Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Comparative Study of Energy Contents in Mosquito Vectors of Malaria and Dengue Prevailing in Jodhpur City (Thar Desert) of Rajasthan State, India

Background: Transmission of malaria and dengue in the desert part of India is mainly caused by Anopheles stephensi and Aedes aegypti respectively. The maintenance and transmission of the pathogens that cause malaria and dengue are dependent on the physiology of the mosquito vectors. We aimed to measure the energy contents in the mosquitoes transmitting malaria and dengue in the desert part of the country. Methods: Immature stages of mosquitoes were collected from six different larval habitats situated in Jodhpur City of Rajasthan state, India. The immature stages of both the mosquitoes were collected once in fortnightly from each location. Quantitative estimations of the lipid, glucose, and glycogen of the laboratory-reared and field collected An. stephensi and Ae. aegypti were made by spectrophotometric method. The energy contents of the larvae, pupae, females, and males were estimated in triplicates on six different occasions. Results: The lipid content of laboratory-reared larvae, pupae and female mosquitoes of An. stephensi and Ae. aegypti was found to be lower than their conspecific field-collected specimens. Whereas, the glycogen content in the laboratory-reared larvae, pupae and female mosquitoes of An. stephensi and Ae. aegypti was higher than that of their conspecific field-collected specimens. The glucose content in all the stages of the laboratory-reared An. stephensi was lower than their conspecific field-collected specimens except in few cases. Conclusion: The higher amount of lipid in field-collected mosquitoes may be because of the availability of food in the natural habitat and adaptation of mosquitoes. Mosquitoes living in desert climate are physiologically better equipped to survive in the desert environment.
PURIFICATION OF REFINERY WASTEWATER BY DIFFERENT PERENNIAL GRASSES GROWING IN A FLOATING BED

Four species of perennial grasses [Geophila herbacea O Kumtze (GHK), Lolium perenn CV. Caddieshack (LCC), Lolium perenne Topone (LPT) and Lolium perenne L. (LPL)] were used to remove nutrients and pollutants from refinery wastewater, of which the average concentration of total nitrogen (TN), total phosphorus (TP), chemical oxygen demand (CODMn), total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH) were 15.6 mg L−1, 0.6 mg L−1, 142.8 mg L−1 and 1720 mg L−1, respectively. These perennial grasses had performed extremely well in removing the nutrients and pollutants and were capable of removing up to 60% of TN and 56% of TP from the refinery wastewater during 35 days treatment period, to which plant uptake contributed only 5%–10% and 10%–20%. The removal rates of CODMn and TPH were fluctuating within 52% to 67% and 40% to 55%, respectively. The nutritional value of these perennial grasses as animal feeds such as crude protein, crude fat, crude fiber, crude ash and nitrogen-free extraction after growing in refinery wastewater for 35 days were analyzed and the results suggested that these indicators were superior to national animal feed thresholds, with its nitrites and several heavy metals including zinc (Zn), arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), and lead (Pb) concentration far below the thresholds. We concluded that perennial grass floating-bed system was effective for purifying refinery wastewater during its growing season and harvested perennial grass had great value as animal feeds.
On lens spaces which are isospectral but not isometric

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Carabus (Oreocarabus) guadarramus La Ferté-Sénectère, 1847 (Coleoptera, Carabidae): first instar larva and reflections on its biology and chorology

Se proporciona, por primera vez, informacion sobre la morfologia larvaria de Carabus (Oreocarabus) guadarramus La Ferte–Senectere, 1847, una especie endemica de la peninsula Iberica, acompanada de una detallada iconografia. Se destacan tres caracteres diagnosticos especialmente relevantes con el objetivo de proporcionar una herramienta util y practica para facilitar el reconocimiento del primer estadio larvario de esta especie con respecto a otra que es filogeneticamente muy proxima y habita en sintopia: Carabus (Oreocarabus) ghilianii La Ferte–Senectere, 1847, especie protegida y endemica del Sistema Central. Ademas, se aportan mapas detallados con las UTM de 10 x 10 km de donde se conoce cada especie, con el fin de poner de manifiesto su diferente corologia. Se discuten algunas de las posibles causas ecologicas que podrian condicionar su actual distribucion.
Integrating ICT and Learning Study in Teaching Conversion of Travel Graphs

This study reports on the use of ICT in Cycle Three of a Learning Study. The purpose is to enhance students’ understanding on the topic Conversion of Travel Graphs with the integration of ICT in Learning Study and to shift teachers away from the traditional methods of teaching to a more systematic and meaningful learning through the work of collaboration between colleagues. The research lessons, the tests and the rubric were all planned with the collaboration of teachers involved in this Learning Study. A class of Year 9 students in one secondary school in Brunei Darussalam participated in the intervention and sat for both pre-test and post-test. Analysis of the scores, comparing the results, observations of research lessons and student interview were among the methods used in this study. From the analyses, it was found that the integration of ICT in Learning Study had an impact to the students’ performance. Misconceptions were identified and they are ‘Common problems’, ‘Coordinates confusion’, ‘Formula dependency’, ‘Gradient-Area confusion’, ‘Keywords misinterpretation’ and ‘Misleading graphical feature’. Teachers had given positive views on Learning Study. The integration of ICT in Learning Study was also seen as a possible pedagogical tool in teaching.
The Swift X-ray Telescope Cluster Survey: data reduction and cluster catalog for the GRB fields

(abridged) We present a new sample of X-ray selected galaxy groups and clusters serendipitously observed with Swift and the X-ray Telescope (XRT). We searched the XRT archive for extended sources among 336 GRB fields with galactic latitude |b|>20{\deg}. Our selection algorithm yields a flux-limited sample of 72 X-ray groups and clusters with a well defined selection function and negligible contamination. The sky coverage of the survey goes from the total 40 deg^2 to 1 deg^2 at a flux limit of 10^-14 erg/s/cm^-2 (0.5-2 keV). Here we describe the XRT data processing, the statistical calibration of the survey, and the catalog of detected cluster candidates. All the X-ray sources are detected in the Swift-XRT soft (0.5-2 keV) band. A size parameter defined as the half power radius (HPR) measured inside a box of 45x45 arcsec, is assigned to each source. We select extended sources by applying a threshold on the Half Power Radius and we calibrate its dependence on the measured net counts and on the image background with extensive simulations in order to identify all the sources with ~99% probability of being extended. We compute the logN-logS of our sample, finding very good agreement with previous deep cluster surveys. A cross correlation with published X-ray catalogs shows that only 9 sources were already detected, none of them as extended. Therefore, ~90% of our sources are new X-ray detections. We also cross correlated our sources with optical catalogs, finding 20 previously identified clusters. Overall, about ~65% of our sources are new detections. The XRT follow-up observation of GRBs is providing an excellent serendipitous survey for groups and clusters of galaxies, mainly thanks to the low background of XRT and its constant angular resolution across the field of view. About 33% of the sample has spectroscopic or photometric redshifts from public optical surveys.
The impact of T&V extension in Africa : the experience of Kenya and Burkina Faso

Agricultural extension programs based on the Training and Visit (T&V) system are operating in some thirty-one Sub-Saharan African countries. Evidence from Kenya and Burkina Faso shows that T&V management enhance the effectiveness of extension and that such programs support agricultural growth and produce high returns on investments. The data indicate that areas served by extension have higher yields and that within these areas the highest yields are achieved by farmers who participate directly in extension activities. As a result, extension helps to close the gap between die yields attainable with existing technologies and those actually realized by farmers. Closing this gap improves agricultural productivity in the short run, but long-term increases in output in Sub-Saharan Africa will depend on the development of improved technologies that are relevant to local conditions.
Metalinguistic awareness in children with differing language learning experience

Theoretical research concerned with the notion of second language (L2) learning difficulty has resulted in specific criteria that can be used to predict the learning difficulty of different languages in terms of both explicit and implicit knowledge. The characteristics of the constructed language Esperanto suggest that this language has lower explicit and implicit learning difficulty than other languages. It may therefore be a suitable ‘starter language’ for child L2 learning in the classroom. Specifically, we propose that Esperanto may facilitate the development of metalinguistic awareness and, as a consequence, boost children’s budding capacity for explicit learning. This would be particularly advantageous in the minimal-input setting of the average foreign language classroom. We present findings from an empirical study which compared 11 to 12-year-old English-speaking children who had learned Esperanto and a European L2 (N = 35) with children who had learned various combinations of European and non-European L2s (N = 168) in terms of their performance on a measure of metalinguistic awareness. No significant differences in overall level of metalinguistic awareness were identified, but the Esperanto group significantly outperformed the comparison group on one of the eleven metalinguistic tasks included in the measure. Moreover, the Esperanto group displayed a more homogeneous performance than the other groups of children. This suggests that learning Esperanto may have a lasting levelling effect, reducing differences between children with varying metalinguistic abilities.
New insights into saline water evaporation from porous media: Complex interaction between evaporation rates, precipitation, and surface temperature

Understanding salt transport and deposition patterns during evaporation from porous media is important in many engineering and hydrological processes such as soil salinization, ecosystem functioning, and land‐atmosphere interaction. As evaporation proceeds, salt concentration increases until it exceeds solubility limits, locally, and crystals precipitate. The interplay between transport processes, crystallization, and evaporation influences where crystallization occurs. During early stages, the precipitated salt creates an evolving porous structure affecting the evaporation kinetics. We conducted a comprehensive series of experiments to investigate how the salt concentration and precipitation influence evaporation dynamics. Our results illustrate the contribution of the evolving salt crust to the evaporative mass losses. High‐resolution thermal imaging enabled us to investigate the complex temperature dynamics at the surface of precipitated salt, providing further confirmation of salt crust contribution to the evaporation. We identify different phases of saline water evaporation from porous media with the corresponding dominant mechanisms in each phase and extend the physical understanding of such processes.
Tropism based analysis of Chlamydia trachomatis chromosome

Microbes possess a multiplicity of virulence factors that confer them the ability to specifically infect distinct biological niches. Contrarily to what is known for other bacteria, for the obligate intracellular human pathogen Chlamydia trachomatis, the molecular basis underlying serovars’ tissue specificity is scarce. We scrutinized all its ~900 genes at both phylogenetic and evolutionary levels to assess their putative association with cellappetence and ecological success. Only ~1% of the genes showed a phylogenetic segregation of the three disease groups (strains infecting the ocular conjunctiva, epithelial-genitalia and lymph nodes). About 80% of the genes segregate the lymphogranuloma venereum (LGV) strains, and 28% of all genes, including the majority of T3SS effectors and inclusion membrane proteins, cluster them exclusively. Half of the genes are involved in strain segregation of the most prevalent genital serovars, but only 61 proteins display this restricted mutational pattern. Notably, the latter are co-segregated with the LGV strains by ~20% of the genes. Some putative pseudogenes were identified as likely expendable for a particular phenotype. About 3.5% of the genes revealed a significant overrepresentation of nonsynonymous mutations, where the majority encode proteins that directly interact with the host. Overall, this in silico prediction of C. trachomatis phenotype-associated genes may constitute an important database, opening avenues for future studies aiming the development of disease-specific prophylaxis.
Optimal precoder designs for sum rate maximization in MIMO multiuser multicells

This paper is concerned with the joint linear precoder design problem for the multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) heterogeneous networks (HetNets) in which multiple femto base stations (FBSs) coexist with a macro base station (MBS). To tackle the inter-user interference in the macrocell, we exploit the blockdiagonalization scheme and then use the convex optimization to maximize the sum rate of the macrocell. The FBS transmission strategy is to maximize the sum-rate of femtocells subject to the transmitted power constraints per FBS and restrictions on the cross-tier interference to macro-users (MUs). Such a design problem is typically nonconvex, and, thus, challenging to find the FBS precoders. We reformulate the design problem of the FBS precoders as a d.c. (difference of convex functions) programming, and develop an efficient iterative algorithm to obtain the optimal precoders. Numerical simulation results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the other methods in terms of the total sum-rate of the HetNet.
Growth in a Globalised Economy: The Effects of Capital Taxes and Tax Competition

This contribution provides evidence for the hypothesis that trade increases growth through its curbing effect on capital taxes. The analysed mechanism includes two different steps and considers the critical points of both the theoretical and empirical studies in this field. In particular, the estimation problems of omitted variables and parameter heterogeneity are addressed. Using panel data for a sample of 12 OECD countries in the time period 1967-1996, it is shown that the theoretical predictions can be corroborated by empirical results.
Supply of crab larvae to an estuary in the eastern Atlantic upwelling system exhibits predictable and haphazard variation at different temporal scales

We measured variability in daily supply levels of shore crab megalopae in an estuary on the northwest Portuguese coast, Ria de Aveiro, located in the eastern Atlantic upwelling system. The 5 yr study covered the shore crab larval season (generally February to July) in 2002 and from 2006 to 2009. We addressed the possible effects of wind- and tide-driven circulation, number of flood hours during darkness, and chlorophyll a concentration in coastal waters on larval supply variation. Mega- lopae supply measured over the years was an episodic phenomenon, and observations showed some predictable and haphazard patterns. In some episodes, supply was highest around spring tides and was enhanced by southerly winds, as predicted, although not all episodes fitted this pattern. The rela- tionships between supply levels and number of flood hours during darkness or chlorophyll a concen- tration were ambiguous throughout the time series, although in some years increased levels of sup- ply were positively correlated with number of flood hours during the night. The analysis of multiple years conducted in this study showed that shore crab megalopae supply patterns to Ria de Aveiro are more variable than previously assumed, suggesting the participation of several delivery mechanisms that vary within and among years. However, a proportion of supply variation exists that cannot be explained by the mechanisms we propose.
The economic assessment of education: Social Efficiency or Social Reconstruction?

Educational policy is a very complex process: the all too familiar assertion “we should invest more in education” is really of little help. Investment in education, something difficult to reject, competes however with many other public expenditures also highly beneficial from a social point of view. Even within the educational sector itself, more precision is required regarding the allocation of scarce economic resources. The social decision maker would surely appreciate a somewhat more precise recommendation: investing in primary education, or in doctorate studies? Reducing the number of students in the classroom? Increasing teacher’s salaries? In this sense, some information regarding the impact on social welfare not only of different public investment alternatives, but also of different policy models in the education sector would be highly desirable. Furthermore, as the final impact of these expenditures depends to a great extent on the positive reaction of the recipients of the investment (schools, teachers, students), the establishment of some link between expenditure and results would also be welcome. It is in this context where economic analysis may provide some very useful tools. On the one hand, a measuring rod of the relative social profitability of different education investment and policy alternatives: their Internal Rate of Return. A simple quantitative measure that allows comparing the social benefits associated to different education expenditure, as well as in relation with public investment in other sectors. On the other hand, an analysis of the better ways to link investment with results, based on the study of the incentives of the agents involved. Accountability seems to be the issue here. Yet, and in order to ascertain the positive impact of different education measures, as well as whether the recipients are reacting as expected, the analyst needs to know very precisely which are the social objectives pursued. Without knowing the final destination one does not know whether we are approaching it, or just the opposite. In the case of both accountability and the Internal Rate of Return methodology this final social objective is related with economic growth. Being so, the contribution of economic analysis to the assessment of education alternatives fits very well with the Social Efficiency ideology regarding the education process. Yet, this may be somewhat short-sighted: surely, education efforts may have some other objectives as well. Not to mention the fact that the way this contribution to economic growth is ascertained may also be flawed.
A Slicing Tree Representation and QCP-Model-Based Heuristic Algorithm for the Unequal-Area Block Facility Layout Problem

The facility layout problem is a typical combinational optimization problem. In this research, a slicing tree representation and a quadratically constrained program model are combined with harmony search to develop a heuristic method for solving the unequal-area block layout problem. Because of characteristics of slicing tree structure, we propose a regional structure of harmony memory to memorize facility layout solutions and two kinds of harmony improvisation to enhance global search ability of the proposed heuristic method. The proposed harmony search based heuristic is tested on 10 well-known unequal-area facility layout problems from the literature. The results are compared with the previously best-known solutions obtained by genetic algorithm, tabu search, and ant system as well as exact methods. For problems O7, O9, vC10Ra, M11*, and Nug12, new best solutions are found. For other problems, the proposed approach can find solutions that are very similar to previous best-known solutions.
Inside Debt and Corporate Investment

This paper examines how and when CEO debt-like compensation (i.e., “inside debt”) affects debt contracting terms and corporate investment levels. We find a negative relation between inside debt and investment for firms with low cash constraints, but this relationship reverses for constrained firms. Our results are most pronounced for firms nearer to default, suggesting inside debt has a greater effect on investment when agency costs of debt are large. Our findings contribute to the literature on CEO incentives and corporate investment policy, and provide a richer understanding of the role of debt-like compensation in reducing agency costs.
A comparative analysis of the temperature behavior and multiple tropopause events derived from GPS, radiosonde and reanalysis datasets over Argentina, as an example of Southern mid latitudes.

Recent research on climatologies for temperature structure and tropopause parameters in the tropics, based on radiosonde, satellites data and model reanalysis show good agreement between radiosonde (RS) and data derived from remote sounding, such as GPS Radio Occultation (GPS RO), and reanalysis. The agreement is remarkably good over and immediately near the tropics. However, in the southern extra tropical region, especially at medium and high latitudes, there are often considerable differences in the temperature profiles as latitudes increases, which depends on the variability of location and evolution of the tropopause. The purpose of this work is to compare the behaviour of temperature profiles derived from GPS RO, daily and monthly ERA 40 reanalysis means and nearby radiosonde measurements in the southern extra tropical region. Argentina serves as an example of latitudes between 30 - 60 S. The data covers 2001-2002 and analyses parameters such as temperature, pressure, and height derived rom radiosonde and satellite data in order to detect single and multiple tropopause events. The results show that in most cases are GPS RO more closely related to RS measurements than to reanalysis profiles, both for daily values, monthly means and their standard deviations. However, GPS RO deviations increase with respect to RS for heights above the tropopause, i.e., in the stratosphere, and decrease into the troposphere. Radiosonde and GPS appear to be in good agreement for tropopause temperatures and heights estimates when a single tropopause (LRT1) is considered, but with decreasing agreement as latitudes increase. Furthermore, while single and double tropopause events can be detected in RS observations this is less common for the GPS RO retrievals.
STABILITY ANALYSIS OF A MODIFIED PSK HOMODYNE OPTICAL RECEIVER

In this paper, we present the stability analysis of a modified PSK homodyne optical receiver in the presence of a loop delay. This paper also reports the impact of damping factor and loop gain on the phase margin of the receiver and establishes a relationship between damping factor and phase control parameter to achieve practical phase margin on the order of 45o to 60o. The performance of this receiver is compared to that of conventational homodyne optical receiver and a substantially improved performance is predicted.