Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Adaptability of Durum Wheat Genotypes (Triticum turgidum L. Var durum) to Contrasted Locations

This investigation was carried out to determine the adaptability patterns of a set of 23 durum wheat (Triticum durumDesf.) genotypes evaluated at four contrasted locations during two cropping seasons. The results indicated that yield varied widely and was significantly affected by year, location, year x location, genotype x location and genotype x location x year interactions, which accounted for 0.8, 63.1, 21.0, 5.8, and 3.40% of the treatment sum square, respectively. The joint regression and the AMMI analyses explained 30.08% and 83.35% of the sum square of the interaction, respectively. The results indicated that tested locations exhibited high interaction and could be grouped into two recommendation domains: Khroub vsTiaret, Setif and Guelma. Genotypes Azeghar-1/3/Mrf-2/Bcr/Gro-1ICD00-0904-H-9AP-AP-1AP-TR, Miki-3ICD94-0994-C-10AP-0AP-2AP-0AP-9AP-0TR and Azeghar-1/Blm//Mrf-2 ICD00-0818-C-18AP-AP-9AP-TRexhibited high yield main effect, and large adaptability to all locations, while Mrf1/Stj2/Bcrch1 ICD99-0027-C-0AP-14AP-AP9AP-APshowed specific adaptation to Khroub location and Ter-1/3/Stj3/Bcr/Lks-4 ICD99-1036-T-0AP-7AP-AP-3AP-APexpressed a specific adaptation to Tiaret, Setif and Guelmasubregion. Based on nominal yield, selection for specific adaptation achieved 7.87% grain yield gain compared to selection for wide adaptation.
Assessing student's changing perceptions of higher education

A major contribution of higher education institutions towards benefitting societies, is their potential to assist students in their academic progress as well as their progress in other spheres. To be able to assess how students change progressively, particularly in respect of change in perceptions during their undergraduate studies, relevant pre-entry data is needed. If a transformational approach to quality assurance and development is desirable in higher education, strategies and instrumentation for assessing student change and progress need to be continuously investigated. This article reports research directed at the adaptation and implementation of relevant assessment models, including Astin's comprehensive approach to student talent development, Kuh's model of student engagement and Tinto's longitudinal model of factors influencing student departure. It explores new possibilities of generating data on student change that might be potentially valuable to students, learning facilitators and researchers in higher education institutions. The article also proposes instrumentation that might assist higher education institutions in rethinking ways and means of determining students' perceptual change.
Clinics in diagnostic imaging ( 143 )

CASE PRESENTATION A 43-year-old man with a known history of perianal hidradenitis and bilateral recurrent anorectal fistulae was surgically treated with Seton placement and at least three fistulotomies over a period of three years. He subsequently defaulted treatment from the surgical department, but was referred back six years later due to complaints of a recurrence of symptoms over the last two years. He experienced perianal pain with occasional whitish or bloody discharge. Continence was maintained, and there was otherwise no other altered bowel habits or constitutional symptoms. On examination, he was noted to have right perineal induration and mild tenderness, as well as multiple predominantly right-sided perianal fistulous openings. A provisional clinical diagnosis of complex fistula-in-ano was made. Contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance (MR) imaging of the anal canal, rectum and pelvis was performed to evaluate the perianal fistula prior to surgery. What do these images (Figs. 1a–d) show? Is this likely to be benign? What is the diagnosis? Clinics in diagnostic imaging (143)
Development of the ommastrephid squid Todarodes pacificus, from fertilized egg to the rhynchoteuthion paralarva

The present study establishes for the first time an atlas for the normal development of Todarodes pacificus Steenstrup, 1880, from fertilized egg to rhynchoteuthion paralarva. In the course of the study, observations on embryogenesis and histological differentiation in T. pacificus were made for consideration of the developmental mode of the Oegopsida, which is a specialized group with a reduced external yolk sac. It appears that differentiation of the respiratory and digestive organs is relatively delayed in the Oegopsida, with reduction of the yolk sac as well as the egg size. These characters could be related to a reproductive strategy for paralarval dispersion in the open ocean.
Space weather radiation effects on geostationary satellite solid‐state power amplifiers

In order to understand and mitigate the effects of space weather on the performance of geostationary (GEO) communications satellites, we analyze 16 years of archived telemetry data from Inmarsat, the UK‐based telecommunications company. We compare 665,112 operational hours of housekeeping telemetry from two generations of satellites, designated as Fleet A and Fleet B. Each generation experienced 13 solid‐state power amplifier (SSPA) anomalies for a total of 26 anomalies from 1996 to 2012. We compare telemetry from the Inmarsat anomalies with space weather observations, including data from the OMNI2 database, Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites, the Advanced Composition Explorer Satellite, and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) GEO observations; the evolution of the sunspot number; and the Kp index. Most SSPA anomalies for Fleet A occur as solar activity declines; Fleet B has not yet experienced a full solar cycle. For both fleets, the average value of Kp remained < 2 over time periods of 2 days, 3 days, and 2 weeks around the time of anomaly, which suggests that the anomalies occurred at times of relatively quiet geomagnetic activity and that they were probably not solely caused by surface charging. From 1996 to 2009, the average of the 1.8–3.5 MeV electron flux was 1.98 #/(cm2 s st keV). Five of the 26 anomalies, unfortunately, do not have corresponding science observations (specifically, electron flux data in the LANL data set), so part of this study focuses on the 21 anomalies when science observations were available. Six out of 21 anomalies experienced a high‐energy electron flux greater than 1.5 standard deviations above the mean of the log10 of the flux between 7 and 14 days prior to the anomaly. By contrast, a Monte Carlo simulation finds that on average, only 2.8 out of 21 (13%) of randomly assigned “anomalies” occur between 7 and 14 days after an electron flux greater than 1.5 standard deviations above the mean. Our observations suggest that internal charging from either past elevated radiation belt fluxes or some conditions related to relativistic electron enhancements (either causally or accidentally) is most likely responsible for the SSPA anomalies. We next consider the timing of these anomalies with respect to the local time (LT) and season. Anomalies occur at all LT sectors with 46% (Fleet A) and 38.5% (Fleet B) in the midnight to dawn sector and 54% (Fleet A) and 46% (Fleet B) in the local noon to dusk sector. From the local time distribution, surface charging does not appear to be the sole causative agent of the anomalies. Understanding the connection between the space weather conditions and anomalies on subsystems and specific components on identical and similar geostationary communications satellites for periods of time longer than a solar cycle will help guide design improvements and provide insight on their operation during space weather events.
Impact of Blighia sapida (k. Koenig) aril powder level in diet on the growth and the well-being of albino Wistar rats

The aim of the present investigation was to evaluate the impact of Blighia sapida aril level in diet on the growth of albino Wistar rats and their welfare. A quantity of B. sapida arils was cooked and lyophilized. Thirty six young albinos Wistar rats teams up in six with six homogeneous groups were used for a four weeks research. Young rats group were fed ad libitum with six different diets which can be distinguished by the level of B. sapida arils powder. There were control diet (0% B. sapida arils powder), diet Bs1 (6.25% B. sapida arils powder), diet Bs2 (12.5% B. sapida arils powder), diet Bs3 (25% B. sapida arils powder), diet Bs4 (50% B. sapida arils powder) and diet Bs5 (75% B. sapida arils powder). Body weight was measured weekly and the animals were observed for signs of abnormalities throughout the study. At the end of the experimentation, blood sample was collected and analyzed. Results show that the growth of rats fed with diets Bs1, Bs2 and Bs3 were normal as compared to the growth of rats fed with the control diet. On the other hand, growth retardation was noticed on rats fed with diets Bs4 and Bs5. However, rats coat fed with diets Bs4 and Bs5 were also normal. Again, for rats fed with diets Bs4 and Bs5, a level (p<0.05) of total cholesterol and LDL-cholesterol was noticed as compared to values obtained in rats of the other groups.In the case of natural disaster, the consumption of B. sapida aril could be used as nutritional base at a degree neighboring 50% of the nutritional need of the organism. Outside this value, growth retardation and a level of total cholesterol and LDL-cholesterol can be noticed. Key words: Blighia sapida aril, diet, rats, growth, welfare.
Anthropogenic Climate Change

Scientific understanding of anthropogenic global climate change has advanced notably in recent years, and led to commensurate developments of mitigation strategies. International discussions on mitigation are primarily founded on our present understanding of global-scale change. Opposed to mitigation, adaptation is inherently a local and regional scale issue, and limited by the measure of confidence in the projected changes at these scales. It is at regional scales that credible information of probable climate change and the associated uncertainties is mostly needed. The possible consequences of climate change within some regions may even motivate some countries to commit to and argue for further mitigation practises.
DETERMINANTS OF INNOVATION CAPABILITY IN PORTUGUESE INDUSTRIAL FIRMS : A LOGIT APPROACH

In the context of globalisation, innovation is considered as a key factor for enhancing the competitiveness of firms. Nowadays, it is widely accepted that Portuguese firms face an increasing competitive environment, which is characterised by internationalization and globalization. In this sense, it becomes important to analyse the determinant factors of innovation capability of firms. This paper aims to identify and analyse the degree of importance of the determinant factors of innovation capability of Portuguese industrial firms. The data obtained through the 2 Community Innovation Survey (CIS II) conducted by EUROSTAT, is used in a linear regression model. The entrepreneurial innovative capability, measured as product innovation, is considered as the variable answer, in the estimation process of a Logit function. The paper presents an innovative contribution since it uses a set of five determinant factors of innovation capability of industrial firms, at a product innovation level. Technological capacity, dimension of the firm, activity sector, market orientation and location of the firm, are considered as determinants factors of innovation capability of the firms. The results of the joint analysis provide the identification of stimulating factors and restraining factors of the entrepreneurial innovative capability of a selected sample of Portuguese industrial firms. Under a Schumpeterian approach, the paper ratifies that large enterprises are more prone to innovate than small enterprises. The dimension plays a role, in terms of the strategic conduct implemented by small firms, which are not so prone to innovate, due to its small dimension. Benchmarking the Portuguese case is particularly important, because small industrial enterprises face restraining conditions imposed by outsourcing contracts that are established between small producers and leading international buyers. This restrains, broadly, the entrepreneurial innovative capability of small industrial enterprises.
Towards Stable and Efficient Training of Verifiably Robust Neural Networks

Training neural networks with verifiable robustness guarantees is challenging. Several existing approaches utilize linear relaxation based neural network output bounds under perturbation, but they can slow down training by a factor of hundreds depending on the underlying network architectures. Meanwhile, interval bound propagation (IBP) based training is efficient and significantly outperforms linear relaxation based methods on many tasks, yet it may suffer from stability issues since the bounds are much looser especially at the beginning of training. In this paper, we propose a new certified adversarial training method, CROWN-IBP, by combining the fast IBP bounds in a forward bounding pass and a tight linear relaxation based bound, CROWN, in a backward bounding pass. CROWN-IBP is computationally efficient and consistently outperforms IBP baselines on training verifiably robust neural networks. We conduct large scale experiments on MNIST and CIFAR datasets, and outperform all previous linear relaxation and bound propagation based certified defenses in $\ell_\infty$ robustness. Notably, we achieve 7.02% verified test error on MNIST at $\epsilon=0.3$, and 66.94% on CIFAR-10 with $\epsilon=8/255$. Code is available at this https URL (TensorFlow) and this https URL (PyTorch).
Morphological diversity in the hyphophores of Gomphillaceae (Ostropales, lichenized Ascomycetes)

Hyphophores are highly specialized conidia-producing structures characteristic of the Gomphillaceae. In this paper the high diversity and variability of these structures is evaluated. New setiform hyphophores of unidentified species of the genera Calenia, Echinoplaca and Tricharia are described. A new grouping is proposed, based on the external morphology and the possible ontogeny of these conidiomata.
Effects of season, sex and age on the diet of Homonota fasciata (Squamata, Phyllodactylidae) from Monte region of Argentina

This study aimed to investigate the diet of the gecko Homonota fasciata (Duméril & Bibron, 1836) in a population from Monte of San Juan Province, Argentina, and to analyze possible temporal, sexual, and ontogenetic variations in feeding behavior. We determined the total volume, number, and occurrence frequency of each prey item and calculated the relative importance indexes. We also assessed trophic diversity and trophic equity. Homonota fasciata had a generalist and diverse diet based on arthropods, including insects and arachnids. Individuals adopted a passive ‘sit and wait’ foraging strategy. There were seasonal-, sex-, and age-related variations in the trophic spectra. The results of this study provide a valuable contribution to our understanding of the biology of this species, with implications for the establishment of management guidelines both for the species and its habitat.
Exploring cost and risk issues in the variability between design stage elemental cost plan and final tender sum

Adafin, J., Wilkinson, S. , Rotimi, J.O. B. and Odeyinka, H. (2014). Exploring Cost and Risk Issues in the Variability Between Design Stage Elemental Cost Plan and Final Tender Sum. Proceedings of the 4 New Zealand Built Environment Research Symposium (NZBERS). Auckland, New Zealand. 14 November. ISSN 2324-1829 (Online). 1 EXPLORING COST AND RISK ISSUES IN THE VARIABILITY BETWEEN DESIGN STAGE ELEMENTAL COST PLAN AND FINAL TENDER SUM
Wine Prices and Quality Ratings: A Meta‐Regression Analysis

This article examines the empirical support for the hypothesized hedonic theoretical relation between the price of wine and its quality. The examination considers over 180 hedonic wine price models developed over 20 years, covering many countries. The research identifies that the relation between the price of wine and its sensory quality rating is a moderate partial correlation of +0.30. This correlation exists despite the lack of information held by consumers about a wine's quality and the inconsistency of expert tasters when evaluating wines. The results identify a moderate price-quality correlation, which suggests the existence of strategic buying opportunities for better informed consumers. Strategic price setting possibilities may also exist for wine producers given the incomplete quality information held by consumers. The results from the meta-regression analysis point to the absence of any publication bias, and attribute the observed asymmetry in estimates to study heterogeneity. The analysis suggests the observed heterogeneity is explained by the importance of a wine's reputation, the use of the 100-point quality rating scale, the analysis of a single wine variety/style, and the employed functional form. The most important implication from the analysis is the relative importance of a wine's reputation over its sensory quality, inferring that producers need to sustain the sensory quality of a wine over time to extract appropriate returns. The reputation of the wine producer is found not to influence the strength of the price-quality relationship. This finding does not contradict the importance of wine producer reputation in directly influencing prices.
The Impact of Labour Market Policies on Productivity in OECD Countries

We investigate the impact of labour market policies on labour and multifactor productivity with industry-level data. First and foremost, labour market policies can influence average measured productivity through their impact on employment. Other things equal, employment growth tends to be associated with lower average measured labour productivity growth as more low-skilled workers enter the workforce. However, policies can also have sizeable direct effects on individual productivity levels and/or growth by creating incentives for workers to invest in training, facilitating reallocation of resources to their most productive uses and generating or maintaining high-quality job matches. We find that employment protection legislation, minimum wages, parental leave and unemployment benefits influence productivity through multiple channels, over and above their impact on employment levels.
EFFECT OF AQUEOUS EXTRACT OF FRESH LEAVES OF UVARIA CHAMAE ON SOME ELECTROLYTE LEVELS IN ALBINO RATS

Various parts of Uvaria chamae are used by traditional medicine practitionersin almost all parts of Nigeria especially in the eastern region in management and treatment of several disorders such as heart and kidney related diseases. This research was carried out to investigate the effect of aqueous extract of fresh leaves of Uvaria chamae on serum concentration of some electrolytes in albino rats. A total of twenty-five adult malealbinorats used in this study were randomly distributed into five groups (A, B, C, D and E). Groups A, B, C and D were administered 100, 400, 600 and 800 mg/kg body weight respectively of the extract for seven consecutive days. Group E was used as control. There was a decrease in physical activities, the rate of feed and water intake and body weight of the animals in the test groups when compared with the control. The recorded concentrations of HCO 3 , Na + and K + in the animals given the extract were significantly lower (P<0.05) than those in the control group. This effect was found to be dose dependent. The finding of this research indicates that aqueous extract of fresh leaves Uvaria chamae possess the potential to lower serum concentration of some electrolytes. This may be responsible for the application of the leaves of Uvaria chamae in the management of kidney related diseases.
Sustainability Transitions: An Investigation of the Conditions Under Which Corporations are Likely to Reshape Their Practices to Reverse Environmental Degradation

Increasing levels of the unsustainable use of natural resources have been widely reported. In this paper we argue that engaging private sector corporations to address environmental risks is crucial to solving many of the key environmental challenges humans face. We investigate the enabling conditions under which private sector corporates act to reshape their business. To explore the nature of these enabling conditions we build on conceptual framing drawn from organizational theory and apply this framing to a case study of the South African food and beverage sector. This paper considers the role of awareness in bringing about the changes required, the motivation of those engaged with the key issues, pathways for change and explores the role of rewards. It further investigates the relationship between these four variables (awareness, motivation, pathway and reward) and describes a set of design principles to inform initiatives to bring about change in this context.
Determination of the complex frequencies for the normal modes below 1mHz after the 2010 Maule and 2011 Tohoku earthquakes

Based upon SG (superconducting gravimeter) records, the autoregressive method proposed by Chao and Gilbert [1980] is used to determine the frequencies of the singlets of seven spheroidal modes ( 0 S 2 , 2 S 1 , 0 S 3 , 0 S 4 , 1 S 2 , 0 S 0 , and 3 S 1 ) and the degenerate frequencies of three toroidal modes ( 0 T 2 , 0 T 3 , and 0 T 4 ) below 1 mHz after two recent huge earthquakes, the 2010 Mw8.8 Maule earthquake and the 2011 Mw9.1 Tohoku earthquake. The corresponding quality factors Qs are also determined for those modes, of which the Qs of the five singlets of 1 S 2 and the five singlets (m=0, m=±2, and m=±3) of 0 S 4 are estimated for the first time using the SG observations. The singlet m=0 of 3 S 1 is clearly observed from the power spectra of the SG time series without using other special spectral analysis methods or special time series of polar station records. In addition, the splitting width ratio R of 3 S 1 is 0.99, and consequently we conclude that 3 S 1 is normally split. The frequencies and Qs of the modes below 1mHz can contribute to refining the 3D density and attenuation models of the Earth.
Evaluating Nigeria Cashless Policy Implementation

The Central Bank of Nigeria introduced cashless policy initiative to accomplish two main macro-socio-economic policy objectives of increased convenience and greater financial inclusion in Nigeria. This study evaluates Nigeria cashless policy implementation using a four point Likert scale questionnaire administered to six hundred respondents. The results of the study show that the twin policy objectives investigated were partially achieved. Also the study reveals that social infrastructures in power and telecommunications need improvement and expansion and the need to create more awareness to encourage the unbanked to embrace banking culture. This study recommends vigorous investments on cyber security, strengthening of internet protocol and controls in the banks and enactment of relevant legislative laws to curb cybercrimes.
Risk Attitude towards Mandatory Retirement Protection in Hong Kong: Why Are Risky Investments More Attractive?

The government of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) launched the Mandatory Provident Fund (MPF) scheme as a major source of retirement protection. Now, over 2.6 million employees and self-employed persons are currently making contribution to this scheme and they are required to decide on allocation of their MPF contributions to different MPF choices. However, we know little about how their decisions are formed. One major contribution of this study is to investigate people’s perceptions of MPF and their preferences of MPF choices. And, this study has adopted the predictions of prospect theory, in order to explain why risky choices are more attractive to the public. Findings indicated that more individuals perceived MPF contribution as a loss, than those who perceived it as a gain; those who perceived MPF as a loss generally made higher contributions to the risky fund.