Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The impact of a dairy cattle project on households livelihoods in Kasulu district, Tanzania

This study was conducted in Kasulu district with the aim of assessing the impact of a dairy cattle project on the households’ livelihoods. Muzye and Mnanila wards were surveyed. Purposive, stratified and simple random sampling techniques were employed to obtain the desired sample. Data were collected through a cross sectional survey from a sample of 120 respondents, 60 of whom had received dairy cattle and 60 without dairy cattle. Questionnaires for respondents with and without dairy cattle were used to collect data. Data were analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 16 computer program. Descriptive statistics, multiple linear regression and t-test techniques were used to analyse the data. A t-test showed a significant difference (t=2.978, df =59, p<0.05) between households’ incomes before and after the project intervention. The mean annual incomes for dairy cattle owners increased from 471 266.67 to 1 012 400.00 TAS after the project intervention. In addition, farmers with dairy cattle had higher mean annual incomes (1 012 400.00 TAS) than those without dairy cattle animals (523 596.67 TAS). Integration of dairy and crop enterprises increased crop yields due to the application of cattle manure. Farmers with dairy cattle (93.3%) reduced application of industrial fertilizers after dairying compared to 51.7% of households without dairy animals. The observed overall mean cow performance in terms of daily milk yield, lactation length and dry period were 7.25kg, 9.08 and 2.65 months, respectively. It was concluded that small scale dairy cattle enterprise had contributed significantly in improving households’ livelihoods as regards to food security and increased purchasing power of goods and services. It is therefore recommended that guaranteed milk market, quality extension services and access to quality dairy animals will sustain the project. This calls for development partners to support farmers through small scale dairy schemes. ii
Biochemical and Molecular Roles of Nutrients Hydrogenated Fat High in Trans Monoenes with an Adequate Level of Linoleic Acid Has no Effect on Prostaglandin Synthesis in Rats 1 , 2

Our study was designed to determine whether hydrogenated fat high in trans monoenes concentration affected prostaglandin synthesis. Corn oil (CO), butter (B), hydrogenated vegetable oil (HF) and coating fat (CF) were used in this study. These fats were fed to rats for 10 wk at 10 g/100 g diet. The phospholipid (PL) fatty acid content of platelets, aorta and heart was determined by gas liquid chromatography, and the in vitro aorta production of prostacyclin (PGI2) from exogenous or endogenous arachidonic acid (AA) was measured using the radioimmuno-assay (RIA) method. Serum thromboxane B2 (TXB2) released by platelets as thromboxane A2 (TXA2) during incubation of whole blood was also measured by this method. In the group fed CF, AA was significantly lower in the PL of aorta, platelet and heart, and the ratio 20:3(n-9)/20:4(n-6) was greater than in the groups fed CO, B or HF, indicating that the group fed CF was essential fatty acid (EFA) deficient. Although AA was significantly lower in the aorta and platelet PL of the group fed HF compared to the group fed CO, that difference did not affect the amounts of PGI2 or TXB2 produced in these groups. The group fed CF had significantly less PGI2 and TXB2 released by aorta and platelets than the other groups. This was the result of the reduced level of AA and the presence of higher amounts of 20:3(n-9) acid in the PL, which might act as a competitive inhibitor for cyclooxygenase. The aortic production of PGI2 from exogenous AA did not differ among the groups indicating that prostaglandin synthetase was not affected by the dietary fat. We conclude that the consumption of hydrogenated fats high in trans 18:1 acids with adequate amount of linoleic acid had no effect on the amount of thromboxane or prostacyclin produced by platelet or aorta in vitro. J. Nutr. 129: 15–24, 1999.
Stress-dilatancy behaviour of frozen sand in direct shear

This paper aims to clarify the characteristics of the strength and dilatancy behaviour of saturated frozen sand in direct shear. A series of direct shear box tests were performed in a cold room using saturated frozen fine sand samples with a wide range of sand volume fractions. The dependency of the strength and dilatancy behaviour on the temperature, normal stress and strain rate are discussed on the basis of the experimental results. It was found that the shear strength and dilatancy of the sand-ice mixture was strongly dependent on the rate of shear deformation and the volume fraction of sand. The ongoing dilation of most of the tests indicates that the shearing not only affects a thin shear plane, but also influences strongly the adjacent soil due to possible propagation of cracks between the solid particles. Furthermore, the shear strength was quite sensitive to the temperature changes in the ranges near to 0°C. Permafrost, Phillips, Springman & Arenson (eds) © 2003 Swets & Zeitlinger, Lisse, ISBN 90 5809 582 7
Improving the Diversity of PSO for an Engineering Inverse Problem using Adaptive Inertia Weight

: Particle swarm optimization is a stochastic optimal search algorithm inspired by observing schools of fishes and flocks of birds. It is prevalent due to its easy implementation and fast convergence. However, PSO has been known to succumb to local optima when dealing with complex and higher dimensional optimization problems. To handle the problem of premutature convergence in PSO, this paper presents a novel adaptive inertia weight strategy and modifies the velocity update equation with the new Sbest term. To maintain the diversity of the population a particular radius r is introduced to impulse cluster particles. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, various test functions and typical engineering applications are employed, and the experimental results show that with the changing of the proposed parameter the performance of PSO improves when dealing with these complex and high dimensional problems.
Activation of Wnt Signaling by Chemically Induced Dimerization of LRP5 Disrupts Cellular Homeostasis

Wnt signaling is crucial for a variety of biological processes, including body axis formation, planar polarity, stem cell maintenance and cellular differentiation. Therefore, targeted manipulation of Wnt signaling in vivo would be extremely useful. By applying chemical inducer of dimerization (CID) technology, we were able to modify the Wnt co-receptor, low-density lipoprotein (LDL)-receptor-related protein 5 (LRP5), to generate the synthetic ligand inducible Wnt switch, iLRP5. We show that iLRP5 oligomerization results in its localization to disheveled-containing punctate structures and sequestration of scaffold protein Axin, leading to robust β-catenin-mediated signaling. Moreover, we identify a novel LRP5 cytoplasmic domain critical for its intracellular localization and casein kinase 1-dependent β-catenin signaling. Finally, by utilizing iLRP5 as a Wnt signaling switch, we generated the Ubiquitous Activator of β-catenin (Ubi-Cat) transgenic mouse line. The Ubi-Cat line allows for nearly ubiquitous expression of iLRP5 under control of the H-2Kb promoter. Activation of iLRP5 in isolated prostate basal epithelial stem cells resulted in expansion of p63+ cells and development of hyperplasia in reconstituted murine prostate grafts. Independently, iLRP5 induction in adult prostate stroma enhanced prostate tissue regeneration. Moreover, induction of iLRP5 in male Ubi-Cat mice resulted in prostate tumor progression over several months from prostate hyperplasia to adenocarcinoma. We also investigated iLRP5 activation in Ubi-Cat-derived mammary cells, observing that prolonged activation results in mammary tumor formation. Thus, in two distinct experimental mouse models, activation of iLRP5 results in disruption of tissue homeostasis, demonstrating the utility of iLRP5 as a novel research tool for determining the outcome of Wnt activation in a precise spatially and temporally determined fashion.
Differential Involvement of Parietal and Precentral Regions in Movement Preparation and Motor Intention

Flexible goal-oriented behavior relies on spatial coordinate transformations and motor control mechanisms, but also on the capability to take advantage of contextual information for steering the sensorimotor machinery. Although accurate performance of a sensorimotor task requires parietal and frontal regions, their differential contribution and functional relationship with other associative regions remains obscure. We have used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure human cerebral activity associated with motor cognitive processes in the context of delayed performance of an associative visuomotor task. Movement instruction (specified by visual cues) and motor performance (specified by an auditory cue) were separated by a variable delay period. By manipulating the predictive value of the instruction cue, we distinguished delay-related activity influenced by response probabilities (motor preparation and motor inhibition) from delay-related activity unaffected by the likelihood of providing a motor response (motor intention). We found delay-related activity distributed across a cerebral network involving not only frontal circuitry, but also extrastriate and mediotemporal regions. Areas showing motor intentions and preparatory responses were spatially intermingled. Posterior parietal cortex deviated from this pattern, showing delay-related activity regardless of movement probability, but no specific preparatory responses. These results suggest that posterior parietal cortex and dorsal precentral cortex play different strategic roles in handling associative visuomotor problems. While parietal regions cover a range of potential responses defined by the task setting, precentral regions focus on a likely movement. Temporo-prefrontal regions might incorporate contextual information in the visuomotor process by defining potential and probable responses on the basis of the task contingencies.
The Provision of Public Inputs and Foreign Direct Investment

"A small open economy model is developed that incorporates direct and indirect effects on multinational location decisions associated with public input provision. It is shown that when agglomeration externalities are present in local intermediate goods markets, public input provision can affect multinational firms directly by lowering the fixed costs of production and indirectly by decreasing the costs of intermediate inputs, but growth is contingent on achieving a critical mass of investment. It is further shown that the effectiveness of a policy of public input provision over a policy of subsidy incentives is critically dependent on key market parameters in the host country". ("JEL" F2, H4, O1) Copyright No Claim to Original U.S. Government Works.
A Loss-Augmented Approach to Training Syntactic Machine Translation Systems

Current syntactic machine translation (MT) systems implicitly use beam-width unlimited search in learning model parameters (e.g., feature values for each translation rule). However, a limited beam-width has to be adopted in decoding new sentences, and the MT output is in general evaluated by various metrics, such as BLEU and TER. In this paper, we address: 1) the mismatch of adopted beam-widths between training and decoding; and 2) the mismatch of training criteria and MT evaluation metrics. Unlike previous work, we model the two problems in a single training paradigm simultaneously. We design a loss-augmented approach that explicitly considers the limited beam-width and evaluation metric in training, and present a simple but effective method to learn the model. By using beam search and BLEU-related losses, our approach improves a state-of-the-art syntactic MT system by +1.0 BLEU on Chinese-to-English and English-to-Chinese translation tasks. It even outperforms seven previous training approaches over 0.8 BLEU points. More interestingly, promising improvements are observed when our approach works with TER.
Nestin‐expressing cells and their relationship to mitotically active cells in the subventricular zones of the adult rat

Nestin is a protein that is thought to be expressed in neural stem cells; however, there is a paucity of data on nestin expression in vivo, and little is known of the relationship between nestin and mitotically active cell populations in the subventricular zones (SVZ). In this study, the subventricular zone of the third ventricle contained a high proportion of cells that expressed nestin, while there were significantly fewer cells that expressed nestin in the SVZ of the lateral ventricles. In contrast, bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU) immunoreactivity was the diametric opposite, being higher in the SVZ of the lateral ventricle than in the SVZ of the third ventricle. Morphological and anatomical evidence suggests that nestin‐expressing cells in these two areas may be different cell types. In a separate set of experiments, an acute localized lesion was induced adjacent to one of the ventricles. While the number of BrdU cells and Ki‐67 cells in the SVZs increased with this manipulation, the number of nestin‐expressing cells did not change significantly. These data indicate that the expression of nestin does not correlate with mitotic activity in cells of the SVZs under either normal or inflammatory conditions. It is hypothesized that nestin‐expressing cells in the SVZs may give way to transit amplifying cells that in turn give way to immature neurons or glia. These transit‐amplifying cells may have a much higher rate of mitosis than nestin‐positive cells and may react to neural damage by increasing their rate of proliferation.
Plant Species Diversity and Management of Temperate Forage and Grazing Land Ecosystems

More than a century since Charles Darwin stated that diverse grasslands produce more herbage than monocultures, scientists still debate the relationship between species diversity and ecosystem function. Postulated benefits of diversity in experimental grasslands include greater and more stable primary production along with more efficient nutrient use. These benefits have been extrapolated to forage and grazing land systems with little supporting objective data. Most information on the potential benefits of increased plant diversity comes from studies of synthesized grasslands that have not included domestic grazing animals. We explore this debate relative to the management of temperate forage and grazing lands. Plant species diversity refers to the number of species (richness) and their relative abundance (evenness) within a defined area. Plant relations influence biodiversity responses through positive (e.g., facilitation, N 2 fixation, hydraulic lift) and negative interactions (e.g., competitive exclusion, allelopathy). Early 20th century research on complex mixtures of forage species (limited to grasses and legumes) for pasture indicated equivocal results regarding benefits of species-rich mixtures and typically recommended using the best adapted species in simple grass-legume mixtures. Recent research indicates potential herbage yield benefits from species-rich mixtures for pastures. Limited animal productivity research on species-rich mixtures indicates variable responses and much more research is needed. Grazing land productivity is a primary focus for biodiversity benefits because of the direct economic relevance to producers. However, taking a broader view of the multifunctionality of grazing lands to include environmental and aesthetic benefits to humans reveals a great scope for using biodiversity in grazing land management.
An Analysis of Beverage Consumption in the United States Using the National Health and Examination Survey 2007-2017

Sugar-Sweetened Beverages (SSBs) are liquids sweetened with various forms of added sugar. They are the leading source of calories and added sugar in the American diet (Drewnowski & Rehm, 2014; National Cancer Institute, 2016; Powell, Chriqui, Khan, Wada, & Chaloupka, 2013). The health and nutrition literature has increasingly identified added sugars and SSBs as a key potential contributor to a host of public health issues including obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease (Johnson et al., 2009; Malik, Popkin, Bray, Despres, & Hu, 2010; Vartanian, Schwartz, & Brownell, 2007). Concern about these public health crises has recently animated regional and local campaigns to attempt to limit consumption of these items through taxes and other policies. These policy proposals have raised demand for information and research about the drivers and effects SSB and beverage consumption in general. This study documents the major systems that have been used to categorize different types of SSBs and proposes a new beverage categorization typology – the Synthesized Beverage Categorization System – that cross references information from the What We Eat In America Food Categories and the Food Patterns Equivalents Database to offer the most precise SSB typology available today. The remaining sections use reported dietary intake data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) to analyze consumption patterns of sugary beverage subtypes in a number of ways. First this study lays the groundwork for future studies of beverage consumption by examining consumption patterns of major SSB subtypes for adults and children by a number of variables commonly used in dietary intake analysis. Second, this article provides an analysis of sociodemographic trends in the consumption of several major sugary-beverage subtypes by age group, race and gender. Finally, consumption patterns of conventional and “non-traditional” SSBs are provided for the last 4 NHANES data collection cycles to analyze recent trends in reported intake of calories and added sugars from sugary beverages.
EXCAVATION OF AN EARLY MEDIEVAL SITE AT BRENT KNOLL

A series of ditches and gullies excavated on a site in Brent Knoll village represented an initial aceramic phase radiocarbon dated to the 7th–10th century. Thereafter these ditches were sealed by an extensive soil that accumulated into the first half of the 11th century. This was rapidly followed by a short-lived period of Saxo-Norman occupation involving the construction of a sunken-floored building in the north of the site. Further ditch cutting in the early years of the 12th century destroyed the north-western end of the building and a hiatus in activity followed until the post-medieval period.
Planck 2015 results. XXV. Diffuse low-frequency Galactic foregrounds

(abridged) We discuss the Galactic foreground emission between 20 and 100GHz based on observations by Planck/WMAP. The Commander component-separation tool has been used to separate the various astrophysical processes in total intensity. Comparison with RRL templates verifies the recovery of the free-free emission along the Galactic plane. Comparison of the high-latitude Halpha emission with our free-free map shows residuals that correlate with dust optical depth, consistent with a fraction (~30%) of Halpha having been scattered by high-latitude dust. We highlight a number of diffuse spinning dust morphological features at high latitude. There is substantial spatial variation in the spinning dust spectrum, with the emission peak ranging from below 20GHz to more than 50GHz. There is a strong tendency for the spinning dust component near many prominent HII regions to have a higher peak frequency, suggesting that this increase in peak frequency is associated with dust in the photodissociation regions around the nebulae. The emissivity of spinning dust in these diffuse regions is of the same order as previous detections in the literature. Over the entire sky, the commander solution finds more anomalous microwave emission than the WMAP component maps, at the expense of synchrotron and free-free emission. This can be explained by the difficulty in separating multiple broadband components with a limited number of frequency maps. Future surveys (5-20GHz), will greatly improve the separation by constraining the synchrotron spectrum. We combine Planck/WMAP data to make the highest S/N ratio maps yet of the intensity of the all-sky polarized synchrotron emission at frequencies above a few GHz. Most of the high-latitude polarized emission is associated with distinct large-scale loops and spurs, and we re-discuss their structure.
An Emulation-Based Method for Lifetime Estimation of Wireless Sensor Networks

Lifetime estimation in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) is crucial to ensure that the network will last long enough (low maintenance cost) while not being over-dimensioned (low initial cost). Existing solutions have at least one of the two following limitations: (1) they are based on theoretical models or high-level protocol implementations, overlooking low-level (e.g., hardware, driver, etc.) constraints which we find have a significant impact on lifetime, and (2) they use an ideal battery model which over-estimates lifetime due to its constant voltage and its inability to model the non-linear properties of real batteries. We introduce a method for WSN lifetime estimation that operates on compiled firmware images and models the complex behavior of batteries. We use the MSPSim/Cooja node emulator and network simulator to run the application in a cycle-accurate manner and log all component states. We then feed the log into our lifetime estimation framework, which models the nodes and their batteries based on both technical and experimental specifications. In a case study of a Contiki RPL/6LoWPAN application, we identify and resolve several low-level implementation issues, thereby increasing the predicted network lifetime from 134 to 484 days. We compare our battery model to the ideal battery model and to the lifetime estimation based on the radio duty cycle, and find that there is an average over-estimation of 36% and 76% respectively.
On the unramified spectrum of spherical varieties over p-adic fields

Abstract The description of irreducible representations of a group G can be seen as a problem in harmonic analysis; namely, decomposing a suitable space of functions on G into irreducibles for the action of G×G by left and right multiplication. For a split p-adic reductive group G over a local non-archimedean field, unramified irreducible smooth representations are in bijection with semisimple conjugacy classes in the ‘Langlands dual’ group. We generalize this description to an arbitrary spherical variety X of G as follows. Irreducible unramified quotients of the space $C_c^\infty (X)$ are in natural ‘almost bijection’ with a number of copies of AX*/WX, the quotient of a complex torus by the ‘little Weyl group’ of X. This leads to a description of the Hecke module of unramified vectors (a weak analog of geometric results of Gaitsgory and Nadler), and an understanding of the phenomenon that representations ‘distinguished’ by certain subgroups are functorial lifts. In the course of the proof, rationality properties of spherical varieties are examined and a new interpretation is given for the action, defined by Knop, of the Weyl group on the set of Borel orbits.