Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Biofumigation on Post-Harvest Diseases of Fruits Using a New Volatile-Producing Fungus of Ceratocystis fimbriata

A variety of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) produced by Ceratocystis fimbriata have strong bioactivity against a wide range of fungi, bacteria and oomycetes. Mycelial growth, conidial production, and spore germination of fungi and oomycetes were significantly inhibited after exposure to cultures of C. fimbriata, and colony formation of bacteria was also inhibited. Two post-harvest diseases, peach brown rot caused by Monilinia fructicola and citrus green mold caused by Penicillium digitatum, were controlled during a 4-day storage by enclosing wound-inoculated fruits with 10 standard diameter Petri plate cultures of C. fimbriata in a 15 L box. The fruits were freshly inoculated at onset of storage and the cultures of C. fimbriata were 6 days old. Percentage of control was 92 and 97%, respectively. After exposure to C. fimbriata VOCs, severely misshapen hyphae and conidia of these two post-harvest pathogens were observed by scanning electron microscopy, and their pathogenicity was lost or greatly reduced.
Evaluation of Digital Surface Models by Semi-Global Matching

This paper considers a processing chain for automatically creating high resolution digital surface models and true ortho-images from aerial and satellite image data. It has been developed at the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics of the German Aerospace Center (DLR-RM). The processing chain is based on Semi-Global Matching (SGM) that uses a radiometric robust matching cost and an optimization that is based on a global smoothness constraint. SGM is especially suitable for creating models of urban scenes, where sharp depth discontinuities and small details need to be precisely reconstructed. However, the technique also produces very good results in scenes with forest and mountains. In this paper we give an overview of the processing chain and evaluate its results on test data sets from different aerial cameras. It is concluded that SGM permits the creation of high quality surface models that are more accurate and provide much more detail than a surface model from an aerial laser scanner. We also discuss the conditions under which good surface models can be produced by SGM. For very good results, an overlap of 80 % or more along track and 70 % across track should be provided.
The relationship between happiness and intelligent quotient: the contribution of socio-economic and clinical factors

Background Happiness and higher intelligent quotient (IQ) are independently related to positive health outcomes. However, there are inconsistent reports about the relationship between IQ and happiness. The aim was to examine the association between IQ and happiness and whether it is mediated by social and clinical factors. Method The authors analysed data from the 2007 Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey in England. The participants were adults aged 16 years or over, living in private households in 2007. Data from 6870 participants were included in the study. Happiness was measured using a validated question on a three-point scale. Verbal IQ was estimated using the National Adult Reading Test and both categorical and continuous IQ was analysed. Results Happiness is significantly associated with IQ. Those in the lowest IQ range (70–99) reported the lowest levels of happiness compared with the highest IQ group (120–129). Mediation analysis using the continuous IQ variable found dependency in activities of daily living, income, health and neurotic symptoms were strong mediators of the relationship, as they reduced the association between happiness and IQ by 50%. Conclusions Those with lower IQ are less happy than those with higher IQ. Interventions that target modifiable variables such as income (e.g. through enhancing education and employment opportunities) and neurotic symptoms (e.g. through better detection of mental health problems) may improve levels of happiness in the lower IQ groups.
A Research Study on Identifying the Correlation between Fourth Graders’ Attitudes and Behaviors toward the Environment

This study aims to examine the degree to which scores received by fourth graders in Turkey on the environmental attitudes scale is reflected in their environmental awareness (with respect to practice, behaviors), and to identify the correlation between attitudes and behaviors. Case study design was used to collect data in the study. Observation and questionnaire techniques were used as the data collection instruments. The sample of the study consisted of 15 students selected among the fourth graders attending elementary schools in Agri province of Turkey in the 2015-2016 academic year. The Attitudes Toward the Environment Scale (ATES), developed by Yasaroglu (2012), was used to measure students’ attitudes toward the environment. The reliability of the scale was examined by Yasaroglu (2012) using Cronbach’s alpha internal consistency coefficient, which is reported to be 0.84. Observations were made to measure students’ environmental awareness by using the video recording technique. On the other hand, Spearman’s Correlation analysis was used for data analysis. The relationship between students’ scores on the attitude scale and their scores for environmental awareness, assigned on the basis of the observations made, was found weak, as indicated by the correlation between the two (Spearman’s rho (r)=0.075). An important finding was that even though students received satisfactory scores on the ATES scale, a sizable number of them failed to reflect these attitudes in their practices or behaviors, which would indicate environmental awareness.
Financial stability implications of local currency bond markets: an overview of the risks

Latin American countries have made considerable progress in developing their local currency bond markets. With more sizeable local bond markets come improved efficiency of financial intermediation, diversification of intermediation, reduction in the concentration of risks in the banking sector and financing of fiscal deficits in a non-inflationary manner. In addition, the more developed local currency debt markets in these countries should help mitigate important risks and sources of vulnerabilities, eg by reducing systemic instability associated with currency and maturity mismatches. A growing body of evidence says that the development of local currency bond markets, which has gone further than many had expected a decade ago, has strengthened the stability of local financial systems in the emerging market economies as a whole.
Innovation Sources, Capabilities and Competitiveness: Evidence from Hong Kong Firms

It is widely recognized in the theoretical literature that firms are required to use both internal and external sources of innovation in order to achieve competitive advantage. However, while many assume that internal and external sources of innovation bear distinct relationships to firm capabilities, it is not clear how various sources affect such capabilities, or how or to what extent such relationships affect product competitiveness. This paper therefore examines the impact of diverse sources of innovation on a firm’s technological innovation capabilities (TICs) and the extent to which such capabilities mediate the improvement of product competitiveness. Based on a survey of 200 manufacturing firms in Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta region, we have identified internal departments as a major source of innovation for improving a range of firm capabilities Moreover, acquiring disembodied technology improves learning, resource allocation, and organizing capabilities, whereas acquiring embodied technology enhances learning and manufacturing capabilities. We furthermore utilize a hierarchical regression analysis to demonstrate that some sources of innovation, such as internal departments, can lead directly to superior product competitiveness, while innovations acquired through conferences and competitors contribute to competitiveness through the mediation effects of resource allocation, marketing, and organizing capabilities.
Phenotyping of Eggplant Wild Relatives and Interspecific Hybrids with Conventional and Phenomics Descriptors Provides Insight for Their Potential Utilization in Breeding

Eggplant (Solanum melongena) is related to a large number of wild species that are a source of variation for breeding programmes, in particular for traits related to adaptation to climate change. However, wild species remain largely unexploited for eggplant breeding. Detailed phenotypic characterization of wild species and their hybrids with eggplant may allow identifying promising wild species and information on the genetic control and heterosis of relevant traits. We characterizated six eggplant accessions, 21 accessions of 12 wild species (the only primary genepool species S. insanum and 11 secondary genepool species) and 45 interspecific hybrids of eggplant with wild species (18 with S. insanum and 27 with secondary genepool species) using 27 conventional morphological descriptors and 20 fruit morphometric descriptors obtained with the phenomics tool Tomato Analyzer. Significant differences were observed among cultivated, wild and interspecific hybrid groups for 18 conventional and 18 Tomato Analyzer descriptors, with hybrids generally having intermediate values. Wild species were generally more variable than cultivated accessions and interspecific hybrids displayed intermediate ranges of variation and coefficient of variation (CV) values, except for fruit shape traits in which the latter were the most variable. The multivariate principal components analysis (PCA) reveals a clear separation of wild species and cultivated accessions. Interspecific hybrids with S. insanum plotted closer to cultivated eggplant, while hybrids with secondary genepool species generally clustered together with wild species. Many differences were observed among wild species for traits of agronomic interest, which allowed identifying species of greatest potential interest for eggplant breeding. Heterosis values were positive for most vigor-related traits, while for fruit size values were close to zero for hybrids with S. incanum and highly negative for hybrids with secondary genepool species. Our results allowed the identification of potentially interesting wild species and interspecific hybrids for introgression breeding in eggplant. This is an important step for broadening the genetic base of eggplant and for breeding for adaptation to climate change in this crop.
The Aquila prestellar core population revealed by Herschel

The origin and possible universality of the stellar initial mass function (IMF) is a major issue in astrophysics. One of the main objectives of the Herschel Gould Belt Survey is to clarify the link between the prestellar core mass function (CMF) and the IMF. We present and discuss the core mass function derived from Herschel data for the large population of prestellar cores discovered with SPIRE and PACS in the Aquila Rift cloud complex at d ~ 260 pc. We detect a total of 541 starless cores in the entire ~11 deg^2 area of the field imaged at 70-500 micron with SPIRE/PACS. Most of these cores appear to be gravitationally bound, and thus prestellar in nature. Our Herschel results confirm that the shape of the prestellar CMF resembles the stellar IMF, with much higher quality statistics than earlier submillimeter continuum ground-based surveys.
In Vivo Evidence for a Role of Toll-Like Receptor 4 in the Development of Intimal Lesions

Background—Inflammation plays an important role in atherogenesis. The toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) is the receptor for bacterial lipopolysaccharides and also recognizes cellular fibronectin and heat shock protein 60, endogenous peptides that are produced in response to tissue injury. To explore a possible role for this receptor in arterial obstructive disease, we determined the expression of TLR4 in the atherosclerotic arterial wall, including adventitia, and studied the effect of adventitial TLR4 activation on neointima formation in a mouse model. Methods and Results—Localization of TLR4 was studied in human atherosclerotic coronary arteries by immunohistochemistry and detected in plaque and adventitia. In the adventitia, not all TLR4-positive cells colocalized with macrophages. In primary human adventitial fibroblasts, expression of TLR4 was demonstrated by immunofluorescence, Western blot, and reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction. Adding lipopolysaccharide to these fibroblasts induced activation of NF-&kgr;B and an increase of mRNAs of various cytokines. The effect of adventitial stimulation of TLR4 was studied in a mouse model. A peri-adventitial cuff was placed around the femoral artery. Application of lipopolysaccharide between cuff and artery augmented neointima formation induced by the cuff (intimal area±SEM, 9134±1714 versus 2353±1076 &mgr;m2, P <0.01). In TLR4-defective mice, application of cuff and lipopolysaccharide resulted in a smaller neointima than in wild-type mice (intimal area, 3859±904 &mgr;m2, P =0.02 versus wild type). Conclusions—A functional TLR4 is expressed in human adventitial fibroblasts and macrophages. Adventitial TLR4 activation augmented neointima formation in a mouse model. These results provide evidence for a link between the immune receptor TLR4 and intimal lesion formation.
Cytomegalovirus pneumonia as the first manifestation of severe combined immunodeficiency

Severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) is characterized by the absence of functional T lymphocytes and impairment of adaptive immunity. While heterogeneity of the genetic background in SCID leads to the variability of immune phenotypes, most of affected newborns appear healthy but within the first few months they develop life-threatening opportunistic respiratory or gastrointestinal tract infections. The objective of the study was to define the presenting features and etiology of infections in children with SCID. We retrospectively reviewed five children in whom the diagnosis of SCID had been established in our pediatric immunology clinic over the last 10-year period. A viral respiratory tract infection was the first manifestation of SCID in all the children studied. Cytomegalovirus (CMV) pneumonia was recognized in as many as 4 cases and coronavirus pulmonary infection was diagnosed in one case, whereas Pneumocystis jiroveci was identified as a co-pathogen in one CMV-infected patient. Severe combined immunodeficiency is a pediatric emergency condition and given the significant impact of pulmonary CMV infection in SCID children, establishing an accurate etiological diagnosis is of essential importance in instituting the specific treatment and improving the outcome.
Systems theory for geospace plasma dynamics

This is a tutorial review on systems theory and its applications to space plasma physics and, more broadly, on geophysics. With its basis on the state representation of a plasma the theory is widely applicable, but it is of particular interest for dynamical, nonlinear, or out‐of‐equilibrium regimes that cannot be represented by traditional microscopic modeling. Two distinct, but closely related, branches of the theory are applied when the plasma dynamics is traced to first principles and when it needs to be derived from experimental data. A framework of modeling methods is presented in order of increasing complexity: enumeration of the effective degrees of freedom, measurement of the linear dynamics and stability, and generalization to their nonlinear counterparts. The relation between symmetries in the plasma system and modes in its structure and response is discussed. Signal processing methods are presented, illustrated by examples, and their relative merits and limitations are discussed. The dynamical framework provides a new approach alongside the traditional perturbative and statistical‐mechanical methodologies and is directly relevant to the development of space weather applications.
Comparing Out-of-Sample Predictive Ability of PLS, Covariance, and Regression Models

Partial Least Squares Path Modelling (PLSPM) is a popular technique for estimating structural equation models in the social sciences, and is frequently presented as an alternative to covariance-based analysis as being especially suited for predictive modeling. While existing research on PLSPM has focused on its use in causalexplanatory modeling, this paper follows two recent papers at ICIS 2012 and 2013 in examining how PLSPM performs when used for predictive purposes. Additionally, as a predictive technique, we compare PLSPM to traditional regression methods that are widely used for predictive modelling in other disciplines. Specifically, we employ out-ofsample k-fold cross-validation to compare PLSPM to covariance-SEM and a range of atheoretical regression techniques in a simulation study. Our results show that PLSPM offers advantages over covariance-SEM and other prediction methods.
Suppression of Salient Objects Prevents Distraction in Visual Search

To find objects of interest in a cluttered and continually changing visual environment, humans must often ignore salient stimuli that are not currently relevant to the task at hand. Recent neuroimaging results indicate that the ability to prevent salience-driven distraction depends on the current level of attentional control activity in frontal cortex, but the specific mechanism by which this control activity prevents salience-driven distraction is still poorly understood. Here, we asked whether salience-driven distraction is prevented by suppressing salient distractors or by preferentially up-weighting the relevant visual dimension. We found that salient distractors were suppressed even when they resided in the same feature dimension as the target (that is, when dimensional weighting was not a viable selection strategy). Our neurophysiological measure of suppression—the PD component of the event-related potential—was associated with variations in the amount of time it took to perform the search task: distractors triggered the PD on fast-response trials, but on slow-response trials they triggered activity associated with working memory representation instead. These results demonstrate that during search salience-driven distraction is mitigated by a suppressive mechanism that reduces the salience of potentially distracting visual objects.
The Lung Immune Response to Nontypeable Haemophilus influenzae (Lung Immunity to NTHi)

Haemophilus influenzae is divided into typeable or nontypeable strains based on the presence or absence of a polysaccharide capsule. The typeable strains (such as type b) are an important cause of systemic infection, whilst the nontypeable strains (designated as NTHi) are predominantly respiratory mucosal pathogens. NTHi is present as part of the normal microbiome in the nasopharynx, from where it may spread down to the lower respiratory tract. In this context it is no longer a commensal and becomes an important respiratory pathogen associated with a range of common conditions including bronchitis, bronchiectasis, pneumonia, and particularly chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. NTHi induces a strong inflammatory response in the respiratory tract with activation of immune responses, which often fail to clear the bacteria from the lung. This results in recurrent/persistent infection and chronic inflammation with consequent lung pathology. This review will summarise the current literature about the lung immune response to nontypeable Haemophilus influenzae, a topic that has important implications for patient management.
BADASSES: The Rise of Women in Criminal Justice

Little is known about the experiences and career trajectories of women working in the criminal justice field. Criminal justice, particularly law enforcement, has historically been largely a male-dominated career field. This study examines the experiences of 850 women working in the criminal justice field; in policing, courts, corrections, victim services, and academia. The present study collected data in 2017 and asked women working in the criminal justice field about their employment. Respondents said that they experienced a wide range of gender discrimination but did not see gender discrimination as a barrier to their success. The women identified personal and professional perseverance, strong mentorship, and family support as contributing factors to their success. Findings highlight the experience and challenges of women working at all levels and in all components of the criminal justice system and the journey of these women at a unique time in the history of criminal justice and evolution of women in the workplace. Implications for criminal justice, advice for current and aspiring women working in the field, and the nature of the experience for women in criminal justice are discussed.
Large Scale Arabic Error Annotation: Guidelines and Framework

We present annotation guidelines and a web-based annotation framework developed as part of an effort to create a manually annotated Arabic corpus of errors and corrections for various text types. Such a corpus will be invaluable for developing Arabic error correction tools, both for training models and as a gold standard for evaluating error correction algorithms. We summarize the guidelines we created. We also describe issues encountered during the training of the annotators, as well as problems that are specific to the Arabic language that arose during the annotation process. Finally, we present the annotation tool that was developed as part of this project, the annotation pipeline, and the quality of the resulting annotations.
The Relationship between Conversion Factors and Health: Evidence from the Ready-Made Garment Workers in Bangladesh

This study examined the association between health condition and conversion factors (i.e. environmental, individual and social) among workers in the ready-made garment (RMG) industry in Bangladesh. It used data gathered from a cross-sectional survey of 775 RMG workers in the Dhaka and Narayanganj districts. Using multiple logistic regression, the study found that: (1) achieving good health among RMG workers is hindered by various factors including high job-related demands, high noise levels, workplace crowding, heavy workloads, and low level of educational attainment; (2) job-related rewards and marital status have contributed to achieving good health; (3) health condition of workers is worse for women than for men; and (4) poor health condition is more prevalent among the oldest age group than in the lowest age category. The main contributions of this research: (1) this study develops a comprehensive framework to determine the factors affecting the health condition of manufacturing workers in general, and RMG workers in particular; and (2) it also examines the effects of both psychosocial and physical working conditions on the health of RMG workers.