Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An extinction-risk assessment tool for flora threatened by Phytophthora cinnamomi

A risk-assessment tool was used to investigate the risk of extinction from disease caused by Phytophthora cinnamomi to 33 taxa from the Stirling Range National Park, Western Australia. Criteria used to score risk of extinction were the direct impact of P. cinnamomi on taxa, number of extant or extinct populations, percentage of populations infested by P. cinnamomi, proximity and topographical relationship of populations to P. cinnamomi, proximity of populations to tracks and the number of additional threatening processes. Direct impact scores were derived from mortality curves determined from the survival of taxa after soil inoculation with P. cinnamomi in a shade-house environment. On the basis of the total extinction risk score, nine taxa had a ‘very high’, five had a ‘high’, six a ‘moderate’, eight a ‘low’, four a ‘very low’ and one ‘no’ risk of extinction. Whereas the methodology confirmed the current threatened status of nine taxa, it also identified five taxa, not currently listed, to be at ‘high’ risk of extinction. Other threatening processes identified included fire, herbivory, aerial canker disease and climate change. These combine with P. cinnamomi to push taxa further towards extinction. Quantification of risk of extinction identifies taxa at risk and allows for prioritisation of management actions for currently threatened flora. This risk-assessment methodology combined glasshouse inoculation with habitat and ecological data, current in situ disease impact and proximity to disease and vectors, to enable a more comprehensive assessment of extinction risk and may be used in other areas with endemic flora threatened by P. cinnamomi.
Effects of Oil Spill on Fish Production in the Niger Delta

The Niger Delta region is the oil producing area of Nigeria, which consist of highly diverse ecosystems that is supportive of numerous species of terrestrial and aquatic fauna and flora. This region is the largest wetland in Africa and it is among the ten most important wetlands and marine ecosystems in the world. Incident of oil spill raises concern about seafood safety. Crude oil spill endangers fish hatcheries in coastal water and also contaminates commercially valuable fish flesh. This study examines the effect of oil spills on fish production in the Niger Delta of Nigeria from 1981-2015 using an estimable model based on a Cobb Douglas production function. The variables included in the model are captured fish production, number of fishers, loan to fishery, oil spills and oil production. The findings suggest that oil spill and oil production negatively affects fish production, while farm labour has a positive effect on fish production. On the other hand, fishery loan exerts a negative effect on fish production and this could be ascribed to the bottlenecks in trying to access these loans. The Pairwise Granger Causality test result shows that the number of times oil is spilled to the environment affects the level of fish production negatively. This study corroborates the findings in recent literature and proposes a cautious approach to oil exploration activities for sustainable economic development.
Group Lending or Individual Lending? Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment in Rural Mongolia

We present evidence from a randomized field experiment in rural Mongolia on the comparative poverty impact of group versus individual microcredit. We find a positive impact of group loans but not of individual loans on entrepreneurship and food consumption. Moreover, group borrowers are less likely to make informal transfers to families and friends while the opposite holds true for individual borrowers. This suggests that joint liability may deter borrowers from using loans for non-investment purposes with stronger impacts as a result. We find no difference in repayment rates between both types of microcredit.
Viruses and phytoplasma in European pear trees in New Zealand and the role of these pathogens in the compatibility of pear with quince rootstocks

Abstract The history of European pear (Pyrus communis L.) cultivars, and pear and quince (Cydonia oblonga Mill.) rootstocks used in New Zealand during the present century was investigated in relation to their virus and phytoplasma disease status. Early attempts to control tree size and vigour using quince clonal rootstocks or seedlings of Oriental pear (P.pyrifolia Burm. Nak.) were unsuccessful, in part because of the presence of these diseases, and pear trees were grown for most of this century on European pear seedling rootstocks. Testing of 12 older pear cultivars commonly grown in commercial orchards at the present time showed that most were infected with several viruses, and also with the phytoplasma disease apple rubbery wood. All of the 12 cultivars were imported before, or at the beginning of this century, and were likely to have been infected in their country of origin before being introduced to New Zealand. When freed from infection by heat therapy, some were successfully grown on the virus‐free.
Does Mutual Fund Illiquidity Introduce Fragility into Asset Prices? Evidence from the Corporate Bond Market

Abstract Open-end corporate bond mutual funds invest in illiquid assets while providing liquid claims to shareholders. Does such liquidity transformation introduce fragility to the corporate bond market? To address this question, we create a novel bond-level latent fragility measure based on asset illiquidity of mutual funds holding the bond. We find that corporate bonds bearing higher fragility subsequently experience higher return volatility and more outflows-induced mutual fund selling over the period of 2006–2019. Using the COVID-19 crisis as a natural experiment, we find that bonds with higher precrisis fragility experienced more negative returns and larger reversals around March 2020.
Asymmetric Information, Financial Reporting, and Open Market Share Repurchases

We explore the link between open market share repurchases (OMRs) and asymmetric information - based on financial reporting quality - and find opaque firms experience positive abnormal returns twice the magnitude of transparent firms. These significant differences remain after controlling for governance, earnings management, and firm characteristics. We document significantly positive long-run post-announcement returns for opaque firms, but not for transparent firms. We find takeover activity and premiums rise with repurchase activity by opaque firms and may explain some of the wealth effects. Our results suggest that asymmetric information plays an important role in the wealth effects around OMRs.
Strains of Xanthomonas campestris pv. campestris with atypical pigmentation isolated from commercial crucifer seeds

Poplawsky, A. R. , and Chun, W. 1995. Strains of Xanthomonas campestris pv. campestris with atypical pigmentation isolated from commercial crucifer seeds. Plant Dis. 79:1021-1024. Assays of commercial crucifer seed using a semiselective agar medium yielded three bacterial strains that were similar to the black rot pathogen except for atypical pigmentation. Cultural traits and carbon source utilization (BIOLOG) identified these strains, along with a previously isolated, nonpigmented strain, as Xanthomonas campestris. Further characterization by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis of membrane proteins, monoclonal antibody typing, and host symptomatology indicated that the first three strains were X. campestris pv. campestris. Wild-type X. c. pv. campestris strains show a standard DNA hybridization pattern for the pigment-encoding region (pig). However, the three atypical strains each showed one of two different molecular rearrangements in pig, indicating multiple mutational events. Over a 4-year period, atypically pigmented X. c. pv. campestris strains occurred in 1.8% of the samples that were positive for the pathogen. Thus, in screening crucifer seed for X. c. pv. campestris strains, it is necessary to test for nonpigmented and partially pigmented strains in addition to those with typical yellow pigmentation.
Trade Credit Risk Management: The Role of Executive Risk‐Taking Incentives

In this study we investigate how executive equity incentives affect companies' risk‐taking behavior in relationships with their customers. We hypothesize and find that executive risk‐taking incentives provided by options are positively related to the degree of trade credit riskiness measured both as the amount of total trade credit a firm extends to all its customers and as the amount of trade credit a firm extends to customers with a high probability of default. We also find that the measures of trade credit riskiness are positively related to the firm's future stock return volatility, suggesting that the customer default risk inherent in customer‐supplier trade credit relationships represents an important economic source of the overall supplier‐firm riskiness. The findings of the study provide insights into why firms facing financial difficulties are not denied trade credit.
The Establishment of a National Pest Information Platform for Extension and Education

Many millions of US soybean acres that would have received at least one fungicide application remained untreated for soybean rust in 2005 due to information disseminated through the US Department of Agriculture Soybean Rust Information System website. The information provided by the system increased US producers’ profits by between $11 and $299 million at a low cost of between $2.6 and $5 million (8). This savings and the positive environmental implications of not spraying millions of acres with fungicides demonstrates the value of a coordinated national pest management framework and stimulated the development of the 2006 Pest Information Platform for Extension and Education.
A taxonomic study of phlebioid fungi (Basidiomycota).

The genus Phlebia has long been regarded as a polyphyletic or paraphyletic taxon, including distinct groups of more closely related species. Consequently, the delimitation of the genus has been given different interpretations and several rearrangements have been proposed by various authors. In the present study, DNA sequences (25S, rDNA) were obtained for twenty species of the genus Phlebia and a phylogenetic analysis was performed. Because of the presumably paraphyletic nature of the genus, different outgroups were used for different sets of taxa. A core group of species, including the type Ph. radiata, is well distinguished. For the delimitation of the genus, however, the wider scope of a more weakly supported clade is proposed. This clade also includes Phlebiopsis gigantea and its combination in Phlebia is reaffirmed. Two species, Ph. griseoflavescens and Ph. tristis, are distinctly separated from this clade and should be removed from the genus. Morphological characters were used in a separate phylogenetic analysis but the result did not conform with analysis from sequence data.
Price Pressure in the Government Bond Market: Long-term Impact of Short-term Advice

This paper analyzes the systemic impact of massive pension funds' portfolio reallocations triggered by a financial advisory firm. We analyze the main channels by which government yields are affected and trace their impact on households financing costs. We document significant and persistent price pressure in the domestic government bond market after portfolio switching recommendations. Further, we find persistent changes in government yields, particularly in long-term inflation-linked bond yields, triggered by changes in the term premium component. Consistent with the relevance of inflation-linked bonds as the primary benchmark in setting interest rates, we find a substantial impact on households' financing costs.
NF‐κB mediated glucocorticoid response in the inner ear after acoustic trauma

The inner ear of humans and experimental animals demonstrate an abundance of glucocorticoid receptors (GR). Glucocorticoids (GC) are widely used to treat different hearing disorders; yet the mechanisms of GC action on the inner ear are unknown. We demonstrate how GR can directly modulate hearing sensitivity in response to a moderate acoustic trauma that results in a hearing loss (10–30 dB). The GC agonist (dexamethasone) and the drugs (metyrapone + RU 486) showed opposing effects on hearing threshold shifts. GC agonist (dexamethasone) decreased the hearing threshold whereas pre‐treatment with a GC synthesis inhibitor (metyrapone) in combination with a GR antagonist (RU 486) exacerbated auditory threshold shifts (25–60 dB) after acoustic trauma with statistically significant increase in GR mRNA and GR protein compared with the vehicle and acoustic trauma group. Acoustic trauma caused a significant increase in the nuclear transport of NF‐κB, whereas pre‐treatment with the drugs (metyrapone and RU 486) blocked NF‐κB nuclear transport into spiral ganglion nuclei. An NF‐κB inhibitor, pyrrolidine dithiocarbamate ammonium blocked the trauma‐induced translocation of NF‐κB and resulted in a hearing loss (45–60) dB. These results indicate that several factors define the responsiveness of the inner ear to GC, including the availability of ligand or receptor, and the nuclear translocation of GR and NF‐κB. These findings will further our understanding of individual GC responsiveness to steroid treatment, and will help improve the development of pharmaceuticals to selectively target GR in the inner ear for individuals with increased sensitivity to acoustic trauma. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Customer Acquisition and Retention: A Fluid Approach for Staffing

We investigate the trade‐off between acquisition and retention efforts when customers are sensitive to the quality of service they receive, that is, whether they get timely access to a company's resources when requested. We model the problem as a multi‐class queueing network with new and returning customers, time‐dependent arrivals, and abandonment. We derive its fluid approximation; a system of ordinary linear differential equations with continuous, piecewise smooth, right‐hand sides. Based on the fluid model, we propose a novel approach to determine optimal stationary staffing levels for new and returning customer queues in anticipation of future time‐varying dynamics. Using system accessibility as a proxy for service quality and staffing levels as a proxy for investment, we demonstrate how to apply our approach to two families of time‐varying arrival functions motivated by real‐world applications: an advertising campaign and a clinical setting. In a numerical study, we demonstrate that our approach creates staffing policies that maximize throughput while balancing acquisition and retention efforts more effectively (i.e., equitable abandonment from each customer class) than commonly used near‐stationary methods such as variants of square‐root staffing policies. Our model confirms that acquisition and retention efforts are intimately linked; this has been found in empirical studies but not captured in the operations literature. We suggest that in time‐varying environments, focusing on either alone is not sufficient to maintain high levels of throughput and service quality.
Changes in the level of oxidized and reduced pyridine nucleotides during cold acclimation of winter rape plants

Prolonged cold (2°C) treatment of winter rape plants (Brassica napus L. var. oleifera L. cv. Gorczanski) markedly modified the pattern of leaf growth and brought about changes in the level of pyridine nucleotides already during the first few days of treatment. The NAD+, NADP+ and NADPH levels markedly increased but there was practically no effect on the NADH level. Changes in the respective nucleotide levels were reflected by changes in anabolic and catabolic reduction charges. The former increased by 70%, whereas the latter decreased by 44%. Alterations in pyridine nucleotide levels and the reduction charges are discussed in terms of possible mechanisms involved, as well as in terms of their role in plant adaptation to cold.
Data-Driven Models with Applications in Crowdsourcing, Retail, and Peer-to-Peer Lending

Making predictions based on historical data has a wide range of applications. Nowadays with the advent of more and more online platforms, we are able to design various machine learning models and test them with online data. In this thesis, there are three main chapters, each focusing on a specific application of data-driven modeling problems. The first chapter is devoted to the development of rank aggregation algorithms in the setting of crowdsourcing. The basic question we want to answer is how to efficiently collect a large amount of high-quality pairwise comparisons for the ranking purpose. <br><br>The second chapter focuses on designing and comparing different demand prediction models for online retail with promotions. The data obtained from online retail platforms has a distinctive hierarchical structure and our goal is to utilize such a structure to help us achieve higher prediction accuracy. Experimental evaluations on both synthetic and real data are available at the end of the chapter. <br><br>Finally, the last chapter focuses on the online peer-to-peer lending market. In particular, we want to infer the impact of IPOs on firms operational behaviors. We use one firm (public) as treatment and the other one (private) as control to conduct causal inference.
Black Scholes Pricing and Dynamic Hedging

In this short notice, we present structure of the perfect hedging. Closed form formulas clarify the fact that Black-Scholes (BS) portfolio which provides perfect hedge only at initial moment. Holding portfolio over a certain period implies additional cash flow, which could not be imbedded in BS pricing scheme, and therefore BS option price cannot be derived without additional cash flow which affects BS option price.
Education, Information, and Smoking Decisions: Evidence from Smoking Histories, 1940-2000

De Walque tests the hypothesis that education improves health and increases people's life expectancy. Smoking histories - reconstructed from retrospective data in the National Health Interview Surveys in the United States - show that after 1950, when information about the dangers associated with tobacco consumption started to diffuse, the prevalence of smoking declined earlier and most dramatically for college graduates. More educated individuals are also more likely to quit smoking: incidence analysis of smoking cessation shows a strong education effect. The instrumental variable approach, which relies on the fact that during the Vietnam War college attendance provided a strategy to avoid the draft, indicates that education does affect decisions about whether to smoke or stop smoking. This paper - a product of the Public Services Team, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to study the health benefits associated with education.
Comparison of Speech Recognition of Isolated Words Using Linear Predictive Coding (Lpc), Linear Predictive Cepstral Coefficient (Lpcc) & Perceptual Linear Prediction (Plp) and the Effect of Variation of Model Order on Speech Recognition Rate

Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) by machine has been a goal of research from more than six decades. In spite of all advances, machines cannot match the performance of their human counterparts in terms of accuracy and speed, especially in case of speaker independent speechrecognition. So, today significant portion of speech recognition research is focused on speaker independent speech recognition problem. Before recognition, speech processing has to be carried out to get feature vectors of the signal. So, front end analysis plays an important role. The reasons are its wide range of applications and limitations of available techniques of speech recognition. The aim of this paper is to study, implement and compare those widely used parameterization method Linear Predictive Coding (LPC) techniques and Linear Predictive Cepstral Coefficient (LPCC) and Perceptual Linear Prediction (PLP) in speech technology for speech recognition . We have also observed the effect of variation of model parameter on recognition rate. Vector Quantization (VQ) is used to prepare word model as a template for each utterance. Moreover Euclidean distance is used as a classifier. Front ends were compared in clean speech and with speech degraded by noise and spectral variability, using the TI-46 word database. We have studied some aspects of speech recognition and effect noise at various SNR levels 40dB, 35dB, 30dB, 20dB, 15dB, 10dB, 5dB, 0dB and-5dB. Experimentation is carried out with white Gaussian noise. It has been observed that LPCC gives better results as compared LPC in clean as well as in noisy environment.PLP with DELTA and DELTA-DELTA works better than LPC and LPCC in clean and noisy speech. Comparison of all above techniques for speech recognition is carried out in this paper. Suitability of each technique for different environment is also discussed.
An Investigation Into the Asymmetry in Asset Return Volatility

We propose a new test to measure asymmetry in volatility based on daily opening, high, low and closing prices. The test results are shown to be unbiased via both a theoretical derivation and a computer-based simulation exercise. Next, we test it on real time series data of various equity market indices. Subsequently, we make an attempt to capture the asymmetry in volatility using Heston model. Our simulation study give credence to the hypothesis that Heston Model can capture the asymmetry in volatility. We believe that this novel speciﬁcation approach will add to the body of knowledge on the study of financial time series.
The Market for Innovation Leadership

In an increasingly technology-driven economy, CEOs' innovation leadership forms an essential part of companies' human capital. We find CEOs with superior innovation leadership, measured by their proven on-the-job innovation performance, are more popular on the directorship market. Through the directorship market, superior innovation leadership is matched to the boards of firms that are more innovative or have deeper technology overlap with the CEO's firm. The appointing firms improve their innovation and operating performance subsequently. Our results suggest that the benefit of CEO innovation leadership diffuses across firm boundaries through a subsection of the labor market.
On the Performance of Asymptotic Locally Risk Minimizing Hedges in the Heston Stochastic Volatility Model

This paper investigates the use of the asymptotic Heston solution in locally risk minimising hedging. The asymptotic Heston solution is presented along with issues that are relevant to its use. Comparison between the exact and asymptotic Heston hedges are made using both simulated and real historical data. The asymptotic Heston hedge is found to be a viable alternative to the exact hedge. It provides a means for faster calculation, while performing as well as the exact Heston hedge in the locally risk minimising framework.