Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
LONG-TERM EFFECTS OF TILLAGE, PHOSPHORUS FERTILIZATION AND CROP ROTATION ON PEARL MILLET–COWPEA PRODUCTIVITY IN THE WEST-AFRICAN SAHEL

The millet (Pennisetum glaucum)-based cropping systems that dominate the Sudano–Sahelian Zone of West Africa cannot, as they are currently practised, meet the growing food needs of the region. They must therefore be intensified in a sustainable manner. The present study was initiated in 1986 and continued until 1996 to evaluate the effects of phosphorus (P) fertilization, tillage and rotation with sole cowpea (Vigna unguiculata) on an operational scale with two cropping systems, namely, sole millet and millet–cowpea intercropping. A randomized complete block design with four replications was used. The effects of P fertilization, ridging with animal traction and planting on ridges (AT), and rotation with sole cowpea increased the productivity of millet substantially in 10 of the 11 years. Based on the 11-year average, P fertilization alone improved grain yield by 52%, and AT with P fertilization improved grain yield by nearly 135%. Combining AT, P fertilization and the sole cowpea rotation resulted in a 200% increase in grain yield compared with the traditional system of production. Millet productivity did not show a significant decline when intercropped with cowpea. Stability and relative stability analysis showed that the traditional system was more stable than the various agronomic packages, but had the least yield. Conversely, the agronomic package with the highest yield advantage over the traditional system was the least stable. A major portion of the annual variation in the environmental index for grain yield and total dry matter was attributed to the seasonal variation in rainfall and organic matter depletion. Organic matter levels declined linearly with years of cultivation. Significant differences were found in the rate of depletion between the various agronomic treatments tested. After 11 years, nearly 60% of the organic matter was depleted irrespective of the agronomic treatments.
Longer is fatter: body mass changes of migrant Reed Warblers (Acrocephalus scirpaceus) staging at Eilat, Israel

Ecological barriers are the riskiest phases of the annual migrations for migratory birds. Comparatively little field data exists pertaining to the ability of migratory birds to prepare for the challenges of crossing ecological barriers, or their ability to recuperate afterward. Migrating Reed Warblers (Acrocephalus scirpaceus) were captured in Eilat, Israel, during their spring and autumn migrations. Data on spring and autumn body masses, their inter-annual variation, and the pattern of body mass increase were analysed. The birds show a significant inter-annual variation in their body mass and body condition index in both seasons, which is consistent with the data from other sites and for other passerine species. During stopovers, mass gain occurred in both seasons. Birds in poor initial condition, and those that stop over for a longer period of time, gained more body mass faster. In spring, but not in autumn, the progress of the season was also an important factor; late-arriving birds gained more fuel faster. The average rate of fuel gain was 0,157g·day−1 ± 0.018 SE.
Effect of twin vs. single births on gestation length, reproductive performance, dystocia, calf survival rate and culling in Holstein cows

Data of Holstein dairy cows in a private farm (TEC-DAP) in Al-Fayum Governorate comprising 5815 calving events (80 for twins and 5735 for singles) in the period from January 1997 to April 2008 were used to determine if there was any significant difference between twin and single calving cows in gestation length, reproductive performance, incidence of dystocia, perinatal calf survival and mortality rates and culling rate. Cows giving twins had shorter (p < 0.0001) gestation and more (p < 0.005) days to first heat, first service and days open than cows giving singles. Incidence of dystocia was higher in cows with twins (22.5%) than those with singletons (7.22%). Survival rate of singles was 12.9% greater than that of twins at birth, whereas perinatal mortality rate was 16.25 % (9.37% stillborn & 6.88% dead after birth) for twins and 3.33% (2.06% stillborn & 1.27% dead after birth) for singles. Culling rate was greater in cows producing twins (61.53%) than those with singles (30.73%). Twinning in cattle shortens the length of gestation, impairs subsequent reproductive performance by prolonging postpartum breeding intervals, increases the incidence of dystocia and perinatal calf mortality and increases number of cows to be culled during subsequent lactation. Thus, twinning in dairy cattle is undesirable due to its detrimental effect on cow fertility and health and calf survival. However, these adverse effects can be minimized by preparturient diagnosis of twin pregnancy and timely administration of obstetrical assistance which aids in management of dystocia to facilitate delivery of twin calves and to increase their neonatal survival.
A Comparison of Mutagenic Effectiveness and Efficiency of Gamma Rays, EMS, NMU AND NG*

The mutagenic effectiveness and efficiency of gamma rays, ethyl methane sulphonate, nitrosomethyl urea and nitrosoguanidine was compared using Triticum durum var. N.P. 404. NMU was the most effective and reasonably efficient and can be an useful mutagen under low concentrations. These results are found to be in agreement with the conclusions of Shama Rao and Sears (1964) that alkylating agents like EMS and NMU are capable of inducing functional alterations of genes in polyploid plants.
EVALUATION OF BINDER AGING AND ITS INFLUENCE IN AGING OF HOT MIX ASPHALT CONCRETE: LITERATURE REVIEW AND EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN

Binder oxidation in pavements and its impact on pavement performance has been addressed by numerous laboratory studies of binder oxidation chemistry, reaction kinetics, and hardening and its impact on mixture fatigue. Studies also have included some work on binder oxidation and hardening in pavements and the effectiveness of maintenance treatments. Yet more such studies are needed to better understand the fundamentals of pavement performance as a function of climate and pavement parameters. Based on these reports in the literature, an experimental design has been developed to meet three objectives and to provide four products. The objectives are: 1) to develop and calibrate a laboratory test to assess binder aging during the production process and during the field service of the pavement; 2) to incorporate aging for use in a HMA mix design system to produce mixtures that provide adequate resistance to fatigue cracking, including guidelines to optimize resistance of HMA to aging; and 3) to evaluate the use of maintenance treatments to reduce the aging of asphalt pavements starting at early ages. The products: 1) a new test procedure to characterize binder aging, and predict service life for different applications; 2) an HMA mix design component that incorporates aging and its effect on resistance to fatigue cracking; 3) guidelines for optimizing HMA mixture resistance to aging; and 4) guidelines for the best maintenance treatments to reduce the aging of binders. The experimental design includes measurements of binder oxidation and hardening at various stages of binder service, fundamental studies of binder oxidation and hardening kinetics, developing a transport model of binder oxidation in pavements, measurements of field oxidation and hardening rates, measurements of mixture fatigue decline as a function of binder oxidative hardening in both the field and laboratory, and measurements of maintenance treatment effectiveness at retarding binder oxidative hardening.
Event Day 0? After-Hours Earnings Announcements

ABSTRACT In recent years, the proportion of after-hours earnings announcements has increased to more than 40%. For after-hours announcements, earnings-related volume and price changes are not observed on the Compustat or I/B/E/S earnings announcement date, but one trading day later. This study demonstrates the importance of accounting for after-hours announcements for event studies around earnings announcements. Copyright (c), University of Chicago on behalf of the Institute of Professional Accounting, 2008.
Want + Prepositional Adverb in the Midland and Beyond

The regional, social, and stylistic distributions of want + prepositional adverb (e.g., I can move if you want by) are poorly understood in spite of a long history of documentation and the inclusion of one form—want off—in major dialectology projects. This article investigates the acceptability of a range of forms of want + prepositional adverb in the United States and finds a wider than expected regional distribution, differences in the acceptability of different forms, and in the dialect area that boasts the greatest concentration of use—the Midland—little variation across social variables yet greater variation across styles. The author argues that the findings support the use of acceptability judgments in the study of morpho-syntactic features; indicate change from below in progress with the spread of want + prepositional adverb from the Midland; give additional evidence for an independent Midland dialect area; and call into question current assumptions about the relationship between social and stylistic variation.
Matching plant-available nitrogen from biosolids with dryland wheat needs

Biosolids are stabilized solids from municipal wastewater treatment that meet federal standards for land application. Good estimates of biosolids N availability are needed to develop sustainable biosolids management programs. We conducted this study to (i) determine the availability and fate of biosolids N applied to a dryland soft-white winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)-fallow rotation, (ii) determine if N availability predictions for biosolids are applicable under dryland conditions, and (iii) make practical recommendations for biosolids management. We applied dewatered (21-30% solids) biosolids (4.3-5.5% total N; 257-853 lb N/acre) to on-farm test plots at three locations in the 9-12 in. rainfall zone of eastern Washington. Fertilized (anhydrous or aqua ammonia [AA]) and unfertilized treatments were established at each site for comparison. We measured yield and N uptake of grain and straw at harvest, and determined soil profile nitrate N (plus ammonium N, 0-12 in. depth only) before application, during fallow, and post-harvest. We determined apparent N recovery from the soil at the end of the fallow (ANR fallow ). Nitrogen release from biosolids as measured by ANR fallow was dependable and consistent over the three sites, despite differences in environment among the sites. ANR fallow averaged 29%, similar to predicted values of 26-31%. The lowest biosolids rates (257-330 lb/acre) supplied more available N tban AA. Yield, grain N, and flag leaf N all indicate that N was sufficient at the lowest biosolids rates used, and that higher levels of biosolids did not benefit the crop. Drawbacks to higher rates include risks of reduced crop yield (from moisture stress) and quality (from increased protein), and increased risk of nitrate movement below the root zone. Storage of nitrate in the soil profile does not appear to be a reliable strategy for supplying N for a second crop. Lower biosolids rates seem to reduce economic risks to the farmer and reduce leaching risk Evaluation of low biosolids rates (100-300 lb total N/acre) and second crop response will be valuable in refining biosolids application recommendations.
Extraction and Formal Representation of Natural Language Requirements from Breach Reports

We address the problem of extracting useful information contained in security and privacy breach reports.A breach report tells a short story describing how a breach happened and the follow-up remedial actions taken by the responsible parties. By predicting sentences that may follow a breach description using natural language processing, our goal is to suggest security and privacy requirements for practitioners and end users that can be used to prevent and recover from such breaches. We prepare a curated dataset of structured short breach stories using unstructured breach reports published by The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. We propose a prediction model for inferring held-out sentences based on Paragraph Vector, a document embedding method, and Long Short-Term Memory networks. We represent the natural language requirements suggested by the prediction model in the form of security norms. We evaluate our model on the curated dataset as well as the ROCStories corpus, a collection of fivesentence common sense stories, and find that the presented model performs significantly better on the prediction task than the baseline of using average word vectors.
The over-rationalized conception of man in the rational choice perspective

The rational choice perspective explains all forms of crime by viewing offenders as reasoning criminals. In this article, we take this approach to task by trying out its heuristic potential. More specifically, we look at how well it works for one special type of crime, i.e. street robbery. On the basis of a detailed analysis of offender accounts we argue that rational choice theory fails adequately to conceptualize some of the essential aspects of this form of criminal behaviour: impulsiveness, expressivity, moral ambiguity and shame. We argue that adequate explanation and understanding of criminality requires taking more seriously the affective aspects of criminal behaviour and the normative meanings that perpetrators attribute to their own behaviour before, during and after the crime.
A Systematic and Evolutionary Study of Oenothera (Onagraceae): Seed Coat Anatomy

On the basis of a study of 32 of the 124 species representing the 14 sections of Oenothera, we find that the seed coats exhibit considerable anatomical diversity, particularly the exotesta, mesotesta, and endotesta. Features throughout the genus are: (1) endotegmen is one cell thick and persistent and (2) consists of longitudinally elongate, tannin-containing cells; (3) exotegmen consists of longitudinally elongate, thick-walled, pitted, lignified fibers; and (4) endotestal cells contain crystals. Unequivocal relationships are demonstrated for species with essentially identical seed features: (1) between section Kleinia and section Oenothera subsection Raimannia; and (2) among sections Hartmannia, Kneiffia, Xylopleurum, and Anogra. A cladistic analysis, using seed anatomy data, indicates that (1) O. havardii differs in several characteristics from members of section Gauropsis and should be excluded; and (2) seed anatomy of O. maysillesii differs in several features from the other species of subsection Emersonia; these same differences are shared with sections Ravenia, Contortae, Eremia, and Pachylophus, indicating that O. maysillesii is their sister group. The analysis indicates an early divergence of Oenothera into two major lineages: (1) species with thick endotesta (sections Contortae, Eremia, Kleinia, Oenothera, Pachylophus, and Ravenia); and (2) species with radially flattened endotestal cells (sections Anogra, Gauropsis, Hartmannia, Kneiffia, Lavauxia, Megapterium, Paradoxus, and Xylopleurum). Subsequent changes in seeds of both lineages include multiplication of the fibrous exotegmen, development of a crushed mesotesta or multiplication of the cell layers of the mesotesta, and specialization of the exotesta involving various radial cell enlargements. Diversification of the first lineage has involved changes in seed anatomy that correlate with ecological shifts, while to a much greater extent the evolution of the second lineage has not. Outer layers of the seed appear to be more open to adaptive modifications than inner ones.
Soft-sediment benthic community structure in a coral reef lagoon -- the prominence of spatial heterogeneity and 'spot endemism'

An encompassing view of coral reef ecosystems needs to extend beyond the prominent and attractive hard substrata to include soft-sediment habitats associated with the reefs. Focusing on the soft-sediment assemblages within the lagoon of the Great Astrolabe Reef (Fiji), we quantified pat- terns, clines and variability of community structure across space and evaluated models for marine bio- diversity conservation based on the spatial distribution and rarity of benthic species. Water depth sam- pled ranged from 17 to 42 m over a spatial sampling scale of 18 x 11 km with 25 localities on average 2.4 km apart. Both plant diversity and biomass were poor predictors of zoobenthic diversity. In contrast to the commonly held view that sediment characteristics are the prime factors in structuring benthic assemblages, spatial variability of the benthos was overriding the generally weak relationships between sedimentary features and the biota. High spatial heterogeneity in community structure is a key feature of the benthic biota in the lagoon. Part of this pronounced spatial heterogeneity stems from the marked patchiness in individual species distributions, here operationally coined 'spot endemism'. Out of a total of 211 recorded taxa, 42% were rare, being restricted to a single site. No species' range spanned the entire lagoon; in fact, the maximum species range was 16 out of 25 sites sampled. Fur- thermore, the number of taxa common to any 2 localities was not strongly linked to spatial distance, with adjoining sites having no more taxa in common than more distant localities. The commonness of rarity, prevalence of highly compressed species' range sizes, and patchiness in benthic diversity all combine to have profound implications for conservation strategies of these marine benthic habitats.
Fruit Quality in Almond as Related to the Type of Pollination in Self-compatible Genotypes

Nut and kernel dimensions and sphericity, shelling percentage, oil content, and fatty acid composition were studied over 2 years in 15 advanced almond (Prunus amygdalus Batsch) selections. The aim was to test the effect of pollination type on these fruit traits for this group of new self-compatible selections of a mostly self-incompatible species as well as the yearly effect on these variables. Variability between selections was much higher than that between years, showing a moderate level of year-stability and a significant year effect only for some variables. The differentpollinationtreatmentsaffected allchemicalcomponents studied,aswellasnutandkernelweight,butnotthe other physical traits. Self-pollination decreased kernel weight and volume as well as oil content and percentage of linoleic acid but increased the percentage of oleic acid. These variations in the fatty acid composition were in the trend of increasing kernel quality. Inbreeding depression could also negatively affect several aspects of nut and kernel quality. Thus, autogamous almond genotypes without apparent symptoms of inbreeding depression may yield kernels of increased nutritional and industrial quality.
Do Managers Time Securitization Transactions to Obtain Accounting Benefits

ABSTRACT: Relative to recording securitizations as collateralized borrowings, the “gain on sale” treatment has several accounting benefits such as reducing leverage, increasing earnings, and improving efficiency. We investigate whether managers engage in real transaction management to take advantages of these benefits. We predict that in order to maximize financial statement window‐dressing, managers will engage in securitizations toward the end of the quarter. We find that 41 percent of the quarter's transactions occur in the third month of the quarter and almost half of these occur in the last five days of the quarter. In addition, we show that when firms report securitization gains sufficient to beat earnings thresholds, the securitization transactions are more likely to have occurred in the last five days of the quarter. We also document that the impact of securitizations on leverage is large and material for many firms. Our results suggest that window‐dressing the financial statements appears to be a.
Regional application of an ecosystem production model for studies of biogeochemistry in Brazilian Amazonia

The degree to which primary production, soil carbon, and trace gas fluxes in tropical forests of the Amazon are limited by moisture availability and other environmental factors was examined using an ecosystem modelling application for the country of Brazil. A regional geographical information system (GIS) serves as the data source of climate drivers, satellite images, land cover, and soil properties for input to the NASA Ames-CASA (Carnegie-Ames-Stanford Approach) model over a 8-km grid resolution. Simulation results lead us to hypothesize that net primary production (NPP) is limited by cloud interception of solar radiation over the humid north-western portion of the region. Peak annual rates for NPP of nearly 1.4 kg C m ‐2 year ‐1 are localized in the seasonally dry eastern Amazon in areas that we assume are primarily deep-rooted evergreen forest cover. Regional effects of forest conversion on NPP and soil carbon content are indicated in the model results, especially in seasonally dry areas. Comparison of model flux predictions along selected eco-climatic transects reveal moisture, soil, and land use controls on gradients of ecosystem production and soil trace gas emissions (CO2 ,N 2O, and NO). These results are used to formulate a series of research hypotheses for testing in the next phase of regional modelling, which includes recalibration of the light-use efficiency term in NASA-CASA using field measurements of NPP, and refinements of vegetation index and soil property (texture and potential rooting depth) maps for the region.
Decaploidy in Rosa praelucens Byhouwer (Rosaceae) Endemic to Zhongdian Plateau, Yunnan, China

Abstract Genus Rosa (Rosaceae) has a base chromosome number of x = 7. Ploidy levels of wild species range from 2n= 2x= 14 to 2n= 8x=56. In this paper, one decaploid, the highest naturally occurring ploidy never reported before in the genus was detected in the karyological study of an endemic wild species, R. praelucens Byhouwer to Zhongdian Plateau, Yunnan, China. Its karyotype formula was 2n=10x=70=2st+6sm+62m and the karyotype was 2B. Chromosome No. 6 was subterminal. Chromosome No. 15, No. 22 and No. 23 were submedian. According to its karyomorphology, R. praelucens derived not from auto polyploidization directly but from inter-specific hybridization. Polyploidization and inter-species hybridization both might have played important roles in the origin of R. praelucens associated with effect of high altitude environment. Further research on this species is warranted to provide helpful evidences to understand the differentiation and evolution of the Genus Rosa, and even clues to trace the process of speciation in Sino-Himalayan region.