Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A molecular framework for the taxonomy and systematics of Japanese marine turbellarian flatworms (Platyhelminthes, Polycladida)

The order Polycladida comprises a highly diverse and cosmopolitan group of marine turbellarian flatworms. Owing to the great morphological diversity and the absence of a molecular phylogeny, the classification of this group has always been controversial. Here we seek to add resolution by reporting the results of molecular phylogenetic analysis based on sequences of the 28S ribosomal RNA gene, thus providing a framework for understanding relationships and the evolution of characters within the group. The phylogeny provides strong support for 10 and 7 distinct families within the suborders Acotylea and Cotylea, respectively. In addition, an analysis based on the mitochondrial gene sequences (cytochrome c-oxidase subunit I) reveals further details of the relationships within Acotylea, which were classified by morphological analysis, but not by 28S rRNA sequence-based analyses. These analyses also showed that several species corresponded to previously described genera based on morphological features and character combinations. We conclude that a classification of genera in Acotylea and Cotylea based on molecular phylogeny reflects the morphological diversity of these polyclad flatworms.
Singularities of a Space Curve according to the Relatively Parallel Adapted Frame and Its Visualization

The relatively parallel adapted frame or Bishop frame is an alternative approach to define a moving frame that is well defined even when the curve has vanished second derivative, and it has been widely used in the areas of biology, engineering, and computer graphics. The main result of this paper is using the relatively parallel adapted frame for classification of singularity type of Bishop spherical Darboux image and Bishop dual which are deeply related with a space curve and making them visualized by computer.
Evaluating water use efficiency of maize in different intercropping systems with legumes.

Water scarcity is one the key constraints in agriculture due to climate change. Drought spells are expected to increase throughout the world. Crop growth and final yield are negatively affected by the decline in water availability. An experiment was conducted at Ukulinga Research Farm to evaluate water use efficiency (WUE) of maize and various legumes in an intercropping system. The experiment was arranged in a randomised complete block design, with three replicates. The treatments were maize intercropped with bambara groundnut, cowpea, pigeon pea and tepary beans. Data was collected at a 14-day interval on all parameters measured (water use efficiency, transpiration, photosynthesis, stomatal conductance and soil moisture). Water use efficiency, stomatal conductance, transpiration and photosynthesis were measured on the second new fully expanded leaf. A significance difference (P < 0.05) was observed between intercropping treatment means with regard to stomatal conductance and transpiration. Stomatal conductance of pigeon pea (0.42 mol H2O m -2 S) was greater than pigeon pea intercrop (0.18 mol H2O m -2 S). Monocrops of pigeon pea (18.32 mol H2O m -2 S), cowpea (9.24 mol H2O m -2 S) and tepary beans (7.94 mol H2O m -2 S) had a high transpiration rate compared to their intercrops. There was a significance difference (P < 0.05) between cropping systems treatment means with regards to WUE. Water use efficiency of maize-tepary beans (1.24 μmol CO2 mol -1 H2O) intercrop was the highest across all cropping system. In pigeon pea and cowpea cropping systems, the stomatal conductance was accompanied by a decline in transpiration rate and an increase in photosynthesis. This translated to an increased WUE of these legumes. Crop agronomic variation observed in the current study is important for plant breeding purposes and requires further research.
SiPM Photodetectors for Highest Time Resolution in PET

Silicon photomultipliers (SiPM) have a wide range of applications in high energy and medical detector physics. Their excellent timing properties and compactness make them particularly interesting for time of flight positron emission tomography (TOF-PET). This study aims at determining the optimum detector conditions for highest time resolution in a TOF-PET system. The measurements are based on the time over threshold method in a coincidence setup using the ultra-fast amplifier-discriminator NINO and a fast oscilloscope. We compare commercial SiPMs of different SPAD types (Hamamatsu MPPC S10931-025P, S10931-050P and S10931-100P) and production batches. To explore the intrinsic timing capabilities of the SiPM, we coupled short, i.e. 2x2x5mm 3 , Ca-co-doped LSO:Ce crystals to the different MPPCs and obtained best results for the 50mm type of 142 4ps FWHM CTR. This performance makes SiPMs ideal candidates for photodetectors in high resolution TOF-PET systems. The results will be discussed in terms of SiPM dark noise and photon detection efficiency (PDE).
38. TECTONIC CONSTRAINTS ON THE HOT-SPOT FORMATION OF NINETYEAST RIDGE1

This paper examines the constraints on the tectonic setting of Ninetyeast Ridge, based on a compilation of bathymetric and magnetic data from the basins surrounding Ninetyeast Ridge in the Indian Ocean that includes the magnetic profiles collected under way during ODP Leg 121. Magnetic data in the Central Indian Basin demonstrate that the spreading center immediately west of Ninetyeast Ridge jumped to the south by a total amount of 11° between 68 and 46 Ma, implying that parts of the mirror image of Ninetyeast Ridge on the Antarctic plate were transferred onto the Indian plate. The obliquity of Ninetyeast Ridge relative to the fracture zone pattern and the occurrence of an Eocene extinct spreading axis in the Wharton Basin suggest that the northern part of Ninetyeast Ridge was emplaced by intraplate volcanism on the Indian plate, whereas the middle and southern parts of the ridge were emplaced along transform plate boundaries. The northward drift of the Indian plate over a single hot spot is the most plausible origin for Ninetyeast Ridge. Based on a recent kinematic model for the relative motions of the Indian, Antarctic, and Australian plates, we present a simple model that reconciles most of the available observations for Ninetyeast Ridge: Paleomagnetism, distribution of basement ages, geochemistry, and geometry. In addition, the model predicts a slow westward migration of the Kerguelen/Ninetyeast hot spot with respect to the Antarctic and Australian plates between the Late Cretaceous and early Oligocene (84 to 36 Ma). Allowing the hot spot to move slowly permits an excellent match to both the position and age of the volcanism along Ninetyeast Ridge and also provides a model for excess topography on the Kerguelen Plateau. Finally, comparisons of published hot-spot reference frames suggest that the Kerguelen/Ninetyeast hot spot also migrated with respect to the Atlantic and western Indian Ocean hot spots.
Influence of Pre and Post Emergence Herbicides on Yield and Quality of Garlic

A field investigation entitled “Influence of pre and post emergence herbicides on yield and quality of garlic (Allium sativum L.)”, was carried out at Main garden, University Department of Horticulture, Dr. Panjabrao Deshmukh Krishi Vidyapeeth, Akola during the rabi season of 2011-2012. The investigation was carried out to study the relative influence of herbicides and cultural practices on weed control in garlic and to study the effect of herbicides on growth, yield and quality of garlic. The result of the present investigation revealed that, the treatment pendimethalin @ 1.0 kg a.i/ha before planting and quizalofop ethyl 0.050 kg a.i./ha at 30 DAP was obtained superior in respect of growth characters like maximum height of plant , leaves per plant ,plant population and minimum days required for maturity, qualitative characters in regards to diameter and length of bulb, diameter and length of cloves, cloves per bulb and clove index was found to be significantly maximum. Further, the maximum fresh bulb yield (123.25 q ha-1), cured bulb yield (116.44 q ha-1) and cost benefit ratio (1:2.37) was observed with T4 treatment.
Research on Value Sharing Model of Energy Service Industry Value Network

Energy service industry is a complex network system and a promising industry involving multi-subject, multi-product, multi-technology and multi-value. In this network, all the value network participators are correlative and the value appreciation constitutes value network. Value network is a new effective form of management for the industrial value chain, which can increase the added value of the value network. In the value network of the energy service industry, analyzing the relationship among those participators can help to solve the distribution problem and create more value. This paper built the value sharing model with energy service companies as the object. Then analyzed the relevant factors through fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method and analytic hierarchy process method. The example confirmed the feasibility and validity of the model.
A note on comparison of two extraction methods used to quantify C18 fatty acids in feed and digesta of ruminants

The aim of the present study was to compare two methods of fatty acid determination and quantifi cation, differing in the kind of solvent used. Our hypothesis stated that diethyl ether can replace dichloromethane for the extraction of fatty acids, facilitate the analysis, and reduce health hazards. The analyses were conducted on feed and duodenal digesta samples from an experiment investigating the effects of feeding increasing amounts of either rape seed or linseed oils to sheep. Based on the obtained results, we conclude that the diethyl ether method seems to be more effi cient for extraction of fatty acids from hydrolysed feed and digesta. Further investigations are needed to determine whether diethyl ether can replace dichloromethane for the extraction of fatty acids from other matrices.
Factors Explaining Debt Firm Policy: A Comparison between Five Intercontinental Countries

We test the factors explaining the debt policy of firms across five continents. To this end, we examine samples from South Africa, Australia, Brazil, India and Spain over a period of 8 years from 2003 to 2010. The results manipulate differences in debt policy for all countries (except for the variable Return on Assets, ROA). As for the effect of activity sectors on firm debt policy, higher performance led to lower firm debt ratios. Furthermore, we concluded some differences in other variables. Higher tangibility ratios for firms from South Africa, India and Spain led to higher capital structure ratios. Larger firms from Brazil led to lower short term debt ratio. We could not find evidence on the effect of firm growth opportunities in Brazil and India. Furthermore, we concluded to a positive and a statistically significant effect of liquidity ratio for Australia and India, and a positive and a statistically significant effect of firm age for firms from Spain.
Management of Microstegium vimineum Invasions and Recovery of Resident Plant Communities

Restoration of communities invaded by exotic plants requires effective eradication of the invader and reestablishment of the resident plant community. Despite the commonly cited need for techniques to accomplish such goals, studies that test strategies for removing invasive plants, monitor effects on resident communities, and incorporate replicate sites are generally lacking. Microstegium vimineum is an exotic annual grass that is rapidly invading forests in the eastern United States and threatening to reduce biodiversity and inhibit forest regeneration. I conducted a field experiment at eight sites over two growing seasons in southern Indiana to evaluate hand‐weeding (HW), a postemergent grass‐specific herbicide (POST), and the postemergent herbicide plus a preemergent herbicide (POST + PRE) for removing Microstegium. Compared to reference plots (REF), the three treatments each reduced Microstegium biomass at the end of the growing seasons to relatively low levels. However, after the second year of the experiment, POST and POST + PRE resulted in very little spring cover of Microstegium, but HW plots were significantly reinvaded. HW and POST, but not POST + PRE, increased resident plant community productivity and spring resident community cover compared to reference plots. The amount of light at the research sites did not alter the effectiveness of treatments, but the recovery of resident communities was positively correlated with light availability under HW and POST + PRE. These results indicate that natural systems invaded by Microstegium can be restored using the POST or HW treatments, which will effectively remove the invasion and allow the resident plant community to recover when used over multiple growing seasons.
Calibration and Validation of Strategic Freight Transportation Planning Models with Limited Information

Strategic transportation network models are often used as support tools in the framework of decisions to be taken at the policy level, such as the Trans-European Network projects. These models are mostly setup using aggregated or limited data. If their calibration is regularly mentioned in the literature, their validation is barely discussed. In this paper, several modal choice model specifications that make only use of explanatory variables available at the network level are described and applied to a large scale case. A validation exercise is performed at three levels of aggregation. The paper is designed from a strategic transport planning perspective, and does not present new modal choice formulations or assignment procedures. Its main added value is the focus on calibration and validation considerations. Despite the limited explanatory information used, the global performance of the best models can be considered as satisfactory. However, the quality of the models varies from mode to mode, the use of railway transport being the most difficult to predict without more specific input.
Estimating Firm-Level Effective Tax Rates and the User Cost of Capital in New Zealand

Effective marginal tax rates can be very different from the statutory rate and vary across firms, reflecting such factors as the extent and nature of taxable deductions (losses, depreciation), asset and ownership structures, and debt/equity financing. We estimate firm-specific EMTRs and related user cost of capital (UCC) measures allowing for shareholder-level taxation using data for 2000-2010 from the Longitudinal Business Database. Examining distributions of various UCC measures we find substantial firm-level heterogeneity; systematic changes as a result of tax reforms between 2004 and 2011; and systematic differences between foreign-owned and domestically-owned firms. Choices among alternative UCC measures make a difference to interpretations.
Neuroticism affects working memory and training performance in regularly developed school children

There are high individual capacity differences in working memory (WM), a core cognitive ability influencing the development of basic academic skills. Furthermore, the sparse studies investigating the possibility to train WM in children found high individual differences regarding training success. The investigation of the relationship between WM and personality is an important process to find out more about possible reasons for such differences. In Study 1, we examined the performance of 258 school-age children (7 to 12 years) in two WM tasks in relation to their level of neuroticism (emotional instability). Children completed measures of WM (visual n-back task; complex animal span task) and general intellectual abilities (fluid and crystallized intelligence). Our results indicate that high neuroticism scores predict poorer performance in WM tasks, even when controlling for age and general intelligence. In Study 2, we investigated the influence of neuroticism on WM training performance. During four weeks, 34 of the children trained on the same two WM tasks. Even though children with high and low neuroticism, respectively, significantly improved their performance in the WM tasks, there was a detrimental effect of neuroticism on training improvement. We conclude that the level of neuroticism can be considered as a negatively modulating psychological variable on WM capacity and WM training gain. Notwithstanding, higher levels of neuroticism do not prevent training-related improvements in WM performance. The results are discussed in the context of the attentional control theory and implications are made regarding the importance of special support of emotionally instable children with WM-related or non-cognitive interventions.
Phylogeography , genetic diversity and demography of boreal-montane orchid

In an age of changes in species’ geographical ranges, compounded by climatic and anthropogenic impacts, it become important to know which processes and factors influence plant populations and their persistence in the long term. Here we investigated dynamic and fitness components in twelve populations of Malaxis monophyllos (L.) Sw. , situated in different geographical (regions) and ecological (type of habitat) units. Although M. monophyllos is a rare species, characterized by highly fragmented, boreal-montane distribution range, in last few decades it successfully colonized secondary habitats in Polish uplands. Our results indicate that M. monophyllos is represented mainly by small populations, which annual spatial and temporal changes might be very high, what affects the ephemeral character of these populations, regardless of the region and type of habitat. This dynamic structure, in turn, is caused by intensive exchange of individuals in populations, as well as by their short above-ground life span. Despite the large range of variation in size and reproductive traits, we can distinguish some regional patterns, which indicate boreal region as the most optimal for M. monophyllos growth and persistence in the long term, and with montane and upland/anthropogenic populations, due to lower reproductive parameters, as the most threatened. Although it should be considered that anthropogenic populations, despite their lower reproductive parameters and instability in the long term, present an intermediate, geographical and ecological character, therefore they may be valuable in shaping, both M. monophyllos’ future range, as well as its potential for response on ongoing and future changes. In general, reproduction is the main factor differentiating of M. monophyllos populations in regions, and we can suspect that it may become the cause of the future differentiation and isolation of these populations, occurring with progressive range fragmentation.
The use of low temperature detectors for direct measurements of the mass of the electron neutrino

Recent years have witnessed many exciting breakthroughs in neutrino physics. The detection of neutrino oscillations has proved that neutrinos are massive particles, but the assessment of their absolute mass scale is still an outstanding challenge in today particle physics and cosmology. Since low temperature detectors were first proposed for neutrino physics experiments in 1984, there has been tremendous technical progress: today this technique offers the high energy resolution and scalability required to perform competitive experiments challenging the lowest electron neutrino masses. This paper reviews the thirty-year effort aimed at realizing calorimetric measurements with sub-eV neutrino mass sensitivity using low temperature detectors.
Exopolymer particles : microbial hotspots of enhanced bacterial activity in Arctic fast ice (Chukchi Sea)

Sea ice is an important structuring element of Arctic marine ecosystems and provides a vast low-temperature habitat for ice-associated bacteria. While it is now known that sea ice sequesters large amounts of extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) contributing significantly to its particulate organic carbon pool, the ecological role of EPS in sea ice is poorly understood. Using in situ incubations combined with a newly developed triple-staining method (Alcian Blue, DAPI, CTC), we determined the number of CTC-reducing (i.e. actively respiring) sea-ice bacteria living freely or attached to gel-like exopolymer particles. Samples were collected at 6 depths from Chukchi Sea coastal fast ice in April, May and June 2003. Concentrations of exopolymer particles ranged between 1.8 × 106 and 149.1 × 106 particles l–1 (average 4.7 × 106 particles l–1) and showed strong vertical gradients with maximum concentrations at the ice-water interface. Total bacterial numbers (TBN) ranged from 0.18 × 109 to 8.48 × 109 cells l–1 with an average fraction of 7.4% of actively respiring cells (range 3.0 to 17.2% of TBN). The attached bacterial fraction (range 4.6 to 28.5%, average 15.0% of TBN) showed a significantly, approximately 4 times higher proportion of actively respiring cells (average 19.6%, range 7.8 to 37.6%) when compared to the free-living fraction that had an average of 5.4% (range 1.1 to 11.2%) of actively respiring cells. In conclusion, exopolymer particles in sea ice are microbial hotspots of increased bacterial activity able to foster enhanced biogeochemical cycling.
Getting the Right Spin: A Theory of Value of Social Networks

I examine the problem of maximizing the spread of information in a context where users of a network decide which piece of information is shared. A company thus provides initial information to some users and they then choose what to share to their neighbours. These actions of sharing and choosing produce the characteristics of word-of-mouth advertising over time. I then answer the two following questions: what is the best word-of-mouth campaign that the company can perform and second, what is the value of such a campaign? The optimal solution can be understood as a Nash Equilibria that maximizes the concentration of the initial information to a small group of users. Such solution contrasts with standard measures of user influence and I show that they can sometime be seriously misleading. I provide an exact solution for a wide class of generic network topologies and an algorithm to compute it in polynomial time.
Tem and X-Ray Diffraction Evidence for Cristobalite and Tridymite Stacking Sequences in Opal

In an attempt to resolve the structure of opal-CT and opal-C more precisely, 24 opal samples from bentonites, Fuller’s Earths, zeolite tuffs, biogenic silicas and silicified kaolins have been analyzed by high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). Results of this examination demonstrate that opal-C and opal-CT are part of a continuous series of intergrowths between end-member cristobalite and tridymite stacking sequences.These findings are consistent with Flörke’s (1955) interpretation of the most intense opal peak at ~4 A as a combination of the (101) cristobalite and (404) tridymite peaks. The position and width of this peak are controlled by the relative volume of the two stacking types and the mean crystallite size. Direct evidence obtained by HRTEM provides data showing various stacking sequences in opals. Broadening due to crystallite size alone was determined by directly measuring crystallite size by TEM and comparing the measured size to the apparent size calculated using the Scherrer equation. XRD peak broadening is also described in terms of various contributions from structural disorder. The mean opal crystallite size ranges from 120 to 320 A. For samples at either end of the size range, the crystallite size plays a larger role, relative to stacking disorder, in controlling peak broadening.