Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Combining ability and gene action of hot pepper (Capsicum annuum L.) genotypes in Southern Ethiopia

This work identifies the combining ability of 10 hot pepper (Capsicum annuum L.) parents and 45F1 hybrids obtained from 10 x 10 half diallel. The work aims to identify the parents with the best general combining ability (gca) and crosses with high specific combining ability (sca) for yield, quality and nature of gene action involved. The study was conducted during 2015-2016 at six environments in Southern Ethiopia using RCBD with three replications. The combined analysis of variance showed that variance for gca and sca was highly significant for all the traits studied. This indicates that both additive and non-additive gene actions were operating in the inheritance of these traits. Parental level of gca revealed that introduced genotype (AVPP0514) had highest (1843.87) effect followed by Ethiopian variety 'Mareko fana' (930.97) for fresh pod yield and other related traits. The highest sca for hybrids was exhibited by AVPP0514 x AVPP59328, 'Marekofana' x AVPP0514, 'Melkaawaze' x AVPP0206 and AVPP9813 x AVPP0105 for yield and quality traits. This indicates the existence of immense potential for population improvement and heterosis breeding for enhancing productivity and qualities. The ratios of gca mean square to sca mean square were higher than unity for traits, indicating that additive gene action plays a predominant role in the inheritance of most of the traits. Key words: Additive gene action, hybrid, improvement, parents, quality, yield.
Robust Boosting Forests with Richer Deep Feature Hierarchy

We propose a robust variant of boosting forest to the various adversarial defense methods, and apply it to enhance the robustness of the deep neural network. We retain the deep network architecture, weights, and middle layer features, then install gradient boosting forest to select the features from each layer of the deep network, and predict the target. For training each decision tree, we propose a novel conservative and greedy trade-off, with consideration for less misprediction instead of pure gain functions, therefore being suboptimal and conservative. We actively increase tree depth to remedy the accuracy with splits in more features, being more greedy in growing tree depth. We propose a new task on 3D face model, whose robustness has not been carefully studied, despite the great security and privacy concerns related to face analytics. We tried a simple attack method on a pure convolutional neural network (CNN) face shape estimator, making it degenerate to only output average face shape with invisible perturbation. Our conservative-greedy boosting forest (CGBF) on face landmark datasets showed a great improvement over original pure deep learning methods under the adversarial attacks.
The Transition from the Kuiper Belt to the Jupiter-Family (Comets)

Kuiper Belt Objects, or more generally Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs), are planetesimals found beyond the orbit of Neptune. Some TNOs evolve onto Neptune-crossing orbits and become Centaurs. Many Centaurs, in turn, reach Jupiter-crossing orbits and become Jupiter-family comets (JFCs). TNOs are the main source of the JFCs. TNOs offer a different window than the JFCs, of more primordial bodies and over a different size and temperature range. It is in that context that this chapter is written. Here we discuss the dynamical pathways taken from the trans-Neptunian region to the JFCs, and the most important properties of TNOs that relate to the JFC population, including considerations of their origins, compositions, morphologies, and size distributions. We relate these properties to the JFCs whenever possible. We reﬂect on a few key outstanding issues regarding our incomplete knowledge of TNOs as they pertain to the Centaurs and JFC populations. We ﬁnish with a short discussion of notable new and upcoming facilities and the impacts they will have regarding these outstanding questions.
Fabrication and characteristics of a GaInP/GaAs heterojunction bipolar transistor using a selective buried sub-collector

A C-doped GaInP/GaAs heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) with a selective buried sub-collector has been fabricated by two growth steps. The active HBT region was made on the selective buried sub-collector layer with minimum overlap of the extrinsic base and the sub-collector region resulting in substantial reduction of the base-collector capacitance. The experiment shows that the base-collector capacitance is reduced to about half of that of a conventional HBT while the base resistance remains unchanged resulting in a 40-50% increase in the maximum oscillation frequency. Both DC and RF characteristics are investigated and compared with a conventional HBT. A current gain of 40, cutoff frequency of 50 GHz and maximum oscillation frequency of 140 GHz were obtained for the GaInP/GaAs HBT. It is demonstrated that the selective buried sub-collector provides an effective means for enhancing RF performance of an HBT.
Musical experience and Mandarin tone discrimination and imitation

Previous work [T. L. Gottfried and D. Riester, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 108, 2604 (2000)] showed that native speakers of American English with musical training performed better than nonmusicians when identifying the four distinctive tones of Mandarin Chinese (high‐level, mid‐rising, low‐dipping, high‐falling). Accuracy for both groups was relatively low since listeners were not trained on the phonemic contrasts. Current research compares musicians and nonmusicians on discrimination and imitation of unfamiliar tones. Listeners were presented with two different Mandarin words that had either the same or different tones; listeners indicated whether the tones were same or different. Thus, they were required to determine a categorical match (same or different tone), rather than an auditory match. All listeners had significantly more difficulty discriminating between mid‐rising and low‐dipping tones than with other contrasts. Listeners with more musical training showed significantly greater accuracy in their discrim.
Elicitation of normative and fairness judgments: Do incentives matter?

Krupka and Weber (2013) introduce an incentive-compatible coordination game as an alternative method for elicitation of normative judgments. I show, however, that people provide virtually the same responses in incentivized and non-incentivized versions of the Krupka-Weber game. Besides ratings of social appropriateness, I also elicit ratings of fairness of all possible offers in an ultimatum game. Ratings of social appropriateness and fairness are similar for low offers (below or equal to the equal split), but not for high offers which are judged to be more appropriate than fair.
Probability-Dependent Gradient Decay in Large Margin Softmax

In the past few years, Softmax has become a common component in neural network frameworks. In this paper, a gradient decay hyperparameter is introduced in Softmax to control the probability-dependent gradient decay rate during training. By following the theoretical analysis and empirical results of a variety of model architectures trained on MNIST, CIFAR-10/100 and SVHN, we find that the generalization performance depends significantly on the gradient decay rate as the confidence probability rises, i.e., the gradient decreases convexly or concavely as the sample probability increases. Moreover, optimization with the small gradient decay shows a similar curriculum learning sequence where hard samples are in the spotlight only after easy samples are convinced sufficiently, and well-separated samples gain a higher gradient to reduce intra-class distance. Based on the analysis results, we can provide evidence that the large margin Softmax will affect the local Lipschitz constraint of the loss function by regulating the probability-dependent gradient decay rate. This paper provides a new perspective and understanding of the relationship among concepts of large margin Softmax, local Lipschitz constraint and curriculum learning by analyzing the gradient decay rate. Besides, we propose a warm-up strategy to dynamically adjust Softmax loss in training, where the gradient decay rate increases from over-small to speed up the convergence rate.
Employee Initiative and Managerial Control

I analyze the impact of managerial involvement and the allocation of authority on employee initiative in a setting where both a manager and an employee can come up with new ideas for implementation. Extending the analysis of Aghion and Tirole (1997), the model introduces two effects that are absent in their framework and examines their implications for both the optimal level of managerial involvement and the allocation of authority. These effects are the competition effect, whereby increased effort by the manager can increase the effort of the employee when the manager retains formal authority, and the alignment effect, whereby the types of ideas that are generated in equilibrium are dependent on the allocation of authority. The implications of these effects are two-fold. First, both effects decrease the value of formal delegation and in the present setting are so strong that the manager rarely wants to formally delegate authority to the agent. Second, conditional on retaining formal authority, the manager will choose one of two strategies. To utilize the competition effect and to maximize employee initiative, the manager can choose a strategy of active but limited involvement in the idea generation stage. Too much involvement will crowd out employee initiative, while too little involvement (like formal delegation) will allow the employee to pursue his pet projects at the detriment of overall organizational goals. Alternatively, if the cost of employee initiative is too large in terms of the compromised quality of managerial ideas, the manager prefers to work alone. The worst possible outcome arises when the manager is involved enough to demotivate the employee but not active enough to generate strong alternatives herself.
Flexible working hours, effective tool in reducing congestion?

Congestion and optimizing the use infrastructure are hot topics in the Netherlands. To tackle this congestion problem different policies can be implemented. Seeing as the current predominately used anti-congestion measures seem to be ineffective in ensuring a high level of mobility in the long run, implementing flexible working hour initiatives on a large scale and thus spreading the need for transportation over the day could help to tackle the current congestion problem. This idea sound simple and effective, but how do the actual commuters, the employees stuck in traffic, react to these policies and why? This thesis has been written with the aim of assessing the effectiveness of flexible working hour initiatives on the reduction of congestion from the employee’s point of view.
Does feet position alter triceps surae EMG record during heel-raise exercises in leg press machine?

Background: muscle activation measured by electromyography (EMG) provides additional insight into functional differences between movements and muscle involvement. Objective: to evaluate the EMG of triceps surae during heel-raise exercise in healthy subjects performed at leg press machine with different feet positions. Methods: ten trained healthy male adults aged between 20 and 30 years voluntarily took part in the study. After biometric analyses the EMG signals were obtained using a 8-channel telemeterized surface EMG system (EMG System do Brazil, Brazil Ltda) (amplifier gain: 1000x, common rejection mode ratio >100 dB, band pass filter: 20 to 500 Hz). All data was acquired and processed using a 16-bit analog to digital converter, with a sampling frequency of 2kHz on the soleus (Sol), medial (GM) and lateral (GL) gastrocnemius muscles in both legs, in accordance with the recommendations of SENIAN. The root mean square (RMS) of the EMG amplitude was calculated to evaluate muscle activity of the three muscles. After being properly prepared for eletromyography procedures, all subjects were instructed to perform 3 sets of 5 repetitions during heel-raise exercise using the maximal load that enabled 10 repetitions on leg press 45° machine, each set being performed with one of the following feet positions: neutral (0o), internal and external rotation (both with 45° from neutral position). The tests were sequential and applied a 5-minute rest interval between sets. The order of the tests was randomized. Results: thought had been found interaction (F=0.27, P= 0.75) on RMS parameters and feet position, the values of Sol muscle were significantly (F=17.86, P= 0.003) lower compared with GL and GM muscles independently of feet position. Conclusion: The change in the feet position during the heel-rise exercise performed in the leg press does not influence the activation of the triceps surae, and the soleus is less activated than the gastrocnemius in that exercise.
Biological diversity and seasonal variation of mesozooplankton in the southeastern Black Sea coastal ecosystem

In this study, the seasonal distribution of mesozooplankton was investigated between 1999 and 2006 at a station located in the southeastern Black Sea region. A total of 40 cruises were done within the southeastern continental shelf throughout this period in order to collect mesozooplankton samples. A total of 10 mesozooplankton species were identified. The average annual highest abundances of species were 67,770 ind. /m2 in 2000 (Penilia avirostris), 50,048 ind. /m2 in 2001 (Sagitta setosa), 42,143 ind. /m2 in 2006 (Oikopleura dioica), 27,987 ind. /m2 in 2005 (Acartia clausi), 25,792 ind. /m2 in 2001 (Oithona similis), 24,806 ind. /m2 in 2005 (Pseudocalanus elongatus), 12,094 ind. /m2 in 2005 (Paracalanus parvus), and 11,697 ind. /m2 in 2001 (Calanus euxinus). Calanus euxinus and Pseudocalanus elongatus were determined as cold-water species, having high abundance in winter and early spring. The species of Acartia clausi and Oithona similis were assessed as species observed in all seasons. According to the Bray-Curtis similarity index, the copepod species showed seasonal differences. Summer and early autumn were found to be different from other sampling periods in terms of population structure. The results of this study will form a basis for long-term mesozooplankton monitoring studies in the Black Sea coastal ecosystem.
Length-weight relationship of two fish species from a dryland intermittent river in northeastern Brazil

Given the context of high hydrological uncertainties and stress in dryland streams, the evaluation of length-weight relationships and condition factors of fish becomes of chief concern for the understanding of these systems. Length-weight relationships were estimated for two fish species, Astyanax fasciatus (Cuvier 1819) and Astyanax bimaculatus (Linnaeus 1758), from temporary pools in a dry river bed. Length-weight relationship information was compared between dry and rainy seasons. Sampling was performed using gillnets, manual trawls and cast nets at different reaches of the river. Estimates for the values of b of the length-weight relationship were 2.63 for A. fasciatus , and 2.78 for A. bimaculatus , indicating a negative allometric growth. The condition factor ranged between 0.0180 and 0.0187 for both species, without significant difference between seasons, and meaning a greater investment in growth rather than weight gain. Results indicated that fishes tended to be larger during the rainy season, likely representing the result of a higher frequency of immature and smaller individuals during the previous dry season as a consequence of reproductive activity of adults. Keywords: Astyanax fasciatus, Astyanax bimaculatus, temporary pools, condition factor.
CALRETICULIN 3 GENE POLYMORPHISM IN CELIAC DISEASE AND EFFECTS OF GLUTEN ON CALRETICULIN LOCALIZATION AND EXPRESSION IN EPITHELIAL CELLS IN VITRO

Celiac disease (CD) is an inflammatory disease of the small intestine with characteristics of autoimmunity. CD is induced in genetically susceptible individuals by gluten peptides from dietary wheat, barley and rye and leads to mucosal inflammation, villous atrophy, crypt hyperplasia and production of autoantibodies. Majority of these antibodies are against the enzyme transglutaminase 2 (TG2). CD patients are also positive for autoantibodies that recognise other autoantigens, such as calreticulin (CRT), which is a multifunctional, Ca-binding chaperone of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). Its chromosomal location 19p13.1 has previously been linked to CD. CRT is able to modulate the immune system and epithelial cell function and is suspected to have role in CD. calr3 gene polymorphisms from 25 CD and 25 control patients were determined by Conformation-sensitive Gel Electrophoresis (CSGE), a fast and sensitive method to detect single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP). CSGE positive samples were confirmed by DNA sequencing. The alterations in CRT localization and expression levels in T84 human epithelial cells after gluten challenge was determined by confocal microscopy and Western blotting, respectively. An intron mutation was found from 9/25 (36%) of control patients against 2/25 (8 %) of CD patients (p<0,05). SNPs resulting in amino acid changes were not identified. The found mutation possibly exhibits a protective function against gluten challenge and thus inhibits the pathogenesis of CD and may be an important contribution to the understanding of CD genetics. Gluten challenge resulted in altered localization and downregulation of CRT. The localization change of CRT reflects the gluten-induced stress response and can be used as an additional characteristic in describing the epithelial gluten-response. The down-regulation of CRT by gluten may interfere intracellular signalling and uptake of apoptotic cells by professional phagocytes. The CRT expression and localization data shown here support the theory that CRT has a role in CD.
The Relationship between Psychological Status (Depression and Anxiety) and Social Support and Sexual Function

Abstract Introduction: Given that large numbers of marital problems arise from lack of proper satisfaction with sexual desire (libido) as well as lack of awareness towards the complicated dimensions of this fundamental motive, the purpose of the present study was to determine correlations between psychological state (depression and anxiety), social support, and sexual function among females of the reproductive age. Methods: This study was a descriptive-analytic research on 400 females referred to clinics affiliated with Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences in the city of Tehran, during year 2015. The study sample was recruited by cluster and multi-stage random sampling method. The Sexual Function Questionnaire, Demographic Questionnaire, Scale of Perceived Social Support, Spielberger’s Anxiety Inventory, and Beck Depression Inventory were also used to collect the data. The obtained data was analyzed through the SPSS software via descriptive statistics, t test, one way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), as well as chi-square test. Results: The findings revealed that 4.5% of females had poor level of sexual functioning. In addition, 24.5% of females benefited from low social support and also 75% and 9% of the given individuals had chronic depression and severe anxiety, respectively. According to the results of this study, sexual functioning was correlated with female’s age, husband’s age, age of first pregnancy, length of marriage, duration of having private rooms, and history of infertility (P ˂ 0.05). Furthermore, there were relationships between sexual functioning and depression as well as anxiety and social support (P ˂ 0.05). Conclusions: It was concluded that sexual functioning was correlated with psychological state (depression and anxiety) and social support. Thus, it was recommended to conduct screening tests in terms of the variables examined.
The long term effects of Bolsa Família on child labour and school enrolment

In this paper we study the effects of conditional cash transfers in school enrolment and tackling child labour. We develop a dynamic heterogeneous agent general equilibrium model, where households face a set of tradeoffs while allocating their children’s time in leisure activities, schooling and working. We calibrate the model using data from the Brazilian survey PNAD, before the policy was implemented, in order to quantify the effects of a conditional transfer. We then evaluate the results of a policy experiment that implements a conditional cash transfer scheme similar to the Brazilian Bolsa Famı́lia. Our results suggest that the program, in the long term, is able to substantially increase school registration and reduce child labour and poverty. In addition, we find out that a progressive conditional cash transfer results is even more effective in tackling child labour and increasing school enrolment.
ACCOUNTABILITY ROLE IN CUSTOMER LOYALTY: EVIDENCE FROM REFAH BANK

This study is the descriptive research applied method. The main purpose of this study was examining the role of accountability on customer loyalty in refah banks of Golestan province. The populations are all bank customers of Refah bank in Golestan Province that were selected 385 person as sample and Morgan table was used to determine sample size. Random sampling was selected to choose simples. Data is collected by questionnaire. To analysis of hypotheses we used Regression test. Findings show that aspects of political, ethical, functional, structural, financial and legal arrangements to address the impact of customer loyalty and predicting variables obtained the first six ranks respectively. The cultural dimensions of information had not a significant role to meet anticipated customer loyalty.
Treatment of infantile fibrosarcoma: A tertiary care center experience

Objective Infantile fibrosarcoma (IFS) is a highly locally aggressive nonrhabdomyosarcomatous soft tissue sarcoma that most commonly occurs in young infants. There exists no standard treatment this lesion due to its rarity. We shared our treatment experience for IFS in this study. Methods Patients' record between January 2013 and December 2018 were reviewed and patients with newly diagnosed IFS were included. The clinical characteristics, treatment strategy, treatment-related toxicities and clinical outcome were retrospectively analyzed. Results Eleven patients were admitted in our center, including 4 girls and 7 boys, and the median age at diagnosis was 5 months (range 1–23 months). Ten patients achieved complete remission (CR) after the completion of initial treatment. The main short-term adverse effects was myelosuppression. Three patients experienced relapse, including two patients with local progression and one patient with distant metastasis. After a median follow-up of 3.5 years (range 1.5–7 years), 9 patients were alive and 2 patients died. The 3-year overall survival (OS) rate was 93.5% (95% CI 83.7–98.2). Conclusion We formulated the treatment strategy according to group grade and the experience from previous studies, which may be effective and feasible for the treatment of IFS.