Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of land fragmentation on smallholders' productivity in Imo state, Nigeria.

This study analyzed the determinants of the productivity of smallholder arable crop farmers with a particular focus on land fragmentation using the Simpson Index as measures of land fragmentation in Imo state of Nigeria. Data collected by using structured questionnaire and interview schedules were analyzed using simple descriptive statistics; Simpson index and regression analysis. Results showed that a greater percentage of the respondents were females, while the average age of the respondents was 52 years. About 90% of the respondents had formal education. The average farm size cultivated by the respondents was about 1 ha. Farming was the primary occupation of majority (73.33%) of the respondents. About 63.33% of the respondents were not visited by extension agents during the last cropping season. The Simpson index was 71.91%, indicating high degree of land fragmentation. The significant factors influencing the productivity of the farm were fragmentation, fertilizer, labour, and planting materials. Land reform policies and programmes that would give farmers access to more contiguous land holdings for increased agricultural production was recommended.
Analysis of Portfolio Risk of Private Investors

This dissertation includes three research articles on the portfolio risks of private investors. In the first article, we analyze a large data set of private banking portfolios in Switzerland of a major bank with the unique feature that parts of the portfolios were managed by the bank, and parts were advisory portfolios. To correct the heterogeneity of individual investors, we apply a mixture model and a cluster analysis. Our results suggest that there is indeed a substantial group of advised individual investors that outperform the bank managed portfolios, at least after fees. However, a simple passive strategy that invests in the MSCI World and a risk-free asset significantly outperforms both the better advisory and the bank managed portfolios. The new regulation of the EU for financial products (UCITS IV) prescribes Value at Risk (VaR) as the benchmark for assessing the risk of structured products. The second article discusses the limitations of this approach and shows that, in theory, the expected return of structured products can be unbounded while the VaR requirement for the lowest risk class can still be satisfied. Real-life examples of large returns within the lowest risk class are then provided. The results demonstrate that the new regulation could lead to new seemingly safe products that hide large risks. Behavioral investors who choose products based only on their official risk classes and their expected returns will, therefore, invest into suboptimal products. To overcome these limitations, we suggest a new risk-return measure for financial products based on the martingale measure that could erase such loopholes. Under the mean-VaR framework, the third article discusses the impacts of the underlying’s first four moments on the structured product. By expanding the expected return and the VaR of a structured product with its underlying moments, it is possible to investigate each moment’s impact on them, simultaneously. Results are tested by Monte Carlo simulation and historical simulation. The findings show that for the majority of structured products, underlyings with large positive skewness are preferred. The preferences for variance and for kurtosis are ambiguous.
Mammalian Iron Metabolism

ABSTRACT Iron is an essential transition metal for mammalian cellular and tissue viability. It is critical to supplying oxygen through heme, the mitochondrial respiratory chain, and enzymes such as ribonucleotide reductase. Mammalian organisms have evolved with the means of regulating the metabolism of iron, because if left unregulated, the resulting excess amounts of iron may induce chronic toxicities affecting multiple organ systems. Several homeostatic mechanisms exist to control the amount of intestinal dietary iron uptake, cellular iron uptake, distribution, and export. Within these processes, numerous molecular participants have been identified because of advancements in basic cell biology and efforts in disease-based research of iron storage abnormalities. For example, dietary iron uptake across the intestinal duodenal mucosa is mediated by an intramembrane divalent metal transporter 1 (DMT1), and cellular iron efflux involves ferroportin, the only known iron exporter. In addition to duodenal enterocytes, ferroportin is present in other cell types, and exports iron into plasma. Ferroportin was recently discovered to be regulated by the expression of the circulating hormone hepcidin, a small peptide synthesized in hepatocytes. These recent studies on the role of hepcidin in the regulation of dietary, cellular, and extracellular iron have led to a better understanding of the pathways by which iron balance in humans is influenced, especially its involvement in human genetic diseases of iron overload. Other important molecular pathways include iron binding to transferrin in the bloodstream for cellular delivery through the plasma membrane transferrin receptor (TfR1). In the cytosol, iron regulatory proteins 1 and 2 (IRP1 and IRP2) play a prominent role in sensing the presence of iron in order to posttranscriptionally regulate the expression of TfR1 and ferritin, two important participants in iron metabolism. From a toxicological standpoint, posttranscriptional regulation of these genes aids in the sequestration, control, and hence prevention of cytotoxic effects from free-floating nontransferrin-bound iron. Given the importance of dietary iron in normal physiology, its potential to induce chronic toxicity, and recent discoveries in the regulation of human iron metabolism by hepcidin, this review will address the regulatory mechanisms of normal iron metabolism in mammals with emphasis on dietary exposure. It is the goal of this review that this information may provide in a concise format our current understanding of major pathways and mechanisms involved in mammalian iron metabolism, which is a basis for control of iron toxicity. Such a discussion is intended to facilitate the identification of deficiencies so that future metabolic or toxicological studies may be appropriately focused. A better knowledge of iron metabolism from normal to pathophysiological conditions will ultimately broaden the spectrum of the usefulness of this information in biomedical and toxicological sciences for improving and protecting human health.
Behavior of fractionally-spaced constant modulus algorithm: mean square error, robustness and local minima

The fractionally-spaced constant modulus algorithm (FSCMA) is an effective technique for blind receiver design in practice. Its global convergence has been proved for a nonsingular channel and in the absence of noise. In this paper, we study the effects of noise and singular channel. The performance gap between the FSCMA receiver and the optimal linear receiver is investigated. In particular, a mean square error (MSE) upper bound of the FSCMA is derived. Using the MSE bound, we show that the FSCMA is robust to the effects of noise, model mismatch, equalizer length, channel common zeros, etc. Our analysis shows that, despite of the local minimum problem, the FSCMA can achieve almost the same performance as the (nonblind) MMSE receiver.
Fault tolerant control using linear quadratic technique against actuator faults in a UAV

The paper presents an optimal fault tolerant control solution against the actuator faults in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). A set of potential actuator fault scenarios are determined for the design of the fault tolerant controller. Controller design based on a linear quadratic (LQ) technique is chosen to be used for fault tolerant control design with the reformulated algebraic Riccati equation. In designing the fault tolerant controller gain, algebraic Riccati equation is reformulated to satisfy the stability and performance requirement under all the known fault scenarios. Weighting matrices Q and R are chosen in a way using method which can still maintain post-failure system's stability and acceptable performance with the desired redefined pole positions. The good performance is showed in simulations with respect to different fault scenarios considered in designing the fault tolerant controller for a UAV.
The prognosis and survival analysis according to seven staging systems of hepatocellular carcinoma following curative resection.

BACKGROUND/AIMS Several staging systems have been introduced to predict the prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The aim of current study was to analyze the clinicopathologic prognostic variables and calculate overall survival and disease-free survival rates to compare the prognosis of HCC patients treated with curative resection according to seven different staging systems. METHODOLOGY A retrospective study of 163 patients with HCC who underwent curative resection in our department between January 1998 and December 2001 was conducted. The clinicopathological prognostic factors were identified by univariate analysis. The patients were classified according to the TNM (AJCC 5th and 6th edition), Okuda, BCLC (Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer), JIS (Japanese Integrated System), CLIP (Cancer of Liver Italian Program), and GRETCH (Group d'Etude de Traitement du Carcinoma Hepatocellullarire) systems. The overall survival and disease free survival were calculated using the Kaplan-Meier method. RESULTS Univariate analysis of clinicopathologic prognostic factors indicated that tumor size, satellite nodules, portal vein invasion, bile duct invasion, microvessel invasion, differentiation and albumin level were statistically significant factors for survival. Mean survival time was 72.3+/-3.0 months. The overall survival curve and the disease-free survival curve applied to TNM (AJCC 6th edition) staging clearly show the difference in survival. CONCLUSIONS The TNM (AJCC 6th edition) staging system provides the most effective means of assessing the prognosis of patients following curative resection of HCC.
High harmonic generation spectroscopy of laser induced phase transitions in strongly correlated systems

The advent of attosecond spectroscopy, in particular high harmonic generation spectroscopy, has led to advances in following electronic dynamics in atoms and molecules on their natural timescale. The recent discovery of the high harmonic generation in bulk solids [1-8] has opened the door for applying HHG spectroscopy for ultrafast investigations of the electronic dynamics in the condensed phase, including the demonstration of the dynamical Bloch oscillations [2], the analysis of the relative importance of the intraband and interband current in harmonic generation [5], the reconstruction of the band structure in ZnO [6, 7]. In particular, recent work [8-10] elegantly demonstrated the power of HHG spectroscopy for reconstructing NIR, MIR and THz driven nonlinear response in time, with temporal resolution at the small fraction of the laser cycle. In the case of intense THz drivers, the information about the temporal profile of the nonlinear dipole was reconstructed with an uncertainty of about 1.5 fs [8].
Phenomenon of relief by flush in multiple sclerosis; its use as a foundation for therapy.

VARIOUS gross changes in the retinal blood vessels in cases of multiple sclerosis have been described in recent years. They are visible opthalmoscopically. So far, microscopic changes have not been described, nor has there been any recorded opportunity to look for them. Rucker has reported "venous sheathings," which give the appearance of perivenous white, thickened tissue. His photographs suggest narrowing of the vessels at the sheathed areas. * Rucker did not study associated visual function or disturbance. With Franklin, I have described narrowed areas in both retinal arterioles and venules (Fig. 1). There were associated visual defects; most of them were so located as to be explicable by the constrictions. Frequently, also, rapidly acting vasodilating drugs promptly reduced or abolished the visual disturbances, at least temporarily. The effect of these drugs upon the constricted areas of the vessels was less certain, although frequently Franklin thought he saw a widening; the vascular
Determinantes da qualidade da informação contábil sob a perspectiva das características empresariais

The purpose of this article is to analyze the determinants of entrepreneurial characteristics of accounting information quality in the context of internationalized companies and from the perspective of different accounting standards. The sample considered 1,406 companies located in twelve countries, covering the period 2005 to 2012. The quality of accounting information considered attributes of the quality of accruals, persistence, predictability and smoothing. From the calculation of individual attributes settled an aggregate ranking of companies using multi-criteria analysis method TOPSIS and the technique of entropy. The investigation considered factors in accounting standards, corporate incentives and intensity of internationalization of economic activities as explanatory factors of accounting information quality. The results indicated that the lower financial leverage constituted an incentive for companies positioned themselves with higher scores in the ranking of quality of accounting information. The study confirmed the intensity of internationalization of business activities as a significant determinant to explain the quality of accounting information reported in the international context.
Fault Diagnosis of Helical Gear Box Using Decision Tree and Best-First Tree

Gear is one of critical transmission elements, found its wide applications in small, medium and large machineries. It is well proved that vibration signals acquired from a rotating machine comprise of the dynamic information about the health condition of the rotating machine. This paper uses vibration signals acquired from machinery comprising of gears in good and simulated faulty conditions for the purpose of fault diagnosis by machine learning approach. In this paper, a vibration based on machine learning approach is presented for helical gear box as it plays critical role in the industries. This approach has mainly three steps namely feature extraction, feature selection and classification. Here statistical analysis was used for feature extraction and decision tree and best-first decision tree for classification was taken and compared. The classification accuracies for different conditions were calculated and compared to find the best classifier for the fault diagnosis of the helical gear box.
80-Mbit/s radiation-tolerant optical receiver for the CMS digital optical link

The CMS tracker slow control system will use approximately 1000 digital optical links for the transmission of timing, trigger and control signals. In this system, the 80 Mbit/s optical receiver at the detector end of each optical link has to be radiation hard since it will operate in the severe radiation environment of the CMS tracker (10 Mrad in 10 years). We have developed a prototype circuit in a 0.25 micrometers commercial CMOS process using radiation tolerant layout practices to achieve the required radiation tolerance. This effective technique consists in the systematic use of enclosed (edgeless) NMOS transistors and guardrings, and relies in the natural total dose hardness of the thin gate oxide of deep submicron processes. The circuit features an Automatic Gain Control loop allowing detection of wide dynamic range input signals (-20 to -3 dBm) with minimum noise, compatible with the maximum expected radiation-induced drop in quantum efficiency of the PIN photodiode. A second feedback loop compensates a photodiode leakage current up to 100 (mu) A, and the circuit outputs an LVDS signal. Four receiver channels were integrated in a 2 X 2 mm2 chip, out of which two were simultaneously bonded to two PIN photodiodes, and their Bit Error Rate performance was measured before and after an irradiation with 10 keV x-rays up to 20 Mrad (SiO2).
Rate optimize power allocation and relay selection for MIMO two-way cognitive relay networks with multiple relays using AF strategy

The following paper investigates the secondary sum rate of MIMO two-way cognitive relay networks with multiple relays using amplify and forward (AF) strategy. The capacity of the system can be maximize by using optimum power allocation (OPA) algorithm in place of equal power allocation(EPA) among all nodes, while assuming that all node having fully channel state information (CSI). It has been considered that MIMO cognitive relay with spectrum sharing and cooperative strategy between node to maximize the secondary sum rate and enormous use of the spectrum. Our aim is to maximize the secondary sum rate and efficient spectrum use. MIMO relay is going to use amplify and forward relay technique means relay is not decode the signal received from the secondary user's. Result shows that this technique is increasing the secondary sum rate without using extra power and spectrum.
How Uncertainty Avoidance, Power Distance and Indulgence Affect Social Commerce Expenditure? An Investigation Based on Facebook

The increasing popularity of social networking sites (SNS) in recent years paved the way for the emergence of social commerce. As a subset of e-commerce, s-commerce establishes the communication between companies and consumers through SNS and allows online shopping. However, online shopping through s-commerce varies substantially between different regions. The differences observed in consumer behaviour stem from the different cultural background every society has. This study analyses the effects of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions; uncertainty avoidance (UAI), power distance (PDI) and indulgence (ING), on s-commerce expenditure. With this purpose, the total amount of online expenditure for 53 countries chosen from different regions, their total number of internet and Facebook users, and data related to their cultural dimensions have been collected. In an effort to better understand the current state of s-commerce, annual average expenditure of per Facebook user in each country has been calculated through total online expenditure. Correlation and regression analysis have also been performed together with cultural dimensions. Following these findings, it has been concluded while UAI and PDI reduce s-commerce expenditure, ING increases it. Consequently, the findings demonstrate while consumer willingness to do online shopping decreases in the context of uncertainty and risk; increases when safety is provided.
An Approach to Improving the Quality of Airport Services for the Mobility Handicapped

The types and characteristics of services that airport service systems provide have recently been diversified and specialized to meet various needs of users and their travelling activities. A service for the mobility handicapped is one of the newly demanded services. However, current services for them, which are provided by most of the Korean airports, are not sufficient to satisfy their needs. Additionally, there exist a lot of constraints in the use of those services, which makes it difficult for the mobility handicapped to use them effectively. Another problem is that a lot of the mobility handicapped do not even know that airports now offer services specialized for them. Considering that Korean airports have been recognized as a top-level service provider for about decades, it can be claimed that such an inferior quality of services for the mobility handicapped should be urgently improved. With this issue in mind, this study aims to propose an approach to improving the quality of airport services for the mobility handicapped. Firstly, we examined the actual conditions of the services for the mobility handicapped and identified the limitations of the current services, based on the results of literature review and questionnaire survey against the mobility handicapped and stakeholders of the services currently provided. Then we established a set of design improvement requirements and suggested several ways to improve the services for the mobility handicapped. Finally, we pointed out several issues to be resolved to design better specialized services for the mobility handicapped.
Global distribution and sources of dissolved inorganic nitrogen export to the coastal zone: Results from a spatially explicit, global model

Here we describe, test, and apply a spatially explicit, global model for predicting dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) export by rivers to coastal waters (NEWS‐DIN). NEWS‐DIN was developed as part of an internally consistent suite of global nutrient export models. Modeled and measured DIN export values agree well (calibration R2 = 0.79), and NEWS‐DIN is relatively free of bias. NEWS‐DIN predicts: DIN yields ranging from 0.0004 to 5217 kg N km−2 yr−1 with the highest DIN yields occurring in Europe and South East Asia; global DIN export to coastal waters of 25 Tg N yr−1, with 16 Tg N yr−1 from anthropogenic sources; biological N2 fixation is the dominant source of exported DIN; and globally, and on every continent except Africa, N fertilizer is the largest anthropogenic source of DIN export to coastal waters.
An application of an integrated ANP–QFD framework for sustainable supplier selection

ABSTRACT This study provides a novel integrated multi-criteria decision-making approach to sustainable supplier selection problems. Despite the large supply chain management literature on green performance measurement, the need for a systematic analysis of how specific sustainable variables develop and affect each other remains mostly overlooked. The proposed integrated framework allows for such an analysis. By combining analytic network process and quality function deployment, our model identifies a clear hierarchical structure for all the relevant sustainable factors and sub-factors while weighting the decision criteria based on the importance given to customer requirements. Finally, suppliers are ranked using a multi-objective optimisation procedure based on ratio analysis and weighted aggregated sum product assessment. The proposed framework is used to analyse a case study of a dairy company, but it can be easily implemented for supplier selection by any other company with similar features.
Total sialic acid profile in regressing and remodelling organs during the metamorphosis of marsh frog (Pelophylax ridibundus Pallas 1771)

This study aimed to investigate the functional relationship of sialic acid in regressing and remodelling organs such as the tail, small intestine and liver during the metamorphosis of Pelophylax ridibundus. For this purpose, four groups were composed according to developmental periods by considering Gosner's criteria (1964). Our findings showed that the sialic acid content of the larval tail has an opposite profile to cell death process. Although the sialic acid content of the small intestine and liver did not change evidently during metamorphosis, it increased after the completion of metamorphosis. Frog tail extensively exhibited cell death process and decreased proliferative activity and underwent complete degeneration during metamorphic climax. In spite of increased apoptotic index, a decreased sialic acid level in the tail tissues during climax can be the indication of a death cell removal process. However, the intestine and the liver included both cell death and proliferative process and remodelling in their adult forms. Thus, their sialic acid profiles during metamorphosis were different from the tail's profile. These data show that sialic acid may be an indicator of the presence of some cellular events during metamorphosis and that it can have different roles in the developmental process depending on the organ's fate throughout metamorphosis. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.