when the confederate had just code-switched. This indicates that lexical triggering is driven by interactive alignment. False friends did not enhance the likelihood of code-switching. Experiment 2 used a similar dialogue game with participants from the same population but focused specifically on how to account for interactive alignment of code-switching. Rather than aligning on their dialogue partner’s pragmatic act of code-switching, bilinguals aligned on the language activation from the utterance produced by their dialogue partner. All in all, the results show how co-activation of languages at multiple levels of processing together influence bilinguals’ tendency to code-switch. The findings call for a perspective on bilingual language production in which cross-speaker and cross-language processes are combined.
Eurasian lynx natal den site and maternal home‐range selection in multi‐use landscapes of Norway

In carnivores, securing suitable den sites with associated early maternal home ranges is important for successful reproduction, and understanding natal den site selection is essential to ensure that these habitats are protected from human disturbance. This study investigated Eurasian lynx Lynx lynx natal den site selection across multiple use landscapes in Norway and explores whether the selection of early maternal home ranges across southern Norway involved a trade-off of security for access to their preferred prey species, roe deer Capreolus capreolus. The characteristics of natal dens and home ranges from 33 reproductive events were quantified across south-eastern and northern Norway. Natal dens were located in terrain further from the most accessible and disturbed areas (public roads) and in terrain more rugged than generally available. Early maternal home ranges were characterized by low human and low road density in rugged terrain and a selection for areas associated with higher or lower roe deer densities was not important in our analysis. Humans are the dominant cause of lynx mortality throughout Norway and our findings suggest that female lynx primarily chose areas that limited their interaction with people during the denning period.
Enhanced Myogenic Constriction in the SHR Preglomerular Vessels Is Mediated by Thromboxane A2 Synthesis

Background Spontaneously Hypertensive Rats (SHR) have chronically elevated blood pressures at 30 weeks of age (systolic: 191.0 ± 1.0, diastolic: 128.8 ± 0.9). However, despite this chronic malignant hypertension, SHR kidneys remain relatively free of pathology due to having an augmented myogenic constriction (MC). We hypothesized that the enhanced MC in the SHR preglomerular vessels was due to increased prostaglandin and decreased nitric oxide (NO) synthesis, providing renal protection. Methods SHR and Wistar Kyoto (WKY) arcuate and mesenteric arteries were treated with indomethacin (prostaglandin synthesis inhibitor), N omega-nitro-L-arginine (L-NNA, NO synthase inhibitor), and nifedipine (L-type calcium channel blocker); and MC was measured in these vessels. The role of endothelium in MC was examined by removing endothelium from WKY and SHR preglomerular and mesenteric arteries using human hair, and measuring MC. We also studied the source of prostaglandin in the SHR by treating endothelium-removed arcuate arteries with indomethacin and furegrelate (thromboxane synthase inhibitor). Results MC was enhanced in the SHR preglomerular vessels but not the mesenteric arteries. Indomethacin and LNNA removed the enhanced MC in the SHR. Nifedipine also inhibited MC in both WKY and SHR arcuate and mesenteric arteries. Removing endothelium did not change MC in either arcuate or mesenteric arteries of WKY and SHR rats; and did not remove the augmented MC in the SHR arcuate arteries. Indomethacin and furegrelate decreased MC in endothelium-removed SHR arcuate arteries and obliterated the enhanced MC in the SHR. Conclusion The enhanced MC in the SHR arcuate arteries was due to thromboxane A2 synthesis from the tunica media and/or adventitia layers. MC was not dependent on endothelium, but was dependent on L-type calcium channels. Nevertheless, SHR arcuate arteries displayed differential intracellular calcium signaling compared to the WKYs.
Perfectly sampling k ≥ (8/3 + o(1))Δ-colorings in graphs

We present a randomized algorithm which takes as input an undirected graph G on n vertices with maximum degree Δ, and a number of colors k ≥ (8/3 + oΔ(1))Δ, and returns – in expected time Õ(nΔ2logk) – a proper k-coloring of G distributed perfectly uniformly on the set of all proper k-colorings of G. Notably, our sampler breaks the barrier at k = 3Δ encountered in recent work of Bhandari and Chakraborty [STOC 2020]. We also discuss how our methods may be modified to relax the restriction on k to k ≥ (8/3 − є0)Δ for an absolute constant є0 > 0. As in the work of Bhandari and Chakraborty, and the pioneering work of Huber [STOC 1998], our sampler is based on Coupling from the Past [Propp&Wilson, Random Struct. Algorithms, 1995] and the bounding chain method [Huber, STOC 1998; H'aggstr'om& Nelander, Scand. J. Statist. , 1999]. Our innovations include a novel bounding chain routine inspired by Jerrum’s analysis of the Glauber dynamics [Random Struct. Algorithms, 1995], as well as a preconditioning routine for bounding chains which uses the algorithmic Lovász Local Lemma [Moser&Tardos, J.ACM, 2010].
Contribution à la détection de concepts sur des images utilisant des descripteurs visuels et textuels. (Contribution to concept detection on images using visual and textual descriptors)

This thesis is dedicated to the problem of training and integration strategies of several modalities (visual, textual), in order to perform an efficient Visual Concept Detection and Annotation (VCDA) task, which has become a very popular and important research topic in recent years because of its wide range of application such as image/video indexing and retrieval, security access control, video monitoring, etc. Despite a lot of efforts and progress that have been made during the past years, it remains an open problem and is still considered as one of the most challenging problems in computer vision community, mainly due to inter-class similarities and intra-class variations like occlusion, background clutter, changes in viewpoint, pose, scale and illumination. This means that the image content can hardly be described by low-level visual features. In order to address these problems, the text associated with images is used to capture valuable semantic meanings about image content. Moreover, In order to benefit from both visual models and textual models, we propose multimodal approach. As the typical visual models, designing good visual descriptors and modeling these descriptors play an important role. Meanwhile how to organize the text associated with images is also very important. In this context, the objective of this thesis is to propose some innovative contributions for the task of VCDA. For visual models, a novel visual features/descriptors was proposed, which effectively and efficiently represent the visual content of images/videos. In addition, a novel method for encoding local binary descriptors was present. For textual models, we proposed two kinds of novel textual descriptor. The first descriptor is semantic Bag-of-Words(sBoW) using a dictionary. The second descriptor is Image Distance Feature(IDF) based on tags associated with images. Finally, in order to benefit from both visual models and textual models, fusion is carried out by MKL efficiently embed. [. ]
Teaching on the Intersection of Digital Humanities and Visualization

The increasing value of information visualization techniques to support investigating quantitative research questions in humanities applications is well-documented (Jänicke et al., 2017; Windhager et al., 2019). At the same time, it is important to make (digital) humanities scholars literate in dealing with visualizations to ensure that accurate conclusions can be drawn. In order to make younger generations ready for interdisciplinary work in a digital humanities context, I taught a module that attracted both computer science and humanities students. This article reflects on the most important aspects in teaching the course throughout three years
Division of labour in the matabele ant Megaponera foetens (Fabr.) (Hymenoptera Formicidae)

Mated workers are absent in colonies of Megaponera foetens and reproduction is carried out exclusively by a lone queen. The worker caste is polyphenic with a continuous, bimodal frequency distribution of body sizes. Since physical and temporal polyethism was continuous, only one caste could be distinguished in the workers, and the boundaries of subcastes were arbitrary. The origin of polymorphism in this species may be related to its dietary preference for socially defended prey. M. foetens has 30 behaviours that contribute to colony labour. Most are executed without interaction between colony members, but foraging raids show indirect co-operation. Physical polyethism is due to size matching between the workers and the objects with which they work, especially brood stages, and is caused by purely physical constraints on workers' efficiencies in executing different tasks imposed by their various sizes. Allometry of the mandibles allows them to serve different functions in ants of different sizes. Age polye.
Effect of Increased Productivity on the Abundances of Trophic Levels

Increasing productivity can have a variety of effects on the abundances of higher trophic levels. Previous work, based on models with one type per trophic level, has suggested that increasing nutrient input to the lowest trophic level (1) always increases the abundance of the highest trophic level and (2) increases the abundances of levels that are an even number of levels below the top, while leaving others unchanged. This article investigates how these predictions are altered by the presence of different species or types (i.e., heterogeneity) within trophic levels. The models investigated are Lotka-Volterra-type models of food webs with two or three trophic levels and one or two types per level. Less complete results are derived for models with more levels and more types per level. Several different food web structures may cause the highest level to be independent of nutrient input or actually decrease with nutrient input. However, the majority of possible food web configurations with two species on some or all levels can produce productivity-abundance relationships similar to those obtained when trophic levels are homogeneous. Factors other than heterogeneity within levels can affect the productivity abundance relationships; these factors and available information on relationships in nature are discussed.
Individual selection, kin selection, and the shifting balance in the evolution of warning colours: the evidence from butterflies

It is difficult to imagine how warning colours evolve in unpalatable prey. Firstly, novel warningly coloured variants gain no protection from their colours, since predators have not previously encountered and learnt their colour patterns. This leads to a frequency-dependent disadvantage of a rare variant within a species. Secondly, novel warningly coloured variants may be more conspicuous than non-aposematic prey. Nevertheless, it is obvious that many palatable butterflies have bright colours used in intraspecific communication and in duping predators. Other palatable butterflies are already warningly coloured. Should such butterflies evolve unpalatability, perhaps because of a host-plant shift, these bright colours would be preadapted to a warning role. Warning colours could then continue to evolve by enhancement of memorable characteristics of these patterns, or by mimicry. Even within lineages of warningly coloured, unpalatable butterflies, colour patterns have continued to evolve rapidly. This diversity of warning colour patterns could have evolved in a number of ways, including individual and kin selection, and by the shifting balance. Evidence for these mechanisms is discussed, as are the similarities between the evolution of warning colours and more general evolutionary processes, including sexual selection and speciation.
High genetic diversity and extreme differentiation in the two remaining populations of Habromys simulatus

Abstract The Jico crested-tailed mouse (Habromys simulatus) is an arboreal rodent endemic to Mexico, with only 2 known extant populations restricted to montane cloud forests in the states of Hidalgo and Oaxaca. The habitat of this species has been reduced and fragmented as a result of anthropogenic activities, isolating populations and likely decreasing their sizes. We evaluated the effects of such isolation by analyzing the genetic diversity and structure of H. simulatus using 10 microsatellite loci. DNA was obtained from 52 samples from both populations. Despite the isolated and fragmented nature of the species, we found high levels of genetic diversity (HNei = 0.732), similar to those reported in other endangered species with fragmented distributions. Genetic differentiation was significant (FST = 0.178) and number of migrants was negligible (NmFST = 0.196), a result supported by an assignment test and a factorial correspondence test. Molecular analysis of variance showed that 82% of genetic variation was distributed within populations, not unexpected given that each of the individuals' genotypes was distinct. Individuals within each population were mostly unrelated. The smallest population showed evidence of genetic bottleneck. We found evidence of detrimental genetic processes such as allelic fixation, genetic drift, and inbreeding. Our results strongly suggest that each of the 2 populations is a unique genetic entity that must be considered a distinct evolutionary unit. Unfortunately, both populations are at high risk of extinction, primarily due to habitat loss and population decline.
Processing Losses, Carcass Quality, and Meat Yields of Broiler Chickens Receiving Diets Marginally Deficient to Adequate in Lysine Prior to Marketing

Abstract A feed based on com, soybean meal, and sesame meal containing . 85% lysine was supplemented with L-lysine HCl to provide . 95 and 1.05% of total lysine. Each lysine level was given to broilers from 28 to 42 days of age in which the sexes were reared separately. No differences occurred in BW because of lysine, but feed conversion decreased as the lysine level increased. The holding loss prior to slaughter was greater with the birds that had received . 95% lysine versus those that had received . 85 and 1.05% lysine, respectively; however, no effects were detected on the chilled-carcass yield after processing. The extent of carcass finish increased as the lysine decreased. The fat content of the whole chilled carcass increased along with finish, while protein and ash were to the reverse. The percentage of fat in the skin and in the thigh meat were altered in parallel with the whole carcass, but the breast meat was unaffected. Cutting sample carcasses into commercial parts revealed that the proportions of breast and thigh increased with lysine at the expense of back both on a raw and a cooked basis. The cooked meat from the breast, wings, and back increased, the skin decreased. Both sexes responded similarly to lysine.
Vehicle Perception: Localization, Mapping with Detection, Classification and Tracking of Moving Objects

Perceiving or understanding the environment surrounding of a vehicle is a very important step in building driving assistant systems or autonomous vehicles. In this thesis, we study problems of simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) with detection, classification and tracking moving objects in context of dynamic outdoor environments focusing on using laser scanner as a main perception sensor. It is believed that if one is able to accomplish these tasks reliably in real time, this will open a vast range of potential automotive applications. The first contribution of this research is made by a grid-based approach to solve both problems of SLAM with detection of moving objects. To correct vehicle location from odometry we introduce a new fast incremental scan matching method that works reliably in dynamic outdoor environments. After good vehicle location is estimated, the surrounding map is updated incrementally and moving objects are detected without a priori knowledge of the targets. Experimental results on datasets collected from different scenarios demonstrate the efficiency of the method. The second contribution follows the first result after a good vehicle localization and a reliable map are obtained. We now focus on moving objects and present a method of simultaneous detection, classification and tracking moving objects. A model-based approach is introduced to interpret the laser measurement sequence over a sliding window of time by hypotheses of moving object trajectories. The data-driven Markov chain Monte Carlo (DDMCMC) technique is used to solve the data association in the spatio-temporal space to effectively find the most likely solution. We test the proposed algorithm on real-life data of urban traffic and present promising results. The third contribution is an integration of our perception module on a real vehicle for a particular safety automotive application, named Pre-Crash. This work has been performed in the framework of the European Project PReVENT-ProFusion in collaboration with Daimler AG. A comprehensive experimental evaluation based on relevant crash and non-crash scenarios is presented which confirms the robustness and reliability of our proposed method.
Genetic Factors That Act As An Effect Modifier for Environmental Risk Factors of Obesity

Obesity is caused by a failure of complex interrelated homeostasis mechanisms that firmly control body weight and is triggered by multiple, overlapping and complex feeding mechanisms. Pathogenesis of obesity depends on a mutual complex interplay mainly between genetic variants and exposure to environmental risk factors. A minimum of 127 candidates for multiple polymorphic genes for obesity have been identified and characterized. Yet, conclusive and reliable evidence consistently linking gene-environment interactions and energy homeostasis remains inadequately investigated. This critical review therefore provides an up to date summary on current understanding of most common single-nucleotide polymorphisms at the most prominent obesity candidate genes that act as an effect modifier for environmental risk factors; namely leptin, ghrelin, β3-adrenergic receptor, and proopiomelanocortin genes.