Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A NEW BASIS FOR CHARACTERIZING GERMINATION1

Procedures for characterizing seed lots (i.e., by mean and variation of days to germination, peak germination date, and other useful properties) are com­ monly complicated because frequency of days to germination does not have a normal distribution. A procedure is presented for minimizing this problem. Tests of a seed lot of Douglas-fir (Pseudotauga menziaii (Mirb.) Franco) sub­ jected to differing stratification periods and germination temperatures in­ dicated that it is the rates at which seed embryos develop toward germination rather than days to germination that have a normal distribution. Conse­ quently, by transforming cumulative percentages of germination to probits (a means for converting a normal sigmoid curve to a straight line) and fitting a straight line to probits regressed on rates rather than on days-or by plotting percentages on probit-scaled graph paper-the resulting intercept and regres­ sion coefficient can be used to easily calculate all the standard properties for characterizing a seed lot. Additional index words: Douglas-fir, Pseudotauga menzietlii, stratification, germination rate, skewness. Introduction We recently started work on procedures for identifying provenance of Douglas-fir seeds of unknown origin. Germination characteristics of Douglas-fir seeds depend at least partly on stratification, germination temperature, light intensity and photoperiod (1, 14). Seeds from different provenance commonly react differently to treatment (1). Such reactions may reflect adaptation to climatic conditions at seed origin ( 19). Conse­ quently, it may be possible to determine origin by establishing quantitative relationships between seed response and climatic or geographic factors of seed origin. To study these relationships, we needed to describe germination behavior in the fewest possible quantitative terms, in each of many seed lots. Herein we report a procedure for characterizing a seed lot with only two parameters, the intercept and regression coefficient of a linear regres­ sion equation. These coefficients can be estimated from the cumulative fre­ quency distribution of germination counted over time. 'From Project Genetic Improvement of Doμglas-fir and other Pacific Northwest Trees, Forestry Sciences Laboratory, Pacific Northwest Forest and Range Experiment Station, Portland, Oregon 97232. 'Principal Plant Geneticists.
ORDERING POLICY FOR AMELIORATING INVENTORY WITH LINEAR DEMAND RATE AND UNCONSTRAINED RETAILER’S CAPITAL

Items that incur a gradual increase in quality, quantity or both while in inventory are referred to as ameliorating items. Fruits, wine, high breed fishes in breeding yard (fish culture facility), fast growing animals like broiler, goose, rabbit etc. in farming yard provide good examples. When these items are stoked in the inventory or in the production centre, they undergo amelioration at some stages of their storage. This paper proposes a model that determines the optimal replenishment cycle time, such that the total variable cost is minimized.The amelioration rate and holding cost are constants, the demand rate throughout the cycle is linear time dependent, and shortages are not allowed. Numerical examples are provided to illustrate the application of the model developed.
Banco Central de Chile Documentos de Trabajo Central Bank of Chile Working Papers

This paper makes an empirical contribution to the discussion on the optimal exchange rate regime. Using as a study case the experience of the Central American countries, we compare the dynamics of the Real Exchange Rate (RER) and inflation persistence between dollarized economies and countries with some degree of exchange rate flexibility. Our results show that the two dollarized countries in the region, El Salvador and Panama, are quite different in terms of RER and inflation dynamics. While in El Salvador the RER spends more time away from the equilibrium level than the non-dollarized countries in the region, the opposite is true for Panama. We also find that inflation persistence in El Salvador is similar to that of the other countries, but smaller in Panama. This leads us to the conclusion that some degree of exchange rate flexibility helps countries to have a RER more aligned with its fundamentals. Nevertheless, a long-lived, highly credible dollarized economy, like Panama, can reduce inflation persistence to such an extent that RER misalignments are actually less frequent than in countries with more flexible exchange rate regimes.
Externally triggered smart drug delivery system encapsulating idarubicin shows superior kinetics and enhances tumoral drug uptake and response

Rationale: Increasing the bioavailable drug level in a tumor is the key to enhance efficacy of chemotherapy. Thermosensitive smart drug delivery systems (SDDS) in combination with local hyperthermia facilitate high local drug levels, thus improving uptake in the tumor. However, inability to rapidly and efficiently absorb the locally released drug results in reduced efficacy, as well as undesired redistribution of the drug away from the tumor to the system. Methods: Based on this paradigm we propose a novel approach in which we replaced doxorubicin (DXR), one of the classic drugs for nanocarrier-based delivery, with idarubicin (IDA), a hydrophobic anthracycline used solely in the free form for treatment hematologic cancers. We established a series of in vitro and in vivo experiments to in depth study the kinetics of SDDS-based delivery, drug release, intratumor biodistribution and subsequent cell uptake. Results: We demonstrate that IDA is taken up over 10 times more rapidly by cancer cells than DXR in vitro. Similar trend is observed in in vivo online imaging and less drug redistribution is shown for IDA, together resulting in 4-times higher whole tumor drug uptake for IDA vs. DXR. Together his yielded an improved intratumoral drug distribution for IDA-SDDS, translating into superior tumor response compared to DXR-SDDS treatment at the same dose. Thus, IDA - a drug that is not used for treatment of solid cancers - shows superior therapeutic index and better outcome when administered in externally triggered SDDS. Conclusions: We show that a shift in selection of chemotherapeutics is urgently needed, away from the classic drugs towards selection based on properties of a chemotherapeutic in context of the nanoparticle and delivery mode, to maximize the therapeutic efficacy.
INDUCTION AND FLOW CYTOMETRY, GC-MS IDENTIFICATION OF TETRAPLOIDS THROUGH COLCHICINE TREATMENTS IN DATURA STRAMONIUM L

A field experiment study was conducted during two seasons in spring 2017-2018 at the college of agriculture engineering sciences-university of Baghdad-Iraq.The induction of artificial polyploidy may prove useful in increasing the production of some important secondary metabolic medicinal compounds such as a tropan alkaloids. In this study we tested the effects of fore levels 0.125 ,0.25, 0.5 and 1% of colchicine as C1, C2, C3 and C4,respectively as the first factor and two incubation times of ploidy (T1) 24 and ( T2) 48hours as the second factor in addition to the control C0 treatment on jimsonweed plant (Datura stramonium L.) to determinate the ploidy levels may be accrued andobtaining tetraploid plants with the changes in their morphological and physiological traits such as of branches per plant, the height of plant, leaves area, total chlorophyll content, dry weight,, total alkaloids. Also, total chlorophyll content was determined by SPAD (single -pass albumin dialysis). The phytochemical content including Hyoscyamine and scopolamine levelswere measured by GC-MS and Polyploidy levels by Flow cytometry methods in the second generation plants. The Tetraploidy occurred by seeds treatment with 1% Colchicine for 48 h was improved the vegetative growth and increased the useful a tropan alkaloids percent in the Datura leaves. Several polyploidy plants of Datura were induced by colchicine’s treatments were compared with their untreated plants on vegetative traits and phytochemical compounds, the results indicate a reduction in plant height, increases in plant wet and dry weight, leaves areaand total alkaloid ratio in the all polyploidy plants at the all Colchicine levels. The analysis results showed the presence of Polyploidy plants (4X =100% )when we treated Datura seeds with aqueous solution of colchicine 1% for 48h. The Tetraploidy 4X plant showed the significantly increased in total alkaloids content 7.25% compare with untreated plant 4.22% , with increasing in the active tropian alkaloids such as a Hyoscyamine and scopolamine levels up to 2.6 and 3.0 times respectively to controltimes the control, respectively. Also the phytochemical compounds were induced by 1% Colchicine for 48h seeds treatment in polyploidy plant, and new photochemical compounds were appeared in this treatment such as Palustrol, (S)-Citronellic acid and Widdrol or Increase the other oneswhich have a medicinal values .
Advances in the Preparation of Magnetic Nanoparticles by the Microemulsion Method

A method based on a microemulsion route is presented to obtain magnetic nanoparticles of different sizes, offering several advantages with respect to other similar methods. It consists basically of the development of a microemulsion route above room temperature. Magnetic iron oxide particles with sizes ranging from 2 to 8 nm are obtained. The as-obtained product presents defined X-ray diffraction patterns, without the complications of working in an inert atmosphere or with extra amounts of Fe2+, thereby eliminating the need for further steps in order to achieve good crystallization of the material.
Comparing performances and effectiveness of machine learning classifiers in detecting financial accounting fraud for Turkish SMEs

Turkish small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are exposed to fraud risks and creditor banks are facing big challenges to deal with financial accounting fraud. This study explores effectiveness of machine learning classifiers in detecting financial accounting fraud assessing financial statements of 341 Turkish SMEs from 2013 to 2017. The data are obtained from one of the leading creditor banks of Turkey. Highly imbalanced classes of 1384 nonfraudulent cases and 321 fraudulent cases (by 122 firms) are detected thus sampling techniques are used to mitigate class imbalance problem. Research methodology consists of two stages. First stage is data preprocessing wherein financial ratio calculation, feature selection methods for defining financial ratioswiththegreatestimpactonfraudulentfinancialstatementsandtwosamplingmethodsofSyntheticMinorityOversamplingTechnique(SMOTE)asoversamplingandundersamplingareperformed,respectively.Secondstageisperformanceevaluation andcomparisonofclassifierswhereinsevendifferentclassifiers(supportvectormachine,NaiveBayes,artificialneuralnetwork, K-nearestneighbor,randomforest,logisticregression,andbagging)areexecutedandcomparedbyusingperformancemetrics. Classifiersarealsocomparedwithoutusinganyfeatureselectionand/orsamplingtechniques.Resultsrevealthatrandomforest-withoutfeatureselection-oversamplingmodeloutperformsallothermodels.
Genetic and biochemical characterization of an oligo-α1 , 6-glucosidase from 1 Lactobacillus plantarum 2 3

Genetic and biochemical characterization of an oligo-α-1,6-glucosidase from 1 Lactobacillus plantarum 2 3 Susana Delgado # , Ana Belén Flórez # , Lucía Guadamuro, and Baltasar Mayo* 4 5 Departamento de Microbiología y Bioquímica, Instituto de Productos Lácteos de 6 Asturias (IPLA), Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Paseo Río 7 Linares s/n, 33300-Villaviciosa, Spain 8 9
ON SEMIGROUPS OF PARTIAL CONTRACTIONS OF A FINITE CHAIN

Let be the finite n-elements set under its natural order. A partial map α of is said to be a contraction if, for all , and an order-preserving if, , . Let and denote, respectively, semigroups of all partial contraction maps and of all order preserving partial contraction maps. In this paper, we study the structure of and and present characterisations of starred Green’s relations in these semigroups.
Cross-aspect Queries and Dynamic Views for Model-based Development *

Some important characteristics of model-based development are the ability to see more of a design at a time (at a higher level of abstraction), and to see its interactions more directly than ASCII text can support. This works well until the design scales so large that the model becomes overwhelming. To address large designs, models are often broken up into systems of interacting models. However this can obscure important interactions. A cross-model query and viewing capability makes it possible to specify the components and interactions that are of interest so that cross-aspect and cross-model interactions can be seen in a single view without excess clutter.
Exploiting Easiness and Overcoming Delays in Online Learning

In recent decades the field of online machine learning has enjoyed an increasing interest both from applications and significant theoretical advances. Especially models based on the framework of multi-armed bandits and prediction with expert advice have been successful in uncovering central dynamics of sequential decision problems. In this thesis we explore two learning settings within this framework and design adaptive learning algorithms with theoretical performance guarantees. One learning setting we explore falls within the general goal of exploiting structure or easiness when present without sacrificing performance if the problem is hard. We first show that one can circumvent the recently discovered impossibility of exploiting a small effective loss range in multi-armed bandits by having access to one additional point of feedback. We further show that our algorithm simultaneously exploit stochastic data achieving constant regret. Our algorithm requires no prior information of the learning scenario rendering it robust to the unconstrained adversarial setting. The second setting we study is the within multi-armed bandits with delayed feedback. This model covers realistic streaming scenarios where the central timing assumption of multi-armed bandits is violated, including applications where the incoming data is batched. We prove a recent conjecture of the regret scaling when the delays are arbitrary and the losses are adversarially generated. We generalize the analytical approach of algorithmic stability for delayed feedback and uncover a data dependence that generalizes previous dependencies on the delay. We design a meta algorithm that skips excessively delayed feedback and alleviates the data dependence, thereby proving the conjectured regret bound for any delay sequence. Finally for a slightly easier setting we design a novel, adaptive tuning scheme with which our algorithm can perform much better than conjectured. We provide examples of settings where this is the case and the dependence of the problem parameters is polynomially better.
Simple and Efficient Methods to Perform the Optimum Matching Between a Reciprocating Piston Pump and a Wind Machine

One of the major problems facing the use of the wind driven reciprocating lift pump is the problem of starting. The required starting torque of the pump is at least three times the average torque. This means that the pump will need a high wind velocity just to be started, after that it will continue to operate at a lower wind velocity because of the lower average torque, provided that there is enough inertia in the system. For this reason, the torque characteristics of the wind turbine – reciprocating pump combination are very important. Thus, there is a real need to develop new methods in order to reduce this starting performance of the reciprocating pump. This paper presents a theoretical study to reduce the starting torque of a non-conventional reciprocating piston pump using new methods, for example, changing the wind machine parameters, such as the aerodynamics configuration of the rotor and blade elements, or by studying the effect of wind speed velocity on the starting torque. Also by changing the cross-section area of the piston or by changing the static head of the piston pump or by controlling the flow rate of the piston pump.
A Proposal of New Recycling System of High-Water Content Mud by using Paper Debris and Polymer and Strength Property of Recycled Soils

A new recycling system by using paper debris and polymer has been developed for high water-content mud such as bed materials in the river and lake, and construction sludge. The new recycling system proposed in this study consists of two steps. In the first step, the paper debris are added for controlling water content of mud and strengthening the bonding force between mud clusters. In the second step, polymer materials are added to increase the bonding force of mud particles in the cluster. By using this system, 200- 500% water-content mud has been modified to landfill materials by 20-30 minutes mixing process.The unconfined and triaxial compression tests were carried out to examine the strength of the recycled soils. It was confirmed through the tests that the failure strain and residual strength of the recycled soils produced by the new system are much larger than those of recycled soils produced by the conventional method. Furthermore, the transformation coefficient of the recycled soils is close to the one of the ordinary soils. Therefore, it can be concluded that the recycled soils produced by the new system are much more suitable for landfill materials than the recycled soils produced by the conventional method.
Mixtures of fluopyram and abamectin for management of Meloidogyne incognita in tomato

Abstract The southern root-knot nematode (RKN), Meloidogyne incognita, causes significant damage to vegetable production and is a major problem in greenhouse tomatoes. The effect of a combination of fluopyram and abamectin, at a mass ratio of 1:5, was studied for RKN control. Pot trials showed that fluopyram, abamectin, and their combination at three dosages increased the height, stem diameter, root fresh weight, shoot fresh weight, and the root length of tomato plants. The RKN control efficacy of the 1:5 combination at 450 g a.i./ha was 74.06% at 30 days after transplanting (DAT), and the control efficacy of the combination at 337.5 and 450 g a.i./ha differed significantly from those of other treatments at 60 DAT. The root-galling index (RGI) control efficacy of the combination at 450 g a.i./ha and of fluopyram (41.7% SC) only at 450 g a.i./ha were better than the control efficacies of other treatments, and these two treatments significantly increased root activity. Field trial results showed that the soil nematode control efficacy was similar to that of the pot trials at 30 and 60 DAT. The RGI control efficacy of the combination at 337.5 and 450 g a.i./ha and of fluopyram (41.7% SC) only at 450 g a.i./ha differed significantly from those of the two other treatments. The tomato yields of the 1:5 combination at 450 g a.i./ha were increased by 24.07 and 23.22% compared to the control in field trials during two successive years. The combination of fluopyram and abamectin provides good nematode measure, and it can increase tomato yields. It provides an effective solution for the integrated management of southern RKN.
Using Domain-Specific Corpora for Improved Handling of Ambiguity in Requirements

Ambiguity in natural-language requirements is a pervasive issue that has been studied by the requirements engineering community for more than two decades. A fully manual approach for addressing ambiguity in requirements is tedious and time-consuming, and may further overlook unacknowledged ambiguity – the situation where different stakeholders perceive a requirement as unambiguous but, in reality, interpret the requirement differently. In this paper, we propose an automated approach that uses natural language processing for handling ambiguity in requirements. Our approach is based on the automatic generation of a domain-specific corpus from Wikipedia. Integrating domain knowledge, as we show in our evaluation, leads to a significant positive improvement in the accuracy of ambiguity detection and interpretation. We scope our work to coordination ambiguity (CA) and prepositional-phrase attachment ambiguity (PAA) because of the prevalence of these types of ambiguity in natural-language requirements [1]. We evaluate our approach on 20 industrial requirements documents. These documents collectively contain more than 5000 requirements from seven distinct application domains. Over this dataset, our approach detects CA and PAA with an average precision of 80% and an average recall of 89% (90% for cases of unacknowledged ambiguity). The automatic interpretations that our approach yields have an average accuracy of 85%. Compared to baselines that use generic corpora, our approach, which uses domain-specific corpora, has 33% better accuracy in ambiguity detection and 16% better accuracy in interpretation.
Multimodal EEG and Keystroke Dynamics Based Biometric System Using Machine Learning Algorithms

Electroencephalography (EEG) based biometric systems are gaining attention for their anti-spoofing capability but lack accuracy due to signal variability at different psychological and physiological conditions. On the other hand, keystroke dynamics-based systems achieve very high accuracy but have low anti-spoofing capability. To address these issues, a novel multimodal biometric system combining EEG and keystroke dynamics is proposed in this paper. A dataset was created by acquiring both keystroke dynamics and EEG signals simultaneously from 10 users. Each user participated in 500 trials at 10 different sessions (days) to replicate real-life signal variability. A machine learning classification pipeline is developed using multi-domain feature extraction (time, frequency, time-frequency), feature selection (Gini impurity), classifier design, and score level fusion. Different classifiers were trained, validated, and tested for two different classification experiments – personalized and generalized. For identification and authentication, 99.9% and 99.6% accuracies are achieved, respectively for the Random Forest classifier in 5 fold cross-validation. These results outperform the individual modalities with a significant margin (~5%). We also developed a binary template matching-based algorithm, which gives 93.64% accuracy 6X faster. The proposed method can be considered secure and reliable for any kind of biometric identification and authentication.