Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The role of allelopathy, heat and charred wood on the germination of chaparral herbs,

Assistant Professor of Biology Whittier College, Whittier, California 90608,USA; and Assistant Professor of Biology, Occidental College, Los Angeles, California 90041 Abstract: The herbaceous flora of the chaparral includes annual and perennial species which differ in their temporal relationship to fire. Germination cues for these herb groups could be expected to reflect these temporal differences. Thirty species of herbs were tested for germination in response to Adenostoma leachate and charred stems, direct heat, and their combinations. For herbs present pre-and post-fire, germination was best under control conditions, or with leachate. Fire following herbs germinated best with a combination of charred stems and low heat. The enhancement effect of burned Adenostoma stems was found to be generalizable to other woody plants and was not a fertilizer effect.
Environmental Risk Factors, Health and the Labor Market Response of Households in the United States

Title of Dissertation: ENVIRONMENTAL RISK FACTORS, HEALTH AND THE LABOR MARKET RESPONSE OF HOUSEHOLDS IN THE UNITED STATES 35BMarcella Veronesi, Ph.D., 2008 Directed By: Professor Anna Alberini, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics Professor Maureen Cropper, Department of Economics Many studies have shown an association between environmental exposures and certain health conditions. Estimates of the labor market impacts of these illnesses are often included in regulatory impact analyses of health and safety regulations. I estimate the magnitude of these effects using data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey for U.S. households from 1996 to 2002. In the first part of the dissertation, I estimate the effect of a married adult’s specific health condition on his or her own labor market decisions (labor force participation, earnings, hourly wages, and hours of work) and his or her spouse’s. I focus on cancer, stroke, ischemic heart disease, emphysema, chronic bronchitis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma. The effects differ by health condition and duration of the disease. With the exceptions of chronic bronchitis and COPD, all the health conditions here examined significantly reduce the probability that a married man participates in the labor force. The effect of a married woman’s health condition on her labor force participation, even if statistically significant, is very small. Among married men who are working, having had emphysema for less than one year is enough to reduce the earnings of a man with college degree to those of a healthy man without high school diploma. My results also suggest that if a man has had cancer, his wife may have to compensate for the ensuing loss in household income by working more hours or entering the labor force. In the second part of the dissertation, I focus on the effect of children’s asthma on mothers’ labor force participation, on fathers’ and mothers’ labor supply, and on their hourly wages and weekly earnings. I compare these effects to those of a set of health conditions that includes deformities, congenital anomalies, heart problems, epilepsy and cancer. I find that single mothers with chronically ill children are the most affected group in terms of hours of work lost and reduction in earnings, and that fathers with an asthmatic child less than six years old work more hours per week. Then, I explore how mothers’ labor force participation and hours of work affect days missed from school of a chronically ill child. My results suggest that maternal employment is associated with a higher probability of a child missing school, and that this effect is the same for healthy children as for asthmatic children. In contrast, I find that if the mother works, then a child with deformities, congenital anomalies, heart problems, epilepsy or cancer is less likely to experience lost school days than if the mother does not work. ENVIRONMENTAL RISK FACTORS, HEALTH AND THE LABOR MARKET RESPONSE OF HOUSEHOLDS IN THE UNITED STATES.
Industries, Business Cycle and Profitability of Momentum Strategies: An International Perspective

The apparent predictability of stock prices and the related profitability of investment strategies based on it has generated a great deal of research. Since the late eighties, momentum strategies have attracted a lot of the attention and have been found to be very profitable mainly for US stock market (NYSE and AMEX). A few papers (notable exceptions are Rouwenhorst (1998) and Chan, Hameed and Tong (2000)) have investigated this issue from an international perspective. In line with the recent literature this paper documents the profitability of momentum strategies in countries from the G-7 and explores some conjectures about the links existing between the return of these strategies, the business cycle and industries.
Compact Modeling of CMOS Transistors under Uniaxial Stress

Changes in the BSIM3 compact model are necessary in order to accurately simulate the CMOS transistors under applied uniaxial stress. In this paper we focus on the analysis of external uniaxial mechanical stress effects on DC BSIM3 model parameters of bulk MOS-FETs fabricated in a 0. 8μm CMOS process. The results show that stress influences mostly the carriers mobility while the threshold voltage remains almost unchanged. We measured the piezoresistive coefficients for different transistor geometries and used them to adjust the BSIM3 mobility parameter in order to include stress effects. Moreover, we propose a modified MOS-FET circuit able to simulate the transistor under variable uniaxial stress conditions. The simulation results were compared with the experimental ones and found to be in good agreement.
Facilitated music listening: Music therapy in an invasive cardiac procedure

This article presents and discusses a clinical music therapy protocol for use during an invasive cardiac procedure and the theoretical rationale behind it. The protocol was developed for a specific invasive cardiac procedure performed transvenously with local anaesthesia: cardiac implantable electronic device lead extraction. The music listening intervention presented in the protocol aims to optimise stress and pain management for patients through patient involvement, communication, individualised music listening and relaxation techniques. The Music Therapist remains present throughout the peri-operative phase (in the operating theatre during the operation). The music is chosen from a limited set of prepared playlists through a process involving assessment and patient preference. Biological, psychological and social components are integrated into the protocol, which is also informed by the theory of music therapy as procedural support, the neuromatrix theory of pain and receptive music therapy techniques. The protocol was developed to be standardised for implementation into the existing medical procedure, yet flexible enough to meet individual patient needs. It is the cornerstone of the research protocol of an ongoing randomised controlled trial at the Department of Cardiology at Oslo University Hospital Ulleval. Results of the randomised controlled trial, focussing on quantitative efficacy outcomes, are expected in 2020.
Repeatability of vibrotactile perception thresholds obtained with two different measuring systems.

OBJECTIVES The measurement of vibrotactile perception thresholds (VPTs) on the workers' fingertips is one of the diagnostic methods of the occupational peripheral neuropathies. The aim of the study was to compare the repeatability of VPT measurements in two groups of healthy women with different finger skin temperature, using two different types of measuring systems. MATERIALS AND METHODS One measuring system employed a pallesthesiometer, and the measurement procedure complied with the new ISO 13091-1 standard; the other used vibrotactile meter according to the Polish procedure. Ten healthy women, mean age, 38.5 years, took part in 10 sessions, twice a day for over a five-day period. VPTs were measured on 3 fingers of both hands at eight discrete frequencies from 4 to 500 Hz with a pallesthesiometer, and adequately at five frequencies from 63 to 500 Hz with a vibrotactile meter. RESULTS It was observed that the succession of repeated vibration perception measurements, determined according to the ISO method, did not significantly influence the mean values of vibrotactile thresholds in subjects with the finger skin temperature not lower than 29degrees C. The repeatability of vibrotactile threshold measurements was similar in both groups only when the ISO method was used. The mean VPT values, obtained with the ISO 13091-1 method, were significantly higher in healthy subjects with lower finger skin temperature, which did not exceed 28 degrees C. CONCLUSIONS The results of vibrotactile threshold measurements, obtained according to the ISO 13091-1 method, are repeatable. Repeatability of vibrotactile threshold results obtained with the ISO 13091-1 method, within the range of low frequencies up to 125 Hz does not depend on the finger skin temperature.
International Endogenous Growth, Macro Anomalies, and Asset Prices

This paper develops a two-country production economy with complete and frictionless financial markets and international trade in which investments in research and development (R&D) by entrants lead to endogenous new firm creation and economic growth. Innovative entrants use both consumption goods in their innovation technologies to capture international technological spillovers. Households also consume both goods. Specifically, I compare the equilibrium implications from the model with technology spillovers to the ones from an equivalent model without technology spillovers, i.e. a model where entrants only use domestic final goods in their R&D expenditures. With these two models at hand, new insights on the interplay of endogenous growth and long-run risks, technology spillovers, complete financial markets, and international trade are obtained, particularly with respect to international macro and asset pricing anomalies. The novel technology spillover channel has the potential to help explaining a number of these anomalies.
Dust in the wind: How climate variables and volcanic dust affect rates of tooth wear in Central American howling monkeys.

OBJECTIVES Two factors have been considered important contributors to tooth wear: dietary abrasives in plant foods themselves and mineral particles adhering to ingested food. Each factor limits the functional life of teeth. Cross-population studies of wear rates in a single species living in different habitats may point to the relative contributions of each factor. MATERIALS AND METHODS We examine macroscopic dental wear in populations of Alouatta palliata (Gray, 1849) from Costa Rica (115 specimens), Panama (19), and Nicaragua (56). The sites differ in mean annual precipitation, with the Panamanian sites receiving more than twice the precipitation of those in Costa Rica or Nicaragua (∼3,500 mm vs. ∼1,500 mm). Additionally, many of the Nicaraguan specimens were collected downwind of active plinian volcanoes. Molar wear is expressed as the ratio of exposed dentin area to tooth area; premolar wear was scored using a ranking system. RESULTS Despite substantial variation in environmental variables and the added presence of ash in some environments, molar wear rates do not differ significantly among the populations. Premolar wear, however, is greater in individuals collected downwind from active volcanoes compared with those living in environments that did not experience ash-fall. DISCUSSION Volcanic ash seems to be an important contributor to anterior tooth wear but less so in molar wear. That wear is not found uniformly across the tooth row may be related to malformation in the premolars due to fluorosis. A surge of fluoride accompanying the volcanic ash may differentially affect the premolars as the molars fully mineralize early in the life of Alouatta.
Life with Carbon Monoxide

This review focuses on how microbes live on CO as a sole source of carbon and energy and with CO by generating carbon monoxide as a metabolic intermediate. The use of CO is a property of organisms that use the Wood-L jungdahl pathway of autotrophic growth. The review discusses when CO metabolism originated, when and how it was discovered, and what properties of CO are ideal for microbial growth. How CO sensing by a heme-containing transcriptional regulatory protein activates the expression of CO metabolism-linked genes is described. Two metalloenzymes are the cornerstones of growth with CO: CO dehydrogenase (CODH) and acetyl-CoA synthase (ACS). CODH oxidizes CO to CO2, providing low-potential electrons for the cell, or alternatively reduces CO2 to CO. The latter reaction, when coupled to ACS, forms a machine for generating acetyl-CoA from CO2 for cell carbon synthesis. The recently solved crystal structures of CODH and ACS along with spectroscopic measurements and computational studies provide insights into novel bio-organometallic catalytic mechanisms and into the nature of a 140 Å gas channel that coordinates the generation and utilization of CO. The enzymes that are coupled to CODH/ACS are also described, with a focus on a corrinoid protein, a methyltransferase, and pyruvate ferredoxin oxidoreductase.
A slotted floor acquisition multiple access based MAC protocol for underwater acoustic networks with RTS competition

Long propagation delay, limited bandwidth, and high bit error rate pose great challenges in media access control (MAC) protocol design for underwater acoustic networks. A MAC protocol called slotted floor acquisition multiple access (slotted-FAMA) suitable for underwater acoustic networks is proposed and analyzed. This FAMA based protocol adds a time slot mechanism to avoid DATA packet collisions. However, slotted-FAMA is not suitable for dense networks since the multiple request-to-send (RTS) attempts problem in dense networks is serious and greatly limits the network throughput. To overcome this drawback, this paper proposes a slotted-FAMA based MAC protocol for underwater acoustic networks, called RC-SFAMA. RC-SFAMA introduces an RTS competition mechanism to keep the network from high frequency of backoff caused by the multiple RTS attempts problem. Via the RTS competition mechanism, useful data transmission can be completed successfully when the situation of multiple RTS attempts occurs. Simulation results show that RC-SFAMA increases the network throughput efficiency as compared with slotted-FAMA, and minimizes the energy consumption.
An interlaboratory comparison of 16S rRNA gene-based terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism and sequencing methods for assessing microbial diversity of seafloor basalts

We present an interlaboratory comparison between full-length 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis and terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (TRFLP) for microbial communities hosted on seafloor basaltic lavas, with the goal of evaluating how similarly these two different DNA-based methods used in two independent labs would estimate the microbial diversity of the same basalt samples. Two samples were selected for these analyses based on differences detected in the overall levels of microbial diversity between them. Richness estimators indicate that TRFLP analysis significantly underestimates the richness of the relatively high-diversity seafloor basalt microbial community: at least 50% of species from the high-diversity site are missed by TRFLP. However, both methods reveal similar dominant species from the samples, and they predict similar levels of relative diversity between the two samples. Importantly, these results suggest that DNA-extraction or PCR-related bias between the two laboratories is minimal. We conclude that TRFLP may be useful for relative comparisons of diversity between basalt samples, for identifying dominant species, and for estimating the richness and evenness of low-diversity, skewed populations of seafloor basalt microbial communities, but that TRFLP may miss a majority of species in relatively highly diverse samples.
Genome Rearrangement Distances and Gene Order Phylogeny in γ-Proteobacteria

Genome rearrangements have been studied in 30 gamma-proteobacterial complete genomes by comparing the order of a reduced set of genes on the chromosome. This set included those genes fulfilling several characteristics, the main ones being that an ortholog was present in every genome and that none of them had been acquired by horizontal gene transfer. Genome rearrangement distances were estimated based on either the number of breakpoints or the minimal number of inversions separating two genomes. Breakpoint and inversion distances were highly correlated, indicating that inversions were the main type of rearrangement event in gamma-Proteobacteria. In general, the progressive increase in sequence-based distances between genome pairs was associated with the increase in their rearrangement-based distances but with several groups of distances not following this pattern. Compared with free-living enteric bacteria, the lineages of Pasteurellaceae were evolving, on average, to relatively higher rates of between 2.02 and 1.64, while the endosymbiotic bacterial lineages of Buchnera aphidicola and Wigglesworthia glossinidia were evolving at moderately higher rates of 1.38 and 1.35, respectively. Because we know that the rearrangement rate in the Bu. aphidicola lineage was close to zero during the last 100-150 Myr of evolution, we deduced that a much higher rate took place in the first period of lineage evolution after the divergence of the Escherichia coli lineage. On the other hand, the lineage of the endosymbiont Blochmannia floridanus did present an almost identical rate to free-living enteric bacteria, indicating that the increase in the genome rearrangement rate is not a general change associated with bacterial endosymbiosis. Phylogenetic reconstruction based on rearrangement distances showed a different topology from the one inferred by sequence information. This topology broke the proposed monophyly of the three endosymbiotic lineages and placed Bl. floridanus as a closer relative to E. coli than Yersinia pestis. These results indicate that the phylogeny of these insect endosymbionts is still an open question that will require the development of specific phylogenetic methods to confirm whether the sisterhood of the three endosymbiotic lineages is real or a consequence of a long-branch attraction phenomenon.
Path Planning with Compressed All-Pairs Shortest Paths Data

All-pairs shortest paths (APSP) can eliminate the need to search in a graph, providing optimal moves very fast. A major challenge is storing pre-computed APSP data efficiently. Recently, compression has successfully been employed to scale the use of APSP data to roadmaps and gridmaps of realistic sizes. We develop new techniques that improve the compression power of state-of-the-art methods by up to a factor of 5. We demonstrate our ideas on game gridmpaps and the roadmap of Australia. Part of our ideas have been integrated in the Copa CPD system, one of the two best optimal participants in the grid-based path planning competition GPPC.
Inflation securities valuation with macroeconomic-based no-arbitrage dynamics

We develop a model to price inflation and interest rates derivatives using continuous-time dynamics that have some links with macroeconomic monetary DSGE models equipped with a Taylor rule: in particular, the reaction function of the central bank, the bond market liquidity, inflation and growth expectations play an important role. The model can explain the effects of non-standard monetary policies (like quantitative easing or its tapering) and shed light on how central bank policy can affect the value of inflation and interest rates derivatives. The model is built under standard no-arbitrage assumptions. Interestingly, the model yields short rate dynamics that are consistent with a time-varying Hull-White model, therefore making the calibration to the nominal interest curve and options straightforward. Further, we obtain closed forms for both zero-coupon and year-on-year inflation swap and options. The calibration strategy we propose is fully separable, which means that the calibration can be carried out in subsequent simple steps that do not require heavy computation. A market calibration example is provided. The advantages of such structural inflation modelling become apparent when one starts doing risk analysis on an inflation derivatives book: because the model explicitly takes into account economic variables, a trader can easily assess the impact of a change in central bank policy on a complex book of fixed income instruments, which is normally not straightforward if one is using standard inflation pricing models.
Observations of englacial water passages:a fracture-dominated system

Abstract To test models of the hydraulics and geometry of englacial conduits, 48 holes (3900m of ice) were drilled into Storglaciaren, Sweden, in search of conduits. About 79% of the holes intersected a hydraulically connected englacial feature. A video camera was used to examine the features and measure local water-flow rates. Because of the extremely clear ice that surrounded most features, their geometry could not be discerned. Of the remaining features, 80% (36) were fracture-like, 16%(6) were of complex geometry, and 4%(2) exhibited a conduit-like geometry. The fracture-like features exhibited steep plunges (∼70˚), narrow openings (∼40mm) and slow water-flow speeds (∼10mms–1). We argue that these fracture-like features are indeed englacial fractures of unknown origin. The depth to fractures intersection varied from near the glacier surface to 96% of local ice depth, with a maximum depth of 131 m. Few hydraulically connected fractures exhibited water motion, indicating some preferential flow pathways exist. We found one ‘traditional’ englacial conduit after an intentional search in a field of moulins. These results suggest that englacial water flow is conveyed through a ubiquitous network of fractures and that conduits are relatively rare.
A key individual-to-community link: the impact of perceived collective control on Aboriginal youth well-being.

Colonization of Aboriginal peoples has created serious challenges for individuals and communities, particularly with regard to issues of independence and control. Currently there is a pressing need to address these issues, on both the individual and group (or collective) levels. Research in the general population highlights the role of perceived personal control in wellbeing, and hints at a similar role for perceived collective control. The present research investigated the impact of perceived collective control on the wellbeing of Aboriginal youth. Residents of two Cree communities in northern Manitoba collaborated in the research. Together we developed two surveys on youth well-being, completed by students in grades 7 and up. The results of each study indicated that greater perceived individual inter1. Note: This research was conducted in conjunction with two First Nations (Cree) communities in northern Manitoba. Community representatives played an integral role in developing and carrying out the research. However, the communities are not identified in this article to protect their privacy. Acknowledgements: This research was generously supported by a doctoral award to the first author from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Institute of Aboriginal People’s Health (CIHR IAPH), and project support from the National Network for Aboriginal Mental Health Research (NNAMHR), Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), and Fonds Quebecois de la Recherche sur la Societe et la Culture (FQRSC). Valued comments on a previous version of this article were provided by Barbel Knauper. Very special thanks to the members of the two participating communities, in particular the youth. Meegwetch.