Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Spatial variability of soil chemical properties and its effect on crop yields: a case study in maize (Zea mays L.) on the Bogota Plateau

To evaluate the effect of soil chemical properties on the crop yield of corn, in the context of site-specific fertilization, it was characterized the spatio-temporal variability of these properties and crop yield in a lot at the Centro Agropecuario Marengo of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia (Mosquera, Colombia). Using a systematic sampling grid of 32 points (25 x 25 m), soil samples were taken before crop sowing and 60 days after sowing (das) to determine soil pH, N (%); Ca, K, Mg, Na, Al, H (cmol+ kg-1), P, Cu, Fe, Mn, Zn and B (mg kg-1). At 162 das, harvest and yield components were evaluated by site. The data was processed using multivariate procedures, descriptive analysis and geostatistical analysis. Emergent properties were obtained from the original chemical variables using principal component analysis (PCA); these new variables were evaluated using geostatistical analysis to show spatial distribution and its correlation with crop yield. The PCA allowed the finding of three patterns of spatial variability in the soil corresponding to the variables related to soil fertility OC, Ca, Mg, K, CIC and B, the availability of nutrients by soil redox potential, and the variability associated with salinity explained by the Na content and soil electrical conductivity. The first group of variables largely explains the spatial variability of crop yield of corn.
A Relationship of Wine Ratings and Wholesale Pricing, Vintage, Variety, and Region

Wine reviews, such as those from Wine Spectator and other consumer publications, help drive wine sales. The researchers in this study utilized standardized wholesale “line pricing” from a major wholesale distributor in the Southwest to compare pricing to the ratings published by Wine Spectator and to determine whether there were any correlations among other key attributes of the wine. The study produced interesting results, including that the wholesale price and vintage of a wine are significant in the prediction of the wine’s rating. Wine reviews, such as those from Wine Spectator and other consumer publications, help drive wine sales. The researchers in this study utilized standardized wholesale “line pricing” from a major wholesale distributor in the Southwest to compare pricing to the ratings published by Wine Spectator and to determine whether there were any correlations among other key attributes of the wine. The study produced interesting results, including that the wholesale price and vintage of a wine are significant in the prediction of the wine’s rating.
One-Year Outcomes Comparison of Anti-VEGF Monotherapy and Combined Anti-VEGF + Photodynamic Therapy for Retinal Angiomatous Proliferation

DOI: 10.14744/bej.2017. 46036 Beyoglu Eye J 2017; 2(2): 62–66 Original Article Kesim et al., Retinal Angiomatous Proliferation Therapy Results 63 travitreal antiangiogenic factor (anti-VEGF), which has been the principal method used for the last decade (10-12). Anti-VEGF monotherapy can provide the necessary decrease in subretinal fluid, an active disease marker in clinical examination and optical coherence tomography (OCT), and also increase visual acuity (13). RAP lesions, however, might require more aggressive treatment protocols with PDT in clinical practice (14). RAP lesions may be detected when anti-VEGF-resistant cases primarily diagnosed as exudative AMD are re-evaluated (15). The main purpose of this study was to evaluate the results of anti-VEGF monotherapy versus anti-VEGF therapy combined with PDT in primarily diagnosed RAP cases as well as secondarily diagnosed RAP cases refractory to anti-VEGF treatment.
Gender based differences in diabetic peripheral neuropathy

Introduction: Diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN) is one of the common complications of diabetes mellitus. Aim: To find out gender based differences in frequency of DM, age at diagnosis of DM and subsequent onset of DPN, duration of DM and DPN and electrophysiological patterns. Methodology: On the basis of non-probability purposive sampling, a cross sectional study was conducted at Neurology department, Mayo Hospital, Lahore. Patients fulfilling the ADA criteria for DM, and DPN were included in the study. Data was analyzed using SPSS 16 version. Results: A total of 125 patients were included in the study with 57/125 (45.6%) males and 68/125 (54.4%) females. This difference in gender based frequency was not statistically significant (p<0.324]. Although mean age of females [51.83+10.04 yrs.] was lower than that of males [53.29+9.39 yrs.] but this difference was also not significant (p<0.504). There was no significant difference (p<0.685) in the mean age at onset of DM in men (42.03+9.97yrs) and women (41.24+10.62yrs). Both genders took a mean period of 08 yrs to develop DPN. The mean age of onset of DPN was 50.87+9.43yrs in men and 49.25+10.62yrs in women and this was not statistically significant (p<0.374). Sensory-motor mixed polyneuropathy was the commonest electrophysiological pattern (51%) seen in both the genders. Conclusion: In our study, gender based differences in DPN are statistically not significant with respect to frequency of diabetes, age at diagnosis of diabetes or at onset of DPN, duration of DM before onset of DPN and electrophysiological patterns. More studies are required to settle whether gender based differences in onset and progression of diabetic neuropathy exist.
Recovering the French Party Space from Twitter Data

This study explores the possibility to retrieve information on partisan polarization from data generated by online social media users. The specific application that we pursue consists in placing a sample of over 1,000 French politicians on a unidimensional left-right scale by using their followers on Twitter as a proxy for their relative ideological positions. The methodology that we use to that end closely replicates that of Barbera (2015), who developed a Bayesian Spatial Following model to retrieve such ideal point estimates in the United States and in five European countries. Our results concur with existing measures of the French party space, and yield additional insights into the behaviour of ideologically extreme social media users.
HOW DO GOVERNMENTS SPEND THEIR PUBLIC SPENDING

Abstrak: Bagaimana Pemerintah Mengalokasikan Pengeluaran Publiknya? Tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk menguji apakah belanja daerah untuk belanja pendidikan, kesehatan, dan ekonomi mempengaruhi kesejahteraan, dan apakah populasi mempengaruhi hubungan antara ketiga belanja tersebut dengan kesejahteraan. Penelitian ini menggunakan sampel seluruh provinsi di Indonesia tahun 2008-2013, kecuali Provinsi Kalimantan Utara. Metode yang digunakan adalah metode regresi berganda. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa belanja pendidikan memiliki pengaruh positif, belanja kesehatan memiliki pengaruh negatif tidak signifikan, dan belanja ekonomi memiliki pengaruh negatif signifikan terhadap kesejahteraan. Populasi sebagai variable moderasi tidak mampu memoderasi hubungan antara ketiga belanja tersebut dengan kesejahteraan. Kata Kunci: belanja pendidikan, belanja kesehatan, belanja ekonomi, populasi penduduk, dan kesejahteraan masyarakat. Abstract: How Do Governments Spend Their Public Spending? The objectives of this study are to examine whether the local expenditure for education, health, and economic influence economic welfare, and whether population influences the relationship between them. This study used the sample of all province in Indonesia 2008-2013, except Kalimantan Utara Province. The method used in this study is multiple regression methods. The result of this study states that education expenditure had a significant positive effect, health expenditure had not significant negative effect, while economic expenditure had a significant negative effect on the welfare. Population as the moderating variable cannot moderate the relationship between that expenditure with the welfare. Keywords: education expenditure, health expenditure, economic expenditure, population, and welfare.
On the Roots of Undiscipline

Variously used to describe a branch of knowledge, a system of rules of conduct or a method of practice, or a character trait associated with rigorous and controlled behaviour, the term ‘discipline’ is both widespread in its application and yet considerably under-examined in regard to its expectations and consequences. While the general field of design, or each of the various sub-fields thereof, is colloquially referred to as being a discipline – and unreflectively accepted as such – quite what constitutes and informs this disciplinarity remains unclear. Arguing that design problems are, to a significant extent, personally determined rather than neutrally provided; that, while highly informed in regard to their disciplinary practice(s), design agents are inescapably influenced, driven, and, to large measure, controlled by their specific theory choices and ideological commitments; that, rather than being a knowledge-generating discipline, the field of design generally constitutes a practice-based knowledge-utilization discipline, aimed at providing service to an external world; and thus that design is essentially normative rather than explanatory-descriptive; this paper explores the nature of design’s disciplinarity, and avers that the above factors not only actively contribute to, but promote and prolong design’s undisciplinarity. Design’s very characteristics are thus the roots of its undiscipline, roots that go deep into design’s psyche, and that support and feed an enterprise that is in need of serious self-examination.
A Comparative Study of Anticipatory it Lexical Bundles in Applied Linguistics and Analytical Chemistry Research Articles

Lexical bundles, frequent word combinations that commonly occur in different registers, have attracted researchers in corpus linguistics in the last decade. While most previous studies of bundles have been mainly concerned with variations in the use of these word sequences across different registers, very few studies have focused on their use across disciplines. To address possible disciplinary variations in the use of these word combinations in academic register, this quantitative and qualitative study chose to investigate, compare, and contrast range, frequency, and function of anticipatory it bundles as a sub-set of these word clusters with important metadiscursive functions in published writing. For this purpose, the study zoomed in research articles of applied linguistics and analytical chemistry as a soft and hard science, respectively. The results indicated that generally anticipatory it bundles could be regarded as a distinctive characteristic of academic writing in both disciplines. At the same time, each discipline was found to draw almost on a particular set of it bundles in the development of its discourse. However, analytical chemistry seemed to rely more on these bundles in the development of its discourse. Functional analysis also showed that it bundles served a wide variety of functions in both disciplinary areas. Therefore, this study called for a more robust pedagogical focus on different multiword sequences like anticipatory it lexical bundles. The findings also highlighted the importance of a more genre-focused EAP (English for academic purposes).
The Quantitative Importance of News Shocks in Estimated DSGE Models

We estimate a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model with several frictions and both unanticipated and news shocks, using quarterly US data from 1954-2004 and Bayesian methods. We find that unanticipated shocks dominate news shocks in accounting for the unconditional variance of output, consumption, and investment growth, interest rate, and the relative price of investment. The unanticipated shock to the marginal eficiency of investment is the dominant shock, accounting for over 45% of the variance in output growth. News shocks account for less than 15% of the variance in output growth. Within the set of news shocks, non-technology sources of news dominate technology news, with wage markup news shocks accounting for about 60% of the variance share of both hours and ination. We find that in the estimated DSGE model (a) the presence of endogenous countercyclical price and wage markups due tonominal frictions substantially diminishes the importance of news shocks relative to a model without these frictions, and (b) while there is little change in the estimated contributions of technology news when we restrict wealth effects on labour supply, the contributions of non-technology news shocks are relatively more sensitive.
Reporting expected longevity and smoking: evidence from the SHARE

This paper investigates formation of expected longevity in an elderly popu- lation. We use Italian data from the early (2004) release of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). The SHARE provides a numerical measure for subjective survival probability (SSP). To assess inter- nal consistency and investigate validity of SSP as a proxy of actual mortality, we compare SSP to lifetables and look at the variation with health, smok- ing and socio-economic variables. In a multivariate framework, we propose a recursive model for expected longevity, self-assessed health and smoking duration, where health and smoking variables are potentially endogenous. Unobservable individual-speci¯c heterogeneity is considered by estimating a finite mixture model via the EM algorithm, which allows division of the popu- lation according to different latent classes and estimation of class membership probabilities. Our mixture model fits the data better than the single class model and provides evidence of individual unobserved heterogeneity in the formulation of survival expectations. Expectations are shown to vary most with health status, socio-economic characteristics, parental mortality and age. Two-types of individuals in the population are identified, that differ in terms of unobservable frailty and rationality in addiction. We also find differences between current and former smokers in the way they discount future conse- quences of tobacco consumption on health and mortality risk. Our findings suggest caution in the use of SSP as a proxy of actual mortality.
Impact of microsensor-caused changes in diffusive boundary layer thickness on O2 profiles and photosynthetic rates in benthic communities of microorganisms

Although O2 microsensors used for study of benthic photosynthesis have tip diameters of less than 10 pm and stem diameters of about 150 pm at a distance of 0.5 cm from the tip, they do change the local flow pattern in the overlying water and thereby reduce the thickness of the diffusive boundary layer (DBL). The reduced DBL resulted in a lower diffusional resistance towards export of 0, from communities with a net production of Oa, and insertion of a microsensor in such a community therefore resulted in lowered O2 concentrations. The total diffusion flux out of the photosynthetic layer was not significantly dffected by the presence of the microsensor. The higher upward flux into the water phase was counterbalanced by a reduced downward flux into the sediment. The O2 profiles and diffusion fluxes were only affected when the surface was smooth, while the effect of microsensor insertion was undetectable when the surface was made irregular by small tufts, bubbles, etc. In the investigated cyanobacteria-dominated mats, the gross photosynthetic rates as measured by the light/dark shift technique were unaffected by the presence of a microsensor.
Information content of inter-transaction time: A structural approach

This study examines the information role of inter-transaction time by employing a structural market microstructure model. By analyzing the intraday data of the KOSPI200 futures market, we find that the inter-transaction time (i.e., time between two consecu- tive trades) reveals significant information, and that fast trading is indicative of informed trading. This result remains robust when the effect of trade size is incorporated into the model. Our regression analysis indicates that the information role of inter-transaction time becomes more important when informed trading is less concentrated, liquidity is lower, and the market is more volatile.
IMPROVED LEARNING THROUGH PEER TUTORING IN A DECLARATIVE PROGRAMMING COURSE

A method of peer tutoring was used and evaluated in an introductory programming course in Haskell. Students were paired on the basis of skill level with pairings opposite those suggested by the existing literature. This method of peer tutoring was shown to be effective in increasing the performance of both high- and low-skilled students in learning a declarative language. This method of peer tutoring can be applied to business and other technology education.
Potential and limitations of using soil mapping information to understand landscape hydrology

Abstract. This paper addresses the following points: how can whole soil data from normally available soil mapping databases (both conventional and those integrated by digital soil mapping procedures) be usefully employed in hydrology? Answering this question requires a detailed knowledge of the quality and quantity of information embedded in and behind a soil map. To this end a description of the process of drafting soil maps was prepared (which is included in Appendix A of this paper). Then a detailed screening of content and availability of soil maps and database was performed, with the objective of an analytical evaluation of the potential and the limitations of soil data obtained through soil surveys and soil mapping. Then we reclassified the soil features according to their direct, indirect or low hydrologic relevance. During this phase, we also included information regarding whether this data was obtained by qualitative, semi-quantitative or quantitative methods. The analysis was performed according to two main points of concern: (i) the hydrological interpretation of the soil data and (ii) the quality of the estimate or measurement of the soil feature. The interaction between pedology and hydrology processes representation was developed through the following Italian case studies with different hydropedological inputs: (i) comparative land evaluation models, by means of an exhaustive itinerary from simple to complex modelling applications depending on soil data availability, (ii) mapping of soil hydrological behaviour for irrigation management at the district scale, where the main hydropedological input was the application of calibrated pedo-transfer functions and the Hydrological Function Unit concept, and (iii) flood event simulation in an ungauged basin, with the functional aggregation of different soil units for a simplified soil pattern. In conclusion, we show that special care is required in handling data from soil databases if full potential is to be achieved. Further, all the case studies agree on the appropriate degree of complexity of the soil hydrological model to be applied. We also emphasise that effective interaction between pedology and hydrology to address landscape hydrology requires (i) greater awareness of the hydrological community about the type of soil information behind a soil map or a soil database, (ii) the development of a better quantitative framework by the pedological community for evaluating hydrological features, and (iii) quantitative information on soil spatial variability.
The impact of land use on soil erosion in the river basin Boljanska Rijeka in Montenegro

Soil erosion is acknowledged as a major environmental problem, threatening sustainable livelihoods around the world. Inappropriate land use and land management is often viewed as main cause of accelerated erosion rates. Therefore, modelling soil erosion rates under various land use and climate conditions is key to understand the impact of future land management and climate change on land degradation. For the Boljanska Rijeka River Basin (Polimlje, Montenegro), we studied soil erosion processes, using a series of data that are reflecting variations in land use over a period of four decades (1970-2013). The computer-graphic IntErO model was used to calculate soil erosion intensity, taking data of Forest Management Plans, Cadastre, Landsat images and Statistical Yearbooks into account. It was concluded that the condition of the vegetation cover and the land use influenced the development of erosion processes in the river basin. For the current state of land use, calculated maximal outflow from the river basin is 212 ms and the net soil loss is 8644 m3 year. This indicates that the river basin belongs in „Destruction Category V”, according to the classification system of Gavrilovic. The strength of the erosion process is medium, and according to the erosion type, it is mixed erosion. Change of the land use in structure for the period of four decades (19702013), in the studied river basin, decreased the soil erosion intensity by 3.95%.
Investor Pessimism and Post-Issue Outperformance: Evidence from Privatized Firms

Using a unique sample of privatized firms over the period 1980 and 2002, we explore how the policy risk which is a distinctive feature of privatization is perceived by investors and whether the post issue outperformance of these firms is associated to investor pessimism. We find evidence that market-adjusted abnormal returns are negatively related to analysts forecast errors used as a proxy for investor expectations. This result suggests that contrary to traditional private firms investors seem to be pessimistic in their forecasts of privatized firms’ earnings projections in the beginning of the privatization procedure. However, they are more confident in the prospects of these firms over time consistent with the positive performance we find after privatization.
Spatial and temporal variations of meiofaunal communities in Cienfuegos Bay, Cuba

The community structure of meiofauna was studied in 16 subtidal sampling stations and in four months in Cienfuegos Bay, Cuba for describing their patterns of distribution, as well as their possible causes. Silt/clay (S/C) and organic matter (OM) contents in sediment were positively correlated, and their changes were related to spatial variation of sedimentary environment across stations. The narrow range of interstitial salinity suggests a slight effect on meiofauna even when changes of surficial salinity occurred. Density and number of taxa changed among dry and wet seasons plausibly as a response to hypoxic conditions due to water stratification in the wet season. Negative relationships were recorded among S/C and OM with meiofaunal densities possibly due to restrictive effects of accumulation and oxidation of organic matter. Physical disturbance appears to be a main process affecting meiofauna in some shallow stations subjected to strong waving and tidal currents. No any single ecological factor explains the large spatial variability of meiofaunal communities in the whole bay; a combination of several processes like distribution of primary production, stratification/mixing of the water column and physical disturbance probably is occurring in the bay.
TARGET BOARD STRUCTURE AND TAKEOVER-INDUCED ABNORMAL RETURNS IN THE UK

We examine the link between board structure and bid-induced abnormal returns for a sample of 198 UK-based firms that became takeover targets between 1989 and 1998. As expected, takeover targets experience significant gains during the takeover announcement period. In line with a disciplinary explanation for takeovers, we find that target boards that are larger, with fewer independent directors, and a managing director chairman, experience more favorable announcement-period returns. Targets with more reputable directors and directors with greater ownership incentives, also experience more favorable announcement-period returns.