Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Assessing potential benthic habitat impacts of small-scale, intertidal aquaculture of the geoduck clam (Panopea generosa)

Context: The Pacific geoduck clam (Panopea generosa) is the largest burrowing clam in the world, adults living up to a metre below the sediment surface. In order to extract them, harvesters use high-volume water jets to liquefy the surrounding sediment. Expansion of geoduck aquaculture is highly desired by the shellfish culture industry, but is publicly contentious. High-density culture of geoduck clams and/or harvesting to a depth of a metre or more could have profound effects on the local benthic environment, but little research has examined the possibility. As a result, DFO Fisheries and Aquaculture Management requested an environmental impact assessment of culturing and harvesting cultured geoduck clams in the intertidal or subtidal marine environment. This report summarizes the results of the first in a series of experiments to assess the potential benthic impacts of geoduck out-planting and harvesting.
The use of track autoradiography to determine species-specific phytoplankton productivity

This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of PDXScholar. For more information, please contact pdxscholar@pdx.edu. Recommended Citation Vaga, Ralph Martin, "The use of track autoradiography to determine species-specific phytoplankton productivity" (1978). Dissertations and Theses. Paper 2835.
Multi Spectral Efficient Image Coding Approach for Medical Image Compression

Image compression is a primal need in all image coding applications. Images are processed in spatial domain or spectral domain, where finer resolution of the image content is processed in multiple spectral bands for finer resolution. In the compression approach, images are decomposed using multi spectral wavelet coding, and finer resolution bands are processed for compression. The decomposition process, gives a finer detail of the image content however the recurrent pixel values in decomposed band leads to processing overhead. To overcome, this issue a new compression model based on band selection and entropy optimization is selected. The compression model is a optimal solution approach to image compression, where the accuracy of compression is achieved at lower processing overhead and overall processing delay.
How to Subvert Democracy: Montesions in Peru

Which of the democratic checks and balances--opposition parties, the judiciary, a free press--is the most forceful? Peru has the full set of democratic institutions. In the 1990s, the secret-police chief Montesinos systematically undermined them all with bribes. We quantify the checks using the bribe prices. Montesinos paid a televisionchannel owner about 100 times what he paid a judge or a politician. One single television channel's bribe was five times larger than the total of the opposition politicians' bribes. By revealed preference, the strongest check on the government's power was the news media.
Technological Change in the Early Middle Pleistocene: The Onset of the Middle Stone Age at Kathu Pan 1, Northern Cape, South Africa

This dissertation describes the technological behaviors represented by the ~500-thousand-year-old stratum 4a lithic assemblage from Kathu Pan 1 (KP1), Northern Cape, South Africa, and situates new evidence from this site into evolutionary context. The findings highlight the significance of the early Middle Pleistocene in Africa for understanding behavioral evolution in later Homo. The stratum 4a assemblage at KP1 represents a mainly flake and blade-based industry that employed multiple strategies to produce blanks that were retouched into a variety of forms, including unifacially retouched points. Diverse core reduction strategies at KP1 suggests that KP1 hominins were flexible to the demands of local raw materials, consistent with increased degrees of ‘behavioral variability’ and adaptability. Several lines of evidence indicate that the KP1 points were used as spear tips. Points from sites ~300 thousand years ago (ka) and younger were often used as weapon tips, and evidence for this behavior can now be pushed back to ~500 ka, with important implications for cognition and social behavior among early Middle Pleistocene hominins. Raw materials in the KP1 assemblage were acquired from multiple local sources. Based on comparisons with a sample from the underlying stratum 4b Acheulean assemblage, the stratum 4a assemblage does not exhibit major changes in the kinds or quality of raw material exploited; thus, the technological changes represented by the stratum 4a assemblage are not explained by changes in raw material. New evidence from KP1 poses problems for current models that link the appearance of Middle Stone Age technologies to speciation and dispersion ~300 ka. Middle Stone Age technologies appear in the African archaeological record by ~500 ka. The new timing for the origins of Middle Stone Age technologies provides a parsimonious explanation for technological similarities between the lithic assemblages of Neanderthals and modern Homo sapiens, who share a common ancestor in the early Middle Pleistocene. Limits imposed by the nature of the African archaeological record and chronometric analyses may explain why the antiquity of these technological changes was not previously recognized. %%%%PhD
Rehabilitation of Kerrib Lands in Upper Atbara River using Indigenous Trees and Water Harvesting Techniques

Trials were conduct at Elshowak area during2003 season to test the use of "U" shape and "L" shape micro water harvesting technique to grow Acacia tortilis subspecies raddiana, Acacia mellifera , Acacia seyal , Zisyphus spina christi , Moringa oleifera and Balanites aegyptiaca in an area affected by gully erosion. Survival rat e trials showed that these species except Moringa oleifera can be established using micro water harvesting technique. Field trials show ed that "U" shape micro-catchment have better results in terms of survival rate than control through increasing moisture content. Also field trial showed promising results that, 30%, 21.4% and 15.2% survival rates for A.tortilis A.mellifera and Zizyphus spina christi respectively when compared to control that obtained zero percent.
Geographic variation in carotenoid plumage pigmentation of House Finches

fected with coccidia. Poult. Sci. 53:1801-1809. SLAGSVOLD, t. , AND J. t. LIFJELD. 1985. Variation in plumage coloration of the Great Tit Parus major in relation to habitat, season, and food. J. Zool. (Lond.) 206A:321-328. WEBER, H. 1953. Bewirkung des Fabwechsels bei m•innlichen Kreuzschn•ibein. J. Ornithol. 94:342346. WEBER, H. 1961. •ber die Ursache des Verlustes der roten Federfarbe bei gek•ifigten Birkenzeisigen. J. Ornithol. 102:158-163. WILLIAMS, J. H. , G. BRITTON, AND T. W. GOODWIN. 1967. The biosynthesis of cyclic carotenes. Biochem. J. 105:99-105.
THE CHARACTERISTICS AND ORIGIN OF GAS HYDRATE IN SHENHU AREA,SOUTH CHINA SEA

The drilling results in shenhu area show that gas hydrate occurs in the sediments of coarse,medium,fine predominte and very finely silts in a disseminated nature.The analysis of the gases from the top of sediments indicate that hrdrocarbon gases predominte in free gases except slight carbon dioxide(CO2). Methane(CH4) is in range from 62.11%～99.91%,and 98.04% in average.The gas hydrate isotopic compositions suggest that hrdrocarbon gases are generatd through CO2 reduction by microbe in Shenhu Area,South China Sea.The paper belieues that there is favourable geologic conditions for the formation of microbiogenic CH4 in the upper Miocene and the Pliocene sediments of the region.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF TURNIP-TYPE AND OILSEED-TYPE BRASSICA RAPA CROPS FROM THE WILD-TYPE IN EUROPE - AN OVERVIEW OF BOTANICAL, HISTORICAL AND LINGUISTIC FACTS

There is a lot of botanical, historical and linguistic evidence that the use of turnip-type Brassica rapa is very old in Europe. It was probably domesticated directly from its wild progenitor, the wildtype B. rapa. The use of European oilseed-type Brassica crops is relatively new. This paper gives a short overview on the history of B. rapa and presents botanical, historical and linguistic facts for a better understanding wild-, turnip- and oilseed-type B. rapa which will be useful for the interpretation of systematic and genetic work and future breeding.
Bmc Clinical Pharmacology Methadone vs. Buprenorphine/naloxone during Early Opioid Substitution Treatment: a Naturalistic Comparison of Cognitive Performance Relative to Healthy Controls

Background: Both methadone-and buprenorphine-treated opioid-dependent patients frequently show cognitive deficits in attention, working memory, and verbal memory. However, no study has compared these patient groups with each other during early opioid substitution treatment (OST). Therefore, we investigated attention, working memory, and verbal memory of opioid-dependent patients within six weeks after the introduction of OST in a naturalistic setting and compared to those of healthy controls.
Activation of the iNOS/

edu. Background: The combination of the nutraceuticals, Paullinia cupana, ginger rhizome, muira puama, and the amino acid L-citrulline (COMP-4) has been shown to stimulate the production of inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS), nitric oxide (NO), and cGMP in rat corpora cavernosa smooth muscle cells (CSMC). When administered to middle-aged rats, long-term treatment with COMP-4 resulted in both an increase in the number of CSMC and an improvement in erectile function. We, therefore, aimed to determine whether a commercial formulation of COMP-4, Revactin ® , could have a similar stimulatory effect on human CSMC. Methods: Primary human CSMC cultures (HCSMC) were grown and incubated with Revactin® for up to 24 hours. cGMP generation and nitrite formation were determined by ELISA and Griess reaction, respectively. IBMX (1 mM), sildenafil (0.4 mM), and L-NIL (4 μM) were utilized as modulators of the NO-cGMP pathway. iNOS, endothelial NOS (eNOS), and neuronal NOS (nNOS) expressions were determined by Western blot. Results: Revactin ® up-regulated both nitrite formation and cGMP expression, achieving the highest expression at 24 hours in the HCSMC. These effects were completely blocked by L-NIL. Revactin ® up-regulated iNOS expression, but not that of eNOS or nNOS. Conclusions: The results presented in this study confirmed that Revactin ® activated the iNOS-NO-cGMP pathway intracellularly in HCSMC. It still needs to be determined whether the upregulation of this pathway would be an effective approach for counteracting the fibrosis and apoptosis of the corporal smooth muscle cells associated with aging.
Questioning empowerment in community-based tourism in rural Bali

The term ‘empowerment’ is used with greater frequency in tourism for development, particularly in the context of community-based tourism (CBT), which is often referred to as a tool to ‘empower’ communities in the initiation, implementation and management of tourism. Still, critical and empirically grounded research on empowerment remains limited, particularly as emerging from social relationships in CBT. These are in many cases regarded as disempowering for community members, such as the tourism encounter and community relationships in cases where they lead to conflicts and jealousy, rather than collaboration. This research analyses these social relationships prevalent in CBT to take them as a potential starting point for social empowerment. Its aim is to locate social spaces of empowerment in CBT by unravelling power relations between the actors involved at local level. In these social spaces of empowerment, the basis of empowerment is generative power, defined as collective power with and power within, based on self-respect, to achieve power to generate positive change and to overcome power over (i.e. dominating power).
Florisbad—New investigations at a middle stone age Hominid Site in South Africa

First results of renewed excavations at the Middle Stone Age spring site of Florisbad are reported. Seven meters of deposits dating possibly from the later mid-Pleistocene to the mid-Holocene contain several cultural phases and record alternating periods of increased spring flow versus more stabilized conditions. The archaic Homo sapiens cranium discovered in 1932 and the Florisian Land Mammal Age fauna retrieved from the springs are argued to derive from the earliest deposits, estimated to be ca. 100,000–200,000 years old. In an Upper Pleistocene layer beyond the range of Carbon-14 dating, a Middle Stone Age occupation floor has been excavated. This we interpret as a multiple-occupation kill, butchery, or scavenging site. The presence of a hearth, of chipping debris under 10 mm in size, and the limited displacement of artifacts which have been refitted as conjoining pieces demonstrate a minimally disturbed, primary context site.
Pathogenicity of highly pathogenic avian H5N1 influenza A viruses isolated from humans between 2003 and 2008 in northern Vietnam

Vietnam is one of the countries most affected by highly pathogenic H5N1 influenza A viruses. To evaluate the potential pathogenicity in mammals of H5N1 viruses isolated from humans in Vietnam, we determined the sequences of all eight genes of 22 human isolates collected between 2003 and 2008 and compared their virulence in mice. The isolates were classified into clade 1 and clade 2.3. 4 and differed in pathogenicity for mice. Whilst lysine at position 627 of PB2 (PB2-627K) is a critical virulence determinant for clade 2.3. 4 viruses, asparagine at position 701 of PB2 and other unknown virulence determinants appear to be involved in the high pathogenicity of clade 1 viruses, warranting further studies to determine the factors responsible for the high virulence of H5N1 viruses in mammals.
Impacts of Different Allocation Plans as Soil and Water Conservation Measures on Annual Runoff in the Chaohe River Basin

By considering the three objectives of ecology,economy,and society in soil and water conservation,the two principles of guaranteeing regional grain self-sufficiency and increasing vegetation coverage,as well as the current status of soil and water loss in the Chaohe River basin in 2005,the three allocation plans of food grain security plan,eco-priority plan,and comprehensive plan are established,as soil and water conservation measures.Impacts of the three allocation plans for soil and water conservation on annual runoff of the Chaohe River are simulated and analyzed based on the water reduction norm of level terraces and forestlands under different precipitation schedules.Results show that if all the soil erosion areas are converted to artificial woodland,the impact to annual runoff reduction is greater,with the reductions in wet year,normal year,and dry year being 8.27%,8.28%,and 11.13% of the annual average runoff,respectively.Adopting comprehensive allocation plan may affect annual runoff greatly and the reductions in wet year,normal year,and dry year are 11.42%,8.38%,and 13.21% of the annual average runoff,respectively.The impact of grain security allocation plan on annual runoff reduction is littler and the reductions are 7.59%,6.03%,and 9.11% of the mean annual runoff during wet year,normal year,and dry year,respectively.
NOTAS CIENTíFICAS COMPRIMENTO DA PEÇA INTERMEDIÁRIA DE ESPERMATOZÓIDES BOVINOS E SUAS RELAÇÕES COM CARACTERISTICAS DO SÊMEN E FERTILIDADE 1

With the objective of identiing predictors offertility in bulls, the correlation coefficients of the midpiece length ofbovine spermatozoa with semen traits and fertility were cstimated. Data were obtained from semen saxnples of 50 crossbred bulls submitted to a progeny test. The midpiece length was determined in 40 midpieces ofeach bulI through a image analysis system (Videoplan). Resides the physical traits before and afler semen freezing, the oxygen consump- tion rate and the cytochemical activity index were observed. The cor- relation coefficients were low and non-significant (1'> 0.05), indicating that the midpiece length is not a good predictor of fertility.
University of Birmingham Discrimination, Social Capital, and Financial Constraints

This paper examines the relationship among gender, social capital, and access to ﬁnance of micro, small, and medium enterprises in the manufacturing sector in Viet Nam. Our dataset is from the 2011, 2013, and 2015 results of the Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprise Survey in Viet Nam. Using the Heckman technique to control for sample selection bias, the estimates do not provide evidence for discrimination against female-owned enterprises in the formal lending market. Speciﬁcally, female entrepreneurs have a higher probability of getting a loan and they pay lower interest rates in comparison with male entre-preneurs. No discrimination in formal credit markets may arise from the preference for informal loans over formal loans as entrepreneurs tend to borrow informal loans before applying for formal ones. Further analysis shows that social capital could facilitate loan applications: ﬁrms that have a closer relationship with government ofﬁcials and other business people can get loans of longer duration.
World Federation of Societies of Biological Psychiatry (WFSBP) Guidelines for Biological Treatment of Unipolar Depressive Disorders, Part 2: Maintenance treatment of major depressive disorder and treatment of chronic depressive disorders and subthreshold depressions.

These practice guidelines for the biological treatment of unipolar depressive disorders were developed by an international Task Force of the World Federation of Societies of Biological Psychiatry (WFSBP). The goal for developing these guidelines was to systematically review all available evidence pertaining to the treatment of the complete spectrum of unipolar depressive disorders, and to produce a series of practice recommendations that are clinically and scientifically meaningful based on the available evidence. These guidelines are intended for use by all physicians seeing and treating patients with these conditions. The data used for developing these guidelines have been extracted primarily from various national treatment guidelines and panels for depressive disorders, as well as from meta-analyses and reviews on the efficacy of antidepressant medications and other biological treatment interventions identified by a search of the MEDLINE database and Cochrane Library. The identified literature was evaluated with respect to the strength of evidence for its efficacy and was then categorized into four levels of evidence (A-D). The first part of these WFSBP guidelines on unipolar depressive disorders covered the acute and continuation treatment of major depressive disorder (Bauer et al., 2002). This second part of the guidelines covers the management of the maintenance-phase treatment of major depressive disorder, as well as the treatment of chronic and subthreshold depressive disorders (dysthymic disorder, double depression, minor depressive disorder and recurrent brief depression). These guidelines are primarily concerned with thebiological treatment (including antidepressants, lithium, other psychopharmacological and hormonal medications, and electroconvulsive therapy) of young adults and also, albeit to a lesser extent, children, adolescents and older adults.
ANÁLISIS DE LA AMENAZA DE CAÍDA DE ROCAS A PARTIR DEL ESTUDIO DE HUELLAS DE IMPACTO SOBRE CARRETERAS ANALYSIS OF ROCKFALL HAZARD FROM THE STUDY OF IMPACT MARKS ON THE ROADWAY

This paper presents a methodology for the rockfall hazard assessment along roads. The main contribution of this work is to measure and analyze the marks that have been printed on the asphalt pavement, product of previous impacts of rock blocks, and take this information to assess the historical threat , once consolidated the historic threat, from the marks study, we obtained the current threat, using conventional techniques of rock mechanics and finally by integrating the two sources of information, obtain a more accurately knowledge of the magnitude and location of the threat along the road section under study. As a case study is presented the area known as "La Volcana", located on K 16+300 of the Guillermo Gaviria Correa road, which connects the city of Medellin with the municipality of Santa Fe de Antioquia in Antioquia Department - Colombia.
ICCAS 2002 October 16-19 , Muju Resort , Jeonbuk , Korea Development of Sound Source Localization System using Explicit Adaptive Time Delay Estimation

The problem of sound source localization is to determine the position of sound sources using the measurement of the acoustic signals received by microphones. To develop a good sound source localization system which is applicable to a mobile platform such as robots, a time delay estimator with low computational complexity and robustness to background noise or reverberations is necessary. In this paper, an explicit adaptive time delay estimation method for a sound source localization system is proposed. Proposed explicit adaptive time estimation algorithm employs direct adaptation of the delay parameter using a transform-based optimization technique, rather than a gradient-search-based optimization. This new adaptation method shows less computational burden, fast tracking performance for non-stationary signals, more robustness to reverberant environment. Performance of the proposed method is shown through computer simulations.
oftware defect prediction using cost-sensitive neural network mer

The software development life cycle generally includes analysis, design, implementation, test and release phases. The testing phase should be operated effectively in order to release bug-free software to end users. In the last two decades, academicians have taken an increasing interest in the software defect prediction problem, several machine learning techniques have been applied for more robust prediction. A different classification approach for this problem is proposed in this paper. A combination of traditional Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and the novel Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithm are used in this study. Training the neural network is performed by ABC algorithm in order to find optimal weights. The False Positive Rate (FPR) and False Negative Rate (FNR) multiplied by parametric cost coefficients are the optimization task of the ABC algorithm. Software defect data in nature have a class imbalance because of the skewed distribution of defective and non-defective modules, so that conventional error functions of the neural network produce unbalanced FPR and FNR results. The proposed approach was applied to five publicly available datasets from the NASA Metrics Data Program repository. Accuracy, probability of detection, probability of false alarm, balance, Area Under Curve (AUC), and Normalized Expected Cost of Misclassification (NECM) are the main performance indicators of our classification approach. In order to prevent random results, the dataset was shuffled and the algorithm was executed 10 times with the use of n-fold cross-validation in each iteration. Our experimental results showed that a cost-sensitive neural network can be created successfully by using the ABC optimization algorithm for the purpose of software defect prediction. © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Edinburgh Research Explorer Free-hand Sketch Synthesis with Deformable Stroke Models

We present a generative model which can automatically summarize the stroke composition of free-hand sketches of a given category. When our model is ﬁt to a collection of sketches with similar poses, it discovers and learns the structure and appearance of a set of coherent parts, with each part represented by a group of strokes. It represents both consistent (topology) as well as diverse aspects (structure and appearance variations) of each sketch category. Key to the success of our model are important insights learned from a comprehensive study performed on human stroke data. By ﬁtting this model to images, we are able to synthesize visually similar and pleasant free-hand sketches.