Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analysis of agricultural research institutes' ICT integration and needs for research development in southwest zone of Nigeria

Inadequate capturing, processing and dissemination of agricultural information in Nigeria agricultural institutes is thought to have contributed to the reduction of agricultural productivity, economic performance, food security and loss of bio-diversity. This paper presents an analysis and effect of the availability and use of ICT tools for research work in Nigeria agricultural research institutes. The research was conducted in six research institutes in Oyo State, Southwest, Nigeria. Data was obtained from a random sample of 175 researchers and was analyzed using frequencies, and percentages. Chi-Square test was used as an inferential statistic at 5% level of significance. The findings showed that majority of the research institutes in Oyo state hardly have the necessary ICT tools to capture, process and disseminate agricultural information. Also, the results indicated that cost of transmission, poor infrastructure, and limited technical skills as some of the challenges researchers faced in performing their expected roles The study established that majority of the research institutes in this zone are not up to the international standard. The study however concluded pro-agricultural research-based ICT policy should be geared toward provision and installation of agro-research-base ICT in the Nigerian Agricultural Research Institutes.
A Functional Polymorphism of the MAOA Gene Modulates Spontaneous Brain Activity in Pons

Objective. To investigate the effects of a functional polymorphism of the monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) gene on spontaneous brain activity in healthy male adolescents. Methods. Thirty-one healthy male adolescents with the low-activity MAOA genotype (MAOA-L) and 25 healthy male adolescents with the high-activity MAOA genotype (MAOA-H) completed the 11-item Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS-11) questionnaire and were subjected to resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) scans. The amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF) of the blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signal was calculated using REST software. ALFF data were related to BIS scores and compared between genotype groups. Results. Compared with the MAOA-H group, the MAOA-L group showed significantly lower ALFFs in the pons. There was a significant correlation between the BIS scores and the ALFF values in the pons for MAOA-L group, but not for the MAOA-H group. Further regression analysis showed a significant genotype by ALFF values interaction effect on BIS scores. Conclusions. Lower spontaneous brain activity in the pons of the MAOA-L male adolescents may provide a neural mechanism by which boys with the MAOA-L genotype confers risk for impulsivity and aggression.
The development of basketball in Taiwan: from the perspectives of theories of governance and strategic relations

This thesis has sought to investigate the nature of the governance system relating to basketball in Taiwanese society with emphasis on the development of basketball against the backdrop of societal development in Taiwan and in the broader political-cultural environment. Two complementary theoretical approaches are adopted in this study: those of governance theory at the meso level of analysis; and a strategic-relational approach at the macro level to explain the ways in which governance decisions are taken in strategically selective contexts which facilitate and constrain certain actions and thus outcomes. The empirical analysis draws on a qualitative case-study approach, which was based on documentary materials and semi-structured interviews. Three major cases, namely, the collapse of the Chinese Basketball Alliance, the emergence of the Super Basketball League and the sporting links with China, were selected on the basis of their significance in the operational governance of basketball. The first is a specific event, the second focuses on a particular process, and the third on the impact of context. The perceptions of the stakeholders in the specific groups were reviewed in order to compose insights into their account of the principal interests and forces in the governance system. Interview transcripts and government reports were subject to coding employing Nvivo 9 qualitative data analysis software, and coding and analysis were undertaken employing an ethnographic content analysis approach. While governance theory provides an explanatory framework at the meso-level of analysis, the thesis argues for embedding this within a wider strategic relational meta-theoretical account. This emphasises the dialectic relationship between strategic, reflexive actors and the strategic selectivity of the context of decision-making which privileges certain strategies and tactics, and explains the structural coherence (and/or patterns of incoherence) which have emerged in the evolving nature of the governance of basketball in Taiwan. By focusing on these three inter-related studies, we provided linked spatio-temporal forms of explanation of how the collapse of the CBA provided the strategic context and strategic resources for the emergence of the SBL and the Sina Basketball Club s migration to China. Subsequently the case of the SBL and Sina provided the strategic context and strategic resources for Taiwanese players migration to China as individual sportsmen. The thesis has thus produced explanations of how the outcomes of one case provide the strategically inscribed selectivity of the next which with recursively selected strategies and tactics on the part of stakeholders produces the structured coherence/pattern (and / or incoherence) of the Taiwanese (male) prospective-professional basketball system.
Energy Consumption, Employment and Causality in Japan : A Multivariate Approach

Using Hsiao's version of Granger causality and cointegration, this study finds that employment (EP), energy consumption (EC), Real GNP (RGNP) and capital are not cointegrated. EC is found to negatively cause EP whereas EP and RNGP are found to directly cause EC. It is also found that capital negatively Granger-causes EP while RGNP and EP are found to strongly influence EC. The findings of this study seem to suggest that a policy of energy conservation may not be detrimental to a country such as Japan. In addition, the finding that energy and capital are substitutes implies that energy conservation will promote capital formation, given output constant.
Cytosine modifications in the honey bee (Apis mellifera) worker genome

Epigenetic changes enable genomes to respond to changes in the environment, such as altered nutrition, activity, or social setting. Epigenetic modifications, thereby, provide a source of phenotypic plasticity in many species. The honey bee (Apis mellifera) uses nutritionally sensitive epigenetic control mechanisms in the development of the royal caste (queens) and the workers. The workers are functionally sterile females that can take on a range of distinct physiological and/or behavioral phenotypes in response to environmental changes. Honey bees have a wide repertoire of epigenetic mechanisms which, as in mammals, include cytosine methylation, hydroxymethylated cytosines, together with the enzymatic machinery responsible for these cytosine modifications. Current data suggests that honey bees provide an excellent system for studying the “social repertoire” of the epigenome. In this review, we elucidate what is known so far about the honey bee epigenome and its mechanisms. Our discussion includes what may distinguish honey bees from other model animals, how the epigenome can influence worker behavioral task separation, and how future studies can answer central questions about the role of the epigenome in social behavior.
Inference in linear panel data models with serial correlation and an essay on the impact of 401 (k) participation on the wealth distribution

In this paper, we use the instrumental quantile regression model developed in Chernozhukov and Hansen (2001) to examine the effects of 401(k) plans on wealth using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation. Using 401(k) eligibility as an instrument for 401(k) participation, we estimate the quantile treatment effects of participation in a 401(k) plan on several measures of wealth. The results show the effects of 401(k) participation on net financial assets are positive and significant over the entire range of the asset distribution, and that the increase in the low tail of the assets distribution appears to translate completely into an increase in wealth. However, there is significant evidence of substitution from other forms of wealth in the upper tail of the distribution. We also provide estimates obtained using the estimator of Abadie, Angrist, and Imbens (2002). JEL Classification: H31, C21, C31
Collapsing glomerulopathy--recurrence in a renal allograft.

A second biopsy showed features characteristic of collapsing glomerulopathy (see Figure 1). The patient focal segmental glomerulosclerosis; visceral epithelial cell; nephrotic syndrome developed systemic hypertension, progressive anasarca, and renal insufficiency, and was initiated on maintenance haemodialysis in April 1993. In November 1993 the patient received a renal
The impact of global economic crisis on SMEs: Does entrepreneurial orientation matter?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of the entrepreneurial orientation (EO) in global economic crisis and whether it can mitigate the negative effects of economic crisis both on firm's operations and on firm's financial performance.Design/methodology/approach – A quantitative approach is used to test the hypotheses. Principal component analysis and multiple regression analysis are used on the empirical survey data.Findings – Results based on a sample of almost 200 Finnish small and medium‐sized enterprises indicated that the different dimensions of the EO can have diverging effects on how firms are impacted by the recession. In general, the more innovative and proactive the firm is, the less its operations are affected by the recession and the more risk‐taking the firm is, the more its profitability is affected by recession.Research limitations/implications – A longitudinal design – rather than the current cross‐sectional design – would give a better premiss to explore the causal re.
Investigation of Human Emotional State in Human-Robot Collaboration

In order for humans and robots to interact in an effective and instinctive manner, robots must obtain information about the human emotional state in response to the robot’s actions. This is important as the presence of robot in human living environment has become tremendously increasing. Consequently, we believed that it is necessary to investigate how human feel about this situation and if robot can understand those human emotions, collaboration with human can be much better. In order to investigate the human emotions, we applied a kansei survey method based on a kansei engineering technology. We request a number of participants to take part in our experiment where they will be in the same environment of where a robot is working on some tasks. The participants will answer those questions in the survey based on what they feel about working together with moving robot. The overall goal is, in fact, to predict in the least possible time which area in the vicinity of the robot the human is heading to. This paper describes the results of our findings about how human feel when collaborating with robot(s).
A Comprehensive Analysis of E-government services adoption in Saudi Arabia: Obstacles and Challenges

Often referred as Government to Citizen (G2C) e- government services, many governments around the world are developing and utilizing ICT technologies to provide information and services to their citizens. In Saudi Arabia (KSA) e- government projects have been identified as one of the top government priority areas. However, the adoption of e- government is facing many challenges and barriers including technological, cultural, organizational which must be considered and treated carefully. This paper explores the key factors of user adoption of e-government services through empirical evidence gathered by survey of 460 Saudi citizens including IT department employees from different public sectors. Based on the analysis of data collected the researchers were able to identify some of the important barriers and challenges from these different perspectives. As a result, this study has generated a list of possible recommendations for the public sector and policy- makers to move towards successful adoption of e-government services in Saudi Arabia.
A Fault Detection Method for Hard Disk Drives Based on Mixture of Gaussians and Nonparametric Statistics

Hard Disk Drives (HDD) failure prediction is a challenging topic that has attracted much attention in recent years. Predicting failures in HDD may avoid losing data thus improving data reliability. Previous works on failure prediction are based on parametric approaches that model healthy drives with a Gaussian distribution. Although they achieved good results, the Gaussianity assumption may not hold true. The following work proposes a method for fault detection in HDD based on a Gaussian Mixture Model. A self-monitoring, analysis, and reporting technology dataset is used to evaluate the proposed method. Results show that the method outperforms previous works in both fault detection and time before failure.
On the Flavor Structure of the Constituent Quark

We discuss the dressing of constituent quarks with a pseudoscalar meson cloud within the effective chiral quark model. SU(3) flavor symmetry breaking effects are included explicitly. Our results are compared with those of the traditional meson cloud approach in which pions are coupled to the nucleon. The pionic dressing of the constituent quarks explains the experimentally observed violation of the Gottfried Sum Rule and leads to an enhanced nonperturbative sea of quark-antiquark pairs in the constituent quark and consequently in the nucleon. We find 2.5 times more pions and 10-15 times more kaons in the nucleon than in the traditional picture.
Self-Selection and the Performance of Return Migrants: The Case of Albania

In this paper, using the framework of a Roy theoretical model, we examine the performance of return migrants in Albania. We ask two questions: (i) Had they chosen not to migrate, what would be the performance of return migrants compared to the non-migrants? and (ii) What would be the performance of non-migrants had they decided to migrate and return? Both the selection estimates and the semi-parametric approach allow us to conclude that the flows of return migrants are negatively selected. We find that, had they decided to migrate and come back, the non-migrants would have earned more than twice the wages of return migrants.
Exploration and Exploitation on Two Dimensions: Product/Technology and Customer/Market

It is increasingly viewed that in order to have sustained performance and success, firms should engage in two types of innovative activities: exploitation and exploration. However, while focusing on exploration and exploitation concerning a firm’s technologies, earlier research has treated exploration and exploitation related to customers and markets rather implicitly. This article pays explicit attention to innovation forms of exploration-exploitation not only on product/technology dimension but also on customer/market dimension. We clarify the potential role of exploration-exploitation on the customer/market dimension and how this combines to exploration-exploitation on the product/technology dimension. Accordingly, we present a twodimensional matrix implying that in order to have sustained performance and success, a firm should simultaneously engage in different forms of innovation specified in various cells around the matrix – and not to treat the different forms as alternatives with engagement only in one or two.
Clinical Relevance of Adipokines

The incidence of obesity has increased dramatically during recent decades. Obesity increases the risk for metabolic and cardiovascular diseases and may therefore contribute to premature death. With increasing fat mass, secretion of adipose tissue derived bioactive molecules (adipokines) changes towards a pro-inflammatory, diabetogenic and atherogenic pattern. Adipokines are involved in the regulation of appetite and satiety, energy expenditure, activity, endothelial function, hemostasis, blood pressure, insulin sensitivity, energy metabolism in insulin sensitive tissues, adipogenesis, fat distribution and insulin secretion in pancreatic β-cells. Therefore, adipokines are clinically relevant as biomarkers for fat distribution, adipose tissue function, liver fat content, insulin sensitivity, chronic inflammation and have the potential for future pharmacological treatment strategies for obesity and its related diseases. This review focuses on the clinical relevance of selected adipokines as markers or predictors of obesity related diseases and as potential therapeutic tools or targets in metabolic and cardiovascular diseases.
Synthesis and Characterization of a Mg2+-Selective Fluorescent Probe

A new Mg2+-selective fluorescent probe P was synthesized and characterized. With optimal conditions, the proposed probe P showed good selectivity to Mg2+ compared to other common metal ions, and worked in a wide linear range of 5.0 × 10−7–6.0 × 10−6 M with a detection limit of 1.7 × 10−7 M Mg2+ in ethanol-water solution (9:1, v/v, 20 mM HEPES, pH = 10.0).
Pulmonary vein isolation for the treatment of drug-refractory atrial fibrillation in adults with congenital heart disease.

BACKGROUND Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a common arrhythmia in adults with congenital heart disease (CHD). Long-term antiarrhythmic therapy (AAT) in these patients has significant shortcomings. The safety and efficacy of pulmonary vein antrum isolation (PVAI) for the treatment of AF in CHD is presently unknown. HYPOTHESIS We hypothesized that PVAI for AF in patients with CHD is effective and safe. METHODS We reviewed a prospective cohort of 4315 patients (age ≥ 18) undergoing PVAI for drug refractory AF at a single institution and identified 36 consecutive patients with CHD (single ventricle physiology, tetralogy of Fallot, coarctation of the aorta, ventricular septal defects, atrial septal defects (ASD) and cardiomyopathy resulting from anomalous origin of the left main coronary from the pulmonary artery). A second cohort of 355 consecutive patients with noncongenital structural heart disease (NSHD) (coronary artery disease, valvular heart disease, ejection fraction <50%, or prior noncongenital cardiac surgery) undergoing PVAI during the same time period was used as a control. Success was defined as freedom from AF starting two months after PVAI in the absence AAT until the end of follow-up. Partial success was defined as freedom from AF in the presence of AAT until the end of follow-up. Combined success was defined as the sum of success and partial success. We compared the outcomes with the use of propensity-score matching in the overall cohort. RESULTS Patients with NSHD were older and had higher prevalence of hypertension (P < .01), diabetes (P < .01) and hyperlipidemia (P < .01). The most common CHD lesion was ASD (61%) and the most common NSHD lesion was valvular heart disease (57%). After one PVAI, success was achieved in 42% and 53% at 300 days in the CHD and NSHD groups respectively. Four-year success was achieved in 27% and 36% in the CHD and NSHD groups, respectively. There were no significant differences in the success rates between patients groups (P= .46), nor were there any differences in left atrial size or changes in ejection fraction after one or two PVAI in the respective groups. Complication rates between the CHD and NSHD groups were similar (15% vs. 11%, P= .42) except for a higher risk of vascular site complications in patients with CHD (8% vs. 1%, P < .05). CONCLUSION PVAI is an attractive treatment modality in drug refractory AF in CHD, with combined success rates in excess of 60%. The maintenance of sinus rhythm after PVAI in CHD appears similar to that of NSHD and warrants prospective validation.
Who Has Benefited from Economic Growth in the United States Since 1969? The Case of Children

One can use the Census Bureau's income statistics to show either that low-income children were considerably worse off or considerably better off in 1999 than in 1969. Likewise, one can use Census statistics to show that middle-income children gained very little or a great deal between 1969 and 1999. Resolving these disagreements requires agreeing on the best price index, the best adjustment for changes in household size, and the best treatment of noncash benefits. In addition, one must reconcile discrepancies between trends in income and consumption. Since there is no consensus on any of these matters, we investigate trends in children's well-being using more direct measures of material well-being, such as housing conditions, neighborhood safety, motor vehicle ownership, telephone service, regular medical checkups, and food consumption. Almost all these measures suggest that low-income children's material well-being rose between the early 1970s and the late 1990s. This finding implies that traditional price indices such as the CPI-U overstated inflation.
Suppression by γ-Hydroxybutyric Acid of “Alcohol Deprivation Effect” in Rats: Preclinical Evidence of its anti-Relapse Properties

γ-Hydroxybutyric acid (GHB) reduces (a) alcohol intake and alcohol motivational properties in alcohol-preferring rats and (b) alcohol drinking and craving for alcohol in human alcoholics. The present study was designed to extend to relapse-like drinking the capacity of GHB to suppress different alcohol-related behaviors in alcohol-preferring rats. The “alcohol deprivation effect,” defined as the temporary increase in alcohol intake occurring in laboratory animals after a period of alcohol deprivation, was used as model of alcohol relapse. Acute administration of non-sedative doses of GHB (0, 100, 200, and 300 mg/kg, i.p.) resulted in the complete suppression of the extra-amount of alcohol consumed by Sardinian alcohol-preferring rats during the first hour of re-access to alcohol after a 14-day period of deprivation. These data demonstrate that GHB suppressed relapse-like drinking in a rat model of excessive alcohol consumption.
Populism and the mirror of democracy

Populism raises awkward question about modern forms of democracy. It often represents the ugly face of the people. It is neither the highest form of democracy nor its enemy. It is, rather, a mirror in which democracy may contemplate itself, warts and all, in a discovery of itself and what it lacks. This definitive collection, edited by one of the world's pre-eminent authorities on populism, Francisco Panizza, combines theoretical essays with a number of specially commissioned case studies on populist politics in the US, Britain, Canada, eastern Europe, Palestine, Latin America and South Africa. A broadly shared understanding of the nature of populism gives the book a coherence rarely found in collective works and enhances the richness of the case studies.