Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Harnessing Net Primary Productivity Data for Monitoring Sustainable Development of Agriculture

This study was undertaken to assess the utility of remotely sensed net primary productivity (NPP) data to measure agricultural sustainability by applying a new methodology that captures spatial variability and trends in total NPP and in NPP removed at harvest. The sustainable intensification of agriculture is widely promoted as a means for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and transitioning toward a more productive, sustainable, and inclusive agriculture, particularity in fragile environments. Yet critics claim that the 17 SDGs and 169 targets are immeasurable and unmanageable. We propose adoption of satellite-estimated, time-series NPP data to monitor agricultural intensification and sustainability, as it is one indicator potentially valuable across several SDGs. To illustrate, we present a unique monitoring framework and a novel indicator, the agricultural appropriation of net primary productivity (AANPP) and analyze spatial trends in NPP and AANPP across the continent of Africa. AANPP focuses on the proportion of total crop NPP removed at harvest. We estimate AANPP by overlaying remotely sensed satellite imagery with rasterized crop production data at 10-by-10-kilometer spatial resolution; we explore variation in NPP and AANPP in terms of food and ecological security. The spatial distribution of NPP and AANPP illustrates the dominance of cropping systems as spatial drivers of NPP across many regions in West and East Africa, as well as in the fertile river valleys across North Africa and the Sahel, where access to irrigation and other technological inputs are inflating AANPP relative to NPP. A comparison of 2000 and 2005 datasets showed increasing AANPP in African countries south of the Saharaâ€”particularly in Mozambique, Angola, and Zambiaâ€”whereas NPP either held stable or decreased considerably. This pattern was especially evident subnationally in Ethiopia. Such trends highlight increasing vulnerability of populations to food and ecological insecurity. When combined with other indicators and time-series data, the significance of NPP and the capacity of spatially explicit datasets have far-reaching implications for monitoring the progress of sustainable development in a post-2015 world.
The yeast homologue of the microtubule-associated protein Lis1 The yeast homologue of the microtubule-associated protein Lis1 interacts with the sumoylation machinery and a SUMO-targeted interacts with the sumoylation machinery and a SUMO-targeted ubiquitin ligase ubiquitin ligase

Microtubules and microtubule-associated proteins are fundamental for multiple cellular processes, including mitosis and intracellular motility, but the factors that control microtubule-associated proteins (MAPs) are poorly understood. Here we show that two MAPs—the CLIP-170 homologue Bik1p and the Lis1 homologue Pac1p—interact with several proteins in the sumoylation pathway. Bik1p and Pac1p interact with Smt3p, the yeast SUMO; Ubc9p, an E2; and Nfi1p, an E3. Bik1p interacts directly with SUMO in vitro, and overexpression of Smt3p and Bik1p results in its in vivo sumoylation. Modified Pac1p is observed when the SUMO protease Ulp1p is inactivated. Both ubiquitin and Smt3p copurify with Pac1p. In contrast to ubiquitination, sumoylation does not directly tag the substrate for degradation. However, SUMO-targeted ubiquitin ligases (STUbLs) can recognize a sumoylated substrate and promote its degradation via ubiquitination and the proteasome. Both Pac1p and Bik1p interact with the STUbL Nis1p-Ris1p and the protease Wss1p. Strains deleted for RIS1 or WSS1 accumulate Pac1p conjugates. This suggests a novel model in which the abundance of these MAPs may be regulated via STUbLs. Pac1p modification is also altered by Kar9p and the dynein regulator She1p. This work has implications for the regulation of dynein’s interaction with various cargoes, including its off-loading to the cortex.
Using An Elevation Gradient As A Surrogate For Climate Warming To Understand The Effects On Wood Anatomy And Water Relations Of Fraser Fir (ABIES FRASERI) Christmas Trees

Fraser fir (Abies fraseri) Christmas trees are an important part of the agro-economyof Western North Carolina, accounting for $100 million dollars in annual sales. Inorder to assess how warming-driven stressors of climate change could affect thesetrees, I examined water relations and wood anatomy of Fraser fir Christmas treesalong an elevation gradient from 664 m to 1228 m. Low elevations exhibited thehighest daytime maximum temperatures and higher associated evaporative demand(greater vapor pressure deficit, VPD) than the middle and high elevations, whilehigh elevations experienced greater cloud cover and immersion than the lowerelevations, as expected. Stomatal conductance varied over site and season, showinga strong response to VPD and temperature changes. Diurnal water potentialslikewise displayed a change over the season and with elevation, with the lowestwater potential at the low elevation in the early growing season. In the mid-seasonthe high elevation trees exhibited the lowest water potential because of a high VPD.Trees did not experience enough water stress to induce embolism in the currentfield sites and conditions. Hydraulic conductivity did not exhibit a change acrosselevations. From an anatomical perspective, xylem lumen area was similar amongall sites. The tracheid count, however, differed among sites with the fewestcells/mm2 at the low elevation. Middle elevations had the greatest cell wallthickness but neither differences in the tracheid anatomy was great enough tochange alter the hydraulic conductivity. Trees across elevations tended tocompensate for warming by physiology, namely stomatal control, rather than adjustanatomy. With climate warming, dryer soil, and lower relative humidity,physiological functioning will decrease and low elevation farms may experiencelonger periods of stress during the growing season.
Intercomparison of projected changes in climate extremes for South Korea: application of trend preserving statistical downscaling methods to the CMIP5 ensemble

Global climate models (GCMs) provide the fundamental information used to assess potential impacts of future climate change. However, the mismatch in spatial resolution between GCMs and the requirements of regional applications has impeded the use of GCM projections for impact studies at a regional scale. This study applied statistical post‐processing methods that preserve long‐term temporal trends, bias‐correction/spatial disaggregation with detrended quantile mapping (SDDQM) and BCSD with quantile delta mapping (SDQDM), to downscale 20 CMIP5 GCM climate projections for daily precipitation, minimum temperature, and maximum temperature over South Korea. Using the downscaled CMIP5 climate projections, we investigated absolute changes in extreme indices between the reference and three 30‐year future periods. In addition, the biases in change signals from GCM projections for different statistical downscaling methods were compared to evaluate how well long‐term trends in indices are preserved. The results showed that the statistical downscaling methods significantly improved the skill in reproducing extreme indices. For temperature‐related extreme indices, we found strong significant trends while trends for precipitation‐related indices varied depending on the index and climate projection horizon. Specifically, more frequent, longer duration, and more intense hot extremes may occur under the CMIP5 climate projections, while corresponding decreases may occur for extreme cold indices. Prominent upward trends are found in extreme precipitation events. Regarding analysis of the bias in change signals, SDQDM, which explicitly preserves changes in all quantiles of the underlying variables, better preserved long‐term trends in extreme indices simulated by GCMs.
Atmospheric Escape from Earth and Mars: Solar and Solar Wind Drivers of Oxygen Escape

Habitability at the surface of a planet depends on having an atmosphere long enough for life to develop. The loss of atmosphere to space is an important component in assessing planetary surface habitability. Current models of atmospheric escape from exoplanets are not well constrained by observations. Atmospheric escape observations from the terrestrial planets are available in
Special Issue "Strengthening Derivation Chains in Cognitive Neuroscience": Research Report We don ' t know what you did last summer. On the importance of transparent reporting of reaction time data pre-processing

systematic literature review , presented in this paper, revealed that the justiﬁcation for and order in which analytical choices are conducted are rarely reported, leading to difﬁculty in reproducing results and interpreting mixed ﬁndings. To address this methodological shortcoming, we created a checklist on reporting reaction time pre-processing to make these decisions more explicit, improve transparency, and thus, promote best practices within the ﬁeld. The importance of the pre-processing checklist was additionally supported by an expert consensus survey and a multiverse analysis . Consequently, we appeal for maximal transparency on all methods applied and offer a checklist to improve replicability and reproducibility of studies that use reaction time measures.
Eﬀects of climate and acidic deposition on inter-annual variations of stream water chemistry in forested watersheds in the Shimanto River Basin, southern Japan

Although the amount of acidic deposition has recently decreased in Japan, acid deposition has deteriorated some forest ecosystems during the past few decades. We investigated the yearly variations in stream water chemistry for more than 20 years in two areas (Yusuhara and Taisho) in the Shmanto River Basin, southern Japan, where the eﬀects of acidic deposition are considered to be modest. Stream water samples were collected monthly from three forest watersheds selected at each site. The annual means of the stream chemistry were predicted by multiple regression analysis. The sunlight hours were positively related with the potassium, magnesium, calcium, nitrate, sulfate, and bicarbonate concentrations in stream water. The results suggest that long sunlight hours boost the photosynthetic activities, thus promoting soil respiration and decomposition of soil organic matter; moreover, a higher carbonic acid concentration in the soil solution promotes cation weathering and carbonic acid dissociation to bicarbonate. The ammonium, nitrate, and sulfate concentrations in the bulk precipitation have decreased at Yusuhara and the sodium, magnesium, calcium, chloride, nitrate, and sulfate concentrations in the stream water have decreased in both areas. The nitrate and sulfate concentrations apparently responded to the decreasing input of acidic deposition. Given the decreasing trends in magnesium and calcium concentration with no change in bicarbonate concentration, we inferred that previous inputs of acidic deposition enhanced the rate of rock weathering.
Edinburgh Research Explorer The Edinburgh Social Cognition Test (ESCoT)

Current measures of social cognition have shown inconsistent findings regarding the effects of healthy aging. Moreover, no tests are currently available that allow clinicians and researchers to examine cognitive and affective theory of mind (ToM) and understanding of social norms within the same test. To address these limitations, we present the Edinburgh Social Cognition Test (ESCoT) which assesses cognitive and affective ToM and inter-and intrapersonal understanding of social norms. We examined the effects of age, measures of intelligence and the Broader Autism Phenotype (BAP) on the ESCoT and established tests of social cognition. Additionally, we investigated the convergent validity of the ESCoT based on traditional social cognition measures. The ESCoT was administered alongside Reading the Mind in Films (RMF), Reading the Mind in Eyes (RME), Judgement of Preference and Social Norm Questionnaire to 91 participants (30 aged 18–35 years, 30 aged 45–60 years and 31 aged 65–85 years). Poorer performance on the cognitive and affective ToM ESCoT subtests were predicted by increasing age. The affective ToM ESCoT subtest and RMF were predicted by gender, where being female predicted better performance. Unlike the ESCoT, better performance on the RMF was predicted by higher verbal comprehension and perceptual reasoning abilities, while better performance on the RME was predicted by higher verbal comprehension scores. Lower scores on inter-and intrapersonal understanding of social norms were both predicted by the presence of more autism-like traits while poorer interpersonal understanding of social norms performance was predicted by increasing age. These findings show that the ESCoT is a useful measure of
HSOA Journal of Practical and Professional Nursing

Background: Scabies is an infestation of the skin by the human itch female mite. Scabies infestation provides an important portal of entry for bacteria and complement inhibitors from scabies mites. The most common clinical symptoms suggestive of Scabies i.e. insomnia due to severe itching at night, rashes, irritability leading to school absenteeism and poor quality of life. Objective: The objective of this study is to assess prevalence of scabies and associated factors among governmental elementary school students in Gondar town, northwest Ethiopia. Methods: A Quantitative cross-sectional study was conducted. Data was collected by using structured self-administered questionnaire. The analysis was done using statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) version 20. Association was determined by using p-value; p-value of <0.05 will be consider as statistically significant. Result: Among the total participants, 354(56.9%) of them were males and 197 (31.7%) were grade seven students followed by 188(30.1%) grade six students. The overall prevalence of scabies was
Determinants of Agricultural Credit in Rural India by Social Group

Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC) is engaged in interdisciplinary research in analytical and applied areas of the social sciences, encompassing diverse aspects of development. ISEC works with central, state and local governments as well as international agencies by undertaking systematic studies of resource potential, identifying factors influencing growth and examining measures for reducing poverty. The thrust areas of research include state and local economic policies, issues relating to sociological and demographic transition, environmental issues and fiscal, administrative and political decentralization and governance. It pursues fruitful contacts with other institutions and scholars devoted to social science research through collaborative research programmes, seminars
in Yemen

hyroid malignancy is the most common endocrine malignancy. 1 Worldwide there are approximately 500 peer-reviewed studies published every year on thyroid cancer (TC). There was only one study came out of Yemen, which is nearly 12 years and it reported TC in multinodular goiter. It is a well known fact that thyroid carcinoma is more prevalent in areas with endemic adenomatous goiter, especially the follicular type. 2 The Republic of Yemen lacks a national cancer
Maternal environmental tobacco smoke exposure and adverse birth outcomes in Egypt: a cross sectional study

Objective. To study the association between exposure to Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS) during pregnancy and the adverse birth outcomes in Egypt. Materials and Methods. Target population were mothers admitted to the postnatal ward of the obstetrics department of an educational hospital, giving birth to viable single neonates with or without adverse birth outcomes. The total sample size was 345, and a pre-designed pre-coded structured interviewing questionnaire in Arabic language was used to collect data from the study population within 24 hours after delivery. Results. The study revealed that mothers who reported regular exposure to ETS had two times more risk of experiencing adverse birth outcomes than mothers who reported no exposure (OR 2.0, 95%CI 1.13-3.58). Mothers who were regularly exposed to ETS during pregnancy had 1.36 times more risk of having preterm babies, two times more risk of having small for gestational age (SGA) babies and 3 times more likely to have low birth weight (LBW) babies than mothers who were not exposed to ETS (OR 1.36, 95%CI 0.59-3.09), (OR1.97, 95%CI 0.73-5.3) and (OR 2.74, 95%CI 1.38-5.46) respectively. There was no significant association between exposure to ETS during pregnancy and the risk of congenital anomalies or Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) admission. Conclusions. Mothers regularly exposed to ETS had two times more risk for adverse birth outcomes compared to non-exposed. Birth weight was the only birth outcome significantly associated with gestational exposure to ETS and low birth weight was the adverse birth outcome most affected by ETS exposure.
challenge reports improved protein function prediction and new functional annotations for hundreds of genes through experimental screens

Background: The Critical Assessment of Functional Annotation (CAFA) is an ongoing, global, community-driven effort to evaluate and improve the computational annotation of protein function. Results: Here, we report on the results of the third CAFA challenge, CAFA3, that featured an expanded analysis over the previous CAFA rounds, both in terms of volume of data analyzed and the types of analysis performed. In a novel and major new development, computational predictions and assessment goals drove some of the experimental assays, resulting in new functional annotations for more than 1000 genes. Specifically, we performed experimental whole-genome mutation screening in Candida albicans and aeruginosa genomes, which provided us with genome-wide experimental data for genes associated with biofilm formation and motility. We further performed targeted assays on selected genes in Drosophila melanogaster , which we suspected of being involved in long-term memory. Conclusion: We conclude that while predictions of the molecular function and biological process annotations have slightly improved over time, those of the cellular component have not. Term-centric prediction of experimental annotations remains equally challenging; although the performance of the top methods is significantly better than the expectations set by baseline methods in C. albicans and D. melanogaster , it leaves considerable room and need for improvement. Finally, we report that the CAFA community now involves a broad range of participants with expertise in bioinformatics, biological experimentation, biocuration, and bio-ontologies, working together to improve functional annotation, computational function prediction, and our ability to manage big data in the era of large experimental screens.
Smith ScholarWorks Smith ScholarWorks

There is biochemical, imaging and functional evidence that Rho GTPase signaling is a crucial regulator of actin-based structures such as lamellipodia and filopodia. However, although Rho GTPases are believed to serve similar functions in growth cones, the spatiotemporal dynamics of Rho GTPase signaling has not been examined in living growth cones in response to known axon guidance cues. Here we provide the first measurements of Cdc42 activity in living growth cones acutely stimulated with both growth-promoting and growth-inhibiting axon-guidance cues. Interestingly, we find that both permissive and repulsive factors can work by modulating Cdc42 activity, but in opposite directions. We find that the growth-promoting factors laminin and BDNF activate Cdc42, whereas the inhibitor Slit2 reduces Cdc42 activity in growth cones. Remarkably, we find that regulation of focal adhesion kinase (FAK) activity is a common upstream modulator of Cdc42 by BDNF, laminin and Slit. These findings suggest that rapid modulation of Cdc42 signaling through FAK by receptor activation underlies changes in growth cone motility in response to permissive and repulsive guidance cues.
Economic Burden of Mental Illnesses in Pakistan.

BACKGROUND The economic consequences of mental illnesses are much more than health consequences. In Low and Middle Income Countries (LMIC) the economic impact of mental illnesses is rarely analyzed. This paper attempts to fill the gap in research on economics of mental health in LMIC. We provide economic burden of mental illness in Pakistan that can serve as an argument for reorienting health policy, resource allocation and priority settings. AIM To estimate economic burden of mental illnesses in Pakistan. METHODS The study used prevalence based cost of illnesses approach using bottom-up costing methodology. We used Aga Khan University Hospital, Psychiatry department data set (N = 1882) on admission and ambulatory care for the year 2005-06. Healthcare cost data was obtained from finance department of the hospital. Productivity losses, caregiver and travel cost were estimated using socio-economic features of patients in the data set and data of national household survey. We used stratified random sampling and methods of ordinary least square multiple linear regressions to estimate cost on medicines for ambulatory care. All estimates of cost are based on 1000 bootstrap samples by ICD-10 disease classification. Prevalence data on mental illnesses from Pakistan and regional countries was used to estimate economic burden. RESULTS The economic burden of mental illnesses in Pakistan was Pakistan Rupees (PKR) 250,483 million (USD 4264.27 million) in 2006. Medical care costs and productivity losses contributed 37% and 58.97% of the economic burden respectively. Tertiary care admissions costs were 70% of total medical care costs. The average length of stay (LOS) for admissions care was around 8 days. Daily average medical care cost of admitted patients was PKR 3273 (USD 55.72). For ambulatory care, on average a patient visited the clinic twice a year. The estimated average yearly cost for all mental illnesses was PKR 81,922 (USD 1394.65) and PKR 19,592 (USD 333.54) for admissions and ambulatory care respectively. In the sensitivity analysis productivity losses showed high variability (from USD 1022.17 million to USD 4007.01 million). Assuming a gate keeping role of primary healthcare (PHC) demonstrated a saving of USD 1577.19 million in total economic burden. IMPLICATIONS FOR HEALTH POLICY This study set out to generate evidence using a low cost innovative approach relevant to many LMICs. In Pakistan, like many LMICs, patients access tertiary care directly, even for illness that can be efficiently managed at PHC level. In economic terms the non-medical consequences of mental illnesses are far greater than medical consequences. Based on these finding we recommend, firstly, that mental illnesses should be prioritized equally as other illnesses in health policy and secondly there needs to be integration of mental health in primary health care in Pakistan.
Predictors of sustainable consumption in a tourism context: a CHAID approach

This investigation studied a sample of 900 prospective international tourists to Norway with respect to their attitudes towards environmental sustainability on holiday. Sustainability was measured using a single item according to which the sample was first divided into highly sustainable tourists and low-sustainable tourists. Later, using a CHAID analysis, predictors of sustainability were identified. These included gender, nationality, being a nature-based tourist or not, and being interested in authenticity or not. The results showed that people who considered authenticity as important on holiday had a higher probability of being highly sustainable tourists. Further, different segments were identified. For instance, the segment that had the greatest likelihood of being highly sustainable tourists was represented by German tourists who were highly interested in authenticity on holiday.