Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
GROWTH PERFORMANCE, LINEAR MEASUREMENT AND COST- BENEFIT OF TWO STRAINS OF BROILER CHICKENS IN A HUMID

Department of Animal Breeding and Physiology, Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, Umuahia, Abia State, Nigeria. Department of Animal Nutrition and Forage Science, Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, Abia State, Nigeria. *Corresponding author’s email: uceemer@yahoo.com The study was conducted to evaluate strain effect on growth performance, body conformation, carcass and costbenefit parameters of two broiler chickens – Arbor Acre and Anak. A total number of 100 each of Arbor Acre and Anak Titan were used for the experiment which lasted for 56 days (8 weeks). The experiment was carried out at the Poultry Unit of the Teaching and Research farm of Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, where the birds were raised in separate deep litter pens. Each strain was replicated 5 times with 20 birds per replicate. Data collected include body weight and linear body traits (body girth, shank length, thigh length, wing length and body length) at 2 weeks interval beginning from 2 week, growth performance traits, carcass and organ characteristics as well as cost-benefit indices. Data were analyzed using independent student’s t-test statistic. Analyzed results showed that strain had significant (p<0.05) effect on the traits measured except organ characteristics. Arbor Acre had significantly (p<0.05) higher daily feed intake (136.26 vs 111.82 g per day per bird), daily weight gain (32.31 vs 28.22) and better feed conversion ratio (3.47 vs 4.06) than Anak. Arbor Acre strain also had significantly (p<0.05) heavier body weight, longer body length and shank length in weeks 4, 6 and 8, longer thigh length in weeks 4 and 6 as well as longer wing length in week 8 compared to the Anak strain. A similar trend was observed with the carcass characteristics. Arbor Acre showed superiority (p<0.05) over Anak in dressed weight (1403.87 vs 1333.28 g), shank (6.50 vs 4.81 % live weight) and thigh (14.81 vs 13.10 % live weight). At similar cost of production, the Arbor Acre strain had significantly (p < 0.05) lower feed cost/bird and feed cost/weight gain and generated higher revenue (₦846.20 vs 695.90) and gross margin (₦556.10 vs 405.80) than its counterpart strain. From this study, it is concluded that broiler chicken’s growth responses are affected by their genetic potential and Arbor Acre strain appeared more adaptable and profitable in our study area.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Non-symplectic symmetries and bi-Hamiltonian structures of the rational harmonic oscillator

The existence of bi-Hamiltonian structures for the rational harmonic oscillator (non-central harmonic oscillator with rational ratio of frequencies) is analysed by making use of the geometric theory of symmetries. We prove that these additional structures are a consequence of the existence of dynamical symmetries of non-symplectic (non-canonical) type. The associated recursion operators are also obtained.
Linking glacier annual mass balance and glacier albedo retrieved from MODIS data

Albedo is one of the variables controlling the mass balance of temperate glaciers. Multispectral imagers, such as MODerate Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board the TERRA and AQUA satellites, provide a means to moni- tor glacier surface albedo. In this study, different methods to retrieve broadband glacier surface albedo from MODIS data are compared. The effect of multiple reflections due to the rugged topography and of the anisotropic reflection of snow and ice are particularly investigated. The methods are tested on the Saint Sorlin Glacier (Grandes Rousses area, French Alps). The accuracy of the retrieved albedo is estimated us- ing both field measurements, at two automatic weather sta- tions located on the glacier, and albedo values derived from terrestrial photographs. For summers 2008 and 2009, the root mean square deviation (RMSD) between field measure- ments and the broadband albedo retrieved from MODIS data at 250 m spatial resolution was found to be 0.052 or about 10 % relative error. The RMSD estimated for the MOD10 daily albedo product is about three times higher. One decade (2000-2009) of MODIS data were then processed to create a time series of albedo maps of Saint Sorlin Glacier during the ablation season. The annual mass balance of Saint Sorlin Glacier was compared with the minimum albedo value (av- erage over the whole glacier surface) observed with MODIS during the ablation season. A strong linear correlation ex- ists between the two variables. Furthermore, the date when the average albedo of the whole glacier reaches a minimum closely corresponds to the period when the snow line is lo- cated at its highest elevation, thus when the snow line is a good indicator of the glacier equilibrium line. This indi- cates that this strong correlation results from the fact that the minimal average albedo values of the glacier contains con- siderable information regarding the relative share of areal surfaces between the ablation zone (i.e. ice with generally low albedo values) and the accumulation zone (i.e. snow with a relatively high albedo). As a consequence, the monitoring of the glacier surface albedo using MODIS data can provide a useful means to evaluate the interannual variability of the glacier mass balance. Finally, the albedo in the ablation area of Saint Sorlin Glacier does not exhibit any decreasing trend over the study period, contrasting with the results obtained on Morteratsch Glacier in the Swiss Alps.
Control of formation of two distinct classes of RNA polymerase II elongation complexes

We have examined elongation by RNA polymerase II initiated at a promoter and have identified two classes of elongation complexes. Following initiation at a promoter, all polymerase molecules enter an abortive mode of elongation. Abortive elongation is characterized by the rapid generation of short transcripts due to pausing of the polymerase followed by termination of transcription. Termination of the early elongation complexes can be suppressed by the addition of 250 mM KCl or 1 mg of heparin per ml soon after initiation. Elongation complexes of the second class carry out productive elongation in which long transcripts can be synthesized. Productive elongation complexes are derived from early paused elongation complexes by the action of a factor which we call P-TEF (positive transcription elongation factor). P-TEF is inhibited by 5,6-dichloro-1-beta-D-ribofuranosylbenzimidazole at concentrations which have no effect on the initiation of transcription. By using templates immobilized on paramagnetic particles, we show that isolated preinitiation complexes lack P-TEF and give rise to transcription complexes which can carry out only abortive elongation. The ability to carry out productive elongation can be restored to isolated transcription complexes by the addition of P-TEF after initiation. A model is presented which describes the role of elongation factors in the formation and maintenance of elongation complexes. The model is consistent with the available in vivo data concerning control of elongation and is used to predict the outcome of other potential in vitro and in vivo experiments.
Formations of vehicles in cyclic pursuit

Inspired by the so-called "bugs" problem from mathematics, we study the geometric formations of multivehicle systems under cyclic pursuit. First, we introduce the notion of cyclic pursuit by examining a system of identical linear agents in the plane. This idea is then extended to a system of wheeled vehicles, each subject to a single nonholonomic constraint (i.e., unicycles), which is the principal focus of this paper. The pursuit framework is particularly simple in that the n identical vehicles are ordered such that vehicle i pursues vehicle i+1 modulo n. In this paper, we assume each vehicle has the same constant forward speed. We show that the system's equilibrium formations are generalized regular polygons and it is exposed how the multivehicle system's global behavior can be shaped through appropriate controller gain assignments. We then study the local stability of these equilibrium polygons, revealing which formations are stable and which are not.
Pulmonary cytomegalovirus infection in immunocompromised patients.

BACKGROUND Cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection and CMV disease are frequent complications in immunocompromised patients. In this study, the incidence of pulmonary CMV infection was analyzed in different groups of immunocompromised patients and the diagnostic value of immunostaining with anti-CMV antibodies in BAL cells was evaluated in regard to the diagnosis of CMV pneumonitis. METHODS Five hundred eighty consecutive BAL procedures were analyzed prospectively in 442 immunocompromised and 126 nonimmunocompromised control subjects. CMV culture in BAL fluid was performed by shell vial assay and immunostaining using three monoclonal anti-CMV antibodies. RESULTS The incidence of culture results positive for CMV in the BAL fluid varied from 20 to 30% in HIV-positive patients, in patients following stem cell or renal transplantation, and in patients with autoimmune disease or lung fibrosis treated with immunosuppressive agents. CMV was cultured from 4.4% of BALs in patients treated with high-dose chemotherapy and from 2.4% of control subjects. CMV disease developed in 37 patients; in 18 of these patients, CMV pneumonitis was present. The results of CMV immunostaining were positive in a total of 22 BALs, all in patients with CMV disease. The sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive values of positive CMV immunostaining results for the diagnosis of CMV pneumonitis were 88.9%, 98.6%, 72.7%, and 99.5%, respectively. CONCLUSION The incidence of pulmonary CMV infection is similar in different groups of immunocompromised patients except for patients following high-dose chemotherapy. CMV immunostaining in the BAL fluid is a very helpful method to diagnose CMV pneumonitis in these patients.
Automated Goal-Oriented Error Control I: Stationary Variational Problems

This article presents a general and novel approach to the automation of goal-oriented error control in the solution of nonlinear stationary finite element variational problems. The approach is based on automated linearization to obtain the linearized dual problem, automated derivation and evaluation of a posteriori error estimates, and automated adaptive mesh refinement to control the error in a given goal functional to within a given tolerance. Numerical examples representing a variety of different discretizations of linear and nonlinear partial differential equations are presented, including Poisson's equation, a mixed formulation of linear elasticity, and the incompressible Navier- Stokes equations. © 2013 Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.
Using phase spectrum information for improved speech recognition performance

New acoustic features for continuous speech recognition based on the short-term Fourier phase spectrum are introduced for mono (telephone) recordings. The new phase based features were combined with standard Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC), and results were produced with and without using additional linear discriminant analysis (LDA) to choose the most relevant features. Experiments were performed on the SieTill corpus for telephone line recorded German digit strings. Using LDA to combine purely phase based features with MFCCs, we obtained improvements in word error rate of up to 25% relative to using MFCCs alone with the same overall number of parameters in the system.
The Influence of Sentence Context on Phonetic Recalibration

Individual talkers vary considerably in how they produce different speech sounds, and a challenge for the listener is to learn the appropriate mapping between acoustics and phonetic categories for an individual talker. Several studies have shown that listeners are able to leverage various sources of context (e.g., coincident visual information, lexical knowledge) to guide this process, sometimes termed perceptual learning of speech. Here, we examine how sentence-level semantic information – specifically, whether preceding sentence context is predictive of an upcoming word – might modulate the size of learning effects. Across a series of perceptual learning experiments, we manipulate how learning compares between groups who receive neutral or predictive sentence contexts, also varying whether contexts are presented in the auditory or written modality. Though we observed greater learning for subjects who read predictive contexts than for subjects who read neutral contexts, this finding did not replicate in an identical follow-up experiment, suggesting that potential influences of sentence context on phonetic recalibration may be small. These findings are discussed in the context of the broader literature on perceptual learning.
The importance of different dimensions in the experiential based model among wine tourists and wine industry experts in the Republic of Macedonia.

Wine tourism is facing new challenges where tourists are in search of extraordinary, unique and memorable experiences, which require from individual wine operators to develop a distinct, engaging and value-added offering. The latest research suggests the need for a more holistic approach to the experiential nature of wine tourism. The present study utilizes relevant constructs of the experience economy model to reveal the importance of each dimension among visitors of major wineries in the Republic of Macedonia. Wine industry experts have ranked the importance and performance of pertinent attributes as key success factors for visiting a winery. The purpose of the paper is to analyze whether the 4E construct is of equal importance to tourists’ evaluations of the wine tourism experience. The survey results reveal that, according to the experts’ opinions, human resources, information and signage, and landscaping are the essential success factors for visiting the winery. The esthetic dimension appeared to be the dominant dimension of the experiential outcomes among wine tourists. Findings from the wine tourism research, within the experience economy model, might be beneficial for all the involved parties in wine tourism to improve their wine tourism offer to experience-seeking visitors.
APPLICATION OF CHAOTIC PARTICLE SWARM OPTIMIZATION ALGORITHM TO PATTERN SYNTHESIS OF ANTENNA ARRAYS

To deal with pattern synthesis of antenna arrays, a chaotic particle swarm optimization (CPSO) is presented to avoid the premature convergence. By fusing with the ergodic and stochastic chaos, the novel algorithm explores the global optimum with the comprehensive learning strategy. The chaotic searching region can be adjusted adaptively. To evaluate the performance of CPSO, several representative benchmark functions are minimized using various optimization algorithms. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed approach improves the performance of the algorithm signiflcantly, in terms of both the convergence speed and exploration ability. Moreover, CPSO was applied to array synthesis examples, including the equally spaced linear array, unequally spaced linear array and conformal array, compared with other optimization methods. Experimental results show its high performance in the pattern synthesis with low side lobe, multi-nulls and shaped beam.
In Press: Ieee Transactions on Computational Intelligence and Ai in Games Adaptivity Challenges in Games and Simulations: a Survey

—In computer games and simulations, content is often rather static and rigid. As a result, its pre-scripted nature can lead to predictable and impersonal gameplay, while alienating unconventional players. Adaptivity in games has therefore been recently proposed to overcome these shortcomings and make games more challenging and appealing. In this article we survey present research on game adaptivity, identifying and discussing the main challenges, and pointing out some of the most promising directions ahead. We first survey the purposes of adaptivity, as the principles that could steer an adaptation and generation engine. From this perspective, we proceed to thoroughly discuss adaptivity's targets and methods. Current advances and successes in this emerging field point to many yet unexplored research opportunities. Among them, we discuss the use of gameplay expectations, learning preferences and assessment data in the integrated adaptation of game worlds, scenarios and quests. We conclude that, among other methods, procedural content generation and semantic modeling can powerfully combine to create off-line customized content and on-line adjustments to game worlds, scenarios and quests. These and other promising methods, deserving ample research efforts, can therefore be expected to significantly contribute towards making games and simulations even more unpredictable, effective and fun.
Citation for published version: G. Anglada-Escude, et al, ‘NO EVIDENCE FOR ACTIVITY CORRELATIONS IN THE RADIAL VELOCITIES OF KAPTEYN'S STAR’,

Stellar activity may induce Doppler variability at the level of a few m/s which can then be confused by the Doppler signal of an exoplanet orbiting the star. To first order, linear correlations between radial velocity measurements and activity indices have been proposed to account for any such correlation. The likely presence of two super-Earths orbiting Kapteyn’s star was reported in Anglada-Escudé et al. (2014), but this claim was recently challenged by Robertson et al. (2015b) arguing evidence of a rotation period (143 days) at three times the orbital period of one of the proposed planets (Kapteyn’s b, P=48.6 days), and the existence of strong linear correlations between its Doppler signal and activity data. By re-analyzing the data using global optimization methods and model comparison, we show that such claim is incorrect given that; 1) the choice of a rotation period at 143 days is unjustified, and 2) the presence of linear correlations is not supported by the data. We conclude that the radial velocity signals of Kapteyn’s star remain more simply explained by the presence of two super-Earth candidates orbiting it. We also advocate for the use of global optimization procedures and objective arguments, instead of claims lacking of a minimal statistical support. Subject headings: techniques: radial velocities – stars: individual: Kapteyn’s star, planetary systems 1 Centre for Astrophysics Research, University of Hertfordshire, College Lane, AL10 9AB, Hatfield, UK 2 School of Physics and Astronomy, Queen Mary, University of London, 327 Mile End Rd. London, United Kingdom 3 Carnegie Institution of Washington, Dept. of Terrestrial Magnetism, 5241 Broad Branch Rd. NW, 20015, Washington D.C., USA 4 Departamento de Astronomı́a, Universidad de Chile, Camino El Observatorio 1515, Las Condes, Santiago, Chile, Casilla 36-D. 5 Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Weizmann Institute of Science, 234 Herzl St., Rehovot 76100, Israel 6 Universität Göttingen, Institut für Astrophysik, Friedrich-Hund-Platz 1, 37077 Göttingen, Germany 7 Institut für Planetare Geodäsie Technische Universität Dresden 01062, Dresden, Germany 8 UCO/Lick Observatory, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, USA 9 Instituto de Astrof́ısica de Andalućıa-CSIC, Glorieta
Mammographic risk assessment and local greylevel appearance histograms

It has been shown that the probability to develop breast cancer is strongly correlated with the appearance of tissue in mammographic images. This appearance incorporates both greylevel and tissue pattern aspects and models of local texture information, which incorporate both greylevel and spatial aspects, can as such be related to mammographic risk assessment. Here we represent texture by the variation in local greylevel configuration/appearance in histogram format for which the distribution varies with texture appearance. The histogram information can be directly used to classify mammograms according to standard mammographic risk estimation models (e.g. BIRADS). Results on the MIAS database indicate a correct classification of 70% (which increases to 84% for high/low risk classification), which is comparable with existing methods. Variation of the classification results with respect to some of the model parameters are discussed, which indicate the robustness of the methodology. In addition future directions, to improve the classification results are discussed.
Natural occurrences of ochratoxicosis in slaughtered pigs from different regions of Serbia.

Samples of blood, kidney and liver per animal were randomly selected from slaughtered pigs (n=60) and analyzed for ochratoxin A. Determination of ochratoxin A (OTA) concentration in samples of kidney and liver was performed by HPTLC after immunoaffnity column clean-up, while for plasma samples, spectrofluorometric procedure was used. Of the 60 plasma samples, 60% contained OTA in the range of 2.5-33.3 ng/mL (mean 3.05±5.0 ng/mL), while the incidence of OTA in kidneys and liver were very similar (70% and 65%). The average OTA concentration in liver was 3.2±4.35 ng/g (1.2-19.5 ng/g) and in kidneys was 3.97±4.47 ng/g (1.3-22.0 ng/g). A statistically significant difference (p liver>serum (100>80.8>77%). The results from these survey indicated that there was a strong correlation between the OTA level in serum and liver as well as in the OTA serum in kidney (r=0.884 and r=0.896, respectively) while the strongest correlation was found between the OTA level in liver and in kidney (r=0.970).
The Complementarities of Accounting Information and Its Off-equilibrium Role

This paper studies the role of financial reporting in enhancing the credibility of other sources of information. We find that an interim accounting report can discipline management's investment behavior and its effectiveness increases with accounting quality. As a consequence, when accounting quality increases, the investment itself becomes a sufficiently credible signal of management's more valuable private information, and therefore induces a dramatic market response. In this sense, the two pieces of information serve as compliments. However, since most information has already been preempted by the investment, the market's response to subsequent earnings announcement declines. Our results are consistent with the confirmatory role by Gigler and Hemmer (1998) in that the value of accounting is off equilibrium. Specifically, it is the threat that accounting will reveal an inefficient investment that prevents it from happening. Nevertheless, the mechanism in our paper is completely different, and the economic magnitude of the off-equilibrium role is first order, rather than a result of improved risk sharing. Therefore, to assess the value of accounting, we cannot simply rely on the equilibrium market responsiveness to earnings.