Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Climate affects global patterns of COVID-19 early outbreak dynamics

Environmental factors, including seasonal climatic variability, can strongly impact on spatio-temporal patterns of infectious disease outbreaks, but relationships between Covid-19 dynamics and climate remain controversial. We assessed the impact of temperature and humidity on the global patterns of Covid-19 early outbreak dynamics during January-March 2020. Here we show that Covid-19 growth rates peaked in temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere with mean temperature of ~5 C, and specific humidity of 4-6 g/m3 during the outbreak period, while they were lower both in warmer/wetter and colder/dryer regions. Relationships between Covid-19 and climate were robust to the potential confounding effects of air pollution and socio-economic variables, including population size, density and health expenditure. The strong relationship between local climate and Covid-19 growth rates suggests the possibility of seasonal variation in the spatial pattern of outbreaks, with temperate regions of the Southern Hemisphere becoming at particular risk of severe outbreaks during the austral autumn-winter.
Can Shorter Transfer Chains and
Transparency Reduce Embezzlement?

We study embezzlement when donations have to pass through intermediaries to reach recipients, by means of a sequential game tested in a laboratory experiment conducted in Tanzania. We investigate the impact on the amount embezzled of both the number of intermediaries in transfer chains and transparency about the donation. We show that donors are less generous in the presence of intermediaries. When transfer chains are shorter, aggregate embezzlement decreases when donations are transparent. At the individual level, intermediaries embezzle less, the longer the transfer chain; this is due to less embezzlement at the beginning of the chain. We fail finding significant positive effects of transparency on the honesty of individual transfers through social judgment.
Yield and economics of intercropping legumes in maize (Zea mays) under rainfed conditions

A field experiment was carried out during 2001-02 and 2002-03 to evaluate the yield and economics of maize (Zea mnays L.)-based intercropping systems under ramfed conditions Of jhabus hill maize was grown sole and intercropped with legumes (pigeonpea, soybean and blackgram) in 1 : 1 and 2:2 row spacing. The maize intercropped with soybean or blackgram in alternate rows (l:l),increased yield attributes of maize, viz cobslplant, length of cob, grainslcob, 1000- grain weight and grain yield (2 981 to 2 985 kg/ha) over the other systems. However grain yield was non significantly higher (3 015 kgka) when maize was grown alone. Further, maize + soybean either in 1:l or 2:2 rowr ratio performed equally well giving higher net return up to Rs 10 71 1 to.10 934 ha over the other intercropping systems including sole cropping of maize or legumes.
Comparative evaluation of milk secretion rate and milk composition of West African Dwarf and Red Sokoto Goats

A comparative study on milk composition and secretion rate of West African Dwarf (WAD) and Red Sokoto (RS) goats was carried out at Abeokuta, Nigeria. Samples of colostrums and milk were analyzed for total solids, fat, lactose, crude protein, ash, phosphorus and calcium.
Understanding Universality within a Liberal Welfare Regime: The Case of Universal Social Programs in Canada

Although Canada is known as a liberal welfare regime, universality is a key issue in that country, as several major social programs are universal in both their core principles and coverage rules. The objective of this article is to discuss the meaning of universality and related concepts before exploring the development of individual universal social programs in Canada, with a particular focus on health care and old-age pensions. More generally, the article shows how universality can exist and become resilient within a predominantly liberal welfare regime due to the complex and fragmented nature of modern social policy systems, in which policy types vary from policy area to policy area, and even from program to program within the same policy area. The broader analysis of health care and old-age pensions as policy areas illustrates this general claim. This analysis looks at the historical development and the politics of provincial universal health coverage since the late 1950s and at the evolution of the federal Old Age Security program since its creation in the early 1950s. The main argument of this article is that universality as a set of principles remains stronger in health care than in pensions yet key challenges remain in each of these policy areas. Another contention is that there are multiple and contested universalisms in social policy.
Development of para rubber seed oil as the efficient makeup remover

The para rubber tree (Hevea basilensis) is an economically important tropical tree species that produces natural rubber, a valuable industrial raw material. Innovative products that are derived from by-products from the rubber production process, such as seeds, are important for the sustainability of the para rubber industry. Therefore we subjectively assessed para rubber seed oil for its makeup-removal efficacy and developed it into a makeup cleansing product with appropriate quality control measures for the cosmetic industry. The makeup-removal efficacy of para rubber seed oil was analyzed using a validated UV-Vis spectroscopy, which indicated that the oil removed 86.21 ± 2.48% of liquid foundation [relative standard deviation (RSD) = 2.88%]. Therefore, we developed stable makeup removers containing 40-70% para rubber seed oil. Bio-oil removers containing 50% and 60% oil had the best appearance and texture and were subsequently evaluated for their makeup-removal efficacy. The bio-oil remover with the higher oil content was significantly better at removing makeup (95.26 ± 0.97% removal by the 60% oil compared with 73.88 ± 3.97% removal by the 50% oil). To conclude, para rubber seed oil is a promising new bio-oil for the cosmetic industry, which broadens consumers’ choices of bio-oil makeup removers. We believe that the manufacture and quality control of this innovative and efficient makeup remover are feasible on an industrial scale.
Experimental study on the carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer–steel interfaces based on carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer delamination failures and hybrid failures

The failure mode is crucial to the interfacial bond performance between carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer plates and steel substrates. Existing studies mainly focused on the cohesive failures in the adhesive; however, research on other types of failure modes is still limited. In this article, a series of single-shear bonded joints are prepared to investigate the bond behaviors of the carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer–steel interfaces based on carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer delamination failures and hybrid failures. Three kinds of adhesives—which have different tensile strengths and elastic moduli—and two kinds of carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer plates—which have different interlaminar shear strengths—are used to evaluate the influencing factors of carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer–steel interfaces. The three-dimensional digital image correlation technique is applied to measure the strain and the displacement on the surface of each specimen. The obtained test results include the strain distribution, the ultimate load, the failure mode, the load–slip curves, and the bond–slip relationships. For the carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer delamination mode, the results show that the load at the debonding stage is closely related to the interlaminar shear strength of the carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer plate, and the higher the interlaminar shear strength is, the greater the load. However, for the hybrid mode, the load of the whole test process is independent of the interlaminar shear strength of the carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer plate.
The Political Economy of Status Competition: Sumptuary Laws in Preindustrial Europe

Sumptuary laws that regulated clothing based on social status were an important part of the political economy of premodern states. We introduce a model that captures the notion that consumption by ordinary citizens poses a status threat to ruling elites. Our model predicts a non-monotonic effect of income—sumptuary legislation initially increases with income, but then falls as income increases further. The initial rise is more likely for states with less extractive institutions, whose ruling elites face a greater status threat from the rising commercial class. We test these predictions using a new dataset of country and city-level sumptuary laws. It is unfortunately an established fact that both men and womenfolk have, in utterly irresponsible manner, driven extravagance in dress and new styles to such shameful and wanton extremes that the different classes are barely to be known apart. —Nuremberg Ordnance of 1657, Quoted in Hunt (1996)
Primary Dealer Systems in the European Union

Abstract States require money to function and therefore every government has to continuously raise new funds. On the financial markets, governments cannot be sure that auctions of their debt will be sufficiently attractive to financial investors, which is why they usually enter into cooperative agreements with selected banks. The best known and most widespread form of cooperation is the primary dealer system. A primary dealer is a bank that commits to purchasing a certain percentage of government debt at each auction and to intervene as a formalized market maker in the debt market if necessary. Most of the primary dealer systems involve the banks being financially neither remunerated nor compensated for their activities, and if there is some kind of financial compensation, it is on a low level. The article analyses European primary dealer systems and asks why banks are willing to participate in these systems. I will show that both domestic and foreign banks use their status as primary dealers to build long-term relationships with one or more European governments and to gain an advantage on the global stage. In Bourdieu’s terms, primary dealer banks use their financial capital to accumulate social and symbolic capital.
High Expression of Fas Ligand by Synovial Fluid-Derived γδ T Cells in Lyme Arthritis 1

γδ T cells accumulate at epithelial barriers and at sites of inflammation in various infectious and autoimmune diseases, yet little is understood about the function of tissue-infiltrating γδ T cells. We observe that γδ T cells of the Vδ1 subset accumulate in synovial fluid of human Lyme arthritis and are intensely cytolytic toward a wide array of target cells. Particularly striking is that the cytolytic activity is highly prolonged, lasting for at least 3 wk after stimulation of the γδ T cells with Borrelia burgdorferi. Cytolysis is largely Fas dependent and results from very high and prolonged expression of surface Fas ligand, which is transcriptionally regulated. This also manifests in a substantial level of self-induced apoptosis of the γδ T cells. In this capacity, certain γδ T cell subsets may serve as cytolytic sentinels at sites of inflammation, and perhaps at epithelial barriers.
The fully automated construction of metabolic pathways using text mining and knowledge-based constraints

Understanding metabolic pathways is one of the most important fields in bioscience in the post-genomic era, but curating metabolic pathways requires considerable man-power. As such there is a lack of reliable experimentally verified metabolic pathways in databases and databases are forced to predict all but the most immediately useful pathways by inheriting annotations from other organisms where the pathway has been curated. Due to the lack of curated data there has been no large scale study to assess the accuracy of current methods for inheriting metabolic pathway annotations. In this thesis I describe the development of the Literature Metabolic Pathway Extraction Tool (LiMPET), a text-mining tool designed for the automated extraction of metabolic pathways from article abstracts and full-text open-access articles. I propose the use of LiMPET by metabolic pathway curators to increase the rate of curation and by individual researchers interested in a particular pathway. The mining of metabolic pathways from the literature has been largely neglected by the textmining community. The work described in this thesis shows the tractability of the problem, however, and it is my hope that it attracts more research into the area.
Hmong Students’ Attitudes toward Affirmative Action

Using a sample of 119 Hmong students, this study employed multiple linear regression analysis to examine the role of ethnic identity, principled policy beliefs, self-interest, and gender in Hmong college students’ support for college affirmative action policies designed to benefit their own group. Results indicated principled policy beliefs as well as gender were significant predictors of support. Ethnic identity and self-interest were not significant predictors of support. Implications for research and practice are addressed.
Effect of Various Levels of Nitrogen and Phosphorus on Growth and Yield of Chilli (Capsicum Annuum L.)

Response of chilli variety Pant C-l to different levels of nitrogen (0, 60,90 and 120 kg/ha) and phosphorus (0, 30, 60 kg P2O5/ha) was studied on a sandy loam soil, during summer season of 1983 at the Horticultural Research Centre, Patharchatta, Pantnagar. The mean plant height, number of branches, fresh and dry weights of root and shoot, number and weight of fruits per plant, fruit length and diameter. flesh content, yield of red ripe fruits and nitrogen and phosphorus content in fruit and plants, all were significantly higer in 120 kg N/ha. The application of phosphorus pid not show significant effect on vegetative growth characters but number and weight of fruits per plant, total yield and N and P accumulation in plant were affected significantly. The combination of N120P60 resulted in maximum yield and also proved most economic,
Multi-drug resistance in Salmonella serovars of zoonotic importance and detection of anti-microbial resistance genes*

Total 50 Salmonella isolates belonging to 10 different serovars comprising Salmonella Typhimurium (21), S. Weltevreden (12), S. Ughelli (5), S. Essen (3), S. Elisabethville (2), S. Lagos (2), S. Drogana (2), S. Enteritidis (1), S. London (1) and un-typable Salmonella-isolate (1) were isolated from 1,132 different samples. Extreme variation of anti-microbial resistance in Salmonella isolates was observed in a range from 0â€“100%. Maximum resistance was observed against sulphamethizole and furazolidone (100% each) followed by kanamycin (50%), gentamicin (44%), nalidixic acid (14%), tobramycin (10%), amikacin, ampicillin, streptomycin and tetracycline (8% each), amoxicillin/clavulanic acid (6%), norfloxacin (4%), ciprofloxacin and cefotaxime (2% each) and chloramphenicol (0%). High level of sensitivity in Salmonella isolates was observed against chloramphenicol (100%) and tetracycline (92%). The anti-microbial resistance genes detected were blaTEM, tetA, aphAI-LAB, aadB and strA in Salmonella serovars that showed resistance against ampicillin, tetracycline, kanamycin, gentamicin and streptomycin, respectively. The blaTEM gene was present in all ampicillin resistant Salmonella isolates (100%) and strA gene in all streptomycin resistant Salmonella isolates (100%) followed by tetA gene in 75% tetracycline resistant Salmonella isolates, aadB gene in 14.28% gentamicin resistant Salmonella isolates and aphAI-LAB gene in 8% kanamycin resistant Salmonella isolates. All Salmonella isolates (100%) were multi-drug resistant (MDR), indicating injudicious and extensive use of anti-microbial agents in these areas that may pose great risks to animal health and production. Moreover, MDR Salmonella serovars may pose great public health problems through consumption of foods of animal origin. Multi-drug resistance genes exhibited by all Salmonella serovars also indicated serious threats to the animal health and production including great risks to the public health.
Dragon’s Blood from Dracaena cambodiana in China: Applied History and Induction Techniques toward Formation Mechanism

Dragon’s blood that is extracted from Dracaena plants has been widely used as traditional medicine in various ancient cultures. The application of dragon’s blood has a cherished history in China, even though the original plants were not discovered for some period. Dracaena cochinchinensis and Dracaena cambodiana were successively discovered in southern China during the 1970s–1980s. In the last half of the century, Chinese scientists have extensively investigated the production of dragon’s blood from these two Dracaena species, whereas these results have not been previously systematically summarized, as in the present paper. Herein, we present the applied history in ancient China and artificially induced technologies for dragon’s blood development based on these two Dracaena species, in particular, using tissue cultures seedlings and tender plants of D. cambodiana. Big data research, including transcriptomic and genomic studies, has suggested that dragon’s blood might be a defense substance that is secreted by Dracaena plants in response to (a)biotic stimuli. This review represents an effort to highlight the progress and achievements from applied history as well as induction techniques that are used for the formation of dragon’s blood that have taken place in China. Such knowledge might aid in the global conservation of wild Dracaena species and contribute to understanding dragon blood formation mechanisms, eventually assisting in the efficient utilization of limited Dracaena plant resources for the sustainable production of dragon’s blood.
Antarctic Glacial Melt as a Driver of Recent Southern Ocean Climate Trends

Recent trends in Southern Ocean (SO) climate—of surface cooling, freshening, and sea ice expansion—are not captured in historical climate simulations. Here we demonstrate that the addition of a plausible increase in Antarctic meltwater to a coupled climate model can produce a closer match to a wide range of climate trends. We use an ensemble of simulations of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies Earth system model to compute “climate response functions” (CRFs) for the addition of meltwater. These imply a cooling and freshening of the SO, an expansion of sea ice, and an increase in steric height, all consistent with observations since 1992. The CRF framework allows one to compare the efficacy of Antarctic meltwater as a driver of SO climate trends, relative to greenhouse gas and surface wind forcing. The meltwater CRFs presented here strongly suggest that interactive Antarctic ice melt should be included in climate models.
Uncovering the organization of neural circuits with Generalized Phase Locking Analysis

Despite the considerable progress of in vivo neural recording techniques, inferring the biophysical mechanisms underlying large scale coordination of brain activity from neural data remains challenging. One obstacle is the difficulty to link high dimensional functional connectivity measures to mechanistic models of network activity. We address this issue by investigating spike-field coupling (SFC) measurements, which quantify the synchronization between, on the one hand, the action potentials produced by neurons, and on the other hand a mesoscopic “field” signals, reflecting subthreshold activities at possibly multiple recording sites. As the number of recording sites gets large, the amount of pairwise SFC measurements becomes overwhelmingly challenging to interpret. We develop Generalized Phase Locking Analysis (GPLA) as a dimensionality reduction of this multivariate SFC. GPLA describes the dominant coupling between field activity and neural ensembles across space and frequencies, thereby providing rich yet interpretable information. In particular, we show that GPLA features are biophysically interpretable when used in conjunction with appropriate network models, such that we can identify the influence of underlying circuit properties on these features. We demonstrate the statistical benefits and interpretability of this approach in various computational models and Utah array recordings. The results suggest that GPLA used jointly with biophysical modeling can help uncover the contribution of recurrent microcircuits to the spatio-temporal dynamics observed in multi-channel experimental recordings.
Long-term Observations of Atmospheric Speciated Mercury at a Coastal Site in the Northern Gulf of Mexico during 2007–2018

<p>Atmospheric mercury species (including gaseous elemental mercury (GEM), gaseous oxidized mercury (GOM) and particulate-bound mercury (PBM)), trace pollutants (including O<sub>3</sub>, SO<sub>2</sub>, CO, NO, NO<sub>Y</sub> and black carbon), and meteorological parameters have been continuously monitored since 2007 at an Atmospheric Mercury Network (AMNet) site located on the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico at the Grand Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR) in Moss Point, Mississippi. For the data collected between 2007 and 2018, the average concentrations and standard deviations were 1.39 &#177; 0.22 ng m<sup>-3</sup> for GEM, 5.1 &#177; 10.2 pg m<sup>-3</sup> for GOM, 5.9 &#177; 13.0 pg m<sup>-3</sup> for PBM, and 309 &#177; 407 ng m<sup>-2</sup> wk<sup>-1</sup> for mercury wet deposition, with interannual trends of -0.009 ng m<sup>-3</sup> yr<sup>-1</sup> for GEM, -0.36 pg m<sup>-3</sup> yr<sup>-1</sup> for GOM, 0.18 pg m<sup>-3</sup> yr<sup>-1</sup> for PBM, and 2.8 ng m<sup>-2</sup> wk<sup>-1</sup> yr<sup>-1</sup> for mercury wet deposition. The trends are statistically significant for GEM and GOM, but not statistically significant for PBM and mercury wet deposition. Diurnal variation of GEM shows lower concentrations in the early morning due to GEM depletion likely due to plant uptake in high humidity events and slight elevation during the day likely due to downward mixing of higher concentrations of GEM in the air aloft to the surface. Seasonal variation of GEM shows higher levels in winter and spring and lower levels in summer and fall. Diurnal variations of both GOM and PBM show broad peaks in the afternoon likely due to photochemical oxidation of GEM. Seasonally, PBM measurements exhibit higher levels in winter and early spring and lower levels in summer, while GOM measurements show high levels in late spring/early summer and late fall and low levels in winter. The seasonal variation of mercury wet deposition shows higher values in summer and lower values in winter due to higher precipitation amounts in summer than in winter. As expected, anticorrelation between Hg wet deposition and the sum of GOM and PBM but positive correlation between Hg wet deposition and rainfall were observed. Correlation among GOM, ozone, and SO<sub>2</sub> suggests two possible GOM sources: direct emissions and photochemical oxidation of GEM with the possible influence of boundary dynamics and seasonal variability. This study indicates that the monitoring site, which is located in a coastal environment of the Gulf of Mexico, might experience impacts from mercury sources that are both local and regional in nature. </p>