Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Combination of 1-Methylcyclopropene and Ethoxyquin to Control Superficial Scald of ‘Anjou’ Pears

Superficial scald of ‘Anjou’ pears (Pyrus communis) usually develops after cold storage of ≥3 months. Ethoxyquin has been used to control scald commercially. However, only a small amount of fruit can be treated within 7 days after harvest as recommended, and sometimes ethoxyquin causes phytotoxicity. Application of 1-methylcyclopropene (1-MCP) showed excellent scald control potential, with rapid and mass treatment feasible. However, fruit may lose normal ripening ability at a dosage of 1-MCP as low as 30 nL·L−1, whereas a dosage of ≤20 nL·L−1 is not enough to control scald. In this investigation, ‘Anjou’ pears treated with 25 nL·L−1 1-MCP immediately after harvest were stored at −1 °C for up to 5 months. After 1, 7, 30, or 60 days of cold storage, part of the fruit were treated with 1000 μL·L−1 ethoxyquin and the remainder was left untreated as nonethoxyquin controls. The incidence of superficial scald, the concentrations of α-farnesene and its conjugated triene (CT) oxidation products, and the ripening ability of fruit were measured after 3-, 4-, and 5-month storages. All fruit ripened properly within 7 days of shelf life at 20 °C regardless of treatment. 1-MCP treatment at harvest or ethoxyquin alone applied within 7 days adequately controlled scald for only 3 months. By contrast, 1-MCP + ethoxyquin controlled scald for 5 months, regardless of when ethoxyquin was applied from 1 to 60 days after the start of cold storage. Thus, a combination of 25 nL·L−1 1-MCP, which is easily applied and does not influence ripening ability, and a delayed application (up to 60 days) of 1000 μL·L−1 ethoxyquin, which is a low dosage that does not cause phytotoxicity on fruit, controlled scald sufficiently. Scald is linked with accumulation of CT oxidation products of α-farnesene. 1-MCP and ethoxyquin inhibited accumulation of CT in fruit peel by different mechanisms. 1-MCP inhibited the production by reducing α-farnesene synthesis and the oxidation to CT, whereas ethoxyquin worked by inhibiting the latter.
C Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche Minimum-Delay Service Provisioning in Opportunistic Networks

Opportunistic networks are (ad hoc) networks created dynamically by exploiting contacts between pairs of mobile devices that come within communication range. This networking paradigm overcomes main limitations of conventional MANETs, related to the fact that, due to mobility and energy conservation issues, it is often not practical to maintain connected multihop paths among nodes. While forwarding in opportunistic networking has been explored, investigations into asynchronous service provisioning are unique contributions of this paper. Mobile devices are typically heterogeneous, possess disparate physical resources, and can provide a variety of services. During opportunistic contacts, the pairing peers can cooperatively provide (avail of) its (other peer’s) services. This service provisioning paradigm is a key feature of the emerging opportunistic computing paradigm. We develop an analytical model to study the behaviors of service seeking nodes (seekers) and service providing nodes (providers) that spawn and execute service requests, respectively. The model considers the case in which seekers can spawn parallel executions on multiple providers for any given request, and determines: i) the delays at different stages of service provisioning; and ii) the optimal number of parallel executions that minimizes the expected execution time without saturating providers’ resources. The analytical model is validated through simulations, and exploited to investigate the performance of service provisioning over a wide range of parameters.
On the Nature of Contemporary Prejudice From Subtle Bias to Severe Consequences

Other chapters in this volume describe the fragile nature of intergrouprelations and illustrate vividly, with examples from Rwanda, the for-mer Yugoslavia, and from the Holocaust during World War II, howneighbors who had been living in apparent harmony can suddenlybecome violent enemies. These chapters describe conditions such as political instability that arouse strong passions, elicit hatred, andproduce violence in its most extreme form: genocide. Whereas the other chapters focus on the political, social, structural, and intergroupfactors that address the central issue of this volume, why neighborskill, in this chapter we examine the psychological processes that providethe foundation for transforming basically normal and well-intentionedpeople into agents of violence under these societal-level conditions.We use as a case study the attitudes of Whites toward Blacks in theUnited States. We focus on this topic because of the historical andcontemporary importance of race in the United States; racial issueshave deﬁned politically, legally, and socially the nature of majority–minority relations throughout the nation’s history. It is a history involving absolute oppression and violence associated with the inhu-manity of slavery in the past and manifested most overtly in hate crimes, criminal acts motivated in whole or in part by prejudice towardanother group (Boeckmann & Turpin-Petrosino, 2002), in the present.
Individual N D Importance Map Fuzzy Integral Median Filter DMP Light vs . Dark Selection Morph Reconstr Importance

Object recognition from remote sensing systems is a task of immense interest. With the vast deployment of aerial vehicles and space borne sensors for a wide variety of purposes, it is critical to have robust image processing techniques to analyze massive streams of collected data. Herein, we explore the utility of a feature descriptor learning framework, called improved Evolution-COnstructed (iECO) features. Additionally, an investigation into the combination of iECO features with soft features is conducted. Soft features are a deterministic approach to highlighting pertinent information for improving the quality of features extracted specific to the object of interest while iECO is a way to learn from data the relevant information. Experiments are conducted using four-fold (scene based) cross-validation and are reported in terms of target recognition rates and false alarm rates. Results indicate that iECO features are individually best overall and the combination of iECO and soft features can lead to improved results.
Correlates of reticulation in linguistic phylogenies

This paper discusses phylogenetic reticulation using linguistic data from the Automated Similarity Judgment Program or ASJP (Holman et al., 2008; Wichmann et al., 2010a). It contributes methodologically to the examination of two measures of reticulation in distance-based phylogenetic data, specifically the δ score of Holland et al. (2002) and the more recent Q-residuals of Gray et al. (2010). It is shown that the δ score is a more adequate measure of reticulation. Our empirical analyses examine possible correlations between δ and (a) the size (number of languages), (b) age, and (c) heterogeneity of language groups, (d) linguistic isolation of individual languages within their respective phylogenies, and (e) the status of speech forms as dialects or recently emerged languages. Among these, only (d) is significantly correlated with δ. Our interpretation is that δ is a realistic measure of reticulation and sensitive to effects of socio-historical events such as language extinction. Finally, we correlate average δ scores for different language families with the goodness of fit between ASJP and expert classifications, showing that the δ scores explain much of the variance.
Black holes, entanglement and random matrices

We provide evidence that strong quantum entanglement between Hilbert spaces does not generically create semiclassical wormholes between the corresponding geometric regions in the context of the AdS/CFT correspondence. We propose a description of low-energy gravity probes as random operators on the space of black hole states. We use this description to compute correlators between the entangled systems, and argue that a wormhole can only exist if correlations are large. Conversely, we also argue that large correlations can exist in the manifest absence of a Lorentzian wormhole. Thus the strength of the entanglement cannot generically diagnose spacetime connectedness, without information on the spectral properties of the probing operators. Our random matrix picture of probes also provides suggestive insights into the problem of ‘seeing behind a horizon’.
The Development of a New Scale to Measure Teachers' Attitudes Toward Students (TATS)

Teachers vary in their attitudes toward students. Some teachers are conservative and autocratic, while others are liberal and democratic. Research indicates that both of these attitudes can have a significant, though different, impact on the learning outcomes of students. To spur fttrther research in this important area, I developed a new scale for measuring these two attitudes. This new scale is known as the TATS (Teachers' Attitude Toward Students). There were altogether 16 items in this scale. One set of items measured the conservative-autocratic attitude, while the other measured the liberal-democratic attitude. A survey questionnaire containing this new scale to measure attitudes (TATS) and an established scale to measure personal values (the Schwartz value survey )was distributed to a sample of 65 experienced teachers and 82 trainee-teachers in Singapore. The TATS scale was found to possess internal reliability. Exploratory factor analysis revealed that it possessed a clear factor structure. In addition, the conservative-autocratic attitude of TATS was
A SCHEME FOR AN STF CODING AND ADAPTIVE MULTIPLE ANTENNA SELECTION FOR IMPROVING THE PERFORMANCE OF MULTIPLE-INPUT SINGLE-OUTPUT OFDM SYSTEM

This paper describes a multiple-input single-output (MISO) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing employing space-time-frequency coding with antenna selection at the receiver. The system in tested in a severe IEEE 802.16 broadband wireless access channels. Adaptive multiple antenna selection (AdMAS) was performed based on the second-order moment of the channel impulse response and only good channels were use for data transmission. Results show that our second-moment-based AdMAS scheme with 2 most faded transmitters turned off outperforms similar schemes based on the mean of the CIR, and conventional coded STF-OFDM. Second-moment-based scheme shows significant gain in terms of Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) requirement especially at higher level constellations which makes it a potential scheme to be employed for realization of high data rates system. The performance of MIMO systems can be improved by employing a larger number of antennas than actually used and selecting the optimal subset based on channel state information. Mobiles in future broadband systems supporting spatial multiplexing will be capable of receiving substreams from multiple transmit antennas on one or more base stations. Simultaneous transmission from all available transmit antennas may be difficult due to hardware costs. It is therefore of interest to select a subset of available antennas for transmission. Selection has been considered in the past in the context of both transmit and receive diversity. Selection for multiple-transmit multiple-receive antenna systems was first presented in (5) based on the argument that it increases capacity. The selection criterion proposed in (6) is based on Shannon capacity and does not readily apply to spatial multiplexing. In (4), antenna selection algorithms that minimized the BER of linear receivers in spatial multiplexing systems were presented, while (7, 8) proposed selection algorithms to minimize SER when orthogonal block coding is used in MIMO systems. This paper proposes adaptive multiple antenna selection (AdMAS) in which a subset of 'strong' antenna is chosen among the many available multiple transmit antennas at the base station for transmissions. This selection is based on the second-order moment of the channel impulse response of the channel realization. We assume that the channel is characterized by quasi-static Rayleigh flat-fading when orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is employed when the subchannels fade independently. We also assume that the channel state information (CSI) is readily known at both the transmitter and receiver thus allowing the transmitter to determine the 'strong' channel to use. This is normally obtained via a dedicated feedback channel from the receiver to the transmitter or as in time division duplex (TDD) where both transmitter and receiver share the same channel.
Molecular phylogeny of the Kosciuscola grasshoppers endemic to the Australian alpine and montane regions

Abstract. Diversity and speciation in Australia’s alpine biota are poorly understood. Here we present a molecular phylogeny of the Australian alpine grasshopper genus Kosciuscola (Sjösted) that currently includes five described species. These grasshoppers are of interest not only because of their alpine distribution but also for the extraordinary colour change exhibited by the species K. tristis, whose males turn turquoise when their body temperature exceeds 25°C. We reconstructed the phylogeny with two fragments of the mitochondrial genome using parsimony, maximum likelihood and Bayesian analyses and our data support the current taxonomy. Further, our data show little geographic structuring within some clades, which is puzzling since members of Kosciuscola are brachypterous. Finally, our data coupled with our observations on colouration provide evidence for a genetically distinct clade of K. tristis in the Victorian Alps. This is among the first molecular studies of an alpine invertebrate and one of a few on non-endangered, widespread Australian alpine species. More phylogenetic studies in the Australian Alps are required if we are to understand the evolution of alpine fauna and establish baseline data to monitor their response to climate change.
Insecticidal effects of Moroccan plant extracts on development, energy reserves and enzymatic activities of Plodia interpunctella.

The aim of this work was to study the effects of methanol extracts of ten plant species used in traditional medicine in Morocco (Peganum harmala, Ajuga iva, Rosmarinus officinalis, Lavandula stoechas, Lavandula dentata, Cistus ladanifer, Cistus salviaefolius, Cistus monspeliensis, Centaurium erythraea and Launaea arborescens) on Plodia interpunctella Hubner (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae) larvae. Firstly, we studied the effects of the ingestion of these extracts at 500 ppm on post-embryonic development parameters. Most plant extracts provoked a notable decrease of larval weight 8 days after treatment (up to 33% weight loss with C. erythraea) and caused significant alterations on pupation (ranging from 5% to 85%) and adult emergence (below 2.5% with R. officinalis, C. erythraea and A. iva). The plant extracts that showed strongest effects on post-embryonic development were selected to test their effects on the following physiological parameters: larval reserve substances (at 500 ppm); and midgut activities of hydrolytic and detoxification enzymes (at 500, 750 and 1,000 ppm). All treatments provoked a significant reduction of protein and carbon hydrate larval contents, the inhibition of proteases and α-amylase activities in a dose depended manner, and the induction of glutathione Stransferase and esterase (using MtB as substrate) activities, whereas the activity of cytochrome P450 monooxygenases and esterases (using 1-NA as substrate) increase or decrease depending on the extract concentration and the plant analyzed.
Modelling the effect of the Ecodesign and Labelling directives – Bottom-up analysis of EU-27 residential electricity use

The Ecodesign and Labelling directives are key policy measures to increase energy efficiency in Europe. In view of the extension of Ecodesign and Labelling to further products as well as the revision of the current implementing directives, it is essential to evaluate the potential energy savings, takin g into account different paths of technological development and diffusion. Our study uses bottom - up modelling to evaluate the long - term saving potentials of Ecodesign and Label ling for residential appliances (including large appliances, cooking and ICT), lighting and air conditioning. The household end - uses that are affected by the legislation are implemented in the model in a disaggregated way. The model is designed as a vintage stock approach and based on the simulation of consumer activities as well as technological trajectories. We model the electricity demand of household end - uses in the EU - 27 by country and compare various scenarios. Our Reference Scenario reflects the electricity demand of household end - uses without any policy measures implemented after 2008. Our current Policy Scenario includes all implementing directives that are currently in force and assumes that the sensitivity of consumers to the total cost of ownership remains at the currently witnessed level. Finally, our LLCC Scenario explores the potential energy savings assuming that consumers choose the economically favourable options considering the total cost of ownership.
Rainbow Smelt ( Osmerus mordax ) age and growth in Whitefish Bay , Lake Superior , with an analysis of age estimation effort

In the Laurentian Great Lakes, nonnative Rainbow Smelt (Osmerus mordax) provide forage for Lake Trout (Salvelinus namaycush) and other predatory fish and are potential competitors with and predators of young Coregonus species. In recent years, Rainbow Smelt populations have declined across the Laurentian Great Lakes. This study is centered on Whitefish Bay, located at the Eastern end of Lake Superior, which is warmer and has a lower abundance of Lake Trout than other parts of Lake Superior. I compared age, after identifying an appropriate ageing structure, and growth metrics between Rainbow Smelt collected from Whitefish Bay in 2015 to collections made from other times and locations. I found no significant bias in estimated ages between readers for thin sectioned and whole cleared otoliths, but a significant bias between readers was detected for whole uncleared otoliths. Average coefficient of variation between readers was lowest for thin sectioned otoliths. For the same reader, the only significant bias detected was where whole uncleared otoliths underestimated the age for fish with an estimated otolith thin section age of 3. Results indicate that thin sectioned otoliths appear to be the superior structure for estimating the age of Rainbow Smelt. Maximum ages and growth rates differed between Rainbow Smelt from Whitefish Bay in 2015 and those from many of the other times and locations examined. The oldest fish in 2015 was 3 years old, whereas 5 and 6 year old fish were found in all of the other studies. Mean lengths-at-age for age-1 and age-2 Rainbow Smelt from Whitefish Bay in 2015 were intermediate compared to all other studies. However, age-3 Rainbow Smelt from the 2015 sample were noticeably smaller than from all other studies. The maximum age and growth differences for Rainbow Smelt among these periods and locations may be related to the observed population declines. Additional studies will be required to determine if this pattern is evident in other years and locations in Lake Superior.
Direct numerical simulations of particle transport in a model estuary

We investigate numerically the mixing of freshwater with ambient saltwater in a model estuary along with associated particle settling processes. We first discuss and specify two numerical setups that consider several relevant features to study the particle settling. The first configuration is a large rectangular basin with a small inlet for the (particleladen) freshwater; the second is geometrically identical to the first except that the flow is laterally confined to the narrow inlet width. The two flows are computed until a statistically stationary solution is reached. We perform highly resolved direct numerical simulations using a high-order finite difference approach to yield reliable and accurate results. Accordingly, all relevant turbulent scales are resolved and turbulence modeling is not needed. The main target of this study is to describe and illustrate the fluid dynamics and the particle settling processes under the influence of turbulence arising in the freshwater/saltwater-stratified mixing layer. To this end we analyze and compare the two simulations with respect to different aspects of the freshwater/saltwater interaction and to the transport and settling processes of the particles. We investigate the spatial structure as well as the temporal evolution of the flows and the particle suspensions. Generally, we find a qualitatively good agreement of both numerical simulations with pertinent laboratory experiments. Particularly, the results confirm a significant enhancement of the particle settling speeds compared to pure Stokes settling in the presence of turbulence. However, we also demonstrate that the results for the two configurations differ fundamentally in several aspects: stability of the freshwater/saltwater interface, degree of turbulent mixing, particle plume expansion and particle settling enhancement. Using these two simulations we explain the observed settling enhancement, which is not related to the particle inertia (as it is not considered in the numerical model) but rather to the buoyancy velocity of the particle suspension and the geometry of the estuary mouth configuration.
Regenerative Techniques in Oral and Maxillofacial Bone Grafting

The art and science of reconstruction of maxillofacial bony defects is a field of interest for most of maxillofacial surgeons due to its importance and prerequisite role for other surgical procedures. Despite significant improvements during last decades in this field, challenge still exists to determine which type of reconstruction techniques and materials is the treatment of choice. Although dental implants are considered as a standard and effective treatment to restore dental defects nowadays, lack of adequate bone quantity is a pitfall for dental implant reconstruction procedures. Grafting techniques have a long history in the literature with different donor sources and technical innovations and improvements. These methods are the most common techniques in bone reconstruction yet, but in the era of bioengineering, new alternative horizons lie ahead.
On the formulation of simple mixing models for complex phases

In activity-composition relationships for multisite phases, it often occurs that end-members possess individual sites that contain more than one element. For example, in hornblende, trCarMg. [MgAl][AlSi3]Si4O,,(OH)r, the M2 site contains one Mg and one Al, and the Tl site contains one Al and three Si. In such cases, normalization is required to ensure that the ideal mixing activity and the activity coefficient of each end-member are each unity for the pure end-member. Such normalization is well known for the former, but not for the latter. A new formulation of normalization for activity coefficients is presented. In the context of symmetric (regular and reciprocal) interactions, the formulation is used to show that the thermodynamics can always be written in terms of lzn(n l) interaction parameters, where n is the minimum number of components needed to represent the composition of the phase. These macroscopic interaction parameters are particular linear combinations of the constituent regular and reciprocal model microscopic interaction parameters. With this, a further generalization leads to a dramatic simplification in the writing of activity coefficients: for any end-member, a, of a complex phase, including all symmetric microscopic interactions: