Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Economic, ecological, and social performance of conventional and organic broiler production in the Netherlands

1. In this study, we compared a conventional broiler production system keeping fast growing broilers with an organic broiler production system keeping slow growing broilers in the Netherlands, both managed by one person working a full time year (Full Time Equivalent, FTE). This comparison was based on a quantification of economic, ecological and social indicators. Indicators were quantified using scientific literature and national data sets. 2. The organic system performed better for the economic indicator net farm income per FTE than the conventional system. 3. Regarding ecological indicators, calculations showed a higher on-farm emission of ammonia per kg live weight for the organic system. Moreover, an organic system includes a higher risk for eutrophication per ha due to outdoor access. Emission of green house gasses, use of fossil fuels and use of land required for the production of one kg of live weight is higher for an organic than for a conventional system. This is mainly due to a lower feed conversion in organic production and use of organic feed. 4. The organic system performed better than the conventional system for the social indicators related to animal welfare time spent on walking, footpad lesions, mortality, and sound legs. Regarding the social indicator food safety was found that meat from an organic system contained less antibiotic residues and Salmonella contaminations but more Campylobacter contaminations than meat from a conventional system. 5. Changing from a conventional to an organic broiler production system, therefore, not only affects animal welfare, but also affects economic, ecological and other social issues. In this study, we ran into the situation that some information needed was lacking in literature and quantifications had to be based upon several sources. Therefore, an integrated on-farm assessment is needed, which can be used to develop a broiler production system that is economically profitable, ecologically sound, and acceptable for society.
Stability of Vaccines

Vaccines are considered the most economical and effective preventive measure against most deadly infectious diseases. Vaccines help protect around three million lives every year, but hundreds of thousands of lives are lost due to the instability of vaccines. This review discusses the various types of instability observed, while manufacturing, storing, and distributing vaccines. It describes the specific stability problems associated with each type of vaccine. This review also discusses the various measures adopted to overcome these instability problems. Vaccines are classified based on their components, and this review discusses how these preventive measures relate to each type of vaccine. This review also includes certain case studies that illustrate various approaches to improve vaccine stability. Last, this review provides insight on prospective methods for developing more stable vaccines.
Similarity in env and gag genes between genomic RNAs of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) from mother and infant is unrelated to time of HIV-1 RNA positivity in the child

Variation in the env (V3 region) and gag (p17 region) genes of genomic RNA of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 was studied in three mother-child pairs. One infant was human immunodeficiency virus type 1 RNA positive at birth (pair 114), one became positive 6 weeks after birth (pair 127), and one became positive 30 months after birth (pair 564). The first two children were born to seropositive mothers, and the last child was infected by breast-feeding following seroconversion of the mother after delivery. In both V3 and p17gag, intrasample variability was much higher in the maternal samples, including the first seropositive sample of the seroconverted mother, than in the infants' samples. Variability was less in p17gag than in V3, except in the postnatally infected child. In all three cases, infection of the child was established by variants representing a minority of the cell-free virus population in the maternal samples. For the two infants born to seropositive mothers, V3 sequences were more similar to the sequence populations of maternal samples collected during pregnancy than to those of samples collected at delivery or thereafter. However, in pair 114 a V3 variant identical to the child's virus was also detected in the sample collected at delivery. In contrast to the V3 region, p17gag sequences of maternal samples of the first trimester of pregnancy and at delivery had comparable resemblance to the child's sequences in pair 114, while in pair 127, similarity to sequences of the sample collected at delivery was higher than that to sequences of the sample from early in pregnancy. In the last pair, V3 and p17gag sequences from a maternal sample collected 18 months prior to the first RNA-positive sample of the child resembled the infant's sequences as much as the sample collected close to the presumed time of infection. Taken together, the evolutionary characteristics for genomic RNA env and gag genes did not point to a particular time of mother-to-child transmission.
GRASSHOPPER MANDIBLES AND THE NICHE VARIATION HYPOTHESIS

Evolutionary biology consists, in large measure, of attempts to understand biotic diversity. For this reason, the "niche variation" hypothesis (Van Valen, 1965) of adaptive variation occupies a central position among evolutionary theories. The hypothesis attempts to explain biotic diversity at both genetic and phenetic levels, postulating a causal relationship between genetic or morphological variation and ecological habits. Under the conditions of the hypothesis, populations that occupy broader ecological niches are expected to be more variable, in phenotype and genotype, than more narrow-niched populations (Van Valen, 1965). In the past, both continuous (unimodal) and discontinuous (polymorphic) variation have been considered as facets of a single process leading to adaptive variation. A variety of studies have examined the niche variation hypothesis. Tests of the hypothesis typically consist of estimates of genetic (i.e., electromorphic) or morphological variability in comparison with suitable estimates of ecological amplitude. In general, the results of these studies are ambivalent. While the electromorphic analyses of Shugart and Blaylock (1973) and Steiner (1977) generally support the niche variation model, others by Sabath (1974), Soule and Yang (1973), Powell and Wistrand (1978), Mitter and Futuyma (1979), and Smith (1981) provide conflicting, occasionally contradictory, results. Similarly, morphological analyses by Van Valen (1965), Grant et al. (1976), Davidson (1977, 1978), and Bernstein (1979) provide supporting evidence, while those of Soule and Stewart (1970), Soule (1972),
Short‐ and long‐term outcomes of intracoronary and endogenously mobilized bone marrow stem cells in the treatment of ST‐segment elevation myocardial infarction: a meta‐analysis of randomized control trials

Bone marrow stem cell (BMSC) treatment of ST‐segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) has been primarily via the intracoronary route or via endogenous mobilization using granulocyte colony‐stimulating factor (G‐CSF). Studies have provided conflicting results. We therefore performed a meta‐analysis of these treatments, examining short‐ and long‐term efficacy and safety.
Considerations in Writing About Single-Case Experimental Design Studies

Single-case experimental design (SCED) studies are particularly useful for examining the processes and outcomes of psychological and behavioral studies. Accurate reporting of SCED studies is critical in explaining the study to the reader and allowing replication. This paper outlines important elements that authors should cover when reporting the results of a SCED study. Authors should provide details on the participant, independent and dependent variables under examination, materials and procedures, and data analysis. Particular emphasis should be placed on justifying the assumptions made and explaining how violations of these assumptions may alter the results of the SCED study.
Isolation and characterization of a novel oncogene, amplified in liver cancer 1, within a commonly amplified region at 1q21 in hepatocellular carcinoma

Amplification of 1q21 is the most frequent genetic alteration in human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), being detected in 58%‐78% of primary HCC cases by comparative genomic hybridization. Recently, we isolated a candidate oncogene, Amplified in Liver Cancer 1 (ALC1), from 1q21 by hybrid selection. Here we demonstrate that ALC1 was frequently amplified and overexpressed in HCC. ALC1‐transfected cells possessed a strong oncogenic ability, increasing the colony formation in soft agar and increasing the tumorigenicity in nude mice, which could be effectively suppressed by small interfering RNA against ALC1. Functional studies showed that overexpression of ALC1 could promote G1/S phase transition and inhibit apoptosis. Molecular studies revealed that the oncogenic function of ALC1 might be associated with its roles in promoting cell proliferation by down‐regulating p53 expression. Conclusion: These results suggest that ALC1 is the target oncogene within the 1q21 amplicon and plays a pivotal role in HCC pathogenesis. (HEPATOLOGY 2007.)
Interaction Domains and Nuclear Targeting Signals in Subunits of the U2 Small Nuclear Ribonucleoprotein Particle-associated Splicing Factor SF3a*

Human splicing factor SF3a is a component of the mature U2 small nuclear ribonucleoprotein particle (snRNP) and its three subunits of 60, 66, and 120 kDa are essential for splicing in vitro and in vivo. The SF3a heterotrimer forms in the cytoplasm and enters the nucleus independently of the U2 snRNP. Here, we have analyzed domains required for in vitro interactions between the SF3a subunits. Our results indicate that the SF3a66-SF3a120 interaction is mediated by a 27-amino acid region in SF3a120 C-terminal to the second suppressor-of-white-apricot and prp21/spp91 domain and amino acids 108–210 of SF3a66. Neither of these sequences contains known structural motifs, suggesting that the interaction domains are novel. Moreover, an ∼100-amino acid region, including the SURP2 domain of SF3a120 but extending into neighboring regions, is sufficient for binding to SF3a60. Analysis of determinants for nuclear import of SF3a demonstrates that SF3a120 provides the major nuclear localization signal and SF3a60 contributes to nuclear import.
Short-term wind power forecasting using a double-stage hierarchical hybrid GA-ANN approach

Power generation from wind generators is always associated with some intermittency due to wind speed and other weather parameters variation, and accurate short-term forecasts are essential for their efficient and effective operation. This can well support transmission and distribution system operators and schedulers to enhance the power network control and management in the smart grid context. This paper presents a double stage hierarchical genetic algorithm trained artificial neural network (double-stage hybrid GA-ANN) for short-term wind power forecast of a microgrid wind farm in Beijing, China. The approach has two hierarchical stages. The first GA-ANN stage employs numerical weather prediction (NWP) meteorological parameters to forecast wind speed at the wind farm exact site and turbine hub height. The second stage models the actual wind speed and power relationships. Then, the predicted next day's wind speed by the first stage is applied to the second stage to forecast next day's wind power. The presented approach has achieved considerable prediction accuracy improvements. The prediction performance of the proposed approach was also compared with another double-stage Back Propagation (BP) trained ANN prediction model and showed a better accuracy improvement.
Further understanding of complex information processing in verbal adolescents and adults with autism spectrum disorders

More than 20 years ago, Minshew and colleagues proposed the Complex Information Processing model of autism in which the impairment is characterized as a generalized deficit involving multiple modalities and cognitive domains that depend on distributed cortical systems responsible for higher order abilities. Subsequent behavioral work revealed a related dissociation between concept formation and concept identification in autism suggesting the lack of an underlying organizational structure to manage increases in processing loads. The results of a recent study supported the impact of this relative weakness in conceptual reasoning on adaptive functioning in children and adults with autism. In this study, we provide further evidence of the difficulty relatively able older adolescents and adults with autism have with conceptual reasoning and provide evidence that this characterizes their difference from age- and ability-matched controls with typical development better than their differences in language. For verbal adults with autism, language may serve as a bootstrap or compensatory mechanism for learning but cannot overcome an inherent weakness in concept formation that makes information processing challenging as task demands increase.
Measurement of natural radionuclides in the soil of Highlands agricultural farmland

Natural occuring radioctive material (NORM) is distributed in the environment including soil. It consist the gamma emmiting radionuclides such as 40K, the decay products of 238U and 232Th such as 214Bi, 214Pb (representing 226Ra) and 228Ac (representing 228Ra). This study was carried out to determine the radioactivity concentration of NORM in soil, to calculated the radium equivalent, absorbed dose, annual effective dose and external hazard index level for the study area. The measurement was done by using gamma spectrometer with high resolution hyperpure germenium (HPGe) detector. Soil samples were collected using hand auger from the highland agricultural farm area in Cameron Highlands. These samples were dried, pulverized and sieved prior to analysis. The range of the radionuclides activity concentration for 40K is 363.6 to 1244.1Bq Bq/kg; range for 226Ra is 131.1 to 200.0 Bq/kg 228Ra 18.6 to 237.7 Bq/kg and Radium equivalent activity range 222 to 453 Bq/kg; 153.2 to 263.8 nGy/h is the range for absorbed dose rate while annual dose range from 0.17 to 0.30 mSv. External hazard index is in the range of 0.92–1.54, which are higher than unity. These value should be less than unity in order to keep the radiation hazard to be insignificant. Therefore, it can be concluded that soil from this study area might be contaminated by the fertilizer applied to the the plants itself and from the geological and geographial location soil types.
Privatizing Public Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services: Issues, Opportunities, and Challenges

Much like the medical care system, delivery systems for mental health and substance abuse services are being transformed rapidly by managed care. Public sector systems are now facing challenges to transfer service delivery responsibilities to private managed behavioral health care organizations as a way of containing treatment costs and realizing operational efficiencies. These privatization efforts entail a range of quality management issues that are specific to mental health and substance abuse problems, treatments, and clients.
MAD: a suite of tools for microarray data management and processing

SUMMARY Microarray data management and processing (MAD) is a set of Windows integrated software for microarray analysis. It consists of a relational database for data storage with many user-interfaces for data manipulation, several text file parsers and Microsoft Excel macros for automation of data processing, and a generator to produce text files that are ready for cluster analysis. AVAILABILITY Executable is available free of charge on http://pompous.swmed. edu. The source code is also available upon request.
The functions of the “Greeting Ceremony” among male mantled howlers (Alouatta palliata) on Agaltepec Island, Mexico

Nonhuman primates use greeting behaviors as nonaggressive communicatory signals in multiple social contexts. Adult male mantled howlers (Alouatta palliata) perform a ritual greeting that has been associated with bond‐strengthening functions. The aim of this study is to explore the greeting patterns of male howlers living on Agaltepec Island, Mexico. Specifically, we analyzed the relationships between greetings and several individual, relational, and contextual variables, such as the expression of affiliation and agonism, dominance rank, age, kinship relationships, spatial organization, activity patterns, and subgrouping patterns. Greetings were more frequent between males with closer dominance ranks. Among those dyads that greeted at least once, dominant males initiated greetings more frequently than less‐dominant males. On the other hand, more greetings were observed when one of the participants had recently returned to a subgroup and during locomotion. On the basis of these results, we propose that on Agaltepec greetings are a conflict management mechanism used between males of similar ranks. The fission–fusion social system of this group of howlers allows males with conflicting interests to remain separated, and greetings may reduce tension during fusion events. Am. J. Primatol. 70:621–628, 2008. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Frequency Doubling Perimetry in Glaucoma

PurposeTo evaluate the validity of frequency doubling perimetry (FDP) in the detection of glaucomatous field defects. MethodsGroup I consisted of 85 eyes of 85 patients with established field defects in automated perimetry, classified by severity of defect. Group II consisted of 48 eyes of 48 control subjects. Both groups underwent Swedish Interactive Testing Algorithm (SITA) standard tests as well as FDP screening strategies (C20-1 and C20-5 and full threshold test). Sensitivity and specificity measures for the FDP tests were calculated using one new and two previously published algorithms. ResultsA described scoring system provided the best sensitivity (85.9%) and specificity (95.1%). For moderate and severe cases, the sensitivity improved to 91%. Quantification of the defect did not improve detection. ConclusionsFDP is a valid screening test for glaucoma. The scoring system described by Patel et al. provided the best results.
Presence in the 'silent’terminus region of the Escherichia coli K12 chromosome of cryptic gene(s) encoding a new nitrate reductase

A cosmid complementing narG mutants defective in nitrate reductase activity was isolated from a genomic library of Escherichia coli. The restriction map of the insert differed from that of the narGHI operon. The new enzyme, termed NarZ, required molybdenum for activity. The expression of narZ was not affected by the factors controlling narGHI. Insertion mutations indicated that the narZ locus covered about 8 kb of DNA; narZ is located at 32.5 U on the chromosome, in the cotransduction gap near the replication terminus. Southern blot experiments under stringent conditions using narGHI or narZ DNA as probes revealed a large extent of homology, with a small area of very high homology. We propose that narZ and narGHI have descended from a common ancestor by gene duplication.
Experimental study of Print-and-Scan impact as random process

The Print-and-Scan (P&S) process is generally considered as being a random process that can be modeled by a white additive normal process, ergodic in the wide sense. This study aims at experimentally validate or invalidate this hypothesis. Moreover, the experiments we carried on have been conducted in order to separate the printing from scanning impact. The main conclusion of these experiments is that the usual hypothesis cannot be supported by the experiments. The normal modeling can be invalidated for the whole P&S process. Moreover, it has been highlighted that this process cannot be considered as being neither white nor ergodic in the wide sense. The scanner noise seems to be mean ergodic and closer to a Laplace, than to a normal distribution.
Dual-Hop Transmission Scheme Based on Hierarchical Modulation in Wireless Networks

Dual-hop wireless transmission is a technique by which the channel from the source to the destination is divided into two shorter links using relays. By using this transmission, the communications reliability is improved whereas the throughput might go down since the dual-hop transmission is performed by two times. In this letter, we propose a scheme that uses hierarchical modulation at the source and adaptive modulation based on cyclic redundancy check (CRC) code at the relays. The proposed scheme is evaluated in terms of the bit error rate (BER) and throughput performances.
The Use of Three- and Four-Dimensional Surface Harmonics for Rigid and Nonrigid Shape Recovery and Representation

The use of spherical harmonics for rigid and nonrigid shape representation is well known. This paper extends the method to surface harmonics defined on domains other than the sphere and to four-dimensional spherical harmonics. These harmonics enable us to represent shapes which cannot be represented as a global function in spherical coordinates, but can be in other coordinate systems. Prolate and oblate spheroidal harmonics and cylindrical harmonics are examples of surface harmonics which we find useful. Nonrigid shapes are represented as functions of space and time either by including the time-dependence as a separate factor or by using four-dimensional spherical harmonics. This paper compares the errors of fitting various surface harmonics to an assortment of synthetic and real data samples, both rigid and nonrigid. In all cases we use a linear least-squares approach to find the best fit to given range data. It is found that for some shapes there is a variation among geometries in the number of harmonics functions needed to achieve a desired accuracy. In particular, it was found that four-dimensional spherical harmonics provide an improved model of the motion of the left ventricle of the heart. >
Thermal- and Performance-Aware Address Mapping for the Multi-Channel Three-Dimensional DRAM Systems

In this paper, we proposed thermal- and performance-aware address mapping (TPAMAP) for the multi-channel 3-D DRAM systems. TPAMAP reduces the thermal problem from the vertical stacking of the active banks in different DRAM channels and supports the mappings with the design tradeoffs of the temperature and performance. In our experiments, the peak temperature can be reduced by 1.1 °C ~ 12.3 °C for the 3-D DRAM system using TPAMAP. The cost function for the constraints of the temperature and performance is also proposed. In hardware design, we demonstrate the low-cost feature of TPAMAP in our hardware design.
Notice of RetractionDesign of X band MMIC LNA for wireless communication

This paper deeply researches extraction method of nonlinear model and optimization technique of CAD resign for MMIC LNA. We use three-stage circuits of topology structure. Matching circuit, bias circuit and topology structure are all designed. It achieves low noise and high gain as small-scale as possible, and ensures minimize of gate dimension and as high-linearity as possible.