Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
EX VITRO ROOTING OF THREE BLACK PEPPER CULTIVARS

: Compared to propagation method via herbaceous cuttings, micropropagation presents higher multiplication rate in less space and time and better phytosanitary control, but with higher costs. The induction of the root system during the acclimatization phase is an alternative to reduce costs in the in vitro propagation system. In order to induce roots in the acclimatization phase, the effect of different NAA plant regulator concentrations on the ex vitro rooting and acclimatization for the production of black pepper seedlings was evaluated. The experimental design was in randomized blocks, in a 3x4 factorial scheme, with three black pepper cultivars: ‘Apra’, ‘Bragantina’ and ‘Kuthiravally’ and four NAA concentrations: 26.85, 53.70; 80.56; 134.26 µmol/L, six replicates with two plants per plot. The variables evaluated were: survival and rooting rate; roots number per shoot (RN); length of the longest root (LR); number of leaves (NL), root dry matter (RDM) leaf area and and shoot dry matter (LSDM). Data obtained for each variable were submitted to analysis of variance, considering the 3 x 4 factorial model, with three cultivars and four NAA doses, and when significant by the F test, the mean comparison test, the Tukey test (p <0.05), was applied. There was difference for variables NR, LR, NL, LSDM for the source of variation cultivar versus NAA doses, demonstrating the presence of interaction between factors and that the NAA effect depends on concentration and cultivar used, that is, the cultivar specifically responds to NAA concentration, being necessary to evaluate the results of interactions. However, for variable RDM, the difference was due to cultivar, with no interaction with NAA concentration. Shoot rooting can be induced during the acclimatization phase as a viable alternative for the three black pepper cultivars. All NAA concentrations promote rooting, but the ‘Kuthiravally’ cultivar is more sensitive to rhizogenesis, and lower concentrations are recommended to reduce production costs.
Analysis of the effects of the aortic conduit’s geometry and mechanical behavior on heart valve prosthesis’ test bench characterization

Any medical device, before reaching the market, has to follow a precise path: first preclinical trials that involve in vitro and in vivo test and then clinical trials. For cardiac valve prosthesis the information on the required procedures is contained in the ISO 5840:2021 in which is available the description of all the tests that need to be performed on a new prosthesis. In particular a pulsatile test is mandatory, however when describing its apparatus no indications are given on the characteristics of the tube downstream the aortic valve. As a result, this tube is often a straight, rigid conduit, not at all representative of the aorta. This work concerns itself with modifying this conduit to introduce first the geometry, characterized by the Valsalva sinuses, and then the ascending aorta’s compliance. In order to do this, a complete characterization is performed on a commercial polymeric material, the Elastic 50 A resin by Formlabs. In particular several tests were performed including a tensile test to find the elastic modulus and cyclic test to ensure survival to testing. The results obtained were used to 3D print the conduit with the correct geometry and compliance. Then, according to the Standard, pulsatile tests were performed on three heart valve prosthesis: a mechanical, a polymeric, and a biological one; in three configurations: standard, rigid with Valsalva sinuses and compliant with Valsalva sinuses. With the complete characterization it was possible to obtain the aortic phantom and use it during testing. From said tests emerged that the introduction of the Valsalva sinuses led to a decrease in regurgitation, due to vortex formation. The compliance instead led to an increase in regurgitation due to backflow from the tube’s pulsatile behaviour. The effect on the valves was also related to the type of prostheses tested. From these results we can see how the lack of precise directions on the aortic downstream conduit in the Standard leaves everyone the freedom to test the valves in non-physiological conditions that cannot properly predict how the valve will perform in the human body. Key-words: heart valve prosthesis, aortic phantom, standard, geometry, mechanical properties, 3D printing.
Discrimination in Hiring Based on Potential and Realized Fertility: Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment

Due to conventional gender norms, women are more likely to be in charge of childcare than men. From an employer’s perspective, in their fertile age they are also at “risk” of pregnancy. Both factors potentially affect hiring practices of firms. We conduct a largescale correspondence test in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, sending out approx. 9,000 job applications, varying job candidate’s personal characteristics such as marital status and age of children. We find evidence that, for part-time jobs, married women with older kids, who likely finished their childbearing cycle and have more projectable childcare chores than women with very young kids, are at a significant advantage vis-à-vis other groups of women. At the same time, married, but childless applicants, who have a higher likelihood to become pregnant, are at a disadvantage compared to single, but childless applicants to part-time jobs. Such effects are not present for full-time jobs, presumably, because by applying to these in contrast to part-time jobs, women signal that they have arranged for external childcare.
M Ay / J U N E 2 0 0 2 Predicting Exchange Rate Volatility: Genetic Programming versus Garch and Riskmetrics  the Benchmark Model

I t is well established that the volatility of asset prices displays considerable persistence. That is, large movements in prices tend to be followed by more large moves, producing positive serial correlation in squared returns. Thus, current and past volatility can be used to predict future volatility. This fact is important to both financial market practitioners and regulators. Professional traders in equity and foreign exchange markets must pay attention not only to the expected return from their trading activity but also to the risk that they incur. Risk-averse investors will wish to reduce their exposure during periods of high volatility, and improvements in risk-adjusted performance depend upon the accuracy of volatility predictions. Many current models of risk management , such as Value-at-Risk (VaR), use volatility predictions as inputs. The bank capital adequacy standards recently proposed by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision illustrate the importance of sophisticated risk management techniques for regulators. These norms are aimed at providing international banks with greater incentives to manage financial risk in a sophisticated fashion, so that they might economize on capital. One such system that is widely used is RiskMetrics, developed by J.P. Morgan. A core component of the RiskMetrics system is a statistical model—a member of the large ARCH/ GARCH family—that forecasts volatility. Such ARCH/ GARCH models are parametric. That is, they make specific assumptions about the functional form of the data generation process and the distribution of error terms. Parametric models such as GARCH are easy to estimate and readily interpretable, but these advantages may come at a cost. Other, perhaps much more complex models may be better representations of the underlying data generation process. If so, then procedures designed to identify these alternative models have an obvious payoff. Such procedures are described as nonparametric. Instead of specifying a particular functional form for the data generation process and making distributional assumptions about the error terms, a nonparametric procedure will search for the best fit over a large set of alternative functional forms. This article investigates the performance of a genetic program applied to the problem of forecasting volatility in the foreign exchange market. Genetic programming is a computer search and problem-solving methodology that can be adapted for use in nonparametric estimation. It has been shown to detect patterns in the conditional mean of foreign exchange and equity returns that are not accounted for by standard statistical models These achievements suggest that …
Gain function analysis of sand transport in a turbulent air flow

Abstract Recent work on the modelling of sand transport processes in the wind is concentrating on the effects of turbulence and, in particular, on flow accelerations and particle inertia. An approach is developed here in which the problem is cast in the frequency domain using the particle momentum equation which balances grain inertia against resultant steady and acceleration related fluid forces. A transport gain function is defined which relates the normalized transport spectrum to the normalized, turbulent flow spectrum. Experiments are reported in which the gain function was determined using a hot wire anemometer and a new pin impact probe to make high-frequency measurements of the velocity and sand transport profiles within the saltation layer in a small laboratory wind tunnel. The results were subjected to frequency analysis and the corresponding wind and transport spectra were obtained. Preliminary calculations suggest that the transport gain function is reasonably flat over the range up to 0.4 Hz and, therefore, models based upon gain function analysis may more properly account for sand transport within a turbulent boundary layer.
Black Box Optimization in Engine Development

This thesis discusses the possibility to use modern optimizations methods in engine development and more specifically how to optimize a five cylinder, naturally aspirated engine when serial intake valves (SIV) have been added to its configuration. Both the SIV settings and the hardware of the engine can be optimized. The optimization problem to be solved is a ”black-box” optimization problem, since the objective function’s form as well as its derivatives are unknown. Also, each function value takes considerable time to compute. We evaluated five algorithms on a simpler engine problem and found that Powell’s NEWUOA and Gutmann’s rbfSolve were worth utilizing since they gave the best improvement over the starting solution and also used the least number of function evaluations. The result is promising. Our calculations show that the SIV can decrease the fuel consumption up to 14% compared to that of an engine without SIV and about 5% compared to that of a non-optimized engine with SIV. Our conclusion is that ”black-box” optimization can be a valuable tool for improvements in the area of engine development. The outcome of this thesis is of interest for engine developers, both for its emphasis on SIV and for its analysis of optimization in engine development. The thesis should also interest someone who wants to introduce the use of optimization algorithms in new areas of specializations, with similar black-box optimization problems.
HERMAN DELEECK CENTRE FOR SOCIAL POLICY

Redistribution is usually understood in terms of income; as a way to rank individuals as well as to determine taxable capacity or benefit eligibility. Yet, it is increasingly argued that more prominence should be given to the joint distribution of income and wealth and interest into the taxation of wealth for redistributive purposes has largely increased. By including the HFCS data into the microsimulation model EUROMOD we add two novel aspects to the literature. First, we include the analysis of taxes on wealth and wealth transfers. Second, we evaluate redistributive effects of tax-benefit systems against the joint income-wealth distribution instead of income only. We show that expressing living standards in terms of both income and wealth results in considerable reranking of individuals, which in turn leads to a lower redistributive impact of tax-benefit systems than is traditionally considered.
Measurement Equivalence of Trucking Industry- Specific Safety Climate Scales

Precise measurement and understanding of employees’ safety climate perception is critical in promotion of a safe environment in an organization. The current study aimed at testing measurement equivalence (ME) of trucking industry-specific safety climate scales. ME refers to whether a psychological assessment system has consistent wording, scaling, and construct scoring across different measurement conditions and consequently can measure the same attributes. For both organization- and group-level safety climate scales, ME was supported to the configural, metric, and partial scalar invariance levels. The findings suggest that the safety climate scales’ measurement structure holds consistent meaning across different trucking companies and the scale scores can be used for comparison of safety climate across different companies and safety climate interventions.
Synthesis of ZnO Nanoparticles Doped Zirconium Oxychloride by PSTA BATAN Yogyakarta Production as Photoanode Semiconduktors for Dye Sensitized Solar Cell

Slamet D, Krisdiyanto D, Khamidinal. 2017. Synthesis of ZnO Nanoparticles Doped Zirconium Oxychloride by PSTA BATAN Yogyakarta Production as Photoanode Semiconduktors for Dye Sensitized Solar Cell. Proc Internat Conf Sci Engin 1: 91-97. Dye Sensitized Solar Cell (DSSC) is a device for light conversion to be electrical energy based on the concept of semiconducting sensitivity of the wide gap. This study aims to synthesis nanoparticles of ZnO: Zr semiconductors and tested the performance of ZnO: Zr nanoparticles on the DSSC system. ZnO Doped Zr Nanoparticles from precursor by Science and Technology Acceleration Center of National Nuclear Energy Agency (PSTA BATAN) Yogyakarta production was synthesized by gel-combustion method, and tested its performance on DSSC system. Effect of doping concentration variation Zr (0, 1, 3 and 5%) on the structure crystals and optical properties of ZnO studied by X-ray diffraction, infra-red spectra, and UV-Visible absorbance spectra. In this study also studied about the effect of Zr doping on changes in the parameters of crystal structures such as distances between fields of crystals , crystals lattice (a and c), unit cell volume, crystallite size, microstrain (ε), dislocation density (δ), and the textural coefficient . The synthesized nanoparticles meet the criteria 3-dimensional nanostructure of hexagonal wurtzite crystals. Uptake ZnO infrared radiation shows an increase in intensity as well shift in wave number 610 - 400 due to doping Zr. Doping Zr also influences the electronic structure of semiconductors characterized by the change of bandgap energy from 3,10-3,05 eV. Semiconductor performance test nanoparticles on the DSSC system showed a 1% Zr doping concentration increasing the voltage by 174 mV and the stability of the solar cell than the cell ZnO solar without doping that produces a voltage of 128 mV.
Passive digital phenotyping

to be associated with changes in social functioning 31 . A recent study demonstrated the feasibility of such a warning system in schizophrenia. This study showed anomalies in mobility and social behaviour as measured through smartphones two weeks prior to a relapse 18 . Similar results have been found in the context of bipolar disorder. By using a variety of different smartphone modali-General
The role of the soil seed bank for the restoration potential of eroded alpine grassland

The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021–2030 has launched nature conservation, environmental protection, and ecosystem services' restoration on the global environmental policy agenda. However, particularly high mountain habitats being subject to erosion are up to now hardly restorable. Erosion with associated loss of vegetation, soil, and its fertility, is one of the most urgent environmental problems throughout the world. Consequently, we analyzed the soil seed bank of calcareous high‐mountain grassland in the European Alps to reveal the natural regeneration potential after shallow erosion events. We applied a chronosequence approach taking recently eroded grassland areas (<5 years) as well as areas with earlier erosion events (>5 up to 10 and >27 years) into account. Our results revealed that the vegetation of old eroded areas was not closely similar to the surrounding intact grasslands. However, it was well differentiated from the initial stages of young and intermediate eroded areas' vegetation and had higher plant cover and species richness. The old eroded areas' seed bank had higher seed density and species richness compared to younger areas. While typical mountain meadow species were present in the seedbank of eroded areas, the assessed indicator species of both, younger and older eroded areas did not resemble the ones of the aboveground vegetation. We conclude that the seed bank has important but limited potential for the restoration of the complete species range of calcareous eroded alpine grasslands. This implies that additional restoration measures are needed to reintroduce species absent from the seed bank.
Dalton By-pass: site investigation in an area of abandoned haematite mine workings

Summary The choice of the public for a route for the Dalton By-pass lay through an extensive area of well-worked and abandoned haematite mine workings. The geology of the area and the method of mining are described, and the reasons are given for the selection of the preferred route. The problems associated with the route are discussed, together with the detailed planning necessary to organize an extensive complex site investigation, involving almost 700 boreholes in a roadway length of 4½ km. A typical cutting is examined in some detail to illustrate the contractual and technical problems connected with the required excavation of a cutting slope directly over a major iron ore sop; these problems include the removal and treatment of the water-filled collapse cone over the rubble-filled cavern left by the ore extraction. The relative costing of an elevated structure and an embankment founded on collapsed workings are discussed. Some engineering conclusions are drawn from the site investigation regarding the suitablty of embankment fill, the rate of settlement of embankments on alluvium, and the stability of a rock slope.
Echantillonnage compressif appliqué à la microscopie de fluorescence et à la microscopie de super résolution

Mes travaux de these portent sur l’application de la theorie de l’echantillonnagecompressif (Compressed Sensing ou Compressive Sampling, CS) a la microscopie defluorescence, domaine en constante evolution et outil privilegie de la recherche fondamentaleen biologie. La recente theorie du CS a demontre que pour des signauxparticuliers, dits parcimonieux, il est possible de reduire la frequence d’echantillonnagede l’information a une valeur bien plus faible que ne le predit la theorie classiquede l’echantillonnage. La theorie du CS stipule qu’il est possible de reconstruireun signal, sans perte d’information, a partir de mesures aleatoires fortement incompleteset/ou corrompues de ce signal a la seule condition que celui-ci presente unestructure parcimonieuse.Nous avons developpe une approche experimentale inedite de la theorie du CSa la microscopie de fluorescence, domaine ou les signaux sont naturellement parcimonieux.La methode est basee sur l’association d’une illumination dynamiquestructuree a champs large et d’une detection rapide a point unique. Cette modalitepermet d’inclure l’etape de compression pendant l’acquisition. En outre, nous avonsmontre que l’introduction de dimensions supplementaires (2D+couleur) augmentela redondance du signal, qui peut etre pleinement exploitee par le CS afin d’atteindredes taux de compression tres importants.Dans la continuite de ces travaux, nous nous sommes interesses a une autre applicationdu CS a la microscopie de super resolution, par localisation de moleculesindividuelles (PALM/STORM). Ces nouvelles techniques de microscopie de fluorescenceont permis de s’affranchir de la limite de diffraction pour atteindre des resolutionsnanometriques. Nous avons explore la possibilite d’exploiter le CS pour reduiredrastiquement les temps d’acquisition et de traitement.Mots clefs : echantillonnage compressif, microscopie de fluorescence, parcimonie,microscopie de super resolution, redondance, traitement du signal, localisation demolecules uniques, bio-imagerie
hdpGLM: An R Package to Estimate Heterogeneous Effects in Generalized Linear Models Using Hierarchical Dirichlet Process

The existence of latent clusters with different responses to a treatment is a major concern in scientific research, as latent effect heterogeneity often emerges due to latent or unobserved features – e.g., genetic characteristics, personality traits, or hidden motivations – of the subjects. Conventional random-and fixed-effects methods cannot be applied to that heterogeneity if the group markers associated with that heterogeneity are latent or unobserved. Alternative methods that combine regression models and clustering procedures using Dirichlet process are available, but these methods are complex to implement, especially for non-linear regression models with discrete or binary outcomes. This article discusses the R package hdpGLM as a means of implementing a novel hierarchical Dirichlet process approach to estimate mixtures of generalized linear models outlined in Ferrari (2020). The methods implemented make it easy for researchers to investigate heterogeneity in the effect of treatment or background variables and identify clusters of subjects with differential effects. This package provides several features for out-of-the-box estimation and to generate numerical summaries and visualizations of the results. A comparison with other similar R packages is provided.
Strength and Conditioning Programs to Increase Bat Swing Velocity for Collegiate Baseball Players

Bat swing velocity (BSV) is an imperative element of a successful baseball hitting performance. This study aimed to investigate the anthropometric and physiological variables associated with BSV and explore strength and conditioning programs to increase BSV in collegiate baseball players. Seventy-eight collegiate baseball players (mean age ± SD, 19.4 ± 1.0 years) participated in this study. Maximum BSV (km/h) was measured using Blast Baseball (Blast Motion Inc., Carlsbad, CA, USA). The anthropometric and physiological variables measured were height, body mass, lean body mass, grip strength, back muscle strength, the 30 m sprint, standing long jump, and backward overhead medicine ball throwing. Analysis using Pearson’s product-moment correlation coefficient showed a weak but significant positive correlation between all anthropometric measurements to BSV. Significant relationships existed between physiological variables of hand grip, back muscle strength, and backward overhead medicine ball throwing, but not the standing long jump and 30 m sprint. These data show that BSV is related to anthropometric and physiological variables, particularly upper and lower body strength and full-body explosive power. Based on the results of this study, we designed examples of sound training programs to increase BSV. Strength and conditioning coaches may want to consider using this information when designing a training program for collegiate baseball players.