Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dynamics of Soil Bacterial Communities in Response to Repeated Application of Manure Containing Sulfadiazine

Large amounts of manure have been applied to arable soils as fertilizer worldwide. Manure is often contaminated with veterinary antibiotics which enter the soil together with antibiotic resistant bacteria. However, little information is available regarding the main responders of bacterial communities in soil affected by repeated inputs of antibiotics via manure. In this study, a microcosm experiment was performed with two concentrations of the antibiotic sulfadiazine (SDZ) which were applied together with manure at three different time points over a period of 133 days. Samples were taken 3 and 60 days after each manure application. The effects of SDZ on soil bacterial communities were explored by barcoded pyrosequencing of 16S rRNA gene fragments amplified from total community DNA. Samples with high concentration of SDZ were analyzed on day 193 only. Repeated inputs of SDZ, especially at a high concentration, caused pronounced changes in bacterial community compositions. By comparison with the initial soil, we could observe an increase of the disturbance and a decrease of the stability of soil bacterial communities as a result of SDZ manure application compared to the manure treatment without SDZ. The number of taxa significantly affected by the presence of SDZ increased with the times of manure application and was highest during the treatment with high SDZ-concentration. Numerous taxa, known to harbor also human pathogens, such as Devosia, Shinella, Stenotrophomonas, Clostridium, Peptostreptococcus, Leifsonia, Gemmatimonas, were enriched in the soil when SDZ was present while the abundance of bacteria which typically contribute to high soil quality belonging to the genera Pseudomonas and Lysobacter, Hydrogenophaga, and Adhaeribacter decreased in response to the repeated application of manure and SDZ.
The Expanding Role of Privatization in Education: Implications for Teacher Education and Development.

Introduction The merits of a marketplace model for public education have been among the most prominent themes in education policy discussions over the last two decades. Advocates of market approaches to educa tion reform contend that creating a market in educational services will foster competition among providers and thus spur delivery of better services at the same or lower cost than providing them through traditional public schools. Whether this is the case is debatable. It is clear, how-
Emergence and community: The story of three complex adaptive entities

This study details the research of three organi zations from the perspectives of complexity science and communities of practice. We conducted in-depth interviews with key leaders from three organizations: an organization for nursing leaders, a spiritual and self-development practice of the Jewish faith called Mussar, and an urban cohousing community. Meaningful connections between the interviewees’ stories and 12 comprehensive elements of complex adaptive entities are discussed. From these findings, a relevant similarity dealing with community, specifically communities of practice, emerges, and we subsequently identify key elements of communities of practice among the three entities. The paper con cludes with lessons from our research to date as well as recommendations for future research.
Below-ground process responses to elevated CO2 and temperature: a discussion of observations, measurement methods, and models

Rising atmospheric CO2 and temperatures are probably altering ecosystem carbon cycling, causing both positive and negative feedbacks to climate. Below-ground processes play a key role in the global carbon (C) cycle because they regulate storage of large quantities of C, and are potentially very sensitive to direct and indirect effects of elevated CO2 and temperature. Soil organic matter pools, roots and associated rhizosphere organisms all have distinct responses to environmental change drivers, although availability of C substrates will regulate all the responses. Elevated CO2 increases C supply below-ground, whereas warming is likely to increase respiration and decomposition rates, leading to speculation that these effects will moderate one another. However, indirect effects on soil moisture availability and nutrient supply may alter processes in unexpected directions. Detailed, mechanistic understanding and modelling of below-ground flux components, pool sizes and turnover rates is needed to adequately predict long-term, net C storage in ecosystems. In this synthesis, we discuss the current status of below-ground responses to elevated CO2 and temperature and potential feedback effects, methodological challenges, and approaches to integrating models and measurements.
Economic Effects of A Personal Capital Income Tax Add-on to a Consumption Tax

The general idea is the following: any tax authority that respects basic human rights has to impose taxes on a base to avoid random and arbitrary taxation. The tax base should be announced prior to the imposition of the tax and therefore, taxpayers are given an advanced warning concerning the tax base. The advanced warning enables the taxpayers to adjust the tax base to the new circumstances so that they can adjust their behavior to the existence of the tax. This adjustment of the tax base by the taxpayer is responsible to the excess burden of the tax. Retroactive taxes, that is taxes imposed on tax bases determined in the past and that, therefore, cannot be changed by the taxpayers are considered as unethical. Although the determination of the tax base is just the first stage in the taxation process- tax liability is determined by applying a rate or a schedule of rates to the base- most of the complications that arise in taxation (and as a result are responsible for administrative and compliance costs) arise in the determination of the tax base.
Plant Defense against Herbivory: Progress in Identifying Synergism, Redundancy, and Antagonism between Resistance Traits This Review Comes from a Themed Issue on Biotic Interactions Edited

Plants respond to herbivore attack through a complex and variable system of defense, involving different physical barriers, toxic chemicals, and recruitment of natural enemies. To fully understand the relative role of each type of defense, their synergisms, redundancies, or antagonisms between traits, a variety of methods of enquiry, commonly used in plant physiology and ecology, have been employed. By overexpressing or silencing genes of interest, it is possible to understand the specific role of a particular defensive molecule or mode of action. We argue, however, that these types of experiments alone are not enough to holistically understand the physiological as well as ecological role of plant defenses. We thus advocate for the use of a combination of methods, including genetic modification, quantitative genetics, and phylogenetically controlled comparative studies. Introduction Upon attack by herbivores, individual plants rely on a matrix-like variety of defense mechanisms, involving physical barriers, toxic or anti-nutritive secondary metab-olites, and/or recruitment of predators and parasitoids [1,2 ,3,4]. Moreover, a plant's defense arsenal is dependent on a variety of genetic, ontogenetic, and environmental factors, which together shape the multivariate defensive phenotype and outcome of the interaction. It thus seems pointless to consider different types of resistance traits as inherent, independent, constant, or singular in their mode of action [5]. For example, in a classic study, Berenbaum and Neal [6] showed that the biochemical toxicity of the furanocoumarin xanthotoxin, found in most Apiaceae, is radically enhanced by the presence of tiny amounts of another compound (myristicin) in the plant. Duffey and Stout [5] showed that the variety of toxic compounds in tomato plants (alkaloids, phenolics, proteinase inhibitors, and oxidative enzymes), act in a matrical reaction, affecting the herbivore during inges-tion, digestion, and metabolism in a way that would be presumably reduced, if each of the compounds were ingested separately. In Nicotiana attenuata, the presence of nicotine increases the negative impact of proteinase inhibitors on herbivores compared with plants with nicotine silenced [7 ]. Finally, non-lethal resistance traits that reduce herbivore growth rates may act synergistically with the attraction of natural enemies of herbivores by increasing the window of opportunity for predation or parasitism [8,9]. Although few, if any, plant resistance traits may act independently, attempting to identify the contribution of traits is crucial for (1) understanding any redundancy, synergism, or antagonism between the multiple strategies employed against herbivores, (2) revealing the specificity of resistance traits against different herbivores, and (3) …
Markov Switching Dynamics in REIT Returns: Univariate and Multivariate Evidence on Forecasting Performance

type="main"> We document the presence of Markov switching regimes in expected returns, variances and the implied reward-to-risk ratio of real estate investment trust (REIT) returns and compare them to properties of stocks and bonds. Our evidence suggests that regime switching techniques are more successful over the period 1972–2008 than other time-series models are. When the analysis is extended to a multivariate setting in which REIT, stock and bond returns are modeled jointly, we find that the data call for the specification of four separate regimes. These result from the absence of synchronicity among the regimes that characterize univariate REIT, stock and bond returns.
A New Method for Constructing Decision Tree Based on Rough Set Theory

One of the keys to constructing decision tree model is to choose standard for testing attribute, for the criteria of selecting test attributes influences the classification accuracy of the tree. There exists diversity choosing standards for testing attribute based on entropy, Bayesian, and so on. In this paper, the degree of dependency of decision attribute on condition attribute, based on rough set theory, is used as a heuristic for selecting the attribute that will best separate the samples into individual classes. The results of example and experiments show that compared with the entropy-based approach, our approach is a better way to select nodes for constructing decision tree.
Docetaxel monotherapy as a second-line treatment after failure of fluoropyrimidine and platinum in advanced gastric cancer: experience of 154 patients with prognostic factor analysis.

OBJECTIVE To investigate the efficacy and safety of docetaxel monotherapy as salvage chemotherapy for advanced gastric cancer (AGC) in clinical practice and to determine the prognostic factors in these patients. METHODS We retrospectively reviewed the medical records of patients with AGC for whom fluoropyrimidine and platinum had previously failed and who had received docetaxel salvage monotherapy between December 2000 and March 2006. Docetaxel was administered at a dose of 75 mg/m(2) intravenously every 3 weeks with dexamethasone prophylaxis. RESULTS A total of 154 patients received 583 cycles of docetaxel with a median of three cycles per patient (range 1-10). The median age was 54 years (range 27-75 years). The objective response rate of 86 patients with measurable lesions was 14%, with 1 complete response and 11 partial responses, with a median response duration of 5.6 months. An additional 25 patients achieved stable disease. The median time to progression (TTP) for all patients was 2.6 months [95% confidence interval (CI), 2.2-2.9] and the median overall survival (OS) from the start of docetaxel chemotherapy was 7.2 months (95% CI, 5.9-8.5). The chemotherapy was generally well tolerated. Multivariate analysis showed that the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) performance status (0 or 1 versus 2) was an independent prognostic factor for both TTP and OS. Disease status indicative of a relatively small tumor burden (resected metastatic or recurrent tumor) was a predictor for better TTP and good differentiation of the tumor was a predictor for better OS. CONCLUSION Docetaxel 75 mg/m(2) is relatively active and tolerable as a second-line salvage treatment after failure of fluoropyrimidine and platinum in general clinical practice for AGC.
Evaluation of Radiation Dose Received by Premature Neonates Admitted to Neonatal Intensive Care Unit

Background This study aimed to evaluate the radiation dose received by premature neonates using diagnostic radiographies. Methods This cross-sectional study was conducted on 116 premature neonates with gestational age from 25 to 37 weeks; with the diagnosis of neonatal respiratory distress syndrome (NRDS) and tachypnea, they were admitted to a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at Ahvaz Imam Khomeini Hospital in 2015. For assessing the dose received, the model GR-200 thermoluminescent dosimeter (TLD) was used. For each premature neonate under radiation, three TLDs separately (one for each) were placed on surfaces of Ch1, T1, and G1 (chest, thyroid, and gonad of first newborn, respectively). Moreover, for the adjacent neonate at a distance of 60 - 100 cm, two TLDs were laid in the surfaces of T2 and G2 (thyroid and gonad of second newborn, respectively). The dose received by TLDs for any baby and the adjacent neonate under the entrance surface dose (ESD) was estimated. Results The mean of neonates’ weight under study was 1,950.78 ± 484.9 g. During the hospitalization period, minimum one and maximum three radiographies were done for any premature neonate. The doses received in the premature neonates to Ch1, T1 and G1 were 0.08 ± 0.01, 0.06 ± 0.01, and 0.05 ± 0.01 mSv, respectively and for adjacent infants for T2 and G2 were 0.003 ± 0.001 and 0.002 ± 0.0009 mSv, respectively. Conclusions In the study, radiation dose received by organs at risk of premature neonates was lower than the international criteria and standards, therefore, also due to the lack of radiation damage threshold, to limit collimator, and the use of the proper filtration, kilovoltage and time during radiography of premature neonates are recommended.
ECONOMIES OF SCALE AND THE QUESTION OF "NATURAL MONOPOLY" IN THE AIRLINE INDUSTRY

The available evidence concerning the question of economies of scale and the possibility of natural monopoly in the American airline industry are reviewed and analyzed. The paper defines and discusses the general concepts of economies of scale and natural monopolies. The methods used to measure economies of scale are described, and actual estimates of airline scale economies (estimates at the company-wide level; city pairs and local networks) are reviewed, and the role of entry is briefly discussed. It is concluded that "natural monopoly" is not a serious problem for the airline industry. All of the current truck and local service carriers have reached a size at which scale no longer affects unit costs. Thus claims of economies of scale in support of proposed mergers deserve close scrutiny. The recent introduction of fare flexibility will surely not lead to the monopolizing of the industry because of scale effects.
Supervisory control of a class of discrete event processes

The paper studies the control of a class of discrete event processes, i.e., processes that are discrete, asynchronous and possibly nondeterministic. The controlled process is described as the generator of a formal language, while the controller, or supervisor, is constructed from a recognizer for a specified target language that incorporates the desired closed-loop system behavior. The existence problem for a supervisor is reduced to finding the largest controllable language contained in a given legal language. Two examples are provided.
A Study of Modified Testing-Based Fault Localization Method

In software development and maintenance, locating faults is generally a complex and time-consuming process. In order to effectively identify the locations of program faults, several approaches have been proposed. Similarity-aware fault localization (SAFL) is a testing-based fault localization method that utilizes testing information to calculate the suspicion probability of each statement. Dicing is also another method that we have used. In this paper, our proposed method focuses on predicates and their influence, instead of on statements in traditional SAFL. In our method, fuzzy theory, matrix calculating, and some probability are used. Our method detects the importance of each predicate and then provides more test data for programmers to analyze the fault locations. Furthermore, programmers will also gain some important information about the program in order to maintain their program accordingly. In order to speed up the efficiency, we also simplified the program. We performed an experimental study for several programs, together with another two testing-based fault localization (TBFL) approaches. These three methods were discussed in terms of different criteria such as line of code and suspicious code coverage. The experimental results show that the proposed method from our study can decrease the number of codes which have more probability of suspicion than real bugs.
Compositional Reasoning in Early Childhood

Compositional “language of thought” models have recently been proposed to account for a wide range of children’s conceptual and linguistic learning. The present work aims to evaluate one of the most basic assumptions of these models: children should have an ability to represent and compose functions. We show that 3.5–4.5 year olds are able to predictively compose two novel functions at significantly above chance levels, even without any explicit training or feedback on the composition itself. We take this as evidence that children at this age possess some capacity for compositionality, consistent with models that make this ability explicit, and providing an empirical challenge to those that do not.
Price Band, Offer Price Adjustment and Initial Listing Returns: Evidence from the Indian IPO Market

Extant research on developed markets shows that investor sentiment plays a prominent role in IPO markets. There is sparse work in the context of emerging markets. We fill this lacuna by studying the Indian IPO market. We examine the determinants of offer price band and its influence on offer price adjustment and subsequent listing performance. Offer price band is a crucial component of the book building process and has not been studied in the context of emerging markets. Our work fills this void. We hypothesise that retail demand which is a proxy for investor sentiment will positively influence offer price band. We also posit that the profitability of a firm will be inversely related to offer price band. Our empirical tests support these hypotheses. We also find that offer price adjustment is positively related to offer price band.
Production and Characterization of a Polyclonal Antibody of Anti-rLipL21-IgG against Leptospira for Early Detection of Acute Leptospirosis

Leptospirosis is one of the zoonotic diseases in animals and humans throughout the world. LipL21 is one of the important surface-exposed lipoproteins in leptospires and the most effective cross protective immunogenic antigen. It is widely considered as a diagnostic marker for leptospirosis. In this study, we evaluated the serodiagnostic potential of LipL21 protein of Leptospira interrogans serovar Pomona. We have successfully amplified, cloned, and expressed LipL21 in E. coli and evaluated its specificity by immunoblotting. Purified recombinant LipL21 (rLipL21) was inoculated into rabbits for the production of polyclonal antibody. Characterization of the purified IgG antibody against rLipL21 was performed by cross reactivity assay. Only sera from leptospirosis patients and rabbit hyperimmune sera recognized rLipL21 while the nonleptospirosis control sera showed no reaction in immunoblotting. We confirmed that anti-rLipL21-IgG antibody cross reacted with and detected only pathogenic leptospiral species and it did not react with nonpathogenic leptospires and other bacterial species. Results observed showed that anti-rLipL21-IgG antibody has high specificity and sensitivity to leptospires. The findings indicated that the antibody could be used in a diagnostic assay for detection of leptospires or their proteins in the early phase of infection.
Price Dispersion Under Costly Capacity and Demand Uncertainty

This paper tests the empirical importance of the price dispersion predictions of the Prescott-Eden-Dana (PED) models. Equilibrium price dispersion is derived in a setting with costly capacity and demand uncertainty where different fares can be explained by the different selling probabilities. The PED models predict that a lower selling probability leads to a higher price. Moreover, this effect is larger in more competitive markets. Despite its applications to several important market phenomena, there exists little empirical evidence supporting the PED models, mostly because of the difficulty of coming up with an appropriate measure of the selling probabilities. Using a unique panel of U.S. airline fares and seat inventories, we find evidence that strongly supports both predictions of the models. After controlling for the effect of aggregate demand uncertainty on fares, we also obtain evidence of second degree price discrimination in the form of advance-purchase discounts.
Correction to the article “Study of the Villin Headpiece folding dynamics by combining coarse‐grained Monte Carlo evolution and all‐atom molecular dynamics”

The folding mechanism of the Villin headpiece (HP36) is studied by means of a novel approach which entails an initial coarse-grained Monte Carlo (MC) scheme followed by all-atom molecular dynamics (MD) simulations in explicit solvent. The MC evolution occurs in a simplified free-energy landscape and allows an efficient selection of marginally-compact structures which are taken as viable initial conformations for the MD. The coarse-grained MC structural representation is connected to the one with atomic resolution through a "fine-graining" reconstruction algorithm. This two-stage strategy is used to select and follow the dynamics of seven different unrelated conformations of HP36. In a notable case the MD trajectory rapidly evolves towards the folded state, yielding a typical root-mean-square deviation (RMSD) of the core region of only 2.4 A from the closest NMR model (the typical RMSD over the whole structure being 4.0 A). The analysis of the various MC-MD trajectories provides valuable insight into the details of the folding and mis-folding mechanisms and particularly about the delicate influence of local and nonlocal interactions in steering the folding process.
The mashware challenge: bridging the gap between web development and software engineering

The software industry is currently experiencing a paradigm shift towards web-based software. Although the Web was not originally designed to be a software platform, it is rapidly becoming the platform for all the end-user software. In this position paper we argue that (1) development practices for web applications are still far from the maturity levels of traditional software engineering, (2) web development will evolve towards "mashware" -- mashup software that leverages source code and software components downloaded dynamically from all over the world, (3) there is still an impedance mismatch between web development and software engineering, (4) the trend towards mashware will exacerbate the gap between web development and software engineering, and (5) research is needed in several areas, including modularity and security, to ensure that the academic world does not get left behind from the fundamental changes that are impacting in the software industry.