Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On the specification of prior distributions for variance components in disease mapping models

In this paper, we consider the problem of specifying priors for the variance components in the Bayesian analysis of the Besag-York-Mollie model, a model that is popular among epidemiologists for disease mapping. The model encompasses two sets of random effects: one spatially structured to model spatial autocorrelation and the other spatially unstructured to describe residual heterogeneity. In this model, prior specification for variance components is an important problem because these priors maintain their influence on the posterior distributions of relative risks when mapping rare diseases. We propose using generalised inverse Gaussian priors, a broad class of distributions that includes many distributions commonly used as priors in this context, such as inverse gammas. We discuss the prior parameter choice with the aim of balancing the prior weight of the two sets of random effects on total variation and controlling the amount of shrinkage. The suggested prior specification strategy is compared to popular alternatives using a simulation exercise and applications to real data sets.
Filament motions in magnetized plasmas

Interchange motions of magnetized plasmas due to either a non-uniform magnetic field or a gravitational field lead to charge polarization within a filamentary structure and set up convection. In this project we have provided a clear derivation of the two-field model equations that describe these filament motions. We have also derived an energy theorem for small amplitude oscillations. We have derived the electron temperature equation for interchange motions and also described the coupling between electron temperature and electrostatic potential due to sheath currents leading to spin of filament structures. The calculations showed that the existing two-field model can be extended to the tree-field model. We have also showed that that the temperature field extends an energy theorem, but the mechanism of the interchange motions remains the same. This thesis may be considered as a first step to the three-field description of the filament motions in plasma. Velocity scaling laws were also derived. It was shown, that the maximal centerof-mass velocity scales as a square root of the density amplitude only if this amplitude is small in comparison with the background density, for the amplitudes are large, the velocity scales as unity. It was also shown that in case of the constant background density the maximum centre-of-mass velocity scales as a square root of the temperature amplitude independently on the background temperature. These scaling laws were verified numerically by the two-dimensional advection-diffusion solver.
Model for the resistance force acting on circular bodies in the imminence of rolling

The laws of friction are reasonably well understood for the case of blocks in contact with rough plane surfaces. However, as far as bodies with circular sections are concerned, the physics of friction becomes more involving and it is not possible to adopt a simple conceptual framework to explain all phenomena. In particular, there is no approach so far to the problem of the resistance force that opposes to circular bodies that remain at rest while acted upon by small forces. Here we fill this gap by introducing a mechanical model based on both the elasticity theory and Hertz contact mechanics. Our approach furnishes a quantitative expression for the critical force beyond which rest can no longer be maintained. Besides confirming the expected proportionality of the resistance force with the load, our result contains no free parameters and is expressed solely in terms of physical properties of the problem, such as the pressure of the body per unit of superficial area, a relation between the Young modulus of the surface and its Poisson ratio, and the symmetry of the contact.
The influence of dietary raw and extruded field peas
(Pisum sativum L.) on nutrients digestibility and performance
of weaned and fattening pigs

The intensification of controversies regarding the use of GMO soya products in animal nutrition caused a rapid increase in the cultivation of leguminous plants, including peas (Pisum sativum L.). Pea seeds contain active globulin proteins rich in lysine, but they are deficient in sulphur amino acids, tryptophan and isoleucine (Duranti, 2006; Friesen et al., 2006; Jamroz and Kubizna, 2008). Therefore, in the case of the isonitrogen replacement of soyabean with pea seeds as an alternative protein source, it is necessary to supplement methionine and other amino acids, and to use higher amounts of seeds. Diets containing pea seeds are usually completed with other protein sources, for example, soyabean meal (SBM) or rapeseed meal (RSM). The side effect of this is an increased content of the antinutritive factors (ANF) in the diets: proteases inhibitors, polyphenolic substances, raffinose family oligosaccharides (RFO), phytate, haemagglutinins, glucosinolates, lectins and tannins (Griffiths, 1981; ABSTRACT. The affectivity of extrusion process of pea seeds on nutrients digestibility or growth performance of pigs was analysed. The first study was conducted on 30 male pigs allocated to three dietary treatments for 28 days. The control animals were offered a basal diet whereas the experimental groups received basal diets mixed with raw or extruded pea seeds in the proportion of 75:25 (w/w). The apparent ileal and total tract digestibilities were determined using the difference method with titanium dioxide. The second semi-practical experiment was conducted on 60 pigs (29 ± 0.3 kg) and lasted 75 days. The growth performance of the pigs receiving control diet with soyabean meal (SBM) or diets where SBM was replaced with raw or extruded pea seeds mixed with rapeseed meal (RSM) was analysed. The extrusion of pea seeds significantly reduced the content of resistant starch, phytate-P, crude fibre and neutral detergent fibre levels, and trypsin inhibitor activity. Extrusion only enhanced (P < 0.05) the apparent total tract digestibility of crude protein, and improved the apparent ileal digestibility of Asp, Glu and Cys (P < 0.05). The inclusion of pea seeds with RSM into the diet of growing pigs reduced their daily gain and feed conversion ratio, but not during finishing phase and during the whole time of experiment. The final body weight of pigs receiving pea seeds and RSM was lower in comparison to the control group. In conclusion, extrusion significantly influenced the chemical composition of pea seeds but it did not improve the production results of the animals. Received: 7 July 2017 Revised: 5 March 2018 Accepted: 1 June 2018
Ownership Structure and Dividend Policy of Conglomerate Firms in Nigeria

Dividend policy is considered an integral policy in company decision that can have a big impact on the investors’ reaction. This study examines the effect of ownership structure on the corporate dividend policy in the line with agency context. This study covers the period of ten years (2001-2010), with a sample of eight (8) conglomerate firms, consisting of 80 firm-observations. Data were extracted from the annual reports of the conglomerate firms. The empirical results depict a positive association between dividend pay-out and institutional ownership as well as block-holders ownership, but a negative association with managerial ownership. The results reveal that the higher the institutional and block-holders shareholdings the higher will be the firm dividend pay-out. The result also suggests that dividend policy is used by managers expropriate the shareholders wealth. In line with the result, it is recommended that conglomerate firms in Nigeria should encourage more shareholdings by institutions as well as block-holders to reduce the opportunistic practices through dividend policy. DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2015. v4n2p279
Effect of olive mill wastewater on growth and bulb production of tulip plants infected by bulb diseases

The effect of olive mill wastewater (OMW) on growth of tulip plants infected by common diseases as well as on their new bulbs production is analyzed in this work. Filtered and sterilized OMW was tested as growth inhibitor of Botrytis tulipae, Fusarium oxysporum, Aspergillus niger and Penicillium spp. mycelium. The effect of filtered OMW on uninfected tulip bulbs was also tested as well as on the growth of bulbs infected with the fungus B. tulipae and A. niger in vivo. The mycelium length, severity of scab-like lesions, plant height (PH), fresh mass (FM) and dry mass (DM) of plants and production of new bulbs were recorded. Only the filtered OMW inhibited the in vitro mycelium growth of all tested fungi. However filtered OMW caused infections when it sprayed on uninfected bulbs, malformations on 30% of the plants grown from these bulbs and decrease PH, FM and DM as well as new bulbs production at 75%, 72.4%, 79.1% and 50% respectively. The treatment of B. tulipae infected bulbs with filtered OMW reduced further the PH, FM, DM and the production of new bulbs in 92.1%, 81.4%, 78.7% and 97% respectively. In contrast the treatment of infected bulbs by B. tulipae + A. niger with filtered OMW did not affect PH, FM and the number of new bulbs produced and significantly improved plants DM and the mass of new bulbs.
The importance of radiation for semiempirical water-use efficiency models

Abstract. Water-use efficiency (WUE) is a fundamental property for the coupling of carbon and water cycles in plants and ecosystems. Existing model formulations predicting this variable differ in the type of response of WUE to the atmospheric vapor pressure deficit of water (VPD). We tested a representative WUE model on the ecosystem scale at 110 eddy covariance sites of the FLUXNET initiative by predicting evapotranspiration (ET) based on gross primary productivity (GPP) and VPD. We found that introducing an intercept term in the formulation increases model performance considerably, indicating that an additional factor needs to be considered. We demonstrate that this intercept term varies seasonally and we subsequently associate it with radiation. Replacing the constant intercept term with a linear function of global radiation was found to further improve model predictions of ET. Our new semiempirical ecosystem WUE formulation indicates that, averaged over all sites, this radiation term accounts for up to half (39–47 %) of transpiration. These empirical findings challenge the current understanding of water-use efficiency on the ecosystem scale.
Corporate Governance, Regulation and Bank Risk-Taking Behaviour in Developing Asian Countries

Using data from ten selected developing Asian countries, this paper investigated empirically the influences of corporate governance and regulations on bank risk-taking behaviour. We found sufficient evidence that corporate governance mechanism has strong effect on the level of risk taken by bank: bank with large owner(s) is associated with higher risk-taking, while board size is found to be negatively related to bank risk level, indicating that the bigger the size of the board, the less risk the bank is willing to take. Additionally, we also found that banks with more powerful CEO tend to engage in less risky activities. Meanwhile, an increase in board independence forces banks to assume more risk. Nevertheless, managerial shareholdings appear to have no direct impact on the level of risk banks undertake. Our results further showed that regulatory pressure brought about by the host-country regulators influences neither banks’ risk-taken levels nor their capital adequacy ratios. However, raising regulatory capital adequacy ratio, instead of forcing banks to reduce their risk level, does induce them to take more risk. Thus, banking regulations do not appear to be effective in developing Asian countries. Other variables, such as loan loss reserve and GDP growth also help to predict bank risk-taken pattern. Nonetheless, bank size has no direct impact on shaping the risk-taking behaviour of banks.
Long memory properties and agents’ behavior: an interesting connection

The aim of this work is to establish an interesting connection between the behavior of economic agents and the long memory features that generally occur in a wide set of time series found in economic/financial problems. It is shown that heterogeneity between agents, local interactions and spatial complexity plays a major role in the rise of long memory features, by means of extensive usage of computational multi-agent based models, stochastic analysis and Monte Carlo simulations. Despite the fact that heterogeneity is a widely known characteristic that affects the rise of long memory, the other two factors are not.
FGFR1 amplification and FGFR gene fusion in resected squamous cell carcinoma of the lung

The objective of the present study was to investigate the clinicopathologic characteristics and prognostic role of FGFR1 amplification and FGFR fusion in patients with surgically resected squamous cell carcinoma of the lung (SCCL). Here, fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) was performed to detect FGFR1 amplification and reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was used to screen 15 known FGFR fusion variants in 108 patients with surgically resected SCCL. All cases were also analyzed for EGFR, KRAS, HER2 and BRAF mutations. Clinical characteristics including age, sex, smoking status, stage, relapse-free survival (RFS) and overall survival (OS) were collected. Of 108 tumors screened, 14 (13.0%) FGFR1 amplification was found. There were 4 (3.7%) patients that harbored FGFR fusion including 2 BAG4-FGFR1 and 2 FGFR3-TACC3 fusion. Compared to the FGFR1 amplification negative group, patients with FGFR1 amplification were more likely to be smokers (100.0%, 14 of 14 patients, p=0.036), significantly associated with larger tumor (>3 cm) (88.2%, 13 of 14 patients, p=0.032). Patients with FGFR1 amplification had worse RFS (p=0.013) and OS (p=0.021) than those without FGFR1 amplification. There was no correlation between FGFR fusion and clinicopathologic characteristics. No significant difference in RFS or OS was found between patients with FGFR fusion and those without FGFR fusion. In conclusion, FGFR1 amplification and FGFR fusion occurred in 13.0% and 3.7% of patients with surgically resected SCCL, separately. FGFR1 amplification was correlated with poor prognosis and identified a distinct subset of SCCL with a higher prevalence among smokers with relative larger tumor (>3 cm). FGFR is a therapeutic target and patients with FGFR1 amplification or FGFR fusion may benefit from FGFR targeted therapy which needs further clinical investigation.
Frazil-ice growth rate and dynamics in mixed layers and sub-ice-shelf plumes

Abstract. The growth of frazil or granular ice is an important mode of ice formation in the cryosphere. Recent advances have improved our understanding of the microphysical processes that control the rate of ice-crystal growth when water is cooled beneath its freezing temperature. These advances suggest that crystals grow much faster than previously thought. In this paper, we consider models of a population of ice crystals with different sizes to provide insight into the treatment of frazil ice in large-scale models. We consider the role of crystal growth alongside the other physical processes that determine the dynamics of frazil ice. We apply our model to a simple mixed layer (such as at the surface of the ocean) and to a buoyant plume under a floating ice shelf. We provide numerical calculations and scaling arguments to predict the occurrence of frazil-ice explosions, which we show are controlled by crystal growth, nucleation, and gravitational removal. Faster crystal growth, higher secondary nucleation, and slower gravitational removal make frazil-ice explosions more likely. We identify steady-state crystal size distributions, which are largely insensitive to crystal growth rate but are affected by the relative importance of secondary nucleation to gravitational removal. Finally, we show that the fate of plumes underneath ice shelves is dramatically affected by frazil-ice dynamics. Differences in the parameterization of crystal growth and nucleation give rise to radically different predictions of basal accretion and plume dynamics, and can even impact whether a plume reaches the end of the ice shelf or intrudes at depth.
Numerical simulation of GEW equation using RBF collocation method

The generalized equal width (GEW) equation is solved numerically by a meshless method based on a global collocation with standard types of radial basis functions (RBFs). Test problems including propagation of single solitons, interaction of two and three solitons, development of the Maxwellian initial condition pulses, wave undulation and wave generation are used to indicate the efficiency and accuracy of the method. Comparisons are made between the results of the proposed method and some other published numerical methods.
Quadratic optimal control of well-posed linear systems

We study the infinite horizon quadratic cost minimization problem for a well-posed linear system in the sense of Salamon (1987, 1989) and Weiss (1994). The quadratic cost function that we seek to minimize need not be positive, but it is convex and bounded from below. We assume the system to be jointly stabilizable and detectable, and give a feedback solution to the cost minimization problem. Moreover, we connect this solution to the computation of either a (J,S)-inner or an S-normalized co-prime factorization of the transfer function, depending on how the problem is formulated. In the case where the system is regular it is possible to show that the feedback operator can be computed from the Riccati operator, and that the Riccati operator is a stabilizing self-adjoint solution of an algebraic Riccati equation. This Riccati equation is nonstandard in the sense that the weighting operator in the quadratic term differs from the expected one, and the computation of the correct weighting operator is a nontrivial task. We apply the general theory to get factorization versions of the bounded and positive real lemmas.
Colonization of Brazil by the cattle egret (Bubulcus ibis) revealed by mitochondrial DNA.

The cattle egret (Bubulcus ibis) has recently colonized Brazil. This process offers an excellent opportunity for the study of colonization and dispersal patterns across extensive areas by non-native birds. The aims of the present investigation were a) to determine the genetic diversity of the cattle egret in Brazil and Africa, b) evaluate genetic differentiation between populations in different regions of Brazil and Africa, and c) detect genetic signs of demographic expansion in these two areas. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) Control Region (CR) sequences were obtained from 112 cattle egrets in four Brazilian and four African (Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria) populations. Genetic diversity (H, h, θ s ) and population structure (AMOVA, Fst) were assessed and the populations were tested for signs of recent demographic expansion. A total of 35 haplotypes were found: 22 exclusive to Africa, 10 exclusive to Brazil and three shared by both samples. The degree of genetic diversity, determined by mtDNA analysis, was similar between Brazil and Africa, demonstrating that the successful colonization of the non-native area occurred with no significant loss of diversity. The pairwise Fst values among the Brazilian and African populations were all significantly different. The population in southern Brazilian exhibited the lowest degree of differentiation with respect to the African population, followed by the southeastern and northeastern populations of the country. The genetic differentiation data suggest that the colonization of Brazil by the cattle egret began in the southern region and expanded to the southeastern and northeastern regions of the country. This genetic differentiation pattern is in accordance with the higher number of cattle per grazing area in southern Brazil, which may have favored the onset of the successful establishment of the species. The findings indicate that mtDNA genetic diversity was retained during the colonization process and colonization began in the southern region of the country. Moreover, signs of demographic expansion were detected in the African sample.
Teacher Candidates' Attitudes, Knowledge Levels and Sensitivities towards Environmental Problems

A people without children would face a hopeless future; a country without trees is almost as helpless (Theodore Roosevelt). Humans both have been affected by environmental events and have affected their environments by a variety of activities since man has been on earth. However, because of the lack of population for a long time and the absence of technology that can fight nature, people have contended with those given by nature and lived harmony with nature. As technology began to progress rapidly with the industrial revolution, humans have preferred to dominate it rather than being a part of natural balance. Human pressure on natural environment has been increased because of this preference. This increase has led the excessive use of natural resources and to environmental problems. The most effective solution to the problems seems that environmental literacy gives individuals. The aim of this study is to assess the teacher candidates' attitudes, knowledge levels and sensitivities towards environmental problems. Keywords: environmental problems, environmental literacy, teacher candidates.
Capital structure determinants of financially constrained and unconstrained firms

This paper discusses the determinants of capital structure with a focus on both publicly-owned and privately-owned firms. We use annual financial statement data for over 1,000 publicly-owned and privately-owned Brazilian firms covering the 2012-2015 period. This enables us to use financial statements under the prevailing IFRS regime. The methodology takes into account the interdependency between debt and dividend policies, recognized in the literature on determinants of both capital structure and dividend policies. We also take into account that both debt and dividend policies can be used to mitigate agency problems, and that the presence of agency problems may in turn affect the choice of capital structure and dividend policy in a firm. As a proxy for the agency cost of equity, the firm’s inverted asset turnover ratio is used. Our empirical strategy treats debt and dividend policies and agency cost as dependent variables and leads to the use of a system of three equations, which are estimated with the generalized method of moments (GMM). In particular, we find that both payout and previous debt levels are positive and significant determinants of debt levels, but that there are differences in how important they are for privately-owned firms, on one hand, and publicly-owned firms, on the other. Also, some usual determinants of capital structure are significant for one group: for privately-owned firms (cash flow), for publicly-owned firms (intangibility), but not for the other, pointing out the importance of analyzing such firms separately.