Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Modeling the U.S. firearms market: the effects of civilian stocks, crime, legislation, and armed conflicte

This study represents an attempt to understand the U.S. firearms market – the largest in the world – in economic terms. A model of the underlying interplay of legal firearms supply and demand is a prerequisite for reliably evaluating the effectiveness of pertinent existing state and federal firearms policies, and to amend them as necessary. The stakes are high: compared to other nation-states, per capita firearms-related harm in the United States (including suicides and homicides) is exceptionally high and, within constitutional strictures, state and federal firearms policymakers increasingly view it as a major and pressing society-wide problem. Virtually all firearms in the U.S. are initially manufactured and sold legally. Solving a simultaneous equation model using the instrumental variable of natural disasters and employing a unique dataset of U.S. firearms prices and quantities, this paper models – we believe for the first time in the literature – the U.S. market supply of, and demand for, firearms. Encouragingly, we find that this market operates as any other would be expected to, with the notable exception that lagged nonmilitary firearms stocks generate new market demand in a positive feedback loop. We test as predictors of market performance federal firearms legislation as instances of policy, as well as of extraterritorial armed conflict, firearms industry concentration, crime, and technology gaps between U.S. and imported firearms. Except for the time-limited Federal Assault Weapons Ban (1994-2004), we find (restrictive) firearms legislation not to influence sales. We also find that acute external violent conflict and certain levels of violent crime, including homicides and mass shootings, drive up unit sales, and that higher industry concentrations in certain submarkets boost quantity supplied, suggesting economies of scale. Taken together, this study’s findings may provide some empirical support for firearms stock reduction programs to reduce the total volumes of civilian arms.
What happens when municipalities run corporations? Empirical evidence from 290 Swedish municipalities

ABSTRACT Local governments are increasingly relying on municipally owned corporations (MOCs) to provide public services. Some describe this development as a rational response to austerity challenges and emphasise the cost-efficiency of MOCs (‘the optimistic view’). Others identify complications and associate MOCs with weak supervision, lack of accountability, and corruption risks (‘the sceptical view’). Hitherto, no studies have analysed these opposing claims on MOCs in the one and same inquiry. We address this gap by focusing on Sweden, which has experienced a dramatic growth in the number of MOCs. We examine the association between the number of MOCs, the business climate, satisfaction with local government, local tax rates, and a corruption index for all 290 Swedish municipalities. Putting the ‘optimistic view’ into doubt, results indicate that municipalities relying heavily on MOCs are associated with more perceived corruption and higher taxes but do not have more satisfied citizens nor a better business climate.
An emergent Ebola virus nucleoprotein variant influences virion budding, oligomerization, transcription and replication

To investigate how Ebola virus phenotypes changed during the 2013‒2016 Western African Ebola virus disease epidemic, we examined a key viral mutation that rose to high frequency: an R111C substitution in the viral nucleoprotein (NP). Though NP plays many essential roles during infection, there are a limited number of assays for studying these functions. We developed new reporter assays to measure virion-like particle (VLP) production and NP oligomerization in live cells under biosafety level 2 conditions. We found that NP-R111C significantly enhanced VLP production and slightly increased NP oligomerization without impairing viral transcription and replication. By contrast, a synthetic charge-reversal mutant, NP-R111E, greatly increased oligomerization but dramatically reduced transcription and replication. We detected an interaction of NP with the cellular clathrin adaptor protein-1 (AP-1) complex, which may explain how NP facilitates VLP production. Our study provides enhanced methods to study NP and indicates a complex interplay between NP’s roles in virion budding, protein structure, and transcription and replication.
Nickel and ozone stresses induce differential growth, antioxidant activity and mRNA transcription in Oryza sativa cultivars

ABSTRACT This study evaluates the influences of nickel and ozone exposure individually and/ or in combination on growth performance, antioxidant activity and genes up regulation of two rice cultivars Sakha 101 and Giza 178. Ni treatment at high doses (100 µM Ni) and 75 ppb O3 alone reduced the fresh weight, mineral content, membrane integrity and Rubisco content. There was an increase in SOD and APX activity in the shoots of rice cultivars, whereas, there was a decrease in GR and GST in the roots and shoots. In contrast combined stresses appeared to be stimulatory for growth and mineral contents, Rubisco content and antioxidant enzymes. Nonspecific lipid transfer protein and transmembrane protein genes were up regulation in rice cultivars in response to Ni stress. Carotenoid cleavage dioxygenase is upregulated in response to ozone stress; RNA pseudouridine synthase, heat shock proteins and cytochrome P450-like were upregulated in response to combined stresses. The results revealed that the interactive effects of both stresses were antagonistic on growth parameters and antioxidant activities to overcome the adverse effects of both pollutants.
KARAKTERISASI MORFOLOGI TANAMAN PISANG DI DAERAH LOMBOK

Abstract:The aim of this research is to identify cultivars of bananas are cultivated in the Lombok based on morphological characterization (pseudostem, leaves, and flowers). This research was explorative by identifying directly into the field of cultivated banana cultivars. There are 19 cultivars of banana plants cultivated in Lombok. There are variations in the morphological characteristics of the pseudostem, leaves, and flowers, except on petiole margins, male bract shape, and lobe colour of compound tepal. Especially for the characterization of free tepal, only one Ketip cultivars that do not have free tepal. Key words : Banana, morphological, characterization Abstrak: Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah mengidentifikasi jenis pisang yang dibudidayakan di daerah Lombok berdasarkan karakterisasi morfologi (pseudostem/batang semu, daun dan bunga). Penelitian ini bersifat eksploratif dengan mengidentifikasi secara langsung ke lapangan jenis tanaman pisang yang dibudidayakan. Terdapat 19 kultivar tanaman pisang yang dibudidayakan di Lombok. Karakteristik morfologi bervariasi pada pseudostem, daun, dan bunga, kecuali pada keadaan tepi pelepah daun, ukuran bractea, warna lobe pada compound tepal. Khusus untuk karakteristik free tepal, hanya kultivar Ketip yang tidak memiliki free tepal. Kata Kunci : Pisang, Morfologi, Karakterisasi
Influence of Insulation Thermal Aging on the Temperature Assessment in Electrical Machines

Thermal modeling and temperature assessment of electrical machines often rely on the use of lumped-parameter thermal networks. A historic limitation of analytical thermal models is their need for an experimental fine-tuning, necessary for selecting the appropriate values of thermal conductivity and convection heat transfer coefficients. This evaluation procedure is commonly carried out at the design stage of a new machine, by assuming that its thermal behavior will remain unchanged throughout its whole lifetime. This paper demonstrates, through an in-depth experimental investigation, how the capability of heat extraction from a machine's hot spot towards the coolant can be strongly affected by the level of thermal aging of its insulation system. Based on the experimental findings, a decrement of the winding equivalent thermal conductivity is noted as the thermal aging accumulates, with a corresponding progressive increment in hot-spot temperature.
The Relationship between Sleep Quality and Students’ Acne Vulgaris Severity at Medical Faculty Universitas Kristen Indonesia

Acne vulgaris (AV) is a chronic inflammatory of the pilosebasea follicle caused by many factors with specific symptoms and usually occurs in adolescents and young adults. Sleep quality is one of many factors that likely affect the pathogenesis of AV. This study aimed to determine the relationship between sleep quality and AV severity. This study was observational with crosssectional design conducted from October to November 2018. The sample was collected by using purposive sampling method on medical students of Universitas Kristen Indonesia Batch 2018. Sleep quality was defined by using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). Acne vulgaris severity was defined based on Lehmann criteria. Statistical analysis was performed by using Chi-Square test (p <0.05). Result of the study is students who had mild AV 32 people (36,8%), moderate AV 48 people (55,2%), severe AV 7 people (8%), with 69% of students experience poor sleep quality. This study shows that there is a significant relationship between the sleep quality and severity of AV, with Chi-Square test obtained p-value = 0.000 (p < 0.05). This study suggested that there is a significant correlation between sleep qualities with AV severity.
Texas Hold'em Engaging Employers to Close the Skills Gap.

In 2014, the federal Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) thrust adult educators into a dramatically new landscape of service expectations and partnership requirements to increase the ability of providers to meet the employment needs of students and employers The coronavirus pandemic created an accelerating demand for adult education services that lead to reemployment for individuals who have been laid off Employer engagement can have a tremendous impact on adult education's ability to lead to employment solutions This article describes solutions Texas found as it successfully developed a market-driven adult education system to deliver employers, learners, and other system customers a new model for defining student success After a brief discussion regarding the Texas business and economic climate;and factors that drove, in part, the Texas legislature to transfer the program into the state's labor department a year before WIOA;the article describes demonstrated methods and examples across five dimensions that tell Texas' story These examples provide state and local leaders ways to meet the demands of WIOA and the expectations of students, employers, and system partners
Improving the grafted-plant rate in triploid watermelons by optimizing the water moisture in substrates and the usage of scion

Abstract The cost of growing triploid watermelon seedlings has increased due to their low-efficiency grafting. The first priority in growing seedless watermelon seedlings is increasing the grafted-plant and seed-utilization rates. This study aimed to improve the grafted-plant rate by screening the most suitable substrate formulation, optimizing water moisture in the substrate, and evaluating the effect of different scions to improve seed-utilization rate. Five combinations of substrate (S1 to S5) and seven relative humidity levels (45%, 50%, 55%, 60%, 65%, 70%, and 75%) were used. Three types of scions (yellow bud, Ts-1; two cotyledons did not unfold, Ts-2; and first true leaf appeared, Ts-3) were tested. Results showed that the combination of S1 exhibited the best seed-utilization rate which was 71.6%. Moreover, the most suitable water moisture in the substrate ranged from 50% to 55%. The usage of the scion from Ts-3 significantly increased the grafting survival, grafted plant and seed-utilization rates by 13.7%, 10.1% and 22%, respectively, compared with the conventional method. Our study suggested that the best time to use the scion and the rootstock was during the seedling stage when the first true leaf unfolded. The proposed method decreased the production cost of seedlings and significantly improved the efficiency of grafting procedures. The results of this work are applicable to the technique of growing seedlings and can thus guide growers of high-quality grafted plants of triploid watermelon.
Human genetic polymorphisms influencing the risk and manifestation of malaria in India and Africa

Background: Severe and fatal vivax malaria is increasingly reported from India. In Mangaluru, southern India, malaria is focused in urban areas and associated with importation by migrant workers. In Wenlock Hospital, the largest governmental hospital, the clinical, parasitological and biochemical characteristics of malaria patients were assessed. Methods: During the peak malaria season in 2015 (June to December), outpatients were interviewed and clinically assessed. Malaria was ascertained by microscopy and PCR assays, concentrations of haemoglobin, creatinine and bilirubin, as well as thrombocyte count, were determined, and severe malaria was defined according to WHO criteria. Results: Among 909 malaria patients, the vast majority was male (93%), adult (median, 26 years) and of low socioeconomic status. Roughly half of them were migrants from beyond the local Karnataka state, mostly from northern and northeastern states. Vivax malaria (69.6%) predominated over mixed Plasmodium vivax–Plasmodium falciparum infection (21.3%) and falciparum malaria (9.0%). The geometric mean parasite density was 3412/μL. As compared to vivax malaria, patients with falciparum malaria had higher parasite density and more frequently showed impaired general condition, affected consciousness and splenomegaly. Also, they tended to more commonly have anaemia and increased creatinine levels, and to be hospitalized (7.3%). Mixed-species infections largely assumed an interim position. Severe malaria (3.5%) was not associated with parasite species. No fatality occurred. Conclusion: In this study, uncomplicated cases of malaria predominated, with P. falciparum causing slightly more intense manifestation. Severe malaria was infrequent and fatalities absent. This contrasts with the reported pattern of manifestation in other parts of India, which requires the analysis of underlying causes.
Seismic Data Interpolation Using Dual-Domain Conditional Generative Adversarial Networks

Seismic data interpolation is an effective way to reconstruct missing seismic traces and to improve the quality of the seismic data set. In the field of deep learning, generative adversarial networks are capable of data generation and interpolation and have been widely used for high-quality image generations and image interpolations. In this letter, we propose a dual-domain conditional generative adversarial network (DD-CGAN) for seismic data interpolation. The DD-CGAN consists of a generator network and a discriminator network and uses the seismic data set and discrete Fourier transformed data set in the frequency domain as input vectors. The loss function of the DD-CGAN is defined by the generative-adversarial loss, the data loss function, and the total variation loss. Thus, the DD-CGAN can be trained more accurately. The discriminator is used to calculate the feature differences between the interpolated seismic data set and the complete seismic data set to drive the generator network for learning optimal parameters. The numerical results on the test data set and field seismic data set demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed DD-CGAN.
A Tutorial on Joint Radar and Communication Transmission for Vehicular Networks—Part III: Predictive Beamforming Without State Models

In Part I and II of this three-part tutorial on dual-functional radar-communication (DFRC) design for vehicular networks, we overviewed the basics of radar and communication systems and the state of the art in DFRC respectively. As Part III of the tutorial, we address the issue of predictive beamforming for the vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) links without the need for explicit state evolution models. The beam tracking is done with the aid of the dual-functional radar-communication signals transmitted by the road side unit (RSU). The vehicle’s location parameters are estimated by exploiting the reflected echoes signals. Given these estimates, we propose a prediction method to predict the next position of the vehicle, without specifying a state model. Finally, we verify the superiority of the proposed approaches via numerical simulations, which show that the proposed technique outperforms the conventional benchmark schemes in terms of the achievable communication rate.
Acute Impact of Artificial Sweetener, Aspartame on Blood Parameter in Mice

Aspartame (APM) or L-aspartyl-L-phenylalanine methyl ester, a common artificial non-saccharide sweetener used as a sugar substitute in many foods and beverages, has shown some side effects on consumers. The objective of the present study is to study the acute impact of various doses of daily ingestion of APM on blood parameters of mice. Sixty healthy 3 months old male mice raised in the departmental animal house were divided into five groups i.e. the control were fed normal diet and tap water, while other 4 groups (12 each) were daily orally fed with 1 mL of either 40, 500, 1000 or 1500 mg/Kg b wt, dissolved in distilled water using gavages for consecutive 5 weeks. Fresh blood samples collected directly from the heart at dissection were subjected to complete blood counting (CBC) using automated blood analyzer (Cell DYN-1700) in addition to manual differential Leucocytes (WBC) counting. There has been a significant increase (p ≤ 0.01) in WBC counts starting from the lowest dose (40 mg/Kg·b·wt); significant decrease (p ≤ 0.01) in both Hemoglobin percentages (Hb%) and in Lymphocyte percentages (p ≤ 0.004) in comparison with control. It is concluded that the ingestion of aspartame using the above doses has acute impact and is not dose-dependent on blood parameters which could exert further, on the long run, health risks on to other tissues of consumers.
A wheat/rye polymorphism affects seminal root length and is associated with drought and waterlogging tolerance

The introgression of a small segment of wheat chromosome 1BS in the distal region of the rye 1RS arm translocation in wheat (henceforth 1RSRW) was previously associated with reduced grain yield, carbon isotope discrimination and stomatal conductance, suggesting reduced access to soil moisture. In this study, we show that the 1RS/1RSRW polymorphism causes differences in root length in field and hydroponic experiments. In the latter, differences in seminal root length were associated with a developmentally regulated arrest of the root apical meristem (RAM). Approximately 10 days after germination, the seminal roots of the 1RSRW plants showed a gradual reduction in elongation rate and stopped growing a week later. Seventeen days after germination, the roots of the 1RSRW plants showed altered gradients of reactive oxygen species and emergence of lateral roots close to the RAM, suggesting a loss of apical dominance. The 1RS/1RSRW isogenic lines also differed in plant biomass and grain yield under normal, terminal drought, and waterlogging field conditions. The differences were larger in fields with reduced or excessive irrigation. These results suggest that this polymorphism may be useful to modulate root architecture and mitigate the negative impacts of excess or reduced water in wheat production. HIGHLIGHT A wheat/rye polymorphism in chromosome one affects seminal root length and apical dominance and is associated with differences in drought and waterlogging tolerance in the field.
Genetic continuity in the last seven Millennia in human hepatitis B viruses

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) is a major human pathogen and yet the evolution history of HBV has largely remained uncertain. With a better theoretical understanding of genetic diversity, we here used a new method to examine the previously published ancient and present day HBV genomes. We identified an informative region in the HBV polymerase that is slow evolving and used it to study genetic distances among HBVs. Three ancient human HBV isolates from 4488-7074 years ago in Germany were identified as genotype G that is also presently common in the same country. We constructed a new phylogenetic tree of HBVs that placed genotype D as the most basal branch with an inferred age of ~20500 years, which is remarkably consistent with the worldwide distribution and a most parsimonious migration route of HBV genotypes today. These results help resolve the evolutionary history of HBV and provide a useful method for studying the phylogenetics of HBV and other viruses in general.
Ploidy and DNA content of cape gooseberry populations grown in southern Brazil

ABSTRACT Studies detected chromosomal variability in genotypes of Physalis peruviana L. cultivated in Andean countries, with the existence of diploid and tetraploid genotypes and other variations. Knowledge about the ploidy level in cape gooseberry genotypes grown in southern Brazil is essential to define efficient breeding strategies, for example, in the knowledge of the effects caused by inbreeding and heterosis in obtaining commercial hybrids. The objective of this study was to determine the chromosome number and quantify nuclear DNA by flow cytometry in cape gooseberry populations grown in southern Brazil and in Andean populations. To this end, four cape gooseberry populations of different origins (from Lages and Caçador in Brazil, and Colombia and Peru) were subjected to classical cytogenetic analysis (chromosome counting) and flow cytometry. The chromosome number of the four populations was found to be 2n = 4x = 48, classifying them as polyploid with tetraploid cells. Uniformity was also detected in the amount of DNA, ranging from 12.87 to 13.98 pg, with low coefficients of variation (1.9 to 4.2%). The Tukey’s test confirmed the uniformity between populations as to the amount of DNA. Therefore, tetraploid cape gooseberry populations cultivated in southern Brazil have a 2C DNA mean of 13.23 pg. The chromosomal uniformity reveals that cultivation in Brazil was initially based on the sampling of a small number of plants purchased from Colombia, which may already have been subjected to selection for polyploidy.