Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Effects of Evaporative Cooling on Heat Stressed Dairy Holstein Cows Under a Semi-Arid Environment in Riyadh Area, Saudi Arabia

Heat stress has been identified as a major cause of lower productive and reproductive performance in animal farming. Methods for protecting livestock from heat stress were investigated during the summer months, where one six Holstein cows kept under shade only (group 1), and another six cows kept under shade with evaporative cooling (group 2). The results show that shade and water sprayers (evaporative cooling) significantly lowered ambient temperature and thus reduced the heat stress experienced by dairy cows in Saudi Arabia. Evaporative cooling plus shade, lowered ambient temperature (41.80 ± 0.74 vs. 47.40 ± 0.84°C), increased relative humidity (0.33 ± 0.01 vs. 0.24 ± 0.01) and decreased the temperature humidity index (80.24 ± 0.60 vs. 84.77 ± 0.68) when compared to shade alone. In addition, cows kept under evaporative cooling (38.4 ± 0.32°C) experienced lower rectal temperatures compared to cows under shade alone (39.53 ± 0.44°C). Cows under evaporative cooling had higher serum concentrations of triidothyronine (2.50 ± 0.90 vs. 0.75 ± 0.20 ng/ml) and thyroxine (11.94 ± 1.60 vs. 7.22 ± 1.88) than cows under shade alone. Thus, evaporative cooling can decrease the heat stress experienced by dairy cows in Saudi Arabia and limit its associated detrimental effects.
COMPLEXES ASSOCIATED TO A SURFACE AND THE MAPPING CLASS GROUP

We explore simplicial complexes associated to a surface, namely the curve complex, the arc complex, and the pants complex. Studying the combinatorics modeled by these complexes helps elucidate the algebraic properties of the mapping class group of a surface. First, we prove that the group of automorphisms of the curve complex is equal to the mapping class group of a surface. Next, we prove that the group of automorphisms of the pants complex is also equal to the mapping class group of a surface. Finally, as an application of these theorems, we show that all isomorphisms between subgroups of finite index of the mapping class group are induced by conjugation and that the mapping class group is finitely generated.
Prevalence, Risk Factors and Economic Losses Associated with Fasciolosis in Slaughtered Cattle in Bauchi, North-Eastern Nigeria -

Fasciolosis is a snail-borne parasitosis of veterinary, medical and economic importance with a worldwide distribution. In this study we determined the prevalence, risk factors and economic losses associated with the disease in slaughtered cattle in Bauchi, Nigeria using macroscopic examination at the abattoir, simple sedimentation technique close ended structured questionnaires. We analysed our data using Chi square, Odds ratio and logistic regression at 95% confidence interval. Of the 208 samples analysed, we observed an overall prevalence of 29.8% (62/208) which varied significantly (p < 0.05) between Red Bororo (18.8%) and White Fulani (34.7%). Prevalence rates in relation to sex and body conditions varied significantly (p < 0.05) ranging between 10.9% and 90.0%. Based on sources of cattle, fasciolosis recorded highest (84.2%) and lowest (6.7%) prevalence rates in Tafawa Balewa and Bogoro respectively. A total of 312.6 kg of liver estimated at a cost of # 312,600 (1,570.9 USD) was condemned as a result of fasciolosis during our study. Approximate annual losses of liver due to this disease were estimated at 3751.2kg at a total cost of #3,751,200 (18,850.3 USD). Grazing animals in swampy areas, presence of snails around grazing sites, watering animals using streams, extensive management and lack of routine de-worming all influenced the prevalence of bovine fasciolosis in Bauchi. Fasciolosis remains prevalent and is associated with considerable economic losses in cattle slaughtered in Bauchi, Nigeria. An effective control of the disease requires improvement of management practices and routine de-worming.
Divided We Stand: Cultural Differences within Europe and Their Impact on International Collaborative Arrangements

The aim of this paper is to investigate how cultural differences within Europe affect the success of international collaborative arrangements (ICA). We use a mixed-methodology to analyse the results of a questionnaire-based survey with managers of companies engaged in international collaborative arrangements in the European telecommunications industry. We find that cultural differences within Europe are significant and can affect the success of ICAs. In particular, we identify national pride as a main contributor to cultural differences within Europe that can affect cross-border collaborations. We also find that cultural differences can lead to ICA failure by increasing complexity but that, if managed properly, they can enhance the ICAs’ competitive advantages. Finally, we put forward recommendations for managers to best manage these cultural differences in order to ensure ICA success.
Will northern fish populations be in hot water because of climate change?

Predicted increases in water temperature in response to climate change will have large implications for aquatic ecosystems, such as altering thermal habitat and potential range expansion of fish species. Warmwater fish species, such as smallmouth bass, Micropterus dolomieu, may have access to additional favourable thermal habitat under increased surface‐water temperatures, thereby shifting the northern limit of the distribution of the species further north in Canada and potentially negatively impacting native fish communities. We assembled a database of summer surface‐water temperatures for over 13 000 lakes across Canada. The database consists of lakes with a variety of physical, chemical and biological properties. We used general linear models to develop a nation‐wide maximum lake surface‐water temperature model. The model was extended to predict surface‐water temperatures suitable to smallmouth bass and under climate‐change scenarios. Air temperature, latitude, longitude and sampling time were good predictors of present‐day maximum surface‐water temperature. We predicted lake surface‐water temperatures for July 2100 using three climate‐change scenarios. Water temperatures were predicted to increase by as much as 18 °C by 2100, with the greatest increase in northern Canada. Lakes with maximum surface‐water temperatures suitable for smallmouth bass populations were spatially identified. Under several climate‐change scenarios, we were able to identify lakes that will contain suitable thermal habitat and, therefore, are vulnerable to invasion by smallmouth bass in 2100. This included lakes in the Arctic that were predicted to have suitable thermal habitat by 2100.
The Service Quality Evaluation on Tourist Loyalty in Malaysian Hotels by the Mediating Role of Tourist Satisfaction

The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of service quality on tourism loyalty in the hotel industry. Data were collected from international tourists at several top interested places locations in Kuala Lumpur. The study sample included international tourists who stay in four and five star hotels in Kuala Lumpur. Service quality with five dimensions includes reliability, assurance, responsiveness, tangible, and empathy is considered as independent variables. From the result of study, it was found that service quality affects tourist satisfaction and loyalty directly. The finding of this study is helpful for hotel industry. In fact, the finding of this research informs hotelier to understand about the tourist attitude toward service quality in hotel and its impact on their satisfaction and loyalty. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015. v6n3s2p680
Clothing Change Aware Person Identification

We develop a person identification approach - Clothing Change Aware Network (CCAN) for the task of clothing assisted person identification. CCAN concerns approaches that go beyond face recognition and particularly tackles the role of clothing to identification. Person identification is a rather challenging task when clothing appears changed under complex background information. With a pair of two person images as input, CCAN simultaneously performs a verification task to detect change in clothing and an identification task to predict person identity. When clothing from the pair of input images is detected to be different, CCAN automatically understates clothing information while emphasizing face, and vice versa. In practice, CCAN outperforms the way of equally stacking face and full body context features, and shows leading results on the People in Photo Album (PIPA) dataset.
Examining the Impact of Institutional Ownership on Monitoring Cost: The Case of Iranian Firms Listed on Tehran Stock Exchange

Nowadays, in large corporations, owing to the vast number of owners and shareholders, the direct control by owners over firm performance is impossible and this group can only participate in the results of operations. Therefore, it is reasonable that they come to protect their interests and optimally control behavior of employed managers via establishing appropriate monitoring mechanisms. The main objective of this research is to investigate effect of institutional owners on monitoring costs. Based on this objective, a sample of 84 Tehran stock exchange-listed firms over the period 2006-2012 is analyzed statistically. In order to extract a robust model, Pearson correlation coefficient and multivariate regression are used and to test significance of regression model and coefficients, F-test and T- test are utilized respectively. Moreover, the monitoring cost is considered the sum of audit fees and executive compensation in current research. The findings indicated that there is a significantly positive relationship between institutional ownership and monitoring cost. The results also revealed that institutional ownership is significantly and positively associated to audit fees and executive compensation.
Russian Social Media Influence: Understanding Russian Propaganda in Eastern Europe

Russia employs a sophisticated social media campaign against former Soviet states that includes news tweets, nonattributed comments on web pages, troll and bot social media accounts, and fake hashtag and Twitter campaigns. Nowhere is this threat more tangible than in Ukraine. Researchers analyzed social media data and conducted interviews with regional and security experts to understand the critical ingredients to countering this campaign.
Arbitration with Uninformed Consumers

We examine whether firms have an informational advantage in selecting arbitrators in consumer arbitration, and the impact of the arbitrator selection process on outcomes. We collect a novel data set containing roughly 9,000 arbitration cases in securities arbitration. Securities disputes present a good laboratory: the selection mechanism is similar to other major arbitration forums; arbitration is mandatory for all disputes, eliminating selection concerns; and the parties choose arbitrators from a randomly generated list. We first document that some arbitrators are systematically industry friendly while others are consumer friendly. Firms appear to utilize this information in the arbitrator selection process. Despite a randomly generated list of potential arbitrators, industry-friendly arbitrators are forty percent more likely to be selected than their consumer friendly counterparts. Better informed firms and consumers choose more favorable arbitrators. We develop and calibrate a model of arbitrator selection in which, like the current process, both the informed firms and uninformed consumers have control over the selection process. Arbitrators compete against each other for the attention of claimants and respondents. The model allows us to interpret our empirical facts in equilibrium and to quantify the effects of changes to the current arbitrator selection process on consumer outcomes. Competition between arbitrators exacerbates the informational advantage of firms in equilibrium resulting in all arbitrators slanting towards being industry friendly. Evidence suggests that limiting the respondentâ€™s and claimantâ€™s inputs over the arbitrator selection process could significantly improve outcomes for consumers.
Defining and measuring environmental consciousness

Based on a review of the main analytical approaches found in the literature, in this paper we establish a multidimensional and behaviour-oriented definition of environmental consciousness. We propose a method to operationalize this definition with the final aim of obtaining summary measures (or indexes) of this phenomenon which can be applied to different social contexts and time periods. The data obtained from a survey on environmental attitudes and behaviour conducted in 2004 among Andalusians (Ecobarometro de Andalucia 2004) is used as an empirical basis for the proposed operationalization. The resulting measures are then employed to identify social groups according to the diverse forms of their environmental consciousness and to explore their basic socio-demographic profiles
Literature Review – Epidemiology of Feline Chronic Kidney Disease

INTRODUCTION Chronic kidney disease (CKD), also referred to as chronic renal failure, is one of the most common causes of illness and death in geriatric cats.1 CKD was diagnosed in 1.5 percent of all Banfield feline patients seen in 2010 (n = 444,419); it was most common in cats ≥ 10 years of age (7.5 percent [5,498/73,396]). Of the cats diagnosed with CKD, those ≥ 10 years of age constituted the largest proportion of cats with CKD (81 percent), followed by mature adults (≥ 3 years but < 10 years of age) at 17 percent. The overall prevalence is slightly higher than that reported for a retrospective study2 of cats seen at teaching hospitals (1.2 percent [2,228/189,371] between 1980 and 1990). In that study, only 63 percent of affected cats were geriatric. However, both sets of data concur with other findings that, despite the occasional diagnosis of CKD in kittens < 6 months of age (Banfield data), CKD is primarily an age-related disease.2-4
Occurrence of Natural Enemies of Spodoptera frugiperda (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) in Chihuahua, Mexico

Abstract All instars of fall armyworm (FAW), Spodoptera frugiperda Smith & Abbot (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae), were collected in maize (corn) fields in 5 localities of the state of Chihuahua, Mexico, in 2014, with the main objectives of identifying its natural enemies and estimating the level of parasitism. Larvae were maintained under controlled conditions, fed with artificial diet, and observed daily until the emergence of parasitoids, until the appearance of mycosis, nematodes, or typical symptoms of baculoviral infection, or until they reached adulthood. Out of 5,870 larvae collected, 1,068 were attacked by natural enemies (parasitoids and entomopathogens), representing a total incidence of 18.2%. The incidence of parasitism by parasitoids was 8.1%, and parasitoids emerged from 5.8% of the larvae. The parasitoids found were: Chelonus insularis Cresson and Meteorus arizonensis Muesebeck (Hymenoptera: Braconidae); Campoletis sonorensis (Cameron), Campoletis flavicincta (Ashmead), Pristomerus sp. (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae); Euplectrus platyhypenae Howard (Hymenoptera: Eulophidae); and Lespesia sp. and Archytas marmoratus (Townsend) (Diptera: Tachinidae). Meteorus arizonensis and C. flavicincta were the most commonly encountered parasitoids, affecting 3% and 1.3% of the total collected larvae, respectively. Also, 2 species of entomopathogenic fungi were found: Metarhizium rileyi (Farl.) Kepler, S.A. Rehner & Humber comb. nov. (= Nomuraea rileyi [Farl.] Samson; Hypocreales: Clavicipitaceae) and Beauveria bassiana (Balsamo) Vuillemin (Hypocreales: Cordycipitaceae), with incidences of 8.6% and 0.65%, respectively. Forty-nine nucleopolyhedrovirus (Baculoviridae) isolates were obtained, corresponding to an incidence of 0.8%. Also, 0.07% of larvae were infected by entomopathogenic nematodes. In addition to the parasitoids and pathogens obtained, 34 specimens of the predator Podisus maculiventris (Say) (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae) were found during the surveys.
Mutation Patterns Due to Converging Mitochondrial Replication and Transcription Increase Lifespan, and Cause Growth Rate-Longevity Tradeoffs

DNA replication and RNA transcription share many properties (Little et al., 1993; Hassan & Cook, 1994; Marczynski and Shapiro 1995; Mohanty et al., 1996; Prado & Aguilera 2005), notably in mitochondria (Nass 1995; Lee & Clayton, 1997). The joint occurrence of transcription and replication on DNA apparently necessitates coordination (Gilbert, 2001; MacAlpine at al., 2004), among others because collisions occur between the replication and transcription complexes on the same DNA strand (Mirkin & Mirkin, 2005). This coordination may be part of the regulation of gene expression (Patnaik, 1997) and the rates of both processes (Morton, 1999). This predicts the structural organization of genes on chromosomes around replication origins in relation to functional pressures (Schwaiger & Schubeler, 2006): highly expressed genes are located close to replication origins, those expressed in few tissues are more distant (Huvet et al., 2007). Such functional pressures seem strong enough to cause convergences in genome organization between very distant organisms such as yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) and Caulobacter, despite that the proteins involved in their replication and transcription are basically unrelated (Brazhnik & Tyson, 2006). For that reason, transcription-associated genes are frequently located close to replication origins (Couturier and Rocha, 2006). The conserved arrangements of mitochondrial tRNA genes in vertebrates also seems to optimize between early replication of tRNAs whose anticodons have high probability to mutate in the single strand state (Seligmann et al., 2006a) and early transcription of tRNAs with frequently used cognate amino acids (Satoh et al., 2010). Note that this principle of optimizing between two competing processes exists also at the level of translation, between initiation and elongation (Xia et al., 2007), and might apply to many other molecular processes.
Investigating the effect of tendering capabilities on SME activity and performance in public contract competitions

Barriers to small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) participation in public procurement have been the focus of research for many years. Much less attention has been paid to the predictors of SME success. This article examines the role that tendering capabilities – relational and procedural – play in explaining SME activity and performance in public contract competitions. Analysis of primary survey data from 3010 SMEs supports a capability-based perspective. Procedural capability has a significant effect on number of tenders submitted and value of contract sought. Relational capability does not. However, procedural and relational capabilities have a significant and positive effect on contract win-ratio and percentage of total revenue derived from public contracts. For SMEs, these findings underline the importance of investing in tendering skills and devising buyer engagement strategies. Enterprise support agencies and public sector organisations can play their part through the provision of targeted training programmes and better communication with SME suppliers, respectively.
A Prototype Passive Air Sampler for Measuring Dry Deposition of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons

The passive dry deposition (Pas-DD) collector is presented as a tool for estimating atmospheric loadings (dry deposition fluxes or maps) for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and other semivolatile compounds. Pas-DD collectors based on a parallel plate design were codeployed with conventional polyurethane foam (PUF) disk passive air samplers (PAS) in outdoor urban air over different seasons. Two configurations of sampling media (PUF only vs stacked glass fiber filter on PUF) were used. For both samplers, a higher level of accumulation of PAHs was observed when only the PUF disk was used as the sampling medium. The Pas-DD collector and the PAS accumulated gas-phase PAHs (dry gaseous deposition component) to a similar extent. For the higher-molecular weight PAHs that are associated with particles, the Pas-DD collector was enriched relative to the PAS. Dry deposition velocities derived from the Pas-DD collector were approximately 0.16 cm/s for gas-phase PAHs and up to 0.8 cm/s for particle-phase PAHs.
Duckweed as Ecofriendly Tool for Phytoremediation

Wastewater treatment remains a problem in most developing countries. This is a review paper illustrating the use of duckweed-based wastewater treatment systems that provide genuine solutions to these problems. The biosphere is getting degraded by the release of natural and synthetic substances which can cause deleterious effects on living organisms. Among all the pollutants, heavy metals are easily transported and accumulated in the environment. Several industries such as textile, steel, electroplating, metal producing etc. release heavy metals (cadmium, copper, chromium, nickel, lead etc.) in the wastewater. This review paper illustrating the efficiency of duckweed (lemna minor, Lemna gibba, S. polyrhiza) for heavy metal removal. Any aquatic plant that is capable of recovering or extracting nutrients or pollutants and has a fast growth rate coupled with high nutritive value is an excellent candidate for bio-remediation of waste waters. Therefore, this review paper is oriented towards cost-effective and ecofriendly technology for waste water purification, which will be beneficial for community. This paper discusses the utilization of duckweed plants in purifying water and waste. They are functionally simple, yet easy to maintain; and they can provide tertiary treatment performance equal or superior to conventional wastewater treatment systems now recommended for large scale operation.
Electrocardiographic and Echocardiographic Changes in Subarachnoid Hemorrhage and Their Final Impact on Early Outcome: A Prospective Study Before and After the Treatment

Background: We aimed to prospectively investigate the changes in the electrocardiography (ECG) and the echocardiography of the patients with subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) before and after treatment, and to evaluate the overall role of the findings on early patients’ outcome. Methods: All consecutive patients with SAH were evaluated with on-admission ECG and echocardiography. For those with an abnormal result, a second evaluation was performed after the therapeutic interventions. All of the participants were followed until discharged or possibly expired in the hospital. Proper statistical methods were used to compare the changes between the two groups of the patients: the “expired” group, and the “discharged” group. Results: Of the total of 60 subjects, 25 (41.6%) and three (5%) had an abnormal ECG and echocardiography that were dropped to four (6.7%) and one (1.7%) after treatment, respectively. The most frequent ECG finding was T-wave inversion. Six subjects (10%) were expired in the hospital. Abnormal primary ECG was found in five out of the six dead subjects (83.3%) and 20 out of the 54 discharged ones (37%) (P = 0.029). None of the three patients with abnormal primary echocardiograms were expired during the hospitalization. Conclusion: Most SAH-induced changes in the ECG and the echocardiography are transient and reversible. Abnormal ECG is a good predictor of inpatient mortality, but abnormal echocardiography is not. J Neurol Res. 2015;5(1-2):181-185 doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.14740/jnr317w