Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Estimating the value of agricultural ecosystem services: a case study of New Zealand pastoral farming

Agricultural lands both provide and rely upon important ecosystem services (ES), which are generally unrecognised and uncompensated due to missing markets and market failure. In addition to their essential role in meeting the growing demand for food and other agricultural products, agricultural lands also play an important role in sequestering carbon, managing watersheds, and providing landscapes. However, intensification and unsustainable agricultural activities contribute to degradation of several ES. This paper provides a case study of the intensification of pastoral farming in New Zealand and its detrimental environmental impacts on ES such as increased nitrate leaching to streams and rivers, increased methane gas emissions, increased demands for surface and groundwater for irrigation, and reduced variety in pastoral landscapes. Choice modelling is applied to obtain monetary estimates, such as willingness-to-pay (WTP), for improvements in the levels of selected ES. The study explains the importance of these ES values for policy development and examines how incentives can be introduced to induce farmers to reduce harmful effects on ES.
Atorvastatin attenuates mitochondrial toxin‐induced striatal degeneration, with decreasing iNOS/c‐Jun levels and activating ERK/Akt pathways

Mitochondrial dysfunction is a major contributor to neurodegeneration, and causes vulnerability to oxidative stress and the activations of downstream cell death pathways. 3‐Hydroxy‐3‐methyl‐glutaryl‐CoA reductase inhibitors, statins, were originally developed as cholesterol lowering agents, and have cholesterol‐independent anti‐excitotoxic and anti‐oxidative properties. We investigated whether atorvastatin can prevent the neurodegeneration induced by a mitochondrial toxin, 3‐nitropropionic acid (3NP), which inhibits succinate dehydrogenase complex II. Male Lewis rats were administered 3NP (63 mg/kg/day) using osmotic pumps for 5 days to induce striatal degeneration, and were also treated with either atorvastatin (1 or 10 mg/kg/day, orally) or vehicle (control) on five consecutive days. Atorvastatin‐treated rats showed fewer neurologic deficits than control animals as measured at day 3–5. Atorvastatin‐treated animals showed reduced striatal lesion volumes by Nissl staining, and decreased numbers of TUNEL‐positive apoptosis and Fluoro‐Jade C‐positive degenerating neurons at 5 days. Atorvastatin reduced the numbers of c‐Jun‐positive and p‐c‐Jun‐positive cells, as well as 3‐nitrotyrosin‐positive cells. In addition, atorvastatin increased p‐extracellular signal‐regulated kinase and p‐Akt levels, and attenuated the up‐regulation of inducible nitric oxide synthase by 3NP. When N(omega)‐nitro‐l‐arginine methyl ester hydrochloride was administered concomitantly with the 3NP infusion, atorvastatin failed to further reduce the striatal lesion volume and c‐Jun levels compared to the vehicle treatment. In summary, atorvastatin decreased striatal neurodegeneration induced by 3NP, with attenuating inducible nitric oxide synthase and c‐Jun levels as well as activating extracellular signal‐regulated kinase and Akt.
The Presence of Bilateral Imbalance of the Lower Limbs in Elite Youth Soccer Players of Different Ages

Abstract Atkins, S, Bentley, I, Hurst, H, Sinclair, J, and Hesketh, C. The presence of bilateral imbalance of the lower limbs in elite youth soccer players of different ages. J Strength Cond Res 30(4): 1007–1013, 2016—The aim of this study was to examine bilateral differences in ground reaction forces (GRF), measured during a deep squat (DS) exercise, in a population of elite youth soccer players. Bilateral muscle balance is a key component in promoting musculoskeletal health of performers, yet there is a limited evidence base investigating such imbalances in youth. Seventy-four subjects were assigned to performance groups according to chronological age (younger than 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 years). Analysis of physical maturity status revealed that very few players were classified as “early” or “late” maturers. Players completed an overhead DS exercise, as part of preseason functional movement screening. Peak GRF were assessed using a twin force plate system. Significant differences (p ⩽ 0.05) were identified between right and left side peak GRF for all groups except the youngest (U13) and oldest (U17). Nondominant “sides” showed the highest levels of PGRF across all groups. The magnitude of PGRF was not significantly different both within and between groups, except for the left side in the U13 to U15 groups (p = 0.04). Results from this study show that performance asymmetry is marked in adolescence. There seems a “trigger point” during the early stage of adolescence, when bilateral imbalances become marked. These differences do seem to reduce during the later stages of adolescence. Correct attention to focussed training, designed to remediate any imbalance, is warranted in adolescent groups. This is important with respect of the key associations between bilateral asymmetry and risk of injury.
Structure of the upper-air sounding system of the «Vostochny» cosmodrome

Information concerning the development of the upper-air sounding system for meteorological provision of the "Vostochny" cosmodrome, integrating the most advanced atmosphere parameter instrumentation is provided in the present paper. Complex use of sounding means allows moving to a qualitatively new level in operational data acquisition about an atmosphere state.
Novel heterogeneous computing platforms and 5G communications for IoT applications

IoT(Internet of Things), which collects various data in real world and analyzes values from collected data is one of good methods to help solve such serious problems and to construct efficient social systems. Meanwhile, since collected data is very complicated and has huge size, it takes a long time to collect and analyze “Complicated Big data”. Then, efficient computer systems and efficient network systems are necessary. Integration of heterogeneous computing and 5G network is one of the best platforms to provide complex IoT systems and services. In this paper, first, a reason why complex IoT systems require high performance hetero computing and high-speed communication systems like as 5G is presented. In the next, some use cases of IoT systems infrastructures empowered by hetero computing are also introduced.
Housing Price Indexes from the 1974-1983 SIMSA Annual Housing Surveys

This paper reports residential real estate price indexes computed from the Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area (SMSA) Annual Housing Survey (AHS) for the 1974 through 1983 period. During this ten-year period, the U.S. Bureau of the Census conducted detailed surveys of the housing stock in sixty metropolitan areas in a three to four year cycle. This information is used to compute tenure specific hedonic housing price indexes for: (1) the entire metropolitan housing market; (2) separately for properties located in the central city and in the suburbs (whenever central city locations are identified); and (3) for three points in the dwelling quality distribution-for substandard housing (using the definition employed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development), for new housing (housing less than three years old and not substandard), and for existing standard quality housing (everything else). In addition, the hedonic prices reported here are adjusted for the finite sample bias introduced when taking the exponential of a lognormally distributed random variable. Copyright American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association.
Reference range of serum calcitonin in pediatric population.

BACKGROUND Children belonging to the multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2 (MEN 2) pedigree and carrying germline RET mutations are candidates for prophylactic thyroidectomy, the timing of which is based on the mutation-associated risk and the calcitonin (CT) levels. DESIGN The aim of this study was to establish the reference range for serum CT in a pediatric population. The study included 2740 subjects (1339 females and 1401 males) ranging in age from 1 day to 16 years and undergoing blood testing for any medical condition not affecting serum CT. RESULTS Overall, serum CT was undetectable in 61.5% of the samples and detectable in 38.5%. Detectable samples were more frequent in the first 2 years of life. Thereafter, undetectable samples became more frequent, particularly in females. Mean serum CT concentrations were higher in the first year of life (9.81 ± 8.8 pg/mL; range, 2.0-48.9 pg/mL) and the second year of life (4.56 ± 2.64 pg/mL; range, 2.0-14.7 pg/mL). A significant decrease of serum CT levels was observed thereafter (P < .001), and starting from the third year of life serum CT levels were similar to those found in adults. No gender difference was found in any age group. Based on these results, age-specific CT reference ranges are needed in the pediatric population, and especially in the first 2 years of life. CONCLUSIONS This is the first study defining the reference range for serum CT in the pediatric population and large enough to be statistically meaningful. Our proposal may facilitate the process of decision making when dealing with gene carriers of MEN 2.
A Low-Power Low-Noise mm-Wave Subsampling PLL Using Dual-Step-Mixing ILFD and Tail-Coupling Quadrature Injection-Locked Oscillator for IEEE 802.11ad

This paper presents a low-power low-noise 60 GHz frequency synthesizer using a 20 GHz subsampling phase-locked loop (SS-PLL) and a 60 GHz tail-coupling quadrature injection-locked oscillator (QILO) which results in a lower in-band phase noise and out-of-band phase noise, respectively. To save battery life, dual-step-mixing injection-locked frequency divider (ILFD) enhances locking range for high division ratio. Moreover, tail cross-coupling technique in a QILO helps boost negative transconductance (-gm) of the 60 GHz QILO which allows the use of larger inductance for power reduction. Implemented in 65 nm CMOS, it can cover required channels from 58.32 to 64.80 GHz with quadrature outputs. It consumes 24.2 and 7.8 mW from 20 GHz SS-PLL and QILO, respectively. The proposed synthesizer achieves -78.5; dBc/Hz at 100 kHz offset, -122 dBc/Hz at 10 MHz offset, and a figure-of-merit (FoM) of -236 dB.
The Zen of international relations: IR theory from East to West

Notes on the Contributors Introduction: Within International Relations Itself, A New Culture Rises Up S.Chan & P.G. Mandaville PART I: ESTABLISHING A DEBATE Western (? ) Studies of War Origins H.Suganami Forget IR Theory R.Bleiker PART II: ATTEMPTING TO FORM THE DEBATE Seven Types of Ambiguity in Western International Relations Theory and Painful Steps Towards Right Ethics S.Chan A Story Beyond Telos: Redeeming the Shield of Achilles for a Realism of Rights in IR S.Chan Stories of Priam and Job, the Slaughter of their Families, and Twenty Theses on the Suggestiveness of Good for the Person of International Relations S.Chan PART III: THE INCLINATION OF MIDDLE EASTERN CIVILIZATION Can a Declined Civilization be Reconstructed? Islamic Civilization or Civilized Islam? M.Mozaffari An Islamic Perspective on Non-Alignment: Iranian Foreign Policy in Theory and Practice H.A. Sadri PART IV: THE ZEN OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS East-West Stories of War and Peace: Neorealist Claims in Light of Ancient Chinese Philosophy R.Bleiker Selling Culture: Ancient Chinese Conceptions of 'The Other' in Legends Q.Cao Zen Master's Story and an Anatomy of International Relations Theory X.Huang BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE Has Chinese International Relations Progressed? W.Yi Index
Exponential error bounds for random codes in the arbitrarily varying channel

Random codes for the arbitrarily varying channel are investigated. The code ensemble is restricted to increase only exponentially with codeword length; a quantity called key rate is used as a measure of the rate of increase. The reliability function for such codes is related to the reliability function for codes with unlimited key rate. Explicit results are obtained in some examples of practical interest.
Local adaptive controllers for networked cooperative systems

This paper addresses the design of adaptive controllers for a networked large-scale system subjected to parametric uncertainties. The system in question is assumed to be an interconnection of several subsystems, coupled through physical interconnections and communication networks introduced for the purpose of cooperation. The system-model is assumed to be a large linear time-invariant system with i subsystems, i = 1, . ,N, with multiple inputs and network delays. In order to cope with parametric uncertainties that may be present in the system-model, a local adaptive controller is proposed. It is shown that through suitable choices of Lyapunov functions, stabilization of the overall networked system can be guaranteed. Robustness in the presence of disturbances, unmodeled dynamics, time-delays, and higher-order interconnections is established. It is shown that the local adaptive controller is also capable of dealing with magnitude saturation in the actuators.
A parallel-plate flow chamber to study initial cell adhesion on a nanofeatured surface

Cells in the human body come across many types of information, which they respond to. Both material chemistry and topography of the surface where they adhere have an effect on cell shape, proliferation, migration, and gene expression. It is possible to create surfaces with topography at the nanometric scale to allow observation of cell-topography interactions. Previous work has shown that 100-nm-diameter pits on a 300-nm pitch can have a marked effect in reducing the adhesion of rat fibroblasts in static cultures. In the present study, a flow of cell suspension was used to investigate cell adhesion onto nanopits in dynamic conditions, by means of a parallel-plate flow chamber. A flow chamber with inner nanotopography has been designed, which allows real-time observation of the flow over the nanopits. A nanopitted pattern was successfully embossed into polymethylmethacrylate to meet the required shape of the chamber. Dynamic cell adhesion after 1 h has been quantified and compared on flat and nanopitted polymethylmethacrylate substrates. The nanopits were seen to be significantly less adhesive than the flat substrates (p<0.001), which is coherent with previous observations of static cultures.
Forecasting Volatilities and Correlations with EGARCH Models

Volatility varies randomly over time, making forecasting it d@cult. Formal models for systems with timevarying volatility have been developed in recent years, and widely applied in economics and finance. Models in the Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity (ARCH) family have been particularly popular. Prior studies of ARCH-type models of securities return variances have looked at a single asset and focused on in-sample explanation of volatility movements, rather than forecasting. This article considers time variation for both volatilities and correlations among returns on broad asset classes in the US. and Japan, specijcally, equities, long-term government bonds, a n d the do l l a r lyen exchange rate. We are most concerned with out-$--sample forecasting performance. We fi t Exponen t i a l Genera l ized ARCH (EGARCH) models for the returns variances of weekly data from 1977 to 1990. In-sample parameter estimates are statistically signijcant and of the expected signs and magnitudes. In both regressions and directional tests of outof-sample forecasting ability, the EGARCH models seem to contain more information than historical volatility. But overall explanatory power is not great. Forecasting correlations is less successful. Only six of ten pairwise correlations show any significant ARCH efects. Although the model forecasts were less biased than the historical correlation, explanatory power in all cases is very low.
Face anti-spoofing based on Radon transform

In this paper I will present a technique to generate a digital signature for an image, which will uniquely identify it, using Radon transform. Even if Radon based approaches are broadly applicable to tomography (the construction of an image from the projection data related with cross-sectional scans of it), in this research work I will show how it can be successfully utilized to classify images and detect face spoof attacks. This increased popularity of face recognition system has raised disquiets about biometric attacks, where a photo of an authorized person's face could be used by unauthorized individuals to access diverse services. The presented results prove this method offers similar performances to the state of the art and they were obtained using MATLAB 2013 environment and NUAA Photograph Imposter Database.
Jules Dupuit and the Early Theory of Marginal Cost Pricing

The name of Jules Dupuit, the nineteenth-century French engineer, has been frequently invoked in contemporary economic literature concerned with marginal cost pricing (Hotelling, 1938, pp. 242-44; Nelson, 1964, pp. vii-viii) and cost-benefit analysis (Prest and Turvey, 1965, p. 683). Although his contributions in the area of utility theory (Stigler, 1950), consumers' surplus (Houghton, 1958), and price discrimination (Edgeworth, 1912) were, by any standard, remarkable for the time, his role as proclaimed mentor of the modern theory of marginal cost pricing and, more generally, of cost-benefit theory has been largely unexplored and often misunderstood. The result has been a general confusion among modern theorists concerning his achievement in this area.1 Most writers have not bothered to investigate Dupuit's original works and, following Hotelling's original attribution, have simply accepted Dupuit as the first marginal cost theorist. Ragnar Frisch, Hotelling's first critic, may be placed in this camp (Frisch, 1939, p. 145). Such neglect has probably been nurtured by the relative obscurity of his writings and by the fact that, until recently, only two of his economic articles have been translated into English (Dupuit, 1844, 1849b). The purpose of this article is to assess the nature of Dupuit's contribution to the welfare theory of marginal cost pricing. It will be concluded that although Dupuit has rightful claims as the first cost-benefit economist,
The Industrial Organization of Congress in USA and Spain: A Comparative Institutional Analysis

The institutional and organizational details framing legislative processes are key aspects for understanding how Congresses work. From a new institutional economics perspective, this paper comparatively examines how the Spanish and USA Congresses are organized. The main purpose of the paper is to unveil the so-called "black box" factors operating in each case. The role played by property rights, hierarchy, individual deputies, leadership, transactions costs and committees will be researched. Whereas committees and decision-making rules based on a property rights system are key factors for understanding how the Congress performs in USA; in the Spanish case the most relevant explanatory factors are strong party leadership and the hierarchical rules by which political parties and parlamentary groups are organized.
Population structure of purple sea urchin Strongylocentrotus purpuratus along the Baja California peninsula

Purple sea urchin Strongylocentrotus purpuratus is fished from British Columbia, Canada to Punta Baja, Mexico. The North American population has been divided into northern and southern fishery stocks at the break of Point Conception, but little is known about its southernmost distribution along the Mexican Pacific coast of the Baja California peninsula. In this study purple sea urchin populations in six sites along the Baja California peninsula were analyzed using mitochondrial deoxyribonucleic acid restriction fragment length polymorphism (mtDNA RFLP). A homogeneous distribution of three common haplotypes among all sites was observed. A significant FST value, however, indicated genetic structure mainly due to the haplotype array in San Miguel, Isla Todos Santos and Punta Baja sites, which were characterized by having high haplotype diversity and several unique haplotypes. Homogeneous distribution of haplotypes along the peninsula could have been influenced by the unidirectional California Current system, flowing north to south. Unique haplotypes in Punta Baja and the structure found could be the result of local oceanographic features specific to this major upwelling zone. It may be necessary to consider the Punta Baja populations individually when managing the purple sea urchin fishery in Baja California, as they show signs of being a unique stock.
Early Weaning of HIV-Exposed Uninfected Infants and Risk of Serious Gastroenteritis: Findings from Two Perinatal HIV Prevention Trials in Kampala, Uganda

Objective:To assess serious gastroenteritis risk and mortality associated with early cessation of breastfeeding in infants enrolled in 2 prevention of maternal-to-child HIV-transmission trials in Uganda. Methods:We used hazard rates to evaluate serious gastroenteritis events by month of age and mortality among HIV-exposed uninfected infants enrolled in the HIV Network for Prevention Trials (HIVNET 012) (1997-2001) and HIV hyperimmune globulin (HIVIGLOB)/nevirapine (NVP) (2004-2007) trials. HIV-infected mothers were counseled using local infant feeding guidelines current at the time. Results:Breastfeeding cessation occurred earlier in HIVIGLOB/NVP compared with HIVNET 012 (median 4.0 versus 9.3 months, P < 0.001). Rates of serious gastroenteritis were higher in HIVIGLOB/NVP (8.0/1000 child-months) than in HIVNET 012 (3.1/1000 child-months; P < 0.001). Serious gastroenteritis events also peaked earlier at 3-4 and 7-8 months (16.2/1000 and 15.0/1000 child-months, respectively) compared with HIVNET 012 at 9-10 months (20.8/1000 child-months). All cause infant mortality did not statistically differ between the HIVIGLOB/NVP and the HIVNET 012 trials [3.2/1000 versus 2.0/1000 child-months, respectively (P = 0.10)]. Conclusions:Early breastfeeding cessation seen in the HIVIGLOB/NVP trial was associated with increased risk of serious gastroenteritis among HIV-exposed uninfected infants when compared with later breastfeeding cessation in the HIVNET 012 trial. Testing interventions, which could decrease HIV transmission through breastfeeding and allow safe breastfeeding into the second year of life, are urgently needed.