Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Algorithm to Create Test Data for Large-Scale Railway Network Revenue Management Models with Customer Choice

Large-scale railway network revenue management models with customer choice behavior are not only a challenge from an optimization perspective, it is also complex and time-consuming to collect and set up test data for large networks. To promote research in this field, we present an algorithm that generates test data based on the schedules of railway companies, e.g., the set of itineraries and corresponding data, such as the resource consumption or product attribute values like travel time, number of transfers, etc. The generated data are also useful for other fields of research, such as crew scheduling or delay management. We show that the algorithm generates realistic test data for large-scale networks in only a few seconds. To promote research in the field of large-scale railway revenue management, we make the programming code (incl. a small schedule dataset) publicly available.
Nutritional Components in the Fruit of Different Blueberry Cultivars in Nanjing

In order to understand the nutritional characteristics of blueberries (Vaccinium spp.), provide the fundamental basis for its processing and utilization, 13 blueberry varieties were studied on their major nutrient compositions in fruit. The results showed that blueberry fruit contained 10.31 ± 0.98% of soluble solids, of which 77.13% was soluble sugar and 89.02% of soluble sugar was reducing sugar. Average content of organic acids was 0.79 ± 0.23% and sugar-acid ratio was 10.91 ± 3.38. Total polyphenol content was 4.921 ± 0.738 mg·g-1, of which anthocyanin was 1.441 ± 0.435 mg·g-1 and ellagic acid 0.921 ± 0.098 mg·g-1. Nutrient content and their components had difference between blueberries varieties.
Uscana femoralis , an egg endoparasitoid for biocontrol of Callosobruchus theobromae (Coleoptera: Bruchidae)

Uscana femoralis , recorded for the first time from the eggs of Conicobruchus al- bopubens is also reported from the eggs of Callosobruchus theobromae. The parasitoid deposited its eggs inside the eggs of the host insect by puncturing the egg chorion with its ovipositor. Host eggs 0-84 hours old were accepted for parasitization. Parasitoid eggs hatched inside the host eggs and further development was completed inside at the cost of host egg ooplasm. Adult parasitoids came out after 9.4 ± 0.46 days by making a circular cut from inside the eggshell of the host insect. Of the total number of eggs of the host insect deposited on seeds of the host plant, 22% were de- stroyed by the parasitoid thus resulting in even percent biocontrol of the host insect.
Labor Leverage, Coordination Failures, and Aggregate Risk

This paper studies an economy where demand spillovers make firms' production decisions strategic complements. Firms choose their operating leverage trading off higher fixed costs for lower variable costs. Operating leverage governs firms' exposures to an aggregate labor productivity shock. In equilibrium, firms exhibit excessive operating leverage as they do not internalize that an economy with higher aggregate operating leverage is more likely to fall into a recession following a negative productivity shock. Welfare losses coming from firms' failure to coordinate production are amplified by suboptimal risk-taking, which magnifies the impact of productivity shocks onto aggregate output.
The passage of digesta, particle size, and in vitro fermentation rate in the three‐toed sloth Bradypus tridactylus (Edentata: Bradypodidae)

The digestive physiology of six three-toed sloths (Bradypus tridactylus) fed exclusively on Cecropia palmata foliage was studied. The mass of digesta in the gut was between 17 and 37% of body mass. This was between 133 and 282% of that expected in an animal of this size, based on published allometric equations. The concentration of total short chain fatty acids in the stomach was similar to that in the fermentative regions of other foregut fermenting herbivores but the rate of fermentation measured in vitro was very slow (6–12 mmol.l-1.h-1) and substantially lower than that observed using similar techniques in other small foregut fermenters. The overall (dose to excretion) mean retention time of particulate and solute digesta markers was about 150 h. Most of this (73%) occurred in the stomach but a substantial proportion (17%) could be attributed to the storage of faeces in the rectum. The slow rate of passage of digesta through the gut together with the slow rate of fermentation in the stomach is not typical of small foregut fermenting herbivores. However, such a pattern is feasible in Bradypus tridactylus because of the large volume of digesta retained in the gut and the very low metabolic rate of these mammals.
Variation in selected life‐history parameters of the parasitoid wasp, Aphidius ervi: influence of host developmental stage

We determined the age‐specific fecundity and survival of the solitary parasitoid wasp, Aphidius ervi Haliday (Hymenoptera: Aphidiidae), under constant laboratory conditions. Wasps were reared in each of the four nymphal instars of apterous pea aphids, Acyrthosiphon pisum (Harris) (Homoptera: Aphididae): (age 24 h), L2 (48 h), L3 (72 h), and L4 (120 h). Age‐specific survival (lx) and fecundity (mx) differed between parasitoids developing in different aphid instars. The wasps' life‐time reproductive success, as indexed by the intrinsic rate of population increase (rm), varied non‐linearly with adult biomass and host size at parasitization. A close agreement between larval growth rates in different host instars and adult reproductive performance suggests that, in A. ervi, fitness correlates may be significantly influenced by larval ontogeny and trade‐offs in resource allocation.
Towards Efficient Alternating Current Optimal Power Flow Analysis on Graphical Processing Units

We present a solution of sparse alternating current optimal power flow (ACOPF) analysis on graphical processing unit (GPU). In particular, we discuss the performance bottlenecks and detail our efforts to accelerate the linear solver, a core component of ACOPF that dominates the computational time. ACOPF analyses of two large-scale systems, synthetic Northeast (25,000 buses) and Eastern (70,000 buses) U.S. grids [1], on GPU show promising speed-up compared to analyses on central processing unit (CPU) using a state-of-the-art solver. To our knowledge, this is the first result demonstrating a significant acceleration of sparse ACOPF on GPUs.
On the Hardness of Learning from Censored Demand

Problem definition: We consider a repeated newsvendor problem where the inventory manager has no prior information about the demand, and can access only censored data. The manager needs to simultaneously "explore" and "exploit" with her inventory decisions, in order to minimize the cumulative cost that the firm incurs. We study the hardness of the problem disentangled from any probabilistic assumptions on the demand, and we develop inventory control policies with guaranteed performance. <br><br>Academic/practical relevance: The problem is motivated by multi-period inventory management of perishable goods, such as newspapers, fresh food, or certain pharmaceutical products, where demand needs to be "learned" only through sales. Demand for many goods is non-stationary, e.g., exhibiting trends and/or seasonalities, yet existing literature offers policies that are tailored to, or facilitated by time stationarity. Methodology: We adopt the regret criterion for performance evaluation purposes. By combining concepts and results from partial monitoring, we couple a carefully designed cost estimator to the well-known ExponentiallyWeighted Forecaster. <br><br>Results: We develop a simple and easy-to-interpret policy that achieves optimal scaling of the expected regret (up to logarithmic factors) with respect to both the number of time periods and available actions. We demonstrate the flexibility of our approach by extending these performance guarantees to: (i) tracking regret, a powerful notion of regret that uses a large class of non-stationary action sequences as benchmark; (ii) single-warehouse multi-retailer inventory management of a perishable product. <br><br>Managerial implications: Our results lead to two important insights: the benefit from “information stalking” as well as the cost of censoring are insignificant in this setting; paving the way for the design of applicable heuristic policies. Further supported by numerical experiments, our findings illustrate the performance loss that can be incurred when policies that are designed under stationarity assumptions are applied to non-stationary environments.
Drivers of Deforestation in the Lake Victoria Crescent, Uganda

We examined key drivers of deforestation in the Lake Victoria Crescent, Uganda from 1989 to 2009 through a case study approach with a multiple-case design. Nineteen focus groups with local community members and forest officials, archival analysis, and field observation revealed both proximate causes and underlying drivers of deforestation. Proximate causes of deforestation included agricultural expansion into forests, unsustainable extraction of wood forest products, and clearing of forests for nonagricultural uses. Underlying drivers of these proximate causes included policy and institutional factors, economic factors, population growth, technological changes, and changes in culture—each resulting in alienation of local people from forest resources. Alienation of local people, defined as a psychological dispossession of responsibility for forest resources, is posited as the most important underlying driver of deforestation. We discuss the importance of the involvement of local people in the management and maintenance of forests in the Lake Victoria Crescent.
Effects of iron limitation on photosynthesis and carbohydrate metabolism in the Antarctic diatom Chaetoceros brevis (Bacillariophyceae)

Iron, one of the structural elements of organic components that play an essential role in photosynthesis and nitrogen assimilation of plants, is available at extremely low concentrations in large parts of the Southern Ocean's surface waters. We tested the hypothesis that photosynthesis is the primary target of iron stress in phytoplankton living in this specific environment, resulting in a reduced carbohydrate production. Cultures of a small Antarctic diatom, Chaetoceros brevis, were exposed to two different photon irradiances under iron-rich and iron-poor conditions. Under both light regimes growth rate was reduced only slightly by iron starvation, as expected because the iron requirement of a small-celled species such as C. brevis is low. Even so, iron-starved cells differed markedly from iron-replete cells: for low and high irradiance, respectively, they had a 20 and 27% lower content of light-harvesting pigments (chlorophyll a and c 2 and fucoxanthin), a 8 and 15% decrease in light absorption and a 15 and 17% decrease in quantum yield of photosystem II. The diurnal production of water-extractable carbohydrates was reduced by 28 and 31%, which resulted in a low supply of energy and carbon skeletons from these storage products. This may well have influenced protein synthesis. The nocturnal consumption of carbohydrates was also reduced, which, together with the almost proportional decrease in cellular C and N content, suggests that the C and N metabolism were tightly tuned in iron-stressed cultures. The decrease in C and N content correlated with a decrease in cell volume. Our results indicate that iron limitation is likely to affect the ability of phytoplankton to maintain high rates of protein synthesis within the deep wind-mixed layer of the Southern Ocean. In addition, growth at the surface could be inhibited by too much light: iron-poor cultures of C. brevis grown at low irradiance showed enhanced sensitivity to photoinhibition.
From Average Customer to Individual Traveler: A Field Experiment in Airline Ancillary Pricing

Ancillaries in the travel industry are now a major stream for revenue and profitability. Ancillaries are optional products or services whose sales depend on an individual's personal preference and their trip context. Conventional pricing strategies for ancillaries based on poorly optimized or static business rules do not respond to changing market conditions or trip context. <br><br>We present a dynamic pricing model developed in conjunction with Deepair solutions, an AI technology provider for travel suppliers. Our models provide dynamic, customer-interaction-specific pricing recommendations, to increase revenue. The unique nature of personalized pricing provides the opportunity to search over the market space to find the optimal price-point for each customer, without violating customer privacy. <br><br>We present an A/B testing deployment framework on an airline's website. Embedded in it are three models for dynamic pricing of ancillaries, with increasing levels of sophistication: (1) a two-stage forecasting and pricing model using a logistic mapping function; (2) a two-stage model with a deep neural network for forecasting, followed by pricing using discrete exhaustive search; (3) a single-stage end-to-end deep neural network that recommends the optimal price. In an outer loop, we introduce an online adaptive model-selection framework that adaptively routes customer requests to the above models. This is modeled as multi-armed bandit problem, which we solve using Thompson sampling. <br><br>We evaluate the performance of these models based on offfine and online evaluations, and their real-world business impact. Offline experiments show that deep learning algorithms outperform traditional machine learning techniques for this problem. In online testing, our AI-driven pricing outperforms human rule-based approaches, improving conversion by 17% and revenue per offer by 25%. Additionally, our adaptive model-selection approach outperforms a uniformly random selection policy by improving the expected revenue per offer by 43% and conversion score by 58% in a simulation environment.
Marine heterotrophic bacteria as indicators in the quality assessment of coastal waters: Introducing the “apparent bacterial concentration” approach

A simplified fingerprint, obtained by counting the colonies of luminescent and nonluminescent bacteria developing on filters plated on a solid culture medium, was applied to obtain an indication of coastal water quality. Results from a reference area and three polluted sites (essentially by urban sewage) and their variations during the year are reported. A tentative characterization of the “clean” and polluted sites is made.
EVALUATION OF STEAM-TREATED WHEAT STRAW AS A ROUGHAGE SOURCE IN DAIRY COW RATIONS

Two experiments were conducted involving a total of 24 Holstein cows to evaluate steam-treated (ST) wheat straw as a roughage source in mixed dairy rations. Diets containing ST straw (exp. 1) at 20 and 30% of the ration dry matter (DM) were consumed in amounts similar to a 30% ground alfalfa hay diet and in greater amounts than a mixed diet with 20% untreated (UT) wheat straw. Cows receiving the diet containing 30% alfalfa hay produced more (P 0.05) among the four treatments. Cows fed the diet containing 30% ST straw had a lower (P < 0.05) ruminal fluid acetate: propionate ratio compared with a 20% UT straw mixed diet. In the second experiment, cows receiving a diet containing 30% ST straw plus 30% rolled barley in place of 60% corn silage consumed less (P < 0.05) total DM and produced less 4% fat-corrected milk per day with a depressed (.
Project Selection and Competitive Cheap Talk: An Experimental Study

When agents with private information compete for resources from a principal and are biased towards their own favored projects (e.g., a CEO decides which division manager’s project to fund) an agency problem arises. However, possible future interaction can mitigate this problem even without reputational concerns, since an agent who induces acceptance of a low-valued project today consumes resources that crowd out even better opportunities that may arrive in the future. Using the theoretical model from Schmidbauer (Games &amp; Economic Behavior, 2017), we devise experiments to address this organizational environment. Specifically, we study the incentives of competing agents to strategically communicate about their own favored project’s value (high or low) to an uninformed decision maker when new projects arrive over time. After observing all advice from agents, the decision maker decides which project to adopt, if any. If no project is adopted subjects enter the next period with new independently drawn projects and continue indefinitely until one project is adopted. We hypothesize that truth telling is easier to support the larger is the benefit from a high-quality project or the less likely it is to occur, but harder to support as agent competition grows. Our findings are broadly consistent with these hypotheses.
CHEMICAL DEFENSE AGAINST HERBIVORY IN THE ANTARCTIC MARINE MACROALGAE IRIDAEA CORDATA AND PHYLLOPHORA ANTARCTICA (RHODOPHYCEAE)

Iridaea cordata (Turner) Bory and Phyllophora antarctica A. et E. S. Gepp (Gigartinales, Rhodophyceae) are common in many high‐latitude, shallow benthic marine communities in Antarctica, but previous observations have indicated little or no exploitation by potential herbivores. We have measured retention of test disks over the mouths of the common Antarctic sea urchin Sterechinus neumayeri Meissner, and we have used this assay to examine potential chemical defenses in I. cordata and P. antarctica. Thallus disks of both macroalgal species were retained by the urchins for significantly shorter times than inert filter paper disks and much shorter times than paper disks with a feeding stimulant. Both nonpolar and polar extracts of each macroalgal species added to disks with a feeding stimulant significantly decreased retention times relative to controls. These results support the hypothesis that chemical defenses in I. cordata and P. antarctica play a role in deterring potential herbivores.
Nondestructive sampling of mitochondrial DNA from voles (Microtus)

We present two techniques for sampling mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) without killing individual voles. Total cellular DNA was extracted from small blood samples (100–250 μL) and tail segments (2 cm long) collected from meadow voles (Microtus pennsylvanicus). Restriction fragment patterns produced by the restriction endonucleases HindIII, BamH1, and EcoR1 after hybridization with a probe of nick-translated mtDNA compared well with standard mtDNA assays. Both techniques can be used in the field, and should prove useful in biochemical taxonomy as well as in investigations of population structure, dispersal, and social interactions on both micro- and macro-geographic scales. The Southern blots produced by these procedures have the added advantage of being reuseable, so that nuclear DNA polymorphisms can be examined with appropriate probes.
Nutritional requirements for growth of Methanothrix concilii

Methanothrix concilii, which is a mesophilic, aceticlastic methanogen, required 6.8 mM inorganic nitrogen for maximal growth rate in a mineral salts – vitamins medium containing 73.5 mM acetic acid. Cysteine hydrochloride, sodium sulfide, or glutathione at optimum concentrations of 6.0, 1.0, and 12.0 mM, respectively, served as the sole source of sulphur for growth. Of the 10 vitamins tested, only biotin, thiamine hydrochloride, and p-aminobenzoic acid stimulated growth. The optimum iron and nickel concentrations were 1–5 and 0.1 μM, respectively. Both calcium and magnesium, at an optimum concentration of 250 and 500 μM, respectively, were essential for growth. The optimum concentrations of manganese, cobalt, and zinc, in conjunction with one another, were 2.5, 10.0, and 5.0 μM, respectively.
Isotopic and gross fecal analysis of American black bear scats

Abstract Previous studies have demonstrated the potential of carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analysis (SIA) of feces for use in understanding dietary components and sources. These studies suggest that SIA is useful because it is noninvasive and provides more recent dietary information integrated over a shorter time period than SIA of tissues. We sought to determine whether SIA could be employed in the analysis of feces of American black bears (Ursus americanus) in Utah. Using archived feces, we compared SIA with gross fecal analyses (GFA) to determine if a relationship existed. The percent volume of grass and pine nuts were the only significant indicators of the δ13C of feces. The amount of animal matter was the sole significant indicator of the δ15N value of feces. Although these measures were only weakly indicative (R2 ≤ 0.21), it is interesting that even in an environment that is isotopically homogenous, δ15N and δ13C provided information on the contribution of dietary components. The comparatively tight distribution of fecal δ13C values, essentially ranging −24 to −28‰, clearly indicated a diet of C3 plants. However, this study did not examine the effect of differential digestibility or intestinal slough on δ13C and δ15N values of feces. This needs to be examined. We also encourage additional studies on the usefulness of SIA of feces of omnivores and carnivores. Very few studies exist for these species, and since many of these species are particularly difficult to handle, SIA of feces may provide crucial knowledge of their short-term dietary habits.
An opto‐electronic sediment detector and its use in the chemical micro‐profiling of lakes

SUMMARY. A device for detecting (with minimum disturbance) the sediment-water interface in lakes is described. It is based on a commercially available slotted ‘opto-switch’ incorporating a light emitting diode and a phototransistor. The design of an audible and visual indicator is given. Possible uses are discussed and an example of chemical micro-profiling near to the sediment with the aid of the device is reported.
The Effect of Corruption on Trade Volume of Selected Countries in the Middle East and Latin America (2002-2008)

Some of the economists believe that current volume of international trade is less than the volume that has been predicted by the conventional trade theories. Unobserved barriers (i.e. Corruption) are one of the factors that can reduce the volume of trade from the amount that has been predicted by these conventional theories. This research has studied the role of corruption in the trade volume of selected countries in the Middle East and Latin America. In this study we have used an augmented gravity model of trade and panel data. In addition for estimating the model, we have used fixed effects vector decomposition method. The results showed that the trade is inverted-U shape function of corruption and the little amount of corruption in both regions initially helps the amount of trade to increase but when it reaches the threshold, the volume of the trade reduces in the studied countries. In addition, the results indicated that the existence of corruption in the importing country has a negative effect on the trade volume of the studied countries and it can reduce the amount of the bilateral trade.
'Real' Assets

Traditionally, “real” assets such as inflation-indexed bonds, commodities and real estate were thought to have correlate well with inflation and thus provide protection against rising price levels. But many of these assets turn out not to be that “real. ” While a single real bond provides a constant real return by definition, real bonds as an asset class has a correlation with inflation close to zero. Among commodities, only energy has been a decent inflation hedge. Gold, surprisingly, has been a poor inflation hedge. Real estate has some, but certainly far from complete, inflation-hedging ability. Cash (T-bills), in contrast, is one of the best inflation hedges.