Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Soil Temperature and Phosphorus Supply Interactively Affect Physiological Responses of White Birch to CO 2 Elevation

Phosphorus (P) is a common limiting nutrient element to plants and its supply and uptake by plants are strongly influenced by soil temperature. However, the interactive effects of the two factors on the physiological responses of plants to global change are poorly understood. In this study, we examined how P supply and Tsoil interacted in affecting physiological responses in white birch (Betula papyrifera) to [CO2]. We exposed seedlings to 7˚C, 17˚C and 27˚C Tsoil, 0.1479, 0.3029 and 0.5847 mM P2O5, and 360 and 720 µmol∙mol −1 [CO2] for four months. We have found that both the low soil temperature and CO2 elevation resulted in photosynthetic down regulation but the specific mechanisms of the down regulation were different between the two treatments, particularly the relative contributions of biochemical and photochemical capacity, mesophyll conductance and sink strength for carbohydrate utilization to the down regulation. Furthermore, our data suggest that morphological adjustments, such as reduced leaf size and total leaf area, were the primary form of responses in white birch to low phosphorus supply and no significant physiological acclimation to P supply was detected. Our results suggest that white birch will likely enhance water use efficiency under the projected future climate conditions with doubled carbon dioxide concentration, particularly at warmer soil temperatures. Although a trade-off between water use efficiency and nutrient use efficiency is widely accepted, our results suggest that there does not have to be a trade-off between the two, for instance, CO2 elevation increased both use efficiencies and low soil temperature and reduced nitrogen efficiency without affecting water use efficiency under elevated CO2.
A longitudinal study of the residents' perceptions of tourism impacts using data from the sunshine coast Australia

This study investigates whether there has been a change in residents' perceptions of living and tourism impacts, on the Sunshine Coast, in 2009 from their perceptions of 2008. In 2009 more respondents reported that lifestyle and general pace of life were the key attractions of living on the Sunshine Coast. The results also demonstrate a signifi cant increase in residents' perceptions that tourism is likely to have a positive impact on the cultural identity of the community. The study also found that between 2008 and 2009 there was a signifi cant decrease in the residents' concerns re- garding traffi c congestion; noise and pollution; crime rates; destruction of the natural environment; and unpleasantly overcrowded beaches, and bush walking paths, parks and outdoor facilities in the community. The research, however, reveals no signifi cant differences in the residents' perceptions of conservation of natural resources; creation of employment; and the possibility of having more cul- tural exchange between tourists and residents due to tourism. Overall, these fi ndings are favourable for tourism-related stakeholders in developing future tourism plans for the region in that residents' appear to be more willing to support tourism development.
Grounded Video Description

Video description is one of the most challenging problems in vision and language understanding due to the large variability both on the video and language side. Models, hence, typically shortcut the difficulty in recognition and generate plausible sentences that are based on priors but are not necessarily grounded in the video. In this work, we explicitly link the sentence to the evidence in the video by annotating each noun phrase in a sentence with the corresponding bounding box in one of the frames of a video. Our dataset, ActivityNet-Entities, augments the challenging ActivityNet Captions dataset with 158k bounding box annotations, each grounding a noun phrase. This allows training video description models with this data, and importantly, evaluate how grounded or "true" such model are to the video they describe. To generate grounded captions, we propose a novel video description model which is able to exploit these bounding box annotations. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our model on our dataset, but also show how it can be applied to image description on the Flickr30k Entities dataset. We achieve state-of-the-art performance on video description, video paragraph description, and image description and demonstrate our generated sentences are better grounded in the video.
Kinetic spectrophotometric method for the estimation of cefixime in pharmaceutical formulations

The objective of the current study was to develop a simple, sensitive kinetic spectrophotometric method based on the oxidation of Cefixime using potassium permanganate in alkaline medium. The rate of change of absorbance was measured at 598 nm. The initial rate method and fixed time method (at 4 min) are utilised to construct calibration graphs for calculating the concentration of the drug. The results were validated through inter day and intraday precision assays according to the ICH guidelines and also through recovery studies. Statistical comparison of the proposed methods with that of reference method shows excellent agreement and indicates no significant difference in their accuracy and precision.
Tobacco smoking vs. lipid profile and anthropometric measures: A cross-sectional study among students in the Riyadh College of Health Sciences

Smoking represents the most readily preventable risk factor for morbidity and mortality. The present work aimed at studying the frequency of smoking among Saudi college students and its relation to dyslipidemia and malnutrition. The study was carried out on the students of the Riyadh College of Health Sciences, from September 2006 to December 2008. 474 male students participated in the present study. All subjects answered a self-administered questionnaire which consisted of socio-demographic data. Anthropometric measurements and laboratory analysis of lipid profile were measured. The frequency of smoking among male college students was 38.19%. Triglyceride level was higher while anthropometric measures were lower, among smokers. There was positive correlation between total cholesterol (TC), low-density lipoprotein (LDL), and triglycerides from one side and anthropometric measures on the other side. There is a high frequency of smoking among college students. The smokers have high lipid profile and low anthropometric measurements. Three fourth of the smokers have a strong desire to quit smoking.
Promoting University English Majors' Learner Autonomy in the Chinese Context

According to a survey conducted among some local colleges and universities, the author found that the current English teaching in Chinese colleges and universities is mostly “teacher-centered”. The “teacher-centered” teaching mode poses problems to students, especially to their learner autonomy. The students may see knowledge as something to be transmitted by the teacher rather than discovered by themselves. They, therefore, are less autonomous, more dependent on authority figure. It reduces the student from an autonomous learner, creative and critical thinker, as they should be, to a mechanical recipient of knowledge. Not only is this result at odds with our country’s educational goal, but it will hamper students’ improvement in the long run. There is saying that learner autonomy is not suitable to the Chinese context. This paper mainly discusses one question—Is it really true that learner autonomy is not suitable to the Chinese context and gives a negtive answer to this question from theoretical element and data analysis.
Reproduction, Body Size, and Diet of Polychrus acutirostris (Squamata: Polychrotidae) in Two Contrasting Environments in Brazil

Abstract We compared reproduction, diet, and body size of Polychrus acutirostris (Squamata: Polychrotidae) from the Cerrado and Caatinga biomes in Brazil. Because these two biomes have widely different climates, we predicted that lizards in Caatinga would produce smaller clutches in response to rainfall unpredictability. We also expected reproductive timing to differ between biomes, with lizards occurring in the Cerrado producing a single clutch in association with the predictable rains of October–November. Contrary to expectations, clutches had fewer (although larger) eggs in Cerrado. Reproductive period was remarkably similar (peak of female reproductive activity in November), but female reproduction started 1 month earlier in Cerrado. Diet composition was also similar, with the exception of spiders, that exhibited a high index of relative importance in Cerrado but were nearly absent in Caatinga lizard diets. Lizards from both biomes ingested a large proportion of plant material, as well as soft-bodied arboreal arthropods, such as orthopterans, and mostly slow-moving, large arboreal insects. Rainfall predictability in the Cerrado therefore did not influence Polychrus reproduction or diet in the same manner as in other lizard species. The large number of small eggs in the Caatinga suggests that the competitive environment for offspring is either unpredictable or that mortality is high but random. Rain forest Polychrus lizards produce few large eggs, suggesting that the competitive environment for offspring is predictably intense and mortality is non-random. Cerrado Polychrus lizards seem intermediate between Caatinga and rain forest Polychrus lizards, producing fewer and larger eggs than their conspecifics in the Caatinga but relatively more and smaller eggs than rain forest Polychrus species.
Increasing Achievement by Focusing Grade-Level Teams on Improving Classroom Learning: A Prospective, Quasi-Experimental Study of Title I Schools

The authors conducted a quasi-experimental investigation of effects on achievement by grade-level teams focused on improving learning. For 2 years (Phase 1), principals-only training was provided. During the final 3 years (Phase 2), school-based training was provided for principals and teacher leaders on stabilizing team settings and using explicit protocols for grade-level meetings. Phase 1 produced no differences in achievement between experimental and comparable schools. During Phase 2, experimental group scores improved at a faster rate than at comparable schools and exhibited greater achievement growth over 3 years on state-mandated tests and an achievement index. Stable school-based settings, distributed leadership, and explicit protocols are key to effective teacher teams. The long-term sustainability of teacher teams depends on coherent and aligned district policies and practices.
The thymus in neuro-endocrine-immune network

On the grounds of concise review of literature comprising the most important findings achieved by different investigators during over fifty years of intensive research, authors describe the present stateof-art knowledge on the immunoregulatory role of thymus. Being responsible for creation of immune competence of T lymphocytes, the thymus is able to control immune functions also by regulation of immunity indirectly by neurohormonal mechanisms. They comprise both synergistic (e.g. growth hormone, prolactin, enkephalins, thyroid hormones) and antagonistic (e.g. adrenal and sex hormones) connections between the thymus and neurohormonal system. This way, remaining active for the whole life of the organism, providing both cellular and hormonal influences, the thymus integrates and maintains the homeostatic tasks of neuro-endocrine-immune network related to its metabolic, procreative, regenerative, tolerogenic and defensive functions.
The Irrelevance of Direct Bankruptcy Costs to the Firm's Financial Reorganization Decision

We estimate the costs of reorganization and liquidation using firm-level data on 622 commercial bankruptcies filed under Canadian law (324 liquidating firms and 298 reorganizing firms). Using a hedonic pricing model of bankruptcy costs, we find the costs of liquidation and reorganization depend on firm size, the complexity of the case, and the ability of the bankrupt firm to pay. The central finding is that, contrary to theory, 40 percent of the firms opted either for reorganization or liquidation even though it was more expensive. We conclude that rational firms must base their bankruptcy decision on factors other than direct bankruptcy costs.
Poverty, Government Transfers, and the Business Cycle: Evidence for the United States

We examine the impact of government transfers and the business cycle on poverty in the United States in the context of a poverty function that includes the official poverty rate, three types of government transfers, real wages, the number of female-headed families, and a business cycle variable. Using cointegration techniques, we find ─ contrary to most previous studies ─ that government transfer programs play an important poverty-reducing role. In addition, the findings suggest that the business cycle is one of the key variables in explaining poverty in the US. Furthermore, the empirical results show that the size and composition of public transfer payments change over the business cycle. We also find poverty to have a significant effect on government transfers, the business cycle, and the structure of households.
Assessment of whole-body occupational radiation exposure in industrial radiography practices in Bangladesh during 2010-2014

Presently, ten industrial radiography facilities are operating in Bangladesh using X-ray or gamma-ray sources. During the last 5-year, 14 industrial radiography facilities were received individual monitoring service using thermoluminescent dosimeters (TLDs) from the Health Physics Division (HPD), Atomic Energy Centre, Dhaka under Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission. HPD is the only individual monitoring service provider in Bangladesh due to external sources of ionizing radiation. The number of monitored industrial radiography facilities ranged from 7 to 14 while the number of worker ranged from 72 to 133 during the study period. The annual average effective doses received from external radiation in industrial radiography workers and the distributions of the annual effective doses by dose intervals are presented. The distribution of the occupational doses shows that the majority (about 75 %) of workers received doses below 1 mSv for the last 5-years. Even though, very few workers (about 1%) received doses higher than average annual dose limit (20 mSv), but no workers received doses higher than 100 mSv in 5 consecutive years. The average annual effective dose of industrial radiography workers in Bangladesh is higher than the corresponding values in Tanzania, Greece, Poland, Australia, UK and lower than in Bosnia and Herzegovina, USA and Canada. However, the average annual effective dose is comparable to the corresponding values in China, Brazil, Germany and India. The status and trends in occupational doses show that radiation protection situation at the majority of the workplace were satisfactory. In spite of that, additional measures are required due to big differences observed in the maximum individual doses over the last 5-year.
It Seems Factual, But Is It? Effects of Using Sharp versus Round Numbers in Advertising Claims

This paper compares sharp versus round numbers in advertising claims. Round numbers have a salient conceptual basis (e.g., 10 years are a decade). Sharp numbers do not (e.g., 11 years). Estimates tend to be expressed with round numbers. An experiment is described that examines whether consumers make the false assumption that claims using sharp numbers are less likely to be estimates (i.e., are more factual) than those using round numbers and, if so, whether this makes sharp-number claims more believable. The results demonstrate that such assumptions do occur, even for those consumers considered to be advertising skeptics.
Optimisation des procédés d'impression dédiés à la production de masse de composants microélectroniques

Le potentiel des procedes d’impression dans les applications electroniques sur des supports en ceramique a ete demontre dans ce travail. Plusieurs techniques d’impression ont ete etudiees : serigraphie, flexographie, heliogravure et jet d’encre. Les proprietes de surface de plusieurs types de ceramique ont ete caracterisees avant et apres frittage : taille des pores, rugosite et energie de surface. Ces analyses ont permis de selectionner les matieres premieres des encres les mieux adaptees a ces supports, ainsi qu’aux procedes d’impression consideres. Des formulations aqueuses a base de particules d’argent ont ete privilegiees. Les proprietes de ces encres, rheologie et tension de surface, ont ete analysees et leurs effets sur la qualite des lignes imprimees (largeur, epaisseur et rugosite) ont ete evalues. Apres impression, les motifs ont ete frittes. Des resistivites proches de celle de l’argent ont ete obtenues (2 a 12x10-8 Ohm.m). L’originalite de ce travail reside notamment dans l’utilisation d’encres serigraphiques a base d’eau et l’impression d’encres flexographiques sur des supports en ceramique. Cette etude ouvre donc des perspectives pour l’industrialisation et la production de masse de composants electroniques sur supports ceramiques souples.
The effect of processing method on drying kinetics of Petrovská klobása, an artisan fermented sausage

The drying behaviour of dry-fermented sausage Petrovska klobasa ripened in traditional and industrial conditions has been studied. Obtained results indicated that sausages dried in industrial room (batch I) had higher weight loss and lower water activity (aw) values than counterparts from traditional/artisanal production (batch T). Difference in drying intensity between internal and external fractions of sausages was much more marked for batch I. The experimental data of water content in Petrovska klobasa, dried in respective conditions, were compared with values predicted by seven different mathematical models. Comparing the coefficient of determination (r2), root mean square error (ERMS) and the reduced chi-square (χ2) values of all equations, it was concluded that the Page mathematical model satisfactorily represents drying characteristics of Petrovska klobasa both in traditional (0.990; 2.22 x 10-2 and 6.01 x 10-4, respectively) and industrial conditions (0.995; 1.79 x 10-2; 3.91 x 10-4, respectively).
Collective Economic Decisions and the Discursive Dilemma

Most economic decisions involve judgments. When decisions are taken collectively, various judgment aggregation problems may occur. Here we consider an aggregation problem called the "discursive dilemma", which is characterized by an inconsistency between the aggregate judgment on the premises for a conclusion and the aggregate judgment on the conclusion itself. It thus matter for the decision whether the group uses a premise- or a conclusion-based decisionmaking procedure. The current literature, primarily within jurisprudence, philosophy, and social choice, consider aggregation of qualitative judgments on propositions. Most economic decisions, however, involve quantitative judgments on economic variables. We develop a framework that is suitable for analyzing the relevance of the discursive dilemma for economic decisions. Assuming that decisions are reached either through majority voting or by averaging, we find that the dilemma cannot be ruled out, except under some restrictive assumptions about the relationship between the premise-variables and the conclusion.
BL Lacertae: Hard Optical Spectrum and GeV γ-ray Emission

The spectral energy distribution (SED) of the -ray flare observed in July 1997 in BL Lacertae is re-considered. It is pointed out that the optical observa- tions made by Webb et al. showed the associated optical flare has a hard spectrum (the average spectral index opt 0.48, F / ), and the ASCA observations made by Tanihata et al. showed very steep spectra in the soft X-ray band (0.7- 1.5keV) ( x 3 - 4). We find that the flux densities and spectral indices in both the optical and soft X-ray bands are closely consistent with a 'canonical' synchrotron spectrum emitted by relativistic electrons of a power-law energy distribution with a high energy cuto, and thus the peak of the SED of the synchrotron radiation (in representation of F ) is located in the EUV - soft X-ray bands. Therefore, the GeV -ray emission observed in the July 1997 outburst may be mainly due to the synchrotron self-Compton (SSC) process, contrasting with the current explanations in terms of external radiation Compton (ERC) process, in which the seed photons are mostly taken to be the UV emission from the clouds of the broad emission line region. We argue that the hard optical spectra observed during the -ray outburst may be an important signature for the acceleration of high energy electrons ( e 10 4 ) in the -ray emitting region.
FROM FARMERS TO MERCHANTS, CONVERSIONS AND DIASPORA: HUMAN CAPITAL AND JEWISH HISTORY

From the end of the second century CE, Judaism enforced a religious norm requiring fathers to educate their sons. We present evidence supporting our thesis that this change had a major influence on Jewish economic and demographic history. First, the high individual and community cost of educating children in subsistence farming economies (2nd to 7th centuries) prompted voluntary conversions of Jews that account for a share of the reduction from 4.5 to 1.2 million. Second, the Jewish farmers who invested in education gained the comparative advantage and incentive to enter skilled occupations during the urbanization in the Abbasid empire in the Near East (8th and 9th centuries) and they did select themselves into these occupations. Third, as merchants the Jews invested even more in education—a precondition for the mailing network and common court system that endowed them with trading skills demanded all over the world. Fourth, the Jews generated a voluntary diaspora within the Muslim Empire and later to Western Europe. Fifth, the majority of world Jewry lived in the Near East when the Mongol invasions in the 1250s brought this region back to a subsistence farming economy in which many Jews found it difficult to enforce the religious norm, and hence converted, as it had happened centuries earlier. (JEL: J1, J2, N3, O1, Z12, Z13)
Economic Determinants of Group versus Individual Compensation Schemes for Senior Executives

This paper investigates firm characteristics associated with the choice of individual versus group compensation schemes for senior executives below the CEO level. We define individual compensation schemes where senior executives are compensated independently from other senior executives, where incentive compensation is linked to individual performance. In contrast, group compensation schemes are defined where senior executive compensation is jointly determined with other senior executives, with compensation linked to common incentives. This paper is motivated by limited evidence on compensation schemes for senior executives' beyond the CEO, limiting critical evaluation of senior executives' compensation. Evidence using Australian data provides support that individual compensation schemes are adopted by firms where individual senior executive inputs (effort) and outputs are separable and observable. We also find support that group compensation schemes are adopted where there are efficiencies from senior executive co-operation and interdependencies between executives, such as in integrated firms. The findings contribute to the ongoing debate surrounding the determination of appropriate corporate governance mechanisms in the presence of agency conflicts, and especially executive compensation schemes.