Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of Silicon and Nitrogen nutrition on major pest and disease intensity in low land rice

Nutrition management is one of the most important factors for enhancing yield, but it may affect the response of rice plants to pests and diseases due, in part, to the change of microclimate under the rice plant canopy. Therefore, knowledge of the relationship of nutrition management and pests and diseases is an important component in setting up a high yield production system. The pest and disease control procedures used by farmers can as also include soil fertility management since these nutrition practices can impact the physiological susceptibility of crop plants to pest and diseases by affecting plant resistance. Silicon content is particularly important in pest and disease reduction in rice and certain rice genotypes are more efficient accumulators of silicon than others making them more resistant. In the absence of natural heritable resistance in rice varieties, resistance can be induced by alternate strategies to suppress certain pest and pathogens. Hence experiments were carried out at Jabugam Farm, Anand Agricultural University Anand Gujarat (India). Treatments were arranged in a factorial randomized block design with the silicon factor at four levels (0, 200, 400 and 600 kg ha-1), four levels of nitrogen (0, 75, 100, and 125 kg ha-1), and with three replicates. Indian improved and high –yielding rice variety, GR-13, was used. The overall yield ranged from 4991 to 6439 kg ha-1 with a mean of 5936 kg ha-1. The plots which did not receive any fertilizer, that is, (N0 + Si0) exhibited the highest pest incidence (dead hearts, leaf folder and stem borer) and disease incidence (leaf blight, brown spot and grain discoloration) compared to other treatments which received both N and Si. Key words: Nutrition management, conventional rice, silicon, yield, pest and diseases.
Oxygen-Involved Oxidative Deacetylation of α-Substituted β-Acetyl Amides – Synthesis of α-Keto Amides

alpha-Substituted beta-acetyl amides could undergo CC bond cleavage to form alpha-keto amides when treated with copper(II) chloride (CuCl2) and boron trifluoride diethyl etherate (BF3OEt2) under an oxygen atmosphere. The yield can be increased by the addition of tert-butyl hydroperoxide which alone can also effect the reaction. The reaction provides a new protocol for the synthesis of alpha-keto amides.
A novel trap for quantifying the dispersal of seeds by wind

Question: Understanding the aerial movement of seed is of great significance to the management of native and invasive plant species, but has proven difficult to measure. Here we examine how a more quantitative approach to measuring the aerial movement of seed can be achieved. Location: SE Australia. Methods: We describe a novel seed trap (the ‘Melbourne trap’), for which the proportion of free-stream airflow through the trap can be measured, allowing a more quantitative approach to measuring aerial seed movement. We assessed airflow through the Melbourne trap in a wind tunnel and describe how this information, along with measurements of wind speed and direction, can now be used to derive seed density per volume of airflow. We compare the seed capture and retention efficiency of the Melbourne trap with two simpler and cheaper trap designs, bucket traps and sticky traps. Results: Melbourne and bucket traps captured significantly more species than sticky traps. Seed catch was dominated numerically by Lachnagrostis filiformis (G. Forst.) Trin. Melbourne traps proved more effective than sticky traps, but not bucket traps, in capturing L. filiformis, based on intake area. For all other seeds, Melbourne traps were more effective than both bucket and sticky traps. Conclusion: The Melbourne trap design is a significant advance in quantifying seed dispersal by wind. Melbourne traps will improve the capacity and accuracy of studies that seek to: (i) quantify seed fluxes across landscapes boundaries; (ii) assess directionality of dispersal; (iii) understand processes controlling seed release; and (iv) compare dispersal in wind and water.
Assessing Civic Competency and Engagement in Higher Education: Research Background, Frameworks, and Directions for Next‐Generation Assessment

Civic learning is increasingly recognized as important by the higher education and workforce communities. The development of high-quality assessments that can be used to evaluate students' civic learning during the college years has become a priority. This paper presents a comprehensive review of existing frameworks, definitions, and assessments of civic-related constructs from approximately 30 projects relevant to higher education, and includes a discussion of the challenges related to assessment design and implementation. Synthesizing information from the review, we propose an assessment framework to guide the design of a next-generation assessment of individuals' civic learning that takes advantage of recent advances in assessment methods. The definition identifies 2 key domains within civic learning: civic competency and civic engagement. Civic competency encompasses 3 areas (civic knowledge; analytic skills; and participatory and involvement skills), and civic engagement also captures 3 areas (motivations, attitudes, and efficacy; democratic norms and values; and participation and activities). We discuss item formats and task types that would ensure fair and reliable scoring for the assessment. The review of definitions of civic learning and its components developed by organizations, the proposed assessment framework, and assessment considerations presented here have potential benefits for a range of higher education institutions. This includes institutions that currently have students engaged in relevant curricular or cocurricular activities and also institutions that would find assessments of civic competency and engagement helpful in program development or in evaluating students' accomplishments.
Handbook of Innovation Systems and Developing Countries: Building Domestic Capabilities in a Global Setting

'. this ambitious project definitely succeeds in putting together coherently a relatively recent body of research, and in arguing that a new policy approach to development is needed: one that puts knowledge accumulation at its core, that recognises the complex nature of learning processes and the need of new institutions to stimulate them. For the many who believe in the urgency of revising development strategies and policies in such a direction, this work is a must-read and a highly valuable teaching and reference aid. It is hoped that, as the editors themselves wish, it will serve as a stimulus for further theoretical and empirical efforts in this crucial field of research. ' - Elisabetta Marinelli, Science and Public Policy. © Bengt-Ake Lundvall, K.J. Joseph, Cristina Chaminade and Jan Vang 2009. All rights reserved. (Less)
Cross-Validation of Fitness Scores During Co-evolution Using the ’ Trap-the-Cap ’ Board Game as a Testbed

Games have always been used as a convenient way of testing AI techniques, they have well defined rules and well defined outcomes. The reinforcement learning method of co-evolution is investigated using the board game of Trap-the-Cap. Co-evolution is used when no teacher is available for game playing 'agents' to learn from. Essentially, two populations of agents take it in turns to rank each other before mutating and hence evolving. The populations start out as completely naïve Trapthe-Cap players and gradually increase in sophistication over the ensuing generations. A criticism of co-evolution is that each population of agents is used for training and testing the other population. This is normally to be avoided, but this is not easy for co-evolution which was selected because no teacher was available to provide training. This thesis investigates the technique of injecting independent test agents into the coevolution cycle to provide 'Cross-Validation' of the ranking of a population. It asks the question 'does the use of Cross-Validation provide measurable benefits in terms of speed of evolution, network complexity and performance? ' Neural networks were used as the agents in the two populations. The particular technique used to evolve and mutate them is called Neuro-Evolution of Augmenting Topologies (NEAT) which is a method that allows neural networks to use the cross-over operation as well as mutation. Cross-Validation was achieved by providing a source of independently evolved neural networks as an additional source of testers during the co-evolution cycle. Results were encouraging and showed that there was indeed an advantage gained in terms of performance, speed of evolution and network complexity. However, these effects were only present for the first one hundred or so generations, after which the advantage disappeared. This may have been related to the game of Trap-the-Cap itself and the parameters used to evolve players.
Effect of charged sand particles on microwave propagation along earth-space paths

According to the forward scattering amplitude function of the charged sand particles under the Rayleigh approximation, the calculation models of attenuation and phase shift for microwave wave through sand storms incorporating charged sand particles are obtained along horizontal paths. The attenuation and phase shift due to sand storms along earth-space paths are also given. Some results with different visibility, moisture content, and charge-to-mass are obtained and discussed.
Phytochemical analysis of Caralluma nilagiriana using GC–MS

The aim of the study was to investigate and identify the constituents of the rare endemic species Caralluma nilagiriana. The phytochemical analysis was carried out by using Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectroscopy instrument for the presence of active constituents by qualitative method. The results showed the active ingredients were Alkaloids, Terpenoids, Flavonoids, Steroids, Tannins, and Phenolic compounds in ethanolic extract of the Caralluma nilagiriana. The compounds were identified and confirmed by comparing their mass spectrum with the original spectrum obtained from the inbuilt libraries namely WILEY and NIST. These libraries have more than five million compounds.
Stereological evaluation of local administered palmatine on bone regeneration

DOI: 10.4328/JCAM.5213 Received: 11.07. 2017 Accepted: 24.07. 2017 Printed: 01.11. 2017 J Clin Anal Med 2017;8(6): 478-81 Corresponding Author: Çiğdem Coşkun Türer, Department of Periodontology, Bulent Ecevit University, Faculty of Dentistry, 67600 Kozlu, Zonguldak, Turkey. T. : +90 3722613651 F. : +90 3722613603 E-Mail: cigdemturer@gmail.com Öz Amaç: Bu çalışmanın amacı otojen greft yerleştirilmiş kritik boyuttaki kalvaryal defektler de lokal olarak uygulanan palmatinin tedavi potansiyelini araştırmaktır. Gereç ve Yöntem: 24 adet rat grup C (pasif kontrol), grup G (aktif kontrol) ve grup G+PLM olmak üzere üç gruba yarıldı. Deneklerin kalvaryasında 5 mm çapında kritik boyutta defektler oluşturuldu. Grup C’de defekt alanı boş bırakıldı. Grup G’de defekt alanına otojen greft yerleştirildi ve üzerine 300 mg steril salin emdirilmiş absorbe olabilen kolajen tampon uygulandı. Grup G+PLM’de defekt alanına otojen greft yerleştirildi ve üzerine 300 mg palmatin emdirilmiş absorbe olabilen kolajen tampon uygulandı. Bütün denekler operasyondan 28 gün sonra ötenazi yolu ile sakrifiye edildi. Yeni kemik alanı ve bağ doku hacimlerinin ölçümleri, stereolojik analizler kullanılarak yapıldı. Bulgular: Stereolojik analizler sonucunda, dördüncü hafta sonunda grup C ile karşılaştırıldığında G ve G+PLM gruplarında anlamlı derecede fazla yeni kemik oluşumu gözlendi. Bağ doku hacmi de otojen greft kullanılan gruplarda anlamlı derecede fazla bulundu. G ve G+PLM grupları karşılaştırıldığında yeni kemik ve bağ dokusu hacmi açısından istatistiksel olarak anlamlı bir fark bulunamadı. Tartışma: Lokal olarak uygulanan 500 mg palmatinin otojen greft yerleştirilmiş kritik boyuttaki kemik defektlerinde kemik rejenerasyonu üzerine olumlu etkisi olmadığı belirlenmiştir.
Power-Law and Log-Normal Distributions in Firm Size Displacement Data

We have shown that firm size signed displacement data follow not only power-law in the large scale region but also the log-normal distribution in the middle scale one. In the analyses, we employ three databases: high-income data, high-sales data and positive-profits data of Japanese firms. It is particularly worth noting that the growth rate distributions of the firm size displacement have no wide tail which is observed in assets, sales of firms, the number of employees and personal income data. An extended-Gibrat's law is also found in the growth rate distributions. This leads the power-law and the log-normal distributions of the firm size displacement under the detailed balance.
Terahertz Wireless Communication

The drop of plasma was created in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It is made up of two types of subatomic particles: quarks and gluons. Quarks are the building blocks of particles like protons and neutrons, while gluons are in charge of the strong interaction force between quarks. The new quark-gluon plasma is the hottest liquid that has ever been created in a laboratory at 4 trillion C (7 trillion F). Fitting for a plasma like the one at the birth of the universe. [9]
Heterogeneous Nucleation in Droplet-Based Nucleation Measurements

Droplet-based nucleation experiments reveal discrepancies in kinetic and thermodynamic factors. Here we examine how the chemical nature of the water–oil interface, and not the type of the device, used in different set-ups by three different groups impacts nucleation rate and explain discrepancies among lysozyme interfacial energies and pre-exponential factors encountered in the literature.
Mantle structure beneath Indonesia inferred from high-resolution tomographic imaging

We investigated mantle structure beneath the Indonesian region by means of tomographic inversions of traveltime residuals of direct P and the surface-reflected depth phases pP and pwP. The hypocentres and phase data used in the inversions were derived from the reprocessing of data reported to international data centres, which include data from the Australian SKIPPY project. We used more than 6.0 × 10⁶ data from more than 50 000 globally distributed earthquakes recorded at a subset of nearly 3000 seismological stations worldwide. The use of depth phases improved the sampling of the upper-mantle structure, in particular beneath the back-arc regions. The mapping of distant aspherical mantle structure into the study region was minimized by combining a high-resolution regional with a low-resolution global inversion. The inversion was linearized around the ak135 reference velocity model, and a combination of minimum norm and gradient damping was applied to constrain the solution. Inversion of different subsets of the data and test inversions of synthetic data indicate that resolution is sufficient to substantiate the conclusions pertinent to the complex large-scale structure of the subducted slab beneath the Indonesian archipelago. The tomographic images confirm previous evidence for regional slab penetration into the upper part of the lower mantle but suggest a more complex trajectory of mantle flow beneath Indonesia. The implied lateral variation in the shape of the upper-mantle slab is generally in good agreement with inferences from seismicity. The data reveal a seismic anomaly beneath the Sunda arc, which is detected to at least 1500 km in depth and forms the eastern end of a deep anomaly associated with the past subduction of lithosphere of the Mesozoic Tethys ocean. Below Java the lithospheric slab is probably continuous from the Earth's surface to the lower mantle, but beneath Sumatra the deep slab seems to be detached from the seismogenic slab. The high-resolution images suggest that the subducted slab is deflected in the transition zone beneath the Banda arc and that the descending slabs form a spoon-shaped structure. North of the Banda Sea we detect the two opposing subducted slabs of the Molucca Sea plate; this is consistent with previous studies, but our images suggest that the westward subduction has a significantly steeper dip than the eastward subduction. Slab structure beneath the Banda and Molucca seas is explained in the context of the continent-arc collision between Australia and the southeast Indonesian Island arc, and the arc-arc collision between Sangihe and Halmahera. Inversion of traveltime residuals of direct S phases, a novelty for this region, largely confirms the inferences from the P-wave data, even though less detail is resolved.
Cancellation of reflections in planar antena measuring systems via esprit algorithm

This paper presents an algorithm to cancel the reflections that appear in the anechoic antenna measurement systems due to low frequency bands, AUT and probe supports. The algorithm is based on a modification of the ESPRIT [1-3] direction of arrival method and needs a very low number of frequencies to work – that is, a strict requirement in antenna measurement system. Actually, this algorithm will be applied to a planar near field scanner.
Role of Capacity/Skill Development Trainings in Rural Livelihood: A Case Study of Hapur, Dang

Education has transformative potential if it is connected to people’s life and their livelihood. And education has been seen as a means of developing capabilities, promoting employment potentials, and reducing poverty in rural communities. Reflecting upon those ideas, this study explained transformative role of capacity/skill development training on livelihood in rural contexts. There is no doubt, capable, knowledgeable and skillful youths have been playing change agent role especially in local levels. The study applied quantitative case study research methodology to test the significant relationship between study variables. Questionnaires, and key informant interview techniques were applied while collecting data information. Set of questionnaires were filled up with 108 respondents selected by using stratified random sampling methods. The study found significant role of capacity/skill development trainings on rural livelihoods. Further, skilled and capable youths are becoming human capital in the society and working for transforming social capital. They are also generating household economy by involving in income generate activities. The study concluded that capacity/skill development training program conducting in local level help to nourish knowledge, ability and develop vocational skills of male and female youths. And they are now playing transformative role in the society and achieving rural prosperity. Therefore, findings of the study can become fruitful guidelines to the policy makers and planners in local levels.
Distribution and Antifungal Susceptibility Pattern of Candida species at a Tertiary Hospital in Malaysia.

INTRODUCTION Invasive Candida infections cause significant mortality and morbidity worldwide. Information on recent trends in species distribution and antifungal resistance in local settings is essential. METHODOLOGY Yeast isolates identified through standard culture methods throughout 2014 and 2015 from Hospital Ampang, Malaysia were retrospectively studied. The antifungal susceptibility of Candida species was determined using colorimetric broth microdilution method and MIC values interpreted according to CLSI breakpoints. RESULTS Out of all the 149 yeast cultures collected, most were from blood (55.7%) and respiratory specimens (33.6%). Candida tropicalis was the most common (28.9%), followed by C. albicans (26.2%), C. parapsilosis (15.4%), C. glabrata (14.1%), Crytococcus neoformans (6.7%), Trichosporon asahi (3.4%), C. krusei (2.0%), C. famata, C. rugose, C. guilliermondii, C. dublinensis and Trichosporon spp. (0.7% each). Occurrence of C. tropicalis in candidaemia cases was significantly associated to presence of an underlying haematological disorder, while C. albicans isolates in blood were significantly found in absence of such disorders. The four most common Candida species isolated showed high susceptibility to amphotericin B (100%), anidulafungin (100%), micafungin (100%), caspofungin (98.4%), flucytosine (98.4%) and voriconazole (84.1%). However, drug susceptibility to itraconazole and fluconazole was comparatively lower (57.9% and 72.2%, respectively). C. glabrata and C. tropicalis were the least susceptible to these azoles. CONCLUSION Prevalence of the high number of non-albicans Candida species with slight predominance of C. tropicalis over C. albicans was observed. Low susceptibility to itraconazole among C. glabrata and C. tropicalis isolates and to fluconazole among C. glabrata isolates warrants for continued surveillance to monitor emerging antifungal resistance.
The Effect of Various Elements Substitution on Properties of Bioactive Glass Scaffolds for Bone Tissue Engineering.

Aim: The aim of the present study was to synthesize and characterize sol-gel derived bioactive glass scaffold and evaluate the effect of substitution of Zirconium (Zr), Strontium (Sr), and Zinc (Zn) on the their bioactivity, biodegradability and mechanical properties. Materials and Methods: Bioactive glass scaffold samples with compositions 80% SiO2-15%CaO and 5% P2O5 and 75 % SiO2-15% CaO 5% P2O5 and 5% MO (in mol%) (M=Sr, Zr or Zn) were synthesized using the sol–gel combined with foam replication method. The scaffolds were characterized by DTA, XRD, SEM and FTIR spectroscopy. Their mechanical properties were measured and their bioactivity/ biodegradability were evaluated in simulating body fluid (SBF). Results: All the scaffolds showed no distinct difference in phase composition, macroporous structure, percent porosity or pore size distribution. Conclusions: Sr, Zr and Zn substitution decreased the mechanical properties of the bioglass system. Sr and Zr ions enhanced the formation of nano-structured hydroxycarbonate apatite (HCA) layer, whereas Zn ions diminished the bioactivity. Moreover, Sr ions increased the biodegradability of the bioglass system.
Current trends in carbon nanotube-based polymer nanocomposites

Carbon nanotube-based polymer nanocomposites have been the focus of considerable research. This paper provides a concise review of recent advances in carbon nanotube-polymer composites for mechanical reinforcement, with emphasis on the principles and techniques for carbon nanotube functionalization. Particular interest is given to interfacial bonding of carbon nanotubes to polymer matrices as it applies to stress transfer from the polymer matrix to the carbon nanotube. The interaction between carbon nanotubes and polymers is also reviewed. Various techniques of carbon nanotube-polymer interaction measurements are described. Different methods of interaction improvement, mainly categorized under covalent and noncovalent interactions, are also described afterwards. An optimum carbon nanotube-polymer interaction is a crucial factor towards reaching the full potential of carbon nanotubes in polymer nanocomposites. Potential topics of oncoming focus along with the potential applications of carbon nanotube-polymer composites are highlighted.
Interferometric optical tweezers

Summary form only given. Optical trapping of micron-size dielectric microspheres using a single beam gradient force was first demonstrated by Ashkin in 1986. Since then, extensive research and development of this technique have turned it into a practical device (known as optical tweezers), which has been used in a wide variety of biological and biomedical applications. In this paper, we report the first experimental observation, we believe, of trapping and manipulation of dielectric particles by a set of two-beam interference fringes.