Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Native prey mortality increases but remains density-dependent following lionfish invasion

Predators can regulate prey population dynamics, so the introduction of novel predators may alter predation-mediated regulatory mechanisms, potentially destabilizing prey populations. Compensatory density dependence is an essential condition for population regulation. Thus, understanding whether and how introduced predators alter the relationship between prey density and mortality can aid in predicting the ecological consequences of invasion. Here, we investigate the effects of invasive Indo-Pacific red lionfish Pterois volitans on density-dependent mortality patterns previously documented for a common native Atlantic prey species, the fairy basslet Gramma loreto. By repeating a pre-invasion density manipulation experiment, here in the context of predation by both native piscivores and lionfish, we provide a before-and-after comparison quantifying changes in prey mortality since the introduction of lionfish. Per capita loss of fairy basslet remained density-dependent in the presence of lionfish, but the overall magnitude of loss was higher compared to pre-invasion rates. In the presence of lionfish, 7 of 16 local basslet populations experienced greater than 50% loss over the 8 wk study duration, but there was no evidence of a difference in the slope of the density−mortality curve between preand post-introduction experiments. Thus, our experiment revealed a density-independent increase in per capita mortality rates since the start of the invasion. We conclude that local fairy basslet populations are facing an elevated risk of extirpation as a result of increased predation, and suggest that different predator foraging behavior and/or prey naïveté may explain the altered prey mortality patterns observed after the lionfish invasion.
Efficacy of fly-ash based bio-fertilizers vs perfected chemical fertilizers in wheat ( Triticum aestivum )

Fly-ash was evaluated for possible use as carrier for Azotobacter and Azospirillum formulation. Azotobacter and Azospirillum strains were isolated from healthy wheat rhizosphere soil and bio-formulated in fly-ash (300 meshes). Fly-ash based Azotobacter and Azospirillum formulation alone and in combination with chemical fertilizer was evaluated for bio-efficacy on wheat. Population of Azotobacter and Azospirillum was also evaluated in treated soil. The results of the studies showed that, seed treatment with Azotobacter and Azospirillum and soil treated with chemical fertilizer alone and in combination significantly enhanced the seed germination, plant height, plant biomass and crop yield compared to control. Chemical fertilizer treated wheat plant observed more effective bio-efficacy than bio-fertilizers treated wheat but reduced (destroyed) the microbial population in soil. Whereas Azotobacter and Azospirillum treated soil observed significantly enhanced the microbial population with slightly lesser plant growth as compared to chemical fertilizer. In the present study it was showed that utilization of fly-ash as carrier in bio-fertilizer formulations emerged as safe and effective alternatives. Use of fly-ash as carrier in these formulations is an effective way of utilization of problematic fly-ash waste in a useful manner. International Journal of Engineering, Science and Technology, Vol. 2, No. 7, 2010, pp. 31-35
Modulation of Tumor Angiogenesis by a Host Anti-Tumor Response in Colorectal Cancer

Colorectal carcinoma (CRC) is the second most frequently occurring cancer in industrialized countries, in both men and women. The cumulative lifetime risk of developing colorectal carcinoma is about 6%, and the cancer-related five year survival rate is 62% (Smith et al., 2002). Malignant transformation of CRC occurs in a multistep process via three different pathways: the chromosomal instability pathway, the microsatellite instability pathway (Vogelstein et al., 1988) and the methylation pathway (Jass, 2002). Moreover, putative tumor-initiating cells with increased malignancy were isolated from CRC (O'Brien et al., 2007; Ricci-Vitiani et al., 2007). These cells exhibited stem cell-like characteristics; however, their role in CRC pathogenesis is still controversial (Shmelkov et al., 2008). Tumor development and metastasis require the presence of a newly formed vasculature. Tumor cells can directly promote angiogenesis but the tumor microenvironment plays also a crucial role in this process. The tumor microenvironment consists of a variety of conjunctive tissue components and cells, as well as infiltrating immune cells. It is inflammatory and undergoes constant remodelling. Immune cells are not only recruited in order to eliminate the tumor, they can also be attracted by tumor cells in order to support a tumor-promoting inflammation. In CRC, the type of immune cells infiltrating the tumor has been shown to influence tumor growth and patient survival (Galon et al., 2007; Tosolini et al., 2011). In addition, immune cells have been shown to exert antagonistic effects on tumor angiogenesis. In this chapter, we focus on the modulation of tumor angiogenesis by tumor infiltrating immune cells and on its implications in terms of diagnosis and prognosis in CRC.
Becoming a High-Performance Work Organization: The Role of Security, Employee Involvement, and Training

We discuss an emerging employment system characterized by a high degree of employment security with flexible job assignments, employee involvement in problem solving and continuous improvement, and continuous training of employees. We call this model the SET system (for Security, Employee involvement and Training) and examine case studies of five U.S. firms that are attempting to establish or maintain a SET system. We find that SET systems are difficult to implement in a gradual and partial manner. The three elements of SET reinforce one another and firms that are successful in adopting SET have made an investment to implement all three SET elements simultaneously.
Quality-of-Life and Happiness: not quite the same

Quality-of-life is conceived as a broad concept that covers three meanings: 1) quality of the living environment, 2) quality of performance and 3) subjective enjoyment of life. 'Happiness' is understood as part of the latter meaning. It is defined as the overall appreciation of one's life-as-a-whole. This chapter explores the relation of happiness with the first two quality-of-life variants. A review of empirical happiness-research shows that happiness concurs with several qualities of the living environment, especially with economic affluence, freedom and intimate ties. Yet not all living- conditions deemed beneficial appear to be linked with happiness, for instance not income-equality or full-employment. Empirical research shows also relations between happiness and performance, especially with physical and mental health. Again there are noteworthy exceptions, for instance happiness appears unrelated to intelligence. The analysis illustrates that quality-of-life is not one encompassing syndrome. Rather than one quality the term denotes in fact combinations of qualities. Hence the term should be used as a token only. Reasoning, measurement and decision-making requires on more discrete concepts.
Effect of copper deficiency on ovarian activity in Egyptian buffalo-cows.

Reproductive disorders and malnutrition are the main problems that determine productivity in buffaloes and cause great economic losses. This study was designed to correlate between copper status and ovarian activity in buffalo-cows. A total number of 1365 buffalo-cows reared at Lower Egypt was included in this study during the period from 2004-2008. Animals were clinically and gynecologically examined and blood samples were collected for carrying out some relevant analyses. Results revealed that 19.12% of the examined animals showed clear clinical signs of copper deficiency (hypocuprosis) and had a poor body condition score (BCS). Also, 21.84% of these hypocupremic buffalo-cows suffered from ovarian inactivity. In comparison with control cows, hypocupremic animals showed low serum progesterone level, especially during the luteal phase of the estrous cycle; anemia with no marked changes in leukogram; increased malondialdehyde (MDA) and nitric oxide (NO) and decreased, catalase (CAT), ascorbic acid (ASCA), superoxide dismutase (SOD), reduced glutathione (GSH-R) and total antioxidant capacity (TAC); zinc (Zn), iron (Fe), copper (Cu) and ceruloplasmin. It could be concluded that copper deficiency causes oxidative stress to buffalo-cows resulting in cessation of Ovarian activity. Ceruloplasmin could be used as a good indicator for copper deficiency. It is recommended to supplement animal feeds with balanced mineral mixture to avoid retarded growth, anemia and cessation of ovarian activity.
Major deep levels with the same microstructures observed in n-type 4H–SiC and 6H–SiC

Major deep levels observed in as-grown and irradiated n-type 4H–SiC and 6H–SiC epilayers have been investigated. After low-energy electron irradiation, by which only carbon atoms are displaced, five traps, EH1 (EC−0.36 eV), Z1/Z2 (EC−0.65 eV), EH3 (EC−0.79 eV), EH5 (EC−1.0 eV), and EH6/7 (EC−1.48 eV), were detected in 4H–SiC and four traps, E1/E2 (EC−0.45 eV), RD5 (EC−0.57 eV), ES (EC−0.80 eV), and R (EC−1.25 eV), were detected in 6H–SiC. The Z1/Z2, EH6/7 centers in 4H–SiC and the E1/E2, R centers in 6H–SiC exhibit common features as follows: their generation rates by the e−-irradiation were almost the same each other, their concentrations were not changed by heat treatments up to 1500 °C, and they showed very similar annealing behaviors at elevated temperatures. Furthermore, these defect centers were almost eliminated by thermal oxidation. Taking account of the observed results and the energy positions, the authors suggest that the Z1/Z2 center in 4H–SiC corresponds to the E1/E2 center in 6H–SiC, and the.
Gender‐role egalitarianism predicts desirable traits of potential marriage partners: A cross‐cultural comparison

We examined whether gender-role egalitarianism predicted participants' rank-order preferences for traits in potential marriage partners of the opposite sex, and whether gender-role egalitarianism mediated cultural differences between participants from North America, Polynesia and East Asia. Participants completed the Sex-Role Egalitarianism Scale and ranked the following traits in terms of their importance in choosing a potential marriage partner: kindness, physical attractiveness, social level, athleticism, creativity and liveliness. Parallel analyses for male and female participants reveal that traditional males value physical attractiveness more than egalitarian males, and that traditional females value social level more and kindness less than egalitarian females. Gender-role egalitarianism fully mediated the effect of culture on kindness rankings, but no others. These results expand upon previous findings by accounting for individual differences regarding beliefs about traditional gender roles.
USING IMPLICIT MEASURES TO READ THE MINDS OF UNDECIDED VOTERS

Many voters in democratic societies have clear political preferences, which are often reflected in their personal identification with a particular party. For some voters, these preferences are highly stable, in that they last for a lifetime. For others, preferences change over time as a result of major life events, such as the experience of starting a family, becoming CEO of a major company, or losing one's job. In most of these cases, it is relatively easy for pollsters to identify the preferences of voters for the prediction of election outcomes. They can simply ask them for which party or candidate they intend to vote. Such self-reports are usually quite reliable in the prediction of actual voting behavior. In virtually every election, however, there is also a group of people who report being undecided. In fact, the proportion of undecided voters among the overall electorate is often large enough to determine the final election outcome. Thus, one of the most challenging tasks for pollsters is to predict the future choices of undecided voters. Simply asking them about their preferences does not do the job, because undecided voters will simply report that they are undecided. In early 2001, shortly before the Italian General Election, Luciano Arcuri had the seminal idea that it might be possible to predict future choices of undecided voters by means of implicit measures. In the current chapter, we review (a) the available evidence in support of this idea and (b) novel findings regarding the psychological processes underlying this phenomenon. Taken together, these results not only have the potential to fundamentally change the current way of political polling;
Domestic Violence in a Developing Context

The World Health Organization’s multicountry study of the prevalence rates of intimate partner violence found extremely high rates of violence against women in Ethiopia. This article seeks to enhance our understanding of this violence. By drawing on focus group research conducted with women in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, it explores the types of domestic violence experienced by these women, the impact of this violence, the reasons for it, and the multiple resistance strategies used by the women. The findings suggest a potentially important role for professional social work practice in the Ethiopian context.
Adaptive Distributionally Robust Optimization

We develop a modular and tractable framework for solving an adaptive distributionally robust linear optimization problem, where we minimize the worst-case expected cost over an ambiguity set of probability distributions. The adaptive distributionally robust optimization framework caters for dynamic decision making, where decisions adapt to the uncertain outcomes as they unfold in stages. For tractability considerations, we focus on a class of second-order conic (SOC) representable ambiguity set, though our results can easily be extended to more general conic representations. We show that the adaptive distributionally robust linear optimization problem can be formulated as a classical robust optimization problem. To obtain a tractable formulation, we approximate the adaptive distributionally robust optimization problem using linear decision rule (LDR) techniques. More interestingly, by incorporating the primary and auxiliary random variables of the lifted ambiguity set in the LDR approximation, we can sign.
The Procyclical Role of Rating Agencies: Evidence from the East Asian Crisis

type="main" xml:lang="en"> We demonstrate that credit rating agencies aggravated the East Asian crisis. In fact, having failed to predict the emergence of the crisis, rating agencies became excessively conservative. They downgraded East Asian crisis countries more than the worsening in these countries' economic fundamentals would justify. This unduly exacerbated, for these countries, the cost of borrowing abroad and caused the supply of international capital to them to evaporate. In turn, lower than deserved ratings contributed – at least for some time – to amplify the East Asian crisis. Although this goes beyond the scope of our paper, we also propose an endogenous rationale for rating agencies to become excessively conservative after having made blatant errors in predicting the East Asian crisis. Specifically, rating agencies would have an incentive to become more conservative, so as to recover from the damage these errors caused to them and to rebuild their own reputation.
EFFECT OF CADMIUM ON GROWTH AND THE PERFORMANCE OF PHOTOSYNTHETIC APPARATUS FOR TOMATO PLANTS

Many authors examined the inhibitory effect of heavy metals on growth and the performance of photosynthetic apparatus of plants. Cadmium is a highly toxic heavy metal, which can be absorbed readily by crops and accumulated in human body through the food chains and result in human body health problems. In this work we analyzed the response of tomato plant to the Cd treatment. Our measurements showed an inhibitory effect of this heavy metal. Growth inhibition was accompanied by a diminishing photosynthetic activity. Chlorophyll and carothenoid content decreased in proportion with Cd concentration in the nutrient solution.
Reproduction Study on Doe Rabbits Re-Bred at Three Postpartum Re-Mating Time-Periods in a Tropical Environment

2 Abstract: Ovulation, fertilization, embryo survival, some embryo characteristics, ovarian and uterine changes were investigated in doe rabbits. The rabbits were allocated in a randomized complete block design to one of three postpartum re-mating time-periods; intensive (IN; 1-9 days), semi-intensive (SI; 10-20days) and extensive (EX; 21-28days) postpartum in two seasons (dry and rainy). Results showed that ovulation, fertilization and embryonic survival were not significantly (P>0.05) affected by postpartum re-mating interval and season. Weight of foetal fluid increased with increasing postpartum remating interval and was significantly (P<0.05) higher in does under extensive than intensive remating. Gestation rate was generally low apparently due to concurrent pregnancy and lactation. This research has shown that fertility and embryonic survival will not differ significantly in does re-bred at different time-periods pre-weaning.
Uniformization of surface laminations

— A surface lamination is a metric space that carries a foliation with leaves of dimension two. Given a riemannian metric along the leaves we study the problem of finding another such metric, in the same conformal class, for which all leaves have the same constant curvature. As for surfaces, the existence of such metric is determined by the Euler characteristics of the lamination. These numbers are obtained by evaluating the invariant transverse measures on the curvature form of the given metric. We prove that there is a metric of curvature — 1 (resp. 1) if and only if all Euler characteristics are negative (resp. positive). Using harmonic measures we prove a similar statement holds for flat metrics.
Expression of NADPH-diaphorase in nucleus tractus solitarius after peripheral injection of E . coli endotoxin in rats

1. The possibility that peripheral exogenous pyrogens can activate brainstem nuclei by abdominal viscera aerents was studied using the NADPH-diaphorase method in E. coli lipopolysaccharide treated rats with and without ibuprofen pre-treatment. 2. NADPH-d staining revealed: (i) a signi®cant increase in the number of NADPH-d labeled neurons in the subpostremal area of the nucleus tractus solitarius lipopolysaccharide treated rats compared with control animals ( p < 0.05), and (ii) an almost similar number of NADPH-d positive neurons in both control and ibuprofen pretreated rats ( p = 0.091). 3. These data indicate that peripheral administration of an exogenous pyrogen stimulates the synthesis of nitric oxide in the nucleus tractus solitarius, and are consistent with the hypothesis of a direct neural link between the periphery and the hypothalamus. # 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
The Psychological Type Profile of Anglican Clergymen

Abstract This study employs psychological type theory to discuss the profile of Anglican clergymen serving in the Church in Wales and to explore whether there are distinctive characteristics among those serving in rural ministry. Data provided by 94 clergymen serving in rural ministry and by 135 clergymen serving in non-rural ministry revealed no significant differences between the two groups in terms of the two orientations (introversion and extraversion), the two perceiving functions (sensing and intuition), the two judging functions (thinking and feeling) and the two attitudes (judging and perceiving).
Rivalry, solidarity, and longevity among siblings: A life course approach to the impact of sibship composition and birth order on later life mortality risk, Antwerp (1846-1920)

Background: Family composition and household dynamics, both in early and in later life, influence individual health and longevity. Both positive and negative effects can be expected in terms of sibling size and composition. On one hand, siblings compete with each other, which may lead to resource dilution and increased adult mortality risks. On the other hand, siblings protect and care for each other, which may have a positive impact on longevity. Objective: To investigate the way in which sibling composition (with respect to sibship size, sex, and birth order) in the family of orientation and the proximity of siblings in later life relates to adult mortality risks at ages 50+. Methods: Life courses of 258 men and 275 women from the Antwerp COR*-database were 'reconstructed' and analyzed by way of event history analysis using Gompertz shared frailty models. Results: Being higher in birth order related to significantly higher mortality risk after age 50 for men. Having older brothers, particularly those present in later life, was associated with very high excess mortality risk for both sexes, though men were more strongly disadvantaged. Having (more) younger sisters present at RP (research person) age 50 was related to significantly lower relative mortality risk for women. Conclusions: Our findings highlight the complex relationships between sibling and gender dynamics and mortality risk in later life. Evidence of a lasting impact of sibling competition on mortality risk over age 50 is found; and competition is only replaced by solidarity in critical times (e.g., widowhood), wherein older sibling presence dissimilarly impacts different social groups.
A decade of GPS in Southeast Asia: Resolving Sundaland motion and boundaries

A unique GPS velocity field that spans the entire Southeast Asia region is presented. It is based on 10 years (1994–2004) of GPS data at more than 100 sites in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, the Philippines, and Vietnam. The majority of the horizontal velocity vectors have a demonstrated global accuracy of ? 1 mm/yr (at 95% confidence level). The results have been used to (better) characterize the Sundaland block boundaries and to derive a new geokinematic model for the region. The rotation pole of the undeformed core of the Sundaland block is located at 49.0°N–94.2°E, with a clockwise rotation rate of 0.34°/Myr. With respect to both geodetically and geophysically defined Eurasia plate models, Sundaland moves eastward at a velocity of 6 ± 1 to 10 ± 1 mm/yr from south to north, respectively. Contrary to previous studies, Sundaland is shown to move independently with respect to South China, the eastern part of Java, the island of Sulawesi, and the northern tip of Borneo. The Red River fault in South China and Vietnam is still active and accommodates a strike? slip motion of ? 2 mm/yr. Although Sundaland internal deformation is general very small (less than 7 nanostrain/yr), important accumulation of elastic deformation occurs along its boundaries with fast? moving neighboring plates. In particular in northern Sumatra and Malaysia, inland? pointing trench? perpendicular residual velocities were detected prior to the megathrust earthquake of 26 December 2004. Earlier studies in Sumatra already showed this but underestimated the extent of the deformation zone, which reaches more than 600 km away from the trench. This study shows that only a regional Southeast Asia network spanning thousands of kilometers can provide a reference frame solid enough to analyze intraplate and interplate deformation in detail.