Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Influence of Photoperiod, Light Intensity and Their Interaction on Health Indices of Modern Broilers Grown to Heavy Weights

The effects of photoperiod, light-intensity and their interaction on health indices of broiler chickens grown to heavy weights under environmentally controlled conditions were evaluated in 2 trials. In each trial, 540 Ross x Ross 708 chicks were randomly distributed into 9 environmentally controlled chambers (30 male and 30 female chicks/chamber) at d of hatch, provided with 23L:1D with 20 lx of intensity from placement to 7 d and then subjected to the following treatments. The treatments consisted of 3 photoperiod (long/continuous (23L:1D) from d 8 to d 56; regular/intermittent (2L:2D) and short/non-intermittent (8L:16D) from d 8 to d 48 and 23L:1D from d 49 to d 56, respectively) and exposure to 3 light intensities (10, 5.0 and 0.5 lx) from d 8 through d 56 at 50% RH. All birds were fed the same nutritionally complete diet. Feed and water were provided ad libitum. Ocular health and general health assessments were performed on d 42 and 49, respectively, while foot pad score was evaluated on d 56 of age. There were only significant (P < 0.05) effects of photoperiod on live BW and eye weight, but no differences on ocular weight relative to BW. Food pad lesions quality was significantly decreased with decreasing in photoperiod. There were no differences among treatments on ocular assessments, gait scoring test or tonic immobility responses, suggesting that these treatments did not compromise welfare of the birds. These results indicate that long/continuous and regular/intermittent photoperiods equally improved broiler performance compared with short/non-intermittent photoperiod and no significant effect of light intensity treatments was observed in this study.
Identification and Characterization of the Spodoptera Su(var) 3-9 Histone H3K9 trimethyltransferase and Its Effect in AcMNPV Infection

Histone H3-lysine9 (H3K9) trimethyltransferase gene Su(var) 3-9 was cloned and identified in three Spodoptera insects, Spodoptera frugiperda ( S . frugiperda ), S . exigua and S . litura . Sequence analysis showed that Spodoptera Su(var) 3-9 is highly conserved evolutionarily. Su(var) 3-9 protein was found to be localized in the nucleus in Sf9 cells, and interact with histone H3, and the heterochromatin protein 1a (HP1a) and HP1b. A dose-dependent enzymatic activity was found at both 27 °C and 37 °C in vitro, with higher activity at 27 °C. Addition of specific inhibitor chaetocin resulted in decreased histone methylation level and host chromatin relaxation. In contrast, overexpression of Su(var) 3-9 caused increased histone methylation level and cellular genome compaction. In AcMNV-infected Sf9 cells, the transcription of Su(var) 3-9 increased at late time of infection, although the mRNA levels of most cellular genes decreased. Pre-treatment of Sf9 cells with chaetocin speeded up viral DNA replication, and increased the transcription level of a variety of virus genes, whereas in Sf9 cells pre-transformed with Su(var) 3-9 expression vector, viral DNA replication slow down slightly. These findings suggest that Su(var) 3-9 might participate in the viral genes expression an genome replication repression during AcMNPV infection. It provided a new insight for the understanding virus–host interaction mechanism.
The Dependency Status of Function Words: Auxiliaries

The Universal Stanford Dependencies (USD) subordinates function words to content words. Auxiliaries, adpositions and subordinators are positioned as dependents of full verbs and nouns, respectively. Such an approach to the syntax of natural languages is contrary to most work in theoretical syntax in the past 35 years, regardless of whether this work is constituencyor dependency-based. A substantial amount of evidence delivers a strong argument for the more conventional approach, which subordinates full verbs to auxiliaries and nouns to adpositions. This contribution demonstrates that the traditional approach to the dependency status of auxiliary verbs is motivated by many empirical considerations, and hence USD cannot be viewed as modeling the syntax of natural languages in a plausible way. 1 The dependency status of function words The Universal Stanford Dependencies (USD), as presented in de Marneffe et al. (2014), advocates a scheme for parsing natural languages that categorically subordinates function words to content words. Auxiliary verbs, adpositions (prepositions and postpositions), subordinators (subordinate conjunctions), etc. are subordinated to the content words with which they co-occur. A more traditional dependency-based analysis assumes the opposite, i.e. most function words dominate the content words with which they co-occur. 1 The following diagrams illustrate both approaches: 1 Determiners are one area of disagreement among linguists. (1) waiting V(Aux)
Studies on the role of asset prices and credit in the design of monetary and regulatory policy

The three chapters of this thesis look at the interaction of monetary and regulatory policy with financial markets. The first chapter analyses optimal monetary policy in the presence of liquidity constrained consumers, the proportion of which varies with house prices. In the second chapter, the hypothesis that expansionary monetary policy in response to a stock market crash might lead to excessive risk-taking by financial market participants is evaluated empirically. Finally, the last chapter provides a theoretical model to assess the impact of minimum bank capital requirements on the fluctuation of aggregate bank lending when banks hold different levels of capital over and above the required minimum.
A novel method of surveillance video Summarization based On clustering and background subtraction

In this paper, a novel surveillance video summaryzation approach is proposed to detect the objects and targets which appear less frequently. This approach integrates clustering and background subtraction. The clustering method adopts a modified Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (DBSCAN) algorithm to summarize the surveillance video with HSV color feature. Then the background frame is extracted from the clusters, the background subtraction method is used to generate the key-frame sequences. Finally, video summarization is got by combining the above results. Experimental results show that the Recall Ratio (RR) has a great increase comparing with one of the two methods.
Prenatal and Child Nutrition Programs in Relation to Food Insecurity

emerged as a serious social problem and significant public health concern (Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, 1998; Campbell, 1991; Davis, Katamay, Desjardins, Sterken & Patillo, 1991; Joint Steering Committee, 1996). Popularly termed “hunger,” the first indications of this problem were the large and ever-growing number of people seeking charitable food assistance (Davis & Tarasuk, 1994; Riches, 1997; Wilson, 1999). Although initially construed as temporary relief operations, the food banks hastily established in the 1980s by community groups to respond to this need now appear to have become entrenched (Riches, 1997; Tarasuk & Davis, 1996). Despite these charitable efforts and a myriad of other community responses (Tarasuk, 2001a), many Canadians still report serious food shortages, hunger, and food deprivation (Antoniades & Tarasuk, 1998; Badun, Evers & Hooper, 1995; Che & Chen, 2001; Dachner & Tarasuk, 2002; Hamelin, Beaudry & Habicht, 2001; Jacobs Starkey, Kuhnlein & Gray-Donald, 1998; McIntyre, Connor & Warren, 2000; McIntyre, Glanville, Officer, Anderson, Raine & Dayle, 2002; Tarasuk & Beaton, 1999a; Vozoris & Tarasuk, 2003). Although economic conditions have improved in recent years, governments in most provinces appear resistant to improving income supports for welfare recipients. However, the federal government has been providing funding for community-based prenatal nutrition support programs for low-income, high-risk pregnant women since 1994 (Health Canada, 2001). As well, several provincial governments are now providing funding for school meal programs that, to some
When Can We Forecast Inflation

This article reassesses recent work that has challenged the usefulness of inflation forecasts. The authors find that inflation forecasts were informative in 1977-84 and 1993-2000, but less informative in 1985-92. They also find that standard forecasting models, while generally poor at forecasting the magnitude of inflation, are good at forecasting the direction of change of inflation.
The measurement and determinants of single-family house prices

We assess the conceptual and empirical features of a number of house price series for the United States. We then calculate a measure of the net upgrading of the existing stock of houses that took place during the 1950-1989 period and adjust price indexes for this net increase in quality. Judgments about the trend, volatility, and determinants of house prices are shown to depend crucially on which price series is used. The Freddie Mac upgrade adjusted house price measure rose 5.7% over the past four decades, falling 7.7% from 1950 through 1970 before rising 14.5% from 1970 through 1989. Real house prices declined in the early 1980s as a result of the increase in real after-tax interest rates and the decline in real materials costs. The recovery of house prices in the late 1980s is attributed to lower unemployment and real after-tax interest rates and particularly to demographic factors associated with the aging of baby boomers.
Measurement Matrix Design for Compressive Detection with Secrecy Guarantees

In this letter, we consider the problem of detecting a high dimensional signal based on compressed measurements with physical layer secrecy guarantees. We assume that the network operates in the presence of an eavesdropper who intends to discover the state of the nature being monitored by the system. We design measurement matrices which maximize the detection performance of the network while guaranteeing a certain level of secrecy. We solve the measurement matrix design problem under three different scenarios: $a)$ signal is known, $b)$ signal lies in a low dimensional subspace, and $c)$ signal is sparse. It is shown that the security performance of the system can be improved by using optimized measurement matrices along with artificial noise injection based techniques.
Effect of Balance Training on Postural Instability in Patients With Idiopathic Parkinson’s Disease

Background. Postural instability (PI) is a disabling sign of Parkinson’s disease (PD) not easily amenable to treatment with medication. Objective. To evaluate the effects of balance training on PI in patients with PD. Methods. A total of 64 patients with PI were randomly assigned to the experimental group (n = 33) for balance training or to the control group (n = 31) for general physical exercises. Each patient received 21 treatment sessions of 50 minutes each. Patients were evaluated by a blinded rater before and after treatment as well as 1 month posttreatment using the Berg Balance Scale (BBS), Activities-Specific Balance Confidence Scale (ABC), postural transfer test, self-destabilization of the center of foot pressure test, number of falls, Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS), modified Hoehn and Yahr (H&Y) Staging Scale, and Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS). Results . At the end of treatment, the experimental group showed significant improvements in all outcome measures, except for the UPDRS and the H&Y scale. Improvement was maintained at the 1-month follow-up in all outcome measures except for the GDS. No significant changes in performance were observed in the control group. Conclusions. A program of balance training can improve PI in patients with PD.
Bone Anabolic Effects of Basic Fibroblast Growth Factor in Ovariectomized Rats*

The purpose of this study was to characterize the bone anabolic effects of basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) in ovariectomized (OVX) rats. Female Sprague Dawley rats were subjected to ovariec- tomy or sham surgery at 3 months of age and maintained untreated for 2 months post surgery. Groups of OVX rats were then treated iv with bFGF at doses of 100 or 200 m g/kg z day for 7 or 14 days. Another group of OVX rats and a group of sham-operated control rats were treated iv with vehicle alone for 14 days. Certain groups of bFGF-treated OVX rats were killed at 7 or 14 days after withdrawal of treatment. The right tibiae were processed undecalcified for quanti-tative bone histomorphometry. Vehicle-treated OVX rats were char- acterized by decreased cancellous bone volume associated with increased bone turnover. Treatment of OVX rats with bFGF strongly stimulated bone formation, as indicated by marked increases of at least a factor of 10 in osteoblast surface, osteoid surface, and osteoid volume. Furthermore, new osteoid spicules were observed within the marrow cavity of these animals. Osteoclast surface was markedly decreased in bFGF-treated OVX rats, but this finding may be secondary to the extensive osteoid surface. The strongest bone anabolic effects occurred in OVX rats treated with the higher dose of bFGF for 14 days, but these animals exhibited a bone mineralization defect, as evidenced by abundant osteoid and a lack of double fluorochrome between their administration, to calculate the rate of longitudinal bone growth. The percentage of cancellous bone surface with a double fluorochrome label (mineralizing surface) and mineral apposition rate were also measured with the Bioquant system. In addition, bone formation rate (tissue level, total surface referent) was calculated by mul- tiplying mineralizing surface by mineral apposition rate (29). Values for mineral apposition rate were not corrected for obliquity of the plane of section in cancellous bone (29). Data are expressed as the mean 6 se for each group. Statistical differences among groups for body weight, serum calcium, and serum phosphorus were evaluated by one-way ANOVA, followed by the Fisher PLSD test for multiple comparisons (30). Statistical differences among groups for bone histomorphometric data were evaluated with the nonparametric Kruskal-Wallis test involving a multiple comparison procedure, which is valid for both normal and nonnormal data distri- butions (31). For both statistical analyses, P values less than 0.05 were considered to be significant.
Induction of Tumor Cell Apoptosis or Necrosis by Conditional Expression of Cell Death Proteins: Analysis of Cell Death Pathways and In Vitro Immune Stimulatory Potential 1

For the efficient stimulation of T cells by tumor Ag, tumor-derived material has to be presented by dendritic cells (DC). This very likely involves the uptake of dead tumor cells by DC. Cell death in tumors often occurs through apoptosis, but necrotic cell death may also be prevalent. This distinction is relevant because numerous studies have proposed that apoptotic cells have immunosuppressive effects while necrosis may be stimulatory. However, a system has been lacking that would allow the induction of apoptosis or necrosis without side effects by the death stimuli used experimentally. In this study, we present such a system and test its effects on immune cells in vitro. B16 mouse melanoma cells were generated and underwent cell death through the doxycycline-inducible induction of death proteins. In one cell line, the induction of BimS induced rapid apoptosis, in the other line the induction of the FADD death domain induced nonapoptotic/necrotic cell death. BimS-induced apoptosis was associated with the typical morphological and biochemical changes. FADD death domain induced necrosis occurred through a distinct pathway involving RIP1 and the loss of membrane integrity in the absence of apoptotic changes. Apoptotic and necrotic cells were taken up with comparable efficiency by DC. OVA expressed in cells dying by either apoptosis or necrosis was cross-presented to OT-1 T cells and induced their proliferation. These results argue that it is not the form of cell death but its circumstances that decide the question whether cell death leads to a productive T cell response.
Bilateral bargaining with multiple opportunities: knowing your opponent's bargaining position

Negotiations have been extensively studied theoretically throughout the years. A well-known bilateral approach is the ultimatum game, where two agents negotiate on how to split a surplus or a "dollar"-the proposer makes an offer and responder can choose to accept or reject. In this paper a natural extension of the ultimatum game is presented, in which both agents can negotiate with other opponents in case of a disagreement. This way the basics of a competitive market are modeled, where, for instance, a buyer can try several sellers before making a purchase decision. The game is investigated using an evolutionary simulation. The outcomes appear to depend largely on the information available to the agents. We find that if the agents' number of remaining bargaining opportunities is commonly known, the proposer has the advantage. If this information is held private, however, the responder can obtain a larger share of the surplus. For the first case we also provide a game-theoretic analysis and compare the outcome with evolutionary results. Furthermore, the effects of search costs, uncertainty about future opportunities, and allowing multiple issues to be negotiated simultaneously are investigated
A Survey of Ant Colony Optimization-Based Approaches to Routing in Computer Networks

Nature has provided an elegant solution for the routing problem millions of years ago, when ant colonies started to use swarm intelligence to discover food and route it reliably to their formicaries. The approach utilized by ants has several advantages that are also useful in computer networks: complete distribution, load balancing, finding shortest paths with a high probability. Several routing protocols designed for the area of computer networks have made use of this approach, called ant colony optimization. This paper provides first a broad overview of ant colony optimization-based routing protocols, while focusing on four selected approaches in later sections, describing their operation and discussing their properties in detail.
Atomistic Measures of Materials Strength

We examine the role of atomistic simula- tions in multiscale modeling of mechanical behavior of stressed solids. Theoretical strength is defined through modes of structural instability which, in the long wave- length limit, are specified by criteria involving elastic stiffness coefficients and the applied stress; more gen- erally, strength can be characterized by the onset of soft vibrational modes in the deformed lattice. Alternatively, MD simulation of stress-strain response provides a direct measure of the effects of small-scale microstructure on strength, as illustrated by results on SiC in single crystal, amorphous, and nanocrystalline phases. A Hall-Petch type scaling is introduced to estimate strength of labora- tory specimens containing microstructural flaws of cer- tain critical size. A preliminary simulation of Cu thin film nano-indentation is described as a means of probing the ideal shear strength. The challenge of formulating a local measure of the driving force for defect motion is briefly discussed.
Exploring the Complementary Roles of Social Networks and Search Engines

The Web has become an important information repository; often it is the first source a person turns to with an information need. One common way to search the Web is with a search engine. However, it is not always easy for people to find what they are looking for with keyword search, and at times the desired information may not be readily available online. An alternative, facilitated by the rise of social media, is to pose a question to one’s online social network. We present a series of studies that have explored the differences in the types of questions that people choose to explore via asking their networks versus using search engines, and compare the speed, quality, and quantity of answers discovered using these two methods. We then discuss the implications of these findings for next generation information-seeking technologies that integrate the benefits of using both search engines and social networks. We believe there is an pportunity for tools to help people’s friends collaborate with algorithmic information retrieval tools to produce better answers than either approach might identify alone.
Various Measures of Underlying Inflation in Poland 1995 - 98

As inflation targeting gains popularity policy makers, monetary authorities seek to design a measure of inflation that would be a good indicator of fundamental demand-driven price movements, i.e. the underlying or core rate of inflation. It is widely acknowledged that the Consumer Price Index (which is the simple weighted average of price changes of the set of goods and services comprising the consumers' expenditure basket) is a rather deficient indicator of the 'trend' inflation as it is highly volatile, seasonal and contains a lot of noise. The ideal measure of core inflation should account for the long-term trend movements in prices that reflect the state of demand in the economy and discard various one-off shocks coming from supply side. The paper presents 4 alternative methods of calculating the core inflation most commonly found in the literature: trimmed mean, sample mean percentile, standard deviation trimmed mean and exclusion mean. Using Polish price data from the period 1995:1-1998:7, each measure is calculated at monthly, quarterly and annual frequencies and compared to the 24-month centered moving average . of the CPI which is assumed to be the benchmark core inflation. Root mean square error (RMSE) and mean absolute deviation (MAD) of the candidate measure and the benchmark were chosen to be the criteria for choosing the optimal definition - both within each of the 4 groups and across them. Rather surprisingly, crude methods based on exclusion yielded the best results. Volatility-based exclusion proved most efficient for monthly and quarterly series, whereas excluding broad aggregates (food and energy) turned out optimal for annual series. The paper concludes with highlighting the caveats and fragility of the results as well as stressing the necessity of further research.