Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Patent Protection, Invention, and Productivity Growth∗

Patent protection was introduced for novel plant varieties in 1985, and it affected crops differentially depending on their reproductive structures. Exploiting this variation across crops and a new data set of crop-specific technology development, I find that the introduction of patent protection increased the development of novel plant varieties in affected crops. New technology development was driven by a rapid increase in private research investment, accompanied by positive spillover effects on innovation in complementary non-biological agricultural technologies, and led to an increase in crop yields measured from data on production. Furthermore, in U.S. counties that were more exposed to the change in patent law because of their crop composition, agricultural land values and profits increased despite the fact that, intuitively, expenditure on crop varieties also went up. Taken together, the results suggest that patent incentives spurred technology development and shaped the distribution of downstream productivity and profits. ∗I thank Daron Acemoglu, Pedro Bessone, Amy Finkelstein, Claudia Goldin, Josh Lerner, Petra Moser, Nathan Nunn, Ben Olken, Karthik Sastry, Andrei Shleifer, Heidi Williams, and Samuel Young for advice and comments. I thank workshop participants at MIT, Harvard, and HBS for helpful feedback. Marina Zhang provided outstanding research assistance. First draft: December, 2018. †Department of Economics, M.I. T. , 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, M.A. 02142, U.S.A. (email: moscona@mit.edu; website: http://economics.mit.edu/grad/moscona)
Antifungal Activity of Selected Species of Terminalia, Pteleopsis and Combretum (Combretaceae) Collected in Tanzania

Thirty-five crude extracts of 5 species of Terminalia, 10 species of Combretum (Loefl.) and Pteleopsis myrtifolia (Laws.) Engl. & Diels. collected in Tanzania were investigated for their antifungal activity against 5 species of Candida and Cryptococcus neoformans. An agar diffusion method was used for the antifungal screening, and species of Terminalia (L.) and Combretum were chosen according to their uses in Tanzanian traditional medicine. Candida glabrata and Cryptococcus neoformans were the most sensitive organisms in this antifungal screening, and the root extracts of Terminalia sambesiaca Engl. & Diels. , T. sericea Burch. ex DC. , T. kaiserana F. Hoffm. , Combretum padoides Engl. & Diels. , and C. molle G. Don. showed significant inhibition of the growth of these two fungi. The best screening results were obtained with root extracts of T. sambesiaca, T. kaiserana, and T. sericea, which gave low MIC-values against Candida glabrata and Cryptococcus neoformans. A root extract of T. sericea gave nearly as low MIC values (0.78 mg/ml) as amphotericin B (0.20 mg/ml) against Candida glabrata. This investigation encourages us to search for antifungally active compounds from among the most active species of Terminalia and Combretum.
Title: A review of heavy weight market pigs: status of knowledge and future needs assessment – NPB #15-203 Investigator:

Marketing weight is an important economic variable that impacts the productivity and profitability of finishing pig production. Marketing weight has been increasing worldwide over the past decades driven by the dilution of fixed production cost over more weight per pig and the improvement of genetic selection of lean-type pigs. This review was aimed to summarize current knowledge and assess the future research needs on producing finishing pigs with marketing weight greater than 130 kg. Based on a through literature review, increasing marketing weight affected overall pig growth; in particular, cumulative ADG decreased by 4.0 g/d, ADFI increased by 78.1 g/d, and G:F decreased by 0.011 for every 10 kg increase of marketing weight. Increasing marketing weight by 10 kg increased carcass yield by 0.41 percentage units, backfat by 1.8 mm, LM area by 1.8 cm, carcass length by 2.2 cm, and belly yield by 0.32 percentage units, but decreased percentage of fat-free-lean by 0.78 units and loin, shoulder, and ham yields by 0.13, 0.16, and 0.17 percentage units, respectively. Studies that investigated the effects of marketing weight on pork quality observed decreased pH by 0.02 and 0.01 at 45 min and 24 h postmortem, respectively, and increased a* value by 0.28 per 10 kg marketing weight increase. Heavier market pigs had increased concentrations of saturated fatty acids and intramuscular fat. However, studies reported conflicting results for L* and b* values, drip loss, Warner-Bratzler shear force, and sensory properties of pigs in response to increasing marketing weight. A limited amount of research has been conducted to provide nutritional requirement guideline for pigs greater than 140 kg. Increased weight and size of heavy pigs can create challenges to farm and packer facilities and equipment. Discussions and recommendations are provided concerning the adjustments for floor and feeder space, barn design, ventilation, disease control, transportation, and carcass processing needed for increasing marketing weight. In conclusion, increasing marketing weight creates both opportunities and challenges to current finishing pig production, and future research is needed to provide nutritional and management guidelines and improve feed efficiency and meat quality of heavy weight market pigs.
Movement of three non‐salmonid fish species through a low‐gradient vertical‐slot fishway

Well‐designed fishways have assisted in restoring migrations and rehabilitating riverine fish species in all continents. The performance of fishways varies greatly with their type, design and operating regime, and with the species involved. Vertical‐slot fishways are widely used to overcome low‐level barriers, especially for non‐salmonids. Important issues remain in the design of fishways to meet performance and cost criteria, including the relationship between fishway bed gradient and the fish that ascend, and whether resting pools are needed. Models of species' movement patterns can inform fishway designers about likely fish response to various design options, and can lead to improved efficiency and effectiveness.
Diversidade genética da soja entre períodos e entre programas de melhoramento no Brasil

The objective of this work was to detect the effects of plant breeding over the genetic diversity of soybean germplasm grown during the last three decades by comparing six different breeding programs and releasing intervals of soybean cultivars, using microsatellite loci. Regarding the breeding programs, all loci presented significantly different allelic distributions. Some loci presented alleles restricted to unique breeding programs, while others had a same allele being the most frequent in all the six programs. The AMOVA revealed that the major proportion of the variance occurred among cultivars within breeding programs and only 5.3% (p 0.05). The results suggest that the soybean germplasm pool involved in breeding programs in Brazil has maintained a stable genetic diversity during the past 30 years, in addition to a relative heterogeneity of some breeding programs.
Snag availability and communities of cavity nesting birds in tropical versus temperate forests

Standing dead trees (snags) ate critical foraging and nesting sites for animals, notably birds, yet little is known about snag dynamics or communities of cavity nesting birds in low latitude forests. In a comparison among 10 New World forests, we observed that snags in tropical and subtropical forests (N = 5 sites) occurred at lower densities (3.5-20.5 snags/ha versus 21.2-49.3 snags/ha) and had larger average diameters (27.6-34.2 cm versus 11.2-31.2 cm) than snags in temperate and boreal forests (N = 5 sites). No latitudinal trends were evident in average density of live stems or average snag height. An analysis of avifaunal lists from these sites indicated that low latitude forests supported 2.5 times as many cavity nesting species and approximately equal numbers of primary cavity excavating species as high latitude forests
Pancreatic Islet β-Cells Transiently Metabolize Pyruvate*

Pancreatic β-cell metabolism was followed during glucose and pyruvate stimulation of pancreatic islets using quantitative two-photon NAD(P)H imaging. The observed redox changes, spatially separated between the cytoplasm and mitochondria, were compared with whole islet insulin secretion. As expected, both NAD(P)H and insulin secretion showed sustained increases in response to glucose stimulation. In contrast, pyruvate caused a much lower NAD(P)H response and did not generate insulin secretion. Low pyruvate concentrations decreased cytoplasmic NAD(P)H without affecting mitochondrial NAD(P)H, whereas higher concentrations increased cytoplasmic and mitochondrial levels. However, the pyruvate-stimulated mitochondrial increase was transient and equilibrated to nearbase-line levels. Inhibitors of the mitochondrial pyruvate-transporter and malate-aspartate shuttle were utilized to resolve the glucose- and pyruvate-stimulated NAD(P)H response mechanisms. These data showed that glucose-stimulated mitochondrial NAD(P)H and insulin secretion are independent of pyruvate transport but dependent on NAD(P)H shuttling. In contrast, the pyruvate-stimulated cytoplasmic NAD(P)H response was enhanced by both inhibitors. Surprisingly the malate-aspartate shuttle inhibitor enabled pyruvate-stimulated insulin secretion. These data support a model in which glycolysis plays a dominant role in glucose-stimulated insulin secretion. Based on these data, we propose a mechanism for glucose-stimulated insulin secretion that includes allosteric inhibition of tricarboxylic acid cycle enzymes and pH dependence of mitochondrial pyruvate transport.
Collective action success in New Zealand_final

This paper analyses the likelihood of collective action success in New Zealand for managing natural resources. To assess collective action a wide range of cases of collective action in New Zealand were analysed. From case study research of individual cases, meta-analysis of success factors developed from the literature and the analysis of costs and benefits were performed. We judge from these analyses that collective action holds promise for natural resource management. We further propose five enabling principles to allow authentic collective action to develop. Introduction Until recently, New Zealand’s abundance of natural resources made management simple. It is not difficult to allocate and manage abundant resources. But times are changing as natural resources that we take for granted are becoming increasingly scarce because of pressure from human economic activity. Compounding the problems of scarcity are the competing objectives and values held by an increasing number of stakeholders. This situation is made more complex by the interaction between natural resource systems (eg, the relationship between land erosion and water quality). These challenges of increasing scarcity and complexity for the management and allocation of natural resources have led to much conflict (Land and Water Forum, 2010). Hence, we need a regime that can overcome conflict and deal with change. However, New Zealand’s current legislated regime – the Resource Management Act 1991 – by itself is unsuitable to meet these challenges. Under this regime stakeholders express their objectives and values through submissions on plans and notified resource consents. The result can be a complicated and time-consuming planning process, where unresolved conflicts invariably end up in the Environment Court for those that can afford it.
MP3704_02_Witek 278..297

THE PLEASURABLE DESIRE TO MOVE TO A BEAT IS known as groove and is partly explained by rhythmic syncopation. While many contemporary groovedirected genres originated in the African diaspora, groove music psychology has almost exclusively studied European or North American listeners. While crosscultural approaches can help us understand how different populations respond to music, comparing African and Western musical behaviors has historically tended to rely on stereotypes. Here we report on two studies in which sensorimotor and groove responses to syncopation were measured in university students and staff from Cape Coast, Ghana and Williamstown, MA, United States. In our experimental designs and interpretations, we show sensitivity towards the ethical implications of doing cross-cultural research in an African context. The Ghanaian group showed greater synchronization precision than Americans during monophonic syncopated patterns, but this was not reflected in synchronization accuracy. There was no significant group difference in the pleasurable desire to move. Our results have implications for how we understand the relationship between exposure and synchronization, and how we define syncopation in cultural and musical contexts. We hope our critical approach to cross-cultural comparison contributes to developing music psychology into a more inclusive and culturally grounded field.
Plant β‐diversity in fragmented rain forests: testing floristic homogenization and differentiation hypotheses

Land‐use change is the main driver of global biodiversity loss, but its relative impact on species turnover (β‐diversity) across multiple spatial scales remains unclear. Plant communities in fragmented rain forests can undergo declines (floristic homogenization) or increases (floristic differentiation) in β‐diversity. We tested these alternative hypotheses analysing a large vegetation data base from a hierarchically nested sampling design (450 plots in 45 forest patches in 3 landscapes with different deforestation levels) at Los Tuxtlas rain forest, Mexico. Differences in β‐diversity across spatial scales (i.e. among plots, among patches, and among landscapes) were analysed using multiplicative diversity decompositions of Hill numbers. Plant β‐diversity among plots within forest patches decreased in landscapes with higher deforestation levels, leading to floristic homogenization within patches. This homogenization process can be explained by the loss of rare and shade‐tolerant plant species, and the recruitment and dominance of disturbance‐adapted species, and can limit the accumulation of species (γ‐diversity) in landscapes with higher deforestation. Nevertheless, the landscape with the highest deforestation level showed the highest floristic differentiation among patches. This landscape showed the greatest isolation distances between patches; a landscape spatial pattern that can limit the interchange of seeds (and species) between patches. Because the study patches are undergoing secondary succession following disturbances (e.g. logging, edge effects), different disturbance regimes and increased distance among patches could lead to higher β‐diversity. Synthesis. These findings indicate that patterns of floristic homogenization and differentiation depend on the landscape configuration and on the spatial scale of analysis. At the landscape scale, our results suggest that, in accordance with non‐equilibrium dynamics and the landscape‐divergence hypothesis, patches located in landscapes with different forest cover and different connectivity can experience contrasting successional pathways due to increasing levels of compositional differentiation between patches. These novel findings add further uncertainties to the maintenance of biodiversity in severely deforested tropical landscapes and have key ecological implications for biodiversity conservation planning.
A Survey of Differentially Private Generative Adversarial Networks

Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) have demonstrated the potential to learn the distribution of training data and generate high quality synthetic data. But recent research has shown that machine learning models, including GANs, may leak sensitive information about training samples. To protect the privacy of training samples, several approaches have been proposed to adopt differential privacy in the training of GANs. Moreover, as the winner of the NIST 2018 Unlink-able Data Challenge, differentially private GANs provide a promising direction for generating private synthetic data. In this paper, we survey the existing approaches for differentially private GANs, in order to facilitate the understanding of the current state of research. Speciﬁcally, we aim to provide the workshop audience with a comprehensive review of pre-liminaries, summaries of the approaches, characterization of evaluation criteria, as well as discussions around challenges. In addition, the existing approaches are analyzed with an emphasis on their key innovations and application domains, to facilitate the adoption of the research results. This survey will serve as a reference for future research and point out opportunities for the further development on this important topic.
An analysis of factors influencing victim support for prosecution in male-on-female perpetrated intimate partner violence

Written expression: If your LSA recommends that where core award competencies allow, your work should be marked on its content and your knowledge and understanding of the subject and should be identified with an appropriate sticker, please change the Written Expression Allowance on the right hand side from ‘No’ to ‘Yes’. Please note that you must still achieve the module learning outcomes to pass the assignment.
Microbiological Quality of Ice-Creams Produced in Alba County, Romania

The microbiological quality of 40 ice cream samples of various flavours produced by one large-scale manufacturer in Alba County, Romania, was evaluated. Total number of mesophyll bacteria (cfu/g), total coliforms, E. coli and presence of Staphylococcus aureus, Salmonella spp. and Listeria monocytogenes were performed on all samples. Total bacterial count (TCB) ranged to 3.0×104 cfu/g and coliform bacteria to 60/g. The level of bacterial contamination found in this study reflects the unhygienic conditions prevalent in manufacturing and storage of ice creams. In the mean time it was confirmed that the overall risk associated with the consumption of ice-cream is low. The experimental study results suggest that ice cream processing factory must adopt quality guarantee systems, such as good manufacturing practices, hazard analysis and critical control points system.Grape seed oil obtained by extraction with petroleum ether can be used for technical purposes only.
Effects of Area Closure on Selected Soil Physico-Chemical Properties in Hidabu Abote District, North Shewa Zone, Oromia

This study was conducted at sire moresse area closure, Hidabu abote district, North shewa zone, Oromia Regional State to evaluate the effects of area closure on selected physic-chemical properties of soils. In this study area closure sites were compared with adjacent open grazing land in similar landscape positions for soil fertility buildup. Soil samples were collected from the experimental fields using Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with factorial arrangement to evaluate selected soil physico- chemical properties. Data analyses were carried out using analysis of variance appropriate to general linear model (GLM). A total of 36 undisturbed and 36 disturbed soil samples were collected from both closed and open grazing land at 10 and 20 cm sampling depths along each slope position with three replication. The result of the study indicated that the mean value of most of soil physical and chemical properties were higher at area closure than adjacent open grazing land and also higher at bottom slope position than middle and upper slope position. The mean of Air filled porosity and Bulk density were lower at both area closure management practices and bottom slope position. Bulk density, Total Porosity, volumetric soil moisture content and saturated hydraulic conductivity at 20 cm sampling depth were shows significantly different with respect to management practices. Similarly, soil chemical properties such as EC, OC, AvP and CEC were shows significantly different with respect to management practices. Soil structure quality, Texture, BD, TP, SMC, EC and TN were shows significantly different under the three slope position. The overall output from the research showed that physical and chemical properties of soil in area closure areas are improving. Area closures act as important sinks of water and reduce soil erosion. From this study it was possible to conclude that area closure improves soil physical and chemical properties.
Analysis of the microbial quality of commercialized tropical fruit ice cream in Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Ice cream is a popular food product and can be produced from dairy bases or water with the addition of fresh fruit and other ingredients. However, poor hygiene, unprocessed fruit and the absence of thermal treatment can contribute to the microbial content of the ice cream. This study aimed to determine the densities of the microorganisms that are indicators of the hygienic sanitary quality, as required by the Brazilian legislation. A total of 51 samples of tropical fruit ice creams were collected in Minas Gerais, Brazil. A questionnaire to evaluate Good Manufacturing Practices was completed, which allowed us to characterize handling conditions. Thermotolerant coliform and the high counts of psychrotrophic microorganisms suggest unsatisfactory sanitary quality. One sample was positive for the presence of coagulase-positive Staphylococcus. High counts of molds and yeasts were observed. The results suggest the need for the better control of sanitary conditions during the manufacturing of these products.
The Preliminary Cytotoxicity Study: Anti-Proliferative Activity of Aqueous Extract of Clinacanthus nutans , Strobilanther crispa and Pereskia bleo on Oral Squamous Carcinoma Cells ORL-48

Background: This in vitro study was carried out to screen the aqueous extracts of selected local plants ( clinacanthus nutans , strobilanther crispa and pereskia bleo) known locally to possess anticancer properties for cytotoxic activity. Method: The antiproliferative activity on human oral squamous cell carcinoma, ORL-48 was assessed based on a colorimetric assay using neutral red dye. Result: Clinacanthus nutans exhibited an IC 50 of 49.8 ± 0.02 µg/mL on ORL-48 cells, while Strobilanther crispa and Pereskia bleo showed no antiproliferative response. Conclusion: The aqueous extract of clinacanthus nutans, strobilanther crispa and pereskia bleo does not possess anti proliferative activity towards oral squamous carcinoma cells ORL-48.
Stomata dimorphism in dicotyledonous plants of temperate climate

The leaves of many tropical trees have besides the normal stomata abnormally large stomata long described as “giant stomata. ” They reflect an additional early phase of stomata initiation during leaf ontogeny. In epidermal replicas from more than 200 dicotyledonous species of temperate climate we also found well defined giant stomata or solitary stomata of normal size in the majority of woody plants, but rarely in herbaceous plants. There is no relationship between taxonomic group and presence of giant stomata.