Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of Flooding and the nosZ Gene in Bradyrhizobia on Bradyrhizobial Community Structure in the Soil

We investigated the effects of the water status (flooded or non-flooded) and presence of the nosZ gene in bradyrhizobia on the bradyrhizobial community structure in a factorial experiment that examined three temperature levels (20°C, 25°C, and 30°C) and two soil types (andosol and gray lowland soil) using microcosm incubations. All microcosms were inoculated with Bradyrhizobium japonicum USDA6T, B. japonicum USDA123, and B. elkanii USDA76T, which do not possess the nosZ gene, and then half received B. diazoefficiens USDA110Twt (wt for the wild-type) and the other half received B. diazoefficiens USDA110ΔnosZ. USDA110Twt possesses the nosZ gene, which encodes N2O reductase; 110ΔnosZ, a mutant variant, does not. Changes in the community structure after 30- and 60-d incubations were investigated by denaturing-gradient gel electrophoresis and an image analysis. USDA6T and 76T strains slightly increased in non-flooded soil regardless of which USDA110T strain was present. In flooded microcosms with the USDA110Twt strain, USDA110Twt became dominant, whereas in microcosms with the USDA110ΔnosZ, a similar change in the community structure occurred to that in non-flooded microcosms. These results suggest that possession of the nosZ gene confers a competitive advantage to B. diazoefficiens USDA110T in flooded soil. We herein demonstrated that the dominance of B. diazoefficiens USDA110Twt within the soil bradyrhizobial population may be enhanced by periods of flooding or waterlogging systems such as paddy–soybean rotations because it appears to have the ability to thrive in moderately anaerobic soil.
Differential Evolution with Equally-Mixed Strategies for Robust Control of Open Quantum Systems

Robust control of open quantum systems from one state to another is much more difficult than closed quantum systems as a result of system-environment interactions. In this paper, we adopt the sampling-based learning control approach with the motivation of utilizing some artificial samples instead of unknown uncertainties to design an optimal control field against parameter fluctuations. To enhance the learning performance, we introduce an improved differential evolution (DE) algorithm with equally-mixed strategies in the training step of the control design for open quantum systems. Numerical results verify the effectiveness of the proposed equally-mixed strategies DE (EMSDE) algorithm regarding the control design for open quantum systems with uncertainties.
Determinants of Technical and Allocative Efficiency of Micro‐enterprises: Firm‐level Evidence from Nigeria

Abstract: This paper examines the determinants of technical and allocative efficiency of micro-enterprises in the Nigerian economy, using cross-sectional data collected on 180 micro-enterprises selected from block-making, metal fabricating and sawmilling enterprises. The Nigerian government has put in efforts at promoting productivity and efficiency in both the public and private sector of the economy. As a developing country, Nigeria has immense potential for better economic growth, both in the short and long run. It then becomes important to know the current level of efficiency within the sector. Quantitative estimates obtained from the stochastic frontier production function indicated a wide variation in technical and allocative efficiencies within and across occupational groups and across operational scale. The wide variation in the level of efficiency is an indication that there is ample opportunity for these enterprises to raise their level of efficiency. While the level of education of enterprise owners was found to be highly significant in affecting the level of efficiency of the micro-enterprises, the age of enterprise owners was found to be negatively related to their level of efficiency. These variables are important factors that government policy should address so as to improve the current level of efficiency in the sector. Resume: La presente etude examine les facteurs determinants de la capacite technique et de l’allocation efficiente des ressources des microentreprises dans l’economie nigeriane, en utilisant des donnees transversales recueillies aupres de 180 microenterprises selectionnees parmi des entreprises specialisees dans le faconnage du parpaing, des fabriques de produits metalliques et des scieries. Le gouvernement nigerian a deploye des efforts considerables pour ameliorer la productivite et l’efficacite des secteurs public et prive de l’economie. En tant que pays en developpement, le Nigeria a d’enormes potentialites d’ameliorer sa croissance economique a long et a court terme. Par consequent, il est de plus en plus important d’evaluer le rendement actuel de son secteur economique. L’estimation quantitative de la fonction stochastique «production de pointe» montre qu’il existe un ecart important entre la capacite technique et l’allocation efficiente des ressources tant au sein des groupes professionnels que d’un groupe a l’autre ou d’une echelle des capacites operationnelles a l’autre. L’ecart important entre le degre d’efficience de ces entreprises est une indication qu’elles ont d’enormes possibilites d’accroitre leur efficacite. Si le niveau d’education des chefs d’entreprise est cense influer tres fortement sur le degre d’efficience de leurs microenterprises, leur âge, par contre, est juge incompatible avec leur degre d’efficacite. Ces variables sont des facteurs importants dont l’action gouvernementale doit tenir compte pour ameliorer le degre actuel d’efficacite du secteur economique.
Understanding the Relationship between Income and Health: How Much Can be Gleaned from Cross-sectional Data?

The aim of this paper is to develop a better understanding of the relationship between income and health using a cross-sectional survey of the general British population. It is divided into two parts. First, it examines a number of methodological inconsistencies in the existing literature and assesses their consequences for the inferences that can be drawn about the income–health association. These issues include: the measurement of income and its functional form; health selection; and the role of confounders. Second, it explores the relative strength of the income–health association in contrast to that of other socioeconomic measures. The relationship between income and health is complex. However, having taken into account a range of methodological problems, income is still significantly associated with health. The association appears to be non-linear and is attenuated but not removed by controlling for health selection effects. The inclusion of a wide range of confounders into models of income and health reduces the association between them, but does not make it insignificant. In comparison to other socioeconomic measures, income appears to be a better discriminator of health status than education or occupation. However, tenure and car ownership seem to be at least as good if not better than current income.
Foreign Bank Entry And Performance: With A Focus On Central And Eastern Europe

Since the Fall of the Wall in 1989, large international banks have been opening branches in former Eastern Bloc countries with high expectations. Ilko Naaborg investigated how these banks function in eleven different countries. In 1995, on average, foreign banks made up about 25 percent of the total number of banks. In 2002 that figure had increased to 61 percent. ‘Home advantage’ In the meantime, foreign banks have become the most important providers of financial products in these countries. They dominate the national banks, both in the number of banks and in the assets they manage: from 4% in 1995 to 84% in 2002. Naaborg investigated the financial performance of these banks and compared this with that of the local national banks. Against all expectations, the local national banks turned out to generate more profits – despite their higher overheads. With this conclusion, Naaborg has provided the first evidence of the so-called ‘home advantage’ of national banks. Corruption By 2001, the profitability of foreign banks in Central and Eastern Europe had decreased significantly when compared with the early transition period of the 1990s. In the second part of his thesis, Naaborg highlights the factors that may have influenced this, including political stability, quality of legislation and degree of corruption. Naaborg points out the importance of government policy directed towards improving the institutional environment, including better availability of data concerning local businesses, better legislation to protect both creditors and debtors and a reduction in the susceptibility of the judiciary to corruption.
Sensible Heat Loss from Muskoxen (Ovibos moschatus) Feeding in Winter: Small Calves Are Not at a Thermal Disadvantage Compared with Adult Cows

Muskoxen (Ovibos moschatus) are large (>200 kg adult body mass) mammalian herbivores that overwinter in the polar regions. Calves are around one‐third the body mass of mature females and may be expected to suffer greater thermal stresses in winter compared with adults because the ratio of surface area to volume (SA:vol) is much greater for calves than for adults. We found that during feeding bouts, when animals are fully exposed to environmental conditions, calves did lose sensible (dry) heat more readily than adults (W m−2) in still air conditions. However, calves and cows lost less than 2%–6% of their estimated daily digestible energy intake as conductive, convective, and radiant heat losses accumulated during feeding bouts. More important, calves did not lose relatively more heat than larger adults in terms of sensible losses as part of their daily energy intake. Coat surface temperatures were only 2°–5°C above ambient even when air temperature fell to −40°C. Body temperatures recorded deep within the ear canal near the tympanum fluctuated in both cows and calves. Muskoxen combine peripheral heterothermy and an exceptional winter coat to minimize sensible heat loss in winter. These mechanisms appear to have circumvented some of the thermal problems normally associated with a high SA:vol ratio in calves, which reflects the strong selection to conserve energy in winter.
Mycorrhizal status of native trees and shrubs from eastern Madagascar littoral forests with special emphasis on one new ectomycorrhizal endemic family, the Asteropeiaceae.

The main goal of this work was to describe the mycorrhizal status, AM or ECM or dual AM and ECM or nonmycorrhizal (NM), of different trees species in five coastal humid forests located along the eastern coast of Madagascar. Identification of the plants was carried out by carefully tracing the root system in the field. Several field collection surveys were under-taken and the biological material was examined in laboratory conditions to check the mycorrhizal status of roots and to identify sporophores. (Resume d'auteur)
Integrating embeddings of multiple gene networks to prioritize complex disease-associated genes

Genome-wide association study (GWAS), as one primary approach for genetic studies, has been successfully applied to a variety of complex diseases, leading to the discovery of substantial disease-associated loci. These discovered associations provide unprecedented opportunities for deepening our understanding of complex diseases, such as disease-associated risk variants, genes, and pathways. However, it is non-trivial to extract biological knowledge from the GWAS data due to the existence of several non-negligible factors. For example, the majority of associated loci fall into noncoding regions without certain links to any genes, complicating its functional characterization. Network-based GWAS gene prioritization, aiming to integrate gene networks with GWAS data, emerges as one promising direction towards solving these challenges and has attracted much attention recently. However, gene networks are usually sparse and noisy, and existing methods do not explicitly consider these properties, leading to suboptimal performance. In this paper, we proposed a novel method called REGENT for integrating multiple gene networks with GWAS data to prioritize complex disease-associated genes. Specifically, we leveraged the network representation learning, a recently developed technique for analyzing social networks, to learn compact and robust embeddings from multiple gene networks. To integrate these learned embeddings of genes with GWAS data, we developed a hierarchical statistical model and derived an efficient inference algorithm for model estimation and prediction. Applying to GWAS data of six complex diseases, we demonstrated that REGENT outperformed existing methods regarding the identification of known disease-associated genes. Also, pathway analysis showed that REGENT helped discover disease-associated pathways. Therefore, our method is expected to be a useful tool for post-GWAS analysis.
Profiles of occupational exposure in patients with wood dust-induced nasal carcinoma.

OBJECTIVES Regulations to certify nasal carcinoma as occupational disease induced by wood dust vary in the European countries. In Germany, it must be adenocarcinoma and the dust originating from beech or oak trees. In other countries, the disease is reconized as induced by occupation independent of the kind of wood dust or the type of carcinoma. With regard to the harmonization of regulations necessary in Europe we investigate whether these differences are acceptable from the scientific viewpoint. MATERIALS AND METHODS In a retrospective analysis of a group of 28 patients with wood dust-induced nasal carcinoma in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, we studied whether significant differences in exposure, personal risks (smoking) and histological tumor type could justify the current German, Austrian and Luxembourg pattern of occupational disease certification. To quantify cumulative time of exposure we developed a new semiquantitative formula for the calculation of wood dust years (WDY). RESULTS Our results indicate that there are no significant differences between the subgroups, i.e., exposure to hard wood (n = 13) or other woods (n = 15), WDY (13.1 +/- 11.3), smoking (n = 17) or nonsmoking, type of work and the diagnosis of nasal squamous cell carcinoma (n = 8) versus nasal adenocarcinoma (n = 20). The review of literature suggests systematic errors in the studies that led to the current German regulations. CONCLUSIONS We recommend to amend the German, Austrian and Luxembourg regulations and to recognise nasal carcinomas as occupational disease, regardless of the type of wood dust exposure, and regardless of the tumor histology as also recommended by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).
Dietary folate and colorectal cancer

Folate may be inversely related to colorectal cancer risk, possibly in combination with low methionine and high alcohol consumption. We considered, therefore, the relation between folate and colorectal cancer in a multicentric case‐control study of 1,953 cases and 4,154 controls from Italy, i.e., a population with frequent regular alcohol drinking. In the overall data set, the odds ratio (OR) was 0.72 for the highest quintile of folate, and the continuous OR per 100 μg was 0.86. The inverse relation was similar in men and women and somewhat stronger for the rectum (OR = 0.59 for the highest quintile) compared to the colon (OR = 0.81). It was also somewhat stronger in the highest tertile of alcohol drinking (OR = 0.65), though trends were not heterogeneous across strata of alcohol, whereas no appreciable difference was observed across strata of methionine intake. Compared to subjects reporting low alcohol, high methionine and high folate intake, the OR was 1.83 for those reporting high alcohol, low methionine and low folate intake. The present findings support a favorable role of folate in colorectal carcinogenesis. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Training and business performance: the Spanish case

This paper examines the relationship between training policies and business performance. Our research seeks to enlarge the empirical bibliography about the impact training has on firms and tries to challenge the criticism previous works with similar characteristics received. With this purpose in mind, we have used a theoretical model based on the hypothesis of a ‘cascade-type relationship’ between four types of organizational performance. The results obtained from a sample of Spanish firms show that training policy (based on the human capital theory and the resource-based theory) has a significant impact on firm performance.
Comparative Genome Sequencing of Rickettsia rickettsii Strains That Differ in Virulence

ABSTRACT Rickettsia rickettsii is an obligate intracellular pathogen that is the causative agent of Rocky Mountain spotted fever. Strains of R. rickettsii differ dramatically in virulence. In a guinea pig model of infection, the severity of disease as assessed by fever response varies from the most virulent, Sheila Smith, to Iowa, which causes no fever. To identify potential determinants of virulence in R. rickettsii, the genomes of two additional strains were sequenced for comparison to known sequences (comparative genome sequencing [CGS]). R. rickettsii Morgan and R strains were compared to the avirulent R. rickettsii Iowa and virulent R. rickettsii Sheila Smith strains. The Montana strains Sheila Smith and R were found to be highly similar while the eastern strains Iowa and Morgan were most similar to each other. A major surface antigen, rickettsial outer membrane protein A (rOmpA), is severely truncated in the Iowa strain. The region of ompA containing 13 tandem repeats was sequenced, revealing only seven shared SNPs (four nonsynonymous) for R and Morgan strains compared to Sheila Smith, with an additional 17 SNPs identified in Morgan. Another major surface antigen and autotransporter, rOmpB, exhibits a defect in processing in the Iowa strain such that the beta fragment is not cleaved. Sequence analysis of ompB reveals identical sequences between Iowa and Morgan strains and between the R and Sheila Smith strains. The number of SNPs and insertions/deletions between sequences of the two Montana strains and the two eastern strains is low, thus narrowing the field of possible virulence factors.
Comparative assessment of Japan's long-term carbon budget under different effort-sharing principles

This article assesses Japan's carbon budgets up to 2100 in the global efforts to achieve the 2 °C target under different effort-sharing approaches based on long-term GHG mitigation scenarios published in 13 studies. The article also presents exemplary emission trajectories for Japan to stay within the calculated budget. The literature data allow for an in-depth analysis of four effort-sharing categories. For a 450 ppm CO2e stabilization level, the remaining carbon budgets for 2014–2100 were negative for the effort-sharing category that emphasizes historical responsibility and capability. For the other three, including the reference ‘Cost-effectiveness’ category, which showed the highest budget range among all categories, the calculated remaining budgets (20th and 80th percentile ranges) would run out in 21–29 years if the current emission levels were to continue. A 550 ppm CO2e stabilization level increases the budgets by 6–17 years-equivalent of the current emissions, depending on the effort-sharing category. Exemplary emissions trajectories staying within the calculated budgets were also analysed for ‘Equality’, ‘Staged’ and ‘Cost-effectiveness’ categories. For a 450 ppm CO2e stabilization level, Japan's GHG emissions would need to phase out sometime between 2045 and 2080, and the emission reductions in 2030 would be at least 16–29% below 1990 levels even for the most lenient ‘Cost-effectiveness’ category, and 29–36% for the ‘Equality’ category. The start year for accelerated emissions reductions and the emissions convergence level in the long term have major impact on the emissions reduction rates that need to be achieved, particularly in the case of smaller budgets. Policy relevance In previous climate mitigation target formulation processes for 2020 and 2030 in Japan, neither equity principles nor long-term management of cumulative GHG emissions was at the centre of discussion. This article quantitatively assesses how much more GHGs Japan can emit by 2100 to achieve the 2 °C target in light of different effort-sharing approaches, and how Japan's GHG emissions can be managed up to 2100. The long-term implications of recent energy policy developments following the Fukushima nuclear disaster for the calculated carbon budgets are also discussed.
Trade Openness and Growth: Who Benefits?

We investigate the relationship between economic growth and foreign trade, testing whether the benefits of trade vary over time and across countries. Our results confirm previous findings that specialization in primary exports is bad for growth. While trade openness promoted convergence in the 1960s and 1970s, we find that since 1980 the benefits of trade accrued mostly to the richer economies, with little benefit to the less developed economies. Most of the dynamic benefits of trade are obtained through productivity growth, with a small contribution coming through increased investment. Copyright 2004, Oxford University Press.
North-South Parity in Global Governance: The Affirmative Procedures of the Forest Stewardship Council

As a pioneer among global governance arrangements, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) bases its decisionmaking on an explicit parity of Northern and Southern stakeholders. This article examines the organizational procedures of the Forest Stewardship Council as well as the practical implementation of those procedures. It concludes that, contrary to common assumptions, affirmative procedures alone are insufficient to guarantee that the representation of Southern interests is strengthened. Moreover, the analysis of the FSC reveals significant disparities in the quality of representation of stakeholders from different geographical regions. In the end, it is therefore not so much the affirmative procedures themselves that make the FSC an interesting model for other global decisionmaking processes, but rather their combination with a multilevel system of standard setting in which national and regional standards are used to specify the meaning of globally developed principles and criteria.
Peptide Bond Synthesis: Function of the efp Gene Product

Abstract The efp gene encodes a protein that is essential for the growth and for the viability of Escherichia coli cells. Interruption of this gene results in cell death due to a defect in protein synthesis. We report here that the EFP protein, encoded by the efp gene, is required for in vitro reconstitution of polypeptide synthesis in a system programmed by a native template which contains each of the purified initiation factors, IF1, IF2, IF3; the elongation factors, EFTu, EFTs and EFG, and a protein called W that is required to eject tRNAs from ribosomes. The EFP protein is required for enhancing the rate and the extent of synthesis in the presence of all of the above factors. The EFP protein stimulates synthesis of poly(Phe) programmed with poly(rU) only if Nacetyl PhetRNA initiates the reactions under conditions that foster the dissociation of the 70S ribosome. Study of the ability of the ribosome to synthesize a number of fMetinitiated dipeptides from CCA amino acyl acceptors suggests that EFP acts to promote synthesis with acceptors that are poor donors for the the reconstituted peptidyl transferase.