Hasil untuk "Natural history (General)"

Banafsheh Karimian, Alexis Guichemerre, Soufiane Belharbi et al.

Breast cancer remains a leading cause of cancer-related mortality worldwide. Longitudinal mammography risk prediction models improve multi-year breast cancer risk prediction based on prior screening exams. However, in real-world clinical practice, longitudinal histories are often incomplete, irregular, or unavailable due to missed screenings, first-time examinations, heterogeneous acquisition schedules, or archival constraints. The absence of prior exams degrades the performance of longitudinal risk models and limits their practical applicability. While substantial longitudinal history is available during training, prior exams are commonly absent at test time. In this paper, we address missing history at inference time and propose a longitudinal risk prediction method that uses mammography history as privileged information during training and distills its prognostic value into a student model that only requires the current exam at inference time. The key idea is a privileged multi-teacher distillation scheme with horizon-specific teachers: each teacher is trained on the full longitudinal history to specialize in one prediction horizon, while the student receives only a reconstructed history derived from the current exam. This allows the student to inherit horizon-dependent longitudinal risk cues without requiring prior screening exams at deployment. Our new Privileged History Distillation (PHD) method is validated on a large longitudinal mammography dataset with multi-year cancer outcomes, CSAW-CC, comparing full-history and no-history baselines to their distilled counterparts. Using time-dependent AUC across horizons, our privileged history distillation method markedly improves the performance of long-horizon prediction over no-history models and is comparable to that of full-history models, while using only the current exam at inference time.

Haochen Zhang, Animesh Sinha, Felix Juefei-Xu et al.

Conversational image generation requires a model to follow user instructions across multiple rounds of interaction, grounded in interleaved text and images that accumulate as chat history. While recent multimodal large language models (MLLMs) can generate and edit images, most existing multi-turn benchmarks and training recipes are effectively Markov: the next output depends primarily on the most recent image, enabling shortcut solutions that ignore long-range history. In this work we formalize and target the more challenging non-Markov setting, where a user may refer back to earlier states, undo changes, or reference entities introduced several rounds ago. We present (i) non-Markov multi-round data construction strategies, including rollback-style editing that forces retrieval of earlier visual states and name-based multi-round personalization that binds names to appearances across rounds; (ii) a history-conditioned training and inference framework with token-level caching to prevent multi-round identity drift; and (iii) enabling improvements for high-fidelity image reconstruction and editable personalization, including a reconstruction-based DiT detokenizer and a multi-stage fine-tuning curriculum. We demonstrate that explicitly training for non-Markov interactions yields substantial improvements in multi-round consistency and instruction compliance, while maintaining strong single-round editing and personalization.

Grzegorz Kopij

The yellow mongoose population density was assessed by counting its dens. The study was conducted on the UNAM Ogongo campus. It is situated in the Cuvelai Drainage System, c. 50 km north-west of Oshakati, Outapi district, Omusati region, north-central Namibia (17º700 S, 15º310 E).The Cuvelai Drainage System is a unique ecosystem comprising a network of water canals (oshanas), mopane and acacia savannas. Four habitats were distinguished in the study area: pure acacia savanna (c. 380 ha); transformed acacia savanna mixed with human habitations, gardens, orchards, and arable fields (c. 200 ha); mopane savanna stocked with game (c. 1000 ha); and mopane savanna with livestock (c. 2000 ha). In total, 16 dens were identified in the pure acacia Savanna, 10 dens in transformed, but none in mopane savanna, neither in the one stocked with game, nor in the one with livestock. In the pure acacia savanna, the highest density was recorded at Combretum-dominated place, and none in Acacia nilotica dominated belt. Only two dens were located in the portion dominated by Mopane colophospermum. In general, the population density in the pure acacia savanna was assessed at 16.8–25.3 individuals per 100 ha, whereas in the human-modified acacia savanna at 20.5–30.0 ind./100 ha. The most important reason for the absence of the yellow mongoose in the mopane savanna is the soil type, not suitable for digging dens. Less important is the presence of oshanas flooded almost on a yearly basis, as the yellow mongoose often inhabit places close to water. Also, insects, especially termites, are common in mopane savanna, although population densities of small vertebrates are much lower here than in the acacia savanna. The land covered with the acacia savanna has a sandy soil, suitable for digging. Higher preferences for Combretum vegetation and outskirts of arable field can be explained probably by higher concentrations of small rodents (gerbils), which live there abundantly in burrow colonies. The overall population density of the yellow mongoose in pure acacia savanna at Ogongo was higher than in any other sites in southern Africa, where its density was assessed.

Nuha El Sharif, Muna Ahmead, Munera Al Abed

<b>Background/Objective</b>: While no human monkeypox (MPXV) infections have been reported in Palestine, the rapid global increase in cases, including in neighboring countries, necessitates proactive public health preparedness. This study aimed to assess Palestinians’ willingness to receive MPXV vaccination and to identify associated predictors in the context of a potential outbreak. <b>Methods</b>: A cross-sectional online survey was conducted in September 2024. The questionnaire gathered data on participants’ sociodemographic characteristics, risk perceptions, Vaccine Trust Indicator (VTI) scores, vaccination history, and willingness to receive an MPXV vaccine. Bivariate analyses were performed using Pearson’s chi-square test, and a multivariate logistic regression model was employed to identify the determinants of MPXV vaccination willingness. <b>Results</b>: The overall willingness to receive MPXV vaccination was low (28.8%). Key findings included significant public misconceptions and concerns: 33% of respondents believed that natural immunity from infection was sufficient, while 43% expressed concerns about potential adverse effects, similar to those associated with COVID-19 vaccines. Furthermore, nearly 60% of participants stated they would decline a free MPXV vaccine. Multivariate analysis revealed that prior COVID-19 vaccination (aOR = 3.07, <i>p</i> < 0.05), a moderate VTI score (aOR = 6.65, <i>p</i> < 0.05), and prior influenza vaccination (aOR = 4.00, <i>p</i> < 0.05) were significant predictors of MPXV vaccination willingness. Willingness to pay for the vaccine also positively influenced vaccination intent. One of the common misconceptions found was the belief that having received a smallpox vaccination prior reduces the need for an MPXV vaccination. <b>Conclusions</b>: The willingness to receive an MPXV vaccine in Palestine is suboptimal. Prior vaccination behaviors and general trust in vaccines are key determinants of acceptance. These findings underscore the critical need for public health strategies focused on strengthening trust in vaccine efficacy and safety, along with targeted health education to enhance community preparedness for a potential MPXV outbreak.

Muhammed Adil Yatkin, Mihkel Korgesaar, Jani Romanoff et al.

Current neural network (NN) models can learn patterns from data points with historical dependence. Specifically, in natural language processing (NLP), sequential learning has transitioned from recurrence-based architectures to transformer-based architectures. However, it is unknown which NN architectures will perform the best on datasets containing deformation history due to mechanical loading. Thus, this study ascertains the appropriateness of 1D-convolutional, recurrent, and transformer-based architectures for predicting deformation localization based on the earlier states in the form of deformation history. Following this investigation, the crucial incompatibility issues between the mathematical computation of the prediction process in the best-performing NN architectures and the actual values derived from the natural physical properties of the deformation paths are examined in detail.

Yu Shi, Hao Li, Bram Adams et al.

Automated program repair (APR) has recently shifted toward large language models and agent-based systems, yet most systems rely on local snapshot context, overlooking repository history. Prior work shows that repository history helps repair single-line bugs, since the last commit touching the buggy line is often the bug-introducing one. In this paper, we investigate whether repository history can also improve agentic APR systems at scale, especially for complex multi-hunk bugs. We present HAFixAgent, a History-Aware Bug-Fixing Agent that injects blame-derived repository heuristics into its repair loop. A preliminary study on 854 Defects4J (Java) and 501 BugsInPy (Python) bugs motivates our design, showing that bug-relevant history is widely available across both benchmarks. Using the same LLM (DeepSeek-V3.2-Exp) for all experiments, including replicated baselines, we show: (1) Effectiveness: HAFixAgent outperforms RepairAgent (+56.6\%) and BIRCH-feedback (+47.1\%) on Defects4J. Historical context further improves repair by +4.4\% on Defects4J and +38.6\% on BugsInPy, especially on single-file multi-hunk (SFMH) bugs. (2) Robustness: under noisy fault localization (+1/+3/+5 line shifts), history provides increasing resilience, maintaining 40 to 56\% success on SFMH bugs where the non-history baseline collapses to 0\%. (3) Efficiency: history does not significantly increase agent steps or token costs on either benchmark.

Lvmin Zhang, Shengqu Cai, Muyang Li et al.

Autoregressive video generation relies on history context for content consistency and storytelling. As video histories grow longer, efficiently encoding them remains an open problem - particularly for personal users and local workflows where compute and memory budgets are limited. We present a lightweight history encoder that maps long video histories into short-length embeddings, pretrained with a frame query objective that learns to attend to content features at arbitrary temporal positions. The pretraining stage provides the encoder with dense history coverage on large-scale video data; the subsequent finetuning stage adapts the pretrained encoder under an autoregressive video generation objective to establish content-level consistency. In this way, the lightweight embeddings achieve comparable performance to heavier alternatives. We evaluate the framework with ablative settings and discuss the architecture designs.

John Drummond, Wayne Orchiston, Carolyn Brown et al.

C/1910 A1 was one of the Great Comets of the twentieth century. Although it was widely observed from the Northern Hemisphere, it was first discovered by observers south of the Equator. The comet arrived just months before the widely anticipated apparition of Comet 1P/Halley and was significantly more spectacular. As a result, the two comets were confused, and many who, in later years, talked about how prominent Comet 1P/Halley was in 1910 were often remembering C/1910 A1. In this paper, we present the results of a detailed search through historical records and media publications in Aotearoa / New Zealand, to investigate how extensively C/1910 A1 was observed from New Zealand. We compare our results with observations reported for Comet 1P/Halley later in 1910, finding that surprisingly few observations of C/1910 A1 were made by New Zealand observers. We discuss cases where the comet was misidentified as being an early sighting of 1P/Halley and compare the observations made in New Zealand with international observations/records/accounts. We find that, although the Great January Comet of 1910 was observed from New Zealand, it was witnessed by few compared to other parts of the world, meaning that the apparition of C/1910 A1 was something of a missed opportunity for New Zealand astronomers.

María Couret, Javier Díaz-Pérez, Airam N. Sarmiento-Lezcano et al.

Euphausiids, commonly known as krill, are crucial contributors to the ocean’s active carbon pump, impacting carbon export and sequestration through their diel vertical migration. These organisms feed on organic matter in the epipelagic layer at night and release inorganic carbon in the mesopelagic layer during the day via respiration. Measuring respiration in the mesopelagic layer is challenging due to the difficulties in obtaining direct measurements, as well as the lack of comprehensive data, and reliance on conservative estimates. The measurement of the electron transfer system (ETS) activity is used as a proxy to assess respiration in the mesopelagic layer. However, accurate calibration of respiration rates and ETS activity is imperative through experimental measurements and empirical data. Here, we compared the respiration rates with their respective ETS activities of different species of euphausiids captured at night in the epipelagic layer of the Atlantic Ocean along a latitudinal (42-29°N, 25°W) and a longitudinal (25-13°W, 29°N) transect. Our results revealed a spatial trend in respiration rates, and consequently in ETS activities, with rates decreasing southward and increasing slightly towards the African upwelling region. The Generalized Additive Model (GAM) demonstrated that epipelagic oxygen concentration, chlorophyll a, and the interaction between epipelagic temperature and mesopelagic oxygen concentration significantly influenced euphausiids respiration rates. Furthermore, we observed a strong correlation between respiration and specific ETS activities, with R/ETS ratios exceeding the conservative value of 0.5, which is typically used to estimate respiratory flux.

Baydaa Hussain Mutlak, Sadama Said Faraj

Nelson R. Salinas, Gil Eshel, Gloria M. Coruzzi et al.

Abstract Premise Common steps in phylogenomic matrix production include biological sequence concatenation, morphological data concatenation, insertion/deletion (indel) coding, gene content (presence/absence) coding, removing uninformative characters for parsimony analysis, recording with reduced amino acid alphabets, and occupancy filtering. Existing software does not accomplish these tasks on a phylogenomic scale using a single program. Methods and Results BAD2matrix is a Python script that performs the above‐mentioned steps in phylogenomic matrix construction for DNA or amino acid sequences as well as morphological data. The script works in UNIX‐like environments (e.g., LINUX, MacOS, Windows Subsystem for LINUX). Conclusions BAD2matrix helps simplify phylogenomic pipelines and can be downloaded from https://github.com/dpl10/BAD2matrix/tree/master under a GNU General Public License v2.

Se-eun Yoon, Ahmad Bin Rabiah, Zaid Alibadi et al.

Customers reach out to online live chat agents with various intents, such as asking about product details or requesting a return. In this paper, we propose the problem of predicting user intent from browsing history and address it through a two-stage approach. The first stage classifies a user's browsing history into high-level intent categories. Here, we represent each browsing history as a text sequence of page attributes and use the ground-truth class labels to fine-tune pretrained Transformers. The second stage provides a large language model (LLM) with the browsing history and predicted intent class to generate fine-grained intents. For automatic evaluation, we use a separate LLM to judge the similarity between generated and ground-truth intents, which closely aligns with human judgments. Our two-stage approach yields significant performance gains compared to generating intents without the classification stage.

Bernardo Santos, Meredith Miller, Margarita Miklasevskaja et al.

The use of DNA barcoding has revolutionised biodiversity science, but its application depends on the existence of comprehensive and reliable reference libraries. For many poorly known taxa, such reference sequences are missing even at higher-level taxonomic scales. We harvested the collections of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (USNM) to generate DNA barcoding sequences for genera of terrestrial arthropods previously not recorded in one or more major public sequence databases. Our workflow used a mix of Sanger and Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) approaches to maximise sequence recovery while ensuring affordable cost. In total, COI sequences were obtained for 5,686 specimens belonging to 3,737 determined species in 3,886 genera and 205 families distributed in 137 countries. Success rates varied widely according to collection data and focal taxon. NGS helped recover sequences of specimens that failed a previous run of Sanger sequencing. Success rates and the optimal balance between Sanger and NGS are the most important drivers to maximise output and minimise cost in future projects. The corresponding sequence and taxonomic data can be accessed through the Barcode of Life Data System, GenBank, the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, the Global Genome Biodiversity Network Data Portal and the NMNH data portal.

Xue Li Zhu, Jiao Jiao Yuan, Li Yang Zhou et al.

Cyclommatus stag beetles (Coleoptera, Lucanidae) are very interesting insects, because of their striking allometry (mandibles can be longer that the whole body in large males of some species) and sexual dimorphism. They mainly inhabit tropical and subtropical forests in Asia. To date, there has been no molecular phylogenetic research on how these stag beetles evolved and diversified. In this study, we constructed the first phylogenetic relationship for Cyclommatus using multi-locus datasets. Analyses showed that Cyclommatus is monophyletic, being subdivided into two well-supported clades (A and B). The clade A includes the island species from Southeast Asia, and the clade B is formed by the continental species. The divergent time estimates showed these beetles split from the outgroup around 43.10 million years ago (Mya) in the late Eocene, divided during the late Oligocene (around 24.90 Mya) and diversified further during the early and middle Miocene (around 18.19 Mya, around 15.17 Mya). RASP analysis suggested that these beetles likely originated in the Philippine archipelago, then dispersed to the other Southeast Asian archipelagoes, Indochina Peninsula, Southeast Himalayas, and Southern China. Moreover, relatively large genetic distance and stable morphological variations signified that the two clades reach the level of inter-generic differences, i.e., the current Cyclommatus should be separated in two genera: Cyclommatus Parry, 1863 including the clade A species, and Cyclommatinus Didier, 1927 covering the clade B species. In addition, the evidence we generated indicated these beetles’ diversification was promoted probably by both long-distance dispersal and colonization, supporting an “Upstream” colonization hypothesis. Our study provides insights into the classification, genetics and evolution of stag beetles in the Oriental region.

Wenjin Sun, Wenjin Sun, Wenjin Sun et al.

The North Pacific Subtropical Countercurrent area (STCC) is high in mesoscale eddy activities. According to the rotation direction of the eddy flow field and the sign of temperature anomaly within the eddy, they can be divided into four categories: cyclonic cold-core eddy (CCE), anticyclonic warm-core eddy (AWE), cyclonic warm-core eddy (CWE) and anticyclonic cold-core eddy (ACE). CCE and AWE are called normal eddies, and CWE and ACE are named abnormal eddies. Based on the OFES data and vector geometry automatic detection method, we find that at the sea surface, the maximum monthly number of the CCE, AWE, CWE, and ACE occurs in December (765.70 ± 52.05), January (688.20 ± 82.53), August (373.40 ± 43.09) and August (533.00 ± 56.92), respectively. The number of normal eddies is more in winter and spring, and less in summer and autumn, while abnormal eddies have the opposite distribution. The maximum rotation velocity of the four types of eddies appears in June (11.71 ± 0.75 cm/s), June (12.24 ± 0.86 cm/s), May (10.63 ± 0.99 cm/s) and June (9.97 ± 0.91 cm/s), which is fast in winter and spring. The moving speed of the four types of eddies is almost similar (about 10 ~ 11 cm/s). The amplitude of normal and abnormal eddies is both high in summer and autumn, and low in winter and spring, with larger amplitudes in normal than abnormal eddies. The eccentricity (defined as the eccentricity of the ellipse obtained by fitting the eddy boundary) of the four types of eddies is also close to each other, and their variation ranges from 0.7 to 0.8, with no apparent seasonal variation. The vertical penetration depth, which has no significant seasonal difference, is 675.13 ± 67.50 m in cyclonic eddies (CCE and CWE), which is deeper than that 622.32 ± 81.85 m in anticyclonic eddies (ACE and AWE). In addition, increasing the defined temperature threshold for abnormal eddies can significantly reduce their numbers but does not change their seasonal variation trend.

Sylvia Wenmackers

Problems with uniform probabilities on an infinite support show up in contemporary cosmology. This paper focuses on the context of inflation theory, where it complicates the assignment of a probability measure over pocket universes. The measure problem in cosmology, whereby it seems impossible to pick out a uniquely well-motivated measure, is associated with a paradox that occurs in standard probability theory and crucially involves uniformity on an infinite sample space. This problem has been discussed by physicists, albeit without reference to earlier work on this topic. The aim of this article is both to introduce philosophers of probability to these recent discussions in cosmology and to familiarize physicists and philosophers working on cosmology with relevant foundational work by Kolmogorov, de Finetti, Jaynes, and other probabilists. As such, the main goal is not to solve the measure problem, but to clarify the exact origin of some of the current obstacles. The analysis of the assumptions going into the paradox indicates that there exist multiple ways of dealing consistently with uniform probabilities on infinite sample spaces. Taking a pluralist stance towards the mathematical methods used in cosmology shows there is some room for progress with assigning probabilities in cosmological theories.

Bryony L. Townhill, Elena Couce, James Bell et al.

Climate change is already affecting the distributions of marine fish, and future change is expected to have a particularly large impact on small islands that are reliant on the sea for much of their income. This study aims to develop an understanding of how climate change may affect the distribution of commercially important tuna in the waters around the United Kingdom’s Overseas Territories in the South Atlantic. The future suitable habitat of southern bluefin, albacore, bigeye, yellowfin and skipjack tunas were modelled under two future climate change scenarios. Of all the tunas, the waters of Tristan da Cunha are the most suitable for southern bluefin, and overall, the environmental conditions will remain so in the future. Tristan da Cunha is not projected to become more suitable for any of the other tuna species in the future. For the other tuna species, Ascension Island and Saint Helena will become more suitable in the future, particularly so for skipjack tuna around Ascension Island, as the temperature and salinity conditions change in these areas. Large marine protected areas have been designated around the territories, with those in Ascension and Tristan da Cunha closed to tuna fishing. Although these areas are small relative to the whole Atlantic, these model projections could be useful in understanding whether this protection will benefit tuna populations into the future, particularly where there is high site fidelity.

Rafael M. Chiaravalloti, Katherine Homewood, Mark Dyble

ABSTRACT Most conservation and development initiatives assume that rules limiting resource extraction are necessary for ecological sustainability. While this is often true, in some social–ecological systems, unpredictable ecosystem dynamics and limited exploitation technology make it unlikely that people will overstep the ecological threshold, precluding the need for management rules. Here, two kinds of systems can emerge: open access systems in which individuals can meet their needs without cooperating with others, and a cooperative open access system in which social rules are required though management rules are not, because individuals need to cooperate to survive and to prevent erosion of cooperation by free‐riders. We provide three brief case studies illustrating cooperative open access: Pantaneiro fishers, Agta hunter‐gatherers, and Maasai pastoralists. We conclude that understanding these exceptions is pivotal for a better theoretical understanding of social–ecological systems, and can be valuable in building a strategic approach to conservation.

Min Dai, Songlin Li, Songlin Li et al.

The study was conducted to explore the improvement function of marine protein hydrolyzates on nutritive values of diets for largemouth bass. The diet with no inclusion of marine protein hydrolyzate was considered as the control (NC), and four other diets were formulated with fish soluble (FS), squid paste (SqP), shrimp paste (ShP), or a mixture of FS, SqP, and ShP (Mix). Triplicate tanks of fish were fed to apparent satiation twice daily for 81 days. Results showed that the growth performance was elevated due to the inclusion of marine protein hydrolyzates along with significantly elevated feed intake and protein digestibility. Thereinto, the inclusion of FS and ShP significantly improved the growth performance compared to NC. The supplementation of marine protein hydrolyzates elevated the protein content and lysozyme activity of serum, but significantly decreased the activity of liver alanine transaminase and aspartate transaminase. The gene expression analysis revealed that marine protein hydrolyzate inclusion up-regulated the expression of insulin-like growth factor I (IGF-I) with increased expression of TOR pathway-related genes including protein kinase B (AKT) 1 and ribosomal protein S6. However, the expression of activating transcription factor 4 (ATF4) and regulated in development and DNA damage responses 1 (REDD1) involved in the amino acids response (AAR) pathway was depressed with the addition of marine protein hydrolyzates. The activation of the TOR pathway and depression of the AAR pathway may be beneficial for the improved performance of fish. In the above, the marine protein hydrolyzate, especially FS and ShP, can elevate nutritive values of diets for largemouth bass.

Takumi Nakane, Xuequan Lu, Chao Zhang

In evolutionary algorithms, genetic operators iteratively generate new offspring which constitute a potentially valuable set of search history. To boost the performance of crossover in real-coded genetic algorithm (RCGA), in this paper we propose to exploit the search history cached so far in an online style during the iteration. Specifically, survivor individuals over past few generations are collected and stored in the archive to form the search history. We introduce a simple yet effective crossover model driven by the search history (abbreviated as SHX). In particular, the search history is clustered and each cluster is assigned a score for SHX. In essence, the proposed SHX is a data-driven method which exploits the search history to perform offspring selection after the offspring generation. Since no additional fitness evaluations are needed, SHX is favorable for the tasks with limited budget or expensive fitness evaluations. We experimentally verify the effectiveness of SHX over 4 benchmark functions. Quantitative results show that our SHX can significantly enhance the performance of RCGA, in terms of accuracy.