Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Photosynthetic capacity, nutrient status, and growth of maize (Zea mays L.) upon MgSO4 leaf-application

The major plant nutrient magnesium (Mg) is involved in numerous physiological processes and its deficiency can severely reduce the yield and quality of crops. Since Mg availability in soil and uptake into the plant is often limited by unfavorable soil or climatic conditions, application of Mg onto leaves, the site with highest physiological Mg demand, might be a reasonable alternative fertilization strategy. This study aimed to investigate, if MgSO4 leaf-application in practically relevant amounts can efficiently alleviate the effects of Mg starvation in maize, namely reduced photosynthesis capacity, disturbed ion homeostasis and growth depression. Results clearly demonstrated that Mg deficiency could be mitigated by MgSO4 leaf-application as efficiently as by resupply of MgSO4 via the roots in vegetative maize plants. Significant increases in SPAD values and net rate of CO2-assimilation as well as enhanced shoot biomass have been achieved. Ion analysis furthermore revealed an improvement of the nutrient status of Mg-deficient plants with regard to [Mg], [K], and [Mn] in distinct organs, thereby reducing the risk of Mn-toxicity at the rootside, which often occurs together with Mg deficiency on acid soils. In conclusion, foliar fertilization with Mg proved to be an efficient strategy to adequately supply maize plants with Mg and might hence be of practical relevance to correct nutrient deficiencies during the growing season.
Optimal Public Investments in Education and Endogenous Growth

Optimal public investments in human capital through subsidizing private education or providing public education are considered in an endogenous growth model with externalities. Subsidizing private education stimulates growth, improves welfare, and has no distributional effect. While reducing income inequality as in the literature, public education hinders the growth of the average income unless externalities are strong enough and reduces the welfare of the median agent unless initial income inequality is sufficiently high. Societies with high income inequality may provide public education and will replace it with subsidized private education in some future periods as income converges. Copyright 1996 by The editors of the Scandinavian Journal of Economics.
Beyond slogans: lessons from Uganda's experience with ABC and HIV/AIDS.

Between the late 1980s and mid-1990s, at a time when HIV/AIDS was well on its way toward ravaging sub-Saharan Africa, Uganda achieved an extraordinary feat. It stopped the spread of HIV/AIDS in its tracks and saw the nation's rate of infection plummet. As word of the "Uganda miracle" spread, journalists, researchers, policymakers and advocates all descended to try to ascertain how it was accomplished. By now, Uganda's success story has become virtually synonymous with the so-called ABC approach to HIV/AIDS prevention, for Abstain, Be faithful, use Condoms. And, indeed, it is clear that some combination of important changes in all three of these sexual behaviors contributed both to Uganda's extraordinary reduction in HIV/AIDS rates and to the country's ability to maintain its reduced rates through the second half of the 1990s. Beyond that, however, the picture becomes considerably less clear. ABC refers to individual behaviors, but it also refers to the program approach and content designed to lead to those behaviors. Researchers and public health experts continue to study both and to delve into the many and varied complex relationships among them. This information is critical to determining to what extent the Uganda experience really is replicable and what from that experience productively might be exportable to other countries. At the same time, much more research is needed into the relevance of the ABC approach for the prevention of other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) as well as unintended pregnancy and the abortions or unplanned births that inevitably follow, both in sub-Saharan Africa and in other parts of the world. Meanwhile, US-based social conservatives in and out of government even as they pay homage to the ABC mantra-continue to confuse all of these issues. For them, ABC has become little more than an excuse and justification to promote their long-standing agenda regarding people's sexual behavior and the kind of sex education they should receive: A for all unmarried people, bolstered by advocacy of B, but at least for the so-called general population "anything but C".
Accruals and the prediction of future cash flows

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine the comparative abilities of current period cash flows and earnings (and its components) to predict one-year-ahead cash flow from operations in Egypt. Design/methodology/approach - The study uses the cash flow prediction models developed by Barth, Cram, and Nelson to examine the predictive abilities of earnings and cash flows for future cash flows. The first set of prediction models uses cross-sectional regression to compare the predictive abilities of cash flows and aggregate earnings for one-year-ahead cash flow from operations. The second set of prediction models tests whether disaggregating earnings into cash flows and the major components of accruals enhances the predictive ability of earnings for one-year-ahead cash flow from operations. Findings - The findings of the study reveal that aggregate earnings have superior predictive ability than cash flows for future cash flows. Also, the results reveal that disaggregating accruals into major components – changes in accounts receivable and payable, and in inventory, depreciation, amortization, and other accruals – significantly enhances predictive ability of earnings. Research limitations/implications - The study provides empirical evidence on the superiority of earnings in predicting future cash flows. The findings of the study should be considered in explaining the results of value relevance research Egypt. However, owing to relatively small sample size, given the thinness of the Egyptian capital market, these findings should be interpreted with caution. Originality/value - The paper contributes to the limited body of research on the superiority of earnings and cash flows in predicting future cash flows by examining the predictive abilities of earnings and cash flows for future cash flows in Egypt as one of many emerging markets.
The Conners Parent Rating Scale: Psychometric, clinical and cross-cultural considerations in typically developing 4- to 12-year-old French- speaking children

clinical and cross-cultural considerations in typically developing 4-to 12-year-old French-speaking children Abstract The principal aim of this study was to validate the five-factor structure of the French version of the Conners Parent Rating Scale-CPRS in French-speaking children. A sample of children with Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) was assessed and their ADHD CPRS profile was examined. Confirmatory factor analysis shows that the CPRS presents good psychometric properties and has a factor structure similar to the original version. Furthermore, the CPRS shows high rates of sensitivity and specificity when the ADHD and control group scores are compared. Clinical and cross-cultural implications are discussed.
Relativistic dark matter solution possessing dark energy

In this paper we propose a new exact solution of Einstein's field equations. We find that the space-time geometry of the solution is non-asymptotic and con-formally flat, whose the energy-momentum tensor possesses a non-perfect fluid with the negative pressure and the energy equation of state parameter w = −1/2. We also find that the time-like vector of the matter distribution of the solution is expanding, shearing with acceleration. It is also found that, due to the negative pressure, the energy-momentum tensor of the solution violates the strong energy condition causing the repulsion of the gravitational field of the space-time geometry. From these physical properties of the energy-momentum tensor we refer the space-time metric to as dark matter solution of the Einstein's field equations possessing dark energy with negative pressure. We also find an approximate size of the mass of dark matter as m < (1/2)×10 −60 in Bousso's length scale r > 10 60 .
Site-Specific Migration and Neuronal Differentiation of Human Neural Progenitor Cells after Transplantation in the Adult Rat Brain

Neural progenitor cells obtained from the embryonic human forebrain were expanded up to 107-fold in culture in the presence of epidermal growth factor, basic fibroblast growth factor, and leukemia inhibitory growth factor. When transplanted into neurogenic regions in the adult rat brain, the subventricular zone, and hippocampus, the in vitro propagated cells migrated specifically along the routes normally taken by the endogenous neuronal precursors: along the rostral migratory stream to the olfactory bulb and within the subgranular zone in the dentate gyrus, and exhibited site-specific neuronal differentiation in the granular and periglomerular layers of the bulb and in the dentate granular cell layer. The cells exhibited substantial migration also within the non-neurogenic region, the striatum, in a seemingly nondirected manner up to ∼1–1.5 mm from the graft core, and showed differentiation into both neuronal and glial phenotypes. Only cells with glial-like features migrated over longer distances within the mature striatum, whereas the cells expressing neuronal phenotypes remained close to the implantation site. The ability of the human neural progenitors to respond in vivo to guidance cues and signals that can direct their differentiation along multiple phenotypic pathways suggests that they can provide a powerful and virtually unlimited source of cells for experimental and clinical transplantation.
Dereverberation in noisy environments using reference signals and a maximum likelihood estimator

In speech communication systems the received microphone signals are commonly degraded by reverberation and ambient noise that can decrease the fidelity and intelligibility of a desired speaker. Reverberation can be modeled as nonstationary diffuse sound which is not directly observable. In this work, we derive an optimal signal-dependent informed spatial filter to reduce jointly reverberation and noise. In addition, we derive a novel maximum likelihood estimator for the power spectral density (PSD) of the diffuse sound, that makes use of a set of linearly independent reference signals. Experimental results show, that the proposed method provides an accurate estimate of the diffuse PSD, even with a small number of microphones. The proposed method outperforms two existing methods and is able to provide an optimal tradeoff between noise reduction and dereverberation.
Chandra X-Ray Study of Galactic Supernova Remnant G299.2–2.9

We report on observations of the Galactic supernova remnant (SNR) G299.2-2.9 with the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. The high-resolution images with Chandra resolve the X-ray-bright knots, shell, and diffuse emission extending beyond the bright shell. Interior to the X-ray shell is faint diffuse emission occupying the central regions of the SNR. Spatially resolved spectroscopy indicates a large foreground absorption (NH ~ 3.5 × 1021 cm-2), which supports a relatively distant location (d ~ 5 kpc) for the SNR. The blast wave is encountering a highly inhomogeneous ambient medium with the densities ranging over more than an order of magnitude (n0 ~ 0.1-4 cm-3). Assuming the distance of d ~ 5 kpc, we derive a Sedov age of τ ~ 4500 yr and an explosion energy of E0 ~ 1.6 × 1050 ergs. The ambient density structure and the overall morphology suggest that G299.2-2.9 may be a limb-brightened partial shell extending to ~7 pc radius surrounded by fainter emission extending beyond that to a radius of ~9 pc. This suggests the SNR exploded in a region of space where there is a density gradient whose direction lies roughly along the line of sight. The faint central region shows strong line emission from heavy elements of Si and Fe, which is caused by the presence of the overabundant stellar ejecta there. We find no evidence for stellar ejecta enriched in light elements of O and Ne. The observed abundance structure of the metal-rich ejecta supports a Type Ia origin for G299.2-2.9.
Expression of programmed cell death-ligand 1 and its correlation with clinical outcomes in gliomas

Programmed cell death-ligand 1(PD-L1) was expressed in various malignancies, and interaction with its receptor programmed cell death 1 (PD-1) often contributed to immune evasion of tumor cells. In this study, we explored the expression of PD-L1 and its correlation with clinical outcomes in gliomas. Clinicopathological data of 229 patients with gliomas was collected. PD-L1 expression was assessed by tissue-microarray-based immunohistochemistry. Over 5% of tumor cells with cytoplasm or membrane staining was defined as PD-L1 positive expression. The associations of clinicopathological features with overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS) were analyzed by univariate analysis and multivariate analysis was further performed by Cox regression model. PD-L1 positive expression was observed in 51.1% gliomas patients and no significant association was verified between PD-L1 expression and pathological grade in 229 gliomas patients. However, PD-L1 expression rate was 49.2%, 53.7% and 68.8% for grade II, III and IV in 161 patients with those ≥ 12 months of OS, respectively. Although no significant discrepancies was displayed, there was a certain degree of differences between PD-L1 expression and pathological grade (49.2% vs. 53.7% vs. 68.8%, P = 0.327). Univariate analysis showed that PD-L1 expression was significantly associated with poor OS in the patients with long-time survival or follow up (OS ≥ 12 months) (P = 0.018), especially in patients with grade IV (P = 0.019). Multivariate analysis revealed that a strong tendency towards statistical significance was found between PD-L1 expression and poor OS (P = 0.081). In gliomas patients with long-time survival or follow up, PD-L1 positive expression could indicate the poor prognosis and it is possible that immunotherapy targeting PD-L1 pathway needed to be determined in the further study.
The analytic classification of plane branches

An effective solution of the problem of analytic classification of plane branches is given. A finite stratification of any given equisingularity class of plane branches is determined and normal forms for each stratum are exhibited in such a way that two branches in normal form are easily recognized to be analytically equivalent or not. In this way, we solve the main problems proposed by O. Zariski (Le problème des modules pour les branches planes. Course given at the Centre de Mathématiques de L'École Polytechnique, Paris, October–November 1973).
Factors of influence and changes in the tourism consumer behaviour.

Consumer behaviour is a very important aspect to be studied in every marketing activity, therefore in tourism marketing as well. Defining and identifying the factors that influence consumers help in understanding individual needs and buying processes in their whole complexity. Consumers have changed their behaviour over the last two years due to the instability of the economic environment. The author describes in this article the factors which influence consumer behaviour and also presents how it has changed over the past two years.
THE " INDEPENDENT COMPONENTS " OF NATURAL SCENES ARE EDGE FILTERS 3329 recover the causes

It has previously been suggested that neurons with line and edge selectivities found in primary visual cortex of cats and monkeys form a sparse, distributed representation of natural scenes, and it has been reasoned that such responses should emerge from an unsupervised learning algorithm that attempts to find a factorial code of independent visual features. We show here that a new unsupervised learning algorithm based on information maximization, a nonlinear "infomax" network, when applied to an ensemble of natural scenes produces sets of visual filters that are localized and oriented. Some of these filters are Gabor-like and resemble those produced by the sparseness-maximization network. In addition, the outputs of these filters are as independent as possible, since this infomax network performs Independent Components Analysis or ICA, for sparse (super-gaussian) component distributions. We compare the resulting ICA filters and their associated basis functions, with other decorrelating filters produced by Principal Components Analysis (PCA) and zero-phase whitening filters (ZCA). The ICA filters have more sparsely distributed (kurtotic) outputs on natural scenes. They also resemble the receptive fields of simple cells in visual cortex, which suggests that these neurons form a natural, information-theoretic coordinate system for natural images. © 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd
The optimization of on-wafer shield-based test fixture layout

The effect of layout design on shield-based test fixture parasitic components is studied in this paper. As a result, guidelines for shield-based test fixture layout design are given. The novel test fixture layout details studied in this paper are a slotted ground plane with different slot orientation, the use of ground-bar extensions in a ground-shielded test fixture, and the upgrade of a ground-shielded test fixture to a fully shielded structure with a common ground. It was found that a slotted ground plane does not increase the ground lead impedance significantly. Thus, successful ground-shielded test fixture processing can be ensured by obeying process stress release design rules. Furthermore, the additional ground bar extensions had a negligible effect on reducing the ground-shielded test fixture ground lead impedance. However, upgrading the ground-shielded test fixture structure to fully shielded reduced the ground lead impedance. Therefore, fully shielded test fixtures are proposed for use with two-port cascade-based deembedding methods, which commonly are incapable of taking into account ground lead parasitic components.
Climate change, in the framework of the constructal law

Here we present a simple and transparent alternative to the complex models of earth’s thermal behaviour under time-changing conditions. We show the one-to-one relationship between changes in atmospheric properties and time-dependent changes in temperature and its distribution on earth. The model accounts for convection and radiation, thermal inertia and changes in albedo ( ρ ) and greenhouse factor ( γ ). The constructal law is used as the principle that governs the evolution of fl ow configuration on earth. The model showed that for two time-dependent scenarios, (δ ρ =0.002; δ γ =0.011) and (δ ρ =0.002; δ γ =0.005) the predicted equatorial and polar temperature increases and the time scales are (∆TH =1.16 K; ∆TL =1.11 K; 104 years) and (0.41 K; 0.41K; 57 years), respectively. A continuous model of temperature variation was used to predict the thermal response of the Earth’s surface to changes bounded by δ ρ =δ γ and δ ρ =−δ γ . The poleward heat current reaches its maximum in the vicinity of 35° latitude.
An X-ray review of MS 1054–0321: Hot or not?

XMM-Newton observations are presented for the z = 0.83 cluster of galaxies MS 1054−0321, the highest redshift cluster in the Einstein Extended Medium Sensitivity Survey (EMSS). The temperature inferred by the XMM-Newton data, T = 7.2 +0.7 −0.6 keV, is much lower than the temperature previously reported from ASCA data, T = 12.3
Long-Term Increased Carnitine Palmitoyltransferase 1A Expression in Ventromedial Hypotalamus Causes Hyperphagia and Alters the Hypothalamic Lipidomic Profile

Lipid metabolism in the ventromedial hypothalamus (VMH) has emerged as a crucial pathway in the regulation of feeding and energy homeostasis. Carnitine palmitoyltransferase (CPT) 1A is the rate-limiting enzyme in mitochondrial fatty acid β-oxidation and it has been proposed as a crucial mediator of fasting and ghrelin orexigenic signalling. However, the relationship between changes in CPT1A activity and the intracellular downstream effectors in the VMH that contribute to appetite modulation is not fully understood. To this end, we examined the effect of long-term expression of a permanently activated CPT1A isoform by using an adeno-associated viral vector injected into the VMH of rats. Peripherally, this procedure provoked hyperghrelinemia and hyperphagia, which led to overweight, hyperglycemia and insulin resistance. In the mediobasal hypothalamus (MBH), long-term CPT1AM expression in the VMH did not modify acyl-CoA or malonyl-CoA levels. However, it altered the MBH lipidomic profile since ceramides and sphingolipids increased and phospholipids decreased. Furthermore, we detected increased vesicular γ-aminobutyric acid transporter (VGAT) and reduced vesicular glutamate transporter 2 (VGLUT2) expressions, both transporters involved in this orexigenic signal. Taken together, these observations indicate that CPT1A contributes to the regulation of feeding by modulating the expression of neurotransmitter transporters and lipid components that influence the orexigenic pathways in VMH.
Horse–, training– and race–level risk factors for palmar/plantar osteochondral disease in the racing Thoroughbred

Reasons for performing study Palmar/plantar osteochondral disease (POD) is a common, debilitating condition in Thoroughbred racehorses; however, training- and racing-related factors associated with this disease are unknown. Objectives To determine horse-, racing- and training-related risk factors for POD. The general hypotheses were that early training and racing, and increased intensity of racing and training, lead to increased severity of POD. Methods The metacarpo/metatarsophalangeal joints of 164 Thoroughbred racehorses were examined at post mortem and graded for third metacarpal and metatarsal POD. The relationships between training- and racing-related factors and grade of POD in each condyle were determined using multilevel, multivariable, ordinal logistic regression models. Results A total of 1288 condyles were graded. Factors associated with higher grades of POD were the total lifetime number of races, an increase in gallop sessions in the previous season, racing before import to Hong Kong and an increase in the number of short (8–16 weeks) between-race intervals per season. Horses in their first racing season were more likely to have lower POD grades, while horses that had a long between-race interval (greater than 16 weeks) in the season prior to euthanasia were also more likely to have lower POD grades. Lower POD grades were significantly more likely as days since last race increased up to 400 days. Age at first race was not significantly associated with grade of POD. Conclusions and potential relevance Cumulative racing exposure and training intensity in the previous season were associated with higher grades of POD, supporting the hypothesis that the disease is due to repetitive loading. Longer between-race intervals and increased time since racing were associated with lower POD grades, which may indicate that lesions heal. Further work is required to enable optimisation of racing and training programmes to reduce the frequency and severity of this disease.