Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A simple mechanistic model of seed dispersal, predation and plant establishment: Janzen‐Connell and beyond

1 Although, in nature, seed dispersal usually declines with distance from the source, seedling establishment patterns are highly variable. An increase in seed survival can lead to either hump‐shaped (Janzen‐Connell (J‐C) pattern) or declining (Hubbell pattern) establishment with distance from seed source, but declining establishment can also be generated if survival decreases with distance (McCanny pattern). Pathogens and seed predators are considered to be major mortality agents structuring recruitment patterns, but it is unclear how well predation alone can explain variation in these patterns. 2 We introduce a simple mechanistic model showing that distance and density‐dependent seed predation can generate all of the observed recruitment patterns. Our approach provides the first mathematical reconstruction of conceptual models previously considered to be based on contrasting underlying mechanisms. Three easily measurable quantities (the proportion of seeds escaping predation at the source, and the mean distance from the source of dispersed seeds and of predators’ activity) can be used to test for consistency with the J‐C pattern. The association between recruitment patterns and plant (dispersal) and animal (predation) characteristics is robust with respect to parameter values and various functional forms. 3 The model shows that the J‐C pattern can occur only if the mean distance over which predators are active is lower than that over which seeds are dispersed, corresponding to a system with host‐specific, or immobile, seed predators (often invertebrates) that are restricted to areas of high seed density near adult plants, and therefore selecting for longer dispersal distances of seeds. 4 The Hubbell pattern is generated by the model when dispersal and predation distances are of equivalent magnitudes. The McCanny pattern emerges if more generalized, or more mobile, seed predators (often vertebrates) are attracted to the adult trees but also tend to forage farther away, thereby selecting for short dispersal distances that generate high densities needed to satiate seed predators. 5 The model also predicts that the total number of seeds surviving predation is lowest at intermediate distances, suggesting that distance‐dependent predation promotes either short or long dispersal distances, or both (dimorphism).
Evaluation of bone marrow in cases of pancytopenia in a tertiary care hospital

Background: A spectrum of primary and secondary disorders that affect the bone marrow may manifestwith pancytopenia. This study was carried out to identify the various causes of pancytopenia in patients attending a tertiary care hospital in Lalitpur, Nepal. Materials and Methods: A descriptive study of 83 cases of pancytopenia was carried out in the Department of Pathology, Patan Academy of Health Sciences, Lalitpur, Nepal over a two year period from August 2010 to July 2012. Results: Eighty three patients underwent bone marrow examination. Mean age of the patients was 34 years (range: 4 to 75 years). Maximum number of patients (31.33%) was seen in the age group of 16 - 30 years. The commonest cause of pancytopenia was megaloblastic anemia which was seen in 34.94% (29/83) cases followed by aplastic anemia and hematological malignancies in 31.32% (26/83) and 14.46% (12/83) cases, respectively. Conclusion: This study concluded that megaloblastic anemia and aplastic anemia were the two most common causes of pancytopenia. Bone marrow aspiration is an established diagnostic modality in the evaluation of pancytopenia. Journal of Pathology of Nepal (2015) Vol. 5, 691 - 695
From Return-Oriented to Integration- Related Transnationalisation: Turkish Migrants in Germany

This article examines the relationship between transnational and integration-related practices of Turkish migrants in Germany on the basis of empirical data from the TRANS-NET project. The authors discuss well-known existing concepts of migrant incorporation (assimilation, multiculturalism, transnationalisation) and their relationships, and use their own research results to argue for a combination of these approaches. The analysis of qualitative interviews reveals a remarkable shift from return-oriented to integration-related transnationalisation among Turkish migrants in Germany, a shift that is apparently connected to different political and institutional opportunity structures.
Acquisition of Noun Plurals among Early Sequential Russian-Hebrew Speaking Bilinguals: A Longitudinal Multiple Case Study

The focus of the present study was the trajectory of the acquisition of noun pluralization in Hebrew as a window into the development of inflectional morphology among early sequential Russian-Hebrew speaking bilinguals. Our participants were six early sequential bilingual children between 36 and 42 months of age at the beginning of the study, who acquired Russian (L1) at home and at preschool within a ‘first language first approach’ and whose age at the onset of their acquisition of Hebrew (L2) was about 3 years. We investigated both qualitative and quantitative features of noun pluralization in Hebrew (L2) acquisition in order to determine (1) whether early sequential bilingual children are delayed or accelerated in this domain; (2) whether they show similar or different patterns of errors in comparison to the L1 children; and (3) at what age sequential bilingual children acquire regular versus irregular noun plural forms compared with the L1 children. We relied on a multi-faceted longitudinal analysis of noun pluralization, examining both correct and incorrect production- in structured elicitations as well as in (semi-) spontaneous interactions. Comparing our data to those collected for Hebrew L1 speakers, the results for monolinguals and early sequential bilinguals show a striking similarity with respect to the development of pluralization. These findings suggest that the accelerated rate of ESBs’ L2 pluralization mechanism provides evidence of the linguistic maturation hypothesis.
Validation of the Fung double tube to enumerate Clostridium perfringens from the intestinal contents of broiler chickens raised on different diets

Clostridium perfringens causes necrotic enteritis (NE), resulting in decreased feed efficiency and increased mortality, costing the poultry industry USD 2 billion a year worldwide. The objective of the first trial was to validate the Fung Double Tube (FDT) to detect and enumerate C. perfringens in chicken intestines. Two methods (FDT and petri plates) and three media (Shahidi Ferguson Perfringens [SFP] with egg supplement, polymyxin B [p], and kanamycin [k; E]; SFP with p and k [P]; and SFP with cycloserine [C]) were arranged in a 2 x 3 factorial, resulting in six treatments. The FDT with medium C (5.35 log CFU/g) had significantly (P<0.05) higher C. perfringens counts than any other media/method combination. The objective of the second and third trials was to determine the effect of diet type on the population of C. perfringens in broiler intestines using the FDT. Trial 2 tested: corn-soybean meal (SBM), lowcrude protein (19.8%)/high synthetic amino acids (SAA), and barley (56%)-fishmeal (4%; BF). Diets in Trial 3 included: corn-SBM, barley (7.46%), fishmeal (4%), and BF. Diets in Trial 2 contained an antibiotic and a coccidiostat; diets in Trial 3 did not. After 21 days, birds in Trial 2 fed BF had significantly higher (P<0.05) counts (5.96 log CFU/g) of C. perfringens, as compared to all other diets. Both, corn-SBM and SAA diets resulted in 3.89 log CFU/g. In Trial 3, birds fed the corn-SBM diet (2.7 log CFU/g) had significantly lower (P<0.05) counts than broilers fed BF (4.15 log CFU/g). When broilers were fed fishmeal (3.583 log CFU/g) and barley (3.577 log CFU/g) separately, C. perfringens counts were numerically higher compared to the corn-SBM diet, but numerically lower than birds fed BF. Barley and fishmeal inclusion increased the incidence of C. perfringens, and their combination resulted in a cumulative effect. The FDT method is able to detect C. perfringens at higher levels than the conventional petri plate method (P<0.001) and it also proved to be an effective method to detect differences in C. perfringens counts from the intestines of chickens fed different diet.
Truncated Solutions of Painlevé Equation PV

We obtain convergent representations (as Borel summed transseries) for the five one-parameter families of truncated solutions of the fifth Painlev\'e equation with nonzero parameters, valid in half planes, for large independent variable. We also find the position of the first array of poles, bordering the region of analyticity. For a special value of this parameter they represent tri-truncated solutions, analytic in almost the full complex plane, for large independent variable. A brief historical note, and references on truncated solutions of the other Painlev\'e equations are also included.
CORROSION OF HIGH-DENSITY SINTERED TUNGSTEN ALLOYS

The corrosion behaviour of tungsten and high-density tungsten alloys (W a 90 weight %) has been examined electrochemically through anodic polarization measurements, instantaneous corrosion rate measurements, galvanic coupling, and surface potential mapping. In the anodic polarization tests, pure tungsten and the four alloys studied underwent transitions from an active state to a state where any further increase in potential produced no further increase in current. The presence of chloride ions increased corrosion rates. Predictions of likely trends in corrosion rates from the above electrochemical tests were not in complete agreement with those obtained by the long-term immersion tests. Similarly, a consistent prediction of the likely nature of the corrosion products that would result from long-term immersion testing was not obtained from the above studies. Predictions about which alloys would be susceptible to a crevice effect were in agreement with the immersion testing results, namely those alloys not containing Cu would be the most susceptible. A • k Some insight into the nature of the corrosion mechanism is afforded by the work on galvanic coupling and surface potential mapping: this supported the view that galvanic corrosion plays a part in the corrosion process. Approved for Public Release C Commonwealth of Australia POSTAL ADDRESS: Director, Materials Research Laboratory P.O. Box 50, Ascot Vale, Victoria 3032, Australia
Anomalous helical edge states in a non-Hermitian Chern insulator

A non-Hermitian extension of a Chern insulator and its bulk-boundary correspondence are investigated. It is shown that in addition to the robust chiral edge states that reflect the nontrivial topology of the bulk (nonzero Chern number), anomalous helical edge states localized only at one edge can appear, which are unique to the non-Hermitian Chern insulator.
Nonuniform Staggered Prices and Output Persistence

Staggered prices are a fundamental building block of New Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models. In the standard model, prices are uniformly staggered but recent empirical evidence suggest that deviations from uniform staggering are common, This paper analyzes how synchronization of price changes affects the response to monetary policy shocks. I find that even large deviations from uniform staggering have small effects on the response in output. Aggregate dynamics in a model of uniform staggering may serve well as an approximation to a more complicated model with some degree of synchronization in price setting.
PSYCHOLOGICAL AND BIOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF TIME PREFERENCE

This paper considers the relationship between the economic concept of time preference and relevant concepts from psychology and biology. Using novel data from a time diary study conducted in Ireland that combined detailed psychometric testing with medical testing and real-time bio-tracking, we examine the extent to which individual differences in financial discounting are related to underlying biological and psychological differences. The paper finds that financial discounting is related to a range of psychological variables including consideration of future consequences, self-control, conscientiousness, extraversion, and experiential avoidance, as well as being predicted by heart rate variability and blood pressure. (JEL: D01, D9, C81) (c) 2009 by the European Economic Association.
Commuting traces of biadditive mappings, commutativity-preserving mappings and Lie mappings

Biadditive mappings B: R × R → R where R is a prime ring with certain additional properties, satisfying B(x, x)x = xB(x, x) for all x ∈ R, are characterized. As an application we determine the structures of commutativity-preserving mappings, Lie isomorphisms, and Lie derivations of certain prime rings
Genetic diversity among cultivated and wild lentils for iron, zinc, copper, calcium and magnesium concentrations

Information on the seed mineral concentration of cultivated and wild lentils is limited. The objective of this study was to determine the concentrations of iron (Fe), zinc (Zn), calcium (Ca), copper (Cu), and magnesium (Mg) in the seeds of 26 lentil genotypes representing 4 species and 3 subspecies of Lens. Plants were grown in a greenhouse using a completely randomized design with three replicates (n=78). Seed mineral concentrations were measured using acid digestion followed by inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectroscopy. Concentrations of Fe, Zn, Ca, Cu, and Mg in seeds varied from 26-92, 17-51, 97-536, 3-12 and 272-892 mg kg -1 , respectively, among the Lens culinaris genotypes. Mineral concentrations for L. lamottei (Fe=64-80, Zn=26-40, Ca=311-434, Cu=2-6, Mg=754-839 mg kg -1 ), L. nigricans (60-70, 33-39, 508-590, 3-4, 445-738 mg kg -1 ) and L. ervoides (65, 37, 339, 6, 638 mg kg -1 ) were within the range of Lens culinaris genotypes. No wild species was superior to cultivated ones for all micronutrients. A larger set of germplasm should be evaluated in future experiments to identify additional genetic variation in lentil for these micronutrients.
No-slip billiards in dimension two

We investigate the dynamics of no-slip billiards, a model in which small rotating disks may exchange linear and angular momentum at collisions with the boundary. We give new results on periodicity and boundedness of orbits which suggest that a class of billiards (including all polygons) is not ergodic. Computer generated phase portraits demonstrate non-ergodic features, suggesting chaotic no-slip billiards cannot readily be constructed using the common techniques for generating chaos in standard billiards.
Intergenerational Persistence of Health in the U.S.: Do Immigrants Get Healthier as They Assimilate?

It is well known that a substantial part of income and education is passed on from parents to children, generating substantial persistence in socio-economic status across generations. In this paper, we examine whether another form of human capital, health, is also largely transmitted from generation to generation, contributing to limited socio-economic mobility. Using data from the NLSY, we first present new evidence on intergenerational transmission of health outcomes in the U.S., including weight, height, the body mass index (BMI), asthma and depression for both natives and immigrants. We show that both native and immigrant children inherit a prominent fraction of their health status from their parents, and that, on average, immigrants experience higher persistence than natives in weight and BMI. We also find that mothers’ education decreases children’s weight and BMI for natives, while single motherhood increases weight and BMI for both native and immigrant children. Finally, we find that the longer immigrants remain in the U.S., the less intergenerational persistence there is and the more immigrants look like native children. Unfortunately, the more generations immigrant families remain in the U.S., the more children of immigrants resemble natives’ higher weights, higher BMI and increased propensity to suffer from asthma.
Subjects in children’s object relatives in Italian

We first review the results from a number of experiments with Italian children and adults presented in previous work (Belletti and Contemori 2010, Contemori and Belletti, submitted), investigating the production of Subject (SRs) and Object relative clauses (ORs). We confirm passive as the preferred strategy adopted by children from age 5 when ORs are elicited in the production experiments. We then investigate further aspects of children's results that we did not previously address in detail. First, we analyse the ORs produced by children, focusing on the nature (overt/null) and position (pre/post-verbal) of the subject within the relative clause. Furthermore, we explore the emergence of the passive and the decrease of ORs with post-verbal subjects observed at age 5 as two related phenomena. Finally, we present results from a new preference production task which indicate that post-verbal subjects are preferably adopted by children in a felicitous way given the discourse pragmatics of the design. Null subjects are also produced in an adequate way. In the conditions adopted, in which the subject of the relative clause is a 1 or a 3 person pronominal (active), ORs appear to be relatively easily produced by both younger and older children. We discuss the comparison of these new results with the previous ones and their relevance for the adopted featural approach to locality along the lines of Friedmann et al. (2009).
Global modeling of withdrawal, allocation and consumptive use of surface water and groundwater resources

Abstract. To sustain growing food demand and increasing standard of living, global water withdrawal and consumptive water use have been increasing rapidly. To analyze the human perturbation on water resources consistently over large scales, a number of macro-scale hydrological models (MHMs) have been developed in recent decades. However, few models consider the interaction between terrestrial water fluxes, and human activities and associated water use, and even fewer models distinguish water use from surface water and groundwater resources. Here, we couple a global water demand model with a global hydrological model and dynamically simulate daily water withdrawal and consumptive water use over the period 1979–2010, using two re-analysis products: ERA-Interim and MERRA. We explicitly take into account the mutual feedback between supply and demand, and implement a newly developed water allocation scheme to distinguish surface water and groundwater use. Moreover, we include a new irrigation scheme, which works dynamically with a daily surface and soil water balance, and incorporate the newly available extensive Global Reservoir and Dams data set (GRanD). Simulated surface water and groundwater withdrawals generally show good agreement with reported national and subnational statistics. The results show a consistent increase in both surface water and groundwater use worldwide, with a more rapid increase in groundwater use since the 1990s. Human impacts on terrestrial water storage (TWS) signals are evident, altering the seasonal and interannual variability. This alteration is particularly large over heavily regulated basins such as the Colorado and the Columbia, and over the major irrigated basins such as the Mississippi, the Indus, and the Ganges. Including human water use and associated reservoir operations generally improves the correlation of simulated TWS anomalies with those of the GRACE observations.
Lexical Range and Communicative Competence of Learners in Bilingual Schools in Lower Austria.

This article discusses the impact of lexical range on the learnersΓCO ability to communicate in English when taught as a foreign language in bilingual schools, and emphasizes the importance of explicit vocabulary instruction. ┬a It draws on data from classroom observation, lexis-retrieval tasks, written and spoken performance in bilingual (German-English) and regular school classes at grades 5-8 in Austrian secondary schools. ┬a Results suggest that a wider lexical range results in better communicative competence and fluency and that breakdown of communication in spoken or written performance is more frequently caused by insufficient vocabulary rather than by lack of control or grammatical problems. ┬a┬aConsequently, insights from cognitive linguistics, the Lexical Approach, and Lexical Priming are discussed to justify the concept of vocabulary instruction in contextualized units. Taking the scarceness of theoretical and practical concepts into consideration, the need for research on the explicit instruction of vocabulary and metacognitive strategies is fleshed out.
The methanesulfonic acid (MSA) record in a Svalbard ice core

Abstract Svalbard ice cores have not yet been fully exploited for studies of climate and environmental conditions. In one recently drilled ice core from Lomonosovfonna, we have studied the methanesulfonic acid (MSA) records in relation to temperature and sea ice. Under the present climatic conditions, MSA appears to be negatively correlated with the sea-ice conditions in the Barents Sea, and positively correlated with the instrumental temperature record from Svalbard. However, prior to about 1920 the MSA concentrations were about twice as high, despite the more extensive sea-ice coverage. After exploring different possibilities, we suggest that MSA concentrations were higher in the 19th century than in the 20th century due to increased primary production, in response to increased vertical stability of the sea surface layers, caused by increased meltwater production from the more extensive sea-ice cover. Thus, the MSA record from Lomonosovfonna probably both is a measure of the regional sea-ice variability on the multi-decadal scale and reflects locally favorable conditions for marine biogenic dimethyl sulfide (DMS) production on the sub-decadal scale.
Conversational User Interfaces for Online Shops? A Categorization of Use Cases

How do conversational user interfaces for online shops via messaging services and voice assistants influence customers’ satisfaction? Which use cases are attractive from a customer’s view point? Which use cases are must-be and for which customer segments? The answer to these questions is looked for in this paper. A Segmented Kano perspective is used to derive use case groups and related customer segments simultaneously. The paper starts with an overview on conversational commerce and on chatbots for this purpose. Then, the research method and the use case development is described. Two representative surveys with 2,165 customers of a major German online fashion retailer evaluating 13 messaging service and 2,025 customers evaluating 13 voice assistant use cases were conducted and analyzed. The focus was on the intention to use conversational user interfaces for online shops and the influence on customer satisfaction
AMMI, GGE biplots and regression analysis to comprehend the G x E interaction in multi-environment barley trials

The present study was carried out to ascertain the stable genotypes, environments discrimination and genotype by environment crossovers using different stability models. In AMMI ANOVA, genotype x location interaction implied substantial variation (17.61%) and IPCA1 and IPCA2 altogether captured 65.72% of the interaction mean squares, whereas, in GGE model, PC1 and PC2 captured 36.34% and 15.74% variation, respectively. Four genotypes viz., BH987, DWRB126, DWRB128 and RD2891and two checks, namely, DWRUB52 and DWRB92 were found stable as per GGE AEC view and AMMI biplot. The genotypes, DWRB126 and RD2891 and check DWRB92 were also observed as consistent performers by regression model. The test environments at Bawal, Navgaon and Hisar were observed representative with better discriminating ability. GGE biplot model was found suitable for polygon, AEC view and test environments evaluation.