Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Rainfall Variability and its Effect on Yield of Rice in Nigeria

Nigerian rice production is mainly rain-fed and naturally prone to vagaries of rainfall variability. The objective of this study was to determine the probable effect of rainfall variability on average yield of rice in Nigeria during a 22-year period (1992-2013). The mean annual rainfall data from major rice producing states and national average rice yields were analyzed using descriptive statistics and regression models. Results of the analysis revealed a significant variation in mean annual rainfall across vegetation grouping in a descending order from swamp forest to Sudan savanna. Mean rainfall was adequate for rice production in all vegetation grouping except Sudan savanna where rainfall was less than the prescribed minimum quantity for rice production. Rainfall was positively related to yield of rice in all vegetation grouping except Sudan savanna but relationship was not statistically significant at 5% level. It was concluded that annual rainfall variability had statistically negligible effect on national average rice yield. It was recommended that the cultivation of rice should go along with farming practices that aimed at mitigating adverse effects of rainfall variability on the yield of rice especially in the Sudan savanna.
Tidal Marsh Erosion by Geese, St. Lawrence Estuary, Québec

Damage by geese to tidal marsh substrates are evident in the St. Lawrence Estuary, Quebec. Erosion is significantly increased by geese activity in autumn and spring. Rapid destruction of the vegetative cover in autumn leads to a reduction of the protective effects against waves and currents. Walking and probing in the soft sediment cover destabilize the mud surface and induce subsequent erosion. In search of rhizomes, geese dig many thousands of small holes in the substrate causing an average 10 cm lowering of the lower tidal marsh. As a consequence, erosion by waves of the upper marsh bluff is increased. In addition, geese contribute to the enlargment of shallow marsh depressions, to the destruction of peat blocks, and to the retreat of the lower marsh margins. Although wave, current and ice processes are prevailing, it is suggested that recent erosion of the tidal marsh in the Montmagny area is partly related to geese activity.
Interactive comment on “An estimate of global glacier volume” by A. Grinsted

The paper by Grinsted presents an estimate of global glacier ice volume based on the Randolph Glacier Inventory (RGI) and volume-area scaling laws. There is a focus on uncertainties in volume-area scaling, and on how this approach might be improved. The final result of the study is that existing glacier ice volume estimates might be significantly too high. This finding potentially has a significant impact.
Molecular Interactions in Monolayers οf Azo Dye/Liquid Crystal Mixtures at Interfaces

A study of azo dye/liquid crystal mixtures in monolayers formed at an air–water interface (the Langmuir films) and at a solid surface (the Langmuir–Blodgett films) has been performed. Five azo dyes with various molecular structure and the liquid crystal 4-octyl-4′-cyanobiphenyl (8CB) have been used. The dyes have been added to the liquid crystal at various molar fractions. Surface pressure and surface potential versus mean molecular area isotherms for the Langmuir films have been recorded and information about intermolecular interactions at the air–water interface has been obtained. On the basis of electronic absorption measurements for the Langmuir and Langmuir–Blodgett films the conclusions about the ability of dyes molecules to form self-aggregates at the interfaces have been drawn. The influence of the dye molecular structure and its concentration on aggregates’ geometry has been found.
Verifying tag annotation and performing genre classification in music data via association analysis

Music Information Retrieval aims to automate the access to large-volume music data, including browsing, retrieval, storage, etc. The work presented in this thesis tackles two non-trivial problems in the field. First problem deals with music tags, which provide descriptive and rich information about a music piece, including its genre, artist, emotion, instrument, etc. At present, tag annotation is largely a manual process, which often results in tags that are subjective, ambiguous, and error-prone. We propose a novel approach to verify the quality of tag annotation in a music dataset through association analysis. Second, we employ association analysis to predict music genres based on features extracted directly from music. We build an association-based classifier, which finds inherent associations between music features and genres. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approaches through a series of simulations and experiments using various benchmark music datasets.
Factors Influencing Consumers’ Willingness to Pay for Agricultural Organic Products (AOP)

The main purpose of this study was to investigate factors influencing consumers’ willingness to pay for agricultural organic products (AOP). This article has done with reviewing and analyzing various researches in different countries. The findings revealed that the premiums that consumers were willing to pay vary from country to country. Consumers’ knowledge and awareness about AOP differs. Some had more knowledge about AOP and some were un-knowledgeable about AOP. Some factors influencing consumers’ willingness to purchase AOP were consumers’ socio-economic characteristics and AOP characteristics. Due to the importance of consumers’ knowledge about AOP for purchase decisions, it is recommended to publish materials about AOP and deliver them to families.
What Slice of the Pie? The Corporate Bond Market Boom in Emerging Economies

​This paper studies the determinants of shifts in debt composition among emerging market non-financial corporates. We show that institutions and macro fundamentals create an enabling environment for bond market development. During the recent boom episode, however, global cyclical factors accounted for most of the variation of bond shares in total corporate debt. The sensitivity to global factors appears to vary with relative bond market size rather than local fundamentals. Foreign bank linkages help explain why bond markets increasingly substituted for banks in channeling liquidity to EMs. Our results highlight the risk of capital flow reversal in EMs that benefited from the upturn in the global financial cycle mostly due to their liquid markets rather than strong fundamentals.
Factors Influencing Irrigation Technology Adoption and its Impact on Household Poverty in Ghana

The treadle pump technology was promoted and disseminated as an alternative to traditional rope and bucket for irrigation in Ghana by the International Non-Governmental Organization, Enterprise Works. The aim is to improve output, increase incomes and consequently reduce poverty among farm households. The paper employed the Heckman two-stage and the Ordinary Least Square procedures to identify the factors that influence adoption of the technology and the impact of adoption on the poverty status of farm households. Farm and household level data were obtained from 108 farmers consisting of 52 adopters and 58 non-adopters. The results demonstrated that availability of labor and increases in number of extension visits per year are factors that increase the probability of adoption. The results also showed that increase in irrigated area has the highest impact on poverty followed by adoption of treadle pump and literacy level of farmers.
Proper Motion of the High-velocity Pulsar in SNR MSH 15-56

We present a measurement of the proper motion of the presumed pulsar in the evolved composite supernova remnant (SNR) MSH 15-56 whose pulsar wind nebula (PWN) has been disrupted by the supernova (SN) reverse shock. Using Chandra X-ray observations acquired over a baseline of 15 years, we measure a pulsar velocity of and a direction of motion of 14° ± 22° west of south. We use this measurement to constrain a hydrodynamical (HD) model for the evolution of this system, and find that its morphology is well-described by an SNR expanding in an ambient density gradient that increases from east to west. The effect of the density gradient and the pulsar’s motion is an asymmetric interaction between the SN reverse shock and the PWN that displaces the bulk of the PWN material away from the pulsar toward the northeast. The simulation is consistent with an SNR age of 11,000 years, an SN ejecta mass of 10 M⊙, and an average surrounding density of 0.4 cm−3, but a combination of a higher SN ejecta mass and ambient density can produce a similar SNR morphology at a later age.
Studies on Turbulence Structure of Boundary Layers Disturbed by Moving Wakes

An attempt is made to measure wake-affected boundary layers on a flat plate by means of a split-film probe. Although a number of studies have been made to reveal the transitional behavior of boundary layers subjected to periodic wake passing, much is still unknown on the turbulence structure of those boundary layers. It is because most of the studies measured the boundary layers by single hot-wire probe. This measurement therefore aims at the determination of the turbulent structure of the incoming wakes as well as the disturbed boundary layers mainly in terms of ensemble-averaged Reynolds shear stress and turbulence intensity. Unsteady velocity vectors associated with the wakes and wake-induced turbulence patch (a number of turbulent spots) are also determined in detail. In comparison to a conventional how-wire probe, the probe used in this study is less sensitive to fluctuations of high frequency and less accurate in the near-wall measurement due to its relatively large diameter of its sensor. However, new and important information is obtained on the structure of wake-induced turbulence patch, which provides more insight into the wake-induced boundary layer transition than before. In addition, the measured velocity field following the turbulent patch indicates a clear image of calmed region.Copyright © 2000 by ASME
Revised and updated paleomagnetic results from Costa Rica

Paleomagnetic results from globally distributed lava flows have been collected and analyzed under the time‐averaged field initiative (TAFI), a multi‐institutional collaboration started in 1996 and designed to improve the geographic and temporal coverage of the 0–5 Ma paleomagnetic database for studying both the time‐averaged field and its very long‐term secular variations. Paleomagnetic samples were collected from 35 volcanic units, either lava flows or ignimbrites, in Costa Rica in December 1998 and February 2000 from the Cordilleras Central and Guanacaste, the underlying Canas, Liberia and Bagaces formations and from Volcano Arenal. Age estimates range from approximately 40 ka to slightly over 6 Ma. Although initial results from these sites were used in a global synthesis of TAFI data by Johnson et al. (2008), a full description of methodology was not presented. This paper documents the definitive collection of results comprising 28 paleomagnetic directions (24 normal, 4 reversed), with enhanced precision and new geological interpretations, adding two paleointensity estimates and 19 correlated 40Ar/39Ar radiometric ages. The average field direction is consistent with that of a geocentric axial dipole and dispersion of virtual geomagnetic poles (17.3 ± 4.6°) is in general agreement with predictions from several statistical paleosecular variation models. Paleointensity estimates from two sites give an average field strength of 26.3 μT and a virtual axial dipole moment of 65 ZAm2. The definitive results provide a useful augmentation of the global database for the longer term goal of developing new statistical descriptions of paleomagnetic field behavior.
Performance improvement of AlN/GaN-based intersubband detectors thanks to quantum dot active regions

Since the operating mode of 1.55 μm AlN/GaN-based intersubband photodetectors is based on optical rectification, both the excited state lifetime and the lateral displacement of the carriers play an important role for performance optimization. We thus show here results of an improved detector generation based on a novel type of active region. Thanks to the use of quantum dots instead of quantum wells, a factor of 60 could be gained in terms of maximum responsivity. In addition, the maximum performance was achieved at a considerably higher temperature of 160 K instead of 80 K as typically seen for quantum wells.
Progressive Income Taxes as Built-In Stabilizers ∗

This paper studies how progressive income taxes may reduce aggregate volatility by protecting the economy against expectation-driven fluctuations. Our main conclusion is that for sensible parameter values, fully eliminating sunspot and cyclical equilibria requires large progressivity: stabilizing consumption and labor supply movements requires low volatility of after-tax income, which in turn imposes close-to-maximal tax progressivity. We formalize this argument within two benchmark models and show how the power of progressive income taxes as automatic stabilizers depends on the tax base. In the first setting, we show that progressive taxes should be applied to labor income in a heterogeneous agents economy in which wage income mostly finance consumption, so as to rule out local indeterminacy and bifurcations. On the contrary, progressive taxes should be applied to capital income in an OLG economy where consumption comes from savings income. Incidentally, the latter results suggest that capital income taxes may be desirable, when progressive, to make expectation-driven fluctuations less likely.
Probabilistic Evaluation of the Dynamics and Predictability of the Mesoscale Convective Vortex of 10–13 June 2003

Abstract This study examines the dynamics and predictability of the mesoscale convective vortex (MCV) of 10–13 June 2003 through ensemble forecasting. The MCV of interest developed from a preexisting upper-level disturbance over the southwest United States on 10 June and matured as it traveled northeastward. This event is of particular interest given the anomalously strong and long-lived nature of the circulation. An ensemble of 20 forecasts using a 2-way nested mesoscale model with horizontal grid increments of 30 and 10 km are employed to probabilistically evaluate the dynamics and predictability of the MCV. Ensemble mean and spread as well as correlations between different forecast variables at different forecast times are examined. It is shown that small-amplitude large-scale balanced initial perturbations may result in very large ensemble spread, with individual solutions ranging from a very strong MCV to no MCV at all. Despite similar synoptic-scale conditions, the ensemble MCV forecasts vary greatl.
The Arabic dialect of the Karaite Jews of Hit

Les Karaites representent une secte juive qui s'est detachee du courant principal judaique au Moyen-Age. La communaute de Juifs karaites implantee a Hit (une ville situee sur l'Euphrate, environ a 150 km a l'ouest de Bagdad) est une colonie urbaine qui s'est constituee au 10 e siecle. En se basant sur de longues interviews menees avec divers membres de cette communaute, l'A. propose ici une description detaillee du dialecte arabe qu'ils utilisent. Il rend compte plus particulierement de sa phonologie, de sa morphologie, de sa syntaxe et de son vocabulaire et propose en annexe une transcription des interviews avec une traduction anglaise
Novel Technique for Dynamic Analysis of Shear-Frames Based on Energy Balance Equations

In this paper, an efficient computational solution technique based on the energy balance equations is presented for the dynamic analysis of shear-frames, as an example of a multi-degree-of-freedom system. After deriving the dynamic energy balance equations for these systems, a new mathematical solution technique which is called Elimination of Discontinuous Velocities is proposed to solve a set of coupled quadratic algebraic equations. The method will be illustrated for the free vibration of a two-story structure. Subsequently, the damped dynamic response of a three-story shear-frame which is subjected to harmonic loading is considered. Finally the analysis of a three-story shear-building under horizontal earthquake load, as one of the most common problems in Earthquake Engineering, is studied. The results show that this method has acceptable accuracy in comparison with other techniques, but is not only faster compared with modal analysis but also does not require adjusting and calibrating the stability parameter as compared with a method of time integration like the Newmark method.
Estimation of seasonal long-memory parameters

This paper studies seasonal long-memory processes with Gegenbauer-type spectral densities. Estimates for singularity location and long-memory parameters based on general filter transforms are proposed. It is proved that the estimates are almost surely convergent to the true values of parameters. Solutions of the estimation equations are studied and adjusted statistics are proposed. Numerical results are presented to confirm the theoretical findings.
Increasing Foreign Aid for Inclusive Human Development in Africa

In the light of evidence that poverty has been decreasing in all regions of the world with the exception of Africa, where about 45% of countries in sub-Saharan Africa did not achieve the Millennium development goal extreme poverty target, this study assesses whether increasing foreign aid improves inclusive human development. The investigation is on 53 African countries for the period 2005–2012. The empirical analysis is based on (1) the generalised method of moments (GMM) to control for persistence in inclusive human development, simultaneity and time-invariant omitted variables and (2) Instrumental Variable Tobit Regressions to control for simultaneity and the limited range in the dependent variable. The adopted foreign aid variables are: ‘humanitarian assistance’, ‘action on debt’ ‘aid for social infrastructure’, ‘aid to the productive sector’, ‘aid to the multi sector’, ‘aid for economic infrastructure’ and ‘programme assistance’. The following findings are established. From the GMM specifications, there are (1) synergy effects from ‘aid to the productive sector’ and a positive net effect from ‘programme assistance’ and (2) negative net impacts from ‘aid to social infrastructure’ and human assistance, albeit with positive marginal effects. From Instrumental Variable Tobit regressions (1) there is a synergy effect from ‘aid for economic infrastructure’ and (2) there are negative net impacts from ‘aid for social infrastructure’, ‘aid to the productive sector’ and human assistance, albeit with positive marginal effects. Policy implications are discussed.
Effective practising: a research perspective

This paper reviews latest research findings on practising in an attempt to encourage studio music teachers to trial new approaches. Literature shows that expert performers begin learning an instrument at an early age, and sustain and increase their deliberate practice over at least 10 years. A certain amount of practice hours is needed to achieve professional level. Both formal and informal practice are important in the development of skills. Structured practice based on clear teacher instructions gives better results than unstructured practice. Technical work in practice should be directed to solving repertoire problems to initiate transfer of learning. Effective practising strategies include chunking, modelling, mental rehearsal, and hand reversal. Developing metacognitive skills in students will lead to greater self-regulation and effectiveness in practice. Selection of interesting repertoire is vital for maintaining students' motivation. Parental support plays an important role in the early stages of learning, while in the teen years participation in extracurricular musical activities has significant educational and motivational value. Research findings reviewed in this paper have implications for the teaching profession and deserve consideration and trial.
Laboratory Infrared Spectroscopy of Cationic Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon Molecules

Infrared spectroscopy of a variety of interstellar sources shows strong mid-IR emission bands, which are generally attributed to emission from highly vibrationally excited polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon molecules (PAHs) in the neutral and, particularly, cationic states. Over the past decade, various experimental methods have been developed to record the infrared spectra of cationic PAHs in the laboratory. In this paper, we discuss available experimental spectra obtained with matrix isolation spectroscopy (MIS), infrared multiple-photon dissociation of trapped ions (MPD), dissociation spectroscopy of ionic PAH van der Waals clusters (VDW), and infrared emission (IRE). Moreover, we compare these experimental spectra to density functional theory (DFT) calculations. The main body of experimental data relies on MIS and MPD spectra, and we present a detailed comparison of results from these methods, providing linear and multiple-photon absorption data, respectively. The effects of multiple-photon absorption, as encountered in MPD, and multiple-photon emission, occurring in interstellar spectra, are carefully assessed with the use of mathematical models, which include the effects of vibrational anharmonicity. We show that an analysis of the multiple-photon and linear data can provide important information on the anharmonicity parameters, which is otherwise difficult to attain. This is illustrated with a detailed comparison of the linear and multiple-photon absorption spectra of the naphthalene cation, yielding experimental anharmonicity parameters for the IR-active modes in the 500-1700 cm-1 range.
Saving-Growth Nexus in an Oil-Rich Exporting Country: A Case of Nigeria

The study considers the saving-growth nexus in Nigeria using annual data over the period 1970-2013. For this purpose, ARDL bounds testing approach to co-integration and error correction model (ECM) for short run dynamics have been applied. According to empirical analyses, real GDP per capita, labour force, total savings, Oil revenue, Population growth, and Human capital are co-integrated. Compared to other variables, savings and population growth are major determinant of economic growth in the long-run. Results also revealed that the speed of adjustment to restore equilibrium is -0.549 which confirms stable long-run relationship. In short-run, Savings, Oil revenue, Population growth, human capital and labour force appear to play a more important role. Thus, a bi-directional causality exists between savings and economic growth in Nigeria; leading to a feedback effect, such that, both the Keynes and the Solow model are relevant for Nigeria. Thus, policy makers are required to implement policies mix aimed at increasing savings and growth in Nigeria.
How Do Rural Tourism Providers Exploit Opportunities? Insights from Kazakhstan

The study aims to investigate the process of opportunity exploitation in rural tourism sector of Kazakhstan and to address the challenges that rural tourism entrepreneurs face. In this regard the paper discusses the theory of entrepreneurship in rural context. Primary data has been systematically gained through semi-structured interviews based on qualitative research methodology. In particular, the findings revealed a specific category of entrepreneurs demonstrating irrational thinking behavior contradicting to the logical reasons of an exploitation process.