Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Epidemiological and evolutionary management of plant resistance: optimizing the deployment of cultivar mixtures in time and space in agricultural landscapes

The management of genes conferring resistance to plant–pathogens should make it possible to control epidemics (epidemiological perspective) and preserve resistance durability (evolutionary perspective). Resistant and susceptible cultivars must be strategically associated according to the principles of cultivar mixture (within a season) and rotation (between seasons). We explored these questions by modeling the evolutionary and epidemiological processes shaping the dynamics of a pathogen population in a landscape composed of a seasonal cultivated compartment and a reservoir compartment hosting pathogen year‐round. Optimal deployment strategies depended mostly on the molecular basis of plant–pathogen interactions and on the agro‐ecological context before resistance deployment, particularly epidemic intensity and landscape connectivity. Mixtures were much more efficient in landscapes in which between‐field infections and infections originating from the reservoir were more prevalent than within‐field infections. Resistance genes requiring two mutations of the pathogen avirulence gene to be broken down, rather than one, were particularly useful when infections from the reservoir predominated. Combining mixture and rotation principles were better than the use of the same mixture each season as (i) they controlled epidemics more effectively in situations in which within‐field infections or infections from the reservoir were frequent and (ii) they fulfilled the epidemiological and evolutionary perspectives.
Migrating Legacy Software to the Cloud with ARTIST

As cloud computing allows improving the quality of software and aims at reducing costs of operating software, more and more software is delivered as a service. However, moving from a software as a product strategy to delivering software as a service hosted in cloud environments is very ambitious. This is due to the fact that managing software modernization is still a major challenge, especially when paradigm shifts, such as moving to cloud environments, are targeted that imply fundamental changes to how software is modernized, delivered, and sold. Thus, in addition to technical aspects, business aspects need also to be considered. ARTIST proposes a comprehensive software modernization approach covering business and technical aspects. In particular, ARTIST employs Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) techniques to automate the reverse engineering of legacy software and forward engineering of cloud-based software in a way that modernized software truly benefits from targeted cloud environments. Therewith, ARTIST aims at reducing the risks, time, and costs of software modernization and lowers the barriers to exploit cloud computing capabilities and new business models.
What Do Motor “Recovery” and “Compensation” Mean in Patients Following Stroke?

There is a lack of consistency among researchers and clinicians in the use of terminology that describes changes in motor ability following neurological injury. Specifically, the terms and definitions of motor compensation and motor recovery have been used in different ways, which is a potential barrier to interdisciplinary communication. This Point of View describes the problem and offers a solution in the form of definitions of compensation and recovery at the neuronal, motor performance, and functional levels within the framework of the International Classification of Functioning model.
European Starlings and Their Effect on Native Cavity‐Nesting Birds

Abstract: European Starlings ( Sturnus vulgaris ) were introduced to New York City in 1890 and have since become one of North America's most common species. Starlings are aggressive competitors and commonly usurp cavities of other hole‐nesting species. These characters make it a clear choice for a species whose invasion is likely to have significantly affected native cavity‐nesting birds. Using Christmas Bird Counts and Breeding Bird Surveys, I compared the mean densities of 27 native cavity‐nesting species before and after invasion of sites by starlings. Contrary to expectations, only 10 of the species exhibited significant effects potentially attributable to starlings, and only half of these were in part negative. However, in 2 of the 5 species that showed negative effects, evidence for a decline in one analysis was countered by an increase in the other, whereas in 2 others declines were likely due to factors other than starling competition. Only sapsuckers ( Sphyrapicus spp. ) exhibited declines potentially attributable to starlings that were not countered by other data. Although declines may still occur if starlings continue to increase, the results of this study fail to support the hypothesis that starlings have had a severe impact on populations of native birds. These results highlight the difficulties of predicting the impacts of invasive species. Native hole‐nesting birds have thus far apparently held their own against the starling invasion, despite the latter's abundance and aggressive usurpation of often limited cavities.
Reflections on synaesthesia, perception, and cognition

In this paper, we reflect on three long-standing problems: The relationship between the physical worlds and the perceived world, accounting for individual differences in the way in which we perceive the world around us, and the problem of understanding other minds. We begin by examining the relationship between synaesthesia and hallucinations, as well as between hallucinations and normal perception, attempting to show in both cases that the phenomena in question may share more in common than previously assumed. We consider the plausibility of a functional analysis of synaesthesia and examine the mechanisms of the different types of ordinary and extraordinary perceptions. We propose that synaesthesia-like mechanisms may underlie a range of perceptual phenomena and cognitive functions and demonstrate the usefulness of such an approach given the ubiquity of synaesthesia-like mental processes in human cognition.
Large-Scale Assessment of a Fully Automatic Co-Adaptive Motor Imagery-Based Brain Computer Interface

In the last years Brain Computer Interface (BCI) technology has benefited from the development of sophisticated machine leaning methods that let the user operate the BCI after a few trials of calibration. One remarkable example is the recent development of co-adaptive techniques that proved to extend the use of BCIs also to people not able to achieve successful control with the standard BCI procedure. Especially for BCIs based on the modulation of the Sensorimotor Rhythm (SMR) these improvements are essential, since a not negligible percentage of users is unable to operate SMR-BCIs efficiently. In this study we evaluated for the first time a fully automatic co-adaptive BCI system on a large scale. A pool of 168 participants naive to BCIs operated the co-adaptive SMR-BCI in one single session. Different psychological interventions were performed prior the BCI session in order to investigate how motor coordination training and relaxation could influence BCI performance. A neurophysiological indicator based on the Power Spectral Density (PSD) was extracted by the recording of few minutes of resting state brain activity and tested as predictor of BCI performances. Results show that high accuracies in operating the BCI could be reached by the majority of the participants before the end of the session. BCI performances could be significantly predicted by the neurophysiological indicator, consolidating the validity of the model previously developed. Anyway, we still found about 22% of users with performance significantly lower than the threshold of efficient BCI control at the end of the session. Being the inter-subject variability still the major problem of BCI technology, we pointed out crucial issues for those who did not achieve sufficient control. Finally, we propose valid developments to move a step forward to the applicability of the promising co-adaptive methods.
A Personalized Assistant in 3D Virtual Shopping Environment

Virtual reality (VR) and data mining techniques are widely used in E-commerce. This paper discusses the integration of personalized recommendation system in 3d virtual shopping environment. Our approach has two obvious features: one is the personalized recommendation based on data mining technologies, which means the system enhances the customer desired product attributes by utilizing his/her past purchases, and the other is the application of 3D graphical representations to achieve the realistic and human-like shopping experience such as the personalized avatars, and collaborative interaction between the customers. We experimentally evaluate the system on a real-life data in order to assess its potential usefulness. The methodology discussed here can be useful for customers in making a better choice of the target product in virtual shopping environment.
Neonate characteristics after maternal use of antidepressants in late pregnancy.

BACKGROUND Exposure to antidepressants during the third trimester of pregnancy has been associated with an increased risk for adverse birth outcomes, including preterm birth, respiratory distress, and hypoglycemia. OBJECTIVE To investigate neonatal outcomes in 997 infants (987 mothers) after maternal use of antidepressants based on prospectively recorded information in antenatal care documents. RESULTS An increased risk for preterm birth (odds ratio [OR], 1.96) and low birth weight (OR, 1.98) was verified, but the gestational week-specific birth weight was increased notably after exposure to tricyclic antidepressants. An increased risk for a low Apgar score (OR, 2.33), respiratory distress (OR, 2.21), neonatal convulsions (OR,1.90), and hypoglycemia (OR, 1.62) was found, the latter especially after exposure to tricyclic drugs, but no significant effect on the frequency of neonatal jaundice was seen (OR, 1.13). Most effects seemed not to be selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor drug specific, and outcomes after exposure to paroxetine hydrochloride were not worse than after exposure to other selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. CONCLUSIONS Neonatal effects after maternal use of antidepressant drugs during late pregnancy were seen. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors may be the drugs of choice during pregnancy.
Distributed beamforming techniques for dual-hop decode-and-forward MIMO relay networks

Cooperative relay networks with multiple antennas at each node enable achieving both macro diversity and micro diversity in a wireless fading channel. Using beamforming along with space-time (ST) coding at the source and the relay of a cooperative relay network allows achieving both diversity gain and array gain. In this paper we propose novel distributed beamforming techniques for a space-time (ST) coded dual-hop cooperative multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) decode-and-forward (DF) relay network to minimize the pair-wise error probability (PEP), while maintaining the SNR at the relay node above a given threshold. Beamforming techniques for the availability of full-instantaneous channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT) as well as statistical CSIT are proposed. The source and the relay compute their own beamforming matrices based only its own CSIT subject to individual power constraints at each node. The simulation results show that the proposed beamforming techniques offer a significant performance enhancement over the performance of a relay network using ST coding only. Furthermore, the proposed beamforming techniques maintain their performance improvement throughout the possible spatial correlation factor range for the channel.
Using EMMA to Access Municipal Bond Markups

In the past, assessment of the reasonableness of municipal bond markups depended on anecdotal recollection of markups and subjective judgment about what was customary. Interested parties including regulators can now use the MSRB’s EMMA service to determine the markups charged on a set of transactions and can make precise and accurate statements about how unusual such markups were, controlling for many factors thought to effect the reasonableness of markups. We analyze over 13.7 million customer trades, totaling $3.9 trillion in par amount traded in fixed-coupon, long-term municipal bonds. We estimate that investors were charged $10.65 billion in municipal bond markups between 2005 and 2013 in our sample - $6.45 billion in trades on which excessive markups appear to have been charged.Our sample includes about 30 percent of the fixed-coupon municipal bond trades and so the total markups charged from 2005 to 2013 is likely to be at least $20 billion. $10 billion of this $20 billion in markups were charged on trades on which excessive markups appear to have been charged. These markups are a transfer from taxpayers and investors to the brokerage industry and could be largely eliminated with simple, low-cost improvements in disclosure.
The information feedback in stock market

In this paper, Glosten/Milgrom(1985) Informational Model is adopted to analyze the market maker's establishment of the bid-ask spread in the existence of asymmetric information in the stock market The bid-ask spread is established to avoid losses of the market maker traders when trading with the informed traders. The market makers learn the market information feedback by observing the types of orders and by using Bayes rule. However, the true value of a stock is eventually reflected in stock price along with the trading process. The analysis of the model can provide the necessary theoretical basis for the development and improvement of China's market maker system.
RETRACTED: Gamma-Glutamyl Transferase Activity in Kids Born from Goats Fed Genetically Modified Soybean

Short Retraction Notice The paper does not meet the standards of "Food and Nutrition Sciences". This article has been retracted to straighten the academic record. In making this decision the Editorial Board follows COPE's Retraction Guidelines. The aim is to promote the circulation of scientific research by offering an ideal research publication platform with due consideration of internationally accepted standards on publication ethics. The Editorial Board would like to extend its sincere apologies for any inconvenience this retraction may have caused. Editor guiding this retraction: Prof. Dr. Alessandra Bordoni (EiC of FNS) The full retraction notice in PDF is preceding the original paper, which is marked "RETRACTED".
Variability of the Brewer-Dobson circulation's meridional and vertical branch using Aura/MLS water vapor

This discussion paper is/has been under review for the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (ACP). Please refer to the corresponding final paper in ACP if available. Abstract We use Aura/MLS stratospheric water vapor measurements to infer interannual variations in the speed of the Brewer-Dobson circulation (BDC) from 2004 to 2011. Strato-spheric water vapor (H 2 O) is utilized as a tracer for dynamics and we follow its path along the vertical and meridional branch of the BDC from the tropics to mid-latitudes. 5 We correlate one year time series of H 2 O in the lower stratosphere at two subsequent altitude levels (68 hPa, ∼18.8 km and 56 hPa, ∼19.9 km at the Equator) and determine the time lag for best correlation. The same calculation is made on the horizontal on the 100 hPa (∼16.6 km) level by correlating the H 2 O time series at the Equator with the ones at 40 • N and 40 • S. From these lag coefficients we derive the vertical and hori-10 zontal speeds of the BDC in the tropics and extra-tropics respectively. We observe a clear interannual variability of the vertical and horizontal branch. The variability reflects signatures of the Quasi Biennial Oscillation (QBO). Our measurements confirm the QBO meridional circulation anomalies and show that the speed variations in the two branches of the BDC are out of phase and fairly well anti-correlated. Maximum ascent 15 rates are found during the QBO easterly phase. We also find that the transport towards the Northern Hemisphere (NH) is on the average two times faster than to the Southern Hemisphere (SH) with a mean speed of 1.15 m s −1 at 100 hPa. Furthermore, the speed towards the NH shows much more variability with an amplitude of about 21 % whilst the speed towards the SH varies by only 10 %. An amplitude of 21 % is also observed in 20 the variability of the ascent rate at the Equator which is on the average 0.2 mm s −1 and hence about 5000 times slower than the meridional branch.
Flash on Rails: Consistent Flash Performance through Redundancy

Modern applications and virtualization require fast and predictable storage. Hard-drives have low and unpredictable performance, while keeping everything in DRAM is still prohibitively expensive or unnecessary in many cases. Solid-state drives offer a balance between performance and cost and are becoming increasingly popular in storage systems, playing the role of large caches and permanent storage. Although their read performance is high and predictable, SSDs frequently block in the presence of writes, exceeding hard-drive latency and leading to unpredictable performance. Many systems with mixed workloads have low latency requirements or require predictable performance and guarantees. In such cases the performance variance of SSDs becomes a problem for both predictability and raw performance. In this paper, we propose Rails, a design based on redundancy, which provides predictable performance and low latency for reads under read/write workloads by physically separating reads from writes. More specifically, reads achieve read-only performance while writes perform at least as well as before. We evaluate our design using micro-benchmarks and real traces, illustrating the performance benefits of Rails and read/write separation in solid-state drives.
Government Debt in International Financial Markets

Part 1 Theoretical issues: intertemporal models - the closed economy, open economy extensions the non-Ricardian world. Part 2 Empirical issues: empirical work to date - reduced form tests, multi-country models world interest rates - debt neutrality and the Fisher Hypothesis, capital mobility a two-country model policy conclusions. Appendices: data - source notation world capital accumulation.
Making Space for Disruption in the Education of Early Childhood Educators

Supervisory Committee Alan Pence, School of Child and Youth Care Supervisor Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw, School of Child and Youth Care Departmental Member Wanda Hurren, Faculty of Education Outside Member This postqualitative inquiry explores the processes that occurred when a group of early childhood education (ECE) students and I engaged with and in pedagogical narrations over one academic term as we attempted to make visible and disrupt the hegemonic images of children and childhood we held. I worked with Foucault’s notion of power in this study to attend to those moments when competing material-discursive practices created tensions, anxiety, and contradictions in our thinking as the students and I explored new understandings of children and childhood. Barad’s theory of agential realism provided a framework for considering how pedagogical narrations function as an apparatus, that is, as an instrument that intraacts with organisms and matter, within a learning activity to produce disruptions and change in order for generative knowledges to be produced. Positioned within the reconceptualization of early childhood education (RECE), this research is significant in that it extends the reconceptualization focus beyond the early childhood classroom into the education of early childhood educators. Further, the project challenges education from an anthropocentric and logocentric understanding whereby the knower and the known are considered distinct entities in a pedagogical context.
Roball-an autonomous toy-rolling robot

A mobile robot toy m ust be designed to be appealing to children, to create interesting and meaningful interactions, and to be capable of facing the wide variety of situations that can be experienced , all at a reasonable cost. In this paper we present Roball, a rolling robot. Children are used to play with ball-shaped objects, making Roball implicitly appealing. A special characteristic of the design is that the physical structure of the robot, its dynamics and its control are all taken into consideration to create interactions particular to Roball. In addition, its spherical shape gives Roball robustness in facing all kind of obstacles, surfaces, and interplay situations. This paper describes the robot and observations made of children who played with Roball. The use of Roball as an educational tool for helping autistic children is also discussed.
An Analysis of The Monetary Policy Transmission Mechanism and The Real Economy in Nigeria

I wish to acknowledge with thanks the opportunity, resources and facilities made available for the Research. I appreciate the wonderful cooperation of the management and staff of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Abuja, as well as their intellectual contributions through formal and informal discussions and at the CBN Seminar on the draft of the paper. In particular, I must express my deep appreciation to the Deputy Governor (Economic Policy) Dr. (Mrs.) S. O. Alade, and Director, Research Department, Mr. Charles N. O. Mordi for their invaluable supportive role during the Programme. Finally, I thank my associate computing assistant (Mr. Titus Ogunmola at NISER, Ibadan) for all the computations. The study is an empirical analysis which seeks to explain the monetary policy transmission mechanism to the real economy in Nigeria. It examines the process by which the interest rate policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria actually affects the structure of interest rates, credit, aggregate demand and output production and, hence, changes in inflation rate. In the analysis, we review the paradigm of the channels of monetary policy transmission mechanism by studying over twoand-half dozen cases of empirical studies in the economic literature. By applying vector auto-regression (VAR) with dynamic logarithmic form and the ordinary least squares (OLS) methods, the empirical functional relationships of the macroeconomic variables in the process were captured. It is found that, of all the channels, the credit channel in the financial market for credit supply and accessibility to the private sector provide the effect of a linchpin in the process by which monetary policy transmits to the real economy. However, interest rate and exchange rate channels during the period (1981 – 2008) appeared to have had a weak effect on the real economy. It is, accordingly, suggested that credit supply and accessibility to the real productive sector of the economy in Nigeria should be radically reformed and strengthened with appropriate regulatory measures, while still maintaining the Monetary Policy Rate as the monetary policy anchor to effect changes in the interest rate structure, credit and exchange rate in the real economy. AN ANALYSIS OF THE MONETARY POLICY TRANSMISSION MECHANISM AND THE REAL ECONOMY IN NIGERIA *This research was undertaken during the period ________ to ________ while Professor Eddy C. Ndekwu was a Visiting Research Scholar in the Research Department under the Central Bank of Nigeria Diaspora Collaborative Research Programme (DCRP)/Visiting Research Scholars Programme (VRSP) An Analysis of The Monetary Policy Transmission Mechanism and The Real Economy in Nigeria An Analysis of The Monetary Policy Transmission Mechanism and The Real Economy in Nigeria