Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The effects of Carnobacterium divergens AS7 bacteriocin on gastrointestinal microflora in vitro and on nutrient retention in broiler chickens

The present study was undertaken to evaluate the effects of divercin, a bacteriocin produced by lactobacilli strain Carnobacterium divergens AS7, on the microflora status under in vitro conditions and on nutrient retention and nitrogen-corrected apparent metabolizable energy (AMEN ) of divercin in an in vivo trial on broiler chickens. Low (DL) 200 AU∙ml 1 (0.05% of the liquid divercin prepatation), and high (DH) 1600 AU∙ml-1(0.4% of the liquid divercin prepatation) doses of divercin were used in both trials. In the in vitro trial divercin at concentration, 1600AU ml-1 of divercin had stronger antibacterial effects as compared with 200 AU∙ml-1. In the crop and ileal digesta, the DH treatment was characterized by the lowest lactic acid bacteria (LAB) and coliform bacteria counts (0.4-0.8 log cycle reduction). There were no differences in nutrient retention between treatments. Salinomycin and divercin supplementation tended to increase fat digestibility and N retention, however. The highest AMEN were obtained in the DL treatment. The results of both studies show positive effects of divercin in terms of reduction of microbial populations isolated from the gastrointestinal tract (GIT) of broiler chickens as well as improvement in AMEN. The presented data may suggest that bacteriocin derived from Carnobacterium divergens AS7 could play a role in controlling the microbial ecosystem in the broiler chicken GIT.
Productivity Catching Up: Evidence from Spanish manufacturing flrms ⁄

We study the flrms’ productivity dynamics and its relationship with the business cycle. The Spanish economy during the 1990s provides the adequate conditions to to perform this study because it shows two clear sub-periods in terms of growth: the growth rate of GDP in the second half of the decade (expansion) more than doubled the growth rate in the flrst half (recession). We use the methodology developed by the growth literature to test for productivity catch up (less productive flrms experience higher productivity growth than more productive flrms) and convergence (the variance of the productivity distribution decreases). We also develop a novel methodology to test whether there is higher catch up in recessions than in expansions. We flnd evidence of catch up in the whole analyzed period, but convergence only in the flrst half. Moreover, we also flnd evidence of higher catch up during the recessive period. These flndings suggest a cyclical process of innovation and imitation. Leaders have more incentives to innovate during expansions, but imitation takes place at a steady rate.
Person-Centric Work Psychology: Additional Insights Into Its Tradition, Nature, and Research Methods

In the focal article, Weiss and Rupp (2011) argued for a person-centric focus on conducting research in industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology. According to them, it is fundamentally important to study work from a subjective stance to understand workers' lived-through experiences. We agree with the focal article's emphasis on adopting a more person-centric perspective in I-O psychology research. In this commentary, we provide some additional insights into the tradition, nature, and research methods of person-centric work psychology.
Some problems involving Airy functions

The Airy functions go back to the 19th century. But they have become important in many areas of mathematics, such as Analysis, Topology, Applied Mathematics, Probability, to mention a few. In recent years it has been noticed that they make sense over non-archimedean fields also. In this brief article I review some recent work on them and discuss several questions which remain unsolved.
Dynamic Neural Network Model for Identifying Cumulative Responses of Soybean Plant Growth Based on Nitrogen Fertilizer Compositions

In this study, comparison between dynamic neural network and mathematical model was investigated for identifying cumulative responses of soybean plant growth. In this model, cumulative responses of stem diameter and plant height were used as an output factors and fertilizer compositions using nitrogent (N) were used as an input factors. Dynamic neural network was applied to explore and examine the number of data pattern on cumulative responses of soybean plant growth for acceptable identification, through simulation of a given model. The identification cumulative responses of soybean plant growth using dynamic neural network was resulting more performance compared with least square of a mathematical method. Dynamic neural network using time delay in backpropagation algorithm generated best performance in parameter number (n) =1, learning rate (lr) of 10, momentum constant (m) of 0.9 and the limit of error (err) 0.1 for identifying cumulative responses of stem diameter and plant height of soybean plant growth. The techniques obtained here can be applicable to a wide variety of identification problems in plant cultivation systems.
Nature Conservation in a Tropical Rainforest: Economics, Local Participation and Sustainability

The loss of tropical forests has led to establishment of protected areas such as national parks to conserve environment. National parks often affect the livelihoods of local people, especially when they are strongly linked to natural resources. For conservation efforts in a national park to be efficient, cooperation of local people is required. This thesis focuses on valuations of conservation regimes, ecotourism and conservation held by local people, and on the contribution of national park and non-timber forest products to their livelihoods. The data originated from personal interviews in local communities around the Okwangwo Division of the Cross River National Park in Nigeria. In Paper I, the contribution of the Okwangwo Division to development of local communities was examined. The results showed that local people who reside around the park benefit from different types of infrastructure, employment and income from tourism. Some of the development projects undertaken by the park authorities appear to be capital intensive both in the short and long term, and risk becoming unsustainable. A choice experiment approach was applied in Paper II to elicit the preferences held by local people for different nature conservation regimes. The results showed that most of the respondents preferred the nature conservation regime that would give them more access to infrastructure. Paper III reports a study regarding willingness to conserve a leafy vegetable (afang) important for communities in the vicinity of the Okwangwo Division, using data from a contingent valuation approach. The findings showed that local people have a willingness to conserve the afang. However, since conservation of afang would entail costs to landholders, there is a need for incentives to encourage them. Data from the contingent valuation approach was also used in Paper IV to examine the willingness of local communities to contribute to ecotourism. The results revealed that most of the respondents were willing to contribute money for an ecotourism project associated with the Okwangwo Division. The findings also suggest that impacts of ecotourism on the traditions of local people should be considered when designing an ecotourism project. The income that local people around the Okwangwo Division derive from sale of nontimber forest products (NTFP) was assessed in Paper V. The results showed that NTFP play an important role in livelihoods of the local people. The results suggested that a shift from primarily subsistence to more of a cash economy may lead to an unsustainable exploitation of the products.
BODY PERCEPTION AMONG INDIVIDUALS WITH CHRONIC KIDNEY DISEASE: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL STUDY

Objective: to understand the experience of patients whose body has been invaded by chronic kidney disease (CKD). Methods: exploratory and qualitative study based on the social phenomenology of Amedeo Giorgi. A total of 30 patients attending a hemodialysis clinic in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil took part in the study. Phenomenological interviews were held in March 2017. Results: The invasion of one’s body by CKD is characterized by incapacitation in performing daily tasks, as well as something triggering biological and physical-aesthetic body changes, while some participants consider it not to belong to the pathological sphere, whether because they are resilient or because they deny this new condition that causes changes in their way of life. Conclusion: the CKD imposes the re-signification of one’s body and a new way of life. Thus, it is essential to understand the complexity of this occurrence in its subjective sense, in order to provide care that is appropriate to the needs of patients.
Cascaded Electrochemiluminescence Signal Amplifier for the Detection of Telomerase Activity from Tumor Cells and Tissues

Telomerase is closely linked to the physiological transformation of tumor cells and is commonly overexpressed in most types of tumor cells. Therefore, telomerase has become a potential biomarker for the process of tumorigenesis, progression, prognosis and metastasis. Thus, it is important to develop a simple, accurate and reliable method for detecting telomerase activity. As a high signal-to-noise ratio mode, electrochemiluminescence (ECL) has been widely applied in the field of biomedical analysis. Here, our objective was to construct an improved ECL signal amplifier for the detection of telomerase activity. Methods: A cascaded ECL signal amplifier was constructed to detect telomerase activity with high selectivity via controllable construction of a lysine-based dendric Ru(bpy)32+ polymer (DRP). The sensitivity, specificity and performance index were simultaneously evaluated by standard substance and cell and tissue samples. Results: With this cascaded ECL signal amplifier, high sensitivities of 100, 50, and 100 cells for three tumor cell lines (A549, MCF7 and HepG2 cell lines) were simultaneously achieved, and desirable specificity was also obtained. Furthermore, the excellent performance of this platform was also demonstrated in the detection of telomerase in tumor cells and tissues. Conclusion: This cascaded ECL signal amplifier has the potential to be a technological innovation in the field of telomerase activity detection.
An Improved Association Rule Algorithm Based on Indexed Array

Through analyzing the existing problems in the classical Apriori algorithm and FP growth algorithm, the author proposes a frequent itemsets mining algorithm based on indexed array in the paper. On the basis of Apriori algorithm, this algorithm not only narrows down the set of candidates effectively through introducing indexed array, but also saves memory with no need of using FP storage structure. By analyzing and comparing the experiment, we can reach a conclusion that the algorithm can effectively improve the efficiency of mining frequent itemsets.
Consolidating the Meta-Learning Zoo: A Unifying Perspective as Posterior Predictive Inference

A plethora of methods and approaches combining meta-learning [19, 21] with deep neural networks have recently been proposed, achieving great success in applications such as few-shot learning. Much of the existing work may be characterized as either gradient-based [4, 17, 9], metric-based [22, 20], or amortized MAP based meta-learning [8, 16]. Due to the ubiquity of recent work, a unifying view is useful for understanding and improving these methods. Existing frameworks [5, 9] are limited to specific families of approaches, namely gradient-based methods [17, 4]. In this paper we develop a framework for meta-learning approximate probabilistic inference for prediction, or ML-PIP for short. ML-PIP provides this unifying perspective in terms of amortizing posterior predictive distributions. We show that ML-PIP re-frames and extends existing probabilistic interpretations of meta-learning [5, 9] to cover both point-estimates and variational posteriors, as well as a broader class of methods, including gradient based meta-learning [4, 17], metric based meta-learning [20], amortized MAP inference [16], and conditional probability modelling [6, 7].
Multi-Tasking Evolutionary Algorithm (MTEA) for Single-Objective Continuous Optimization

Multi-task learning uses auxiliary data or knowledge from relevant tasks to facilitate the learning in a new task. Multi-task optimization applies multi-task learning to optimization to study how to effectively and efficiently tackle multiple optimization problems simultaneously. Evolutionary multi-tasking, or multi-factorial optimization, is an emerging subfield of multi-task optimization, which integrates evolutionary computation and multi-task learning. This paper proposes a novel easy-to-implement multi-tasking evolutionary algorithm (MTEA), which copes well with significantly different optimization tasks by estimating and using the bias among them. Comparative studies with eight state-of-the-art single- and multi-task approaches in the literature on nine benchmarks demonstrated that on average the MTEA outperformed all of them, and has lower computational cost than six of them. Particularly, unlike other multi-task algorithms, the performance of the MTEA is consistently good whether the tasks are similar or significantly different, making it ideal for real-world applications.
Productivity Growth and Efficiency in Indian Banking : A Comparison of Public , Private , and Foreign

India’s public sector banks (PSBs) are compared unfavorably with their private sector counterparts, domestic and foreign. This comparison rests, for the most part, on financial measures of performance, and such a comparison provides much of the rationale for privatization of PSBs.In this paper, we attempt a comparison between PSBs and their private sector counterparts based on measures of productivity that use quantities of outputs and inputs. We employ two measures of productivity: Tornqvist and Malmquist total factor productivity growth. We attempt these comparisons over the period 1992-2000, comparing PSBs with both domestic private and foreign banks. Out of a total of four comparisons we have made, there are no differences in three cases, PSBs do better in two, and foreign banks in one. To put it differently, PSBs are seen to be at a disadvantage in only one out of six comparisons. It is difficult, therefore, to sustain the proposition that efficiency and productivity have been lower in public sector banks relative to their peers in the private sector.
Performance enhancement of extended AFDX via bandwidth reservation for TSN/BLS shapers

To support mixed-criticality applications, the AFDX may integrate multiple traffic classes: Safety-Critical Traffic (SCT) with hard realtime constraints, Rate-Constrained (RC) traffic requiring bounded latencies and Best Effort (BE) traffic with no delivery constraints. These traffic classes are managed based on a Non-Preemptive Strict Priority (NP-SP) Scheduler, where the highest priority traffic (SCT) is shaped with a Burst Limiting Shaper (BLS). The latter has been defined by the Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) task group to limit the impact of high priority flows on lower priority ones. This paper proposes two bandwidth reservation methods for BLS shapers in AFDX networks. The proposed methods are evaluated on a realistic AFDX configuration. Results show their efficiency to noticeably enhance the RC delay bounds and the SCT schedulability, in comparison to an intuitive method.
Evaluating the effectiveness of enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to improve managers' decision-making through balanced scorecard approach

Evaluating organization performance for operational and strategic planning is a complex process and perhaps doing it successfully will be more difficult. Balanced scorecard system, as a comprehensive and strategic framework for evaluating organization performance, can lead to a balance between the short and long term goals. In this study this tool has been used to evaluate the effectiveness of enterprise resource planning system and its impact on improving managers’ decision-making. Data was gathered by applying descriptive-survey research and statistical population consists of managers of one of the subsidiary units of Ministry of Economic Affairs and Finance and data was gathered by using interview and questionnaire method. The results show that the implementation of enterprise resource planning system can increase the effectiveness of enterprise resource planning system and improve managers’ decision-making through some factors such as the availability of information, integrating the processes, avoiding parallel operation, and avoiding entering duplicate data. In addition, some factors such as lack of staff training, lack of dynamic system, and non-conformity of the system with organization needs are considered as weak points of this system that by using some solutions they will be reduced. Finally, establishing enterprise resource system improves managers’ decision-making from financial, internal processes, client, and learning and growth perspectives. Internal processes perspective has the greatest impact and the learning and growth perspective has the least impact on improving managers’ decision-making.
Market Risk Dynamics and Competitiveness after the Euro: Evidence from EMU Members

In this paper we propose an empirical model that considers theoretical facts on the relationship between real exchange rates and the net exports of the economy to supplement the interaction of a number of financial and economic factors with the stock market. We discuss the impact of exchange rate fluctuations on market risk in terms of Value at Risk (VaR). Our empirical findings show that common currency introduction produced increments in VaR whereas European stock returns are more sensitive to changes in competitiveness regarding the EMU rather than national exports. Finally, we show that the synchronisation of variation in competitiveness through the introduction of a single currency has made these changes more decisive in explaining financial market fluctuations.
Sistem Pengenalan Wajah Secara Real-Time dengan Adaboost, Eigenface PCA & MySQL

Aplikasi sistem pengenalan wajah secara real time dapat ditemukan pada sistem pengawasan, identifikasi dan keamanan yang berbasis pada pengenalan wajah. Pengamatan wajah secara langsung oleh manusia mempunyai kelemahan karena kelelahan dan kejenuhan yang mungkin terjadi dapat menyebabkan menurunnya ketelitian. Untuk itu penggunaan komputer dapat menjadi alternatif solusi. Pada penelitian ini pengenalan wajah dilakukan melalui tahap face detection, feature extraction dan face recognition, selanjutnya dicocokkan dengan data profil yang tersimpan di dalam database. Pendeteksian wajah menggunakan metode Adaboost, pengenalan wajah menggunakan metode Eigenface PCA dan database MySQL untuk menyimpan informasi profile. Penggunaan metode tersebut untuk pengenalan wajah pada kondisi real time dengan perbedaan jarak antara sensor dan wajah, posisi wajah, intensitas cahaya yang mengenai wajah, mimik muka dan atribut wajah dalam penelitian ini memberikan tingkat keberhasilan sebesar 80% dalam mengidentifikasi wajah. Kata Kunci—Face detection, Face recognition, Adaboost, Eigenfaces PCA, MySQL.
Concept of co-firing coal with biomass and natural gas: On track of sustainable solution for future thermal power plants

This paper presents R&D project of multi fuel concept (MFC) for future coal-based power plants, demonstrated on example of cofiring Middle-Bosnia brown coal with waste woody biomass and natural gas. Pulverised Combustion (PC) lab-scale furnace has been used for the cofiring tests, varying up to 20%w portion of biomass and up to 10%th portion of natural gas in the fuel mix. Tests were purposed to optimize the combustion temperature, air distribution, including Over Fire Air System (OFAS), fuel combination and fuel distribution, including reburning concept, as function of emissions and combustion efficiency estimated through the ash deposits behaviours and unburnt. Considering application of proposed MFC in case of TPP Kakanj unit 6 (118 MWe) set here as a referent power plant, temperature levels and fuel distributions for lowest emissions of CO2 and NOx were found during lab tests, provided that combustion efficiency is at an acceptable level. Derived research results yield input data for calculation sustainability indicators of MFC for the referent power plant, considering 6 fuel options - different combinations of coal, biomass and natural gas. Single criteria analysis and multicriteria sustainability assessment have been done, giving an advantage to the options of cofiring coal with woody biomass and natural gas in the case demonstrated.
Geoarchaeology of La Tène Sunken Houses at Syrovice, Czech Republic: Importance for Understanding Living Strategies

a polycultural settlement site was found at syrovice near Brno, czech republic, during a rescue survey in 2008. Within a widespread cultural layer 100 sunken features were excavated and dated to the La Tène and Roman periods. Given their characteristic shape and infill, several features were interpreted as typical sunken houses. The way the houses were used was identified from the abundant artefacts, and sedimentological and micromorphological analysis. A R t I C l e I n f o Article history: received: 17 May 2011 accepted: 10 august 2011
The Funcional Effect of Beta Blockers vs Vasodilators in Hypertension Treatment

Objective: To evaluate and compare retrospectively the physiological effect of beta blockers versus vasodilators in the treatment of hypertensive patients (pts). Methods: 42 diagnosed hypertensive pts (24 male, 18 female) were studied. They were divided into two groups: (1) 16 patients treated with vasodilators only and (2) 26 patients treated only with beta blockers. A cardiopulmonary exercise test (CPET) was performed in all pts while they were taking their medications as usual. The following indices were monitored and measured breath by breath during exercise: heart rate (HR), blood pressure (BP), oxygen consumption (VO2), oxygen pulse (O2P), ventilatory anaerobic threshold (VAT) and respiratory exchange ratio (RER). Maximal exercise capacity was considered as RER having reached a value of at least 1.15. Peak values of the CPET indices were compared between the two groups for each index separately by the two-tailed Student T test. P values < 0.05 were considered statistically significant. Results: No significant differences were observed between groups A and B, respectively, as follows: age 58 ± 13 vs 59 ± 10; RER 1.17 ± 0.12 vs 1.17 ± 0.1; and peak O2P 108 ± 13 vs 102 ± 33. Significant differences between the two groups were observed in: peak HR (% of predicted HR) 90 ± 8 vs 69 ± 12; peak VO2 (% of predicted VO2) 96 ± 9 vs 69 ± 11; and VAT (% of max VO2 predicted) 55 ± 8 vs 43 ± 9 (p < 0.05). Conclusions: Beta blockers in the treatment of hypertensive patients demonstrate a significant physiological disadvantage compared to vasodilator treatment. These findings further validate the CPET as an important tool for physiological evaluation of various treatments in hypertensive patients. J Clin Basic Cardiol 2008; 11 (online): 8–10.