Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
THE EFFECTS OF CANE TRASH ON YIELD AND NUTRITION FROM THE LONG-TERM FIELD TRIAL AT MOUNT EDGECOMBE

This paper reports on the yield and nutritional trends over 61 years as affected by various treatments (trashed, burnt with tops either left or removed and all plots either fertilised or not fertilised) of the burning and trashing trial (BT1) at Mount Edgecombe. The overall mean residual yield benefit due to trashing was 9.3 tc/ha/an after 39 crops. The capacity of the Arcadia soil form (Vertisol) to sustain yields without fertiliser was 18 years or 8 crops. The fertilised trashed treatment produced 20 tons trash per hectare (variety N16), which contained about 150 kg N/ha, 20 kg P/ha and 260 kg K/ha. Trash from the green cane harvesting treatment with fertiliser was insufficient to prevent a decrease in soil organic matter. However, soil organic matter loss was greater for treatments where cane was burnt. The N and K released from cane trash contributed to the higher yields from the trashed treatments when compared with the burnt treatments. The fertilised treatments significantly increased soil acidification when compared with the non-fertilised treatments and trash from the green cane treatments also contributed to soil acidity. Only the fertilised treatments, whether trashed or burnt, showed a positive yield response to rainfall.
Political Communication and Deliberation

This book is intended as a textbook in introductory political communication courses, especially those that focus on public deliberation. Like any textbook, it does more to survey than investigate its subject matter. And, it does this very well. It is well-written and even witty at times, and is chock-a-block with vivid examples to help students connect ideas to real world events. In its own terms, the volume is a solid contribution to overviews of American political communication. There are a few things I wish Gastil had included in the text (more on this below), but I offer these thoughts less as criticism than as a set of suggestions for future revisions. I assume that many IAP2 practitioners will never teach an introductory course in public deliberation, much less political communication. However, as someone who does, I can tell you that Gastil’s is a solid new text in a rather meager field. Most of these volumes focus on the relationship between mass media and government, and give short shrift to other topics. Also, though many are highly critical of mass mediated political communication, the grounds of their criticism are rarely made explicit much less defended. Often, the text takes students through a litany of complaints about the mass media, leaving them to understand that mass mediated political communication is just plain bad, and getting worse, but the normative basis of their criticism is rarely raised for discussion. Compared to the typical political communication textbook, Gastil’s volume is a welcome addition. In the first place, he offers a broad view of political communication. Chapters 2-5 cover traditional topics of political communication research: conversation; mass mediated deliberation, elections, and governmental communication. Gastil then adds chapters on juries, public meetings, community talk, and international communication. This is by far the most expansive view of political communication in the field. It allows students to see political communication as something more than transactions between government, media, and public
Smoking Adjoints: fast evaluation of Greeks in Monte Carlo calculations

This paper presents an adjoint method to accelerate the calculation of Greeks by Monte Carlo simulation. The method calculates price sensitivities along each path; but in contrast to a forward pathwise calculation, it works backward recursively using adjoint variables. Along each path, the forward and adjoint implementations produce the same values, but the adjointmethodrearrangesthecalculationstogeneratepotentialcomputational savings. The adjoint method outperforms a forward implementation in calculating the sensitivities of a small number of outputs to a large number of inputs. This applies, for example, in estimating the sensitivities of an interestratederivativesbooktomultiplepointsalonganinitialforwardcurveor thesensitivitiesofanequityderivativesbooktomultiplepointsonavolatilitysurface. Weillustratetheapplicationofthemethodinthesettingofthe LIBORmarketmodel. Numericalresultsconflrmthatthecomputationaladvantage of the adjoint method grows in proportion to the number of initial forward rates.
An outbreak of gastroenteritis from a non-chlorinated community water supply

Study objective: To determine the source and the extent of a community wide outbreak of gastroenteritis. Design: A matched case-control study with postal questionnaires. Subtyping of campylobacter strains by pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). Setting: A rural municipality with a population of 8600 in southern Finland, August 2000. Two thirds of the population receive non-chlorinated ground water from the municipal water supply. Participants: Cases were randomly selected among residents of the municipality who contacted the municipal health centre because of gastroenteritis and had illness onset between 31 July and 20 August 2000. Community controls were identified from the population registry and matched according to sex, year of birth, and postal code. Main results: Four hundred and sixty three persons contacted the municipal health centre because of gastroenteritis. Campylobacter jejuni was isolated from stool samples of 24 persons. One hundred and thirty seven cases and 388 controls were enrolled in the case-control study. In multivariate analysis, drinking unboiled water from the municipal supply was significantly associated with illness (odds ratio 11.1, 95% confidence interval 1.4 to 90.2). C jejuni was isolated from one tap water sample. The water isolate and all but one of the patient isolates were indistinguishable by PFGE. Conclusions: Combining epidemiological investigation with molecular subtyping methods provided strong evidence that water was the source of the outbreak. Non-chlorinated small ground water systems may be susceptible to waterborne outbreaks and constitute a risk to rural populations.
M3 Subtype of Muscarinic Receptors Mediate Ca2+ Release from Intracellular Stores in Rat Prostate Neuroendocrine Cells

Our previous studies document the expression of adrenoceptors and purinoceptors in the rat prostate neuroendocrine cells (RPNECs). However, a direct investigation of the receptors for acetylcholine (ACh) is still lacking in the prostate neuroendocrine cells. RPNECs were freshly isolated from the ventral lobes of rat prostate by using collagenase. Effects of ACh and various muscarinic antagonists on the intracellular Ca2+ concentration ([Ca2+]c) were investigated by using the fura-2 spectrofluorimetry. Single-cell RT-PCR analysis was applied to identify the transcripts for the muscarinic receptor subtypes. ACh (5 µM) induced a sharp transient increase in the [Ca2+]c of RPNECs, which was independent of the extracellular Ca2+. In the same RPNECs, high KCl (60 mM), phenylephrine (5 µM), UTP (P2Y1/2 agonist, 50 µM), and α,β-meATP (P2X1/3 agonist, 0.5 µM) also increased the [Ca2+]c. The ACh-induced [Ca2+]c change (Δ[Ca2+]c) was blocked by atropine or by para-fluorohexahydrosiladifenidol (M3 antagonist, 0.3 µM), but not by telenzepine (M1 antagonist, 1 µM) and himbacine (M2 and M4 antagonist, 1 µM). The single-cell RT-PCR demonstrated the selective expression of mRNAs for M3 in RPNECs. In summary, RPNECs express M3 muscarinic receptors that are linked to the release of Ca2+ from intracellular stores. The Ca2+ signals of RPNECs might mediate the parasympathetic regulation of prostate gland.
Evidence of Prejudice-Related Conflict and Associated Affect Beyond the College Setting

Previous research has shown that many college students are prone to prejudice-related discrepancies (i.e. their responses to stereotyped group members are more prejudiced than their personal standards suggest is appropriate), and they feel guilty as a result. Although there are reasons to suspect that this prejudice with compunction may be observed only among college students, the present findings suggest that this is not the case. White participants varying in educational attainment (from completed grade school or less to completed graduate school), age, and income completed prejudice, discrepancy, and affect measures. Replicating findings obtained with college participants, participants reported having discrepancies, and low-prejudice participants felt guilty as a result of detecting their discrepancies. The results generalized across all levels of education, age, and income. Implications for the potential success of prejudice reduction strategies are discussed.
The Lega Nord and the Northern Question in Italian Politics

Since the late 1980s, the Lega Nord has broken the mould of Italian politics. Federalist, secessionist, populist, it has succeeded in mobilizing the entrepreneurial class of Northern Italy in a campaign against the Italian state. In 1996, it launched the idea of Padania, a separate Northern Italian nation. This proved to be a step too far, but the Lega remains a political force to be reckoned with, and has propelled 'the Northern question' on to the national stage.
Political Cycles and the Macroeconomy

The relationship between political and economic cycles is one of the most widely studied topics in political economics. This book examines how electoral laws, the timing of elections, the ideological orientation of governments, and the nature of competition between political parties influence unemployment, economic growth, inflation, and monetary and fiscal policy. The book presents both a thorough overview of the theoretical literature and a vast amount of empirical evidence. A common belief is that voters reward incumbents who artificially create favorable conditions before an election, even though the economy may take a turn for the worse immediately thereafter. The authors argue that the dynamics of political cycles are far more complex. In their review of the main theoretical approaches to the issues, they demonstrate the multifaceted relationships between macroeconomic and political policies. They also present a broad range of empirical data, from the United States as well as OECD countries. One of their most striking findings is that the United States is not exceptional; the relationships between political and economic cycles are remarkably similar in other democracies, particularly those with two-party systems.
Multi-valued autoencoders for multi-valued neural networks

In order to reduce data dimensions, autoencoders with neural networks have been proposed by Hinton et al. Autoencoders are composed of input, one hidden, and output layers, which tune weights and biases by a back propagation to minimize an error between inputs and outputs. The learned weights have input features, and can be applied to pretrainings of deep neural networks. However, these autoencoders have been developed for real-valued neural networks. In this study, we propose complex and quaternion autoencoders for complex and quaternion neural networks, respectively. In the complex-valued autoencoder, inputs, weights, biases and outputs of the real-valued autoencoder are extended to complex numbers. In the quaternion autoencoder, these parameters are extended to quaternion numbers. We show the learning abilities of the proposed methods using handwritten digit images. The results show that the proposed methods can recognize the images as the real-valued methods.
Value at Risk Calculations, Extreme Events, and Tail Estimation

Value at risk has become a standard approach for estimating and expressing a firm's exposure to market risk. Unlike the traditional risk measure, standard deviation, VaR focuses only on the tail of the distribution of outcomes - the extreme events. This makes a lot of sense in theory, but a major problem arises in practice, because empirical returns distributions tend to have tails that look quite different from those of the normal and lognormal distributions that we typically assume in finance. Extreme value theory offers an elegant solution. Like the familiar central limit theorem, which proves that under general conditions the distribution of the average of n identically distributed random variables will converge to the normal as n grows large, extreme value theory provides similar convergence results for the extreme tails of distributions. In this article, Neftci gives a clear and intuitive introduction to extreme value theory and demonstrates how to use it. In an example applying it to forecasting the tails of the distributions of interest rate and exchange rate changes, extreme value theory is shown to be much more accurate than the standard value at risk calculated from the normal distribution.
Thou Shalt Buy ‘Simple’ Structured Products Only

Structured appear to offer good value in two situations. The first is when you can sell them with an attractive margin, such that the payoff provided at the end of the investment horizon T>0 is hedged, and not of your concern. This method of value creation is possible for banks and financial planners but is not really in reach of retail customers. The second possibility consists of purchasing these instruments and making sufficiently high investment returns with them. In this note we claim that one must be extremely careful when one is on the buyer’s side; the odds may go against you, transforming a potential cash cow into a loss generator.
Erratum: Standards versus Standards: The Effects of Different Pollution Restrictions

When economists refer to pollution standards, they almost universally mean uniform restrictions on pollution emissions (e.g., William J. Baumol and Wallace E. Oates, 1975 Ch. 13; Susan Rose-Ackerman, 1973; David Besanko, 1978). However, in practice, standards take many forms: not only emissions restrictions, but restrictions on pollution per unit of output or per unit of an input, restrictions on the use of a polluting input, or mandated use of a particular pollution-control technology. These specifications of regulations will have a variety of effects on a firm's resource-allocation decisions. For instance, allowing pollution per unit of output as the standard instead of directly restricting the level of pollution gives the firm some choice: in addition to reducing pollution, it can increase its output to "dilute" the pollution. This paper examines the effects of five different forms of pollution standards on input decisions, the level of production, and firm profits. The results show that the different standards, by providing firms with different incentives, change the firm's allocation decisions and affect the relative profitability of the standards. Section I reviews the existing literature on the incentives of different instruments. The following section describes the model to be used. Five different forms of pollution constraints are individually examined in Section III using a graphical approach. Their relative effects, as well as some special cases, are assessed in Section IV. Finally, Section V raises the case of different standards when firms are not identical.
Strategies for the minimization of the balancing costs of a variable renewable energy producer

The surge of deployment of variable renewable energy sources is being followed by an increase of imbalances, caused by this variable production. This leads to a growth in the necessity of reserves, to compensate these imbalances and ultimately to an increment on the cost and on the complexity of the operation of the electric system. In addition to this, the Variable Generation Producer (VGP) is not always required to participate in the electricity markets and cover its imbalance costs. This situation, however, is likely to change in the near future: the VGP may have to become an active market participant. As a result, a need for investment in tools and in the creation of strategies to minimise imbalance costs is created. The current dissertation provides such a tool and assesses different bidding strategies for a VGP participating in short-term electrical markets today. It starts by given insight on the French short-term electrical markets. It proceeds to characterize different forecasting tools of wind power production and of market prices, imperative to the success of the bidding strategies. The methodology based on a Monte Carlo simulation is also detailed using the current problem as an example. The work proceeds to depict the different strategies under analysis, which are applied to a study case based on the French electrical market. From the comparison of the different strategies, conclusions regarding the best course of actions of the VGP are drawn. This dissertation presents a simpler approach to the optimal bidding problem in shortterm electrical markets and analyses different bidding strategies for a French VGP. It also sets the basis for the application of such methodology to a different electrical system where VGP has a greater level of penetration.
Interrogating a Hexokinase-Selected Small-Molecule Library for Inhibitors of Plasmodium falciparum Hexokinase

ABSTRACT Parasites in the genus Plasmodium cause disease throughout the tropic and subtropical regions of the world. P. falciparum, one of the deadliest species of the parasite, relies on glycolysis for the generation of ATP while it inhabits the mammalian red blood cell. The first step in glycolysis is catalyzed by hexokinase (HK). While the 55.3-kDa P. falciparum HK (PfHK) shares several biochemical characteristics with mammalian HKs, including being inhibited by its products, it has limited amino acid identity (∼26%) to the human HKs, suggesting that enzyme-specific therapeutics could be generated. To that end, interrogation of a selected small-molecule library of HK inhibitors has identified a class of PfHK inhibitors, isobenzothiazolinones, some of which have 50% inhibitory concentrations (IC50s) of <1 μM. Inhibition was reversible by dilution but not by treatment with a reducing agent, suggesting that the basis for enzyme inactivation was not covalent association with the inhibitor. Lastly, six of these compounds and the related molecule ebselen inhibited P. falciparum growth in vitro (50% effective concentration [EC50] of ≥0.6 and <6.8 μM). These findings suggest that the chemotypes identified here could represent leads for future development of therapeutics against P. falciparum.
Storm Morphology and Rainfall Characteristics of TRMM Precipitation Features

Abstract Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Precipitation Radar (PR), TRMM Microwave Imager (TMI), and Visible and Infrared Scanner (VIRS) observations within the Precipitation Feature (PF) database have been analyzed to examine regional variability in rain area and maximum horizontal extent of rainfall features, and role of storm morphology on rainfall production (and thus modes where vertically integrated heating occurs). Particular attention is focused on the sampling geometry of the PR and the resulting impact on PF statistics across the global Tropics. It was found that 9% of rain features extend to the edge of the PR swath, with edge features contributing 42% of total rainfall. However, the area (maximum dimension) distribution of PR features is similar to the wider-swath TMI up until a truncation point of nearly 30 000 km2 (250 km), so a large portion of the feature size spectrum may be examined using the PR as with past ground-based studies. This study finds distinct differences in land an.
S100A proteins in the pathogenesis of experimental corneal neovascularization

Purpose The S100A protein family is involved in various inflammatory processes. Two of its members, S100A4 and A13, are thought to be pro-angiogenic in tumor development. This study examines whether S100A proteins are involved in the pathogenesis of inflammation-associated corneal neovascularization (CorNV). Methods We used 10–0 nylon suture- (S) or chemical burn (CB) -induced CorNV models for a microarray analysis of the genome-wide expression pattern. At different time points after suturing, we conducted histopathological examinations to detect the infiltration of inflammatory cells into the corneal stroma. Representative members of the S100A family (S100A4, S100A6, S100A8, S100A9, and S100A13), pro-inflammatory cytokines (IL-1β, IL-6, transforming growth factor β1, and MIP-2), and pro-angiogenic factors (fibroblast growth factor and vascular endothelial growth factor) were detected with reverse-transcription quantitative PCR (RT-QPCR). We used immunofluorescence to monitor neutrophil or macrophage infiltration and S100A8 or S100A9 protein deposition in neovascularized corneas. Antibody-mediated neutrophil depletion or S100A8 depletion in mice was performed to evaluate the role of neutrophils and S100A proteins in suture-induced corneal neovascularization (S-CorNV). Results Microarray profiling revealed that S100A4, S100A6, S100A8, S100A9, and S100A13 were upregulated in both CorNV models, with S100A8 and S100A9 manifesting the most significant changes compared to the normal animals. An RT-QPCR assay of these S100A genes and cytokine genes in the S-CorNV corneas showed that the changes were time-dependent, reaching the apex at day 5. Immunofluorescence analysis demonstrated that neutrophils and macrophages produce S100A8 and S100A9. The depletion of neutrophils beginning one day before S-CorNV induction decreased disease severity and S100A8/S100A9 deposition in the neovascularized corneas. The extent of upregulation of other detected S100A genes and pro-inflammatory or pro-angiogenic genes was also decreased by neutrophil depletion. Subconjunctival administration of S100A8 antibodies also significantly inhibited the growth of vessels and inflammation in the S-CorNV model. Conclusions We determined that S100A proteins are involved in the inflammatory CorNV model and that S100A8 or S100A9 in particular might be employed as targets in managing diseases involving this pathological process.
Varying Patterns on Varying Scales: A Metacommunity Analysis of Nematodes in European Lakes

Ecological community patterns are often extremely complex and the factors with the greatest influence on community structure have yet to be identified. In this study we used the elements of metacommunity structure (EMS) framework to characterize the metacommunities of freshwater nematodes in 16 European lakes at four geographical scales (radius ranging from 80 m to 360 km). The site characteristics associated with site scores indicative of the structuring gradient were identified using Spearman rank correlations. The metacommunities of the 174 nematode species included in this analysis mostly had a coherent pattern. The degree of turnover increased with increasing scale. Ordination scores correlated with geographical variables on the larger scales and with the trophic state index on a regional scale. The association of the structuring gradient with spatial variables and the scale-dependent increase in turnover showed that nematode dispersal was limited. The different metacommunity patterns identified at the increasing geographical scales suggested different, scale-related mechanisms of species distribution, with species sorting dominating on smaller and mass effects on larger geographical scales.