Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
IMPACT OF FOREIGN AIDS ON POVERTY ALLEVIATION IN NIGERIA

The aim of the study is to examine the impact of foreign aid on poverty alleviation in Nigeria over the period of 1990 to 2017. Data were collected from UNCTAD World Bank database and CBN Statistical Bulletin. Consequently, Cointegration, DOLS and Granger Causality techniques were utilized to address the objective of the study. The major findings are summarized as follow: Foreign aid has not led to poverty alleviation in Nigeria. Similarly, FDI has a negative impact on household consumption per capita and not significant at 10% level of significance. This implies that FDI does not reduce poverty in Nigeria. In addition, there is an existence of insignificant positive relationship between inflation rate and household consumption per capita in Nigeria. Furthermore, there is a unidirectional causality which runs from foreign aid to household consumption per capita. However, there is no feedback relationship between foreign aid and FDI, likewise FDI and household consumption per capita. Also, there is a unidirectional causal relationship flowing from inflation rate to household consumption per capita. Finally, due to the findings it is recommended that since foreign aid has no reducing impact on poverty in Nigeria, the policy makers should not depend on foreign aid as the only means of combating poverty in Nigeria. Therefore, a holistic approach for tackling the challenge of poverty in Nigeria is suggested and should be embraced.
Effect of process parameters on the surface topography formation in precision additive metal manufacturing

The typical surface topography of parts produced by additive manufacturing differs from those produced by conventional manufacturing. During the powder bed fusion process, spatter particles may eject from the melt pool due to multi-physics phenomena. These spatter particles can have an impact on the part quality as large spatter particles that land on the top of the powder layer may shield the powder from the laser beam, resulting in lack of fusion porosity and increases surface roughness. The measurement of spatter is important to understand the process and to predict the performance of parts. In this study, the effect of laser power and scan speed on the surface topography of the top surface of Maraging steel grade 300 is investigated. The parts were produced by an in-house powder bed fusion machine LM-Q with a powder size distribution of 15 μm to 45 μm. A surface topography comparison was made between several samples which were produced by different process parameters regarding laser power and laser speed, leading to different Archimedes' densities. The surface topography was measured by a confocal microscope. The topography data were pre-processed with bi-cubic interpolation and least square plane subtraction. For the parameter evaluation, Sand F-filters with appropriate nesting index settings were used. Several conventional and surface texture parameters are evaluated in order to investigate the correlation with the production parameters.
Non-Gaussian stochastic models and their applications in econophysics

During the last decades, an increasing number of physicists has begun interesting in financial issues. Their major effort has been analysing and modeling the complex behaviour of financial markets within the framework of statistical and theoretical physics. In particular, the development of the theory of stochastic processes has played a key role in the description of such systems from a physical point of view. This new field of interdisciplinary research has been called econophysics. Today, the geometric Brownian motion (GBM) is considered as a standard of the quantitative finance applied to economical systems. Nevertheless, within this framework many facts typical of the real markets dynamics cannot be captured. To resolve these contradictions, non-Gaussian models are strongly demanded: they would seem, in fact, the natural way to go beyond the GBM paradigm and the inconsistencies emerged from this model. Inspired by these motivations, this work is devoted to non-Gaussian stochastic models, to their often different nature and their possible applications in the field of econophysics.
Characterization of E coli phage isolated from sewage

Bacteriophage are viruses that infect bacterial cells. as with all viruses, phage are nonliving agents and thus require the use of the host‟s metabolic processes to replicate itself. in this study, the phage of interest are those that infect and lyses E. colt host cells. when phage are released from the ruptured host, distinct zones of clearing (plaques) form. the original E. colt host cells for this experiment came from a sample of raw sewage. in order to obtain the bacteriophage, a procedure of enrichment, isolation, dilution and seeding was followed, the presence of distinct plaques indicated that lytic bacteriophage had been successfully amplified, separated and grown.This study included determination of phage titre, latent period , rise period and the burst size of the phage and effect some of factor on phage titre such as (temperature, ether and chloroform) . for determination ofhage titre used series of dilutions(10 1 , 10 -2 , 10 -3 , 10 -4 , 10 -4 , 10 -6 , 10 -7 , 10 -8 , 10 -9 ) the dilution factor gave the best countable number of plaques is(10 3 ). this dilution factor was then used for all other experiments, the latent period , rise period and the burst size of the phage are determined by countable number of plaques and phage titre(titer: plaque-forming unit(p.f.u) during 10,20,30,40,50, and 60 minutes . it was (4.7x10 5 „ 5.3x105 and 6.0x105)during 1O,20and30minutes respectively in the latent period ,but it was (8.5x105 8.9x10‟ 9.3x105)during 40,50,and 60 minutes respectively in the rise period . then the burst size of the phage is counted by the ratio of the phage titer after rise period to that during the latent period it was(1.67). This study also included effect of temperature on phage titre the statistical analysis was significantly increase P<0.05 in phage titre at the temperature37 C° comparing with phage titre at the temperature 50 C° and phage titre at the temperature 65 C°. effects of ether and chloroform on number of plaques and phage titre during 5,10,15 ,20,25 ,30,35 and 40 minutes it was(0.7x105 , 0.3x105 , 0 , 0 , 0 , 0, 0 and 0) respectively in ether sensitivity, but the phage titre in chloroform sensitivity was completely inactivated by chloroform treatment, the statistical analysis (freedom degree ( 2,21 ) and F value=52.60 was high] significant increase (P<0.05) in phage titre in normal saline comparing with phage titre in ether and chloroform sensitivity.
Toward Breathing Edges: A Prototype Respiration Entrainment System for Browser-based Computing Tasks

Increasing levels of work-related stress are pervasive among US workers leading to decreased wellbeing, lower productivity, and poor long-term health outcomes. Controlled breathing exercises can be an effective way of managing stress. However, they often require focused attention from the user, distracting them from their tasks. In this workshop paper, we present Breathing Edges —a browser plugin designed to help mitigate stress. The plugin attempts to turn the browser into an entrainment tool ( i.e., a tool able to alter physiology via indirect stimulus without conscious participation from the user) by injecting a dynamic color gradient animation into the periphery of the active browsing window that emulates rhythmic breathing toward helping users maintain a calm state. Through an exploratory, mixed-methods study ( N= 16) we investigate performance changes, distraction, and usability during two reading comprehension tasks. Results highlight the potential of this approach and we discuss design implications.
The Olympic Games and Raising Sports Participation . The Olympic Games and Raising Sports Participation: A Systematic Review of Evidence and an Interrogation of Policy for a Demonstration Effect AUTHORS

RESEARCH QUESTIONS Can a demonstration effect, whereby people are inspired by elite sport, sports people and events to actively participate themselves, be harnessed from an Olympic Games to influence sport participation? Did London 2012 sport participation legacy policy draw on evidence about a demonstration effect, and was a legacy delivered? RESEARCH METHODS A worldwide systematic review of English language evidence returned 1,778 sources iteratively reduced by the author panel, on advice from an international review panel, to 21 included sources that were quality appraised and synthesised narratively. The evidence was used to examine the influence of a demonstration effect on sport participation engagement and to interrogate sport participation legacy policy for London 2012. RESULTS AND FINDINGS There is no evidence for an inherent demonstration effect, but a potential demonstration effect, properly leveraged, may deliver increases in sport participation frequency and re-engage lapsed participants. Despite setting out to use London 2012 to raise sport participation, successive UK governments’ policy failures to harness the potential influence of a demonstration effect on demand resulted in failure to deliver increased participation. IMPLICATIONS If the primary justification for hosting an Olympic Games is the potential impact on sport participation, the Games are a bad investment. However, the Games can have specific impacts on sport participation frequency and re-engagement, and if these are desirable for host societies, are properly leveraged by hosts, and are one among a number of reasons for hosting the Games, then the Games may be a justifiable investment in sport participation terms.
The Dance of the Meta-Axioms

This paper argues: (a) that neoclassical economics is well defined in terms of three meta-axioms (methodological individualism, methodological instrumentalism, and methodological equilibration); (b) that their adoption is the common practice which delineates mainstream economics; (c) that while the first two meta-axioms allow for rich depictions of socioeconomic phenomena, they lead to an unquenchable indeterminacy, and (d) that the spectre of this indeterminacy generates evolutionary and social forces within the economics profession which cause practitioners to introduce stringent variants of the third meta-axiom. Thus their models’ sophisticated complexity is sacrificed in favour of a determinate framework within which not even a glimpse of contemporary capitalism is possible. Neoclassicism, we contend, owes its hegemonic position in the social sciences to this most peculiar, axiomatically inbuilt, theoretical failure. First submitted June 2007, revised September 2009
Community‐level natural selection modes: A quadratic framework to link multiple functional traits with competitive ability

Research linking functional traits to competitive ability of coexisting species has largely relied on rectilinear correlations, yielding inconsistent results. Based on concepts borrowed from natural selection theory, we propose that trait–competition relationships can generally correspond to three univariate selection modes: directional (a rectilinear relationship), stabilising (an n‐shaped relationship), and disruptive (a u‐shaped relationship). Moreover, correlational selection occurs when two traits interact in determining competitive ability and lead to an optimum trait combination (i.e., a bivariate nonlinear selection mode). We tested our ideas using two independent datasets, each one characterising a group of species according to (a) their competitive effect on a target species in a pot experiment and (b) species‐level values of well‐known functional traits extracted from existing databases. The first dataset comprised 10 annual plant species frequent in a summer‐rainfall desert in Argentina, while the second consisted of 37 herbaceous species from cool temperate vegetation types in Canada. Both experiments had a replacement design where the identity of neighbours was manipulated holding total plant density in pots constant. We modelled the competitive ability of neighbours (i.e., the log inverse of target plant biomass) as a function of traits using normal multiple regression. Leaf dry matter content (LDMC) was consistently subjected to negative directional selection in both experiments as well as to stabilising selection among temperate species. Leaf size was subjected to stabilising selection among desert species while among temperate species, leaf size underwent correlational selection in combination with specific leaf area (SLA): selection on SLA was negative directional for large‐leaved species, while it was slightly positive for small‐leaved species. Synthesis. Multiple quadratic regression adds functional flexibility to trait‐based community ecology while providing a standardised basis for comparison among traits and environments. Our analyses of two datasets from contrasting environmental conditions indicate (a) that leaf dry matter content can capture an important component of plant competitive ability not accounted for by widely used competitive traits, such as specific leaf area, leaf size, and plant height and (b) that optimum relationships (either univariate or bivariate) between competitive ability and plant traits may be more common than previously realised.
Multipitch tracking in music signals using Echo State Networks

Currently, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) define the state of the art for multipitch tracking in music signals. Echo State Networks (ESNs), a recently introduced recurrent neural network architecture, achieved similar results as CNNs for various tasks, such as phoneme or digit recognition. However, they have not yet received much attention in the community of Music Information Retrieval. The core of ESNs is a group of unordered, randomly connected neurons, i.e., the reservoir, by which the low-dimensional input space is non-linearly transformed into a high-dimensional feature space. Because only the weights of the connections between the reservoir and the output are trained using linear regression, ESNs are easier to train than deep neural networks. This paper presents a first exploration of ESNs for the challenging task of multipitch tracking in music signals. The best results presented in this paper were achieved with a bidirectional two-layer ESN with 20 000 neurons in each layer. Although the final F-score of 0.7198 still falls below the state of the art (0.7370), the proposed ESN-based approach serves as a baseline for further investigations of ESNs in audio signal processing in the future.
Dimensionless numbers for the net present value and the perpetual value of sustainable timber harvests from a monospecific uneven-aged forest

Abstract: This paper proposes a simple and direct method to provide reliable approximations of the net present value (NPV) and the perpetual value (PV) of sustainable timber harvests from a monospecific uneven-aged forest based on dimensionless numbers. In addition, two new dimensionless numbers ρNPV and ρPV are introduced. These use the NPV or PV derived from the sale of timber throughout a harvest cycle, plus the final stocking value (as numerator), and the fair value of standing timber under IAS 41 (as denominator). They can be interpreted as economic performance indicators for forest management, inspired by the return on assets accounting concept, showing how profitable the forest is, relative to its total value, with sustainability and stability criteria. Those approximations to the variables NPV, PV, ρNPV and ρPV, were obtained under conditions of stable equilibrium from a matrix model. In order to exemplify and test the results, the model used data from uneven-aged managed Pinus nigra stands, considering three levels of tree diameter growth, six levels of basal area and 33 levels of recruitment, creating a total of 594 planning scenarios. Furthermore, the study revealed the existence of strong linear correlations between those variables and a dimensionless number.
Potential of butterfly pea (Clitoria ternatea) and yam bean (Pachyrhizus erosus) plants for phytoremediation of anthracene- and pyrene-contaminated soil.

The ability of butterfly pea (Clitoria ternatea) and yam bean (Pachyrhizus erosus) to stimulate the removal of anthracene and pyrene from contaminated soil was investigated. Of the two plants, only butterfly pea enhanced the removal of anthracene and pyrene from soil on day 30. The initial concentrations in soil of anthracene and pyrene were 86.3 and 74.1 mg/kg, respectively, while their remaining concentrations were 20.1 and 27.1 mg/kg on day 30. In comparison, the respective concentrations in unplanted soil on day 30 were 67.6 and 68.2 mg/kg. Anthracene and pyrene were completely removed from soil planted with butterfly pea and yam bean on day 75. In comparison, 17.8 and 18.2 mg/kg of anthracene and pyrene, respectively, remained in unplanted soil on day 75. Neither anthracene nor pyrene accumulated in any of the plant tissues examined during the study, so the mechanism for enhanced anthracene and pyrene removal was the stimulation by these plants of competent indigenous microorganisms to degrade the PAH compounds.
Revisiting Prostate Cancer in India

In the recent past, there has been a rise in Prostate Cancer (PCa) in Asia, particularly India. Although systematic reviews on PCa have dealt on the genetics, genomics and the environmental influence in causation of PCa, no predictive analytics in comparing the PCa from Caucasian, American to Asian population was attempted. In this review article, we have attempted to elaborate this aspect of PCa and discuss challenges related to next generation sequencing methods of PCa’s manifestation when compared to the west.
In-Situ Bioremediation of Solvent Saturated Soils Using Methane, Propane, and Butane-Oxidizers

Abstract : The focus of this work was to evaluate the potential of aerobic microorganisms, grown on butane propylene, and propane, to cometabolically degrade chlorinated aliphatic hydrocarbons (CAHs) - The key contaminant of concern was trichloroethylene (TCE) . However, other CABs of interest were chloroform (CF), 1,1,1-trichloroethane (TCA), 1,1-dichloroethylene (1,1-DCE) - The study focused on microbes stimulated from the subsurface core materials from Air Force Base (AFB) sites with subsurface CAB contamination. Comparisons were also made with other gaseous substrates such as methane, propylene, and ammonia that have shown activity for TCE cometabolism. Through microcosm and soil column studies the work determined the potential for applying these processes for in-situ remediation of CAB contamination at AFB sites.
Competing Tenures: Implications for REDD+ in the Democratic Republic of Congo

The capacity of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) forests to sequestrate carbon has attracted interest from the international community to protect forests for carbon storage and alleviate rural poverty by establishing REDD+ (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation). Using information gathered from interviews, focus groups, field observations, and policy document analysis, this paper demonstrates that REDD+ is not well adapted to the institutional structures of forest governance in the DRC, including both statutory and customary tenure. The lack of harmonization between these systems has created a situation of competition between state and customary authorities. This has created opportunities for powerful actors to ‘shop’ between the two systems to attempt to legitimize their expanded use and control over forest resources. As the REDD+ process evolves from the preparation to the implementation phase, competing institutional structures may negatively impact the effectiveness of REDD+, as well as the distribution of costs and benefits. While the newly enacted community forest law provides an opportunity to recognize customary rights to forestland, the lack of functional local government at the district and village levels has prompted REDD+ pilot project organizers to establish new village organizations for REDD+.
Etiology of Twister Disease Complex in Onion

Onion (Allium cepa L.) rightly called as “queen of kitchen” is one of the oldest known and an important vegetable crop grown in India. It belongs to the family Alliaceae. Several factors have been identified for the low productivity of onion in India. The most important factors responsible are the diseases like purple blotch, downy mildew, Stemphylium blight and now twister disease. Onion twister, a disease of rainy season onion, was first reported near Zaria, north Nigeria, in 1969 (Ebenebe, 1980). Kuruppu, (1999) reported the disease on shallot onions, Allium cepa var. ascalonicum, that caused yield losses of up to 20 to 30% in Kalpitiya Peninsula in the North Western Province of Sri Lanka. In the 2005-06, this disease has seriously attacked red onion in a number of onion production centers of Indonesia (Wiyono, 2007).
Molecular identification of peste des petits ruminants virus in wild goat and domestic small ruminants by real-time -PCR technique in Erbil-Iraq

In July 2010 outbreak was occurred in wild goat in Barzan, Sherwin mizzen and Mergasur in Kurdistan RegionIraq. There were over 2700 deaths (both young and adult) during the period of July 2010 to October 2011. Based on the clinical signs and post-mortem findings, the involvement of peste des petits ruminants virus (PPRV) was suspected. This was confirmed by Real Time PCR technique using TaqManprobes for the detection of Peste des petits ruminants. The results of Real-Time PCR for the 9 sample taken from 9 Wild goat there are 6 sample positive and 3 sample negative and 76 sample from domestic ruminants (sheep and goat) 63 samples was negative for PPR. This result confirms the diagnosis domestic ruminants in the region are routinely vaccinated with an attenuated vaccine based on the ‘Nigeria/75/1’ strain of PPRV.
Natural History Notes for the Columnar, Globular and Semi-Epiphytic Cactus Species of the Island of Puerto Rico

Abstract: The island of Puerto Rico is home to five species of columnar, globular and semi-epiphytic cacti: Pilosocereus royenii, Melocactus intortus, Stenocereus fimbriatus, Leptocereus quadricostatus and Hylocereus trigonus. However, their ecology and natural history are still largely unknown. We visited a total of 12 sites during four years. We identified habitat preferences for each cactus species; recorded the incidence of fires and the invasion of grasses in these habitats. We also recorded bird-cactus interactions during 150 hrs. of observation. Observations on the reproduction biology of S. fimbriatus is provided for the first time, and differences of M. intortus morphology of two populations were assessed. Finally, we identify different threats to the Puerto Rican native cacti and dry forests. We also identified various questions on the basic ecology and biology of these cactus species that should be addressed in future works.