Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Integration Machinery of ZAM, a Retroelement from Drosophila melanogaster, Acts as a Sequence-Specific Endonuclease

ABSTRACT Retroviruses and retrotransposons insert into the host genome with no obvious sequence specificity. We examined the target sites of the retroelement ZAM by sequencing each host-ZAM junction in the genome ofDrosophila melanogaster. Our overall data provide compelling evidence that ZAM integration machinery recognizes and leads to ZAM insertion into the sequence 5′-GCGCGCg-3′. This unique property of ZAM will facilitate the development of new tools to study the integration process of retroelements.
Heavy-Tailed Behavior of Commodity Price Distribution and Optimal Hedging Demand

This study explores the importance of imposing a correct distributional hypothesis in a risk management strategy, by comparing hedge ratios under the restrictive normality assumption to those under the generalized stable distribution. Concepts are illustrated for the case of a representative Pennsylvania dairy farm manager who purchases corn as a feed input. The results show that time processes of corn prices and basis risk in five Pennsylvania regions do not correspond to the normal distribution, and they more correctly correspond to one of the stable distribution set. The estimated hedge ratios under the stable distribution are typically larger than those under the normal distribution. The difference would be a bias from imposing a wrong distributional assumption.
Implicit water pricing in Namibian farmland markets

Groundwater can augment total agricultural water supply in areas where rainfall is persistently low, but can also function as a buffer source of water in areas where rainfall is high but variable. In arid countries it is important to examine which of these functions dominates, as this has implications for water policy. As aquifers become depleted, the buffer function can be replaced by other local water supply schemes. However, if groundwater is mainly used to augment total water supply, the only replacement is long-distance supply schemes that may not be economically desirable. This study used Namibian farm price data to estimate implicit water values. The results are consistent with a buffer function for groundwater, but do not show conclusively that this function is more important than other functions. On precautionary principles, one should therefore assume that it will become necessary to decrease agricultural water use as aquifers become depleted.
Guidelines for Referral of the Patient With an Adnexal Mass

Gynecologists have to differentiate between benign and malignant adnexal masses. We review the evidence supporting to the specialty care of a gynecologic oncologist on the basis of the physical examination, imaging studies, family history, and CA 125 determination. We recommend adherence to the ACOG/SGO Joint Opinion guidelines. Specifically, referral to a gynecologic oncologist seems warranted for postmenopausal women with elevated CA 125, nodular or fixed pelvic mass, metastatic disease, ascites, or family history of breast or ovarian cancer. Premenopausal women should be referred if the CA 125 is elevated above 200 U/mL, there is an evidence of metastatic disease or ascites, or strong family history of breast or ovarian cancer.
The Detection and Measurement of the Effects of Individual Genes Involved in the Inheritance of a Quantitative Character in Wheat.

IN the study of quantitative inheritance it has been customary, since the first formulation of the necessary statistical procedures by FISHER in 1918, to base genetic analyses on covariances between relatives. The characterizations of the inheritance of continuously varying characters provided by these statistical analyses are in terms of the action of systems of genes, and although these characterizations have been highly informative, they do not suffice to answer many questions concerning the nature of polygenes. THODAY (1961) has emphasized that the isolation of individual genes affecting quantitative characters is a prerequisite to answering questions about the randomness of distribution of polygenes in chromosomes, about the relationship of polygenes to major genes and to heterochromatin and about the homogeneity of polygenes as a class of genes. This paper describes a technique based on common breeding procedures which appears to be useful in identifying some of the major genes (effective factors) in the presumably complex genetic systems responsible for the heritable differences in quantitative characters between pure lines. It also describes the results of an application of this technique to the determination of genetic differences between two varieties of wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) .
Wear Performance of Ultra-High Molecular Weight Polyethylene on Oxidized Zirconium Total Knee Femoral Components

Wear debris can lead to osteolysis and aseptic loosening after total knee arthroplasty1,2. Efforts to reduce wear of total knee replacements have focused primarily on improving implant design and the quality of ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene. Although these efforts have addressed issues related to fatigue wear of the ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene component, concerns remain about adhesive and abrasive wear caused by the hard counterface of the femoral component. Previous studies have shown that roughening of the condyles occurs clinically and that many observed scratches have a shape and orientation that can increase polyethylene wear (Figs. 1, 2, and 3)3-8. Not only does volumetric wear of polyethylene increase with increasing counterface roughness, it also has been found that increasingly sharp peaks associated with counterface scratches increase the tendency for the production of submicrometer-sized debris that may be related to osteolysis9. These findings suggest that a hard counterface that resists roughening and provides low friction with ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene should reduce abrasive and adhesive wear and thereby prolong the survival of total knee replacements. Fig. 1: In a previous study, condyle surface roughness was found to be greater for retrieved cobalt-chromium femoral components than for components that had not been implanted4,5. Fig. 2: Under clinical conditions, cobalt-chromium femoral components develop scratches, some of which are oriented at an angle to the direction of motion, as seen on this interferometer image of a retrieved clinical specimen4,5. Fig. 3: Hard particles scratch cobalt-chromium surfaces, plowing up adjacent peaks that can increase abrasive wear of ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene, as seen on this interferometer image of a retrieved clinical specimen4,5. A metallic cobalt-chromium alloy (Co–28%Cr–6%Mo) is the standard material for femoral components. An alternative …
Estimation of the uncertainty in a multiresidue method for the determination of pesticide residues in fruit and vegetables

The estimation of uncertainty of an analytical result has become important in analytical chemistry. It is especially difficult to determine uncertainties for multiresidue methods, e.g. for pesticides in fruit and vegetables, as the varieties of pesticide/commodity combinations are many. In the present study, recommendations from the International Organisation for Standardisation's (ISO) Guide to the Expression of Uncertainty and the EURACHEM/CITAC guide Quantifying Uncertainty in Analytical Measurements were followed to estimate the expanded uncertainties for 153 pesticides in fruit and vegetables. Data from in-house validation were used in the estimation of the uncertainty. No significant difference in the relative standard deviation for reproducibility (RSDR) were found between the different concentration levels at concentration levels exceeding 2.5 times the detection limit. Therefore, it was possible to pool the RSDR within a single matrix. However, a difference in RSDR between matrices was seen, thus the poorest RSDR of the investigated matrices was chosen for the uncertainty estimation. The expanded uncertainties ranged from 7 to 78% with an average of 32% and median of 32%. Furthermore, only RSDR contributed to the uncertainty estimation.
The Financial Costs of Caring in the British Labour Market: Is There a Wage Penalty for Workers in Caring Occupations?

Recent evidence from the USA suggests that people engaged in occupations involving providing care for others, such as childcare and teaching, suffer a wage penalty. After taking into account job and individual characteristics such as level of education and work experience, people in these occupations in the American study earned about 6 per cent less than their peers in other types of occupation. However, we do not yet know if people working in similar occupations in other countries also suffer the same degree of disadvantage. The issue is important because, despite the perception that people in caring jobs place a relatively low weight on the level of remuneration when making career decisions, a number of studies have shown clear evidence of an association between pay and the propensity to give up working in a caring occupation. There are implications too for social inequality as many caring jobs are done by women and associated wage penalties could contribute to the persistent gender gap in pay. This study compares and contrasts the predictions of neoclassical economics, cultural feminist theory and social closure theory. Data are taken from 17 waves of the British Household Panel Survey and include a total of 23,773 individuals, giving 110,677 person-year observations. These data are analysed using multi-level linear regression. The results show clear evidence of a statistically significant wage penalty associated with working in some caring occupations. Those occupations requiring lower levels of educational qualification, such as nursing assistants and auxiliaries, are particularly hard-hit by the wage penalty. On the other hand, some occupations, such as medicine and teaching, have fared better than comparable non-caring occupations over the same period. We discuss the implications of these results for the gender gap in pay, poverty, social inequality and the future supply of caring workers.
Modeling Regional Externalities with Heterogeneous Incentives and Fixed Boundaries: Applications to Foot and Mouth Disease Control in South America *

F or over a century, the countries of South America's Southern Cone1 have struggled to control or eradicate foot and mouth disease (FMD). These efforts have been undermined by a pronounced spatial spillover of the FMD virus. Because the virus spreads readily, the effectiveness of control efforts in one country, or on one ranch, is influenced by control efforts in nearby countries or ranches. These spatial effects are compounded by variations in incentives to control the disease and diverse sensitivities to neighbors. This paper demonstrates how control behavior is affected by spatial spillovers of varied intensity and by heterogeneous incentives to control disease. The decision to control disease is framed as a spatial game in which the behavior of neighbors influences the payoffs to individuals from control effort. Because trade, geographic, and policy factors can leave some individuals more susceptible to their neighbors' actions than others, we impose hard boundaries that constrain disease spread and modulate the intensity of spillovers. Divergent incentives to control disease are modeled by fixing some individuals in specific
Has foreign investment played a role in Mongolia's export success?

The exposure of the Mongolian economy to international trade in the early 1990s has led to its export growth exceeding GDP growth and a dramatic increase in inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI). Although FDI can act as a powerful channel for export expansion in a developing country like Mongolia, improved export performance could also be due to other factors, such as movements in prices, competitive exchange rates and world income. In spite of Mongolia's superior export performance, as yet, no study has been conducted to investigate the determinants of Mongolian export demand and supply. Using a panel data set covering 1995–2012 for the mining, manufacturing and primary sectors, we analyse the determinants of export performance. Empirical results suggest that higher world income, higher prices for Mongolian exports and increased FDI inflows have led to improved export performance in Mongolia. There is no statistical evidence to suggest that trade liberalisation and improved provision of basic infrastructure have had any impact on Mongolia's export expansion.
Local Communities Empowerment within Coastal Tourism Development in West Coastal District

Juridical empirical research with the aim finds a model of local communities’ empowerment in coastal tourism development through land tenure arrangements in West Coastal District. The findings of this study states that the district along West Coastal District there are 17 points which have any potential to be developed into coastal tourism. Unfortunately the impacts of coastal tourism development from economic, social and cultural aspects haven’t been enjoyed by the local communities. This happened because the communities are unprepared to welcome tourists, and lack of coordination between local government and tour operator. Rights to land control in the coastal zone within the tourist development dominant with land ownership status, there were indications of land ownership by foreigners who could potentially cause disputes. There are 11 accommodation managed by husband and wife (citizen-foreigner) from 33 accommodation in West Coastal District. The model is offered in the cooperation with foreign parties in the form of granting Use Rights to property, rental property to foreigners, or by getting up operations and transfer (BOT). Hopefully this model will encourage welfare and survival of west coastal communities so they don't become coolies/porters in their own country. Keywords : Coastal Tourism, Foreigner, Empowerment
The Job Satisfaction and Union Commitment of Unionized Engineers

This study presents data on the union commitment and job satisfaction of a sample of unionized engineers and then, to provide a basis of comparison, similar data on a sample of unionized technicians and a sample of nonprofessional white-collar workers — all employed by the same organization. The engineers and technicians did not differ markedly in union commitment or job satisfaction, but the engineers expressed greater union commitment than did the nonprofessional workers. The correlation in all three samples between satisfaction with the union and satisfaction with management provides support for the concept of dual allegiance.
A Privacy-preserving Protocol to Improve the Quality of Location-based Services

Location-based services allow locations of users to be determined accurately and enable a new type of business opportunities. Due to characteristics of the services, an enormous amount of potentially sensitive information is required. In order to avoid unnecessary exposure of details of the underlying tracking and users’ personal information, this paper proposes a novel protocol inspired by privacy preserving cryptography, together with continuous Markov chain to improve the efficiency of our method while preserving the user privacy. The proposed protocol guarantees the quality of the location-based service with privacy protection, a result with a more precisely location is provided to the mobile user.
Of Fish and Fishermen: Shifting Societal Baselines to Reduce Environmental Harm in Fisheries

If reasonable fishery harvests and environmental harms are specified in new regulations, policies, and laws governing the exploitation of fish for food and livelihoods, then societal baselines can shift to achieve sustainable fisheries and marine conservation. Fisheries regulations can limit the environmental and social costs or harms caused by fishing by requiring the fishing industry to pay for the privilege to fish, via access fees for the opportunity to catch fish and extraction fees for fish caught; both fees can be combined with a progressive environmental tax to discourage overcapitalization and overfishing. Fisheries policies can be sustainable if predicated on an instrumental and ethical harm principle to reduce fishing harm. To protect the public trust in fisheries, environmental laws can identify the unsustainable depletion of fishery resources as ecological damage and a public nuisance to bind private fishing enterprises to a harm principle. Collaborative governance can foster sustainable fisheries if decision-making rights and responsibilities of marine stewardship are shared among government, the fishing industry, and civil society. As global food security and human welfare are threatened by accelerating human population growth and environmental impacts, decisions of how to use and protect the environment will involve collective choices in which all citizens have a stake - and a right.
Determinants of Labor Force Participation of Older Married Men in Taiwan

As the proportion of older population increases in Taiwan, issues related to older individuals' labor market behavior attract public attention. During 1988 to 2008, labor force participation rate of older married men declined about 10 percentage points. This paper tries to identify the determinants of older married men's labor force participation in Taiwan. We use data from Manpower Survey and Manpower Utilization Survey from 1988 to 2008. The sample comprises 51,730 observations of married men aged 55-64. Decompositions with methodologies of Oaxaca (1973) and DiNardo et al. (1996) are conducted for explaining the decline in labor participation rate of older married men. The results indicate that the increase in wives' labor force participation increases husband's likelihood of participation and has prevented aggregate husbands' participation rate from declining to the extent of about 1 percentage point. However, regional unemployment rate negatively affects husbands' likelihood of participation and explains at least 3.5 percentage points of the total decline in husbands' participation rate.
Contract Farming and McKinsey’s Plan for Transforming Agriculture into Agribusiness in West Bengal

Agriculture has been the target of modernization for a long time. The earlier interventions of deploying ‘green revolution’ technologies were a statist project and aimed at increasing productivity. The focus of public policy has shifted from increasing productivity to finding and servicing consumer markets. It is in this context that contract farming and linkages with formal retail sector have been proposed. The erstwhile Left Front government in West Bengal, India, had drafted the management consultancy firm McKinsey & Company to strategize a rejuvenation plan for the state’s agriculture. McKinsey suggested that the government should encourage farmers to enter into contract farming, which would allow them to access market, especially international and domestic metropolitan markets. The documents produced by McKinsey were confidential, but have recently been leaked. In this article, I analyze these confidential documents and the proposal to transform agriculture into agribusiness. I try to locate such a proposal at the global level to understand the dynamics of (global) agribusiness and why global agri-capital advocates contract farming. Thereafter, I try to critically evaluate the prospect of contract farming in Bengal and India.
Probabilistic Constrained MPC for Multiplicative and Additive Stochastic Uncertainty

The technical note develops a receding horizon control strategy to guarantee closed-loop convergence and feasibility in respect of soft constraints. Earlier results addressed the case of multiplicative uncertainty only. The present technical note extends these to the more general case of additive and multiplicative uncertainty and proposes a method of handling probabilistic constraints. The results are illustrated by a simple design study considering the control of a wind turbine.
Water Companies' Service Performance and Environmental Trade-offs

Water companies have to ensure that supply and demand for water are kept in balance. This can necessitate the development of new sources of supply that may conflict with local wildlife interests. The paper reviews the policy background to this problem in the UK. It then presents an appraisal of a project to artificially recharge an aquifer with river water during the winter period, and abstract the water in the summer to augment shortages during drought conditions. The research investigates the preference trade-offs of water company customers between increasing security of supply and potential environmental impacts on local wetland sites and river flows. A cost-benefit analysis of the project is presented. The study also reveals a disparity between the site-specific valuation and that generated using the Environment Agency's approved benefit transfer guidelines.
Self-interaction correction to density-functional approximations for many-electron systems

exchange and correlation, are not. We present two related methods for the self-interaction correction (SIC) of any density functional for the energy; correction of the self-consistent one-electron potenial follows naturally from the variational principle. Both methods are sanctioned by the Hohenberg-Kohn theorem, Although the first method introduces an orbital-dependent single-particle potential, the second involves a local potential as in the Kohn-Sham scheme. We apply the first method to LSD and show that it properly conserves the number content of the exchangecorrelation hole, while substantially improving the description of its shape. We apply this method to a number of physical problems, where the uncorrected LSD approach produces systematic errors. We find systematic improvements, qualitative as well as quantitative, from this simple correction. Benefits of SIC in atomic calculations include (i) improved values for the total energy and for the separate exchange and correlation pieces of it, (ii) accurate binding energies of negative ions, which are wrongly unstable in LSD, (iii) more accurate electron densities, (iv) orbital eigenvalues that closely approximate physical removal energies, including relaxation, and (v) correct longrange behavior of the potential and density, It appears that SIC can also remedy the LSD underestimate of the band gaps in insulators (as shown by numerical calculations for the rare-gas solids and CuCl), and the LSD overestimate of the cohesive energies of transition metals. The LSD spin splitting in atomic Ni and s-d interconfigurational energies of transition elements are almost unchanged by SIC. We also discuss the admissibility of fractional occupation numbers, and present a parametrization of the electron-gas correlation energy at any density, based on the recent results of Ceperley and Alder.
Company Financial Performance and ISO 9000 Registration: Evidence from Malaysia

This study investigates factors, including ISO 9000 registration, that impact on corporate performance, in a sample of Malaysian companies. To achieve this objective, the annual reports of 162 companies (81 ISO 9000 accredited companies and 81 non-ISO accredited companies) were collected and a performance evaluation model was estimated. The results of the analysis revealed that factors such as ISO 9000 registration, return on assets (ROA), economic value added (EVA) and industrial category (INDCAT) determine corporate performance.