Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Assessment of Greenhouse Gas Emissionsin Winter Wheat Farms Using Data EnvelopmentAnalysis Approach

Data envelopment analysis (DEA) has been recognized as a suitable tool for efficiency assessment of the economic and environmental performance of multiple similar units in the agri-food sector. In the present study, DEA methodologies were applied to 55 winter wheat farms in three farm sizes in Poland to benchmark the level of operational efficiency for each producer. Next, the potential reduction in the consumption levels of inputs were defined, and the environmental profits linked to these reduction targets were calculating. Our results indicate that 55% of the analysed farms operated efficiently. The technical efficiency scores of inefficient farms were 0.72 for small farms and 0.84 for medium and large ones. The production of 1 kg winter wheat results with average greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of 0.448, 0.481, and 0.411 kg CO2 eq. per kg of grain, for small, medium, and large farms, respectively. The performed analysis shows that GHG emissions per hectare depend on farm size and ranged from 2,378 kg CO2 eq. for the small farms to 2,759 kg CO2 eq. for large farms. The reduction of material input in inefficient farms, converted into environmental gains, resulted in GHG emissions reduction of 25.7, 29.0, and 28.6% for small, medium, and large farms, respectively. The estimated potential reduction of global warming potential (GWP) according to the DEA for the whole sample ranged from 7 to 18%, and was dependent on farm size. The major contributor to GWP was nitrous oxide field emissions (49-52%), followed by nitrogen fertilizer (31-33%), and diesel (11-13%). Raising operational efficiency is recommended for potential environmental improvement in the surveyed region.
Structural Model for the Analysis of Stock Market Price Index

Stock market returns are predictable from a variety of financial and macroeconomic variables and have long been an attraction for equity investors. Recently increasing attention has shifted on the market index as a method of measuring a section of the stock market. The stock market index is regarded as an important indicator by the investing public at large and can be used as a benchmark by which investor or fund manager compares the returns of their own portfolio. In this study, attempts are made to model the Nigerian stock market index using a structural model. The procedure is based on the relationship between the state space and the autoregressive moving average (ARMA) model. The time series procedure from S-PLUS software is used in the analysis. The result obtained shows that the Nigerian stock market price index is an autoregressive model (AR) of order 1. It is also found that the AIC is at minimum at lag 1which corresponds to the same model identified for the series by using the sample ACF and PACF.
Phi Divisions of the Square: a Categorization of Composition Strategies

Artists and architects from ancient times up to the modern period have employed proportions based on Phi, also known as the Golden Ratio, as a system of measures for compositions. While Phi-based compositions typically are employed within an overall Golden Rectangle format, Phi divisions of the square format are far less common, despite the rich compositional possibilities. This paper examines Phi divisions of the square format and a method for deriving a Phi-division pattern for compositional purposes. The author identifies first-order and second-order characteristics of the Phi-division pattern, and how those give rise to four distinct compositional strategies in his square-format painting and digital prints.
Stabilité des systèmes non linéaires sous échantillonnage apériodique

Cet article est dedie a l’analyse de la stabilite de systemes non lineaires commandes par un controleur echantillonne non necessairement periodique. Nous supposons qu’il existe une commande stabilisante en temps continu. Lors de l’implantation numerique de cette commande, il s’agit de trouver des conditions preservant la stabilite asymptotique/exponentielle sous echantillonnage. Les conditions sont formulees a la fois pour la stabilite globale et la stabilite locale. Nous estimons une borne superieure des pas d’echantillonnage dans le cas asynchrone (non periodique). L’idee principale est d’aborder le probleme dans le cadre de la dissipativite. Le resultat est ensuite repris dans le cas speciﬁque des systemes non lineaires polynomiaux, ou les conditions de stabilite sont veriﬁees numeriquement en utilisant la decomposition en somme des carres (SOS) et la programmation semi-deﬁnie.
Optic Cup Segmentation Using Large Pixel Patch Based CNNs

Optic cup(OC) segmentation on color fundus image is es-sential for the calculation of cup-to-disk ratio and fundus morphological analysis, which are very important references in the diagnosis of glaucoma. In this paper we proposed an OC segmentation method using convolutional neural networks(CNNs) to learn from big size patch belong to each pixel. The segmentation result is achieved by classiﬁcation of each pixel patch and postprocessing. With large pixel patch, the network could learn more global information around each pixel and make a better judgement during classiﬁcation. We tested this method on public dataset Drishti-GS and achieved average F-Score of 93.73% and average overlapping error of 12.25%, which is better than state-of-the-art algo-rithms. This method could be used for fundus morphological analysis, and could also be employed to other medical image segmentation works which the boundary of the target area is fuzzy.
Staying well connected – Lithistid sponges on seamounts

Three species of lithistid sponges, Neoaulaxinia zingiberadix, Isabella mirabilis and Neoschrammeniella fulvodesmus were collected from deep seamounts off New Caledonia to address questions about their population structure, gene flow and the relative contribution of sexual and asexual reproductive strategies to their populations. The sponges were tested by sequencing the ITS (internal transcribed spacer) and CO1 regions of their genomes. These rare and presumably ancient sponges have a distribution restricted to seamounts in the south-western Pacific. Deep seamounts represent geographically separated islands. Although the sponges could be expected to have sexual reproduction restricted to near neighbours due to low sexual dispersal opportunities via larvae, this study found surprisingly high levels of gene flow between the seamounts. Amongst the specimens of N. zingiberadix taken from two seamounts there was no population structure; CO1 resulted in identical genotypes. For the population structure within N. fulvodesmus, as revealed by ITS, most of the variation was within each individual from the six seamounts on which it occurred and CO1 revealed no difference between individuals or seamounts. The third species I. mirabilis showed four genotypes based on CO1, which were distributed across all the seamounts. Indirect measures of different species showed a range of reproductive strategies from asexual to sexual, but with much higher connection between seamounts than previously thought. Individual seamounts did not show a separate population structure as one might expect from ‘islands’. The conclusion must be that these sponges have mechanisms to attain greater dispersal than previously thought.
The Public and Geoengineering Decision-Making

In response to the Royal Society report’s claim that “the acceptability of geoengineering will be determined as much by social, legal, and political issues as by scientific and technical factors” (Royal Society 2009, ix), a number of authors have suggested the key to this challenge is to engage the public in geoengineering decision-making. In effect, some have argued that inclusion of the public in geoengineering decision-making is necessary for any geoengineering project to be morally permissible. Yet, while public engagement on geoengineering comes in various forms, the discussion in geoengineering governance and the ethics of geoengineering have too often conceptualised it exclusively in terms of public participation in decision-making, and supported it by various liberal democratic values. However, if the predominant understanding of public engagement on – or, the role of the public in – geoengineering decisionmaking is indeed only grounded on liberal democratic values, then its normative relevance could be challenged by and in other ethical-political traditions that do not share those values. In this paper, I shall explore these questions from a Confucian perspective. I argue that the liberal democratic values invoked in support of the normative importance of public participation are, at least, foreign to Confucian political philosophy. This presents a prima facie challenge to view public participation in geoengineering decision-making as a universal moral requirement, and invites us to reconsider the normative significance of this form of public engagement in Confucian societies. Yet, I contend that the role of the public remains normatively significant in geoengineering governance and the ethics of geoengineering from a Confucian perspective. Drawing from
Teaching of an Instructional Design Course

This 5-year study of 2 instructors teaching a master's level instructional design course used developmental research to systematically examine a reflective teaching approach. The reflexive teaching model is described. Eight data sources across six deliveries of the course were analyzed in terms of design decisions (the teaching model), model implementation, and model evaluation. Methodological issues of this developmental research study are discussed, including data management of evolving data sources, data analysis of teaching artifacts, and the balancing of teaching goals and research objectives. Guidelines for using developmental research to study one's teaching are summarized. The guidelines are organized along the developmental research cycle, consisting of design, implementation, and evaluation components, and are listed first by teaching decisions and second by developmental research prompts. The guidelines address both designing and teaching, activities. (Contains 25 references.) (Author/AEF) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. Using Developmental Research to Study One's Teaching of an Instructional Design Course PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY
Structure and superconductivity of two different phases of Re3W

Two superconducting phases of Re(3)W have been found with different physical properties. One phase crystallizes in a noncentrosymmetric cubic (alpha-Mn) structure and has a superconducting transition temperature T(c) of 7.8 K. The other phase has a hexagonal centrosymmetric structure and is superconducting with a T(c) of 9.4 K. Switching between the two phases is possible by annealing the sample or remelting it. The properties of both phases of Re(3)W have been characterized by powder neutron diffraction, magnetization, and resistivity measurements. The temperature dependences of the lower and upper critical fields have been measured for both phases. These are used to determine the penetration depths and the coherence lengths for these systems.
NEWordS: A News Search Engine for English Vocabulary Learning

: Vocabulary is the first hurdle for English learners to overcome. Instead of simply showing a word again and again, we come up with an idea to develop an English news article search engine based on users word-reciting record on Shanbay.com. It is designed for advanced English learners to find suitable reading materials. The search engine consists of Crawling Module, Document Normalizing module, Indexing Module, Querying Module and Interface Module. We propose three sorting & ranking algorithms for Querying Module. For the basic algorithm, five crucial principles are taken into consideration. Term frequency, inverse document frequency, familiarity degree and article freshness degree are factors in this algorithm. Then we think of a improved algorithm for the scene in which a user read multiple articles in the searching result list. Here we adopt a iterative & greedy method. The essential idea is to select English news articles one by one according to the query, meanwhile dynamically update the unfamiliarity of the words during each iterative step. Moreover, we develop an advanced algorithm to take article difficulty in to account. Interface Module is designed as a website, meanwhile some data visualization technologies (e.g. word cloud) are applied here. Furthermore, we conduct both applicability check and performance evaluation. Metrics such as searching time, word-covering ratio and minimum number of articles that completely cover all the queried vocabulary are randomly sampled and profoundly analyzed. The result shows that our search engine works very well with satisfying performance.
Has e-Learning Delivered on Its Promises? Expert Opinion on the Impact of e-Learning in Higher Education

The purpose of this study was to determine the extent of agreement among experts on the impact of e-learning technology in Canadian higher education learning experiences. Fourteen participants who are experts in e-learning in higher education agreed there are contentions about e-learning technologies in the following areas: (1) a platform for ideal speech; (2) greater opportunities for interactions; (3) the extent to which communities of learners can be created; (4) provision of a new kind of learning environment; (5) a platform for discussions; (6) demand for e-learning by students; (7) the degree to which the environment is equal and equitable; and (8) the quality of the learning experience. The ﬁ ndings of this study indicate that the value of e-learning requires further research before higher education leaders andteacher-practitioners are willing to incorporate them in teaching practices and policy documents. Le but de cette etude etait de determiner le degre d’accord parmi des experts a propos de l’impact de la technologie d’apprentissage en ligne dans l’enseignement superieur au Canada. Les quatorze experts consultes s’entendent pour dire qu’il existe des controverses au sujet des technologies d’apprentissage en ligne dans les domaines suivants : (1) les technologies comme moyen de communication permettant une situation ideale de parole; (2) l’augmentation des occasions d’interaction; (3) la possibilite de creer des communautes etudiantes; (4) la possibilite de fournir un nouveau genre d’environnement d’apprentissage; (5) l’offre d’un moyen de communication pour la discussion; (6) la demande etudiante pour l’apprentissage en ligne; (7) le degre d’equite et d’egalite de l’environnement d’apprentissage offert; et (8) la qualite de l’experience d’apprentissage. Les resultats de cette etude indiquent que davantage de recherche est necessaire pour eclairer les decideurs et les praticiens de l’enseignement superieur sur les politiques et les pratiques d’apprentissage en ligne.
IPM2.0: PRECISION AGRICULTURE FOR SMALL-SCALE CROP PRODUCTION

In order to manage pests impacting New England crop production integrated pest management (IPM) practices should be reevaluated or updated regularly to ensure that effective control of crop pests is being achieved. Three fungal taxa, Colletotrichum gloeosporioides, C. acutatum, and Glomerella cingulata, are currently associated with bitter-rot of apple (Malus domestica), with C. acutatum typically being the dominant species found in the northeastern United States. However, a recent phylogenetic study demonstrated that both C. gloeosporioides and C. acutatum are species complexes with over 10 distinct species being recovered from apple between the two studies. Based on this recent information, the objectives of this study were 1) to complete a phylogenetic analysis to determine species diversity and distribution of Colletotrichum isolates associated with bitter-rot and Glomerella leaf spot in the northeastern United States and 2) to evaluate the sensitivity of these isolates to several commercially used fungicides. A multi-gene phylogenetic analysis was completed using ITS, GADPH and BT gene sequences in order to determine which species and how many species of Colletotrichum were infecting apples in the northeastern U.S. The results of this study demonstrated that C. fioriniae is the primary pathogen causing both bitter rot and Glomerella leaf spot in the northeastern U.S. A second experiment was conducted in order to update management practices for apple scab, caused by the ascomycete Venturia inaequalis. The objective of this project was to evaluate the ability of RIMpro, an apple scab warning system, to control apple scab in New England apple orchards in addition to evaluating the performance of potassium bicarbonate + sulfur as a low-cost alternative spray material for the control of apple scab suitable for organic apple production. Use of RIMpro allowed for the reduction in the total number of spray applications made during the primary scab season by two sprays in 2013 and one spray in 2014 (28% and 25% reductions, respectively). Also, the potassium bicarbonate + sulfur treatment was shown to provide the same level of control as Captan. Finally, disease outbreaks, insect infestation, nutrient deficiencies, and weather variation constantly threaten to diminish annual yields and profits in orchard crop production systems. Automated crop inspection with an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) can allow growers to regularly survey crops and detect areas affected by disease or stress and lead to more efficient targeted applications of pesticides, water and fertilizer. The overall goal of this project was to develop a low cost aerial imaging platform coupling imaging sensors with UAVs to be used for monitoring crop health. Following completion of this research, we have identified a useful tool for agricultural and ecological applications.
Is after-hours trading informative?

This article investigates price and trading volume relations for near term crude oil contracts at the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX). The study investigates the informativeness of after-hours trading under the prior assumption that daytime and after-hours trading sessions are completely segmented. The research methodology uses a vector autoregressive (VAR) structural model to identify the lead/lag structure between the leading overnight session and the lagging daytime session. This framework permits us to impose testable restrictions in considering the view that after-hours price changes and trading volumes provide contemporaneous information in the daytime price discovery process. Furthermore, the reduced-form VAR allows testing whether innovations (surprises) in daytime prices and trading activity influence overnight price/volume behavior.
Halo concentrations and weak-lensing number counts in dark energy cosmologies

We study the effects of a dark energy component with equation of state p = wρ with constant w ≥− 1o n the formation of Cold Dark Matter (CDM) haloes. We find two main effects: first, haloes form earlier as w increases, and second, the amplitude of the dark-matter power spectrum gets reduced in order to remain compatible with the large scale Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies. These effects counteract. Using recipes derived from numerical simulations, we show that haloes are expected to be up to ∼50% more concentrated in CDM models with quintessence compared to ΛCDM models, the maximum increase being reached for w ∼− 0.6. For larger w, the amplitude of the power spectrum decreases rapidly and makes expected halo concentrations decrease. Halo detections through weak gravitational lensing are highly sensitive to halo concentrations. We show that weak-lensing halo counts with the aperture-mass technique increase by a factor of ∼ 2a sw is increased from − 1t o−0.6, offering a new method for constraining the nature of dark energy.
Cathodoluminescence microanalysis of porous GaP and InP structures

Electron microscopy and cathodoluminescence (CL) microanalysis were used for a comparative study of porous layers fabricated by electrochemical etching of n-GaP and n-InP substrates in aqueous solutions of sulfuric and hydrochloric acids. Both the CL and morphology of porous layers were found to depend upon the anodic current density. At high current density (100 mA/cm 2 ) anodization leads to the formation of so-called current-line oriented pores while at low current densities the pores grow along (111) crystallographic directions. The porosity relief was found to give rise to spatial modulation of the CL intensity. The composition microanalysis proved the stoichiometry of porous GaP and InP skeletons, although we found considerable traces of oxygen in porous GaP layers. Self-induced voltage oscillations giving rise to a synchronous modulation of the diameter of pores and CL intensity were evidenced.
Nymphaea pubescens Induces Apoptosis, Suppresses Cellular Oxidants-Related Cell Invasion in B16 Melanoma Cells

Background: Nymphaea spp. , Thai water lilies are aquatic plants. They contain phenolic pigments that play a major role in free radical scavenging. Melanoma is strong aggressive skin cancer-associated with oxidative stress. This study, to determine the effect of Nymphaea spp. extracts on cell apoptosis, cellular migration and invasion through the role of cellular oxidants in B16 melanoma cells. Methods: Free radical scavenging activity and total phenolic were investigated by 1, 1-diphenyl-2 picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) and Ferric reducing anti-oxidant power (FRAP) methods and Folin-Denis test, respectively. Cytotoxic were assessed by 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) method. Cell apoptosis was confirmed by flow cytometry. Cellular oxidants, cellular migration and invasion were determined with 2,7-dichlorodihydrofluorescein diacetate (DCFH-DA), wound healing and Boyden chamber assay, respectively. Results: Nymphaea pubescens showed higher capacity of scavenging free radical activity than Nymphaea stellate and also related phenolic content. Nymphaea pubescens extract was toxic to B16 melanoma cells. High concentrations cell apoptosis was induced. Contrastingly, low concentrations showed a decrease in cellular oxidants associated with the suppression of cancer cell progression. In B16 melanoma cell, Nymphaea pubescens extract was able to inhibit B16 melanoma cell migration and invasion through the low doses. Interestingly, the high doses of extract showed a potential of cytotoxicity to induce melanoma cell death. At the low doses, Nymphaea pubescens extract might suppress melanoma cells progression by interfering with both cellular migration and invasion capacity. Conclusion: Hence, Nymphaea pubescens extract induced cellular apoptosis and it also suppressed cancer cell progression by reducing oxidative stress in B16 melanoma cells.