Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Testing ordered alternatives in the presence of incomplete data

Abstract In testing the null hypothesis of no treatment effects in a randomized block experiment, a researcher may restrict attention to an ordered alternative and thereby increase the power of his test. Jonckheere and later Page proposed such test statistics based on the Kendall and Spearman correlation coefficients. Motivated by notions of distance between permutations, we generalize Jonckheere's and Page's tests to the situation in which one or more observations are missing from one or more blocks. Conditional on the pattern of missing observations, the resulting statistics are shown to be asymptotically normal. For a particular pattern of missing observations, the asymptotic efficiency of the extended Page test is found, in many cases, to be not much lower than for the standard Page test.
The involvement of the phenylpropanoid and jasmonate pathways in methyl jasmonate-induced soft rot resistance in kiwifruit (Actinidia chinensis)

Botryosphaeria dothidea is a major postharvest causal agent of soft rot in kiwifruit. Methyl jasmonate (MeJA) is an important plant hormone that participates as a plant defense against pathogens from a signal molecule. However, the impact and regulatory mechanism of MeJA on the attenuation of kiwifruit fungal decay remains unknown. This work investigated the effects of exogenous MeJA on the enzyme activity, metabolite content and gene expression of the phenylpropanoid and jasmonate pathways in kiwifruit. The results revealed that MeJA inhibited the expansion of B. dothidea lesion diameter in kiwifruit (Actinidia chinensis cv. ‘Hongyang’), enhanced the activity of enzymes (phenylalanine ammonia lyase, cinnamate 4-hydroxylase, 4-coumarate: coenzyme A ligase, cinnamyl alcohol dehydrogenase, peroxidase and polyphenol oxidase), and upregulated the expression of related genes (AcPAL, AcC4H, Ac4CL, and AcCAD). The accumulation of metabolites (total phenolics, flavonoids, chlorogenic acid, caffeic acid and lignin) with inhibitory effects on pathogens was promoted. Moreover, MeJA enhanced the expression of AcLOX, AcAOS, AcAOC, AcOPR3, AcJAR1, AcCOI1 and AcMYC2 and reduced the expression of AcJAZ. These results suggest that MeJA could display a better performance in enhancing the resistance of disease in kiwifruit by regulating the phenylpropanoid pathway and jasmonate pathway.
Evaluation of solid-state camera systems in varying illumination conditions

We propose a practical method for the expeditious determi- nation of the performance of imaging CCD and CMOS camera systems. Special attention is paid to the operation of these devices in varying illumination conditions, which is typical to many surveillance and con- sumer electronics applications. One emerging application utilizing imag- ing sensors in variable illumination conditions is the third generation mo- bile phone, which will deliver wirelessly pictures, graphics, and video. In our method, determination of the system performance is based on the imaging of a calibrated gray scale test chart as a function of illuminance. At each level of illumination the system response is characterized by a signal to random noise figure. The signal is calculated as the difference of the system response to the lightest and darkest areas of the gray scale. The random noise is measured as the standard deviation of the gray values in a difference of two successive images of the test pattern. The proposed method is applied in three exemplary cases: 1. compari- son of inexpensive CCD and CMOS cameras, 2. analysis of the effect of wireless image transmission, and 3. comparison of the effects of auto- matic and manual gain controls. © 2001 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation
Application of shrinkage estimation in linear regression models with autoregressive errors

In this paper, we consider the shrinkage and penalty estimation procedures in the linear regression model with autoregressive errors of order p when it is conjectured that some of the regression parameters are inactive. We develop the statistical properties of the shrinkage estimation method including asymptotic distributional biases and risks. We show that the shrinkage estimators have a significantly higher relative efficiency than the classical estimator. Furthermore, we consider the two penalty estimators: least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) and adaptive LASSO estimators, and numerically compare their relative performance with that of the shrinkage estimators. A Monte Carlo simulation experiment is conducted for different combinations of inactive predictors and the performance of each estimator is evaluated in terms of the simulated mean-squared error. This study shows that the shrinkage estimators are comparable to the penalty estimators when the number of inactive predictors in the model is relatively large. The shrinkage and penalty methods are applied to a real data set to illustrate the usefulness of the procedures in practice.
Essential? COVID-19 and highly educated Africans in Finland’s segmented labour market

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to characterise the position of highly educated African migrants in the Finnish labour market and to examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on that position.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is based on the biographical work stories of 17 highly educated African migrant workers in four occupation areas in Finland: healthcare, cleaning, restaurant and transport. The sample was partly purposively and partly theoretically determined. The authors used content driven thematic analysis technique, combined with by the biographical narrative concept of turning points.FindingsUsing the case of highly educated African migrants in the Finnish labour market, the authors show how student migration policies reinforce a pattern of division of labour and occupations that allocate migrant workers to typical low skilled low status occupations in the secondary sector regardless of level of education, qualification and work experience. They also show how the unique labour and skill demands of the COVID-19 pandemic incidentally made these typical migrant occupations essential, resulting in increased employment and work security for this group of migrant workers.Research limitations/implicationsThis research and the authors’ findings are limited in scope owing to sample size and methodology. To improve applicability of findings, future studies could expand the scope of enquiry using e.g. quantitative surveys and include other stakeholders in the study group.Originality/valueThe paper adds to the knowledge on how migration policies contribute to labour market dualisation and occupational segmentation in Finland, illustrated by the case of highly educated African migrant workers.
Aphid Pest Management in Sweet Pepper Field with Rapeseed as a Companion Crop

Sweet pepper, Capsicum annum L. is commercially grown vegetable grown for its nutritional and economical value. Sucking pests like aphids, whiteflies, thrips, mites, etc. are the major insect pest in sweet pepper fields. Farmers deliberately have been using chemical pesticides in their crop to manage various insect pest and such practices of using hazardous chemicals are harmful to human health and the biodiversity. Similarly, farmers don't have an idea of planting trap and/or companion plants and its role in natural control of pest. Hence, a study was conducted to know the population dynamics, especially to assess the aphid (Myzus persicae, Sulzer) population and its potential natural enemies by planting rapeseed as companion crop. This field experiment was conducted in six different locations of Bharatpur-23, Chitwan from Nov 2019 to Jan 2020 where three plots of sweet pepper were planted with rapeseed as companion crop and other three plots solely having no floral source around. Aphid population was recorded at weekly interval and its major natural enemies; ladybird beetle and syrphid fly. Abnormal data were squared root transformed and analyzed by using paired sample t-test. The result showed that the aphid population in sweet pepper field with companion crop was significantly lower than in sweet pepper grown without floral source (control). Highly significant number of ladybird beetles and syrphid flies were recorded in sweet pepper with companion crop compared to control. The finding is helpful to develop an integrated management protocol of sweet pepper pests with the practice of following conservation biological control strategy.
Inequality Decomposition by Population Subgroups

This paper examines the implications of imposing a weak aggregation condition on inequality indices, so that the overall inequality value can be computed from information concerning the size, mean, and inequality value of each population subgroup. It is shown that such decomposable inequality measures must be monotonic transformations of additively decomposable indices. The general functional form of decomposable indices is derived without assuming that the measures are differentiable. The analysis is suitable for extension to the many other kinds of indices for which a similar relationship between the overall index value and subaggregates is desirable.
Spider Mites Detection in Wheat Field Based on an Improved RetinaNet

As a daily staple food of more than one third of the world’s population, wheat is one of the main food crops in the world. The increase in wheat production will help meet the current global food security needs. In the process of wheat growth, diseases and insect pests have great influence on the yield, which leads to a significant decline. Wheat spider mites are the most harmful to wheat because they are too small to be found. Therefore, how to use deep learning to identify small pests is a hot spot in modern intelligent agriculture research. In this paper, we propose an improved RetinaNet model and train it on our own dataset of wheat spider mites. Firstly, the wheat spider mites dataset is expanded from 1959 to 9215 by using two different angles and image segmentation methods. Secondly, the wheat spider mite feature detection head is added to improve the identification of small targets. Thirdly, the feature pyramid in FPN is further optimized, and the high-resolution feature maps are fully utilized to fuse the regression information of shallow feature maps and the semantic information of deep feature maps. Finally, the anchor generation strategy is optimized according to the amount of mites. Experimental results on the newly established wheat mite dataset validated our proposed model, yielding 81.7% mAP, which is superior to other advanced object detection methods in detecting wheat spider mites.
The impact of grants’ capabilities on performance of local NGOs: Evidence from developing market

This study aimed at assessing grants capacity and performance of local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Jordan. It also aimed to find answers to key research questions: How do grants’ capabilities affect the performance of local NGOs)? Can NGOs maintain peer connections with local actors? Finding out the impact of different grants’ capabilities on the performance of local NGOs in Jordan will allow updating and order to inform the capacity building programs that are provided to local NGOs in Jordan by various stakeholders. NGOs performance proxy developed through two bases: American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) & common performance. While, grants’ capabilities are measured through five dimensions: governance and humanitarian principles, human resources, financial and accounting practices, procurement practices, and programmatic and monitoring practices. Different methods (interviews, questionnaires, and focus groups discussions) were used to collect the data from 69 local NGOs. The sample represents six groups located in different geographical areas. The study result indicates that there is a significant impact of the governance and human resource capacities on the performance of local NGOs in Jordan; while, there is no significant impact of the remaining grants’ capabilities factors on the performance of local NGOs. Finally, the study outlined the main challenges that local NGOs in Jordan face regarding access to funds
A Joint Approach of Morphological and UHPLC-HRMS Analyses to Throw Light on the Autochthonous ‘Verdole’ Chestnut for Nutraceutical Innovation of Its Waste

Nowadays, chestnut by-products are gaining a lot of interest as a low-cost raw material, exploitable for developing added-value products. This is in line with suitable chestnut by-products’ management, aimed at reducing the environmental impact, thus improving the chestnut industry’s competitiveness and economic sustainability. In this context, with the aim of valorizing local cultivars of European chestnuts (Castanea sativa Mill.), our attention focused on the Verdole cultivar, which has been characterized by using the UPOV guidelines for its distinctness, homogeneity, and stability. After harvesting, Verdole chestnuts were properly dissected to collect the outer and inner shells, and episperm. Each chestnut part, previously crushed, shredded, and passed through diverse sieves, underwent ultrasound-assisted extraction. The extracts obtained were evaluated for their total phenolic, flavonoid, and tannin content. The antiradical capacity by DPPH and ABTS assays, and the Fe(III) reducing power, were also evaluated. Although all the samples showed dose-dependent antioxidant efficacy, plant matrix size strongly impacted on extraction efficiency. LC-HRMS-based metabolic profiling highlighted the occurrence of different polyphenol subclasses, whose quantitative ratio varied among the chestnut parts investigated. The outer shell was more chemically rich than inner shell and episperm, according to its pronounced antioxidant activity. The polyphenol diversity of Verdole by-products is a resource not intended for disposal, appliable in the nutraceutical sector, thus realizing a new scenario in processing chestnut waste.
Evaluation of damage induced by inductively coupled plasma etching of 6H–SiC using Au Schottky barrier diodes

Surface damage of 6H–SiC induced by inductively coupled plasma (ICP) etching with a CF4/O2 gas mixture has been evaluated by Au Schottky barrier diodes formed on the etched surfaces. The influence of substrate dc bias has been studied. It is found that there is an optimum dc bias for ICP etching. Under the optimum dc bias voltage, Schottky barrier diodes on the etched surface are of high quality and are comparable with diodes formed on the control sample, indicating that a very low damage and low contamination surface is obtained after etching. A deterioration of etched surface has been observed for both smaller and larger dc biases compared to the optimum bias in term of characteristics of Schottky diodes. Explanations are provided for the observed dependence of Schottky barrier diode characteristics on the substrate dc bias.
Cantor Type Invariant Distributions in the Theory of Optimal Growth under Uncertainty

We study a one-sector stochastic optimal growth model, where the utility function is iso-elastic and the production function is of the Cobb–Douglas form. Production is affected by a multiplicative shock taking one of two values. We provide sufficient conditions on the parameters of the model under which the invariant distribution of the stochastic process of optimal output levels is of the Cantor type.
Universal amplitude ratios for three-dimensional self-avoiding walks

We have calculated exactly the number, the mean-square end-to-end distance, the mean-square radius of gyration, and the mean-square distance of a monomer from the origin for n-step self-avoiding walks on the simple cubic, diamond, body-centred cubic and face-centred cubic lattices, respectively, up to 20, 30, 16 and 13 steps by a computer. Two universal amplitude ratios are estimated.
1-bit Coding Reconfigurable Array for 2-D Wide-Angle Scanning

In this article, an $8\,\,{\times }$ 8 array with 2-D wide-angle scanning is proposed and studied. By integrating two p-i-n diodes on the feeding line, the radiated electric field of the element can present two different phase states of 0° and −180°. By introducing the elaborately designed two groups of fixed phase delay (FPD) in horizontal and vertical directions, the grating lobe of the 1-bit array is effectively mitigated. Simulated and measured results indicate that the proposed array can cover the beam from −60° to 60° with no grating lobe within a 2-D scanning scope from 9 to 10 GHz. The peak gain of the array is 17.3 dBi and the cross-polarization level at the main lobe is less than −20 dB. The proposed array has the advantages of being lightweight, low-cost, and easy to integrate. These features enable its applications in space-limited scenarios such as base stations and unmanned aerial vehicles.
Nominally two-dimensional waves in inclined film flow in channels of finite width

Traveling waves in inclined film flow in channels of finite width are never truly two-dimensional (2D) because of a long-range effect of sidewalls. The present study documents the characteristics of the first waves that are observed beyond the primary instability (termed nominally 2D) by taking measurements in a 3000 mm long inclined facility with adjustable width up to 450 mm using a fluorescence imaging technique. It is observed that nominally 2D waves are very persistent structures with their crests attaining a parabolic shape, which is symmetric with respect to the channel centerplane irrespective of the 3D content of the inlet forcing. The apex curvature of the parabola varies inversely with channel width and Reynolds number. The wave height is maximum at the centerplane and decreases to zero at the sidewalls, irrespective of the wetting properties of the system. The linear phase velocity of nominally 2D waves is always lower than predicted by the theory for small amplitude, 2D waves, and significant.
Preimplantation Developmental Competence of Bovine and Porcine Oocytes Activated by Zinc Chelation

Simple Summary Although naturally triggered by sperm, oocyte activation can be achieved artificially to improve the development of fertilized eggs, produce nuclear transfer embryos, and induce parthenogenetic development. Calcium and zinc are known to play an essential role in this process. Exploring the impact of oocyte artificial activation protocols on development across different mammalian models is critical before application to humans. Here, we report the production of bovine and porcine blastocysts by using a novel zinc chelator. Developmental rates and the expression of key transcription factors were compromised in bovine when using the zinc chelator compared to calcium-induced embryos. On the contrary, a new concentration and incubation time of the zinc chelator allowed higher developmental rates without affecting embryo quality in porcine. Our results contribute to understanding the role of zinc during oocyte activation and preimplantation embryo development across different mammalian species. Abstract After sperm-oocyte fusion, intracytoplasmic rises of calcium (Ca) induce the release of zinc (Zn) out of the oocyte (Zn sparks). Both phenomena are known to play an essential role in the oocyte activation process. Our work aimed to explore different protocols for activating bovine and porcine oocytes using the novel zinc chelator 1,10-phenanthroline (PHEN) and to compare developmental rates and quality to bovine IVF and parthenogenetic ionomycin-induced embryos in both species. Different incubation conditions for the zinc chelator were tested, including its combination with ionomycin. Embryo quality was assessed by immunofluorescence of SOX2, SOX17, OCT4, and CDX2 and total cell number at the blastocyst stage. Even though blastocyst development was achieved using a zinc chelator in bovine, bypassing calcium oscillations, developmental rates, and blastocyst quality were compromised compared to embryos generated with sperm-induced or ionomycin calcium rise. On the contrary, zinc chelation is sufficient to trigger oocyte activation in porcine. Additionally, we determined the optimal exposure to PHEN for this species. Zinc chelation and artificial induction of calcium rise combined did not improve developmental competence. Our results contribute to understanding the role of zinc during oocyte activation and preimplantation embryo development across different mammalian species.
On the Calculation of Maxwellian-averaged Capture Cross Sections

A recipe for the calculation of Maxwellian-averaged capture cross sections as a function of temperature kT from the existing excitation function is discussed. Detailed formulae are given to handle the various portions of this excitation function which in general contains both resolved resonance and an unresolved resonance parts. For the temperature region considered, the details of the thermal (0.0253 eV) capture cross section and a possible direct capture compoment are of importance. The treatment of resolved resonances depending on the characteristics of the resonance parameters is discussed
Deposition of Ultra Fine Particles Using a Gas Jet

Use of a gas jet for the transfer and deposition of metal or ceramic UFP has been studied. Individual particles having a diameter of less than 0.1 µm, are produced by the so-called gas evaporation method. Deposition of the UFP can be made by preparing a colliding gas flow with UFP on a solid surface. Uniformly distributed deposition of different metals or ceramics, regardless of specific gravity, can also be made. A similar technique is also usable with frozen gas UFP (CO2 for example). A CO2 UFP blizzard can remove photoresist without contamination or damage to a substrate (thin film chromium coated on glass). The transfer and deposit technique could be a basic method for handling UFP for industrial application.
A Statistically Precise and Relatively Simple Method of Estimating the Bio-Assay with Quantal Response, Based on the Logistic Function

so that, if the logit P is plotted against x, the points will fall on a straight line, with a as the intercept and ,B the slope. The function (1) has had many statistical applications [37] and has been advanced for use in bio-assay by, among others, Emmens [17] Wilson and Worcester [46], and Berkson [7]. In bio-assay x measures the "dose"' and P the "response. " If the response is measured, not in terms of a continuous scale such as weight or length, but in terms of the observed proportion p affected out of n "exposed," the response is said to be "quantal," and in this statistical model it is assumed that the observation p at x can be considered a random variable binomially distributed around the "true" P at x, with variance o -2 = PQ/n. For this situation, the present writer has advanced a method [71 of calculating a and b, which are estimates of a and a respectively, presently called the "minimum logit X2 estimate," based on a minimization of the following quantity, called the "logit X2. ",