Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Integrated crop management: The other precision agriculture

“Precision agriculture” was a favorite buzzword in agricultural discussions in the 1990s. Proponents of precision agriculture note its promises are twofold: economic benefits for the producer and environmental benefits for society. These benefits are to be achieved by improving the efficiency of input use, based on data obtained with global positioning systems (GPS) and geographic information systems (GIS) technologies. Although fulfillment of these promises has been mixed to date, it appears that “precision agriculture” will continue in the agriculture vernacular into the 21st century. In this article, we propose another sense of the term, and argue that precision agriculture, or at least long strides in that direction, is possible short of these highly complex methods and capital investments, through integrated crop management (ICM). As practiced by the producer and/or provided by independent crop consultants, ICM is one alternative to providing information-intensive management on the farm, and has proven efficiency of input use. That is, the promise of economic and environmental benefits holds true in a manner that makes it possible for any producer to implement “precision agriculture. ” Using data from users and nonusers of independent crop consultants implementing ICM, this study reveals that several economic and environmental benefits are gained from the information and management recommendations provided by consultants. Pest and nutrient management recommendations have led to decreases in pesticide and commercial fertilizer use. For the majority of users, these input reductions have resulted in an increase in profits since hiring a consultant. Users attributed changes in total cost of production to their consultant's effectiveness, and some reported receiving double or greater return for every dollar invested in consultant services. The results confirm the important role that Iowa's independent crop consultants could play in agricultural production and environmental protection through their promotion of ICM activities. However, the scarcity of consultants in Iowa, and possibly elsewhere, presents a challenge within the industry. Addressing this issue may help in contributing to rural development, economic benefit for the producer, and environmental benefit for all of society.
COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE OF HETEROPTERA COMMUNITIES (HEMIPTERA) IN HIGH ALTITUDE HABITATS OF A NATIONAL PROTECTED AREA IN ARGENTINA

Composition and structure of Heteroptera communities (Insecta: Hemiptera) in high altitude habitats of a national protected area in Argentina. One of the basic strategies to protect biodiversity is the establishment of National Parks and other protected areas. Los Cardones National Park (Salta, Argentina) is of great importance because it attempts to preserve a representative sample of Andean biomes above 2700masl, such as Monte Occidental , the Puna-Prepuna and upper reaches of the Yungas. We describe the composition and structure of an inventory of true bugs sampled over a 1-year period in the three ecoregions represented in this protected area. Twenty-nine species of Heteroptera were recorded, including five new records for the Province of Salta. All species are first records to the park. The inventory obtained represents 85.29% of the total estimated by non-parametric estimator (Chao1), with Miridae as the best represented family. The results contribute to knowledge of the Heteroptera of the protected area and provide a basis for comparisons with other studies conducted in other high altitude habitats.
Rhombohedral Distortion of the Cubic MgCu2-Type Structure in Ca2Pt3Ga and Ca2Pd3Ga

Two new fully ordered ternary Laves phase compounds, Ca2Pt3Ga and Ca2Pd3Ga, have been synthesized and characterized by powder and single-crystal X-ray diffraction along with electronic structure calculations. Ca2Pd3Ga was synthesized as a pure phase whereas Ca2Pt3Ga was found as a diphasic product with Ca2Pt2Ga. Electronic structure calculations were performed to try and understand why CaPt2 and CaPd2, which crystalize in the cubic MgCu2-type Laves phase structure, distort to the ordered rhombohedral variant, first observed in the magneto-restricted TbFe2 compound, with the substitution of twenty-five percent of the Pt/Pd with Ga. Electronic stability was investigated by changing the valence electron count from 22e−/f.u. in CaPd2 and CaPt2 (2x) to 37e−/f.u. in Ca2Pd3Ga and Ca2Pt3Ga, which causes the Fermi level to shift to a more energetically favorable location in the DOS. The coloring problem was studied by placing a single Ga atom in each of four tetrahedra of the cubic unit cell of the MgCu2-type structure, with nine symmetrically inequivalent models being investigated. Non-optimized and optimized total energy analyses of structural characteristics, along with electronic properties, will be discussed.
Discovering Mesoscopic-level Structural Patterns on Social Networks: A Node-similarity Perspective

Structural pattern analysis is of fundamental importance as it provides a novel perspective on illustration of the rela tionship between structure and function, as well as to understand the dynamics, of social networks. So far, scientists have uncovered a multitude of structural patterns ubiquitously existing in social net works in different levels, they may be microscopic, mesoscopic or macroscopic. Our work mainly characterizes the mesoscopic-level structural patterns on social networks from the node-similarity viewpoint and reviews some latest representative methods, focusing on the improved methods of community measure and community structure detection, role discovery methods, as well as the structura l group discovery approaches used to reveal hidden but unambiguous structures. Finally, we also outline some important open problems, which may be valuable for related research domains.
Phylogenetic Relationships among North American Popcorns and Their Evolutionary Links to Mexican and South American Popcorns

To determine genetic relationships among representative popcorns (Zea mays L.) of the New World, 56 maize populations from the USA and nine Latin American countries were characterized for 29 morphological traits, 18 isozyme loci, and 31 SSR loci. Cluster and principal component analyses were performed upon standardized morphological data and allelic frequencies from isozyme and SSR loci to elucidate relationships among populations within a geographical and historical context. Three groups of popcorn, with distinctive morphological characteristics and genetic profiles, were identified in the North American populations. The first group includes the North American Yellow Pearl Popcorns, which are currently the most important for U.S. commercial production. This group could be derived from introductions of the race Curagua from Chile into New England in the 19th Century. The second group includes the North American Pointed Rice Popcorns, which probably originated from the complex of traditional races of pointed popcorns from Latin America, such as Palomero Toluqueno, Confite Puntiagudo, Canguil, and Pisankalla, which diffused from the highlands of central Mexico into northern Mexico and then into southwestern USA. The third group includes the North American Early Popcorns, which show a marked influence of Northern Flint maize, from which they probably acquired the trait of early maturity. This third group also shows genetic influences of maize from northwestern Mexico and even from early European varieties of popcorn introduced late in the 19th Century. We propose that the three groups of North American popcorn identified in this study be recognized taxonomically as distinct races, and we provide characteristic traits as well as isozyme and SSR alleles to define the new races.
Development of a Pythagorean-hodograph interpolator for high speed CNC machining

Methodologies for parametric interpolation for NURBS curves have been proposed in the past. However, the errors caused by the approximate nature of the NURBS interpolator were often neglected. This paper proposes an integrated look-ahead algorithm which combines the NURBS interpolation with the exact Pythagorean-hodograph (PH) interpolation to take into account geometric and interpolator approximation errors simultaneously. The algorithm consists of four different modules: a sharp corner detection module, a PH construction module, a jerk- limited module, and an interpolation module. Simulations and experiments are performed to validate the proposed algorithm. It is shown that the developed interpolator improves tracking and contour accuracies significantly compared to adaptive-feed rate and curvature-feedrate algorithms.
CYTOCHROME c COMPLEXES WITH CHLOROPHYLLIN

A b s t r a c t . Chlorophyllin a (CHLA), a food-grade derivative of chlorophyll a, is a potent inhibitor of carcinogenesis. Recently a growing int erest in CHLA application as a natural colorant and diet stabilizing supplement is observed. Th e study presented herein is concerned with the interaction between CHLA and ferricytochrome c (ferriCY) in aqueous solution at physiological conditions, studied by means of spectroscopic metho ds ‐ absorption and fluorescence in the visible range and ultraviolet circular dichroism (U V-CD). In a 0.1M solution of phosphate buffer (pH 7) CHLA undergoes dark transformation from 645 nm (red) to 735 nm (far red) absorbing form with half time of 16 ·10 3 s. This first order reaction is activated by ruby l aser irradiation energy. FerriCY with CHLA in solution undergoes reduction and forms a complex with an additional band of 694 nm in the absorption spectrum. T he data indicated 1:1 stechiometry of ferriCY-CHLA complex formed at single bond site with association constant KA = 1.1 ·10 6 M -1 and free energy ΔG= ‐33.8 kJ mol -1 . In such a complex UV-CD spectra reveal a decrease in the αhelix structure from 22.4% (native ferriCY) to 16.0 5%. These studies indicate that CHLA, when binding with a protein, is an effective reductant ( antioxidant). K e y w o r d s : chlorophyllin a, ferricytochrome c, α-helix structure
Innovation Management of SMEs in the Creative Sector in Flanders and the Netherlands

This article studies the innovation management of 105 creative SMEs in Flanders and the Netherlands. This region appears to have an innovative climate and stimulating life style, well developed infrastructure and proximity of logistics and suppliers. However, we identified many restricting legislations and regulations that hamper creative SMEs. Above that, creative SMEs fail to find sufficient access to capital to invest in their growing innovative activities. Dutch creative SMEs find more easily access to external financial resources and governmental support than their Flemish colleagues. Finally, the use of managerial and financial tools seems uncommon but required among creative SMEs.
Saliency Based Video Object Recognition in Single Concept Video

This paper presents a saliency based video object extraction and recognition framework. The extraction framework automatically extract foreground object of interest without any use of training data. The recognition system uses list of training data beforehand. For extracting the foreground object from a video, it uses visual and motion saliency features . A conditional random field is used to effectively combine the saliency induces features. Our proposed method is able to preserve spatial continuity and temporal consistency. Experiments results on variety video shows that our proposed system provides qualitatively satisfactory video object extraction (VOE) results.
Mayor Games in Bavaria: Self Selection of Local Politicians is not influenced by constitutionally defined remuneration increases! Quasi-experimental evidence from Germany

Remuneration for politicians has been discussed frequently and thus, has been the subject of many reforms in recent decades. Remuneration has an influence on whether or not citizens choose to run for office as well as the amount of effort they might invest once elected. In this paper, I investigate the impact of variations in remuneration on the quality of politicians. It is well known that the amount of remuneration of a Bavarian mayor is regulated by constitutionally defined population thresholds. Utilizing this exogenous variation in the remuneration of politicians, I apply the quasiexperimental regression discontinuity design to six different population thresholds. My analysis demonstrates that positive or negative correlations between remuneration and quality of politicians are found for all six thresholds when simple ordinary least squares regression analysis is used. However, further analysis using regression discontinuity design shows that, in fact, no causal relationship between remuneration and quality exists. This result holds when using the Difference-inDiscontinuities approach. When comparing my results to other empirical findings, one possible explanation for the absence of effects might be rooted in the fact that Bavarian mayors do not face term limits.
Student Retention Prediction in Higher Learning Institutions: The Machakos University College Case

Student retention has become one of the most important priorities for decision makers in higher learning institutions (HLI). Improving student retention starts with a thorough understanding of the reasons behind the attrition. In this study, using student demographic and institutional data along with several business intelligence (BI) techniques, we developed prototype to predict likelihood of student persistence or dropout. This study used classification models generated using Waikato Environment for Knowledge Analysis (WEKA). The model was built using the 10-fold cross validation, and holdout method (60% of the data was used as training and the remaining as test and validation). Random sampling techniques were used in selecting the datasets. The attribute selection analysis of the models revealed that the student age on entry, parent occupation, health of student and financial variables are among the most important predictors of the phenomenon. Results of the classifiers were compared using accuracy level, confusion matrices and speed of model building benchmarks. The study shows that identifying the relevant student background factors can be incorporated to design a prototype that can serve as valuable tool in predicting student withdrawal or persistence as well as recommend the necessary intervention strategies to adopt, leading to better education efficiency. Keywords-Business Intelligence, Retention, attrition, WEKA, classifiers.
Structural Simulations and Conservation Analysis -Historic Building Information Model (HBIM)

Abstract. In this paper the current findings to date of the Historic Building Information Model (HBIM) of the Four Courts in Dublin are presented. The Historic Building Information Model (HBIM) forms the basis for both structural and conservation analysis to measure the impact of war damage which still impacts on the building. The laser scan survey was carried out in the summer of 2014 of the internal and external structure. After registration and processing of the laser scan survey, the HBIM was created of the damaged section of the building and is presented as two separate workflows in this paper. The first is the model created from historic data, the second a procedural and segmented model developed from laser scan survey of the war damaged drum and dome. From both models structural damage and decay simulations will be developed for documentation and conservation analysis.
Molecular markers associated with the agronomic traits in the medicinal plant lemon balm

Finding association between molecular markers and agronomic traits provide an excellent tool for indirect selection of a trait of interest in the population. In this study, stepwise regression analysis was used to estimate associations between ISSR and RAPD markers with some agronomic traits in lemon balm ecotypes. The analysis of results revealed significant associations between the traits and some of the studied loci. For all the traits, more than one informative marker was detected. Totally,90informative markers, including 48 ISSR loci and 42 RAPD loci, were identified. The SA-R-10, UBC826-1, UBC812-9, UBC813-10, UBC825-4, OPA-01-15, OPC-04-7 and CS-56-8 markers or fragment showed a significant correlation with Essential oil percentage and controlled 99.8% of the phenotypic variation. These markers are relatively more reliable. Among the RAPD primers, special attention should be drawn to primer SA-R, which had the highest associated fragments with the traits including days for 50% flowering, number of branches per plant, fresh weight and dry weight. Some of ISSR and RAPD markers were associated with more than one trait in multiple regression analysis that may be due to pleiotropic effect of the linked quantitative trait locus on different traits or its linkage to different genes. These primers have been found useful for improved lemon balm.
Valve Concepts for Microfluidic Cell Handling

In this paper we present various pneumatically actuated microfluidic valves to enable user-defined fluid management within a microfluidic chip. To identify a feasible valve design, certain valve concepts are simulated in ANSYS to investigate the pressure dependent opening and closing characteristics of each design. The results are verified in a series of tests. Both the microfluidic layer and the pneumatic layer are realized by means of soft-lithographic techniques. In this way, a network of channels is fabricated in photoresist as a molding master. By casting these masters with PDMS (polydimethylsiloxane) we get polymeric replicas containing the channel network. After a plasma-enhanced bonding process, the two layers are irreversibly bonded to each other. The bonding is tight for pressures up to 2 bar. The valves are integrated into a microfluidic cell handling system that is designed to manipulate cells in the presence of a liquid reagent (e.g. PEG – polyethylene glycol, for cell fusion). For this purpose a user-defined fluid management system is developed. The first test series with human cell lines show that the microfluidic chip is suitable for accumulating cells within a reaction chamber, where they can be flushed by a liquid medium.
An Exploratory Critique of Action Learning in Higher Education in South Africa: Barriers and Challenges

Abstract This exploratory study investigated the perceptions of staff and students about the Action Learning implementation of Action Learning in higher education. Using judgemental sampling, a qualitative approach was adopted to collect primary data. Action Learning focuses on working with realistic life challenges of groups of students, supported and encouraged by a skilled facilitator to reinterpret the dated information and create new knowledge. A thematic approach was employed to analyse the data. Themes focused on the Educational System, Conventional Learning as opposed to Action Learning, and Challenges and Barriers in implementing Action Learning in higher education. The findings concur with the literature, showing that while Action Learning is a powerful tool for educational and personal development, there are several barriers in the present higher education system that impact on implementing Action Learning, including class sizes, inadequate training of lecturers and the diversity of the student population.
Visual analytics for built-up area understanding from metric resolution Earth observation data

Large scale archives can benefit the application of visual analytics methodologies aimed at characterizing their contents by the effective inclusion of the human analyst in the interpretation loop. Exploiting the knowledge of users that are not remote sensing experts requires the design of easy to use applications. Applied analytical reasoning by visual representations involves methodological aspects dealing with both the design of multiple interactive visualizations as well as data representation and transformation considerations. We present examples of such methodological aspects aiming at the understanding and characterization of metric resolution datasets acquired on urban environments.
Use of a Commercially Available Flight Simulator during Aircrew Performance Testing.

Abstract : Investigations of aircrew sustained operations (SUSOPS) have been criticized for employing tasks with no apparent external validity. Because measures obtained directly from aviators flying high-performance aircraft are difficult to obtain, a laboratory compromise is needed. High-fidelity flight simulators used for aircrew training offer the most realistic simulation, but their availability is limited. Personal computer-based flight simulators amy provide adequate simulation in the laboratory at a reasonable cost. This report describes a representative research protocol using a commercially available flight simulator during a simulated aircrew SUSOP.
Cell Immobilized FOG-Trap System for Fat, Oil, and Grease Removal from Restaurant Wastewater

Cell immobilized lipase-producing bacteria on three different matrices were incorporated in a fat-, oil-, and grease (FOG) trap system for restaurant wastewater treatment. During a 16-day laboratory-scale experiment for the treatment of synthetic FOG wastewater containing soybean oil, no significant difference (two-tailed t test at 95% confidence interval) in the FOG removal between two systems was observed at FOG influent ≤1,000 mg/L . However, the typical trap showed lower FOG removal efficiency than the matrix-based system when the influent FOG concentration was increased to ≥5,000 mg/L . In addition, the matrix-based trap system was able to sustain a stable high FOG removal, with <100 mg/L effluent, even at 10,000 mg/L influent FOG. Based on FOG heights measured and mass balance calculations, 97.4 and 99.5% of the total FOG load for 16 days were removed in a typical trap and matrix-based system, respectively. About 93.6% of the removal in the matrix-based was accounted to biodegradation. The 30-day fu.
Small signal analysis for DC bus voltage disturbance resistance of voltage source converter

The DC bus voltage of the voltage source converter (VSC) is prone to large fluctuation and even to losing its stability for the large mutation of grid voltage or DC-link loads. First the characteristics of two-step transmission to power in the VSC are analyzed, proving that it is inevitable for DC bus voltage fluctuation to occur when grid voltage or DC-link loads mutate. A new two-step feedforward control strategy is then put forward for curbing the fluctuation, which overcomes the shortcoming by which the traditional feedforward control strategy is affected for the performance of current control. The small signal models of nonfeedforward control, traditional feedforward control, and two-step feedforward control are established respectively for comparing their performance. It is certified that the two-step feedforward control maximizes the stability of the bus voltage without affecting current control. Finally, the experimental results verify the correctness of the new strategy and the theoretical analysis.
Personalizing Web Search based on User Profile

Web Search engine is most widely used for information retrieval from World Wide Web. These Web Search engines help user to find most useful information. When different users Searches for same information, search engine provide same result without understanding who is submitted that query. Personalized web search it is search technique for proving useful result. This paper models preference of users as hierarchical user profiles. a framework is proposed called UPS. It generalizes profile and maintaining privacy requirement specified by user at same time.