Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The degradability characteristics of fifty-four roughages and roughage neutral-detergent fibres as described by in vitro gas production and their relationship to voluntary feed intake

Fifty-four roughages of known voluntary dry-matter intakes (DMI; range 7·8−35·2 g/kg live weight per d) were examined in vitro in a gas production test. Samples (200 mg) of roughage and roughage neutral-detergent fibre (NDF) respectively were incubated in a mixed suspension of rumen contents for 96 h and the gas volumes recorded after 4,6,8,12,24,30,36,48,54,60 and 96 h. The kinetics of gas production were derived from the volume recordings described by the exponential equation Y=A+B(l—e-ct) where A is the intercept and ideally reflects the fermentation of the soluble and readily available fraction of the feed, B describes the fermentation of the insoluble (but with time fermentable) fraction and c the fractional rate at which B is fermented per h; A+B describes total fermentation. In vitro true dry matter (TD) and NDF degradabilities (NDF-D) after 24 h incubation were also determined. Of the variation in DMI, 75% was accounted for by the in vitro gas production parameters A, B and c in stepwise multiple regressions; 82% of the variation in DMI was explained by the parameters (ANDF+BNDF) and cNDF as obtained from the incubation of roughage NDF. The rate constants (c) were less important than parameters related to the extent of gas production, accounting for only 6·5 (whole roughage) and 4·1% (NDF) of the variation in DMI. There was no statistical advantage in the use of the exponential model describing extent and rate of fermentation over some of the simple gas volume measurements: 75% of the variation in DMI was accounted for by in vitro gas production of whole roughage after 8 h of incubation. On average gas production from NDF measured from 24–96 h accounted for 81% of the variation in DMI. A combination of gas volume measurements after a short period of incubation (4–8 h) with a concomitant determination of NDF-D after many hours (≥24 h) can render NDF preparations and long incubation times redundant. A method is suggested to obtain two results for DMI prediction in one single incubation. Of the variation in DMI 80% was accounted for by the incubation of 500 mg whole roughage when incubation was terminated after 24 h and the residual undegraded substrate quantified.
The influence of EU officials in European Security and Defence

Abstract European Union (EU) foreign policy has long been considered the domaine réservé of the member states. This article challenges such conventional state-centered wisdom by analyzing the influence of the Brussels-based EU officials in the Common Security and Defence Policy. Using four case studies and data from 105 semi-structured interviews, it shows that EU officials are most influential in the agenda-setting phase and more influential in civilian than in military operations. Their prominence in agenda-setting can be explained by their central position in the policy process. This allows them to get early involved in the operations. The absence of strong control mechanisms and doctrine in civilian crisis management gives them opportunities to affect civilian missions. Finally, EU officials direct civilian operations from Brussels, whereas the command of military operations is with the member states and NATO.
Artificial Neural Networks for Adolescent Marijuana Use and Clinical Features of Marijuana Dependence

This article compares the performance of multiple logistic regression (MLR) with feed-forward, artificial neural network (ANN) models for the assessment of adolescent marijuana use and clinical features of dependence based on self-evaluation from recent National Household Surveys on Drug Abuse (NHSDA). The effect of training and testing the neural networks with randomly selected data was compared to data selected as a function of survey year. The technical aim of the study was to account for adolescent marijuana use and features of marijuana dependence based on experiences with alcohol and tobacco. Similarities observed in MLR and ANN model performance may indicate no major complex or nonlinear relationships in cross-sectional epidemiological data selected to model adolescent drug use and dependence in this specific application. We concluded that ANNs should be further studied in future longitudinal research, perhaps with modeling of recursive networks, allowing feedback from drug dependence to levels of marijuana use. The ANN models also have the potential to model drug use and dependence based on input parameters with no obvious direct link to drug involvement—e.g., polymorphisms associated with “openness to experience” or other personality traits hypothesized to function as distal antecedents, and could thus be implemented to identify higher risk youths using assessments indirectly related or nonlinearly associated to adolescent drug use and dependence but less sensitive to survey-related response tendencies.
Effect of Telmisartan, Angiotensin II Receptor Antagonist, on Metabolic Profile in Fructose-Induced Hypertensive, Hyperinsulinemic, Hyperlipidemic Rats

The metabolic syndrome (MS) is a common risk factor for cardiovascular disease and type-2 diabetes. Recently, telmisartan, an angiotensin II receptor antagonist that has an antihypertensive effect, has been reported to be a partial peroxisome proliferator−activated receptor γ (PPARγ) agonist. The anti-diabetic hormone adiponectin has been recognized as a marker of in vivo PPARγ activation. Therefore, we studied telmisartan's effect on the metabolic profile and adiponectin levels in a fructose-induced hypertensive, hyperinsulinemic, hyperlipidemic rat model. Twenty-four male Sprague-Dawley rats were divided into three groups (eight in each). One group of control rats was fed standard chow for 5 weeks while a second was fed a fructose-enriched diet. A third group was fed a fructose-enriched diet for 5 weeks and treated with telmisartan 5 mg/kg/day during the last 2 weeks. Fructose feeding increased systolic blood pressure (mean±SEM), from 130±1 to 148±2 mmHg, insulin from 0.26±0.03 to 0.68±0.08 ng/mL, and triglycerides from 102±6 to 285±23 mg/dL (p<0.05 for all variables). Telmisartan treatment reversed these effects and reduced blood pressure to 125±2 mmHg, insulin levels to 0.41±0.07 ng/mL, and triglycerides to 146±18 mg/dL (p<0.05 for all variables), while attenuating the increase in body weight during weeks 3 to 5. In contrast, telmisartan did not affect plasma adiponectin levels. In conclusion, although telmisartan is considered a partial PPARγ agonist, its beneficial effect in the fructose-induced hypertension, hypertriglyceridemia, and hyperinsulinemia rat model is apparently not mediated by adiponectin elevation but rather by direct inhibition of AT1 receptor. (Hypertens Res 2008; 31: 135−140)
Sri Lankan Electricity Supply Industry: A Critique of Proposed Reforms

In 2002 the Government of Sri Lanka proposed power sector policy guidelines for the first time in its history in order to facilitate the restructuring of the sector. This paper attempts to critically examine and appraise the Government’s proposals with suggestions for improvements. The methodology employed is to first examine the requirements of the Sri Lankan power sector by analysing the current problems that the power sector faces and to empirically estimate electricity demand to identify the future consumption and capacity expansion needs of the sector. Secondly, it is assessed to what extent the proposed reforms address the requirements of the sector identified above. Finally, alternative proposals are introduced in order to address the identified flaws in the current proposed reforms.
Managing the Oil Revenue Boom : The Role of Fiscal Institutions

Oil-producing countries have benefited from rising oil prices in recent years. The increase in oil exports and oil revenues has had major implications for these countries. These developments have revealed how governments manage their fiscal policies in light of changing oil-market conditions and the role of special fiscal institutions (SFIs). In this Occasional Paper, IMF experts examine the fiscal response of oil-producing countries to the recent oil boom and the role of SFIs in fiscal management, they review the experiences of selected countries, and they draw general lessons. In doing so, they link findings on best practice in the design of SFIs with broader fiscal management advice.
Investigating science communication to inform science outreach and public engagement

This chapter is described in the introduction to this edited collection as providing: "a critically informed rationale for some of the various analytical techniques that can be employed by researchers investigating scientists’ (and other practitioners) participation in science outreach and public engagement activities. This chapter is enriched by setting these techniques within the context of a current action research project, ensuring the outputs of the research inform future practice. "
A Comparison of Reporting Lags of Multinational and Domestic Firms

This study examines whether multinational firms report earnings sooner than domestic firms. When compared with domestic firms, the reporting environment and business operations of multinational firms are significantly more complex. There is a greater amount of information asymmetry between managers and shareholders of multinational firms. Therefore, multinational firms potentially face higher monitoring and external financing costs. To reduce these costs, we conjecture that managers of multinational firms take steps to reduce the information asymmetry between shareholders and management by increasing the timeliness (a proxy for relevance) of their earnings reports. Specifically, we expect multinational firms to announce earnings earlier than domestic firms. We separate earnings reporting delay into auditor-related delay and management's discretionary delay. While test results weakly support the hypothesis that auditors take longer to audit multinational firms, there is strong evidence that managers of multinational firms release their earnings reports sooner than domestic firms.
T-Cell-Rich B-Cell Lymphoma Presenting in the Spleen: A Clinicopathologic Analysis of 3 Cases

We review the clinical, pathologic, and molecular genetic features of 3 splenic T-cellrich B-cell lymphomas and discuss their differential diagnosis. All patients presented with symptomatic splenomegaly and underwent diagnostic/therapeutic splenectomy. Microscopically, the spleen in all cases showed a micronodular proliferation of lymphoid cells. A proportion of the nodules demonstrated central hyalinization or sclerosis. There was also an exuberant extramedullary hematopoiesis. On immunohistochemical stain, the nodules consisted predominantly of small T cells with scattered large atypical B cells. The clonal nature of the atypical B cells was confirmed by polymerase chain reaction assays for immunoglobulin heavy-chain gene rearrangement. In the H&E sections, the differential diagnoses included Hodgkin's lymphoma, follicular lymphoma, peripheral T-cell lymphoma, and nonneoplastic granulomatous process. The presence of exuberant extramedullary hematopoiesis also raised the possibility of a chronic myeloproliferative disorder. The combined morphologic, immunohistochemical, and molecular genetic data are essential for a correct diagnosis of splenic T-cell-rich B-cell lymphoma.
Surface integral equation based discontinuous Galerkin method for impedance surface objects

This paper investigates the discontinuous Galerkin method based on surface integral equations for the simulation of the electromagnetic scattering problem from objects with impedance boundary condition (IBC). The new surface integral equation is formulated by a proper dual paring to form a reaction integral, which is able to easily simulate scattering from objects with different IBCs even from the perfect electric conductors (PEC) and the perfect magnetic conductors (PMC). Due to the discontinuous Galerkin scheme, it is possible to employ non-conformal surface discretization of the objects. In addition, the multilevel fast multipole algorithm (MLFMA) is implemented to reduce the computational complexity. Numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the performance of the proposed formulations.
An Extended TAM to Explore Behavioural Intention of Consumers to Use M-Commerce

This study proposes a research framework that integrates personal innovativeness, perceived risk, cost and enjoyment with the technology acceptance model (TAM). We used the proposed model to explore the antecedents of consumer behavioural intention (BI) to adopt mobile commerce (m-commerce). Excluding missing answers and invalid questionnaires, 477 valid responses were collected. In addition to confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), we used structural equation modelling (SEM) to examine the relationships among the constructs in the proposed model. Our findings indicated that the younger group (under 30) had lower stickiness to m-commerce. Among the constructs, perceived enjoyment (PE) had the most significant influence on BI, followed by attitude, perceived ease of use (PEOU), perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived risk. Our research results could be used as a guide and reference for m-commerce service providers to improve and operate their services.
Double-push skating versus V2 and V1 skating on uphill terrain in cross-country skiing.

PURPOSE The aims of the study were a) to compare the double-push skating technique with the V2 and the V1 skating techniques on an uphill terrain by a kinematic and kinetic analysis, b) to provide kinetic and kinematic data of the V1 technique at maximal skiing speeds, and c) to test the hypotheses that the double-push skating technique is faster compared with the V2 and the V1 skating techniques. METHODS Six elite skiers performed maximum speed sprints over a 60-m uphill section (7 degrees -10 degrees) using the double-push, the V2, and the V1 techniques. Pole and plantar forces and cycle characteristics were analyzed. RESULTS The double-push skating technique was approximately 4.3% faster (P < 0.05) compared with the V2 skating technique and equally fast compared with the V1 skating technique. The double-push and the V2 techniques demonstrated longer cycle lengths, lower cycle rates (both P < 0.05), and equal poling frequencies and pole forces compared with the V1 technique. Cycle length, peak foot force, and knee extension ranges of motion and velocities were higher in the double-push technique compared with the V2 technique (all P values <0.05). Center of pressure was located more laterally in the double-push technique compared with the other two techniques (P < 0.05). All measured skiing speeds were drastically higher compared with former studies. CONCLUSION The higher skiing speeds of the V1 and the double-push techniques compared with the V2 technique stress the mechanical advantage of those techniques on uphill terrain. Because of larger cycle lengths, lower cycle rate, longer recovery times, and equal poling frequency, the double-push technique might be seen as more economic on steep uphills compared with the V1 technique. From a tactical point of view compared with the V1 technique, the double-push technique needs less space due to less lateral displacement, and no technique transitions are necessary when entering and leaving an uphill section.
Political Marketing

ABSTRACT Political marketing is a relatively new approach to analysing political activity that draws upon management marketing assumptions to describe political behaviour. These assumptions are explicitly grounded in neoclassical economic assertions about behaviour. In political science these assumptions are utilised by orthodox rational choice theory. Thus, political marketing can be located within this perspective. Rational choice provides a series of analytic models through which ontological implications can be derived, and predictions made. Yet, the political marketing approach seeks to build upon orthodox rational choice accounts, by introducing a normative element to this perspective, prescribing the internalisation of these assumptions in order to achieve the desired objective. Further, this normative aspect claims that the adoption of marketing improves the democratic process. However, rational choice is an analytical ‘toolkit’ which does not seek to make normative claims. Indeed, normative arguments are inconsistent with rational choice, which seeks to provide a scientific, value-free approach to political analysis, and, consequently, the analytical and normative aspects of political marketing need to be rendered explicit and such normative aspects challenged.
Influence of age on short-term complications after intraoperative radiotherapy in women after breast-conserving surgery.

BACKGROUND We investigated the influence of age on short-term complications in women undergoing intraoperative radiotherapy (IORT) for early breast cancer. PATIENTS AND METHODS We retrospectively analyzed data of 188 women who underwent IORT during breast-conserving surgery (BCS). The study group consisted of 54 patients aged 70 years or older. One hundred and thirty four patients aged less than 70 years served as the control group. RESULTS In both collectives, the acute toxicity was low. There were no significant differences regarding type and duration of surgery, and type of radiation treatment, comparing both collectives. The most frequent postoperative side-effects were haematoma/suggillation (13/54, 24.1% vs. 28/134, 20.9%; p=0.633). There was a significantly higher incidence of postoperative axillary haematoma in the study group (10/54, 18.5% vs. 10/134, 7.5%; p=0.026). CONCLUSION Acute toxicity after BCS with IORT in women aged 70 years and older does not seem to be higher compared to younger patients.
Total Quality Management in the higher education sector: A literature review from an international and Australian perspective

In the past decade, much has been written about Total Quality Management (TQM) and Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) in the manufacturing and healthcare industries; however, less attention has been paid to the application of these quality approaches in the higher education sector. This literature review will focus on higher education institutions in the US, UK and Australia to identify current quality management practices. The review, which will commence with the early TQM writings in higher education and proceed throughout the 1990s, will demonstrate that the degree of TQM development in education has not kept pace with that of TQM in the manufacturing and healthcare industries.
On Subgroups of the Pentagon Group

Given a graph Γ with vertex set X, the graph group of Γ, denoted by G(Γ), is the group generated by the elements of X subject to the relations xy = yx for each pair x and y of adjacent vertices in Γ. In the literature graph groups are also known as partially commutative or right angled Artin groups. It has been known for some time that certain surface groups are embeddable into graph groups [4, 1]. In [4] it was shown that the fundamental group of a closed orientable surfaces of genus 1 + (n − 4)2 embeds into the graph group of the n-gon for n ≥ 4. Crisp and Wiest [1] deal with all surface groups which can possibly be embedded into a graph group and their embeddings are, in addition, quasi-isometric. The methods in these two papers are topological. The purpose of this note is to establish the following result which implies that the fundamental group of every closed orientable surface is embeddable into the graph group of the pentagon. This result appears to be new and its proof is fairly short and purely algebraic.
Falling Out of the Home Owner Market

Abstract By and large the tenure change literature has focused on the shift from renting to owning. The converse process, the move from ownership to renting, has received less attention. In this paper we provide a context for examining who ‘drops out’ of the home owner market. The results show that families with children are less likely to be able to remain in the home owner market than couples and, conversely, that two income earners are more likely to be able to stay in the market or buy another dwelling after a spell in renting than a one income earner. Although those results are somewhat expected, we provide additional new information on the nature of temporary moves out of the home owner market and returns at a later time, and on the seemingly greater role of accidental effects on exit from the home owner market than entrance into that market.
Qualifying for Unemployment Insurance: An Empirical Analysis

Little is known about the effect of unemployment insurance on employment durations. In this paper, the authors take advantage of a unique accidental experiment in the Canadian unemployment insurance system which created an exogenous increase in the entrance requirement (the number of weeks an individual must work to qualify for benefits) of up to four weeks in some regions. The authors identify the effects of this increase primarily by comparing the hazard rate out of employment for the experimental year, 1990, with that for the preceding year in regions where other parameters of the unemployment insurance system do not change. Copyright 1997 by Royal Economic Society.
Multi-Layer Proposal Network for People Counting in Crowded Scene

It is a challenging task to detect people in crowded scene owing to the heavy occlusion and small object characteristic of crowed people. In this paper we propose a multi-layer regional-based convolutional network to address the tasks of people detection in the crowded scenes. Unlike the traditional methods, we propose an end-to-end framework that uses the convolutional network as feature extractor followed by a proposal selecting network which generates candidate proposals online and performs the location optimization simultaneously. In the feature extracting section, we use unpooling layer and deconvolution layer to adjust the different layers' feature maps with different size and fusion the multi-layer feature maps as ROIs features. Then by separately detecting the heads of people, our system gets rid of the problems caused by occlusion and achieves robust detection results in the case that no matter whether the head is towards or backwards to the camera. Experimental results show that it greatly outperforms traditional methods.
Segmental identification of research and development costs in investment decisions by the Greek banking sector

The growth and expansion of firms into foreign markets have resulted in the aggregation of financial information that includes non-homogeneous elements. This paper seeks to investigate the difficulties of reporting on segments of a business. Emphasis will be laid on analysing the existing accounting recognition and measurement difficulties deriving from reporting research and development (R&D) expenditures in the light of investment decisions by the Greek banking sector. In conclusion, this study indicates that there are accounting and auditing problems of defined, measured and disclosed R&D to users of financial statements. Despite these difficulties, the importance of R&D expenditures will increase, as the capital market grows and there is a constant need to supply reliable accounting information.