bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Development of a curricular thread to foster medical students’ critical reflection and promote action on climate change, health, and equity
Authors: Dalapati Trisha , Alway Emily J. , Mantri Sneha , Mitchell Phillip , George Ian A. , Kaplan Samantha , Andolsek Kathryn M. , Velkey J. Matthew , Lawson Jennifer , Muzyk Andrew J.
Published: May 2024

Introduction

Due to the health consequences arising from climate change, medical students will inevitably interact with affected patients during their training and careers. Accordingly, medical schools must incorporate education on the impacts of climate change on health and equity into their curricula. We created a curricular thread called “Climate Change, Health, and Equity” in the first-year preclinical medical program to teach foundational concepts and foster self-reflection and critical consciousness.

Methods

The authors developed a continuum of practice including administrators, educators and faculty members, students, and community partners to plan and design curricular activities. First-year medical students at Duke University School of Medicine participated in seven mandatory foundational lectures and two experiential learning opportunities in the local community. Following completion of activities, students wrote a critical reflection essay and completed a self-directed learning exercise. Essays were evaluated using the REFLECT rubric to assess if students achieved critical reflection and for thematic analysis by Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Results

All students (118) submitted essays. A random sample of 30 (25%) essays underwent analysis. Evaluation by the REFLECT rubric underscored that all students were reflecting or critically reflecting on thread content. Thematic analysis highlighted that all students (30/30, 100%) were adept at identifying new areas of medical knowledge and connecting concepts to individual experiences, institutional practices, and public health and policy. Most students (27/30; 90%) used emotionally laden words, expressing negative feelings like frustration and fear but also positive sentiments of solidarity and hope regarding climate change and effects on health. Many students (24/30; 80%) expressed actionable items at every level including continuing self-directed learning and conversing with patients, minimizing healthcare waste, and advocating for climate-friendly policies.

Conclusion

After participating in the curricular thread, most medical students reflected on cognitive, affective, and actionable aspects relating to climate change, health, and equity.
Assessing capacities to strengthen intersectoral collaboration in Territorial Public Health Councils in the Republic of Moldova
Authors: Lozan Oleg , Mîţa Valentin , Demişcan Daniela , Buzeti Tatjana , Beznec Peter , Sava Valeriu , Curteanu Ala , Rîmiş Constantin , Canavan Robert , Prytherch Helen
Published: May 2024

Background

The government of the Republic of Moldova, endorsed the principle of Health in All Policies (HiAP) through its health sector reforms to address the rising burden of non-communicable diseases and health inequalities. Territorial Public Health Councils (TPHCs) were created to ensure the coordination and management of the population’s health in their respective district. This study assessed the capacities of the TPHCs to identify areas in need of support for strengthening their intersectoral collaboration role in public health at local level.

Methods

A mixed-method approach, using qualitative and quantitative techniques, was used to compare the perceptions of all TPHC members (n = 112) and invitees (n = 53) to council meetings from 10 districts covering all geographical areas of Moldova. The quantitative information was obtained using a cross-sectional survey, while the qualitative aspects were assessed within focus group discussions (FGDs).

Results

Half of all TPHC members, including 75% from groups with a non-medical background, did not attend a public health course within the last three years. Overall, groups with a medical background were more aware of the legislation that governs TPHC activity and intersectoral collaboration compared with those with a non-medical background. The FGDs of TPHC meetings revealed that members had an insufficient level of understanding of intersectoral collaboration to solve public health issues and lacked clarity about their place and role within the TPHC.

Conclusions

HiAP implementation was found to be suboptimal with insufficient capacity at local level. TPHC members’ ability to deal with public health issues were severely impaired by a general lack of knowledge and understanding of how to utilize the TPHC platform for maximum benefit. Reforming TPHC regulation is required in addition to extensive capacity building for TPHC members to increase member understanding of their roles as intended by TPHC regulations, including the facilitation of intersectoral collaborations.
Jedno číslo, dvě výročí
Authors: Králová Jana
Published: May 2024

Editorial
Literatura checa en español publicada en Checoslovaquia 1948-1989
Authors: Cuenca Drouhard Miguel José
Published: May 2024

During the period under study, the Czech publishing industry developed a remarkable activity in the publication of Czech works translated into Spanish, sometimes in the form of co-publication with other publishing houses in Spanish-speaking countries. In many cases, the volume of this production exceeds that of the aforementioned countries. The quantity, authorship, genres and countries of destination of these translations are analysed in the light of the theory of polysystems. To this end, the information collected for the new global database of Czech-Spanish translations, currently under development at the Spanish Department of the Institute of Translation Studies, Faculty of Philosophy, Charles University, is used.
Digital Data for the Sociology of Translation and the History of Translation
Authors: Zehnalová Jitka
Published: May 2024

The study explores the interconnected topics of interdisciplinarity and the use of digital data in research on (literary) translation. Interdisciplinarity is conceived as cooperation between translation studies and other fields of study, specifically with sociology, history and digital humanities, i.e. as an “import” to translation studies, pointing simultaneously to its potential for research in other fields, i.e. an “export” from translation studies. The main goal is to demonstrate the use of digital data (data obtained from online, publicly available, bibliographic databases on national and international levels) in translation research in terms of possibilities and limits. The analyses conducted verify the un/reliability of the UNESCO Index Translationum data sets by comparing them with results obtained from the databases of the National Library of the Czech Republic. As “byproducts”, these analyses produce surveys of fiction authors most frequently translated from Czech (into English, French, German, and Russian) and into Czech (from English). Several examples from our research exemplify the application of data sets extracted from the databases of the National Library and a qualitatively higher level of use of this data source is suggested.
Refactoring Index Tuning Process with Benefit Estimation
Authors: Yu Tao , Zou Zhaonian , Sun Weihua , Yan Yu
Published: May 2024

Index tuning is a challenging task aiming to improve query performance by selecting the most effective indexes for a database and a workload. Existing automatic index tuning methods typically rely on "what-if tools" to evaluate the benefit of an index configuration, which is costly and sometimes inaccurate. In this paper, we propose RIBE, a novel method that effectively eliminates redundant queries from the workload and harnesses statistical information of query plans to enable fast and accurate estimation of the benefit of an index configuration. With RIBE, a considerable portion of what-if calls can be skipped, thereby reducing index tuning time and increasing estimation accuracy. At the heart of RIBE is a deep learning model based on attention mechanism that predicts the impact of indexes on queries. A practical advantage of RIBE is that it achieves both improved accuracy of benefit estimation and time savings without making any changes to DBMS implementation and index configuration enumeration algorithms. Our evaluation shows that RIBE can achieve competitive tuning results and 1--2 orders of magnitude faster performance compared with the tuning method based on the full workload, and RIBE also attains higher tuning quality and comparable efficiency against the tuning methods based on the state-of-the-art workload compression methods.
Mixed Covers of Keys and Functional Dependencies for Maintaining the Integrity of Data under Updates
Authors: Zhang Zhuoxing , Link Sebastian
Published: May 2024

Covers for a set of functional dependencies (FDs) are fundamental for many areas of data management, such as integrity maintenance, query optimization, database design, and data cleaning. When declaring integrity constraints, keys enjoy native support in database systems while FDs need to be enforced by triggers or at application level. Consequently, maximizing the use of keys will provide the best support. We propose the new notion of mixed cover for a set of FDs, comprising the set of minimal keys together with a cover for the set of non-key FDs implied by the FD set. We establish sequential and parallel algorithms for computing mixed covers from a given set of FDs, and illustrate that they complement each other in terms of their performance. Even though FD covers are typically smaller in number or size than their corresponding mixed cover, the latter generate orders of magnitude lower overheads during integrity maintenance. We also quantify how mixed covers improve the performance of query, refresh and insert operations on the TPC-H benchmark under different constraint workloads.
Gluconeogenesis in the yolk syncytial layer‐like tissue of cloudy catshark (Scyliorhinus torazame)
Authors: Shimizu Marino , Takagi Wataru , Sakai Yuki , Kayanuma Isana , Furukawa Fumiya
Published: May 2024

Glucose has important roles in the development of zebrafish, the vertebrate animal model; however, in most oviparous animals, the amount of maternally provided glucose in the yolk is scarce. For these reasons, developing animals need some ways to supplement glucose. Recently, it was found that developing zebrafish, a teleost fish, undergo gluconeogenesis in the yolk syncytial layer (YSL), an extraembryonic tissue that surrounds the yolk. However, teleost YSL is evolutionarily unique, and it is not clear how other vertebrates supplement glucose. In this study, we used cloudy catshark (or Torazame catshark), an elasmobranch species which possesses a YSL‐like tissue during development, and sought for possible gluconeogenic activities in this tissue. In their yolk sac, glucose increased, and our isotope tracking analysis detected gluconeogenic activities with glycerol most preferred substrate. In addition, many of gluconeogenic genes were expressed at the YSL‐like tissue, suggesting that cloudy catshark engages in gluconeogenesis in this tissue. The gluconeogenesis in teleost YSL and a similar tissue in elasmobranch species implies conserved mechanisms of yolk metabolism between these two lineages. Future studies on other vertebrate taxa will be helpful to understand the evolutionary changes in the modes of yolk metabolism that vertebrates have experienced.
Phase-matched third-harmonic generation in silicon nitride waveguides
Authors: Vijayakumar Surendar , Vyas Kaustubh , Espinosa Daniel H. G. , Reshef Orad , Song Meiting , Awan Kashif Masud , Choudhary Saumya , Cardenas Jaime , Boyd Robert W. , Dolgaleva Ksenia
Published: May 2024

Third-harmonic generation (THG) in silicon nitride waveguides is an ideal source of coherent visible light, suited for ultrafast pulse characterization, telecom signal monitoring and self-referenced comb generation due to its relatively large nonlinear susceptibility and CMOS compatibility. We demonstrate third-harmonic generation in silicon nitride waveguides where a fundamental transverse mode at 1,596 nm is phase-matched to a TM02 mode at 532 nm, confirmed by the far-field image. We experimentally measure the waveguide width-dependent phase-matched wavelength with a peak-power-normalized conversion efficiency of 5.78 × 10−7 %/W2 over a 660-μm-long interaction length.
Music enrichment improves the behavior and leukocyte profile of dairy cattle
Authors: Contreras-Torres Esmeralda G. , Hernández-Chavez Juan F. , Díaz-Quiroz Carlos A. , Molina-Barrios Ramón , Millán Paulina Arrayales , Ulloa-Mercado Ruth G.
Published: May 2024

Different studies have suggested that musical enrichment in dairy cattle management reduces animal stress and enhances milk production, management, and disease resistance. Thus, in the present work, we proposed to evaluate the response of a group of Holstein cows to musical stimulation, through the analysis of their leukocyte profile and the recording of voluntary approach to milking parlor. An ABAB design was used, consisting of alternating periods with and without music during the management of 15 Holstein cows for 14 days. At the end of each period, blood samples were collected to determine the number of leukocyte counts. In addition, a voluntary approach to the milking parlor was measured. For statistical analysis, the nonparametric Wilcoxon signed-rank test with an alpha value of 0.05 was used. During periods with music, more cows voluntarily approached the milking parlor and had higher total leukocyte counts. In conclusion, music enrichment improves cattle handling, with a significant positive effect on leukogram profiles
Modification of PEEK for implants: Strategies to improve mechanical, antibacterial, and osteogenic properties
Authors: Chen Menghao , Luo Chengfeng , Yuan Ying , Zhou Hao , Li Zhanglong , Wang Qiang , Gong Baijuan , Li Zhimin , Sun Hongchen
Published: May 2024

Poly-ether-ether-ketone (PEEK), a biomaterial renowned for its mechanical prowess and biocompatibility, is increasingly preferred for medical implants. Its natural bone-like mechanical property, ease of manipulation, and ability to mitigate stress shielding render it a standout replacement for titanium in dental implantology. Adding carbon fiber and graphene to PEEK can further enhance the mechanical properties of PEEK. However, the biological passivity of PEEK hampers its efficacy in bone repair, driving spurring research into surface modifications to enhance its bioactivity. Incorporating metal, inorganic, and organic antimicrobial agents is anticipated to bolster PEEK’s resistance to bacteria, thereby reducing the risk of acute postoperative infections and peri-implantitis. Apart from its antimicrobial activity, researchers have also investigated methods to enhance the osteogenic properties of PEEK. These approaches include surface modification and blending modification. Surface modification includes physical modification, chemical modification, and biologically active substance modification. These methods can further enhance the implant integration and durability, potentially improving patient outcomes. This overview examines PEEK’s processing techniques and highlights recent research achievements in improving its biomechanical, antibacterial, and osteogenic properties. Considering these strides, we argue that modified PEEK holds significant promise as a material for dental implants, charting an encouraging course for its clinical future.
Comprehensive reviews on the potential applications of inorganic metal sulfide nanostructures in biological, environmental, healthcare, and energy generation and storage
Authors: Saeed Mohsin , Shahzad Umer , Rabbee Muhammad Fazle , Al-Humaidi Jehan Y. , Marwani Hadi M. , Rehman Shujah Ur , Shabbir Anam , Ayub Muhammad Naeem , Althomali Raed H. , Asghar Muhammad Nadeem , Rahman Mohammed M.
Published: May 2024

The versatile nature of metal sulfide nanostructures has led to their meteoric rise in popularity. The compositions, morphologies, and sizes of these nanostructures may be tuned, giving them distinct features. Here we look at the many uses of metal sulfide nanostructures, with an emphasis on their possible benefits in the fields of biology, ecology, and energy storage. Because of their remarkable optical characteristics and high degree of biocompatibility, metal sulfide nanostructures have great potential in the biological fields of bioimaging, medication administration, and photothermal treatment. Additionally, because of their large surface area and adsorption capability, these nanostructures show outstanding performance in environmental remediation, which includes pollutant removal and wastewater treatment. Because of their great conductivity and electrochemical activity, metal sulfide nanostructures are also in great demand for energy storage applications such supercapacitors, hydrogen storage, and lithium-ion batteries. This review provides a comprehensive analysis of recent progress in synthesizing various metal sulfides with transition metal elements. Effective physiochemical and biological approaches are employed in their production to control the structures, dimensions, and compositions of these sulfides.
Public Trust in Technology – A Moral Obligation?
Authors: Myskja Bjørn K.
Published: May 2024

Biotechnology proponents claim that the public has a duty to trust biotechnology due to its potential for handling significant future food security challenges. This article uses Kant’s moral and political philosophy as basis for constructing a framework for analyzing trust as a moral duty, both in personal relationships and in institutional settings. This includes trust in technology that is of societal significance. A discussion of key concepts of trust leads to an argument that there is a conditional duty of reflexive trust in fundamental social institutions, including technology. However, reflexive trust in, for example, food biotechnology cannot be conceived of as an individual task. A duty of reflexive trust in technology can only be achieved within a publicly controlled institution of trust-building systematic distrust. This system should ideally clarify which instances and to what extent a technology is ethically justifiable and of benefit to society in general.
Turkey’s response to the war in Ukraine in the context of systemic changes and regional dynamics
Authors: Lechner Zoltán
Published: May 2024

As it is one of the few NATO members that refused to sever cooperation with Russia in 2022, Turkey’s response to the war in Ukraine can be seen as a critical case study in the dynamics of contemporary geopolitics. This article examines Turkey's strategic positioning and policy responses regarding the conflict, with the aim of understanding the logic behind Ankara’s decision to present itself as a mediator, instead of aligning itself with the mostly united policy of the West. Embracing the theoretical framework of neorealism, the article first examines the correlation between systemic changes and Turkish foreign policy, as the author considers that the emergence of a “posthegemonic world order” profoundly affects Ankara’s opportunities in the international environment. Employing the analytical approach of geopolitics, the second section of the study delves into Turkey's security concerns and economic interests in the Black Sea region and examines the evolution of Ankara’s geostrategy towards the region since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Building upon the context outlined by the first two sections, the third part of the study analyses Ankara’s foreign policy responses to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, focusing primarily on the period from February to December 2022.
Incidencia de factores socioeconómicos y culturales en la propagación de la infección por SARS-CoV-2 en las regiones peruanas
Authors: León Mendoza Juan Celestino
Published: May 2024

El objetivo de este artículo es identificar los factores de riesgo del entorno socioeconómico y cultural que incidieron en la propagación diferenciada de infecciones por SARS-CoV-2 a nivel de las 24 regiones políticas peruanas. Con información regional correspondiente a los años 2020 y 2021, se efectuaron regresiones lineales multivariables con el método de los mínimos cuadrados ordinarios. Los resultados indican que los niveles de contagios por covid-19 están asociados positivamente con la tasa de empleo formal, el número de establecimientos de salud por cada 100 mil habitantes, el acceso al consumo de agua de la red pública y la infracción a las normas sanitarias, pero negativamente con el número de médicos por cada 1000 habitantes. En conclusión, la propagación diferenciada de la tasa de infectados por SARS-CoV-2 entre las regiones peruanas guarda relación con factores de riesgo socioeconómicos y culturales.
The improvement of web-application SDL process to prevent Insecure Design vulnerabilities
Authors: Revniuk Oleksandr A. , Zagorodna Nataliya V. , Kozak Ruslan O. , Karpinski Mikolaj P. , Flud Liubomyr O.
Published: May 2024

According to the latest “OWASP Top Ten” list, “Insecure Design” vulnerability is one of the key factors affecting the level of data protection and functional reliability. Heightening attention to this issue is pertinent as this vulnerability is appeared to be the first time in OWASP list and just briefly described there. This study aims to identify and analyze the architectural vulnerabilities of web applications arising from “Insecure Design”. The goal is not only to identify specific vulnerabilities in the web applications design and implementation process but also to develop a detailed listof recommendations, that will help not only avoid similar problems in the futurebut to create a good background for safe web applications development from the start point. In orderto construct a systematic approach to security at all stages of development, recommendations from the Software Development Life Cycle standard are considered here. Special attention is given to integrating security principles at all stages of the development lifecycle. The analysis is based on examining existing architectural solutions, studying vulnerabilities, and developing methods for their mitigation. The developed set of recommendations to enhance the security of web applications includes measures for architectural design, verification and validation processes, and early detection of potential vulnerabilities. Significant attention is paid to developing secure code, implementing security policies, and organizing training for developers. The research emphasizes the importance of integrating security into the web application development process from the beginning. The scientific novelty lies in the systematization and development of approaches to detect and mitigate architectural vulnerabilities caused by “Insecure Design”. The practical significance of the paper is expressed in enhancing the security level of web applications, reducing risks for businesses and users, and fostering a culture of security among developers.
Glucagon infusion alters the circulating metabolome and urine amino acid excretion in dogs
Authors: Merkhassine Michael , Coch Reilly W , Frederick Carol E , Bennett Lucinda L , Peng Seth A , Morse Benjamin , Cummings Bethany P , Loftus John P
Published: May 2024

Glucagon plays a central role in amino acid (AA) homeostasis. The dog is an established model of glucagon biology, and recently, metabolomic changes in people associated with glucagon infusions have been reported. Glucagon also has effects on the kidney; however, changes in urinary AA concentrations associated with glucagon remain under investigation. Therefore, we aimed to fill these gaps in the canine model by determining the effects of glucagon on the canine plasma metabolome and measuring urine AA concentrations. Employing two constant rate glucagon infusions (CRI) – low-dose (CRI-LO: 3 ng/kg/min) and high-dose (CRI-HI: 50 ng/kg/min) on five research beagles, we monitored interstitial glucose and conducted untargeted liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) on plasma samples and urine AA concentrations collected pre- and post-infusion. The CRI-HI induced a transient glucose peak (90–120 min), returning near baseline by infusion end, while only the CRI-LO resulted in 372 significantly altered plasma metabolites, primarily reductions (333). Similarly, CRI-HI affected 414 metabolites, with 369 reductions, evidenced by distinct clustering post-infusion via data reduction (PCA and sPLS-DA). CRI-HI notably decreased circulating AA levels, impacting various AA-related and energy-generating metabolic pathways. Urine analysis revealed increased 3-methyl-l-histidine and glutamine, and decreased alanine concentrations post-infusion. These findings demonstrate glucagon’s glucose-independent modulation of the canine plasma metabolome and highlight the dog’s relevance as a translational model for glucagon biology. Understanding these effects contributes to managing dysregulated glucagon conditions and informs treatments impacting glucagon homeostasis.
Cálculo de la inundación del maremoto del Callao de 1746
Authors: Jimenez Cesar , Ortega Erick
Published: May 2024

On October 28, 1746, at 22:30 local time, the city of Lima and Callao were shaken by a strong earthquake of magnitude Mw 8.6 and intensity X e¿in the Mercalli scale, the epicenter was located in the sea offshore Callao. The tsunami destroyed the city of Callao and produced the death of more than 5000 people, remaining only 200 survivors. From historical catalogue the seismic parameter of the earthquake are obtained, then the rupture parameters are calculated. With the help of WinITDB model the maximum tsunami wave height is calculated. From the wave equation fro shallow water and with the bathymetry data the arrival times of the leading wave are calculated. For calculating the run-up or maximum inundation height, a dynamic and energetic model of one particle is used. This will allow the elaboration of an inundation map, which will be usefulmess for mitigation of the disaster on the part of the corresponding authorities.
Case study: Mangrove phyllosphere fungal populations in agro-waste management
Authors: Ghosh Dr. Bipasha Mridha
Published: May 2024

Introduction: The article highlights the critical role of sustainable solid waste management (SWM) in agro ecosystems and emphasizes the need for effective microbial strains to improve waste management processes. It specifically focuses on isolating fungal strains from the phyllosphere of mangrove leaves in the Sundarbans region of West Bengal, India, during three different seasons. Materials & methods: After isolation, the fungal strains are preserved in laboratory conditions, and pure cultures are established to assess their abilities in decomposing various types of waste substances. Additionally, the study includes an enzyme assay to evaluate the enzymatic activities of the isolated fungal strains, specifically targeting amylase, catalase, and polyphenol oxidase enzymes. Result: The findings reveal that each isolated fungal strain exhibits unique enzyme production capabilities, with notable levels of amylase, catalase, and polyphenol oxidase enzymes. Moreover, the study suggests that employing multiple fungal strains together could prove effective for agricultural solid waste management and sustainable bioremediation technologies for future generations. Conclusion: Key findings from the study reveal that each isolated fungal strain exhibits distinct enzyme production capabilities, with significant levels of amylase, catalase, and polyphenol oxidase enzymes. The research suggests that utilizing a combination of multiple fungal strains could be highly effective for agricultural solid waste management and sustainable bioremediation technologies for future generations. This study significantly contributes to the development and improvement of sustainable technologies for solid waste management. It underscores the potential of fungal strains in waste decomposition and bioremediation processes, highlighting the importance of microbial biodiversity. The research encourages further exploration of novel fungal strains to discover more efficient waste management solutions.
Low Energy n–p and n–d Scattering with Deng–Fan Potential
Authors: Khirali B. , Swain B. , Laha S. , Laha U.
Published: May 2024

In any first approach toward a nuclear structure problem, one presumes the nucleons to be elementary particles. The failure or success of this approach may then instruct us something about the significance of sub-nuclear degrees of freedom. The Deng–Fan potential, although extensively used in molecular dynamics to reproduce several observables for the atomic-atomic and atomic-molecular interactions, is parametrized for nuclear systems to fit low-energy observables. By exploiting the variable phase approach (VPA) to potential scattering, phase parameters, cross-sections and analyzing powers are estimated for the nucleon–nucleon and nucleon–nucleus systems. Our results show good concurrence with the earlier theoretical and experimental data within this simple model of interaction.
Aquatic macroinvertebrate community and water quality in River Tambo, Arequipa region, Peru
Authors: Coayla-Peñaloza Pastor , Cheneaux-Diaz André Alexander , Moreno.Salazar Claudia Viviana , Cruz-Remache Cynthia Elizabeth , Damborenea Cristina
Published: May 2024

Introduction: The River Tambo basin is one of the main hydrographic systems of the Peruvian western watershed, being a source of development for agriculture, agroindustry, livestock, and domestic use in the Tambo Valley and Arequipa City. Objective: To analyze the structure of macroinvertebrates in River Tambo, Perú and assess the water quality through this community. Methods: Five sampling events were conducted between December 2018 and November 2019 in 12 stations, using a Surber net (500 μm). Macroinvertebrates were identified at a family level. To assess community structure, richness, Simpson’s dominance index (D), Pielou’s evenness (J’), and true diversity of order 1 were determined. A nMDS based on the Bray-Curtis index was used to evaluate dissimilarity. To check for differences in community structure, ANOSIM and two-way MANOVA were used. SIMPER was used to establish family contribution to sample similarity. Relations between physicochemical and biological variables were determined by CCA. ABI index was applied to assess ecological quality. Results: 32 families were recognized, being the most abundant: Baetidae, Chironomidae, Leptohyphidae, Simuliidae, Hydroptilidae, and Elmidae. The middle and low zones of the basin showed the highest and lowest diversity respectively. There were significant differences (P < 0.05) in the community structure indices among the 12 stations differed. There was a higher similarity among the 12 stations in December. ABI scores increased from the low to the middle part of the river, which showed the highest ecological quality. Conclusion: Macroinvertebrate communities from River Tambo reflect ecosystem conditions. Environments impacted by human activities show lower diversity and ecological quality, due to the structure, habitat, and water quality of the river being altered.
Growth hormone gene polymorphism in domestic and wild goat breeds in Kurdistan region of Iraq using PCR-RFLP and SNP markers
Authors: Abbas A. M. , Jubrael J. M. S. , Mohammed A. B.
Published: May 2024

In Iraq generally and Kurdistan region especially, goats are an important resource for meat and milk production. It is well known that growth hormone (GH) is involved in a variety of biological activities in livestock animals, including reproduction, growth, lactation, metabolism etc. The goal of this research was to reveal the polymorphism of GH gene in different Capra hircus breeds (native, Shami, Meriz and Kamori goat) and in wild mountain goat (Capra aegagrus) via PCR-RFLP technique and direct seqencing. GH1 (exon 2 and 3) and GH2 (exon 4) polymorphisms on the GH gene were investigated. In all breeds, GH1-Hae III/RFLP revealed only two genotypes (homozygous AA and heterozygous AB), with absent genotype BB. The genotype frequency was 0.886 for the AB genotype and 0.114 for the AA genotype; the allelic frequency was 0.558 for the A allele and 0.442 for the B allele. The average of observed heterozygosity was 0.882 and observed homozygosity was 0.118, indicating that the GH1 was polymorphic. The sequence data of GH1 gene of Meriz and wild goats revealed a SNP at the position 58 (C to T) of the wild goat that has led to a change in amino acid proline to serine. GH2 digestion by Hae III, on the other hand, was monomorphic with the CC homozygous genotype. The results of PCR-RFLP and SNP experiments from this investigation were evaluated as very useful in genotype analysis of local goat breeds/populations. Thus, DNA polymorphisms in the growth hormone gene could be used as reliable genetic markers in breeding programmes in this region.
Gender confusions and other linguistic changes
Authors: Szlovicsák Béla
Published: May 2024

The main goal of this paper is to provide a preliminary examination of the interaction between the Vulgar Latin grammatical gender system and other levels of linguistic change, such as phonological confusions. To achieve this description conditional inference trees and random forests were fitted to our data which enabled a more thorough understanding of these interactions than would be possible to notice without statistical methods.
A Letter from the Guest Editors: Meditation on Hawai`i as the Piko
Authors: Wright Erin Kahunawaikaʻala , Reyes Nicole Alia Salis , Saelua Natasha Autasi , Reyes Alicia Nani
Published: May 2024

This special issue is to engage the NCORE community in respectful and joyful dialogues, situating your temporary presence in Hawaiʻi within the broader historical, social, cultural, and political contexts influencing the education and well-being of our people. The articles featured in this special issue are arranged in honor of the piko from which we draw inspiration, radiating from the center of our physical and metaphorical landscape and land-sea continuum outwards into our oceanscapes.
Planning with Object Creation
Authors: Corrêa Augusto B. , De Giacomo Giuseppe , Helmert Malte , Rubin Sasha
Published: May 2024

Classical planning problems are defined using some specification language, such as PDDL. The domain expert defines action schemas, objects, the initial state, and the goal. One key aspect of PDDL is that the set of objects cannot be modified during plan execution. While this is fine in many domains, sometimes it makes modeling more complicated. This may impact the performance of planners, and it requires the domain expert to bound the number of required objects beforehand, which can be a challenge. We introduce an extension to the classical planning formalism, where action effects can create and remove objects. This problem is semi-decidable, but it becomes decidable if we can bound the number of objects in any given state, even though the state space is still infinite. On the practical side, we extend the Powerlifted planning system to support this PDDL extension. Our results show that this extension improves the performance of Powerlifted while supporting more natural PDDL models.
Termination Properties of Transition Rules for Indirect Effects
Authors: Elahi Mojtaba , Fadnis Saurabh , Rintanen Jussi
Published: May 2024

Indirect effects of agent's actions have traditionally been formalized as condition-effect rules that always fire whenever applicable, after each action taken by the agent.
In this work, we investigate a core problem of indirect effects, the possibility of arbitrarily or infinitely long sequences of rule firings. Specifically we investigate the termination of rule firings, as well as their confluence, that is, the uniqueness of the state that is ultimately reached. Both problems turn out to be PSPACE-complete. After this, we devise practically interesting syntactic and structural restrictions that guarantee polynomial-time termination and confluence tests. Finally, in the context of planning languages that support indirect effects, we propose new implementation technologies.
Replanning in Advance for Instant Delay Recovery in Multi-Agent Applications: Rerouting Trains in a Railway Hub
Authors: Hanou Issa K. , Thomas Devin Wild , Ruml Wheeler , De Weerdt Mathijs
Published: May 2024

Train routing is sensitive to delays that occur in the network. When a train is delayed, it is imperative that a new plan be found quickly, or else other trains may need to be stopped to ensure safety, potentially causing cascading delays. In this paper, we consider this class of multi-agent planning problems, which we call Multi-Agent Execution Delay Replanning. We show that these can be solved by reducing the problem to an any-start-time safe interval planning problem. When an agent has an any-start-time plan, it can react to a delay by simply looking up the precomputed plan for the delayed start time. We identify crucial real-world problem characteristics like the agent's speed, size, and safety envelope, and extend the any-start-time planning to account for them. Experimental results on real-world train networks show that any-start-time plans are compact and can be computed in reasonable time while enabling agents to instantly recover a safe plan.
Neural Combinatorial Optimization on Heterogeneous Graphs: An Application to the Picker Routing Problem in Mixed-shelves Warehouses
Authors: Luttmann Laurin , Xie Lin
Published: May 2024

In recent years, machine learning (ML) models capable of solving combinatorial optimization (CO) problems have received a surge of attention. While early approaches failed to outperform traditional CO solvers, the gap between handcrafted and learned heuristics has been steadily closing. However, most work in this area has focused on simple CO problems to benchmark new models and algorithms, leaving a gap in the development of methods specifically designed to handle more involved problems. Therefore, this work considers the problem of picker routing in the context of mixed-shelves warehouses, which involves not only a heterogeneous graph representation, but also a combinatorial action space resulting from the integrated selection and routing decisions to be made. We propose both a novel encoder to effectively learn representations of the heterogeneous graph and a hierarchical decoding scheme that exploits the combinatorial structure of the action space. The efficacy of the developed methods is demonstrated through a comprehensive comparison with established architectures as well as exact and heuristic solvers.
Weak and Strong Reversibility of Non-deterministic Actions: Universality and Uniformity
Authors: Med Jakub , Chrpa Lukáš , Morak Michael , Faber Wolfgang
Published: May 2024

Classical planning looks for a sequence of actions that transform the initial state of the environment into a goal state. Studying whether the effects of an action can be undone by a sequence of other actions, that is, action reversibility, is beneficial, for example, in determining whether an action is safe to apply. This paper deals with action reversibility of non-deterministic actions, i.e., actions whose application might result in different outcomes. Inspired by the established notions of weak and strong plans in non-deterministic (or FOND) planning, we define the notions of weak and strong reversibility for non-deterministic actions. We then focus on the universality and uniformity of action reversibility, that is, whether we can always undo all possible effects of the action by the same means (i.e., policy), or whether some of the effects can never be undone. We show how these classes of problems can be solved via classical or FOND planning and evaluate our approaches on FOND benchmark domains.
Imitating Cost-Constrained Behaviors in Reinforcement Learning
Authors: Shao Qian , Varakantham Pradeep , Cheng Shih-Fen
Published: May 2024

Complex planning and scheduling problems have long been solved using various optimization or heuristic approaches. In recent years, imitation learning that aims to learn from expert demonstrations has been proposed as a viable alternative to solving these problems. Generally speaking, imitation learning is designed to learn either the reward (or preference) model or directly the behavioral policy by observing the behavior of an expert. Existing work in imitation learning and inverse reinforcement learning has focused on imitation primarily in unconstrained settings (e.g., no limit on fuel consumed by the vehicle). However, in many real-world domains, the behavior of an expert is governed not only by reward (or preference) but also by constraints. For instance, decisions on self-driving delivery vehicles are dependent not only on the route preferences/rewards (depending on past demand data) but also on the fuel in the vehicle and the time available. In such problems, imitation learning is challenging as decisions are not only dictated by the reward model but are also dependent on a cost-constrained model. In this paper, we provide multiple methods that match expert distributions in the presence of trajectory cost constraints through (a) Lagrangian-based method; (b) Meta-gradients to find a good trade-off between expected return and minimizing constraint violation; and (c) Cost-violation-based alternating gradient. We empirically show that leading imitation learning approaches imitate cost-constrained behaviors poorly and our meta-gradient-based approach achieves the best performance.
Logical Specifications-guided Dynamic Task Sampling for Reinforcement Learning Agents
Authors: Shukla Yash , Burman Tanushree , Kulkarni Abhishek N. , Wright Robert , Velasquez Alvaro , Sinapov Jivko
Published: May 2024

Reinforcement Learning (RL) has made significant strides in enabling artificial agents to learn diverse behaviors. However, learning an effective policy often requires a large number of environment interactions. To mitigate sample complexity issues, recent approaches have used high-level task specifications, such as Linear Temporal Logic (LTLf) formulas or Reward Machines (RM), to guide the learning progress of the agent. In this work, we propose a novel approach, called Logical Specifications-guided Dynamic Task Sampling (LSTS), that learns a set of RL policies to guide an agent from an initial state to a goal state based on a high-level task specification, while minimizing the number of environmental interactions. Unlike previous work, LSTS does not assume information about the environment dynamics or the Reward Machine, and dynamically samples promising tasks that lead to successful goal policies. We evaluate LSTS on a gridworld and show that it achieves improved time-to-threshold performance on complex sequential decision-making problems compared to state-of-the-art RM and Automaton-guided RL baselines, such as Q-Learning for Reward Machines and Compositional RL from logical Specifications (DIRL). Moreover, we demonstrate that our method outperforms RM and Automaton-guided RL baselines in terms of sample-efficiency, both in a partially observable robotic task and in a continuous control robotic manipulation task.
Optimal Infinite Temporal Planning: Cyclic Plans for Priced Timed Automata
Authors: Tollund Rasmus G. , Johansen Nicklas S. , Nielsen Kristian Ø. , Torralba Álvaro , Larsen Kim G.
Published: May 2024

Many applications require infinite plans ---i.e. an infinite sequence of actions--- in order to carry out some given process indefinitely. In addition, it is desirable to guarantee optimality. In this paper, we address this problem in the setting of doubly-priced timed automata, where we show how to efficiently compute ratio-optimal cycles for optimal infinite plans. For efficient computation, we present symbolic λ-deduction (S-λD), an any-time algorithm that uses a symbolic representation (priced zones) to search the state-space with a compact representation of the time constraints. Our approach guarantees termination while arriving at an optimal solution. Our experimental evaluation shows that S-λD outperforms the alternative of searching in the concrete state space; is very robust with respect to fine-grained temporal constraints; and has a very good anytime behaviour.
MAPF in 3D Warehouses: Dataset and Analysis
Authors: Wang Qian , Veerapaneni Rishi , Wu Yu , Li Jiaoyang , Likhachev Maxim
Published: May 2024

Recent works have made significant progress in multi-agent path finding (MAPF), with modern methods being able to scale to hundreds of agents, handle unexpected delays, work in groups, etc. The vast majority of these methods have focused on 2D "grid world" domains. However, modern warehouses often utilize multi-agent robotic systems that can move in 3D, enabling dense storage but resulting in a more complex multi-agent planning problem. Motivated by this, we introduce and experimentally analyze the application of MAPF to 3D warehouse management, and release the first (see http://mapf.info/index.php/Main/Benchmarks) open-source 3D MAPF dataset. We benchmark two state-of-the-art MAPF methods, EECBS and MAPF-LNS2, and show how different hyper-parameters affect these methods across various 3D MAPF problems. We also investigate how the warehouse structure itself affects MAPF performance. Based on our experimental analysis, we find that a fast low-level search is critical for 3D MAPF, EECBS's suboptimality significantly changes the effect of certain CBS techniques, and certain warehouse designs can noticeably influence MAPF scalability and speed. An additional important observation is that, overall, the tested 2D MAPF techniques scaled well to 3D warehouses and demonstrate how the MAPF community's progress in 2D can generalize to 3D warehouses.
Reflexiones sobre La investigación y el efecto Mateo
Authors:   Hospital Hesburgh, Troya Altamirano Carlos
Published: May 2024

Carta al editor en referencia al editorial La investigación y el efecto Mateo
The Rise of the Chocolate Chip Cookie: Kitchens, Cookbooks, and Modernity in the Early Twentieth Century
Authors: Walter Kaitlyn
Published: May 2024

This thesis explores the rise in popularity of the chocolate chip cookie in the 1930s. It argues this popularity was dually rooted in challenges created by technological innovations of the oven and in the publication of new technical cookbooks written to address those difficulties. In the nineteenth century, kitchen appliances relied upon a present cook to monitor the approximate heat of the oven and progress of a bake using a vague recipe. However, in the twentieth century, ovens came with thermostats and timers, and as a result, recipes grew more exact to match. Unfortunately, home cooks had difficulty updating older recipes to this level of specificity, and they needed to learn new modes of baking. To solve this problem, motherly figures such as Ruth Wakefield published cookbooks that aided struggling home cooks. The popularity of this cookie offers a unique look at how the American cooks dealt with the rapid onset of modernity in the 1920s and 1930s by falling back on a dependable motherly figure offering traditional concepts of baking while embracing new ideas and ingredients. This thesis evidences cookbooks and newspapers to demonstrate these changes within the kitchen itself and elaborate on the pressures faced by home cooks. 