Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sustained Swimming Ability of Larvae of Walleye (Stizostedion vitreum vitreum) and Yellow Perch (Perca flavescens)

Sustained swimming ability of limnetic larvae of walleye and yellow perch from Oneida Lake, New York, was compared in an experimental apparatus. The current velocity that 50% of the larvae could sustain in 1-hr tests was recorded for each 1-mm length class. Yellow perch larvae swam better than walleye larvae for length classes less than 9–10 mm total length (TL), but swimming ability of the two species was equal for length classes from 9 to 15 mm. Velocities that larvae under 9.5 mm TL could sustain were less than 3.0 cm/sec, and it was concluded that newly hatched young of both species would be subject to transport by lake currents of greater velocity. Relative swimming ability, expressed as the number of body lengths/sec that a larva could sustain for 1 hr, approached an asymptote between 3 and 4 lengths/sec for larvae longer than 9.5 mm. The greater swimming ability of newly hatched yellow perch larvae, compared with that of walleyes, appeared to be related to the smaller yolk sac of yellow perch at ha.
An architectural approach to the growth forms of Nothofagus pumilio (Nothofagaceae) along an altitudinal gradient

Variations in the architecture and axis structure of different growth forms of Nothofagus pumilio (Poepp. et Endl.) Krasser (Nothofagaceae) were studied along an altitudinal gradient. We evaluated the primary growth and branching pattern of annual shoots belonging to the main axis categories (trunk, main branches, and secondary (short) branches) of four growth forms developed at different altitudes (1200–1600 m a.s.l.) in northern Patagonia: (i) low shrubs at the high-altitude timberline, (ii) high shrubs at high altitude, (iii) low trees at mid-altitude slopes, and (iv) high trees at low-altitude single-species forests. Shoot structure and branch distribution along shoots were similar for all axis categories and growth forms. Significant differences between axis categories were found regarding the sizes of shoots, which decreased from trunk to secondary/short branches. For each axis category, shoots of similar size differed between growth forms in stem slenderness and internode length. The extent of diff.
Comparing physical quality of tilled and no-tilled soils in an almond orchard in southern Italy

No-tillage (NT) is an alternative way of reducing costs and lessening the burden of working the land, but in essence it is a method of sustainable land use in dryland cropping systems. The physical quality of the soil is the fundamental factor that defines the sustainability of agro-ecosystems, and its evaluation can be obtained using both capacitive and dynamic indicators. The main objectives of this study were: i) to assess the physical quality of the soil in an almond orchard where long-term different soil tillage systems and weed control methods, such as NT with chemical control and surface tillage (ST), were used; and ii) to compare the indicators under consideration with the proposed reference values, using the information gathered to evaluate the effects of NT and ST. The following physical properties were determined: bulk density, air capacity, macroporosity, plant available water capacity, relative field capacity, Dexter’s index, field saturated hydraulic conductivity, as well as the location (modal, median, and mean pore diameter) and shape (standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis) parameters which corresponded to the equivalent pore size distribution functions. Our results showed that the physical soil indicators adopted were sufficiently sensitive to identify tillage-induced changes and then to quantify the physical quality of rigid to moderately expansive agricultural soils. After thirty years of NT, a set of capacitive indicators, along with measurements of hydraulic conductivity, used in conjunction with an optimal pore volume distribution and the water release curve, unanimously classified the quality of the studied soil as optimal or near optimal .
Entropy‐based dispatching: academic insights and perspectives through bibliometric analysis

Entropy-based dispatching has attracted more and more attention from professional scholars and engineers. The quantity and quality of publications related to this topic are increasing rapidly. To accurately measure this growth, we use bibliometric tools to evaluate publications in the field from 1985 to 2019, based on the Science Citation Index Expanded database. They compare and analyse the relationship between dispatching problems and entropy theory in different research fields, and provide detailed overviews and discussions on hot topics and potential research value based on keywords, citations, H-index, journals, institutions, countries and authors. The analysis shows that the application of information entropy to the quantification of dynamic information in flexible manufacturing systems, noise processing in power systems and channel rate prediction has potential research value. The result reveals that universities in mainland China have made the greatest contribution, which renders the number of publications from China in the lead, followed by the US and the UK. ‘International Journal of Production Research’ and ‘European Journal of Operational Research’ are two of the most noteworthy archives for researchers in this field. For interested readers, integrating entropy theory with economic scheduling, power scheduling, and job-shop scheduling will be the future trend of this field.
What is an Ecodisaster?

The term ‘ecodisaster’ may be defined as ‘a global catastrophe of the human species’. Any ecodisasters occurring in the near future will, almost certainly, be caused, directly or indirectly, by the present overpopulation of the world, accompanied by unwise and irresponsible disregard of environmental deterioration. The suggestion is made here that Man's first and, it is to be hoped, last, ecodisaster may already have begun. Although not dramatic, it is taking the form of a steady decline in the standard of living nearly everywhere, coupled with massive pollution, and widespread malnutrition in the under-developed countries of the world. It will persist until world population eventually becomes adjusted to environmental resources. It is ironical that control of the pests and diseases which have inflicted so much misery on mankind in the past, should have helped to engender the present population explosion with all the hunger and privation that accompany it in the under-developed regions of the world.
Comparação de métodos para a observação de fungos micorrízicos arbusculares e endofíticos do tipo dark septate em espécies nativas de Cerrado

Plant species in sensu stricto Cerrado have adaptive strategies to soil and climatic adversities that require high investment of nutrients, water and photoassimilates. The mutualistic fungi - plant root symbiosis is an important adaptation by which plants can improve soil nutrients and water acquisition and it can be determinant for plant survival in Cerrado conditions. The aim of this study was to establish a method for studying arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) and dark septate endophytic fungi (DSEF) in roots of some tree and shrub species in stricto sensu Cerrado. The best method for root clarification was obtained after autoclaving root samples with 2 % KOH for 20 min followed by incubation in a new 2 % KOH solution for 24 h at room temperature. This procedure was repeated once and subsequently the samples were immersed in 2 % H2O2 for 2 h. The arbuscules were thoroughly examined after resin inclusion, sectioned and stained with toluidine blue. All plant species evaluated were associated to AMF and all but Xylopia aromatica were associated to DSEF as well. The mycorrhizal frequency in shrubs was higher than in tree species. The widespread occurrence of AMF and DSEF symbioses suggests that they represent an important adaptation to environmental factors in the Cerrado region.
Innovating business processes in public administrations: towards a systemic approach

The purpose of this paper is to study the credit collection process in public administrations in order to develop a conceptual model which goes beyond the traditional logic of linearity, adopting system thinking approaches. ,This study analyses the case of an Italian local government-owned enterprise. Data collection through semi-structured interviews and document analysis has enabled the development of propositions, the identification of systemic variables, and the development of an explanatory modeling process based on the system dynamics approach. ,This paper shows that public administrations can effectively involve external actors, especially citizens, as knowledge and public value co-creators only when considering systemic, unintended, and delayed implications of decision-making activities related to the provision of sensitive public services such as credit collection. ,Business process modelling should address some key fragilities of traditional modeling processes, especially in the public sector. This paper develops a novel systemic conceptual model which lays the groundwork for empirically testing business process innovation in public administrations.
A Chemical Reduction Method based on Pathway Analysis

Numerical simulations are a great tool to study plasma physics. However, the nature of a plasma leads to the significant presence of a particle’s or a molecule’s (ro-vibrational) excited and/or ionized states. For a single atom, this might still be computable in reasonable time, but when a molecule or multiple different atoms are present the computational cost quickly skyrockets. The sheer amount of particles and reactions makes full-fledged plasma simulations infeasible. To still be able to model complex plasmas, chemical reduction must be applied. Chemical reduction decreases the complexity by reducing the number of species and/or reactions taken into account. This is done in a way such that the simulated physics can still be represented accurately and relevant for the application. The goal of chemical reduction is two-fold, on the one hand it achieves computational cost reduction, on the other hand it allows for better analysis of the underlying chemistry. In this work a new mechanism reduction method is developed based on the results of the pathway analysis [24] method. An extension of the pathway analysis implementation [26] within the PLASIMO [18] toolbox is created that allows for automated reduction of chemically complex plasmas in zero-dimensional models. The automated tool limits the required user effort and knowledge of the chemistry to a minimum. The pathway reduction method is capable of removing significant parts of the chemistry, in the form of reactions and species. This is done for both constant input power as well as pulsed input power simulations. Besides taking an extensive look at the effect of removing species and reactions on the accuracy of the reduced model, the reduction method is analysed in a number of ways, including a comparison to a naive method and a timescale analysis of the reduction’s effect on the stiffness of the system. Large steps have been made in developing and testing a new mechanism reduction method based on pathway analysis. An automated reduction tool is established and is a very promising basis for subsequent reduction work. An extensive look at possible future work is taken including a detailed proposal and some initial work for a side-by-side comparison between pathway reduction and the Intrinsic Low-Dimensional Manifold [21] method.
Complexity is costly: a meta‐analysis of parametric and non‐parametric methods for short‐term population forecasting

Short-term forecasts based on time series of counts or survey data are widely used in population biology to provide advice concerning the management, harvest and conservation of natural populations. A common approach to produce these forecasts uses time-series models, of different types, fit to time series of counts. Similar time-series models are used in many other disciplines, however relative to the data available in these other disciplines, population data are often unusually short and noisy and models that perform well for data from other disciplines may not be appropriate for population data. In order to study the performance of time-series forecasting models for natural animal population data, we assembled 2379 time series of vertebrate population indices from actual surveys. Our data were comprised of three vastly different types: highly variable (marine fish productivity), strongly cyclic (adult salmon counts), and small variance but long-memory (bird and mammal counts). We tested the predictive performance of 49 different forecasting models grouped into three broad classes: autoregressive time-series models, non-linear regression-type models and non-parametric time-series models. Low-dimensional parametric autoregressive models gave the most accurate forecasts across a wide range of taxa; the most accurate model was one that simply treated the most recent observation as the forecast. More complex parametric and non-parametric models performed worse, except when applied to highly cyclic species. Across taxa, certain life history characteristics were correlated with lower forecast error; specifically, we found that better forecasts were correlated with attributes of slow growing species: large maximum age and size for fishes and high trophic level for birds. © 2014 Nordic Society Oikos.
Pericarp Fiber Separation from Corn Flour Using Sieving and Air Classification

ABSTRACT In the dry-grind process, starch in ground corn (flour) is converted to ethanol, and the remaining corn components (protein, fat, fiber, and ash) form a coproduct called distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS). Fiber separation from corn flour would produce fiber as an additional coproduct that could be used as combustion fuel, cattle feed, and as feedstock for producing valuable products such as “cellulosic” ethanol, corn fiber gum, oligosaccharides, phytosterols, and polyols. Fiber is not fermented in the dry-grind corn process. Its separation before fermentation would increase ethanol productivity in the fermenter. Recently, we showed that the elusieve process, a combination of sieving and elutriation (air flow), was effective in fiber separation from DDGS. In this study, we evaluated the elusieve process for separating pericarp fiber from corn flour. Corn flour remaining after fiber separation was termed “enhanced corn flour”. Of the total weight of corn flour, 3.8% was obtained as fiber.
Acute Ammonia Toxicity and Ammonia Excretion in Rainbow Trout (Salmo gairdneri)

Acute ammonia toxicity in rainbow trout (Salmo gairdneri) was studied by intraarterial injection of NH4Cl and NH4HCO3. Hydrogen ion and total ammonia concentrations were measured in blood sampled from the dorsal aorta both before and after injection. Although injection of NH4HCO3 increased arterial blood pH, and injection of NH4Cl decreased arterial blood pH, the same dose of each was required to kill fish. While the un-ionized form of ammonia in water has been shown to be toxic, in the blood either the ionized form or the total ammonia load is toxic to fish. Ammonia levels were measured in pre- and postbranchial blood. Mean values were not significantly different, but paired values indicated a fall in blood ammonia due to excretion across the gills. There appears to be a more rapid excretion of ammonia following NH4HCO3 infusions, which result in higher un-ionized ammonia levels in blood compared with those following NH4Cl infusions. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that ammonia is excret.
The derivation of grassland vegetation types on the basis of site and land use characteristics

This study derives grassland communities from site, climate and land use characteristics, allowing yield estimation within the framework of model scenarios. Based on the dominant species, about 450 relevés, primarily of extensively used grassland from four regions of the North-East German lowlands, were classified into vegetation types using a cluster analysis. These types were then reclassified to known phytosociological communities. The relationship between the vegetational composition and the abiotic explanatory variables were verified by a discriminant analysis. The water supply level proved to be the most important factor influencing grassland vegetation. The impact of historical land use (especially the persistence of formerly sown species) reduced prognostic quality.
The Human Revolution: Behavioural and Biological Perspectives on the Origins of Modern Humans

This major interdisciplinary work developed from an international conference held at Cambridge University in 1987. Fifty-five of the world's leading authorities from the fields of anthropology, archaeology, human evolution, and genetics met for the first time to discuss all aspects of the biological and behavioural origins of modern human populations. The volume brings together their papers, revised and updated in the light of discussion at the conference itself.The book features the results of new work by geneticists working on mitochondrial DNA, globin polymorphisms, and a Y-chromosome DNA phylogeny, and there are general reviews of the genetic evidence for the evolution of modern humans. Other topics covered include palaeoecological models of human origins; sophisticated modeling of population expansions and replacements; changes in technology, subsistence and social patterns; and the origins of human language and other unique aspects of human behaviour. This is the only book which integrates the remarkable new genetic evidence with the more conventional approaches of archaeologists and anthropologists. No other work provides such an exhaustive and wide-ranging account of modern human origins on a world-wide scale.
Efecto de Tetraselmis chuii, Nannochloris oculata y Dunaliella salina sobre el crecimiento poblacional de Apocyclops distans (Copepoda,Cyclopoidae) en diferentes condiciones de temperatura e iluminación

En el presente trabajo se estudia el efecto de Tetraselmis chuii, Nannochloris oculata y Dunaliella salina en el crecimiento poblacional de Apocyclops distans (Kiefer, 1956) cultivado bajo diferentes condiciones de luz y temperatura. Durante 10 dias se cultivo A. distans (5 ind/mL) en tubos de ensayos (540) conteniendo 5 mL de agua de mar inoculada con las microalgas antes mencionadas como dietas unialgales, a temperatura ambiente (26�33,8 oC) y en el laboratorio (22 ± 1oC) a tres condiciones de iluminacion, fotoperiodo (12 h luz: 12 h oscuridad), oscuridad y luz continua; cada tratamiento se realizo por triplicado. La mayor produccion de nauplios (105,33 ± 48,58/5mL) se obtuvo con T. chuii, en oscuridad a temperatura ambiente (26-33,8 °C) el tercer dia de cultivo. Los analisis estadisticos senalan que el factor que influyo en la produccion de nauplios fue la temperatura (P £ 0,05). La mayor produccion de copepoditos fue de 25,33 ± 11,93/5mL con T. chuii, bajo fotoperiodo (12h luz: 12 h oscuridad) y temperatura ambiente (26�33,8) el sexto dia. Los analisis estadisticos indican que el fotoperiodo y la dieta a base de T. chuii y N. oculata produjeron diferencias significativas en el numero de copepoditos. El mayor numero promedio de hembras adultas no ovadas (26,66 ± 36,66/5mL) con T. chuii se produjo el sexto dia a temperatura ambiente. El promedio maximo de hembras adultas ovadas (9,66 ± 5,50/5mL) con T. chuii se produjo el tercer dia a temperatura ambiente en oscuridad. El mayor numero de masas ovigeras desprendidas fue de 27,33 ± 17,92/5mL con N. oculata a temperatura ambiente. El mayor numero promedio del total de copepodos (132,66 ± 34,00/5mL) con T. chuii se obtuvo en oscuridad a temperatura ambiente el tercer dia. Los resultados alcanzados con D. salina, no produjeron diferencias en el crecimiento poblacional de A. distans (P £ 0,05). Se concluye que A. distans logro desarrollarse completamente y presento una evidente preferencia por la especie T. chuii, microalga de mayor volumen celular y movilidad entre las tres utilizadas. Las microalgas N. oculata y D. salina produjeron valores promedio bajos en el numero total de copepodos, aunque permitieron el desarrollo completo de A. distans.
Differences between Pagrus major and Pagrus auratus through mainly mtDNA control region analysis

SUMMARY: The magnitude of intraspecific and interspecific genetic differentiation in Pagrus major collected from two Japanese areas, the East China Sea (ECS) and the South China Sea (SCS), and Pagrus auratus, collected from Australia (AUS) and New Zealand (NZ), was estimated using restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis and DNA direct sequencing of the mtDNA control region. The RFLP haplotypic diversities in P. major samples were high (0.88–0.93); in contrast, these diversities were relatively lower (0.58–0.65) in P. auratus samples. The relative relationships among samples that resulted from RFLP analysis were almost the same as those from DNA direct sequencing, except that values from the former were less sensitive and were one-third to one-fifth lower than those from the latter. A significant heterogeneity was observed in the distribution of RFLP haplotypes between samples from P. auratus and P. major, and between samples from AUS and NZ. The difference of the nucleotide substitution by direct sequencing in the control region between P. auratus and P. major was 3.48%. Based on the substitution rate, the division time between samples from P. auratus and P. major was assumed to be 2–6 million years ago. With regard to morphological aspects, there was a significant difference in the bump between NZ and ECS samples, although there were no other significant external morphological differences. From these results, we suggest that the relationship between these ‘species’ is at the level of a subspecies. Accordingly, P. major might be renamed P. auratus major and P. auratus renamed P. auratus auratus.
Taxonomy of two Cymbalaria species (Scrophulariaceae) endemic to Italy: C. glutinosa sp. nov. and C. pubescens (J. & C. Presl) Cuf.

Summary Aim of this paper is to shed new light on the identity and taxonomy of two species of Cymbalaria endemic to Italy: C. glutinosa sp. nov. (C. pilosa auct.) and C. pubescens (J. & C. Presl) Cuf. Following lectotypification of the name Anthirrhinum pilosum Jacq. and its synonymization with Sibthorpia europaea L. , it was necessary to replace the name C. pilosa with C. glutinosa on the basis of a new type. In addition, the field-based morphological study of numerous wild populations of C. glutinosa, distributed from Latium to Campania, pointed out to a clear correlation between some flower and seed characters and a well-defined pattern of geographical distribution. On the basis of the size of the corolla, the length and shape of the spur and of the seed coat sculpture, two subspecies were recognized. Subsp. glutinosa includes the northern populations stretching from the Sabina territory southwards to Gaeta and Spigno Saturnia, while subsp. brevicalcarata subsp. nov. circumscribes the southern populations from S. Gregorio Matese to the surroundings of Naples and the Cilento area. Finally, two new interesting characters were highlighted as far as C. pubescens, a Sicilian endemic, is concerned. The surface of the capsula was in fact shown to be covered by glandular trichomes and not glabrous as reported in the literature; this taxon was in addition found to possess a tetraploid chromosome complement with 2n = 28. This would indicate a closer relationship with the two eastern Mediterranean species C. microcalyx (Boiss.) Wettst. and C. minor (Cuf.) Speta than with the diploid (2n=14) Italian species C. muralis G. , B. & S. and C. glutinosa sp. nov.