Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Determinants of Adoption of Improved Maize Varieties and Chemical Fertilizers in Mozambique

In Mozambique, adoption of improved maize seed and chemical fertilizers is still limited. This study assessed farmers’ attitudes towards hybrid maize SC513, Nitrogenous (N) Phosphorous (P) Potassium (K), (NPK 12-24-12) and urea fertilizers in highlands and lowlands of the Manica District. The study determined the influence of farmers’ characteristics, attitudes, sources of information, and agro-ecological conditions on adoption of these technologies during 1995 through 2005. A questionnaire was administered during April and May 2006 with a randomly selected sample of 293 households. In general, farmers held positive attitudes towards improved maize varieties and chemical fertilizers, but the strength of attitudes towards fertilizers, in particular, varied by source of information. Farmers who learned about fertilizers from extension had stronger positive attitudes than farmers who learned about fertilizers from neighbors, although with hybrid seeds adoption there was no significant difference between key sources. Overall, the number of farmers using SC513 was higher than the number of farmers using NPK and urea. Farmers’ decision to adopt SC513 was positively associated with agroecological conditions, knowledge, production traits and marketability of the maize. Agroecological conditions, knowledge of fertilizer application, and extension contact influenced adoption of chemical fertilizers. The results differentiate a simpler process of adoption of new seed from a more complex process of adoption of fertilizers which demands greater knowledge of timing and soils as well as basic computational skills. Factors determining adoption of hybrid maize varieties and chemical fertilizers should be considered when designing extension programs for these technologies.
Polyamines as Quality Control Metabolites Operating at the Post-Transcriptional Level

Plant polyamines (PAs) have been assigned a large number of physiological functions with unknown molecular mechanisms in many cases. Among the most abundant and studied polyamines, two of them, namely spermidine (Spd) and thermospermine (Tspm), share some molecular functions related to quality control pathways for tightly regulated mRNAs at the level of translation. In this review, we focus on the roles of Tspm and Spd to facilitate the translation of mRNAs containing upstream ORFs (uORFs), premature stop codons, and ribosome stalling sequences that may block translation, thus preventing their degradation by quality control mechanisms such as the nonsense-mediated decay pathway and possible interactions with other mRNA quality surveillance pathways.
Research Express@NCKU-Articles Digest

arm swing in standing vertical jumps, contradictory results have also been reported. Knee joint torque/work was found to decrease [1][2] or increase [3] in arm swing jumps. Increase in ankle joint torque/ work was substantial in most studies but insignificant in some other researches [3][4]. This inconsistency may be due to different training or proficiency levels of the subjects, but these proficiency-related factors are difficult to control in experimental studies. Moreover, errors in data recording and smoothing are inevitable. The purpose of this study is to investigate the mechanisms which enhance vertical jumping performance by arm motion. Forward simulation without the disadvantages (e.g. errors in data recording or subject skill/ psychological factors) in actual experiments is employed for the present study.
SEISMIC ANALYSIS OF BURIED ARCH STRUCTURES

This paper summarises results from the initial stage of a continuing study directed at developing an earthquake design procedure for buried concrete arch structures based on site specific finite element analyses. The present and earlier studies indicate that the complex dynamic nonlinear interaction of the soil and arch during earthquake loading can be satisfactorily simplified for design purposes by using static elastic analyses incorporating equivalent secant soil moduli. However, dynamic amplification effects need to be included in the static analysis to provide acceptable accuracy in the arch section force actions. Results show that the bending moments in the arch from horizontal earthquake loading can be significant in relation to the gravity load actions. These moments are also very sensitive to the backfill and surrounding soil stiffness properties and rather less sensitive to the foundation soils beneath the arch.
Do cultural factors alter the relationship between risk attitudes and economic welfare

This paper analyzes how cultural factors shape risk attitudes and subsequently alter its relationship with economic welfare. The research sample is comprised by a three wave balanced panel data set of 588 ethnically diverse households collected between 2008 and 2013 in the Central Vietnam. Different ethnic groups are characterized by different languages, customs and beliefs that create the cultural diversity of the sample. Different approaches are used to examine the relationship between risk attitudes and economic welfare in the presence of the cultural diversity. First, a single-equation estimation method using a fixed effects model and a Hausman-Taylor model is employed to examine the unidirectional relationship. Second, a simultaneous equation estimation method using the Three Stage Least Squares model is applied to explore a bidirectional relationship between risk attitudes and economic welfare. Among the ethnic minorities, results indicate a negative association between willingness to take risks and economic welfare at low degree but a positive at the higher degree of risk-taking. For the ethnic majority, a positive and mutual relationship between risk attitudes and economic welfare is indicated. The ethnic majority is economically better-off than their minority counterparts are, whereas the minorities are economically homogenous but strongly diverse in risk attitudes and social factors. This study sheds light on the cultural heterogeneity in the individual risk attitudes as well as in shaping its relationship with economic welfare. Generally, it is suggested to consider sociocultural factors via risk-taking channel in socioeconomic policies that target ethnically or culturally diverse populations. Particularly, that implies a need to encourage the risk-taking strategies among the extremely risk-averse individuals, particularly who belong to the ethnic minorities.
Single-cell RNA-seq and computational analysis using temporal mixture modeling resolves

Differentiation of naïve CD4 + T cells into functionally distinct T helper subsets is crucial for the orchestration of immune responses. Due to extensive heterogeneity and multiple overlapping transcriptional programs in differentiating T cell populations, this process has remained a challenge for systematic dissection in vivo . By using single-cell transcriptomics and computational analysis using a temporal mixtures of Gaussian processes model, termed GPfates, we reconstructed the developmental trajectories of Th1 and Tfh cells during blood-stage Plasmodium infection in mice. By tracking clonality using endogenous TCR sequences, we first demonstrated that Th1/Tfh bifurcation had occurred at both population and single-clone levels. Next, we identified genes whose expression was associated with Th1 or Tfh fates, and demonstrated a T-cell intrinsic role for Galectin-1 in supporting a Th1 differentiation. We also revealed the close molecular relationship between Th1 and IL-10-producing Tr1 cells in this infection. Th1 and Tfh fates emerged from a highly proliferative precursor that upregulated aerobic glycolysis and accelerated cell cycling as cytokine expression began. Dynamic gene expression of chemokine receptors around bifurcation predicted roles for cell-cell in driving Th1/Tfh fates. In particular, we found that precursor Th cells were coached towards a Th1 but not a Tfh fate by inflammatory monocytes. Thus, by integrating genomic and computational approaches, our study has provided two unique resources, a database www.PlasmoTH. org, which facilitates discovery of novel factors controlling Th1/Tfh fate commitment, and more generally, GPfates, a modelling framework for characterizing cell differentiation towards multiple fates.
Back to work: The Long-term Effects of Vocational Training for Female Job Returners

This paper studies how training vouchers increase the employment prospects of women with interrupted employment histories. Using the population of female job returners who receive a training voucher to participate in training courses and a randomly selected control group from German administrative data, we analyze the effectiveness of training on the employment probability, monthly earnings and job quality. The results suggest that the receipt of a training voucher translates into a higher employment probability and higher monthly earnings. We find an positive impact on the job quality, e.g. the probability to be full-time employed increases significantly. In contrast, the probability to be marginally employed decreases by 5 percentage points in the long-run. We count this as an indicator for employment stability. The investigation of effect heterogeneity reveals some interesting insights regarding the vocational degrees, and the different types of training courses. The effectiveness of vocational training increases with the provided human capital in the courses. Several robustness checks support a causal interpretation of the results and highlight the importance of vocational training for the very special sub-group of female job-returners.
Understanding latent interactions in online social networks

Popular online social networks (OSNs) like Facebook and Twitter are changing the way users communicate and interact with the Internet. A deep understanding of user interactions in OSNs can provide important insights into questions of human social behavior and into the design of social platforms and applications. However, recent studies have shown that a majority of user interactions on OSNs are latent interactions, that is, passive actions, such as profile browsing, that cannot be observed by traditional measurement techniques. In this article, we seek a deeper understanding of both active and latent user interactions in OSNs. For quantifiable data on latent user interactions, we perform a detailed measurement study on Renren, the largest OSN in China with more than 220 million users to date. All friendship links in Renren are public, allowing us to exhaustively crawl a connected graph component of 42 million users and 1.66 billion social links in 2009. Renren also keeps detailed, publicly viewable visitor logs for each user profile. We capture detailed histories of profile visits over a period of 90 days for users in the Peking University Renren network and use statistics of profile visits to study issues of user profile popularity, reciprocity of profile visits, and the impact of content updates on user popularity. We find that latent interactions are much more prevalent and frequent than active events, are nonreciprocal in nature, and that profile popularity is correlated with page views of content rather than with quantity of content updates. Finally, we construct latent interaction graphs as models of user browsing behavior and compare their structural properties, evolution, community structure, and mixing times against those of both active interaction graphs and social graphs.
Debt Financing and Financial Flexibility: Evidence from Pro-active Leverage Increases

Firms that intentionally increase leverage through substantial debt issuances do so primarily as a response to operating needs rather than a desire to make a large equity payout. Subsequent debt reductions are neither rapid, nor the result of pro-active attempts to rebalance the firm’s capital structure towards a long-run target. Instead, the evolution of the firm’s leverage ratio depends primarily on whether or not the firm produces a financial surplus. In fact, firms that generate subsequent deficits tend to cover these deficits predominantly with more debt even though they exhibit leverage ratios that are well above estimated target levels. While many of our findings are difficult to reconcile with traditional capital structure models, they are broadly consistent with a capital structure theory in which financial flexibility, in the form of unused debt capacity, plays an important role in capital structure choices.
Diagram Size vs. Layout Flaws: Understanding Quality Factors of UML Diagrams

Context: Previously, we have defined the notion of diagram size and studied its impact on the understanding of UML diagrams. Subsequently, questions have been raised regarding the reliability and generality of our findings. Also, new questions arose regarding how the quality of diagrams could be defined, and how it interacts with diagram size. Goal: We pursue three goals. First, we want to increase the validity of our research by analyzing a substantially larger data set than before. Second, we broaden the generalizability of our results by including two more diagram types. Our main contribution, though, is our third goal of extending our analysis aspects of diagram quality. Method: We improve our definition of diagram size and add a (provisional) definition of diagram quality as the number of topographic layout flaws. We apply these metrics on 60 diagrams of the five most commonly used types of UML diagram. We carefully analyze the structure of our diagram samples to ensure representativeness. We correlate diagram size and layout quality with modeler performance data obtained in previous experiments. The data set is the largest of its kind (n - 156). Results: We replicate earlier findings, and extend them to two new diagram types. We provide an improved definition of diagram size, and provide a definition of topographic layout quality, which is one more step towards a comprehensive definition of diagram quality as such. Both metrics are shown to be objectively applicable. We quantify the impact of diagram size and quality on diagram understanding. Conclusions: The overall results of previous studies are confirmed, while our previous recommendations for creating better diagrams are revised and refined.
AIS Electronic Library (AISeL) AIS Electronic Library (AISeL)

Companies show a growing demand in corporate agility. The effects of so-called doing and being agile are the key for positive outcomes in agile work. Scrum is used by companies to make them more agile. The present study examines the interaction of doing agile (leadership, work design) and being agile (individual characteristics, empowerment) in relation to satisfaction and commitment based on an online survey of 129 Scrum development team members. The results show that work design and leadership impact empowerment and that the latter leads to both job satisfaction and commitment. Team orientation has no effect. Openness for new actions moderates the relationship between work design and the outcome variables. The results can be used in practice to increase the satisfaction and commitment within Scrum. They provide an insight into the impact structure within Scrum and are thus also the basis for future research.
GLOBAL SOLUTIONS BELOW THE ENERGY SPACE FOR THE GENERALIZED BOUSSINESQ EQUATION

We show that the Cauchy problem for the defocusing generalized Boussinesq equation utt − uxx + uxxxx − (|u|u)xx = 0, k ≥ 1, on the real line is globally well-posed in H(R) for s > 1− (1/3k). To this end we use the I-method, introduced by J. Colliander, M. Keel, G. Staffilani, H. Takaoka and T. Tao [8, 9], to define a modification of the energy functional that is almost conserved in time. Our result extends the previous one obtained by Farah and Linares [16] for the case k = 1.
An automated instrumental variable method for rigid industrial robot identiﬁcation

3 paper as follows. Section 2 describes the considered closed-loop system. The standard and IDIM-IV methods are section 3. Section Abstract: Industrial robots must be operated in closed-loop since they are electro-mechanical systems with double integrator behaviour. Their mechanical model, called the Inverse Dynamic Identiﬁcation Model (IDIM), is based on Newton’s laws and has the advantage of being linear with respect to the parameters. The Instrumental Variable (IDIM-IV) method provides a robust solution to the closed-loop estimation problem. This method relies on a tailor-made preﬁltering process in order to estimate accurate parameters. An alternative and automatic way of constructing the observation matrix has been recently introduced. If this methodology provides appropriate estimated parameters, it can fail to estimate the variances of those parameters. In this paper, an identiﬁcation of the additive noise characteristics is included in the process to obtain correct and lower variances of the IDIM parameters. The evaluation of the new estimation algorithm on a one degree-of-freedom rigid robot shows that it improves statistical eﬃciency, while minimizing the a priori knowledge required from the practitioner.
Reading for meaning: the effects of Developmental Education on motivation and achievement in reading informative texts in primary school

Abstract Content-oriented reading interventions that focus on the integration of motivational enhancement and strategy instruction have been found to have positive effects. Developmental education (DE) in the Netherlands is an innovative content-oriented approach in which reading is an integral part of an inquiry-oriented curriculum. Reading for meaning is a central pursuit, and strategy instruction is functionally integrated. This study differs from previous studies in three aspects. Firstly, instead of interventions, two types of existing practices were compared: the DE approach and a textbook-driven programmatic instruction approach (PI). Secondly, this study accounted for classroom influences by conducting multilevel analyses. Thirdly, control variables, i.e. ethnic background, home language, SES, non-verbal IQ, gender, vocabulary and decoding skills, were taken into account. The effects of both approaches were investigated in terms of reading comprehension, knowledge of reading strategies and reading motivation. In a pretest–posttest natural two-group design, tests and questionnaires were administered to 570 grade 4 students in 24 schools. The outcomes that resulted from the DE approach were as good as those from the PI approach. These results are discussed in relation to previous studies that have reported better outcomes of content-oriented reading approaches than traditional and strategy reading approaches.
Mechanical Alloying and Milling

The search for new and advanced materials is the major preoccupation of metallurgists, ceramicists, and material scientists for the past several centuries. Significant improvements in mechanical, chemical, and physical properties have been achieved by alloying and through chemical modification and by subjection the materials to conventional thermal, mechanical, and thermo mechanical processing methods. Present paper deals with a brief review of the mechanical alloying questions focusing on the possible processes and apparatuses (mills).
The Financial Content of Inflation Risks in the Euro Area

Recent studies emphasize that survey-based inflation risk measures are informative about future inflation and thus useful for monetary authorities. However, these data are typically available at a quarterly frequency whereas monetary policy decisions require a more frequent monitoring of such risks. Using the ECB survey of professional forecasters, we show that high-frequency financial market data have predictive power for the low-frequency survey-based inflation risk indicators observed at the end of a quarter. We rely on MIDAS regressions to handle the problem of mixing data with different frequencies that such an analysis implies. We also illustrate that upside and downside risks react differently to financial indicators.
Cambridge Working Papers in Economics : 1822 EXCHANGE RATE MISALIGNMENT , CAPITAL FLOWS , AND OPTIMAL MONETARY POLICY TRADE-OFFS

What determines the optimal monetary trade-o§ between internal objectives (inflation, and output gap) and external objectives (competitiveness and trade imbalances) when inefficient capital flows cause exchange rate misalignment and distort current account positions? We characterize this trade-o§ analytically, using the workhorse model of modern monetary theory in open economies under incomplete markets–where ine¢cient capital flows and exchange rate misalignments can arise independently of nominal distortions. We derive a quadratic approximation of the utility-based global policy loss function under fairly general assumptions on preferences and openness, and solve for the optimal targeting rules under cooperation. We show that, in economies with a low degree of exchange rate pass-through, the optimal response to ine¢cient capital inflows associated with real appreciation is contractionary, above and beyond the natural rate: the optimal policy curbs excessive demand at the cost of exacerbating currency overvaluation. In contrast, a high degree of pass-through, and/or low trade elasticities, warrants expansionary policies that lean against exchange rate appreciation and competitive losses, at the cost of ine¢cient inflation.
Housing Expenditures and Income Inequality

In this paper, we show that, in terms of real disposable income, changes in housing expenditures dramatically exacerbate the trend of income inequality that has risen sharply in Germany since the mid-1990s. More specifically, whereas the 50/10 ratio of net household income increases by 22 percentage points (pp) between 1993 and 2013, it increases by 62 pp for income net of housing expenditures. At the same time, the income share of housing expenditures rises disproportionally for the bottom income quintile and falls for the top quintile. Factors contributing to these trends include a decline in the relative costs of homeownership versus renting, changes in household structure, and residential mobility toward larger cities. Younger cohorts spend more on housing and save less than older cohorts did at the same age, with possibly negative consequences for wealth accumulation, particularly for those at the bottom of the income distribution.
R A ] 1 4 D ec 2 01 5 REFINEMENT RINGS , LOCALIZATION AND DIAGONALIZABILITY OF MATRICES

In this paper we prove that if R is a commutative refinement ring and M,N are two R-modules then, M ∼= N if and only if for every maximal ideal m of R, Mm ∼= Nm. We prove if R is a refinement ring,then every regular matrix over R J(R) admits a diagonal reduction iff every regular matrix over R admits a diagonal reduction.
User Exprience and Decision Making Research Laboratory Publications User Experience and Decision Making Research Laboratory 1-1-2010 Affect and Acceptance : Examining the Effects of Positive Mood on Technology Acceptance Model

While the technology acceptance model (TAM) is generally robust, TAM’s antecedent constructs, ease of use and usefulness of a system, do not always adequately explain acceptance behavior. Recent studies argue that including individual characteristics in TAM is a way to determine those conditions under which ease of use and usefulness are not adequate for explaining acceptance behavior. Using this argument, we examine the effects of positive mood, one individual characteristic that significantly affects an individual’s cognition and behavior, on acceptance of a DSS that supports uncertain tasks. Our results show that positive mood has a significant influence on DSS acceptance and that its influence on users’ behavior is not due to a halo effect.