Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Selected Blood Serum Elements in Van (Turkey) Cats

Altunok V. , E. Yazar, N. Yuksek: Selected Blood Serum Elements in Van (Turkey) Cats. Acta Vet Brno 2007, 76: 171-177. The Turkish Van cat originates from eastern Turkey. One of the characteristic features of Van cats is the colour of their eyes, which can be both eyes blue, both eyes amber or one eye blue and the other amber. Serum essential trace, macro and industrial element concentrations of Van cats (n = 47) according to sex, age, hair length and eye colour differences were investigated. Serum aluminium, arsenic, boron, barium, cobalt, chromium, copper, gallium, indium, iron, lead, lithium, manganese, nickel, selenium, silver, sulphur, strontium, vanadium and zinc were measured with ICP-OES plasma optical atomic emission spectrometer. In result, serum aluminium, barium, copper, manganese and strontium levels in male cats were found higher ( p 0.05) found in the age and hair length groups. Our results indicate that several of the blood serum elements of Van cats may be related to their eye colours and sex differences. Van cat, trace, macro-elements, industrial elements, serum The Turkish Van cat originates from eastern Turkey and should not be confused with the Turkish Angora cat. One of the characteristic features of Van cats is the colour of their eyes. They are classified into three groups according to the colour of their eyes: both eyes blue; both eyes amber (yellow and its tones); and one eye blue and the other amber (dischromatopsy). Van cats generally have semi-long (native population may have hair of various length), white (some cats may have coloured parts in their body), silky fur, long body, tiger-like walk and a fox-like tail. Van cat has been introduced to the world by Europeans since 1950s. Body mass of female and male Van cats is generally about 2 900, and 3 600 grams, respectively. These cats love to swim and play with water, and they are the only cat species with this feature. Blue eyed Van cats usually show turquoise blue; amber colour shows many differences in tones. The tones are amber, light amber, yellow and green almond. Although very rare, sometimes brown colour can be seen. Blue eyed cats are classified as blue eyed short, velvet furred cats and blue eyed long silky furred cats (Gure 1993; Odabasioglu and Ates 2000). In the periodic table, 109 elements are listed (Emsley 1998) and 27 are considered essential for the healthy growth of mammals. Of these, 16 are generally accepted trace elements and occur at concentrations of less than 1% in the body. Persistent deficiencies or excesses of essential trace elements cause many biochemical, structural and functional pathologies. Trace elements in the biological systems have mainly four basic functions; they can be components of body fluids, factors in the enzymatic reactions, structural components
THE EFFECT OF THE TYPE OF CONTROLLING SHAREHOLDERS AND CORPORATE GOVERNANCE ON REAL AND ACCRUALS EARNINGS MANAGEMENT

This research investigates the relationship between corporate governance and preference of earnings management selected by Indonesian banking controlling shareholders. This study uses all banks listed on Indonesian Stock Exchange from 2006 until 2011 as samples. The result shows higher real earning managements and lower accruals discretionary in familycontrolled banks and private institution compared to government-controlled banks. Governmentcontrolled banks prefer accrual-based earnings management and real activity-based earnings management through operating cash flow. In the other hand, family-controlled banks and private institutions prefer real earnings management through interest expense and discretionary expenses. Foreign-controlledbanks choose earnings management through discretionary expenses. The implementation of corporate governance in Indonesia banking is high and giving negative impacts both to accrual and real-based earnings management. Concentrated ownership gives positive influences toward the accrual earning management and real earning management through discretionary expenses. The bank size has a positive and significant influence on accrual earnings management, yet its effect is negative and significant on real earning management through interest expenses. The findings contribute to the development of financial accounting literatures because there are small numbers of previous research on accrual discretionary on family-owned companies. Company does not indicate the increase of earnings quality, but it is indeed indicating that controlling family pays more attention on choosing the real activity-based earnings management to cover the expropriation. Accrual discretionary-based earnings management is intra-period reversely thus it cannot cover the permanent expropriation of controlling owners. The research also contributes to the studies of realbased earnings management measurement in banking system which has not been become a concern of research on previous studies.
Buried drip irrigation reduces fungal disease in pistachio orchards

Alternaria late blight, a fungal disease affecting both leaves and fruit, can lower the quality of pistachios and reduce grower profit. High humidity in orchards increases the magnitude and severity of the blight infections. One cause of high orchard humidity is the evaporation of water from the soil surface, which in turn is enhanced by irrigation systems that wet the surface. In this study, we tested the use of buried drip irrigation, which reduces orchard floor wetting, to see how well it controlled the disease. When compared with a traditional flood irrigation system, the buried drip system reduced orchard humidity and dew duration and increased temperature. This significantly reduced leaf symptoms of the disease and fruit infection at harvest. Additionally, more shells split open with the buried drip method, resulting in a higher yield of marketable pistachios.
THE IMPACT OF A PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM ON IN-SERVICE TEACHERS ’ TPACK : A STUDY FROM ESTONIA

Recently there has been a considerable interest in the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework for effective technology integration (Koehler et al., 2013). Researchers have been measuring how effective their professional development efforts have been for the development of teachers’ TPACK (Graham et al., 2009; Guzey & Roehrig, 2009). So far research is based only on short-term courses, so longitudinal studies are needed to examine the TPACK development of teachers across time (Hoffer & Grandgenett, 2012; Koh & Sing, 2011). A two-year in-service training program of educational technology (60 ECTS), based on the TPACK framework, was developed at Tallinn University Haapsalu College to support in-service teachers to effectively embed ICT into their classroom teaching. The first group of teachers (n=20) enrolled in the program in January 2014. This paper reports some preliminary findings of a longitudinal action research, the main aim of which is to evaluate the impact of the in-service training program of educational technology on teachers’ TPACK. The key questions for this research were: how do teachers’ perceptions of their TPACK levels change after participating in the training program for a year; which of the seven knowledge domains of the TPACK framework develop more than others; what is the impact of different knowledge domains on teachers’ TPACK perceptions. The TPACK questionnaire developed by Schmidt et al. (2009) was used to measure in-service teachers’ self-assessments of their TPACK during the first meeting of the training program and at the end of the first academic year. The research results revealed increase in all the domains of the TPACK framework. There was significant development of the teachers’ TK and TPACK, but only limited growth in CK and PK. Strong positive correlations were found between TCK, TPK and TPACK in the post-course survey.
11-28-2018 GONE FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE ? EXPLORING THE DUAL NATURE OF EPHEMERALITY ON SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS

The implementation of functionalities inspired by ephemerality represents a new and promising direction for social media platform providers to ensure active user participation. Social media platforms that already rely on ephemerality show increased activity rates. However, ephemerality represents a whole new principle in the social media context; and its impact on user perceptions and behaviours has hardly been explored. Building on an exploratory research approach, we seek to develop an indepth understanding of how and why perceived ephemerality affects user behaviour. Based on 37 interviews with users of ephemerality-based platforms and drawing on a thematic analysis, we depict the promising nature of ephemerality by revealing its positive impact on user behaviour, such as an increase in users’ willingness to share information. We found that users’ control perceptions help to explain this positive relationship. However, and contrary to existing knowledge, we found that, in specific conditions, perceived ephemerality can negatively affect user behaviour. This adverse effect can be explained by users’ loss perceptions as an underlying cognitive mechanism. From a practical perspective, our findings highlight the need to keep the delicate balance of potential upsides and downsides of ephemerality when implementing functionalities.
A Meta-Analysis of Class Sizes and Ratios in Early Childhood Education Programs: Are Thresholds of Quality Associated With Greater Impacts on Cognitive, Achievement, and Socioemotional Outcomes?

This study uses data from a comprehensive database of U.S. early childhood education program evaluations published between 1960 and 2007 to evaluate the relationship between class size, child–teacher ratio, and program effect sizes for cognitive, achievement, and socioemotional outcomes. Both class size and child–teacher ratio showed nonlinear relationships with cognitive and achievement effect sizes. For child–teacher ratios 7.5:1 and lower, the reduction of this ratio by one child per teacher predicted an effect size of 0.22 standard deviations greater. For class sizes 15 and smaller, one child fewer predicted an effect size of 0.10 standard deviations larger. No discernible relationship was found for larger class sizes and child–teacher ratios. Results were less clear for socioemotional outcomes due to a small sample.
Influence of multi-modality on moving target selection in virtual reality

Abstract Background Owing to recent advances in virtual reality (VR) technologies, effective user interaction with dynamic content in 3D scenes has become a research hotspot. Moving target selection is a basic interactive task in which the user performance research in tasks is significant to user interface design in VR. Different from the existing static target selection studies, the moving target selection in VR is affected by the change in target speed, angle and size, and lack of research on some key factors. Methods This study designs an experimental scenario in which the users play badminton under the condition of VR. By adding seven kinds of modal clues such as vision, audio, haptics, and their combinations, five kinds of moving speed and four kinds of serving angles, and the effect of these factors on the performance and subjective feelings in moving target selection in VR, is studied. Results The results show that the moving speed of the shuttlecock has a significant impact on the user performance. The angle of service has a significant impact on hitting rate, but has no significant impact on the hitting distance. The acquisition of the user performance by the moving target is mainly influenced by vision under the combined modalities; adding additional modalities can improve user performance. Although the hitting distance of the target is increased in the trimodal condition, the hitting rate decreases. Conclusion This study analyses the results of user performance and subjective perception, and then provides suggestions on the combination of modality clues in different scenarios.
Subject Matter Specialists and Organizational Effectiveness of Krishi Vigyan Kendras of Tamil Nadu and Kerala

The study was undertaken with the objective of determining the socio-personal characteristics of Subject Matter Specialists (SMS) of Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK) and their relationship with organizational effectiveness. Altogether 65 SMS’ from 12 KVKs across Tamil Nadu and Kerala were selected. The study has concluded that most of respondents were middle aged with more than half of them being female. Majority of them was married, had work experience of below five years and had attended three to five trainings. Most of the respondents had high level of job satisfaction team-work and one-fourth felt a medium to high job stress. More than half of the respondents felt medium level of work load. There was a positive and significant correlation at one per cent level between job satisfaction / team work and organizational effectiveness of KVKs whereas job stress had a negative and significant correlation at five per cent level. Hence it may be concluded that team work, job satisfaction and job stress play a significant role in improving the organizational effectiveness of KVK. More emphasis must be given for team building enhance the job satisfaction level and reduce the job stress among Subject Matter Specialists of KVKs.
Asymmetric Price Adjustment with Costly Consumer Search: A Laboratory Study

Consumers usually complain that the retail gasoline price responds faster to the increases in wholesale prices than to the decreases. Despite of volumin- ous empirical studies which support such observation for dierent industries, the underlying mechanism that drives this phenomenon is not well under- stood. In this paper, we show that, in contrast to the theoretical prediction, price dispersion, as well as asymmetric price adjustment to cost shocks, arises in experimental Diamond (1971) markets. Analysis of individual behaviour suggests that the observed price dispersion can be explained by the presence of bounded rational play. Sellers'pricing strategies are qualitatively consist- ent with Quantal Response Equilibrium (McKelvey and Palfrey 1995). Under price dispersion, asymmetric price adjustment arises naturally due to dier- ences in learning speeds of buyers after positive and negative cost shocks.
Receivers for the up-link of multiuser MIMO systems with Spatial Modulation

This paper presents the results obtained from the conjunction of two techniques proposed for use in modern communication systems: Spatial Modulation (SM) and decoupled signal detection. Theoretical fundamentals of Spatial Modulation signal detection are covered, in addition to signal decoupling techniques that enable the separation at the base station of signals transmitted from different users, aiming at the simplification and utilization of detection procedures best suited to each user in the network. Performance analyses, in terms of bit error rate, and computational complexity, in terms of the average number of flops per detected symbol vector are carried out for the different associations of decoupling techniques and SM detectors. Keywords—MIMO systems, Up-link, Spatial Modulation, Decoupling signal detection.
Comparison of the Chemical Composition and Antimicrobial Activity of Thymus serpyllum Essential Oils

The chemical composition of the essential oils obtained by hydrodistillation from the aerial parts of Thymus serpyllum and Thymus serpyllum ‘Aureus’ has been investigated by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Forty-seven compounds (99.67% of the total oil) were identified in the essential oil of T. serpyllum. The main components found in the oil were carvacrol (37.49%), -terpinene (10.79%), - caryophyllene (6.51%), p-cymene (6.06%), (E)--ocimene (4.63%) and -bisabolene (4.51%). Similarly, carvacrol (44.93%), -terpinene (10.08%), p-cymene (7.39%) and -caryophyllene (6.77%) dominated in the oil of T. serpyllum ‘Aureus’. A total of forty three compounds were identified in this oil, representing 99.49% of the total oil content. On the basis of the obtained data it was proved that the content of 1-octen-3-ol, eucalyptol, (Z)--ocimene, (E)--ocimene, -terpinene, carvacrol methyl ether, germacrene D and -bisabolene was significantly higher for T. serpyllum while T. serpyllum ‘Aureus’ was characterized by a significantly higher content of 3-octanone, 3-octanol, p-cymene, borneol and carvacrol. The isolated essential oils were evaluated for their antimicrobial activity against nine reference strains (Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, Staphylococcus epidermidis, Streptococcus agalactiae, Enterococcus faecalis, Bacillus cereus, Micrococcus luteus, Proteus vulgaris and Candida albicans) by the microdilution technique. Based on this test, the minimum inhibitory concentrations (MIC) of essential oil were calculated. The volatile oil obtained from T. serpyllum showed the highest antimicrobial activity relative to the strain of E. coli (MIC=0.025 μL/mL) and to the yeast C. albicans (MIC=0.05 μL/mL). Similarly, a significant antimicrobial activity exhibited T. serpyllum ‘Aureus’ essential oil, although the MIC values obtained in that case for E. coli and C. albicans strains were twice as high and were respectively 0.05 μL/mL and 0.1 μL/mL.
‘Posidonia meadows calling’: a ubiquitous fish sound with monitoring potential

In the Mediterranean Sea, the seagrass Posidonia oceanica plays a key ecological role, and is protected by a range of legislation. Standard Posidonia monitoring programmes generally focus on the plant at different spatial and short temporal scales, without considering the organisms dependent on the ecosystem. Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) has a high potential to non‐intrusively monitor biological activities and biodiversity at high temporal resolution, and to assess ecosystem health. This is particularly relevant considering that Posidonia meadows host numerous sound‐producing fish species. In this study, bottom‐moored hydrophones were deployed in nine Western Mediterranean meadows covering a distance of more than 200 km to identify acoustic features potentially relevant to monitor this critical habitat. Among eight identified fish sound categories, we found a single type of sound (that we will refer to as /kwa/) dominating the soundscape of Posidonia meadows over a time span of 7 months. Compared to other low‐frequency sounds, the /kwa/ presented unique characteristics that suggest it is produced by a fish via fast contracting muscles. The /kwa/ was the only sound detectable under anthropogenic noise conditions, and little affected by it. Cluster analyses performed on 13 acoustic features revealed a high degree of call diversity. /kwa/ diversity, combined with its large‐scale (all meadows), long‐term (7 months) occurrence and low noise interference, make the /Kwa/ a promising candidate for PAM of Posidonia meadows. Furthermore, variability in acoustic features suggests a central role of the /kwa/ in communication. Overall, this work sets the basis for establishing the relevance of the /kwa/ in monitoring P. oceanica meadows and developing PAM techniques for this critical habitat.
Combined arsenic and di-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate exposure elicits responses in brain ATPases different from hepatic and renal activities in rats

Arsenic and di-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) are environmentally ubiquitous and epidemiologically important toxic agents that millions of people are currently exposed to, worldwide. Although the adverse impact due to exposure to either arsenic or DEHP are documented, the toxicological effects of co-exposure to these agents are largely unknown. In this study, exposure to these chemicals was investigated for their effects on ATPase activities in the brain, liver and kidney of rats. Male Wistar rats were exposed daily to 100 mg L-1 arsenic via drinking water and to 100 mg DEHP kg-1 body weight in corn oil either individually or concurrently for 30 days. Toxicity was assessed by evaluating changes in body and organ weights, as well as, Na+/K+-, Ca2+-, Mg2+- and total ATPase activities in the brain, liver and kidney. Exposure to either arsenic or DEHP resulted in drastic reduction in activities of the enzymes in the compartments investigated, except in the brain where Na+/K+- and Mg2+- ATPases had their activities significantly increased. Also, DEHP displayed no effect on the total ATPase and Ca2+ ATPase in the kidney and brain, respectively. Interestingly, co-exposure to these toxicants significantly stimulated the activities of all these enzymes in the brain. In this compartment, combined treatment resulted in an additive interaction between the toxicants and a potentiation effect of arsenic on DEHP with regards to the Na+/K+- ATPase activity and Ca2+- ATPase activity, respectively. Our findings demonstrate tissue specific response to combined arsenic and DEHP exposure in rats with the effect on the brain significantly different from other compartments. Key words: Arsenic, di-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, Na+/K+-ATPase, Ca2+-ATPase, co-exposure.
Mixing proportion inference and school-based classification from fisheries acoustics in multi-specific environment

Designing automated and/or computer-assisted tools for the inference of species mixing proportions and species biomass from fisheries acoustics remain challenging issues for the remote sensing of marine ecosystems. Operational systems mainly rely on experts’ interpretation of echograms acquired by fisheries echosounders. Besides the important recent technological advances concerned with the emergence of a new generation of multifrequency and/or multibeam echosounders and aimed at improving both sampling coverage (e.g., 2D+t or 3D+t sampling for multibeam system compared to 1D+t sampling for a standard single beam system) and discrimination power, the definition of methods fully exploiting such data and their correspondence to other sampling means (e.g., trawl catch data) are of key interest for automated and computer-assisted inference and classification issues. With a particular emphasis on multi-specific pelagic environment, this paper addresses these issues and presents novel methodological contributions embedded in a probabilistic setting to solve for school-based classification and mixing proportion estimation in multi-specific environment. Two complementary approaches are investigated: the first one relies on the training of probabilistic school classifiers and the second one on a global inference at the echogram level. Based on a simulation-based framework, a comparative evaluation is carried out. Reported results, both in terms of school classification rate and mixing proportion estimation, demonstrate the relevance of the proposed methods. © 2007 International Council for the Exploration of the Sea. Published by Oxford Journals. All rights reserved.
Effects of Sulfur Compounds on Oreochromis Niloticus Blood Chemistry

Sulphur is a non-metallic chemical element and most public water supplies contain sulfate concentrations of less than 500 mg/L. Sulfuric acid is corrosive and toxic by ingestion, inhalation or contact with skin and eyes. Animals were divided into six groups exposed to zero, 30, 50, 70, 100 and 140 ml / 100 L water of sulfuric acid for 32 days, the study concluded that the increase of sulfuric acid concentration in the water have a clear indication of the negative impact on the metabolism in fish and on various vital elements of the fish's body, under study, and these effects depends on the concentration and duration of exposure.