Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Post-harvest deterioration of green billeted and green whole stalk sugarcane in Northeast Thailand

This study considered post-harvest deterioration of green billeted and green whole stalk on sugarcane. A yield deterioration assessment was conducted in the Northeast of Thailand. To have an appropriate assessment, several sugarcane quality parameters such as sugarcane weight (kg), Brix %, juice purity %, commercial cane sugar (CCS) % of cane, reducing sugar % Brix, mannitol, lactic acid, and dextran in mg/kg Brix unit were used to investigate post harvest sugarcane deterioration due to bacterial activity. The deterioration trial was undertaken over 13 days to investigate the green billets (GB) and green whole-stalks (GWS). All sugarcane quality parameters, CCS %, reducing sugar % Brix and juice purity % showed a faster deterioration rate of GB than GWS under identical time and climatic conditions. Mannitol, lactic acid and dextran were useful as an indicator of deterioration and estimating the juice purity drop during post-harvest sugarcane deterioration.
Impact of contract farming on income of smallholder malt barley farmers in Arsi and West Arsi zones of Oromia region, Ethiopia

Abstract This study examined factors that influence farmers’ participation in malt barley contract farming and West Arsi zones of Oromia region, Ethiopia. Data were collected from 384 (190 contract and 194 non-contract) randomly selected farm households. The probit model showed that age, livestock ownership, credit access, distance to the main market and cooperative membership had positive and significant effects on decision regarding contract farming participation. Propensity score matching technique was used to estimate the impact of participation in contract farming on farm households’ income. And it revealed that contract farming resulted in an increased annual gross farm income of Birr 24,302.20 for contract, which is 27.80% higher than the gross annual income of non-contract malt barley farm households. The finding of this study highlights that contract farming is viable to increase farm household’s income, which policy makers and other concerned agencies may consider as an alternative rural development approach so long as it is tailored to contexts alike.
Summertime resource selection and reproductive effects on survival of Ruffed Grouse

ABSTRACT Theory suggests that animals should select resources on the basis of perceived fitness benefits, and avoid other available resources that may result in fitness costs. However, resource selection is both a scale- and a life-stage-specific process, in which the importance of different resources may vary among spatial scales of selection and phases of species' life cycles. We investigated multilevel resource selection and summer survival of Ruffed Grouse (Bonasa umbellus) in Maine, USA, to understand life-stage-specific resource selection and the cost of brood rearing. At the landscape level, male Ruffed Grouse selected areas with greater densities of woody stems taller than breast height, while females avoided these areas and selected areas with greater ground coverage by Rubus. Males further selected areas with greater stem densities at the local level, while females again avoided areas with greater stem densities and selected locally available areas with greater ground coverage by Rubus. Weekly survival rates (± SE) were reduced for females that were actively tending broods (S = 0.9393 ± 0.0294) when compared with nonreproductive individuals (both males and nonbrooded females; S = 0.9966 ± 0.0034). These differences in survival based on reproductive status were better supported than a difference associated solely with sex and resulted in a 69% chance that a female would survive raising a brood to 6 wk, compared with a 98% chance of survival for nonreproductive birds over the same 6 wk period. Our results suggest that male Ruffed Grouse selected resources that reduced their mortality risk, thereby investing in survival and their future reproductive potential, whereas brood-rearing females selected resources to benefit current reproduction and incurred a cost to their own survival in the process.
Occupational Anxiety of Prospective Physical Education and Sports Teachers in Turkey

This study was conducted to reveal the occupational anxiety levels of prospective physical education and sports teachers in Turkey. The sample of the study consisted of 354 prospective teachers who were chosen by the random sampling method from four universities. The “Occupational Anxiety Scale” was used to collect the data from the sample group in the study. The “Independent Samples t-test”, which is one of the parametric tests, was conducted to reveal the differences according to the gender variable while another parametric test, the “One-way Variance Analysis”. Furthermore, the “Pearson Correlation Analysis” was conducted to determine the nature and the level of correlation between dependent variables. In the study, statistically significant differences were observed between the groups in the subscale of “occupational exam” according to the gender variable. According to the variable of the grade level, significant differences were observed between the groups in the subscale of “adaptation”. As a result of the correlation analysis, it was observed that the subscales of “occupation” and “job orientation” were positively and very strongly correlated, which was also the strongest correlation in the analysis. On the other hand, the weakest correlation was determined to be between the subscales of “occupational exam” and “colleagues and parents”, which was a positive and weak correlation (p<0.05). It was discovered that the occupational anxiety of prospective teachers was generally based on the occupational exam and adaptation.
Nutrient management on the growth and yield of black cumin (Nigella sativa L.)

A field experiment was carried out at the research field of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Agricultural University (BSMRAU), Gazipur, during rabi (winter) season of 2016-17 to evaluate the effects of fertilizer treatments on black cumin (BARI Kalozira-1). The field belongs to Shallow red-brown terrace soil of Salna series under AEZ-28 (Madhupur Tract). The experiment was laid out in randomized complete block design (RCBD) with three replications. Results showed that the application of nutrient elements had positive effect on plant height, branches per plant, capsule setting, umbels per plant, capsules per plant, capsule size, seeds per capsule, 1000-seed weight and seed yield of black cumin. The highest seed yield (1277 kg ha-1) was obtained from 75% RDCF + 25% cowdung-N treatment followed by 100% RDCF (N80P45K50S20Zn5B2 kg ha-1) and the lowest seed yield (420 kg ha-1) was recorded with 50% RDCF. Thus, the IPNS treatment 75% RDCF + 25% cowdung-N appeared to be the best suitable package for black cumin cultivation in this location.Bangladesh J. Agril. Res. 43(2): 205-210, June 2018
Indonesian authors� stances in citing English research article introductions literature in sciences

Authorial stance is an important aspect in academic texts in academic texts such as research articles (RAs); that is to show the attitude of authors toward the information cited in a reference in order to establish an argument. The objective of this research was to investigate the authorial stances in English RA introductions written by Indonesia authors in the field of sciences (i.e. Biology, Physic and Chemistry). This research employed a descriptive qualitative method. Thirty English research article introductions were included in the corpus in this study. The results show that two authorial stances: neutral and positive stances are found in the texts but no critical stance is used in the corpus of this research. Also, four types of authorial stance (i.e., hedges, booster, attitudinal markers, and self- mention) are used in the RA introductions and the devices in each type of authorial stance are nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives and modals. Self-mentions found in this research are subjective pronoun, common noun and possessive adjectives. It can be concluded that Indonesian authors in the field of sciences already use similar types of authorial stances in their English RA introductions to those of international authors writing in English.
Distinguishing Knowledge Impact from Citation Impact: A Methodology for Analysing Knowledge Impact for the Literature Review Genre

The scientific impact of research papers is multi-dimensional and can be determined quantitatively by means of citation analysis and qualitatively by means of content analysis. Accounting for the widely acknowledged limitations of pure citation analysis, we adopt a knowledge-based perspective on scientific impact to develop a methodology for content-based citation analysis which allows determining how papers have enabled knowledge development in subsequent research (knowledge impact). As knowledge development differs between research genres, we develop a new knowledgebased citation analysis methodology for the genre of standalone literature reviews (LRs). We apply the suggested methodology to the IS business value domain by manually coding 22 LRs and 1,228 citing papers (CPs) and show that the results challenge the assumption that citations indicate knowledge impact. We derive implications for distinguishing knowledge impact from citation impact in the LR genre. Finally, we develop recommendations for authors of LRs, scientific evaluation committees and editorial boards of journals how to apply and benefit from the suggested methodology, and we discuss its efficiency and automatization.
Effect of Savings Deposit Rate on Stock Market Capitalization in Nigeria: An Empirical Investigation

This research plan is prepared to find out the impact of savings deposit rate on security market capitalization in Nigeria. The inquiry plan employed monthly data between January 2016 and December 2019. The data were collected from the publications of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). Variables on which data were sourced are stock market capitalization (MCAP), savings deposit rate (SDR) and bank lending rate (BLR) as a control variable. The data analysis was done via descriptive tools, Johansen cointegration test, ADF test of unit root and regression procedure. The investigation discovered a significant inverse association among savings deposit rate and security market capitalization. The research also discovered insignificant negative link between bank lending rate and stock market capitalization in Nigeria. The overall equation judging from the R2, Durbin-Watson statistics and F-statistics is significant. It is thus recommended that, at anytime the country intend to raise the level of stock market capitalization, government should formulate and implement policies to reduce savings deposit rate in Nigeria. Government should also implement policies to reduce bank lending rate to boast economic growth and as well raise the level of stock market capitalization in Nigeria. Contribution/Originality: This study is one of very few studies which have investigated the effect of savings deposit rate on stock market capitalization in Nigeria. This study contributes in the existing literature is to be a reference for further researchers who want to deepen or re-examine the effect of savings deposit rate on stock market capitalization.
3D Skeletal Gesture Recognition via Discriminative Coding on Time-Warping Invariant Riemannian Trajectories

Learning 3D skeleton-based representation for gesture recognition has progressively stood out because of its invariance to the viewpoint and background dynamics of video. Typically, existing techniques use absolute coordinates to determine human motion features. The recognition of gestures, however, is irrespective of the position of the performer, and the extracted features should be invariant to body size. In addition, when comparing and classifying gestures, the problem of temporal dynamics can greatly distort the distance metric. In this paper, we represent a 3D skeleton as a point in the special orthogonal group $SO(3)$ product space that expressly models the 3D geometric relationships between body parts. As such, a gesture skeletal sequence can be described by a trajectory on a Riemannian manifold. Following that, we propose to generalize the transported square-root vector field to obtain a time-warping invariant metric for comparing these trajectories (identifying these gestures). Moreover, by specifically considering the labeling information with encoding, a sparse coding scheme of skeletal trajectories is presented to enforce the discriminant validity of atoms in the dictionary. Experimental results indicate that the proposed approach has achieved state-of-the-art performance on many challenging gesture recognition benchmarks.
The frequency of virulent genes and antimicrobial resistance patterns of diarrheagenic Escherichia coli isolated from stools of children presenting with diarrhea in a tertiary hospital in Abakaliki, Nigeria

Aim: This study was aimed to determine the virulent genes and antibiotic resistance patterns among circulating diarrheagenic Escherichia coli (DEC) pathotypes in a tertiary care health center in east of Nigeria. Materials and Methods: Diarrheal stool samples were obtained from 80 children under 5 years and E. coli was isolated and identified using standard biochemical and molecular methods. Multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was used to detect eight virulent genes of DEC. Disk diffusion method was used to determine the antibiotic susceptibility of DEC. Results: DEC infection was observed in 54 (68%) children among which ial gene for enteroinvasive E. coli (EIEC) (40% [n=22]) was commonly detected followed by eltA/eltB for enterotoxigenic E. coli (ETEC) (30% [n=16]), pCVD for enteroaggregative E. coli (EAEC) (20% [n=11]), and eaeA/bfpA for typical enteropathogenic E. coli (EPEC) (10% [n=5]). The DEC isolates phenotypically exhibited resistance for ampicillin (AMP) (44 [81%]), followed by ciprofloxacin (CIP)/ levofloxacin (LEV) (28 [52%]), cefoxitin (FOX) (11 [20%]), and amoxicillin-clavulanic acid (AMC) (6 [11%]). About 60% isolates of stable toxins-ETEC were resistant to AMC, CIP, and LEV while all the labile toxin-ETEC exhibited resistance to AMP. About 60% (n=6) resistance were seen in EAEC against ampicillin, AMC, FOX, CIP, and LEV. In EIEC, all the isolates (n=22) were resistant to AMP while 50% (n=11) were resistant to both CIP and LEV. All EPEC (n=5) were resistant to AMP, FOX, CIP, and LEV. Conclusion: High frequency of virulent ial and eltA/eltB genes for EIEC and ETEC, respectively, suggests that they are the primary etiological agents of diarrhea in children among DEC pathotypes. Resistance of DEC to more than two classes of antibiotics indicate possible emergence of multidrug resistance.
Individual Investors, Average Skewness, and Market Returns

Understanding individual investors’ short-term behavior toward skewness is essential for the management and investment of corporate social responsibility because the skewness-seeking behavior of individual investors, which causes a bubble in the market, makes the market as a whole more vulnerable, and it is difficult for the market to be sustainable. In the Korean stock market, we investigated whether average skewness can predict future market returns at the market level and whether the mispricing is associated with demand for the skewness of individual noise traders. Measuring the demand for skewness by the proportion of trading money of individual investors, we found that average skewness negatively predicts future market excess return when the demand for skewness is strong. The result is robust to controlling for market variance as well as other predictors. Our finding indicates that the overall market is overpriced when individual investors excessively trade to seek huge returns in spite of a small probability.
Measuring the mathematical problem solving and procedural skills of students in an Irish higher education institution – A pilot study

In 2010 the Irish second level mathematics curriculum underwent a period of significant change when a new mathematics curriculum was introduced. Some preliminary research has been carried out into the impact, if any, that this mathematics curriculum is having on students mathematics performance which have suggested that students’ procedural skills are declining year on year however their problem solving skills may have improved (Treacy and Faulkner 2015). Additional research in this area also highlighted that students willingness to engage in problem solving activities may have improved (Prendergast et al 2017). However preliminary analysis on the impact of the reformed mathematics curriculum, if any, on students’ performance in higher education noted that further research was needed in this area to definitively establish what is happening. This research therefore aims to explicitly determine whether the procedural and problem solving skills of beginning undergraduates are changing over time as a result of the reformed mathematics curriculum introduced in second level education. A paper based diagnostic test designed and developed is used in an attempt to determine this. This paper will detail the piloting of this diagnostic test with a group of higher education students in the Irish context.
Example weighting for deep representation learning

In gradient-based optimisation, the derivative of the loss of an example can be interpreted as the example’s effect on the update of a model. Consequently, a derivative magnitude function can be considered to provide a weighting scheme from the viewpoint of example weighting. Therefore, example weighting is universal in deep learning. Partially arising from the recent work on the risky memorisation behaviours of deep neural networks (Arpit et al., 2017; Zhang et al., 2017b), example weighting becomes an active research filed (Chang et al., 2017; Toneva et al., 2019). Example weighting has ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ versions: (1) ‘hard’ weighting is well-known as sample selection or mining, i.e., binary weighting; (2) ‘soft’ weighting means example differentiation using a continuous importance score. In this thesis, we study how to learn more robust and discriminative representations using deep supervised learning. Technically, we propose example weighting for better optimisation and regularisation. Example weighting techniques differentiate and weight training data points according to a criteria, which varies in different scenarios. Example weighting improves the generalisation performance a lot, which is proved across multiple network architectures and learning tasks. We focus on two learning tasks in this thesis: learning to rank, and learning to classify. In both tasks, we reveal the importance of example weighting, by which a deep model focuses on more informative patterns, and pays less attention to non-informative (easy) and noisy (usually extremely hard) ones during the learning process. Therefore, example weighting is an important tool for guiding deep models to treat training samples differentially and learn meaningful patterns robustly and effectively. Furthermore, our study on example weighting helps us understand better about the training data and a model’s learning process. When a training dataset is clean, naively assigning higher weights to harder examples works well. However, when the dataset contains both meaningful and wrong information, a model learns meaningful patterns before fitting random errors. The challenge becomes how to differentiate trusted and error patterns as training progresses, and avoid fitting the error transformation. We demonstrate that example weighting is an effective approach for addressing this challenge. Additionally, we empirically justify the effectiveness of our proposed example weighting methods in other adverse cases:
Assessing the ideology of total quality management towards hotel sustainability performance: empirical evidence using structural equation modelling

: Total quality management (TQM) practices are one of the remarkable management initiatives adopted by the hotel industry to conserve the environment and ameliorate the quality of life while executing activities. Due to the existence of the value creation notion, economic value is no longer the only prerequisite assessing hotel sustainability performance, environmental and social aspects should also be considered when evaluating sustainability performance. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between TQM practices and sustainability performance, taking into account the environmental, economic and social aspects. A questionnaire survey is conducted among 238 hotels with ISO 9001 certification in Malaysia. Structural equation modelling is employed to assess the relationship between TQM practices and sustainability performance. The findings of this study reveal that employee management has the most significant impact on sustainability performance. Hence, it is posited that the hotels in Malaysia are extremely concentrated on employee engagement in the implementation of TQM practices to accomplish sustainability objective.
Monitoring whole blood, plasma and serum variables of nile tilapia during 24 hours, after capture stress

Stress is know as responsible for the decrease in immunity and reduced survival, growth, and reproductive capacity of animals. Besides, organisms respond to certain biological rhythms, such as circadian, to which animals naturally adjust. This study aimed to monitor the plasma (lactate and total protein), serum (cortisol and cholesterol) and whole blood (glucose) variables in tilapia in a 24 h cycle. A set of 49 aquariums with 5 individuals each were used. All of them, at the beginning of the experiment, were subjected to the same stress of capture and handling. The animals from the first aquaria were sampled after 15 min of stress. Blood samples from animals of the remaining aquarium were sequentially drawn at 30-min intervals. Radar charts were used to visualize the hourly change in the measured variables. Significant differences of each analysis between the measured variables by aquarium and the phases of the circadian cycle (light-dark) and morning-afternoon-night-dawn intervals, were evaluated using the Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests, respectively. A positive relationship between cortisol and glucose levels was found. Most analysis, except cholesterol and lactate did not show any significant difference between light and dark periods, and the intensity and frequency of peaks observed were not deleterious to individuals.
Investor Protection, Stock Liquidity, and Firm Value

This paper investigates how investor protection affects the relationship between stock liquidity and firm value. Our sample includes 2,297 listed firms in the UK, Germany, France, and Italy from 2009 to 2018. Employing a firm fixed effects model, our results show that stock liquidity exerts a positive impact on firm value. Moreover, we find that this positive impact is strengthened in countries with strong investor protection. These results are robust when we employ a random effects model. Our paper suggests that policy makers should enhance investor protection environment in their countries and recommends firms’ managers to increase the firms’ corporate governance.