Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Possible utilization of weeds for the management of plant parasitic nematodes infesting some vegetable crops

Leaf extracts of noxious weeds such as Solanum xanthocarpum and Argemone maxicana were used as bare-root dip treatment for the management of three important plant-parasitic nematodes, Meloidogyne incognita, Rotylenchulus reniformis and Tylenchorhynchus brassicae infesting tomato (Lycopersicon esculantum ) and chilli (Capsicum annuum) plants. Significant reduction was observed in the root-knot development caused by M. incognita, multiplication of nematode populations of R. reniformis and T. brassicae on both the test plants. Larval penetration of second stage juveniles of M. incognita was also inhibited at various concentrations of leaf extracts and dip durations. Leaf extract of S. xanthocarpum caused relatively more inhibition in root-knot development in case of root-knot nematode, nematode multiplication of reniform and stunt nematodes than that of A. maxicana. Because of dip treatment in leaf extracts of Argemone maxicana and Solanum xanthocarpum, the plants show better growth and at the same time the populations of nematodes such as M. incognita, R. reniformis and T. brassicae significantly decreased, which naturally improved plant growth. The efficacy of root-dip treatment with respect to improvement in plant weight and reduction in root-knot development and nematode populations, increased with increasing the concentration of leaf extracts and dip durations.
Suppressor of Cytokine Signaling 1 Expression Protects Oligodendrocytes from the Deleterious Effects of Interferon-γ

Interferon-γ (IFN-γ) is a pleiotropic cytokine produced by T cells and natural killer cells that has been implicated as a deleterious factor in the immune-mediated demyelinating disorder multiple sclerosis. In vitro, purified developing and mature oligodendrocytes have been shown to die in the presence of IFN-γ by apoptosis and necrosis, respectively. Moreover, transgenic expression of IFN-γ in the CNS of mice during development results in tremor, hypomyelination, and oligodendrocyte cell loss, and IFN-γ expression in adult animals after demyelinating insults inhibits remyelination. To examine the molecular mechanisms of IFN-γ-induced oligodendrocyte injury, we generated a transgenic mouse line [PLP/SOCS1 (proteolipid protein/suppressor of cytokine signaling 1)] that exhibits diminished oligodendrocyte responsiveness to IFN-γ attributable to the targeted expression of SOCS1 in these cells. We demonstrate that oligodendrocytes in the PLP/SOCS1 transgenic mice are protected against the injurious effect of IFN-γ. Our data indicate that IFN-γ exerts a direct deleterious effect on developing oligodendrocytes. The capacity of SOCS1 to inhibit the effects of IFN-γ suggests a therapeutic approach toward protection of myelinating oligodendrocytes against the harmful effects of inflammation.
Ocean's eleven: a critical evaluation of the role of population, evolutionary and molecular genetics in the management of wild fisheries

Significant changes have occurred in the well-established partnership between fisheries managers and geneticists over the last 50 years. It is therefore timely to review and recalibrate the ways in which genetic technologies can assist the fishing industry to maintain productive and sustainable harvests. Our objective is to contribute to the mutual understanding of all stakeholders in the genetics–management partnership. Genetic technologies that are relevant to fisheries management are grouped into eleven themes, which are described in plain language for a non-specialist audience. The role that the genetic information plays in fisheries management is explained, along with an assessment of the challenges and barriers that may be preventing the uptake of the information into the fisheries management process. The compelling conclusion is that genetics offers a diverse collection of versatile and useful tools for informing fisheries managers about issues that have a biological basis. Presently, mainstream use of genetic tools focuses on a narrow set of fisheries management issues, but the diversity of genetic tools and the novel issues they can address indicates that uptake will grow, particularly as communication between geneticists and end-users improves.
Austerity and Stagnation, Part 1: A Non-Walrasian Approach to Economic Stability

Unlike the narrative in Walrasian economic theory, the real world is not one of perfect foresight. This paper replaces this axiom with fundamental uncertainty, as established in original Keynesian theory. Drawing on contributions from Shackle, Okun, Alchian and Davidson, this paper explores how sticky prices become carriers of confidence through time. The confidence-carrying property is applied to government, fiscal policy, austerity and macroeconomic stability.
Survey Expectations and the Equilibrium Risk-Return Trade Off

Intuition and leading equilibrium models are at odds with the empirical evidence that expected returns are barely related to volatility at the market level. This paper proposes a closed-form general equilibrium model, which connects the investors' expectations of fundamentals with those of market returns, as documented by survey data. Forecasts suggest that investors feature pro-cyclical optimism and hence overestimate the persistence of aggregate risk. In bad times, the forward-looking component of stock volatility offset the transient risk and leads to a weak risk-return relation, in line with survey data about market returns. The model mechanism is robust to many features of financial markets.
Determinants of Government Debt Sustainability in Uganda for the Period 1960-2015

Unquestionably the impact of government debt sustainability, especially the external debt on economic growth in developing countries in particular can never ever over emphasized enough. The status of external debt in many of the developing countries has been an issue of concern among both bilateral and multilateral lending agencies like the IDA for the World Bank, ADF for the African Development bank and other emerging infrastructure financers like China and also among scholars and policy makers since the start of the early 1980’s debt crisis. The ability of the government to sustainably service its debt obligations will depend on how much it borrows in the first place, but most importantly the purpose of the loan, because it argued if funds are well invested then returns are high which ae then utilized in paying back debts. In this paper we examine this notion of debt sustainability considering real values on economies output such as real GDP, real exports and imports, total government revenue and how much government spends and finally the inflation rate. This is done by using data from world development indicators about Uganda’s economic performance since 1990 to 2015, linear imputation is adopted in years with missing observations for certain variables like inflation, total revenue and government expenditure. The results from the estimation show a one unit improvement in real GDP and total revenue and real export will significantly improve government debt sustainability status by 87.3, 46.8, and 2% respectively, while an increase in real imports, government expenditure and inflation will reduce government sustainability by 84.9, 66.0 and 06.0% respectively. A review of debt statistical figures showed that most highly indebted countries are not paying more 95% of debt obligations, this was clearly highlighted in BOU’s 2017 report of the economy. The policy message is that government should cut down on its wasteful spending and direct borrowed funds in infrastructure spending like hydropower projects, roads and investing in human capital which can enhance revenue collection to service debts. Government should also improve export status of the country concentrate in production of agricultural products in which it seems to have a comparative advantage.
A Motivational View of Rationality: The Adaptive Value of Heuristics vs. Irrationality

Procedurally, heuristics are irrational and error-prone because heuristics involve intuitive decision-making procedures rather than logical-statistical procedures. From an evolutionary perspective, however, what matters is not procedures but adaptive consequences of heuristics since they can lead to ecological rationality, i.e. successful adaptation to uncertain environmental conditions with limited cognition. Yet the problem with ecological rationality is that in novel or unexplored environmental structures, (i) ecological rationality is best observed in retrospect once the heuristic decision is implemented, and (ii) ecological rationality can be attained even by irrationality (e.g., superstitions) in some environments. Yet, what level of uncertainty ecologically justifies heuristics is unclear. To address this issue, we propose a motivational view of rationality by drawing on the psychological research on superstitions and the ideas of Perelman and Popper. Motivationally, heuristics are not irrational but instead practically rational when they involve motivations to solve a problem through truth-seeking. By contrast, irrationality involves evasion of truth-seeking either to relieve anxiety in the face of uncertainty or to seek interests unrelated to problem resolution. We use this motivational distinction to form an adaptive utility function indicating how decision-makers can benefit from heuristics vs. irrationality under different levels of uncertainty.
Separation of Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme Inhibitors from Fermented Milk Prepared with Lactobacillus casei HZ1

In this paper, a strain HZ1 which was isolated in our former works was classified as Lactobacillus Casei (L. Casei) by 16S rDNA sequence analysis. The results of angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitory assay showed that this novel stain was able to produce ACE inhibitory components when it was used to fermented milk. Applying the methods of membrane filtration and anion-exchange chromatography with fast protein liquid chromatography (FPLC) system, nine fractions with remarkable ACE inhibitory activity were obtained, and two bioactive fractions, recorded as ACEI-2 and ACEI-5, exhibited the highest ACE inhibitory rate of 60.55% and 71.71%, respectively. Furthermore, seven fractions proteins/polypeptides, which exhibited ACE inhibitory rate higher than 50% were separated from ACEI-2 and ACEI-5 by using sephadex gel filtration chromatography. These works might provide a foundation for the following study of L. Casei HZ1 and its probiotics functions, and contribute to the development of functional foods or drugs that provide health benefits to patients suffering from hypertension.
Nutrient Management in Organic Farming Systems: the Case of Nitrogen

ABSTRACT Nitrogen management in organic agriculture is discussed focussing on strategies maximizing nitrogen input (source: N2-fixation) and minimizing nitrate losses on-site (field losses) and off-site (losses from manure heaps). Due to a strong relationship between grain yield/amount of N in grains and N2-fixation in pulse-crops or total dry matter yield and N2-fixation in fodder legumes, e.g. grass/clover mixtures, nitrogen fixation can be maximized by selecting the best site-adapted (best yielding) species, varieties or mixtures, respectively. Strategies to reduce nitrate losses are based on N-sinks, that is, plants taking up soil-borne and residual nitrogen during or after growth of legumes efficiently, e.g. brassica-underseeds in faba beans, catch crops, or following crops with great sink capacity for nitrogen. In order to keep pre-winter mineralization as low as possible (minimizing N-source) turn over of grass/clover can be postponed or tillage intensity can be reduced in depth or frequency. Gaseo.
Contract Disclosure, Earnings Management, and Public Scrutiny

We examine the effects of mandating compensation disclosure on executive incentive contracts, earnings management, and shareholders' and social welfare. We develop a moral hazard model with multiple principal-agent pairs facing an external inspector who allocates resources across firms to uncover and penalize earnings management. Contract disclosure confers principals with a first-mover advantage, allowing them to design the contract anticipating the inspector's reaction. However, it may also exacerbate a coordination problem among principals, as they do not consider externalities on other principals caused by the effects of their contract choices on the inspector's scrutiny allocation. We find that, if the internal enforcement intensity (e.g., internal control) is relatively weak, contract disclosure may make contracts more strongly contingent on reported earnings, worsen earnings manipulation, and nevertheless increase social welfare. However, disclosure improves shareholders' welfare only if the scrutiny resources available to the inspector are not strongly constrained.
Measured Investment Inefficiency of the Australian Superannuation System

The public’s positive impression of Australian superannuation comes from the rapid asset growth of the system and selective sampling inherent in focusing on performance of funds and options may over-estimate the performance of the whole system by two percent per annum due to survivorship bias. From 20 years of official data, it is shown that the poor performance of the system on average, at less than one percent over cash returns, has been masked by strong contribution flows and the exclusion of poorly performing funds in selective sampling. By using robust methods of statistical analysis, the poor performance of the system has been largely attributed to Retail funds which are typically inefficient, profit-seeking operations, with excessive choices, high indirect costs, and conflicted governance. Retail fund members pay significant additional costs compared to Industry fund members due to higher investment and operational costs which are measured here for a recent three-year period. Returns were lower (expressed as additional cost) by 1.1 percent per annum due to inferior choices of asset allocation, where the lower returns did not result in commensurate lower volatilities. Related-party service providers extracted revenue through additional indirect costs at 1.3 percent per annum. More complex operational structures of Retail funds cost another 0.3 percent per annum. The combined lowering of returns by 2.7 percent per annum of a Retail fund member compared to an Industry fund member, results in a nest-egg halved over a 45-year working life or a loss of about one million dollars. Better enforcement of the law on fiduciary duty of trustees is needed to improve the investment efficiency and to reduce cost of the system.
Lignocellulose Biotechnology: Current and Future Prospects

Lignocellulose is the most abundant biomass available on Earth. It has attracted considerable attention as an alternate feed stock and energy resource because of the large quantities available and its renewable nature. The potential uses of lignocelluloses are in pulp and paper industries, production of fuel alcohol and chemicals, protein for food, and feed using biotechnological means. The current industrial activity of lignocellulosic biomass fermentation is limited mainly because of the difficulty in economic bioconversion of these materials to value-added products. Considerable improvement in many processes related to lignocellulose biotechnology appeared during the last decade. Current uses of lignocellulosic biomass, process constraints, and areas of future research are discussed here.
Antibody response to goat erythrocytes in endangered Nicobari fowl, Vanaraja and their various F1 and F2 crosses under the hot humid climate of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India

The aim of the present investigation was to study the antibody response to goat erythrocytes in Nicobari fowl, Vanaraja and their various F1 and F2 crosses under the hot and humid climate of Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The humoral immune response was measured against (1% v/v) goat red blood cells (GRBC) for total haemagglutinin (HA) antibody titre on days 7, 14, 21 and 28 post-immunization (PI). Among the pure breeds, HA titres of Black Nicobari were found significantly (P<0.05) to be significantly higher than that of White Nicobari and Vanaraja but did not vary significantly with Brown Nicobari during the entire period of the study. Among the F1 crosses, on days 7 and 21 PI, HA titres of Brown Nicobari×Vanaraja were significantly higher in comparison to Vanaraja×White Nicobari, White Nicobari×Vanaraja and Vanaraja×Black Nicobari but did not vary significantly (P<0.05) with Black Nicobari×Vanaraja and Vanaraja×Brown Nicobari. At day 7, PI antibody titres of Vanaraja×(Vanaraja×White Nicobari) and Vanaraja×Black Nicobari were significantly lower (P<0.05) in comparison to that of all other F2 crosses but did not vary significantly (P<0.05) between themselves. Positive heterosis was found in some F1 crosses.
Estimating Sourcing Premia with Italian Regional Data

This paper explores the link between sourcing and performance for a representative sample of manufacturing firms located in Lombardy, the leading economic region in Italy. Survey estimation methods, applied to the authors’ original database, reveal that there exist some performance premia for firms engaged in foreign, rather than domestic and in- rather than out- sourcing. This result is robust to different specifications, samples, performance measures and definitions of sourcing strategies.
Economic Institutions and the Location Strategies of European Multinationals in Their Geographical Neighbourhood

This paper investigates how the location behaviour of Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) is shaped by the economic institutions of the host countries. The analysis covers a wide set of geographically proximate economies with different degrees of integration with the ‘Old’ 15 European Union (EU) members: New Member States, Accession and Candidate Countries, as well as European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) countries and the Russian Federation. The paper aims to shed new light on the heterogeneity of MNE preferences for the host countries’ regulatory settings (including labour market and business regulation), legal aspects (i.e. protection of property rights and contract enforcement) and the weight of the government in the economy. By employing data on 6,888 greenfield investment projects, the random-coefficient Mixed Logit analysis here applied shows that, while the quality of the national institutional framework is generally beneficial for the attraction of foreign investment, MNEs preferences over economic institutions are highly heterogeneous across sectors and business functions.
Public and private Actors Redefining the WTO Adjudicatory System Role in the Global Arena: Examples from the Civil Aircraft Business

The WTO Dispute Settlement System (WTO/DSS) has been a landmark in furthering the autonomy and institutionalization of the multilateral trade system. This article discusses a frequently ignored function of the WTO/DSS: its adjudicatory enforcement in regard to another trade regime, namely the one regulating the civil aircraft manufacturing sector, from the starting point of an analysis of two leading WTO disputes (Brazil – Aircraft and EC – Aircraft). My objective is to identify the operation of so-called “nodal governance” processes through the application of a socio-legal methodology in order to shed light on the actors, mechanisms and dynamics of this system. The civil aircraft sector is a particularly interesting example because, in addition to its economic and political importance, it has mobilized a number of institutions and actors to regulate and support its financing structure. This study, as well as its conclusion, gives special attention to the situation of Brazil.
Historical Account of Nations’ Growth Performance: A Case of Pakistan

Developed countries pursue different policies for their growth trajectory. For some, there was no government intervention, and purely financed by private enterprise. For others it involve active government planning and investment. Developing countries had ‘advantage’ of backwardness. They were not involved in cumbersome process of inventions and rather borrow policies and technologies from developed world. Hence, they follow similar strategies as followed by developed world however it was revealed that there were no signs of convergence. Furthermore, the policies pursued for convergence actually result in divergence. As in case of Pakistan, policies from openness to strict government intervention was followed, but they all failed to put the economy on a sustainable growth path. Hence, the key to economic success lies in factors other than economic policies. It requires a deeper understanding of the inherent structure of the economy. Some of the factors highlighted include Institutions, Financial development, Infrastructure, and Human and social capital
Sex pheromone and diel periodicity of Cydia strobilella (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae) pheromonal communication

The sex pheromone of the spruce seed moth, Cydia strobilella (L.) (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae), has not yet been identified, but several chemicals were found to be attractive to males (reviewed by Grant et al. 1989). E8-Dodecenyl acetate (E8-12:OAc) at 0.3-3.0 μg doses was the only effective attractant for males in field experiments in British Columbia, Ontario, and Newfoundland (Grant et al. 1989). Our objectives were to (i) confirm that female C. strobilella produce E8-12:OAc as a pheromone component, (ii) determine whether females produce additional pheromone components, and (iii) investigate the die1 periodicity of pheromonal communication.
Pollen morphology of Polish native species of the Rosa genus (Rosaceae) and its relation to systematics

The morphology of pollen grains of 16 species from the Rosa L. genus were studied (i.e. R. agrestis , R. canina , R. dumalis , R. gallica , R. inodora , R. jundzillii , R. kostrakiewiczii , R. majalis , R. micrantha , R. mollis , R. pendulina , R. rubiginosa , R. sherardii , R. tomentosa , R. villosa , and R. zalana ). The material came from 16 native localities of those species in Poland. The measurements are based on at least 30-50 randomly selected, fully developed pollen grains per specimen. In total, 500 pollen grains were examined. They were analysed for 13 quantitative features of pollen grains and exine sculpturing and the following qualitative traits: outline, shape, "operculum" structure. The diagnostic features of pollen grains of studied species were: length of polar and equatorial axes and length of ectocolpi. The above-mentioned pollen grain morphological features make isolation of one species possible: R. gallica . R. gallica is distinguished for its highest values of the length of polar and equatorial axes, and the length of ectocolpi. The obtained analytical results of operculum and exine sculpture features, considered as diagnostic, corroborated only slightly their priority significance for the isolation of the examined species and sections. The collected data failed to confirm fully the current taxonomical division of the Rosa genus into sections (only section Gallicanae from R. gallica is isolated) as well as consanguinity relationships between the examined species from the Caninae section. On the dendrogram, both species closely related with each other as well as those from other developmental lines were found in the same group. These equivocal results are by no means surprising because the Caninae section is the most polymorphic group in the Rosa genus, and contemporary Caninae are of the nature of a swarm of R. canina hybrids as a link combining all taxons of the section.