Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Combined effects of herbicides and Sphenoptera jugoslavica on diffuse knapweed (Centaurea diffusa) population dynamics

Abstract Sphenoptera jugoslavica negatively influences diffuse knapweed populations, but the influence is inconsistent in space and time. In spring 1998, a 3-yr experiment was established to determine whether low rates of picloram or clopyralid would increase the percentage of plants infested with S. jugoslavica, thereby potentially enhancing its capacity to control diffuse knapweed. The experiment was conducted at three sites in Colorado, where S. jugoslavica was released in 1994. Picloram and clopyralid were applied separately to plots at 35, 70, or 140 g ha−1 during June or September, and a non–herbicide-treated control was added. Density and cover measurements were collected in permanent quadrats three times during each growing season to determine whether herbicides influenced diffuse knapweed growth and population dynamics. Diffuse knapweed plants were harvested outside the permanent quadrats to determine the percentage of plants bearing S. jugoslavica larvae. During the spring after herbicide application, all picloram rates and the 35-g ha−1 rate of clopyralid applied the previous June increased the percentage of plants infested by S. jugoslavica approximately 25% compared with the nonsprayed control. None of the herbicide treatments increased the percentage of plants infested by S. jugoslavica 2 yr after application, indicating that the herbicides' positive effects on the percentage of plants infested by S. jugoslavica lasted only 1 yr. Results indicate that combining S. jugoslavica with low rates of picloram or clopyralid applied in June can improve diffuse knapweed control compared with using S. jugoslavica alone. Nomenclature: Clopyralid; picloram; diffuse knapweed, Centaurea diffusa Lam. CENDI; Sphenoptera jugoslavica Oben.
When Goal-Setting Forges Ahead but Stops Short

This paper reports the results of an at-scale randomized controlled trial among 18,000 secondary students in Zanzibar (Tanzania) to examine the effects of personal best goal-setting on student outcomes. The paper also tests the impact of combining goal setting with non-financial rewards conditional on students meeting the goals they set. The results suggest that goal-setting has a significant, positive impact on students'time use, study effort, and self-discipline. However, there are no significant impacts on test scores. This is partially because nearly two-thirds of the students do not set realistic goals. The paper finds that the effects on time use, study effort, and discipline are weaker when goal setting is combined with nonfinancial rewards. This suggests that tying goal setting to extrinsic incentives could weaken its impact. The results show stronger impacts for female students and from students from weaker socioeconomic backgrounds. These results demonstrate that goal setting can have positive impacts on student outcomes, especially for the relatively disadvantaged. However, for maximizing the impacts, goal setting may need to be combined with guidance on setting realistic goals, and extrinsic rewards tied to goals may need to be avoided.
Isolation of Panels of Llama Single-Domain Antibody Fragments Binding All Nine Neuraminidase Subtypes of Influenza A Virus

Avian influenza A virus comprises sixteen hemagglutinin (HA) and nine neuraminidase (NA) subtypes (N1–N9). To isolate llama single-domain antibody fragments (VHHs) against all N subtypes, four llamas were immunized with mixtures of influenza viruses. Selections using influenza virus yielded predominantly VHHs binding to the highly immunogenic HA and nucleoprotein. However, selection using enzymatically active recombinant NA (rNA) protein enabled us to isolate NA binding VHHs. Some isolated VHHs cross-reacted to other N subtypes. These were subsequently used for the capture of N subtypes that could not be produced as recombinant protein (rN6) or were enzymatically inactive (rN1, rN5) in phage display selection, yielding novel VHHs. In total we isolated 188 NA binding VHHs, 64 of which were expressed in yeast. Most VHHs specifically recognize a single N subtype, but some VHHs cross-react with other N-subtypes. At least one VHH bound to all N subtypes, except N4, identifying a conserved antigenic site. Thus, this work (1) describes methods for isolating NA binding VHHs, (2) illustrates the suitability of llama immunization with multiple antigens for retrieving many binders against different antigens and (3) describes 64 novel NA binding VHHs, including a broadly reactive VHH, which can be used in various assays for influenza virus subtyping, detection or serology.
Flow-bed interactions analysis and application of automatic close range digital photogrammetric survey in a laboratory flume

ABSTARCT This paper reports on a laboratory study in which the automatic digital photogrammetric survey was applied to derive the high-resolution Digital Surface Model (DSM) of the bed topography, used for the flow-bed interactions analysis, in a large amplitude meandering laboratory flume. The analysis has been conducted with the aid of detailed data of three-dimensional flow field previously collected using the acoustic Doppler velocity profiler DOP2000. The applied surveying procedure has allowed the evaluation of the DSM with a resolution of ±0.5 mm. The detailed DSM has been compared with peculiar maps describing the flow velocity pattern (downstream and the crossstream flows) and the shear velocity distribution along the meandering flume. The comparison has highlighted that high quality topographic data are of crucial importance to evaluate the crosscirculation effect on the redistribution of the velocity and boundary shear stress and, thereby, on the meandering channel evolution.
A REVIEW OF THE CHALLENGES AFFECTING THE AGROPROCESSING SECTOR IN TANZANIA

The purpose of this research is to review challenges affecting the growth of agro-processing firms in Tanzania. Although Tanzania has arable land and produces a large amount of agro produce, processing activities are limited and as a result, the growth of agro-processing firms is affected. Such a decline in processing activities can be explained by several challenges that processors encounter. To identify obstacles that inhibit the growth of processing firms in Tanzania, a mixed-method approach was used where content analysis, as well as descriptive statistics, were used to identify the challenges that impact the growth of processing firms.13 most recent works of literature from Tanzania were used. Impediments were identified and grouped into themes. A total of 9 challenges (financial constraints, bureaucracy, technological difficulties, market accessibility, poor facilities, SCM issues, quality of processed materials, lack of raw materials and increased costs emerged as themes. The results reveal that the majority of Tanzanian agro-processing firms face challenges such as financial constraints, bureaucracy, technological difficulties, lack of raw materials. To enable agro-processing firms to grow and perform better it is recommended that more support is required from the government and lending institutions to facilitate processing firms to avail finances which will enable agro-processing firms to adopt latest technologies and increase productivity.
Evaluation of Storage of Medicines in Households in Delta State, Nigeria

Background: Drug therapy is often the most frequent intervention in the delivery of health care services. Improper drug storage and disposal can have negative impact on treatment outcome and threaten public safety. Objectives: The main objective of this study was to identify medicines stored in households, and explore variables that encourage storage of unused medicines in households. Method: The study was conducted using a questionnaire adapted from a previous study. The survey included 1000 households from 7 communities located in 5 urban and 5 rural areas in delta state. Convenience sampling method was employed for the study. The sampling unit was the family head in every household Result: A little less than half (45%) of households were from rural community. Left over medicines were found in 970 (97%) of households. The medicines that were frequently stored in the homes were analgesics 263 (26.3%), followed anti-hypertensive medications 153 (15.3%) and anti -asthmatic drugs 144 (14.4%). Almost half 481 (48.1%) of the households had antibiotics in their homes. More than one quarter, 340 (34.0%) of all medicines in the surveyed households had expired, Even though more than half 621 (62.1%) of households had members suffering from one or more chronic diseases, and 545 (54.5%) of stored medicines were not in use by any member of the household. The most predominant storage site was the cupboard 322 (32.2%). Conclusion: Storage of leftover drugs is a very common practice among the population surveyed. Analgesics and antihypertensive drugs were the most frequently encountered medicines stored in the homes.
The Imperfect Knowledge Forecasting Framework and Premia on Foreign Exchange: A New Approach to Asset Markets

* The authors are grateful to Charles Engel, Bruce Elmslie, Halina Frydman, Jan Gross, Katarina Juselius, Daniel Kahneman, Andreas Park, Ned Phelps, Andrzej Rapaczynski, Paul Romer, Stephan Schulmeister, George Soros and Larry Summers, James Wible and Mike Woodford for insightful comments on and reactions to an earlier draft of this paper. The authors also thank Marcella Frydman and Ken Murphy for editorial advice, as well as the C.V. Starr Center for Applied Economics at New York University and the Reginald F. Atkins Chair at the University of New Hampshire is for their support. **Department of Economics, New York University, e-mail: roman.frydman@nyu.edu. ***Department of Economics, University of New Hampshire, e-mail: michael.goldberg@ unh.edu
Standing stocks and activity of Archaea and Bacteria in the western Arctic Ocean

This study examined the abundance, cell size, and activity of Bacteria and Archaea in the Chukchi Sea and the Canada Basin of the western Arctic Ocean in the spring (May—June) and summer (July—August) of 2002 and 2004. Data from fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) analyses indicate that bacterial abundance as a percent of total prokaryotes decreased with depth, whereas in contrast, Crenarchaeota increased from about 10%of prokaryotes in surface waters to as much as 40% in samples from 100 to 200 m. Euryarchaeota were detectable in only a few samples. Relative abundance of Crenarchaeota, expressed as a percent of total prokaryotes, correlated with ammonium concentrations, but relative bacterial abundance did not. Crenarchaeota cells were significantly larger than Bacteria by 1.5‐ to 2‐fold in the upper 200 m. Data collected from a combination of FISH and microautoradiography indicate that often the fraction of both Bacteria and Crenarchaeota assimilating organic compounds was high (up to 55%), and both microbial groups were more active in assimilating amino acids than other compounds. However, Crenarchaeota were usually less active than Bacteria in assimilating amino acids and glucose, but were nearly as active as Bacteria in assimilating protein and diatom extracellular polymers. The fraction of Bacteria and Crenarchaeota assimilating CO2 in surface waters was higher than expected by anaplerotic fixation alone, suggesting that many of these microbes are chemoautotrophic. These data add to a growing body of evidence indicating how the roles of Archaea and Bacteria differ in biogeochemical cycles of the oceans.
Tetracentron Fruits from the Miocene of Western North America

An infructescence from the Middle Miocene of Clarkia, Idaho, conforms to the extant Asian trochodendraceous genus Tetracentron. The infructescence of Tetracentron remberi sp. n. bears numerous sessile fruits in a helical arrangement. The fruits are thin‐walled capsules with two pairs of greatly recurved hornlike styles that protrude basally from the lateral margins of the fruit. The adaxial surface of the style is papillose and is covered with tricolpate pollen that also corresponds morphologically to that of extant Tetracentron. The new fossil shows that Tetracentron, like the related Trochodendron, was formerly established in western North America, whereas both of these genera are now endemic to eastern Asia. Although these two genera were sympatric in the Miocene of Clarkia, Idaho, they have nonoverlapping geographic ranges today.
Development and Physicochemical Characterization of New Resistant Citrate Starch from Different Corn Starches

Resistant starch has drawn broad interest for both potential health benefits and functional properties. In this study, a technology was developed to increase resistant starch content of corn starch using esterification with citric acid at elevated temperature. Waxy corn, normal corn and high-amylose corn starches were used as model starches. Citric acid (40% of starch dry weight) was reacted with corn starch at different temperatures (120–150°C) for different reaction times (3–9 h). The effect of reaction conditions on resistant starch content in the citrate corn starch was investigated. When conducting the reaction at 140°C for 7 h, the highest resistant starch content was found in waxy corn citrate starch (87.5%) with the highest degree of substitution (DS, 0.16) of all starches. High-amylose corn starch had 86.4% resistant starch content and 0.14 DS, and normal corn starch had 78.8% resistant starch and 0.12 DS. The physicochemical properties of these citrate starches were characterized using various analytical techniques. In the presence of excess water upon heating, citrate starch made from waxy corn starch had no peak in the DSC thermogram, and small peaks were found for normal corn starch (0.4 J/g) and Hylon VII starch (3.0 J/g) in the thermograms. This indicates that citrate substitution changes granule properties. There are no retrogradation peaks in the thermograms when starch was reheated after 2 weeks storage at 5°C. All the citrate starches showed no peaks in RVA pasting curves, indicating citrate substitution changes the pasting properties of corn starch as well. Moreover, citrate starch from waxy corn is more thermally stable than the other citrate starches.
Comparative Analysis of Mathematics Proficiency and Attitudes Toward Mathematics of Senior High School Student

There have been a number of studies investigating how attitudes such as confidence and motivation affect students and their academic achievement. This study assessed the attitudes towards Mathematics and proficiency in Mathematics of Senior High School Students across different strands. The respondents of the study were 868 grade 11 senior high students of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), Prebaccalaureate Maritime (Maritime), Accountancy, Business and Management (ABM), Humanities and Social Sciences (HUMSS), and Technical Vocation and Livelihood (TVL) strands. It aimed to ascertain the selected SHS students’ level of Mathematics proficiency and their attitudes towards Mathematics. The Attitudes’ Toward Mathematics Inventory (ATMI) was used to measure and determine the students’ attitudes in terms of value, enjoyment, motivation, and self-confidence. Mathematics proficiency was based on the core subject, General Mathematics, the content was functions and graph. The two variables were correlated across different strands. To gather the data an Attitude Towards Mathematics Inventory (ATMI) and a teacher-made test were used. ATMI scores indicated that they valued mathematics, but their scores for Self-Confidence, Enjoyment, and Motivation were somewhat negative in attitudes. As a whole, students’ across strands showed a negative attitudes towards mathematics. The results indicated that there is a significant relationship between attitudes towards mathematics and proficiency in mathematics. These findings indicate that teacher educators should be aware of Senior High School students across different strands’ attitudes and seek to improve them in order to positively influence students’ proficiency in mathematics.
Do Cohabiting Men Really Perform More Housework?

Using data from 17,636 respondents in 28 nations, this research uses multilevel modeling to compare the reported division of household labor and factors affecting it for currently married and currently cohabiting couples. Cohabiting men report performing more household labor than do married men, and cohabiting women report performing less household labor than do married women. The findings provide support for the time-availability, relative-resources, and gender-ideology perspectives. The effects of time availability and relative resources on the division of household labor are substantially the same for both union types, but gender ideology is more influential on the division of labor reported by cohabiting than by married respondents. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.
Impact of ResearchGate on Increasing Citations and Usage Counts of Hot Papers in Clinical Medicine Indexed in Web of Science

The purpose of this research was to conduct a comparative study of the impact of ResearchGate indicators on increasing citation and usage counts of hot papers in clinical medicine indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) database. This is an applied research and has been performed using scientometric methods. Article titles, the number of citations, “Usage count last 180 days”, “Usage count since 2013”, publication year, and authors of 583 hot papers in clinical medicine were extracted from the WoS database. Then, the readership and citation counts of articles were extracted from ResearchGate social network. The data were analyzed by descriptive and analytical statistics using Microsoft Excel and SPSS 21. The results showed that there was a significant relationship between the number of received citations, both usage counts in WoS and ResearchGate indicators (P value ≤ 0.01). Selfarchiving in scientific social networking sites such as ResearchGate may be effective on visibility of articles that may also be related to their received citations.
Application Timing of Harvest Aid Herbicides Affects Soybean Harvest and Yield

Abstract Research was conducted over 2 yr to evaluate soybean response to harvest aid herbicide treatments paraquat at 0.28 kg ai ha−1, paraquat with carfentrazone at 0.014 kg ai ha−1, and sodium chlorate at 6.72 kg ai ha−1. Indeterminate and determinate soybean cultivars were treated when moisture of seed collected from the uppermost four nodes of plants averaged 60, 50, 40, 30, and 20% (± 2%). For each soybean cultivar, the harvest aid treatment by application timing interaction was not significant, and data for harvest aid treatments were averaged. Application of harvest aid at 60% average seed moisture reduced yield for the maturity group (MG) IV indeterminate cultivar 15.4% compared with the nontreated; 100-seed weight was reduced 12.4%. Yield and seed weight were not negatively affected when harvest aid was applied at 50% average seed moisture and soybean was harvested 14 and 15 d before the nontreated control. Although planting date in the 2 yr for the indeterminate cultivar differed by 26 d, number of days from planting to harvest aid application at 50% average seed moisture was 112 and 116 d. For MG V and MG VI determinate cultivars, application of harvest aid at 60% average seed moisture reduced yield compared with the nontreated control 22 and 18.1%, respectively, and at 50% average seed moisture 15.6 and 4%, respectively; seed weight reductions of 8.9 to 33.3% accompanied the yield reductions of the two cultivars. Reduction in soybean yield and seed weight was not observed when harvest aid was applied at 40% average seed moisture, and harvest for the 2 yr was 8 and 9 d earlier for the MG V cultivar and 10 and 14 d earlier for the MG VI cultivar. Nomenclature: Carfentrazone; paraquat; sodium chlorate; soybean, Glycine max L. Pers. ‘Asgrow 4403 RR’, ‘Asgrow 5903 RR’, ‘Asgrow 6202 RR’
Phylogenetic relationships between Juncaceae and Cyperaceae: insights from rbcL sequence data.

Phylogenetic relationships among the families of commelinid monocots have long been troublesome, primarily due to reduction of floral parts and convergence in inflorescence and floral morphology to accommodate entomophily in many of these families. The position of Juncaceae among the monocots has for some years been the subject of wide debate. The floral morphology of the family was envisioned as that of diminutive Liliaceae, and many workers hypothesized a liliaceous origin of Juncaceae (see Cronquist, 1988). This resemblance is now considered superficial, and the presence of a number of anatomical and biochemical characters, including vessels throughout the plant body, paracytic stomata, and starch as the seed food-storage product, all point to inclusion of Juncaceae within subclass Commelinidae sensu Cronquist (1988). Within this subclass, Cronquist supported the more traditional stand of placing Cyperaceae and Poaceae together (Cyperales), distinct from Juncaceae and the monogeneric Thurniaceae (both in his Juncales). In support of this treatment, Cronquist dismissed any similarities between Juncaceae and Cyperaceae as parallelisms, and yet advanced few characters shared between Poaceae and Cyperaceae other than their reduced commelinid floral morphology. Three other major systems of classification, however, all separated Cyperaceae and Poaceae, and instead, placed Juncaceae and Cyperaceae together, either in the same superorder (Takhtajan, 1980) or order (Thorne, 1992; Dahlgren, Clifford, and Yeo, 1985). Indeed, even Cronquist (1988) admitted that "neither of these alternatives is really wrong, but I am not convinced that the change is necessary. "
An analysis of the accumulation of water and dry matter in tomato fruit

Abstract Previously published data from tomato plants grown in nutrient solutions having one of three electrical conductivities (2, 12 and 17 mS cm−1) were analysed. The rate of water import into the fruit, and the proportion of this conducted by the xylem stream were calculated from the daily rates of transpiration and the net accumulation of water and calcium. The rate of water import decreased as the conductivity of the nutrient solution rose, the maximum daily import rates in the third week after pollination being 3.2, 3.0 and 1.8 g fruit−1 d−1 for fruit grown at 2, 12 and 17 mS cm−1, respectively. During fruit development, the proportion of water imported via the xylem fell from 8–15% to 1–2% at maturity. The principal source of water for tomato fruit growth was phloem sap. Based on the daily rates of net dry matter accumulation, respiration and phloem water import, the calculated dry matter concentration of the phloem sap declined from 7 to 3%, or from 12.5 to 7.8% during fruit development in low or high salinity, respectively. The similar dry matter accumulation of fruit grown at different salinities was due to changes in both volume and concentration of phloem sap. Potassium salts in tomato fruit were calculated lo have contributed –0.29, –0.48 and –0.58 MPa to total fruit osmotic potential in the 2, 12 and 17 mS cm−1 treatments, respectively, which accounted for 38% or 49% of the measured total osmotic potential of the 2 mS cm−1 or 17 mS cm−1 treatments. The contribution of hexoses to total fruit osmotic potential in the young fruit was from about –0.1 to –0.2 MPa at all salinities. The osmotic potential of tomato fruit is regulated more by potassium salts than by hexoses.