Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Effects of Excluding Animal Products from the Diet on Sensory Properties of Pork from Pigs Grown in New Zealand as Assessed by Singaporean Panelists

Sensory analyses of pork samples from leg muscles of female pigs raised in New Zealand (n = 17) were conducted using trained and untrained Singaporean panelists. The New Zealand pigs included three dietary groups, with one diet including animal products (NZA), and two containing plant products only (NZP & NZP+), with the NZP+ diet containing a supplement (0.614%) containing conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), selenium, and vitamin E. The New Zealand pork was also compared with Indonesian pork as local reference samples (n = 6). Pork samples from the NZA group had the highest score for mutton flavour and aftertaste, and the lowest score for brothy aroma, brothy flavour, meaty flavour, lightness and juiciness by trained sensory panels. Samples from NZP and NZP+ were similar except the NZP+ group had a stronger stale flavour than the NZP group (1.34 vs. 0.57 on a 100-point scale; p<0.05). The first and second functions of a discriminant analysis based on trained-panel scores for 14 attributes accounted for 95.4% of the variance, with function 1 (83.7%) being related mainly to mutton aroma, mutton flavour and aftertaste. Based on a 20-member untrained panel, the NZA pork had the highest mutton aroma and mutton flavour intensities (p<0.01) and aroma and flavour that was less acceptable than that from the NZP group (p<0.05). The acceptability scores of Indonesian pork were not significantly different from those of New Zealand pork, but its scores for mutton aroma and mutton flavour were significantly lower than NZP. Overall acceptability was positively associated with acceptability of aroma (r = 0.906), juiciness (r = 0.888), and tenderness (r = 0.904), but negatively associated with intensities of mutton aroma (r = -0.478) and flavour (r = -0.551).
Is it worth the effort? Spread and management success of invasive alien plant species in a Central European National Park

The management of invasive alien species (IAS) in protected areas has become increasingly important in recent years. In this study, we analyse IAS management in the bilateral National Park Thayatal-Podyjí at the Austrian-Czech border. Based on two surveys from the years 2001 and 2010 and on annual management data from 2001-2010 we analyse changes in distribution and the efficiency of IAS management of three invasive alien plants (Fallopia × bohemica, Impatiens glandulifera, Robinia pseudoacacia). In 2010, the three study species had invaded 161 ha (2%) of the study area. Despite a decade of management, F. × bohemica has become widespread, whereas I. glandulifera distribution has decreased strongly. The most widespread species, R. pseudoacacia, has declined substantially in cover, but the area invaded has increased. From 2001 to 2010, annual management effort declined by about half. Management effort per hectare and decade was highest for F. × bohemica (2,657 hours), followed by R. pseudoacacia (1,473 hours) and I. glandulifera (270 hours). Management effort for achieving the same amount of reduction in population size and cover was highest for R. pseudoacacia, followed by F. × bohemica and I. glandulifera. We conclude that substantial effort and resources are necessary to successfully manage the study species and have to be provided over prolonged time periods, and thus continued management of these species is recommended. We highly recommend a systematic approach for monitoring the efficiency of IAS management projects in protected areas.
Design-Bid-Build versus Design-Build: The client's choice

The aim of the procurement process in construction is to acquire the construction work that meets the client’s needs. One of the steps in this process is the functional grouping. The functional grouping of a project is the way in which tasks, responsibilities, liabilities and risks are divided among the construction participants. There are several types of functional groupings for construction projects that are commonly used like Design-Bid-Build or Design-Build. For a client, the choice for a type of functional grouping that fits his needs is difficult to make. In this paper, insight is given in possibilities the client has in the decision making process for choosing a suitable functional grouping for his project. Next to that a comparison is made between the traditional Design-Bid-Build and the more integrated Design-Build. Data has been collected by interviewing construction experts. These experts were clients as well as contractors.
Newsletter of the European Network for Increased competitiveness of high quality European Animal fibres by improving fibre quality

EFFN news is an informal newsletter for the Thematic Network for Increased competitiveness of high quality European Animal fibres by improving fibre quality. The views expressed in this newsletter are the authors' and do not necessarily reflect those of the editor, the Network nor any institutions that the authors may belong to. Copyright remains with the authors and the ma- terial in this newsletter should not be cited elsewhere without obtaining the permission of the author. Publication of work in EFFN news does not affect the author's right to publish the same data in a refereed journal.
Assessment of manual load carrying and health status of women farm workers of district Sonipat (Haryana), India

In present study an assessment of manual load carrying and health status of women farm workers of Thana Kalan village, Kharkhoda tehsil in Sonipat district of Haryana was conducted. A total of forty women farm workers between 25-40 years age were selected with at least five year load carrying experience, involved in farm work, with no history of chronic disease and willingness to participate in the study. The women farm workers carried water, fodder, cow dung on daily basis and seed, fertilizer and other farm inputs and farm produce on seasonal basis. It was observed that preferable mode of load carrying was head. The quantum of load varied between 20-40 kg. Assessment of health status revealed that musculoskeletal disorder was prevalent in all the age groups. Musculoskeletal disorder namely lower back pain was observed in 87.5 per cent women workers, neck pain in 72.5 per cent women workers followed by knee (32.5%) and foot pain (25 %). The pain severity was mild in most of the women farm workers and nobody was bed ridden for back pain due to load carrying. The younger age women (25-30 years) preferred traditional way of oil massage and rest for relief from back pain and neck pain after load carrying, while older women (31-40 years) had to take rest for back pain relief. The issue of occupational health disorder associated with manual load carrying by women farm worker has to receive attention to reduce the potential health risk.
The Supreme Court, the Media, and Public Opinion: Comparing Experimental and Observational Methods

Can Supreme Court rulings change Americans’ policy views? Prior experimental and observational studies come to conflicting conclusions because of methodological limitations. We argue that existing studies overlook the media’s critical role in communicating Court decisions and theorize that major decisions change Americans’ opinions most when the media offer one-sided coverage supportive of the Court majority. We fielded nationally representative surveys shortly before and after two major Supreme Court decisions on health care and immigration and connected our public opinion data with six major television networks’ coverage of each decision. We find that Court decisions can influence national opinion and increase support for policies the Court upholds as constitutional. These effects were largest among people who received one-sided information. To address selection concerns, we combined this observational study with an experiment and find that people who first heard about the Court decisions through the media and through the experiment responded in similar ways.
BFI Working Paper Series No . 2012-010 Intermediary Leverage Cycles and Financial Stability

We develop a theory of financial intermediary leverage cycles in the context of a dynamic model of the macroeconomy. The interaction between a production sector, a financial intermediation sector, and a household sector gives rise to amplification of fundamental shocks that affect real economic activity. The model features two state variables that represent the dynamics of the economy: the net worth and the leverage of financial intermediaries. The leverage of the intermediaries is procyclical owing to risksensitive funding constraints. Relative to an economy with constant leverage, financial intermediaries generate higher output and consumption growth and lower consumption volatility in normal times, but at the cost of systemic solvency and liquidity risks. We show that tightening intermediaries’ risk constraints affects the systemic risk-return trade-off, by lowering the likelihood of systemic crises at the cost of higher pricing of risk. Our model thus represents a conceptual framework for cyclical macroprudential policies within a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model. ∗The views expressed here are the authors’ and are not representative of the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York or the Federal Reserve System. †Adrian: tobias.adrian@ny.frb. org, http://nyfedeconomists.org/adrian; Boyarchenko: nina. boyarchenko@ny.frb. org, http://nyfedeconomists.org/boyarchenko. The authors thank Michael Abrahams and Daniel Green for excellent research assistance; David Backus, Olivier Blanchard, Markus Brunnermeier, Mikhail Chernov, John Cochrane, Douglas Diamond, Darrell Duffie, Xavier Gabaix, Ken Garbade, Lars Peter Hansen, Nobu Kiyotaki, Ralph Koijen, John Leahy, David Lucca, Monika Piazzesi, Martin Schneider, Jules Van Binsbergen, Charles-Henri Weymuller, and Michael Woodford for helpful comments; and seminar participants at the Chicago Institute for Theory and Empirics and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for feedback.
The impact of firms' expectations & adjustments on the productivity cost of illness

Sickness-related absenteeism hinders firms' productivity and reduces output, an effect referred to as indirect cost (IC) and often included when assessing the burden of an illness or cost-effectiveness of a treatment. The companies may, however, foresee this risk and modify hiring or contracting policies. We present a model of a firm allowing to estimate IC while accounting for such adjustments. We show that the risk of illness does not change the general shape and properties of the (expected) marginal productivity function. We apply our model to several illustrative examples and show that firm's adjustments impact IC in an ambiguous way, depending on detailed company/market characteristics. Sometimes the company reduces the employment (further increasing IC), yet sometimes the opposite (even generating indirect gains). Contrary to previous literature findings, teamwork and shortfall penalties may reduce IC in some settings. Our analysis highlights that IC should be split into the result of companies preparing for and actually experiencing sick leaves, at least when friction cost approach is taken. To what extent the former counts as IC may depend on the (labour and good) market structure and the interpretation of equilibrium values. These considerations are usually not addressed in applied IC assessment, which may bias the results.
The contribution of individualism vs . collectivism to cross-national differences in display rules *

Despite the fact that display rules are an important concept of theories of emotion and contemporary psychology, relatively little cross-cultural research has been done on them. This study examined cross-national differences in display rules of emotion, and investigated the degree to which those differences could be attributed to Individualism and Collectivism (IC) measured on the individual level. Participants in the US, Japan, South Korea, and Russia completed a comprehensive measure of display rules assessing behavioral tendencies for seven universal emotions in four social contexts in two rating domains. They also completed Matsumotoet al.’s (1997) Individualism–Collectivism Interpersonal Assessment Inventory. The results confirmed the existence of cross-national differences in IC and display rules, and indicated that IC and display rules were correlated. Significant differences between the countries remained even after IC was controlled for, and effect size analyses comparing cross-national differences when IC was controlled and not indicated that IC accounted for approximately 30% of the effect sizes related to cross-national differences. This study is unique in that it not only used the concept of IC to explain and predict differences; it also quantitatively assessed the degree to which IC contributed to those differences. These findings are discussed in terms of the utility of the IC concept to understanding cross-cultural and cross-national differences in emotion.
First year students’ experience of access and engagement at a University of Technology

Universities in South Africa have opened access to a diverse population of students, which has resulted in an increased participation of first-generation, low-income and mature students. Concomitant to the widening access, issues relating to retention and success continue to remain a challenge. Student engagement persists as a key concern at universities both locally and globally. This study draws on the theoretical observations of Tinto (1975, 1993), and Leach and Zepke (2011) to explore First Year (FY) students’ pre-university nonacademic factors and its influence on student engagement experiences with institutional support initiatives. Data was collected from a quantitative questionnaire completed by 195 participants and from a follow up of qualitative data gathered from focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews. The findings from this study reveal that students’ preuniversity non-academic factors play a significant role in the way students engage with institutional support initiatives. One such factor include students’ motivation and resilience to succeed and the key role it plays in enhancing their engagement with peers and lecturers at the university.
What does the recovery debt really measure

Recently, Moreno-Mateos et al. (2017) coined the concept ‘recovery debt’, clearly a close relative of the ecosystem service debt (Isbell et al. 2015), and gave it significance as “the interim reduction of biodiversity and biogeochemical functions occurring during ecosystem recovery”. Using rather impressive dataset consisting 3,035 sampling plots worldwide as an example, they analysed the recovery debt for plant and animal species diversity and abundance as well as for carbon and nitrogen cycling. Based on their analysis MorenoMateos et al. conclude that “. recovering and restored ecosystems have less abundance, diversity and cycling of carbon and nitrogen than ‘undisturbed’ ecosystems . ”. Here, we scrutinize the proposed new concept and point out problems in conclusions resulting from the operationalization of the concept. An undesired change in biodiversity, ecosystem functions or services due to anthropogenic disturbance is customarily called degradation. Magnitude of degradation can be estimated as the difference between the current state of the ecosystem and its undisturbed natural state (UNEP 2003; Bull et al. 2014; Kotiaho et al. 2016a, b) (Fig. 1a). Moreno-Mateos et al. suggest that the recovery debt could be a useful indicator of the magnitude of degradation. They first derive an equation for an absolute recovery debt over any given time period (RD) and then state that as there is variation in the time period of different studies, it is preferable to express the recovery debt in per annum terms (RDt). Thus, while the customary measure of the magnitude of degradation is calculated for the current state of the ecosystem, the recovery debt (RDt) Rethinking Ecology 2: 41–45 (2017)
The Competitive Intelligence Activity of Immigrant Entrepreneurs in South Africa

Abstract The objective of the study was to investigate empirically the competitive intelligence activity of immigrant-owned businesses in South Africa. Immigrant-owned businesses in South Africa face severe competitive pressures. Competitive intelligence is one of the ways to gain and sustain competitive advantage. Data was collected through the use of self-administered questionnaire in a survey. Data analysis included descriptive statistics and the T-test. The results indicate that immigrant entrepreneurs have a good attitude towards competitive intelligence. However, there is no formalised competitive intelligence gathering process. Recommendations on how to improve the competitive intelligence process are suggested.
Viscous gravity currents inside confining channels and fractures

Unidirectional flows of long, thin, Newtonian, viscous gravity currents inside either horizontal or inclined channels are studied theoretically and experimentally. Effects due to temporal variations in the input rate at a point source and spatial variations in the channel shape are considered, with surface tension effects neglected. The current evolves with a self-similar structure at large times when the total volume of fluid scales with time t like tα and the spreading in the lateral direction y is constrained by a rigid boundary of height a∣y∕a∣n, where the length scale of the channel size a varies with distance x along the flow like xb and α≥0, b≥0 and n>0 are prescribed constants. The extent of the flow scales like tc, where the constant c depends linearly on α and is determined in terms of α, b, and n. Amongst channels that remain uniform along the flow (b=0), a V-shaped channel (n=1) gives rise to either a fastest or slowest propagation rate of the current depending on whether α αc, respect.
Radiotherapy and the role of the immune system

Se simulo computacionalmente un gran numero de pacientes bajo tratamiento de radioterapia, mediante un sistema dinamico. De los resultados, se hallo un metodo para cambiar el numero de sesiones de radiacion manteniendo optimo el tratamiento. Ademas, se obtuvo que la relacion entre la fraccion sistema inmune-eficiencia tumoral para un paciente dado y la maxima probabilidad de exito del tratamiento sigue una ley de potencias.
An Empirical Investigation to Validate the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) in Explaining Intentions to Shop Online in Saudi Arabia Using SEM

This study uses structural equation modeling (SEM) to investigate how theoretically applicable the technology acceptance model (TAM) is in an online shopping context in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Three hundred and twenty two subjects participated in a structure d questionnaire survey that was created using existing scales from prior TAM instruments, which were modified when appropriate. Our findings showed that our model is able to create an understanding that is better than the original online shopping intention model. Our results also showed that direct paths from perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of use (PEOU) to online shopping intentions would help to improve the model’s predictive power and would improve fit more than the original TAM model would. The model explains 81 percent of Saudi consumers’ intentions to continue shopping online and can be generalized across Riyadh.
Labor Markets and School-to-Work Transition in Egypt : Diagnostics, Constraints, and Policy Framework

Despite substantial improvements in labor market outcomes in recent years (in raising employment and participation and in lowering unemployment), unemployment rates in Egypt remain exceedingly high among youth2 entering the labor market for the first time. A slow school-to-work transition remains the main reason behind high unemployment rates. The youth unemployment rate in Egypt, at 24 percent in year 2006, is high for international standards- though similar to those in North Africa. Moreover, youth entering the labor market for the first time account for about 82 percent of the country's unemployed workers.
Title CyberKnife for Treatment of Vestibular Schwannoma : A Meta-analysis Permalink

Objectives. (1) Perform a meta-analysis of the available data on the outcomes of CyberKnife radiosurgery for treatment of vestibular schwannomas (VSs) in the published English-language literature and (2) evaluate the collective outcomes of CyberKnife treatment with respect to tumor control and hearing preservation. Data Sources. A thorough literature search of published English-language articles was performed in the PubMed, Ovid, and Cochrane databases. Review Methods. A database search was conducted with the keywords ‘‘CyberKnife’’ and ‘‘vestibular schwannoma’’ or ‘‘acoustic neuroma. ’’ A total of 25 papers were found and reviewed. Data were extracted for patient demographics, number of patients with neurofibromatosis type 2, pretreatment hearing status, tumor size, margin dose, and follow-up duration. The primary outcome variables evaluated were tumor control and hearing preservation. Results. After careful review of the published articles, 11 papers reported data on outcomes of CyberKnife treatment for VS and were included in the analysis, comprising 800 patients studied during 1998 to 2012. The reported mean tumor volume ranged from 0.02 to 19.8 cm, and the follow-up duration ranged from 6 to 120 months. Margin dose varied from 14 to 25 Gy. The collective mean tumor control rate was 96.3% (95% CI: 94.0%-98.5%). The collective hearing preservation rate was 79.1% (95% CI: 71.0%-87.3%) in 427 patients with measurable hearing. Conclusion. Clinical data on outcomes of CyberKnife radiosurgery for treatment of VSs are sparse and primarily limited to single-institution analyses, with considerable variation in tumor volume and follow-up time. This meta-analysis not only provides an in-depth analysis of available data in the literature but also reviews reported outcomes and complications.
Effects of feed restriction on production and reproductive performance of Rhode Island red pullets

The study examined the effect of skip a-day feed restriction on Rhode Island Red chicken and evaluated the effect in relation to age, body weight, egg quality, weight of reproductive tract and liver at the onset of egg laying. Two hundred 40 day-old chicks with mean body weight of 48.92 ± 1.53 g were randomly distributed to 12 pens each with 20 chicks, representing 4 feeding regimen of T1 (unrestricted, control), T2 (restricted at 7, 14, 21 and 28 days of age), T3 (restricted at 35, 42, 49 and 56 days of age) and T4 (restricted at 63, 70, 77 and 84 days of age). Feed restriction was based on skipping a-day once in a week and the next day’s feed offer was based on the previous day’s feed intake. The average day to lay first egg was significantly longer (P 0.05) different between the treatment groups. The result revealed the conclusion that feed restriction by skip a-day feeding system at T3 resulted in higher egg weight and can be considered as the optimum age for pullet rearing. Additionally, feed restriction at T4 could also be recommended due to heavier uterus weight and longer length in absolute term as these attributes indicate good consistency for the subsequent egg production. Keywords: Body weight, egg quality, feed restriction, onset of egg laying, skip a-day.