Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Rapid Rise of Supermarkets in Latin America: Challenges and Opportunities for Development

Why are we writing, in the same article, about ‘supermarkets’ and ‘development’ in a region where 39% of the people are in poverty and 13% in absolute poverty (Echeverria, 1998)? Are not supermarkets niche players for rich consumers in the capital cities of the region? The answer is ‘no’; that traditional image is now a distant memory of the preliberalisation period before the 1990s. This theme issue of Development Policy Review shows that supermarkets are now dominant players in most of the agrifood economy of Latin America, having moved from a rough -estimate population-weighted average of 10-20% in 1990 to 50-60% of the retail sector in 2000. In one globalising decade, Latin American retailing made the change which took the US retail sector 50 years. The supermarkets, together with large-scale food manufacturers, have deeply transformed agrifood markets in the region. Many of those changes spell great challenges – even exclusion – for small farms and processing and distribution firms, but also potentially great opportunities. Development policy and programmes need to adapt to this radical change. The above findings are derived from the articles in this theme issue, the key points of which are compared in this overview article, and set in the context of background and other recent case literature. Earlier versions of the articles 1 were presented at the International Workshop ‘Concentration in the Processing and Retail Segments of the Agrifood System in Latin America, and its Effects on the Rural Poor’, held in November 2000 in Santiago, Chile, organised by the International Network for Research on Farming Systems (RIMISP) and funded by the Department for International Development (DFID) of the United Kingdom. The nine articles are on Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, and Mexico. They focus on the rise of supermarkets and large-scale food manufacturers over the 1990s to the present, and illustrate the effects of their rise on the dairy products and fresh fruit and vegetables (FFV) sectors. Dairy and FFV were chosen because of the interest development programmes have for these products: they are seen as good prospects for sma ll farms and firms because of their higher value-added and income-generation potential and their relative lack of economies of scale (compared with basic grains and
Isotherms describing physical adsorption of Cr(VI) from aqueous solution using various agricultural wastes as adsorbents

Abstract Various agricultural wastes such as peels of pea (Pisum sativum) pod, tea (Camellia sinensis), and ginger (Zingiber officinale) and banana (Musa lacatan) waste were used to adsorb Cr(VI) from the aqueous solutions. A comparative adsorption efficiency study for all these adsorbents was done in laboratory for various pH, adsorbent doses, initial chromium concentrations, contact time, adsorbent sizes, temperature, and mixing speeds up to the optimization. The equilibrium sorption data were fitted into Langmuir, Freundlich, and Temkin isotherms and also the various thermodynamic parameters were determined. The value of R 2 was determined for Freundlich, Langmuir, and Temkin as 0.964, 0.963, and 0.858 (pea pod peels waste (PPP)), 0.969, 0.986, and 0.841(tea & ginger waste (T&G)), 0.985, 0.982, and 0.886 (banana peel waste (BW)). The maximum monolayer coverage (Q 0) from Langmuir isotherm model for pea pod, tea & ginger and banana peels waste were found to be 4.33 mg/g, 7.29 mg/g, and 10 mg/g, respectively, with separation factors (R L) 0.0331, 0.0343, and 0.0756 which are well within favorable sorption. From Freundlich isotherm model, the sorption intensity (n) for the same adsorbents was also less than unity showing normal sorption. The heat of sorption (B) was also determined from Temkin isotherm model as 0.215, 0.271, and 0.271, respectively, vividly proving a favorable physical sorption. The Gibbs free energy was found maximum for BW as 6.0679 joule/mole. Out of the above said combination, BW was found the best low-cost adsorbent with high potential for the removal of hexavalent chromium from aqueous solutions.
PII: S0031-3203(97)00155-6

This paper presents a spatial domain method for lossless still image compression using a new scheme: base switching (BS). The given image is partitioned into non-overlapping fixed-size subimages. Different subimages then get different compression ratios according to the base values of the subimages. In order to increase the compression ratio, a hierarchical technique is also used. It is found that the compression ratio of the proposed algorithm can compete with that of the VBSS and the international standard algorithms known as JBIG and Lossless JPEG. In addition, when the BS method is compared with the S#P method, which is an excellent frequency domain method that used EZW, although S#P method gains about 9% increase in the compression ratio, its encoding time (excluding I/O) is about three times longer than ours. The math theory needed to build up the proposed compression scheme is also provided. ( 1998 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd on behalf of the Pattern Recognition Society. All rights reserved Still image Lossless compression Base-switching Hierarchical technique JBIG Lossless JPEG VBSS EZW S#P
The influence of solar wind variability on magnetospheric ULF wave power

Abstract. Magnetospheric ultra-low frequency (ULF) oscillations in the Pc 4–5 frequency range play an important role in the dynamics of Earth's radiation belts, both by enhancing the radial diffusion through incoherent interactions and through the coherent drift-resonant interactions with trapped radiation belt electrons. The statistical distributions of magnetospheric ULF wave power are known to be strongly dependent on solar wind parameters such as solar wind speed and interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) orientation. Statistical characterisation of ULF wave power in the magnetosphere traditionally relies on average solar wind–IMF conditions over a specific time period. In this brief report, we perform an alternative characterisation of the solar wind influence on magnetospheric ULF wave activity through the characterisation of the solar wind driver by its variability using the standard deviation of solar wind parameters rather than a simple time average. We present a statistical study of nearly one solar cycle (1996–2004) of geosynchronous observations of magnetic ULF wave power and find that there is significant variation in ULF wave powers as a function of the dynamic properties of the solar wind. In particular, we find that the variability in IMF vector, rather than variabilities in other parameters (solar wind density, bulk velocity and ion temperature), plays the strongest role in controlling geosynchronous ULF power. We conclude that, although time-averaged bulk properties of the solar wind are a key factor in driving ULF powers in the magnetosphere, the solar wind variability can be an important contributor as well. This highlights the potential importance of including solar wind variability especially in studies of ULF wave dynamics in order to assess the efficiency of solar wind–magnetosphere coupling.
Critical evaluation of the nursery role hypothesis for seagrass meadows

The vast majority of published papers concerning seagrass meadows contain statements to the effect that seagrass beds serve as important nurseries for many species. We reviewed more than 200 papers that were relevant to the nursery role hypothesis. We used both vote counting and meta-analytic techniques to evaluate whether the body of previous studies that report seagrass meadows to be nursery grounds actually contain data that support this proposition. We restricted our analyses to papers that compared seagrass beds to other habitats, and examined data on a variety of well-studied species concerning their density, growth, survival and migration to adult habitat. Within this group of papers, we considered potential factors that could influence the nursery function (e.g. location, or laboratory vs field studies). We also evaluated case histories of well-documented large-scale seagrass losses on the nursery function. Major results were consistent with the expectations that abundance, growth and survival were greater in seagrass than in unstructured habitats. Abundance data also suggested that seagrass beds in the Northern Hemisphere might be more important as nursery areas than those in the Southern Hemisphere. Surprisingly, few significant differences existed in abundance, growth or survival when seagrass meadows were compared to other structured habitats, such as oyster or cobble reefs, or macroalgal beds. Nor were there decreases in harvests of commercially important species that could clearly be attributed to significant seagrass declines in 3 well-studied areas. However, there were decreased abundances of juveniles of commercially important species in these areas, suggesting a strong link between seagrass abundance and those of juvenile finfish and shellfish. One important implication of these results is that structure per se, rather than the type of structure, appears to be an important determinant of nursery value. Clearly, more rigorous studies that test all aspects of the nursery role hypothesis are clearly needed for seagrass meadows as well as other structured habitats. The results of such studies will allow better decisions to be made concerning the conservation and restoration of marine habitats.
A systematic review and meta-analysis of implicit theory research in sport, physical activity, and physical education

ABSTRACT The purpose of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to gather, catalogue, assess, and evaluate the available evidence examining implicit beliefs about ability in the sport, physical activity, and physical education contexts. A total of 43 studies were found, of which 39 were subjected to meta analyses. With only 7 experimental studies, the strength of evidence is moderate, and the field would benefit from greater experimental work. Overall, incremental beliefs were moderately associated with a small group of theoretically derived correlates, while entity beliefs were only weakly associated. The field would benefit from expanding these outcomes to include a wider range of pertinent outcomes. Researchers should focus their efforts on systematically exploring the most powerful ways of inducing adaptive implicit beliefs with the aim of providing solutions to significant problems such as preventing dropout from organised sports, improving academic grades in and beyond physical education, and increasing levels of physical activity.
Harm Reduction or Psychedelic Support? Caring for Drug-Related Crises at Transformational Festivals

Many of the EDM events known as “transformational festivals” provide psychedelic support spaces: volunteer projects caring for festivalgoers undergoing difficult drug experiences. Mostly drawn from the festival community, many volunteer carers (“sitters”) subscribe to psychedelic culture discourse which frames these substances as aids to personal growth if handled appropriately. However, within the dominant paradigm of international drug prohibition, support projects must employ the contrasting discourse of harm reduction in order to gain access to events, visibility to festivalgoers, and integration with other support staff. Harm reduction, a paradigm for the care of drug users which began as a grassroots heroin addict advocacy movement, has since become associated with neoliberal, medicalised views of drugs, drug users and the self. This article considers how psychedelic support workers negotiate this discourse dichotomy in the course of caregiving, within differing national and local drug policy climates. Early findings are presented from ethnographic fieldwork as a psychedelic support volunteer with three organisations at seven festivals, combining participant observation and in-depth interviews with nineteen support workers. Events in the UK, the US and Portugal were studied due to these countries’ contrasting policy regimes. Points of conflict between the psychedelic and harm reduction discourses were found to create tensions both within the support organisations and in their relations with on-site medics, security guards, festival organisers and police. The findings suggest that mainstream harm reduction discourses may be a poor fit for psychedelics and that risks inhere in their adoption by festival support spaces, such as abjection of drug users in difficulty which may create a trust-damaging divide between users and workers.
Sanitation and Externalities: Evidence from Early Childhood Health in Rural India

This paper estimates two sources of benefits related to sanitation infrastructure access on early childhood health: a direct benefit a household receives when moving from open to fixed-point defecation or from unimproved sanitation to improved sanitation, and an external benefit (externality) produced by the neighborhood's access to sanitation infrastructure. The paper uses a sample of children under 48 months in rural areas of India from the Third Round of District Level Household Survey 2007-08 and finds evidence of positive and significant direct benefits and concave positive external effects for both improved sanitation and fixed-point defecation. There is a 47 percent reduction in diarrhea prevalence between children living in a household without access to improved sanitation in a village without coverage of improved sanitation and children living in a household with access to improved sanitation in a village with complete coverage. One-fourth of this benefit is due to the direct benefit leaving the rest to external gains. Finally, all the benefits from eliminating open defecation come from improved sanitation and not other sanitation solutions.
Legislative Involvement in Parliamentary Systems: Opportunities, Conflict, and Institutional Constraints

In parliamentary systems, the need to preserve the political agreement that sustains the executive often motivates legislative involvement in policymaking. Institutional arrangements regulating executive–legislative relations and ministerial autonomy also structure parliamentary participation. However, empirical evidence of these effects remains limited to a few policies and countries. European Union legislation provides the opportunity to test expectations about legislative involvement for different types of measure across various institutional arrangements, across multiple policy areas, and across time. In this article, we investigate legislative involvement in the transposition of 724 directives in 15 member states from 1978 to 2004. Our results confirm that involvement increases as conflict between the responsible minister and her coalition partners intensifies. The discretionary scope embedded in the directive further inflates this effect. Additionally, parliamentary involvement decreases as the government's institutional advantage over the legislature increases, especially if intracoalitional conflict deepens.
Perception of library service quality, satisfaction and frequency of use of library resources

The aims of this paper are to assess the students’ perceived levels of library service quality, satisfaction with the library service, frequency of use of library resources, and whether there are relationships among these constructs. A survey research method using LibQUAL+ TM instrument was used to collect data from a sample of 400 students at the National University of Lesotho (NUL). Self-administered questionnaires were distributed to students during class hours. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse data. As expected, factor analysis of LibQUAL+ TM items yielded 3 factors - affect of service, information control and library as a place. On average, the respondents perceived low service quality from the library staff and the extent to which library patrons can easily access and control information. The majority of respondents also rarely used the library website. There was a strong and positive correlation between all attributes of library service quality and satisfaction with the library. Even though some attributes of the library service quality had positive correlations with the use of library website, there was only a slight significant relationship between information control and the use of library website in the regression analysis. There was no relationship between satisfaction and frequency of library usage. The paper concludes that LibQUAL+ TM has acceptable applicability in Lesotho, and further recommends how affect of service and information control dimensions of library service quality at NUL can be improved. Key words : Library; library resources; LibQUAL+ TM ; satisfaction; service quality.
Phylogenetic implication of seed coat sculpturing in subtribe Agrimoniinae (Rosaceae)

Seed morphology in the subtribe Agrimoniinae (Rosaceae) was examined using scanning electron microscopy to identify distinct characters and evaluate their evolution in a phylogenetic framework for five gen- era in the subtribe: Agrimonia L. , Aremonia Neck. ex Nestl. , Hagenia J.F. Gmel. , Leucosidea Eckl. & Zeyh. , and Spenceria Trimen. All genera have one or two mature achenes in a fruiting hypanthium. In the seed coats, the cell shape, size, wall features, and sculpturing vary across genera. Of most significance is the presence of papil- lae structures in both Agrimonia and Aremonia. Through the mapping of papillae features onto phylogenetic trees, either one or two changes in seed coats are hypothesized. The phylogenetic tree inferred from four nuclear and six chloroplast regions of sequence data suggests that at least two steps of papillae sculpturing on seed coats are required. On the other hand, in the phylogenetic tree of a low-copy nuclear gene, one independent evolu- tionary step is postulated to explain the current character states. In the latter hypothesis, the seed coat sculp- turing also supports a monophyletic relationship for cosmopolitan Agrimonia and European endemic Aremonia. The seed coat sculpturing provides valuable information for inferring phylogenetic relationships at the generic level in the subtribe Agrimoniinae.
Government Education Expenditure, Third-party Spillover Effect and Economic Growth in China

This paper investigates the impacts of government education expenditure on economic growth in China taking into account the spatial third-party spillover effects. After the theretical analyse, a spatial panel estimation model based on the augmented Solow model is applied by using province data in China during 2007 and 2013. The results reveal that (1) In a whole, Government education expenditure in China has significantly positive impact on economic growth, but expenditure in different educational level shows different results. Government education expenditure in below high-education is positive related to local economic growth, whereas the effect of education expenditure in high-education is insignificant. (2) Neighboring government education expenditure shows spatial spillover effects on local economic growth, and spatial spillover effects in two education level is different. (3) Other input factors of third-governmet also have spatial effects. Some policies about education and economic development are proposed. Meanwhile this study recommends that corporation relationship among regions is very important.
Effect of Different Levels of Satureja Hortensis Essential Oil on Performance, Carcass Characteristics, Acidity and Intestinal Microflora Population in Broilers

This experiment was carried out to study the effects of dietary supplementation of Satureja hortensis essential oil on growth, carcass parts, pH and luminal microbe in broiler chicken. A total of 400 one week old ROS 308 male chicks were used in a completely randomize design model with 5 treatments and 4 replicates, each composing of 20 chicks. Duration of experiment was 35 days until the age of 42 days. Treatments were a basal diet supplemented with 50, 100 and 150 mg/kg of S. hortensis essential oil with a negative (no supplementation) and a positive control (containing 300 g/1000 kg) of Orego-Stim (a commercial compound). Feed intake and body weight gain were measured weekly and feed conversion ratio was calculated accordingly. Chicks were reared on litter and were fed ad libitum with antibiotic and coccidiostat free diet. At 35th day, litter samples was collected and sent to laboratory for determining its moisture and bacterial total count. At the 42nd day, two chicks per cage were slaughtered for determining carcass parts ratio, ileum digesta pH and bacterial count by dilution method. Results showed that S. hortensis essential oil and Orego-Stim compound had no effects on broiler growth. Liver relative weight increased by 50 and 150 ppm S. hortensis essential oil as compared to the control group. No change of pH was observed due to treatments. Chicks that received 150 ppm S. hortensis essential oil showed higher litter bacterial count as compared to the control and other treatments. Key words: Broiler chicken, Satureja hortensis essential oil, growth performance, bacterial count.
Coseismic velocity variations caused by static stress changes associated with the 2001 Mw = 4.3 Agios Ioanis earthquake in the Gulf of Corinth, Greece

[1] The analysis of temporal variations in the seismic velocity across faults can be used to estimate in situ stress changes. Seismic velocity of propagation depends on the fault stiffness, which is a function of stress. The coda wave interferometry technique is applied to seven families of repeating earthquakes (multiplets) recorded on the southern shore of the Gulf of Corinth, Greece, to estimate high precision velocity changes in the Earth's crust associated with the Mw = 4.3 Agios Ioanis earthquake. Results show that the Agios Ioanis event causes a perturbation in elastic properties at seismogenic depth, resulting in a reduction of 0.2% in the seismic velocity. The results are not consistent with either damage induced by dynamic stresses nor a fluid transient origin. In contrast, both the spatial distribution and magnitude of the velocity perturbation correlate well with modeled static stress variations. This suggests that the measured changes in the mechanical properties of the seismogenic crust can be attributed to a change in static stress field associated with the Mw = 4.3 Agios Ioanis earthquake. The velocity changes indicate an unclamping of the Pyrgaki fault at depth, which has local hazard implications.
Hydrogen bonds in the binding of some polyphenols from Quebracho (Schinopsis spp.) to soybean meal protein under in vitro ruminal conditions

The extent of binding to soya protein of a commercial tannin (Quebracho), its ethyl acetate extract, the major putative compound (fisetinidol-(4,8)-cathequin-(6,4)-fisetinidol), and the acetylated and methylated derivatives of the major latter was evaluated incubating them with soybean meal under in vitro ruminal conditions for 48h. The protein binding activity was estimated measuring changes in ammonia concentration when the tannin was incubated with soybean meal at a proportion of 8% of the dry weight. As compared to soybean meal alone (control), ammonia concentration decreased by 19, 27, and 31% for quebracho, the ethyl acetate extract of quebracho and the major compound, respectively, indicating concentration of the protein binding activity. Acetylation or methylation of the major compound resulted in corresponding decreases in the concentration of ammonia by 21 and 6%. This suggested that as the possibility of hydrogen bond formation decreases (being less with methylation than with acetylation), the binding to the protein is reduced but is not eliminated completely. Therefore, our hypothesis is that the main interactions between fisetinidol-(4,8)-cathequin-(6,4)-fisetinidol and soybean protein in an in vitro ruminal system are hydrogen bonds and that only a few hydrophobic interactions are present.