bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Connectivity of Alpine newt populations (Ichthyosaura alpestris) exacerbates the risk of Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans outbreaks in European fire salamanders (Salamandra salamandra)
Authors: Beninde Joscha , Keltsch Florian , Veith Michael , Hochkirch Axel , Wagner Norman 
Published: June 2021

AbstractThe pathogenic chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal) was introduced from Asia to Europe, most likely via the pet trade. It is currently causing a severe local decline in populations of the European fire salamanders (Salamandra salamandra). Laboratory tests confirmed that all infected individuals succumbed to the disease within two weeks. Furthermore, mass mortality events in the wild were observed in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. Some newt species, including the Alpine newt (Ichthyosaura alpestris), can also become infected with Bsal. However, they seem to be ‘tolerant’ and can often survive the disease, but maintain an infectious load, which they could spread among connected populations. It is, therefore, hypothesized that this species functions as a vector of the disease and threatens syntopic populations of susceptible species such as the European fire salamander. To assess the risk of Alpine newts as vectors for Bsal, we sampled 233 individuals from 50 sites in 2017 and performed a genetic population connectivity analysis using microsatellites. The results showed that populations of Alpine newts are not spatially structured, suggesting high gene flow across the study area. Tests for Bsal of all Alpine newts and 150 individuals of two other newt species confirmed five infected individuals. Infected newts can thus function as reservoirs and vectors of Bsal and spread it through dispersal. As a result, the risk of European fire salamander declines in this region is further exacerbated by the connectivity of syntopic Alpine newt populations.
Wildlife conservation in a fragmented landscape: the Eurasian red squirrel on the Isle of Wight
Authors: Hardouin Emilie A. , Butler Helen , Cvitanović Marin , Ulrich Rainer G. , Schulze Vanessa , Schilling Anna-Katarina , Lurz Peter W. W. , Meredith Anna , Hodder Kathy H. 
Published: June 2021

AbstractIsland populations may have a higher extinction risk due to reduced genetic diversity and need to be managed effectively in order to reduce the risk of biodiversity loss. The Eurasian red squirrels (Sciurus vulgaris) in the south of England only survive on three islands (the Isle of Wight, Brownsea and Furzey islands), with the Isle of Wight harbouring the largest population in the region. Fourteen microsatellites were used to determine the genetic structure of red squirrel populations on the Isle of Wight, as well as their relatedness to other populations of the species. Our results demonstrated that squirrels on these islands were less genetically diverse than those in Continental mainland populations, as would be expected. It also confirmed previous results from mitochondrial DNA which indicated that the squirrels on the Isle of Wight were relatively closely related to Brownsea island squirrels in the south of England. Importantly, our findings showed that genetic mixing between squirrels in the east and west of the Isle of Wight was very limited. Given the potential deleterious effects of small population size on genetic health, landscape management to encourage dispersal of squirrels between these populations should be a priority.
A Bootstrap Method to Test Granger-Causality in the Frequency Domain
Authors: Farnè Matteo , Montanari Angela 
Published: June 2021

AbstractWe propose a bootstrap test for unconditional and conditional Granger-causality spectra in the frequency domain. Our test aims to detect if the causality at a particular frequency is systematically different from zero. In particular, we consider a stochastic process derived applying independently the stationary bootstrap to the original series. At each frequency, we test the sample causality against the distribution of the median causality across frequencies estimated for that process. Via our procedure, we infer about the relationship between money stock and GDP in the Euro Area during the period 1999–2017. We point out that the money stock aggregate M1 had a significant impact on economic output at all frequencies, while the opposite relationship is significant only at low frequencies.
Combinatorial invariants for nets of conics in $$\mathrm {PG}(2,q)$$
Authors: Lavrauw Michel , Popiel Tomasz , Sheekey John 
Published: June 2021

AbstractThe problem of classifying linear systems of conics in projective planes dates back at least to Jordan, who classified pencils (one-dimensional systems) of conics over $${\mathbb {C}}$$
C
and $$\mathbb {R}$$
R
in 1906–1907. The analogous problem for finite fields $$\mathbb {F}_q$$

F
q

with q odd was solved by Dickson in 1908. In 1914, Wilson attempted to classify nets (two-dimensional systems) of conics over finite fields of odd characteristic, but his classification was incomplete and contained some inaccuracies. In a recent article, we completed Wilson’s classification (for q odd) of nets of rank one, namely those containing a repeated line. The aim of the present paper is to introduce and calculate certain combinatorial invariants of these nets, which we expect will be of use in various applications. Our approach is geometric in the sense that we view a net of rank one as a plane in $$\mathrm {PG}(5,q)$$

PG
(
5
,
q
)

, q odd, that meets the quadric Veronesean in at least one point; two such nets are then equivalent if and only if the corresponding planes belong to the same orbit under the induced action of $$\mathrm {PGL}(3,q)$$

PGL
(
3
,
q
)

viewed as a subgroup of $$\mathrm {PGL}(6,q)$$

PGL
(
6
,
q
)

. Since q is odd, the orbits of lines in $$\mathrm {PG}(5,q)$$

PG
(
5
,
q
)

under this action correspond to the aforementioned pencils of conics in $$\mathrm {PG}(2,q)$$

PG
(
2
,
q
)

. The main contribution of this paper is to determine the line-orbit distribution of a plane $$\pi $$
π
corresponding to a net of rank one, namely, the number of lines in $$\pi $$
π
belonging to each line orbit. It turns out that this list of invariants completely determines the orbit of $$\pi $$
π
, and we will use this fact in forthcoming work to develop an efficient algorithm for calculating the orbit of a given net of rank one. As a more immediate application, we also determine the stabilisers of nets of rank one in $$\mathrm {PGL}(3,q)$$

PGL
(
3
,
q
)

, and hence the orbit sizes.
Head teachers’ opinions on the future of school education conditioned by emergency remote teaching
Authors: Potyrała Katarzyna , Demeshkant Nataliia , Czerwiec Karolina , Jancarz-Łanczkowska Beata , Tomczyk Łukasz 
Published: June 2021

AbstractThe study explores the school transformation process as evidenced by the opinions of head teachers. The main goal of the research was to present a content analysis study of the Polish educational environment on the basis of primary and secondary head teachers’ views on the risks and perspectives brought by the global Covid-2019 lockdown. The conceptual framework was based on the theoretical perspective (the cognitive and affective processes in multimedia learning, the theory of motivation, and goal setting) as well as the model of the school as a learning organization and the assumptions ofEmergency Remote Teaching.The categorized interviews with the head teachers were conducted using a categorized interview questionnaire and the respondents considered various categories problems within educational practice related to the functioning of schools during the pandemic. The selection of study participants was deliberate using the snowball sampling method, 18 head teachers participated in this study. The research conducted allowed the specification of the different areas of influence ofEmergency Remote Teachingon the transformation of the school as a learning organization (e.g. the functioning of the school in mutual internal and external network cooperation, the dissemination and extending of communication areas using information technologies, the strengthening of the network interaction through information technologies, and other areas). The paper contains numerous recommendations that can improve the school's functioning in the future, based on the experience gained duringEmergency Remote Teaching. These experiences can accelerate the organizational and didactic development of the school as a learning organization.
Ecosystem Shifts: Implications for Groundwater Management
Authors: Esteban Encarna , Calvo Elena , Albiac Jose 
Published: June 2021

AbstractFreshwater ecosystems provide a large number of benefits to society. However, extensive human activities threat the viability of these ecosystems, their habitats, and their dynamics and interactions. One of the main risks facing these systems is the overexploitation of groundwater resources that hinders the survival of several freshwater habitats. In this paper, we study optimal groundwater paths when considering freshwater ecosystems. We contribute to existing groundwater literature by including the possibility of regime shifts in freshwater ecosystems into a groundwater management problem. The health of the freshwater habitat, which depends on the groundwater level, presents a switch in its status that occurs when a critical water level (‘tipping point’) is reached. Our results highlight important differences in optimal extraction paths and optimal groundwater levels compared with traditional models. The outcomes suggest that optimal groundwater withdrawals are non-linear and depend on the critical threshold and the ecosystem’s health function. Our results show that the inclusion of regime shifts in water management calls for a reformulation of water policies to incorporate the structure of ecosystems and their interactions with the habitat.
The instructional situations in which mathematics teachers provide substantive feedback
Authors: Stovner Roar B. , Klette Kirsti , Nortvedt Guri A. 
Published: June 2021

AbstractFeedback provided by mathematics teachers usually addresses procedural skills and, to a much lesser extent, other competencies such as conceptual understanding or engagement in mathematical practices. As most previous literature has studied feedback provided on homework or video prompts, how teachers provide such feedback in the classroom is poorly understood. Here, sixteen lessons taught by five teachers were purposefully sampled from a larger video study (172 lessons) as lessons with high-quality feedback according to a standardized observation instrument. The analysis focused on the instructional situations in which teachers provided feedback. When teachers provided procedural feedback, the situations were orderly and effective. Feedback on conceptual understanding and mathematical practices was provided in situations when students were especially challenged, and entailed a series of complex decisions, thereby placing demands on the teachers to manage both the students’ understanding and behavior. We argue that researchers should focus on how teachers and students negotiate the instructional situation to allow for feedback on conceptual understanding or mathematical practices.
Assessment of off-the-shelf SE-specific sentiment analysis tools: An extended replication study
Authors: Novielli Nicole , Calefato Fabio , Lanubile Filippo , Serebrenik Alexander 
Published: June 2021

AbstractSentiment analysis methods have become popular for investigating human communication, including discussions related to software projects. Since general-purpose sentiment analysis tools do not fit well with the information exchanged by software developers, new tools, specific for software engineering (SE), have been developed. We investigate to what extent off-the-shelf SE-specific tools for sentiment analysis mitigate the threats to conclusion validity of empirical studies in software engineering, highlighted by previous research. First, we replicate two studies addressing the role of sentiment in security discussions on GitHub and in question-writing on Stack Overflow. Then, we extend the previous studies by assessing to what extent the tools agree with each other and with the manual annotation on a gold standard of 600 documents. We find that different SE-specific sentiment analysis tools might lead to contradictory results at a fine-grain level, when used off-the-shelf. Conversely, platform-specific tuning or retraining might be needed to take into account differences in platform conventions, jargon, or document lengths.
Reparations and Egalitarianism
Authors: Blomfield Megan 
Published: June 2021

AbstractSome claim that a commitment to egalitarianism is in tension with support for reparations for historical injustice. This tension appears to arise insofar as egalitarianism is a forward-looking approach to justice: an approach that tells us what kind of world we should aim to build, where that world is not defined in terms of the decisions or actions of previous generations. Some have claimed that egalitarianism thereby renders reparations redundant (what I will refer to as the redundancy thesis). One popular option for egalitarians who aim to reject this thesis is to insist that historical injustices demand reparations when they have caused present-day inequality (the causal approach). A promising alternative, skilfully defended by Alasia Nuti in Injustice and the Reproduction of History, is to argue that historical injustices stand in need of repair when they are reproduced into the present-day, such that some past and present injustices are in fact the same injustice. In this paper, I assess these egalitarian responses to the redundancy thesis. I find that Nuti’s account is equipped to reject this thesis, but that the same lines of reply can be adopted by proponents of the causal approach. I suggest that both approaches therefore be viewed as potential ways to conceptualise the relationship between historical injustice and our present normative circumstances; and that in choosing between them, we should understand ourselves to be engaged in an ameliorative project – a project that is guided by, and designed to help us to achieve, our legitimate purposes.
Generalised Kochen–Specker Theorem in Three Dimensions
Authors: Voráček Václav , Navara Mirko 
Published: June 2021

AbstractWe show that there is no non-constant assignment of zeros and ones to points of a unit sphere in $$\mathbb{R}^3$$

R

3

such that for every three pairwisely orthogonal vectors, an odd number of them is assigned 1. This is a new strengthening of the Bell–Kochen–Specker theorem, which proves the non-existence of hidden variables in quantum theories.
Fusion Methods and Multi-classifiers to Improve Land Cover Estimation Using Remote Sensing Analysis
Authors: Dibs Hayder , Hasab Hashim Ali , Mahmoud Ammar Shaker , Al-Ansari Nadhir 
Published: June 2021

AbstractAdopting a low spatial resolution remote sensing imagery to get an accurate estimation of Land Use Land Cover is a difficult task to perform. Image fusion plays a big role to map the Land Use Land Cover. Therefore, This study aims to find out a refining method for the Land Use Land Cover estimating using these steps; (1) applying a three pan-sharpening fusion approaches to combine panchromatic imagery that has high spatial resolution with multispectral imagery that has low spatial resolution, (2) employing five pixel-based classifier approaches on multispectral imagery and fused images; artificial neural net, support vector machine, parallelepiped, Mahalanobis distance and spectral angle mapper, (3) make a statistical comparison between image classification results. The Landsat-8 image was adopted for this research. There are twenty Land Use Land Cover thematic maps were generated in this study. A suitable and reliable Land Use Land Cover method was presented based on the most accurate results. The results validation was performed by adopting a confusion matrix method. A comparison made between the images classification results of multispectral imagery and all fused images levels. It proved the Land Use Land Cover map produced by Gram–Schmidt Pan-sharpening and classified by support vector machine method has the most accurate result among all other multispectral imagery and fused images that classified by the other classifiers, it has an overall accuracy about (99.85%) and a kappa coefficient of about (0.98). However, the spectral angle mapper algorithm has the lowest accuracy compared to all other adopted methods, with overall accuracy of 53.41% and the kappa coefficient of about 0.48. The proposed procedure is useful in the industry and academic side for estimating purposes. In addition, it is also a good tool for analysts and researchers, who could interest to extend the technique to employ different datasets and regions.
Reinventing Geometric Linear Transformations in a Dynamic Geometry Environment: Multimodal Analysis of Student Reasoning
Authors: Turgut Melih 
Published: June 2021

AbstractThis paper reports the multimodal resources that attached to students’ reasoning in the reinvention of specific geometric linear transformations (like reflections according to the axes, projections onto axes and composition of reflections) in a dynamic geometry environment. Following the design heuristics of Realistic Mathematics Education, we design a task (in ℝ2) referring to specific tools and functions of GeoGebra. Task-based interviews were conducted with a pair of linear algebra students, by way of a computer and a teacher. Data was collected using a video camera observing the students’ working environment, screen recorder software, student production and field notes. The data was analysed according to the multimodal paradigm focusing on all semiotic resources, such as gestures and artefact use, in addition to written signs. According to the findings, the artefact use, verbal and written mathematical expressions all interlaced with the emergence of gestures. The students mostly gestured when they faced a new reflection situation and when describing associated geometric actions. Finally, a shared environment with action, production and communication conveyed student reasoning and they managed to reinvent a number of geometric linear transformations.
Portable Node-Level Parallelism for the PGAS Model
Authors: Jungblut Pascal , Fürlinger Karl 
Published: June 2021

AbstractThe Partitioned Global Address Space (PGAS) programming model brings intuitive shared memory semantics to distributed memory systems. Even with an abstract and unifying virtual global address space it is, however, challenging to use the full potential of different systems. Without explicit support by the implementation node-local operations have to be optimized manually for each architecture. A goal of this work is to offer a user-friendly programming model that provides portable performance across systems. In this paper we present an approach to integrate node-level programming abstractions with the PGAS programming model. We describe the hierarchical data distribution with local patterns and our implementation, MEPHISTO, in C++ using two existing projects. The evaluation of MEPHISTO shows that our approach achieves portable performance while requiring only minimal changes to port it from a CPU-based system to a GPU-based one using a CUDA or HIP back-end.
The route to employability: a longitudinal study on a sample of Italian job seekers
Authors: Lo Presti Alessandro , De Rosa Assunta , Zaharie Monica 
Published: June 2021

AbstractThis study aimed to examine the main predictors of employability, building on a recent conceptual model on employability developed by Lo Presti and Pluviano (Organ Psychol Rev 6(2): 192–211, 2016). Survey based data were collected from a sample of 263 Italian job-seekers through a longitudinal study. The results revealed that employability was more strongly determined by personal dispositions than by external factors, such as life circumstances and that the variables with the most impact were proactive personality, core self-evaluations, and educational level, rather than employability culture, family employability support, and previous work experience. The paper reveals an understanding of the relative importance of antecedents that determine employability.
Academic Dishonesty or Academic Integrity? Using Natural Language Processing (NLP) Techniques to Investigate Positive Integrity in Academic Integrity Research
Authors: Lancaster Thomas 
Published: June 2021

AbstractIs academic integrity research presented from a positive integrity standpoint? This paper uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques to explore a data set of 8,507 academic integrity papers published between 1904 and 2019.Two main techniques are used to linguistically examine paper titles: (1) bigram (word pair) analysis and (2) sentiment analysis. The analysis sees the three main bigrams used in paper titles as being “academic integrity” (2.38%), “academic dishonesty” (2.06%) and “plagiarism detection” (1.05%). When only highly cited papers are considered, negative integrity bigrams dominate positive integrity bigrams. For example, the 100 most cited academic integrity papers of all time are three times more likely to have “academic dishonesty” included in their titles than “academic integrity”. Similarly, sentiment analysis sees negative sentiment outperforming positive sentiment in the most cited papers.The history of academic integrity research is seen to place the field at a disadvantage due to negative portrayals of integrity. Despite this, analysis shows that change towards positive integrity is possible. The titles of papers by the ten most prolific academic integrity researchers are found to use positive terminology in more cases that not. This suggests an approach for emerging academic integrity researchers to model themselves after.
African Environmental Ethics: Keys to Sustainable Development Through Agroecological Villages
Authors: Verharen Charles , Bugarin Flordeliz , Tharakan John , Wensing Enrico , Gutema Bekele , Fortunak Joseph , Middendorf George 
Published: June 2021

AbstractThis essay proposes African-based ethical solutions to profound human problems and a working African model to address those problems. The model promotes sustainability through advanced agroecological and information communication technologies. The essay’s first section reviews the ethical ground of that model in the work of the Senegalese scholar, Cheikh Anta Diop. The essay’s second section examines an applied African model for translating African ethical speculation into practice. Deeply immersed in European and African ethics, Godfrey Nzamujo developed the Songhaï Centers to solve the problem of rural poverty in seventeen African countries. Harnessing advanced technologies within a holistic agroecological ecosystem, Nzamujo’s villages furnish education spanning the fields of ethics, information communication technology, microbiology, international development, and mechanical, electrical, civil and biological engineering in a community-based and centered development enterprise. The essay proposes a global consortium of ecovillages based on Nzamujo’s model. The final section explores funding methods for the consortium. The conclusion contemplates a return to Africa to supplement environmental ethics that enhance life’s future on earth.
The Freegan Challenge to Veganism
Authors: Milburn Josh , Fischer Bob 
Published: June 2021

AbstractThere is a surprising consensus among vegan philosophers that freeganism—eating animal-based foods going to waste—is permissible. Some ethicists even argue that vegans should be freegans. In this paper, we offer a novel challenge to freeganism drawing upon Donaldson and Kymlicka’s ‘zoopolitical’ approach, which supports ‘restricted freeganism’. On this position, it’s prima facie wrong to eat the corpses of domesticated animals, as they are members of a mixed human-animal community, ruling out many freegan practices. This exploration reveals how the ‘political turn’ in animal ethics can offer fertile lenses through which to consider ethical puzzles about eating animals.