Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evolutionary plant breeding for low input systems

Heritable variation is at the heart of the process of evolution. However, variation is restricted in breeding for uniform crop populations using the pedigree line approach. Pedigree lines are successful in agriculture because synthetic inputs are used to raise fertility and control weeds, pests and diseases. An alternative method promoted for exploring the value of variation and evolutionary fitness in crops is to create composite cross populations. Composite cross populations are formed by assembling seed stocks with diverse evolutionary origins, recombination of these stocks by hybridization, the bulking of F1 progeny, and subsequent natural selection for mass sorting of the progeny in successive natural cropping environments. Composite cross populations can provide dynamic gene pools, which in turn provide a means of conserving germplasm resources: they can also allow selection of heterogeneous crop varieties. The value of composite cross populations in achieving these aims is dependent on the outcome of mass trials by artificial and natural selection acting upon the heterogeneous mixture. There is evidence to suggest that composite cross populations may be an efficient way of providing heterogeneous crops and of selecting superior pure lines for low input systems characterized by unpredictable stress conditions.
A Precise 90 Quadrature OTA-C Oscillator Tunable in the 50 – 130-MHz Range

We present a very-large-scale integration continuous-time sinusoidal operational transconductance amplifiers quadrature oscillator fabricated in a standard double-poly 0.8m CMOS process. The oscillator is tunable in the frequency range from 50 to 130 MHz. The two phases produced by the oscillator show a low-quadrature phase error. A novel current-mode amplitude control scheme is developed that allows for very small amplitudes. Stability of the amplitude control loop is studied as well as design considerations for its optimization. Experimental results are provided.
CSR and Good Practices of Stakeholder Engagement: A Case Study of Cross Ethnic Business Relations in Nagaland

This paper seeks to illustrate how KR Steelunion Limited, an iron and steel manufacturer in India dealt with a particular problem of making inroads into Nagaland, a remote state in north-eastern India, having 50 years of insurgency. KR Steelunion had to build trust among the people of Nagaland and thereby defend its ‘license to operate’. The firm chose to build partnerships with stakeholders through initiatives that helped to create and maintain trust which resulted in creating bottom line growth.
Impact of dance complexity on computer-based and movementbased cognitive performance

of a dissertation at the University of Miami Dissertation supervised by Professor Joseph Signorile. No. of pages in text. (43) BACKGROUND: Exercise improves cognition, but the specific mechanisms underlying these changes are not clear. Two proposed mechanism are aerobic demand and cognitive demand inherent in varying degrees to specific exercise tasks. This study compared two kinds of dance that differed in instruction complexity and aerobic intensity, ballroom (BR) and aerobic dance (Aero). The primary aim of this study was to determine if the cognitive benefits of exercise are more responsive to the complexity or aerobic overload. METHODS: Fourteen subjects aged 40-80 were randomly assigned to 8 weeks of Aero or BR dance classes. Aero classes were designed to emphasize low instructional complexity and high aerobic intensity. BR classes were designed to emphasize high complexity and low aerobic intensity. Motor and cognitive functions were assessed before and after participation. The six-minute walk (6MW) and timed up-and-go (TUG )were used to measure aerobic function and agility, respectively. A computer-based cognitive battery (Neurotrax Tests) was used to evaluate global cognitive function, executive function, attention, and memory. The Walking Response Inhibition Test (WRIT) was used to evaluate cognition using whole-body movements through a physical environment. RESULTS: Significant main effects for time were observed for 6MW, TUG, memory, and WRIT. Performance for the 6MW, memory, and WRIT improved, whereas TUG performance worsened. Although neither group exhibited significant change in the 6MW; there was an interaction effect and subsequent pairwise analysis revealed that the change seen for Aero was higher than BR. CONCLUSION: We observed differences in aerobic demand between the groups, with greater, though non-significant, aerobic response by the Aero group. There were improvements in both memory and WRIT for both groups. Improvements in WRIT favored the BR group compared to the Aero group, although between group differences failed to reach significance. Our preliminary data suggest a role for both aerobic demand and movement complexity in driving cognitive adaptations. More research with larger sample sizes is needed to support these findings. Future research should control the complexity of the exercise conditions and assess the learning effects and cognitive demand of the subjects.
TRAINING OUTCOMES OF HEALTHCARE WORKFORCE-A STUDY OF PRIMARY HEALTH CENTRES IN RAYALASEMA REGION

Training plays very important role in the organiz ation to achieve targets. The rate at which organization learns may become the only sustaining source of competitive advantage. Building learning environment and a coherent training strategy is important to balance between individuals and organizations in managing careers. Effective training programmed needs to be integrated with a comprehensive development programmed to reinforce the concepts and practices stressed in training on the job for developing a committed workforce. Health sector being a human resource intensive sector has a different environment for its employees to work in. The requisites that are demanded by this very important sector are commitment of employees who are highly motivated to serve the community 24 x 365 days. Employees in this sec tor are unique in their service orientation as they deal with the health of the public. The need for training of health work force is very obvious as they have to exhibit a lot of competencies while interacting with public. Competent workforce builds a pos itive learning environment in the healthcare sector which leads to a committed workforce. The present study focuses on the perception of health workforce in Primary Health Centers of Andhra Pradesh towards commitment as one of the training outcomes.
THE STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF THE TRANSFORMATIONAL CHANGE MANAGEMENT PROCESS IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONAL SERVICES: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS

Change management research has become a critical focus area for change scholars because of the low success rate in change implementation. This exposition of how the transformational change process has been managed at the Department of Correctional Service was meant to show managers, particularly in the said department, that unless managers pay serious attention to certain critical aspects which must form part of the change management process, no real change would be attained. This becomes critical if one considers that there is still a long way to go in the process of transformation to the philosophy of rehbilitation, namely transforming correctional centres to effective institutions of offender rehabilitation. There is currently limited literature on organisational change approaches that are people-oriented. The available literature seems to focus more on the technical aspects (hard issues such as structures, systems and practices) in terms of change management at the expense of people issues (soft issues such as the human factors). It has been argued that the neglect of people issues in the management of organisational change processes is responsible for the high failure rate in change implementation. For purposes of contextualising transformational change management within the setting of the Department of Correctional Services, an extensive literature study was undertaken. This was followed by an empirical analysis of data collected through survey questionnaires from correctional officials and offenders respectively. The research established that there were strong and weak points in the DCS transformational change management process from the perspective of both research participants.
Impact of Seawater Salinity on Morpho-Biochemical, Photosynthesis, Ultrastructure of Chloroplasts and Oleosomes in Relation to Fat Metabolism in Flag Leaf of Two Wheat Cultivars During Grain-Filling

To cope with the scarcity of fresh water for the sustainable development of agriculture, there is increasing awareness among agricultural scientists and planners in the utilization of seawater (at least diluted) for irrigation of crops.Different responses of two wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) cultivars (Gemmieza-9 and Sids-1) subjected to seawater at a percentage of 10% or 25 % were investigated.Gemmieza-9 would be classified as a species susceptible to seawater salinity, because its growth and physiological parameters, such as dry and fresh weight at the whole plant level, leaf area, specific leaf area, shoot to root ratio on the basis of length, some water relations (i.e. relative water content, saturation water deficit, degree of leaf succulence and degree of leaf sclerophylly) and leaf protein and nucleic acids (DNA and RNA) contents were severely affected by seawater stress in comparison to Sids-1.Genotype Sids-1 appears to be more tolerant to seawater salinity than Gemmieza-9 since it able to maintain less amounts of Na+ and Cland higher amounts of organic solutes (TSS, TSN, proline, organic acids, glycerol and inorganic ions (K+, Ca2+, Mg2+ and K+/ Na+ ratio) in its flag leaf. In addition, this review provides scarce evidence supporting the hypothesis that osmotic adjustment (OA) plays a preponderant role in the resistance to seawater stress in both wheat cultivars. It was clear that osmotic adjustment degree also affected by the rate of stress intensity. Furthermore, osmotic adjustment OA could be a part of the salt tolerance mechanisms developed by wheat and could be exploited in breeding programs for improved salt stress tolerance. A noticeable decline in chloroplast numbers in flag leaves of both wheat cultivars treated with sea water. This reduction could be attributed to the fact that salt stress often induces premature senescence. Furthermore, the observed decrease in the oleosome volume and fatty acids un saturation level together with the increase in lipase activity and glycerol content in the flag leaves is correlated well with the wheat plant tolerance to seawater salinity. Seawater-stress reduced bio-membrane stability through inducing lipid peroxidation resulting in an increase in membrane leakage. Considering all our results antioxidative response is well correlated with growth sensitivity and tolerance of cultivars to seawater-salinity and we can conclude that Sids-1 that could induce more efficiently antioxidative enzyme system is more tolerant towards seawater irrigation than the cultivar Gemmieza-9. The present review suggests that markers for oxidative stress, particularly malondialdehyde content, membrane leakage, and membrane stability index as well as antioxidant enzyme activities can be used as simple, rapid and cost-effective, as potential indicators for in wheat genotypes.
Ten years analysis of Tropospheric refractivity variations

The refractivity variations of the troposphere are responsible for various effects on radio wave propagation, such as refraction, bending, radio-station interference, etc. In this work, the refractivity variations of the Hellenic troposphere are studied using data from Helliniko airport of Athens/Greece. The data were analyzed using various interpolation procedures, i.e. in a day-by-day manner for temperature and relative humidity, to transform the data according to a reference height common for the whole dataset and finally for the refractivity N with respect to time, using piece-wise hermite interpolation polynomials for the low and medium altitudes and linear interpolation factors for the high altitudes. Since refractivity varies with time and height, two height independent basic parameters were computed and analyzed: the refractivity at station height N0 and scale height Hs. These parameters can be used to calculate the refractivity profile. Using statistical tools as the moving average, the s0 parameter and the monthly mean values, together with the corresponding standard deviations, useful results were obtained for the variations of the refractivity with respect to observation hour, height, season, month, day and level.
Motion capture based on RGBD data from multiple sensors for avatar animation

With recent advances in technology and emergence of affordable RGB-D sensors for a wider range of users, markerless motion capture has become an active field of research both in computer vision and computer graphics. In this thesis, we designed a POC (Proof of Concept) for a new tool that enables us to perform motion capture by using a variable number of commodity RGB-D sensors of different brands and technical specifications on constraint-less layout environments. The main goal of this work is to provide a tool with motion capture capabilities by using a handful of RGB-D sensors, without imposing strong requirements in terms of lighting, background or extension of the motion capture area. Of course, the number of RGB-D sensors needed is inversely proportional to their resolution, and directly proportional to the size of the area to track to. Built on top of the OpenNI 2 library, we made this POC compatible with most of the nonhigh-end RGB-D sensors currently available in the market. Due to the lack of resources on a single computer, in order to support more than a couple of sensors working simultaneously, we need a setup composed of multiple computers. In order to keep data coherency and synchronization across sensors and computers, our tool makes use of a semi-automatic calibration method and a message-oriented network protocol. From color and depth data given by a sensor, we can also obtain a 3D pointcloud representation of the environment. By combining pointclouds from multiple sensors, we can collect a complete and animated 3D pointcloud that can be visualized from any viewpoint. Given a 3D avatar model and its corresponding attached skeleton, we can use an iterative optimization method (e.g. Simplex) to find a fit between each pointcloud frame and a skeleton configuration, resulting in 3D avatar animation when using such skeleton configurations as key frames.
Magnetic-Activated Cell Sorting in Combination with Swim-Up Efficiency Improve Effectivity of Spermatozoa Separation

Abstract Correct selection of spermatozoa before their using for an assisted reproductive techniques is one of the crucial step in therapy of human infertility. It was previously reported that male factor plays a major role in infertility. Basic semen analyses and standard methods for sperm selection in many cases does not eliminate sufficiently proportion of spermatozoa with genetics defects. Magnetic Activated Cell Sorting (MACS) is a selection method which reduce apoptotic sperm and improve sperm and embryo quality. The aim of our study was the comparison of swim-up method and MACS and their combination. We tested swim-up and MACS alone and treatment of spermatozoa in combination when was is first swim-up and second MACS and vice versa. In this study we evaluated sperm concentration, motility and their DNA integrity before and after separtion methods. On the basis of our results we recommend to use swim-up before MACS method. This approach brings better results in the sperm selection - lower proportion of spermatozoa with fragmented DNA and also it brings better gain of total spermatozoa usable for next IVF or ICSI methods.
Fe-bearing MgSiO3 perovskite up to the Earth's lower mantle conditions

Se ha investigado el comportamiento electronico y estructural de Fe-MgSiO3 bajo presiones que llegan a la del manto inferior de la Tierra, usando la teoria de primeros principios. Los cristales de Fe- MgSiO3 experimentan cambio de fase desde una estructura perovskita ortorrombica (OPv) hasta una fase de post-perovskita ortorrombica (OPPv), con una disminucion de la presion de transicion con el aumento de la concentracion de Fe. Las transiciones electronicas tienen lugar en un rango de presion de unos 70 a 90 GPa para un cristal OPv de (Mg,Fe)(Si,Fe)O3, en el cual el momento del ion Fe4+ disminuye gradualmente a cero y el momento magnetico del ion Fe2+ pasa a ser cero. Esa transicion electronica proporciona el posible mecanismo para entender los experimentos.
Competition, Reputation and Cheating

Under repeated market interaction, reputation and competition may drive out of the market those firms that do not comply with their quality promises. One may thus presume that competitive pressure improves average market quality. This paper shows that the opposite may be true in an endogenous entry, repeated interaction, linear demand oligopoly model, in which introductory prices may be used as quality signals. Cheating firms may enter the market, fool even rational consumers, and exit the market when discovered, implying a failure of the basic reputation mechanism and an increasing time path of prices. Markets for closer substitutes tend to have a lower initial average quality and less trusting consumers, whereas the number of competitors has no clear relationship with average quality.
UvA-DARE ( Digital Academic Repository ) A study of coronal abundances in RS CVn binaries

We present XMM-Newton data of several RS CVn binary systems. High-resolution X-ray spectra obtained with the Reflection Grating Spectrometers have been interpreted simultaneously with the European Photon Imaging Camera spectra. Highly active stars show a depletion of elements with a low first ionization potential (FIP) relative to high-FIP elements, whereas intermediately active binaries show either no FIP bias or a possible solar-like FIP effect. We find that the low-FIP abundance ratios to oxygen vary with the coronal average temperature whereas the ratios for high-FIP elements stay constant. Since we observe that the absolute Fe (low-FIP) abundance increases with decreasing activity, this suggests that the abundances of elements with low FIP vary with the coronal activity level. Compared with laboratory measurements of the intensity ratios of the Fe  λλ 15.01 and 15.26 Å lines, the coronal plasmas are in the optically thin regime.
Hydrological effects of climate variability and vegetation dynamics on annual fluvial water balance in global large river basins

Abstract. The partitioning of precipitation into runoff (R) and evapotranspiration (E), governed by the controlling parameter in the Budyko framework (i.e., n parameter in the Choudhury and Yang equation), is critical to assessing the water balance at global scale. It is widely acknowledged that the spatial variation in this controlling parameter is affected by landscape characteristics, but characterizing its temporal variation remains yet to be done. Considering effective precipitation (Pe), the Budyko framework was extended to the annual water balance analysis. To reflect the mismatch between water supply (precipitation, P) and energy (potential evapotranspiration, E0), we proposed a climate seasonality and asynchrony index (SAI) in terms of both phase and amplitude mismatch between P and E0. Considering streamflow changes in 26 large river basins as a case study, SAI was found to the key factor explaining 51 % of the annual variance of parameter n. Furthermore, the vegetation dynamics (M) remarkably impacted the temporal variation in n, explaining 67 % of the variance. With SAI and M, a semi-empirical formula for parameter n was developed at the annual scale to describe annual runoff (R) and evapotranspiration (E). The impacts of climate variability (Pe, E0 and SAI) and M on R and E changes were then quantified. Results showed that R and E changes were controlled mainly by the Pe variations in most river basins over the globe, while SAI acted as the controlling factor modifying R and E changes in the East Asian subtropical monsoon zone. SAI, M and E0 have larger impacts on E than on R, whereas Pe has larger impacts on R.
Skin Color Preferences in a Malaysian Chinese Population

Facial skin color influences the perceived health and attractiveness of Caucasian faces, and has been proposed as a valid cue to aspects of physiological health. Similar preferences for skin color have previously been found in African participants, while different preferences have been found among mainland Chinese participants. Here, we asked Malaysian Chinese participants (ethnic Chinese living in an Asian country with high levels of exposure to Western culture) to manipulate the skin color of Malaysian Chinese, Caucasian, and African faces to make them “look as healthy as possible. ” Participants chose to increase skin yellowness to a greater extent than to increase skin redness to optimize healthy appearance. The slight reduction in skin lightness chosen was not statistically significant after correction for multiple comparisons. While broadly in line with the preferences of Caucasian and African participants from previous studies, this differs from mainland Chinese participants. There may be a role for culture in skin color preferences, though methodological differences mean that further research is necessary to identify the cause of these differences in preferences.
Dispersion measurement of microstructured negative curvature hollow core fiber

We present measurements of the dispersion of two negative curvature fibers at and around 1 μm. These fibers are suitable for beam delivery of both high power and ultrashort pulse lasers with one designed to operate at 1030 nm and the other designed for dual wavelength delivery at 515 and 1030 nm. Both fibers were found to exhibit anomalous dispersion measured to be 2.17±0.25 ps nm−1 km−1 for the fundamental mode rising to 4.69±0.17 ps nm−1 km−1 for the first-order mode in the 1030-nm fiber. Dispersion in the double wavelength fiber was found to be higher at 3.81±0.03 ps nm−1 km−1 for the fundamental mode guiding at 1030 nm.