Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Diversity and distribution of endophytic bacterial community in the Noni (Morinda citrifolia L.) plant

Noni (Morinda citrifolia L.) is a plant used by traditional cultures and also in modern health care products. Various chemical substances are derived from the plant and include, but are not limited to anthraquinone flavonol glycosides, iridoid glycosides, lipids glycosides and triterpenoids. Also commonly found on the plant are endophytic bacteria however, there are no reports on endophytic bacterial community of Noni. We collected samples from five sites of Noni plant (roots, branches, leaves, fruits and seeds) and performed 16S rDNA analysis. Results show that these five parts harbor a highly similar bacterial composition with the top four being Sphingomonas, Pseudomonas, Halomonas and Geobacillus. Sphingomonas and Pseudomonas were found to be widely distributed in plant endophytic biotope; while there are little reports on plant-associated Halomonas and Geobacillus, indicating distribution in the plant hosts. Unknown genus also is abundant in five sites of Noni, ranging from 26.70 to 33.66%, implicating necessity to reveal them. This study provides information on endophytic bacteria in the Noni for future analysis based on a metagenome strategy. Key words: Noni, endophytic bacteria, diversity, metagenome.
Programming a CNC-machine using ILP

Het bedrijf Kast op Maat produceert op maat gemaakte kasten. Hierbij wordt gebruik gemaakt van een computer gestuurde freesmachine, die de houten panelen freest waaruit de kasten bestaan. Tijdens het frezen liggen de panelen op een zogenaamd freesbed. Het freesbed bestaat uit acht beweegbare balken met vacuumcups die ervoor zorgen dat het paneel goed op zijn plek blijft tijdens het freesproces. Het probleem is dat de positionering van deze cups voor elk paneel apart bepaald en in de computer ingevoerd moet worden door de persoon die de machine bedient. Aangezien elke kast op maat gemaakt wordt, zijn alle panelen onderling verschillend. Het kost dan ook veel tijd om voor elk paneel een patroon van vacuumcups te creeren en in te voeren. In dit onderzoek ontwikkelen we een algoritme dat voor alle door Kast op Maat te bewerken panelen een cuppatroon kan creeren. Dit algoritme moet rekening houden met onder andere de afmetingen van het paneel en de bewerkingen die er aan uitgevoerd gaan worden. We gaan dit continue probleem modelleren in een discreet model. Hierin wordt het paneel gezien als een eindige verzameling punten. Alleen op deze punten kunnen de vacuumcups het paneel vast houden. Samen vormen deze cups een patroon dat het paneel stabiel moet houden tijdens het frezen. Deze patronen gaan we bepalen met behulp van DP, LP en ILP. Naast dat het gecreeerde patroon het paneel stabiel moet houden, is het van belang dat het vinden van een oplossing niet teveel tijd in beslag neemt. De bruikbaarheid van het algoritme komt in het geding wanneer het berekenen van een patroon te lang duurt. We bekijken daarom of we het probleem efficient kunnen oplossen. Dit doen we door te kijken voor welke panelen de bijbehorende LPs geheeltallige oplossingen geven. Als het probleem efficient opgelost kan worden, dan kunnen we met zekerheid zeggen dat er snel genoeg een cuppatroon gevonden kan worden.
INVESTIGATION OF POTANTIAL BIOLOGICAL CONTROL OF FUSARIUM OXYSPORUM F.SP. RADICIS-LYCOPERSICI AND F. OXYSPORUM F. SP. LYCOPERSICI BY ESSENTIAL OILS, PLANT EXTRACT AND CHEMICAL ELICITORS IN VITRO

Fusarium crown and root rot (caused by Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. radicis-lycopersici, FORL) and Fusarium wilt (caused by Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. lycopersici, FOL) are the most important diseases on tomatoes. In the present study, the antimicrobial activity of 7 essential oil (cumin, thymus, lavandula, eucalyptus, rosemary, nigella, dill), 2 vinegars (apple and vine) and 2 chemical elicitors (BABA, JA) to FORL and FOL. Essential oils from cumin, thymus, nigella and dill showed the highest antagonistic effect against the pathogens. The inhibitory effects of vinegars and elicitors were not determined against FORL and FOL. BABA had no significant effect on mycelial growth with increasing concentration. However, the hyphal development was decreased with increasing concentration at 1000 ppm concentration. Mycelial growth of FORL and FOL was decreased by increasing JA at 100ppm concentration as well, but it was not inhibited completely.
Does Private Selection Improve the Accuracy of Arbitrators' Decisions?

Does Private Selection Improve the Accuracy of Arbitrators’ Decisions? Alon Klement ∗ Zvika Neeman † March 18, 2009 Preliminary and Incomplete — Comments are Welcome 1. Introduction Arbitration is a private dispute resolution mechanism. This distinguishes it from adjudi- cation, which is public. An important implication of the distinction between private and public dispute resolution mechanisms is the diﬀerent way they select the decision maker - adjudicator or arbitrator. Whereas litigants have little inﬂuence over the assignment of a judge to their lawsuit, in arbitration their approval of the arbitrator is necessary. This paper examines the eﬀect of private selection over the expected quality and bias of arbitrators, and over their incentives in deciding the cases before them. Allowing both litigants to veto arbitrators they deem unfavorable would seem to guaran- tee that those who are selected would not be biased in favor of one of the litigants, and would be highly qualiﬁed. Market forces would then drive arbitrators to perform better because they would want to maintain a favorable reputation and increase their prospects of being chosen to arbitrate future disputes. Thus, both the selection eﬀect and the incentive eﬀect should improve the quality of arbitrators, as compared to public alternatives that leave the parties no inﬂuence over the choice of adjudicator. 1 This paper challenges these assumptions. First, it demonstrates that if arbitrators are selected at the time of dispute then the ones who are privately chosen might be more biased and less qualiﬁed on average than randomly selected arbitrators. Unlike random selection, private choice is the outcome of bargaining, and it is determined by the relative bargaining power of the parties. Since at least one of the parties would prefer a more biased arbitrator, the outcome of bargaining might tilt in its favor and against unbiased arbitrators. Moreover, when one of the parties believes his probability of success is low he would prefer an unqualiﬁed Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, Israel; Email klement@idc.ac.il. Boston University and Tel Aviv University; Email zvika@post.tau. ac.il. Clearly, this is not true if the arbitrator is chosen by one of the parties.
SERUM LEVELS OF HIGH SENSITIVITY C REACTIVE PROTEIN AND MALONDIALDEHYDE IN CHRONIC KIDNEY DISEASE

Background: Chronic kidney disease cases are at increased risk for progression to end stage renal disease and accelerated atherosclerosis, with premature cardiovascular morbidity and mortality being the more frequent outcome. Aim: The study was taken up to find if there is any association between nontraditional cardiovascular risk markers like high sensitivity C reactive protein (marker of inflammation) and malondialdehyde (marker of lipid peroxidation) with the progression of chronic kidney disease. Methodology: The study included 44 pre dialysis chronic kidney disease cases and 44 healthy controls. Serum levels of creatinine, high sensitivity C reactive protein and malondialdehyde were estimated in both groups. The mean estimated glomerular filtration rate(eGFR) in chronic kidney disease patients was calculated by the MDRD formula. Results: The mean eGFR in cases was found to be 23.65 14.99 ml/min by MDRD formula. The serum hsCRP and malondialdehyde levels in cases was 11.8 7.24 mg/L and 3.02 1.24 nmol/ml respectively. Conclusion: There was a significant negative correlation (p<0.001) between high sensitivity C-reactive protein and malondialdehyde with eGFR. A highly significant positive correlation was found between serum hsCRP and malondialdehyde (p<0.001) in chronic kidney disease underlining the synergism between oxidative stress and inflammation, perpetuating to further deterioration of renal function and enhancing the predisposition to cardiovascular risk with the progression of chronic kidney disease.
Analyzing Effectiveness of Development Aid Projects: Evaluation Ratings or Project Indicators?

Ongoing empirical research on the drivers of project-aid effectiveness relies on World Bank evaluation ratings across heterogeneous aid sectors. This leads to two problems. First, it is difficult to identify which dimension of project performance World Bank evaluation ratings are measuring precisely. Second, only project management variables, which are sector independent, can be included in the analysis. This study concentrating on an analysis of 150 water supply projects enables us to work with a more precise and objective performance measure by defining sector-specific indicators of improved water supply. Moreover, we are able to analyze the impact of project design in addition to project management. We find that evaluation ratings and indicators of improved water supply are positively but weakly correlated. Project management variables have a higher impact on evaluation ratings whereas project design variables have a higher impact on improving water supply to the target group. Various independent variables even change sign if indicators of improved water supply instead of evaluation ratings are chosen as a performance measure of project-aid effectiveness. Taking into account project design in addition to project management and country characteristics considerably increases the share of variation in project performance that can be explained.
A new method to predict meteor showers. I. Description of the model

Observations of meteor showers allow us to constrain several cometary parameter and to retrieve useful parameters on cometary dust grains, for instance the dust size distribution index s. In this first paper, we describe a new model to compute the time and level of a meteor shower whose parent body is a known periodic comet. The aim of our work was to use all the available knowledge on cometary dust to avoid most of the "a priori" hypotheses of previous meteoroid stream models. The ejection velocity is based on a hydrodynamic model. Because of the large amount of particles released by the comet, it is impossible to compute the orbits of all of them. Instead, we link each computed particle with the real number of meteoroids ejected in the same conditions, through a "dirty snowball" cometary model calibrated with the [A f ρ] parameter. We used a massive numerical integration for all the particles without hypotheses about size distribution. The time of maximum is evaluated from the position of the nodes of impacting meteoroids. The model allows us to compute ephemerides of meteors showers and the spatial density of meteors streams, from which a ZHR can be estimated. At the end a fit of our predictions with observations allows us to compute the dust size distribution index. We used 2002 and 2003 leonid meteor showers to illustrate our method. The application of our model to the Leonid meteor shower from 1833 to 2100 is given in Paper II.
Framework for an E-Voting System Applicable in Developing Economies

Information technology has pervaded virtually every facet of human life. Even in the delivery of governance, information technology has gradually found a place. One of its applications is the use of electronic voting, also known as e-voting, as opposed to the traditional manual method of voting. This form of voting, however, is not immune to challenges generally associated with voting. Two of these include guaranteeing voting access to all eligible voters, and providing necessary voting security. The challenge of accessibility is especially peculiar to developing countries where IT adoption is still relatively low. This paper proposes a framework for an e-voting system that would most benefit developing economies. It ensures availability of the system to only eligible voters and integrity of the voting process through its capacity to identify and prevent ineligible voters and multiple voting. To guarantee accessibility to all eligible voters, it supports both online and offline voting capabilities. Adopting electronic form of voting would provide a more robust, easier to use, and reliable system of voting, which, consequently, would contribute towards enhancing the delivery of democratic dividends.
Molecular markers for screening salinity response in Sorghum

Genomic DNAs from two salinity tolerant (IS 23190-Zm 90 & IS 23217-Zm 138), one moderately tolerant (IS 3566) and one sensitive(IS 213253-Zm 321) accessions of Sorghum were subjected to RFLP and RAPD analyses. A combination of digestion with Dra I and probing with BADH 1 distinguished the sensitive from the tolerant and moderately tolerant accessions in the RFLP patterns. A primer having CGGCTAGGT sequence provided distinct RAPD pattern for the tolerants (presence of specific amplified products a, b & c), moderately tolerant (presence of only c) and sensitive (lacking a, b & c) genotypes.
Circularly Polarized T-Stub Coupled Microstrip Antenna Structure for WLAN

In this chapter, a novel feeding mechanism for single layer microstrip patch antenna to generate circular polarization using electromagnetically coupled microstrip T junction is presented. The antenna structure eliminates the need for capacitors in the RF path for active antenna applications in wireless local area network (WLAN). The simulated results were verified by measurement using the vector network analyzer.
Two Component Long Wave-Short Wave Resonant Interaction in a Madelung Fluid Description ⁄

The interaction between two bright solitons (short waves) and a dark one (long wave) is discussed and in the resonance condition, using a multiple scales analysis, a two component Zakharov-YajimaOikawa system is obtained. A Madelung ∞uid description is used to discuss this system and several solutions are presented. PACS: 42.81 Dp, 05.45. Yv
A new strategy of detecting traffic information based on traffic camera : modified inverse perspective mapping

The development of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) needs high quality traffic information such as intersections, but conventional image-based traffic detection methods have difficulties with perspective and background noise, shadows and lighting transitions. In this paper, we propose a new traffic information detection method based on Modified Inverse Perspective Mapping (MIPM) to perform under these challenging conditions. In our proposed method, first the perspective is removed from the images using the Modified Inverse Perspective Mapping (MIPM); afterward, Hough transform is applied to extract structural information like road lines and lanes; then, Gaussian Mixture Models are used to generate the binary image. Meanwhile, to tackle shadow effect in car areas, we have applied a chromacity-base strategy. To evaluate the performance of the proposed method, we used several video sequences as benchmarks. These videos are captured in normal weather from a high way, and contain different types of locations and occlusions between cars. Our simulation results indicate that the proposed algorithms and frameworks are effective, robust and more accurate compared to other frameworks, especially in facing different kinds of occlusions.
Relationship of Thyroid and Sex Hormones With Osteoarthritis in Postmenopausal Indian Women

Background: Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most frequent joint disease encountered in the clinical practice and is the most common cause of movement disability in the elderly. Females are found to have more severe OA, and prevalence and incidence increase after menopause. OA affects all articular tissues and finally leads to joint failure. Many experimental and clinical studies suggest that loss of hormone especially estrogen at the time of menopause increases a woman’s risk of getting OA and use of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) did seem to be associated with not only relieving of symptoms but also reduced rate of progression of OA. The aim of this case-control study was to investigate whether the thyroid and sex hormones are associated with OA in postmenopausal Indian women. Methods: One hundred twenty-five patients suffering from OA and 82 control subjects, all aged 45 - 65 years, were included in this study. Thyroid and sex hormones were measured in the serum by ELISA and chemiluminescent immunoassay technique. Results: Mean serum estrogen levels in the OA and control samples were 29.53 ± 3.27 and 49.21 ± 2.18 (P < 0.0001) which were significantly lower in OA patients compared with controls. Also these patients show significant change in thyroid hormones and progesterone hormone levels when compared with control subjects. Conclusion: The findings suggest that estrogen deficiency after menopause may contribute to developing OA in postmenopausal women. Estrogen can render help in such patients but with the current level of evidence, it cannot be recommended as a first-line treatment. J Clin Gynecol Obstet. 2016;5(4):117-120 doi: https://doi.org/10.14740/jcgo410e
Strategies for Improving Semi-automated Topic Classification of Media and Parliamentary documents

Since 1995 the techniques and capacities to store new electronic data and to make it available to many persons have become a common good. As of then, different organizations, such as research institutes, universities, libraries, and private companies (Google) started to scan older documents and make them electronically available as well. This has generated a lot of new research opportunities for all kinds of academic disciplines. The use of software to analyze large datasets has become an important part of doing research in the social sciences. Most academics rely on human coded datasets, both in qualitative and quantitative research. However, with the increasing amount of datasets and the complexity of the questions scholars pose to the datasets, the quest for more efficient and effective methods is now on the agenda. One of the most common techniques of content analysis is the Boolean key-word search method. To find certain topics in a dataset, the researcher creates first a list of keywords, added with certain parameters (AND, OR etc.). All keys are usually grouped in families and the entire list of keys and groups is called the ontology. Then the keywords are searched in the dataset, retrieving all documents containing the specified keywords. The online newspaper dataset, LexisNexis, provides the user with such a Boolean search method. However, the Boolean key-word search is not always satisfying in terms of reliability and validity. For that reason social scientists rely on hand-coding. Two projects that do so are the congressional bills project (www.congressionalbills.org ) and the policy agenda-setting project (see www.policyagendas.org ). They developed a topic code book and coded various different sources, such as, the state of the union speeches, bills, newspaper articles etcetera. The continuous improving automated coding techniques, and the increasing number of agenda setting projects (in especially European countries), however, has made the use of automated coding software a feasible option and also a necessity.
Numerical analysis of preferential flows in soils by the Darcy-Brinkman equations

A numerical method which achieves the coupled analysis of the Darcy flows in porous media and the Navier-Stokes flows in fluid domains is proposed, and it is applied to the computation of preferential flows in soils, such as a pipe-flow. The method uses the Darcy-Brinkman equations for the continuous modelling of the interfacial flow velocity, and applies the finite volume method to the spatial discretization and the fractional step method to the numerical simulation of the incompressible fluid. The coupling of the two different flows is realized by the relevant interpolation of the pressure and the flow velocity onto the interface at which permeability and porosity are discontinuous. The numerical simulation of a pipe flow created in a soil block has been conducted, and the results have revealed that the proposed method can simulate the transition to the Hagen-Poiseuille flow through the flow pipe and that the detailed description of the preferential flow in the fluid domain is enabled as well as the seepage flow field in the porous media
RNA-binding activities of barley stripe mosaic virus ? b fusion proteins

The barley stripe mosaic virus (BSMV) 7b gene encodes a 17 kDa cysteine-rich protein known to affect virulence and to have a role in regulating viral gene expression. We have constructed recombinant ~b-glutathione S-transferase fusion proteins in Escheriehia eoli and have determined the ability of the purified fusion proteins and various mutant derivatives to bind nucleic acids in vitro. Gel-shift analyses revealed that the wild-type ? b-fusion protein is able to bind RNA cooperatively. The binding affinity is highly selective for single-stranded RNA because double-stranded RNA, single-stranded and double-stranded DNA, and transfer RNA were unable to compete for binding with the labelled RNA probes. However, BSMV-specific sequence binding was not observed since a chloroplast RNA competed for binding with 32P-labelled transcripts derived from the BSMV genome. The first 44 amino acids of the 152 amino acid yb fusion protein encompassing one of two cysteine-rich 'zinc finger-like' motifs, and a basic region separating the finger-like motifs are required for RNA binding. Sitespecific amino acid substitutions within two groups of lysine and arginine residues located in the basic motif reduced the binding affinity of the fusion protein greatly, but cysteine and histidine substitutions designed to disrupt the finger-like motifs failed to have appreciable effects on binding. These findings indicate that the regulatory properties of ? b may be mediated in part by RNA binding activities.
Urban Sprawl and the Cost of Public Services

One of the principle criticisms of urban sprawl is that it undermines the cost-effective provision of public services. In this paper the authors examine whether or not this is true through an exploratory analysis of the influence that alternative development patterns have on twelve measures of public expenditure: total direct, capital facilities, roadways, other transportation, sewerage, trash collection, housing and community development, police protection, fire protection, parks, education, and libraries. The objectives of the analysis are threefold. First, the authors, through a background discussion, provide a brief overview of previous research on the relationship between urban development patterns and the cost of public services. Second, through empirical analysis, they examine how the character of urban development affects per capita public outlays in a cross-section of 283 metropolitan counties during the 1982–92 time period. A separate equation is estimated for each measure of expenditure, providing substantive evidence on how density, the spatial extent of urbanized land area, property value, and political fragmentation affect the cost of services. Finally, the authors use the results of the empirical analysis to develop a set of policy recommendations and directions for future research.