Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Child Benefit Payments and Household Wealth Accumulation

type="main"> Using the life-cycle/permanent income hypothesis, we theoretically and empirically assess the impact of child benefit payments on household wealth accumulation. Consistent with the predictions of the model, we find that higher cumulative benefits received increase current assets, higher future benefit payments lower asset holding, and that these effects systematically vary over the life cycle. We find different wealth responses to child benefit payments for liquidity constrained and unconstrained households, as predicted by the model.
Estimation of Household Energy Demand and Its Elasticities in Urban Ethiopia: A Case Study of Nakamte Town

This study looks into households’ energy demand and its elasticities in Nakamte town. The objective of the study is to estimate household demand for the main energy sources (fuel-wood, charcoal, kerosene and electricity), and their elasticities of demand. The study used household-level survey data collected from 120 sample households in Nakamte town. A two- stage sampling procedure which consists of simple and systematic random sampling techniques was employed to select the sample households. The study used a Linear Approximated Almost Ideal Demand System model (LA/AIDS) to estimate household energy demand system. Estimates of the model were constrained to comply with neoclassical theoretical restrictions on demand, and the model was estimated using Iterative Seemingly Unrelated Regression (ISUR). The result shows that prices of energy sources significantly influence the energy expenditure shares of all energy sources. Demand for all energy sources are price elastic and all energy sources are substitutes. Except for charcoal, household total energy expenditure significantly influence energy expenditure shares of energy sources. All energy sources considered have expenditure elasticities greater than zero indicating no energy source is an inferior good for households in the study area. Furthermore, energy expenditure share of a particular energy source is significantly influenced by one or more of household characteristics such as sex and age of household head, education level of the wife and refrigerator ownership. Policy interventions aimed to change the household energy consumption pattern of the town need to focus on the estimated elasticities and household characteristics that significantly influence household energy demand. Keywords : Household energy, Iterative Seemingly Unrelated Regression, Linear Approximated Almost Ideal Demand System, energy source, Nakamte town
The Security Management of Aluminum Electrolysis Based on CAS-MES

Well-established system of security management is not only the premise of the failure-free operation, but also the powerful guarantee of the efficient production. Comparing with the traditional system of security management, which is operation-complex, recording-disorder and lack of high security, the security management of aluminum electrolysis based on CAS-MES overcomes all the flaws above and provides a new way for achieving efficient and high security management system.
Effect of Salinity on Growth Chemical Composition and Antioxidative Enzyme Activity of Two Malting Barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) Cultivars

The effects of salinity on the growth, chemical composition and superoxide dismutase (SOD) and peroxidase (POX) activities of 2 malting barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) cultivars (Kaya and Scarlet) were studied. In 10-day-old seedlings, salinity stress was initiated by applying an appropriate amount of NaCl to water, and it lasted for 30 days. Salinity decreased growth of the cultivars significantly. Scarlet restricted entry of Na + and Cl - into root and translocation to leaves more efficiently than did Kaya. As a whole Scarlet produced a higher amount total chlorophyll under salinity than did Kaya. POX activity of the cultivars decreased with salinity up to 20 dS m -1 , and then increased. In contrast to POX, salinity increased the SOD activity of leaves. Compared to the control application, 5.31% and 16.34% increases were determined in SOD activity, in 10 dS m -1 salinity, for Kaya and Scarlet, respectively.
Wetland resources : Status, trends, ecosystem services, and restorability

▪ Abstract Estimates of global wetland area range from 5.3 to 12.8 million km2. About half the global wetland area has been lost, but an international treaty (the 1971 Ramsar Convention) has helped 144 nations protect the most significant remaining wetlands. Because most nations lack wetland inventories, changes in the quantity and quality of the world's wetlands cannot be tracked adequately. Despite the likelihood that remaining wetlands occupy less than 9% of the earth's land area, they contribute more to annually renewable ecosystem services than their small area implies. Biodiversity support, water quality improvement, flood abatement, and carbon sequestration are key functions that are impaired when wetlands are lost or degraded. Restoration techniques are improving, although the recovery of lost biodiversity is challenged by invasive species, which thrive under disturbance and displace natives. Not all damages to wetlands are reversible, but it is not always clear how much can be retained through re.
Immunoelectron microscopical detection of tubulins during spermiogenesis in phytophagous bugs (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae)

Summary Ultrastructural and immunocytochemical studies were carried out in the tail region of spermatids and spermatozoa of the phytophagous bugs, Acrosternum aseadum and Euchistus heros. The axoneme presented a 9+9+2 microtubule pattern and bridges occurred between axonemal microtubules 1, 5, and mitochondrial derivatives. Two paracrystalline structures, embedded in an amorphous matrix, were observed in the mitochondrial derivatives. The axonemal microtubules contained alpha, acetylated and tyrosinated tubulin. Cytoplasmic microtubules contained alpha, beta and gamma tubulin. Moreover, the gamma tubulin was detected near the electron dense rod, an element associated with the centriole, suggesting that this structure may be a microtubule organizing center.
A method to generate formulas for temporal logic satisfiability checkers

In order to evaluate the performance of temporal logic satisfiability checkers, a benchmark with test formulas is required, as well as analysis of the complexity of algorithms. However, there seem to be no clear criteria of the formulas for benchmarks. Thus, to evaluate the performance of satisfiability checkers for new logics, we must prepare test formulas for the logic. In this paper, we propose a systematic method to generate formulas of two-way CTL, which are intended to be benchmark formulas for satisfiability checkers. We also discuss the criteria of test formulas. Finally, we present formulas obtained by our method and describe the results of experiments with our two-way CTL satisfiability checker. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electron Comm Jpn Pt 2, 90(11): 99– 108, 2007; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/ecjb.20410
The strategic planning process: evidence from Turkish firms

Purpose – Findings on the nature and practice of strategic planning are presented from a sample of 135 large companies based in Turkey. Attitudes towards a range of strategic planning issues and the use of a variety of tools and techniques of strategic planning are reported.Design/methodology/approach – Economic forecasting models, strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis, scenario construction and financial analysis of competitors are the most frequently used tools/techniques of analysis.Findings – Respondents indicate a very favorable attitude towards strategic planning which is seen as important by firms in the sample. Comparison of foreign‐owned firms and local firms indicates that the foreign‐owned firms adopt a broader and deeper repertoire of tools and techniques of strategic planning than do local firms, and they tend to believe that the strategy process is more deliberate than do local firms.Research limitations/implications – Need to look at the relationship between strat.
On the methodology of ISEW , GPI and related measures : some constructive comments and some doubt on the ' threshold ' hypothesis

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Mobile Banking, Challenges and Strategies in the Banking System of Iran

Most of the researchers have predicted that the large changes in technology and globalization of financial markets will lead to the greater competition in the banking sector. This competition has closed the deposit rates to the rates of bank loan. Hence, the banks try to obtain a sustainable competitive advantage as well as better and more efficient services providing by the modern and various channels of banking. By new technologies, customers can use various banking services ranging from planning to pay their bills by their cell phones. Using the Internet is more complex than using the mobile and this leads to the superiority of mobile in this field. The executive challenges associated with the banking in Iran can be divided into two categories, first the executive challenges in terms of new telecommunication technology such as the public development of telecommunications networks, lack of fixed codified standards in the field of compatibility with devices and softwares, and lack of preparation and acceptance of active companies in the Radio Regulatory Authority organization and next the executive challenges in terms of the banking network such as reducing the power of controlling the central bank in releasing the physical money, lack of a common policymaking agency, inability to upgrade the software and hardware systems in banks, lack of codified legal and judicial regulations with international standard procedures in the field of IT and Ebanking, absence of the adequate expert staff in banks in order to respond to the problems, and bank employees' inappropriate behavior towards the users' countless questions. Hence, in this study we evaluate the provided suggestions for improving the effect rate of mobile bank.
A tribute to Bill McClymont.

Professor G L McClymont, during his long and distinguished career has made notable contributions to agricultural research and development, to agricultural education and extension and to overseas aid programmes. In later years he successfully applied the principles of ecology to the integration of the technological, economic and social factors involved in sustainable systems of agriculture. These comments, however, are concerned with Bill McClymont% perceptive and wide ranging research activities in animal science, and with his success in creating a research environment that over the years has proved extraordinarily productive.
The bounds of distortion: truth, meaning and efficacy in digital geographic representation

ABSTRACT Even maps that strive for a precise representation of spatial relationships use techniques of distortion to embed a geographic extent within a two-dimensional plane – be it a page or a screen. The graphical design of geospatial information does however conform to a consensus around the conceptual limits of that distortion, with an overall design framework that constrains the design to ensure comprehension and the effective recognition of geographic entities and relations. Although constraints are necessary, we argue that the advent of digital technology, particularly in mobile mapping, warrants re-examination of the parameters of these distortions. Here we introduce the concept of ‘the bounds of distortion’ as a device for considering the conceptual boundaries of map design, and as a foundation for further work to investigate how these bounds may be redefined to better support map users with more effective graphical information. The focus here is navigational information, and in particular urban navigation and interaction with the graphical representation of urban geography and public transport networks.
Cortinarius alpinus as an example for morphological and phylogenetic species concepts in ectomycorrhizal fungi

Cortinarius alpinus as an example for morphological and phylogenetic species concepts in ectomycorrhizal fungi Extensive morphological and molecular analyses of closely related species from alpine, subalpine and montane habitats should enable a comparison of ecological, morphological and phylogenetic species concepts in ectomycorrhizal mushrooms. One fundamental question of this study was whether alpine species really exist, and which criteria, besides the specific habitat, could reliably be used for the de-limitation of such taxa. For this reason, 56 rDNA ITS sequences were generated or downloaded from GenBank for 10 closely related species of Cortinarius subgenus Myxacium, section Myxacium. Several collections were sequenced for each of the following taxa: Cortinarius absarokensis, C. alpinus, C. favrei, C. fennoscandicus, C. grallipes, C. mucosus, C. muscigenus, C. septentrionalis, C. trivialis and C. vernicosus. Moreover, spore statistics were carried out for 38 collections of alpine and subalpine taxa. These data provide clear evidence for C. favrei being a synonym of C. alpinus. C. absarokensis and C. alpinus can clearly be delimited based on pileus diameter and average dry weight per basidiome, even in overlapping habitats, but spore size and shape is not a good distinguishing character. Phylograms have very short branches, and base differences between ITS sequences are generally very low in this group, and give no resolution for the included taxa of this section. Based on these results, species concepts of ectomycorrhizal mushrooms are discussed in detail.
String-theory-based predictions for nonhydrodynamic collective modes in strongly interacting Fermi gases

Very different strongly interacting quantum systems such as Fermi gases, quark-gluon plasmas formed in high-energy ion collisions, and black holes studied theoretically in string theory are known to exhibit quantitatively similar damping of hydrodynamic modes. It is not known if such similarities extend beyond the hydrodynamic limit. Do nonhydrodynamic collective modes in Fermi gases with strong interactions also match those from string theory calculations? In order to answer this question, we use calculations based on string theory to make predictions for modes outside the hydrodynamic regime in trapped Fermi gases. These predictions are amenable to direct testing with current state-of-the-art cold atom experiments.
Green Synthesis of Gold Nanoparticles Using (ALOE VERA) Aqueous Extract

2 Abstract: In the present study we explore the reducing and capping potential of aqueous extract from Aloe vera for the synthesis of gold nanoparticles. The extract with different concentration reduced with HAuCl aqueous 4 solution at room temperature. The color change, pH change and UV-visible spectroscopic analysis reveal the Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) of the final reaction product which confirms the reduction of Au ion to gold 3+ nanoparticles. XRD, particle size analysis results represent strong reducing potential of Aloe vera aqueous extract which can also be tested in the green synthesis of other metallic nanoparticles.
Positive Topological Quantum Field Theories

We propose a new notion of positivity for topological field theories (TFTs), based on S. Eilenberg's concept of completeness for semirings. We show that a complete ground semiring, a system of fields on manifolds and a system of action functionals on these fields determine a positive TFT. The main feature of such a theory is a semiring-valued topologically invariant state sum that satisfies a gluing formula. The abstract framework has been carefully designed to cover a wide range of phenomena. For instance, we derive Polya's counting theory in combinatorics from state sum identities in a suitable positive TFT. Several other concrete examples are discussed, among them Novikov signatures of fiber bundles over spacetimes and arithmetic functions in number theory. In the future, we will employ the framework presented here in constructing a new differential topological invariant that detects exotic smooth structures on spheres.
Inhibition of mammalian target of rapamycin induces phenotypic reversion in three-dimensional cultures of malignant breast epithelial cells

Inhibition of mammalian target of rapamycin (m- TOR) is a potential method for cancer treatment. Effects of rapamycin (RAP) on the reversion of malignant breast epithelial cells were investigated on three-dimensional (3D) basement membrane extract (BME) cultures. Through continuous exposure to 20 nM of RAP, cell colony size was significantly reduced in 3D BME cultures of malignant breast epithelial cells, while normal cell colony size appeared unaffected. In unfixed 3D BME cultures of normal and RAP-treated malignant breast epithelial cells, the presence of luminal cell death was confirmed by ethidium bromide and propidium iodide labeling. Increased structural organization was observed by im- munofluorescence staining of F-actin and β-catenin in RAP-treated malignant breast epithelial cells. In monolayer cultures of normal and malignant breast epithelial cells, continuous exposure to 20 nM of RAP increased caspase 3/7 activity and decreased proliferation. Reverse transcriptase polymerase ch- ain reaction (RT-PCR) array analysis indicated a fold increase in the expression of a number of proteins related to polarity, cell-cell adhesion, and cell-matrix adhesion in the presence of RAP. Our data showed that phenotypic reversion of malignancy can be ach- ieved through RAP exposure on 3D BME cultures. This 3D BME culture system will provide correct microenvironments for observing the effects of other mTOR inhibitors on phenotypic reversion of malignant breast epithelial cells.
Triage for Democracy: Selection Effects in Governance Aid

Foreign aid for improving governance may promote democracy because monitoring presents relatively low costs due to abundant third-party information and the aid largely bypasses governments in order to directly assist civil society groups. However, donors appear to give aid for reasons other than those stipulated in the project documents; instead, they may use aid to cement alliances, promote trade partnerships, bolster relations with former colonies, or buy votes in the United Nations Security Council. Moreover, aid is notoriously fungible and conditional aid may be largely incentive incompatible. So there are good reasons to be skeptical of aid for any purpose, including governance. We argue here that some governance aid may work as intended ‐ and for the reasons stated above ‐ but only in the most-likely cases. That is, donors perform a kind of development finance “triage” to select the recipients that seem most able to enact democratization reforms; donors then provide governance aid mainly in those most-likely cases. We test this argument using our new AidData information base, which adds more than fifty donors and nearly $2 trillion to the well-known total of $2.3 trillion in development finance since 1945. We employ a new pooled time-series technique of propensity matching to control for selection effects. Once the panel propensity matching has occurred, contra prominent research such as Finkel et al. (2007), we find limited evidence that governance aid promotes democracy in the main. Instead, the results suggest that governance aid leads to higher democracy scores only in the subset of observations most likely to receive the governance aid in the first place.
DOES ENTROPIC GRAVITY BOUND THE MASSES OF THE PHOTON AND GRAVITON?

If the information transfer between test particle and holographic screen in entropic gravity respects both the uncertainty principle and causality, a lower limit on the number of bits in the universe relative to its mass may be derived. Furthermore, these limits indicate particles that putatively travel at the speed of light — the photon and/or graviton — have a nonzero mass m ≥10-68 kg . This result is found to be in excellent agreement with current experimental mass bounds on the graviton and photon, suggesting that entropic gravity may be the result of a (recent) softly-broken local symmetry. Stronger bounds emerge from consideration of ultradense matter such as neutron stars, yielding limits of m ≥10-48–10-50 kg , barely within the experimental photon range and outside that of the graviton. We find that for black holes these criteria cannot be satisfied, and suggest some possible implications of this result.
A survey of ecto- and endo-parasites of domestic pigeons (Columba livia) in Mashhad, Iran

As there is no data available on parasite infection of pigeons (Columba livia) in the region, the present study was carried out on domestic pigeons in Mashhad city in the north-east of Iran. Three hundred specimens were examined for the presence of ecto and endoparasites. A total of 300 pigeons, %21.6(n=65) and %15.3(n=46) were infected with nematodes and cestodes respectively whereas no trematodes were found. The helminths and their prevalence were Nematoda: Ascaridia columbae (20.37%), Capillaria bursata (3.7%), Capillaria caudinfillata (1.85%), Eulimdana clava (2.7%), Gongylonema spp (0.9), Cestoda: Choanotaenia infundibulum (11.11%), Raillietina echinobothrida (6.48%). Six different species of ectoparasites: Columbicloa columbae (42.8%), Pseudolynchia canariensis (16.1%), Menocanthus stramineus (10.7%), Menopon gallinae (7.1%), Lipeurus caponis (5.3%), Argas reflexus (3.5%) and 2 haemoparasites species Haemoproteus columbae (50%) and Leucocytozoon spp. (2%) were identified. Further studies are recommended in assessing the effects of the parasites on the pigeons’ health and production.
Stability of Rarefaction Waves to the 1D Compressible Navier–Stokes Equations with Density-Dependent Viscosity

In this paper, we study the asymptotic stability of rarefaction waves for the compressible isentropic Navier–Stokes equations with density-dependent viscosity. First, a weak solution around a rarefaction wave to the Cauchy problem is constructed by approximating the system and regularizing the initial values which may contain vacuum states. Then some global in time estimates on the weak solution are obtained. Based on these uniform estimates, the vacuum states are shown to vanish in finite time and the weak solution we constructed becomes a unique strong one. Consequently, the stability of the rarefaction wave is proved in a weak sense. The theory holds for large-amplitudes rarefaction waves and arbitrary initial perturbations.
Drag on a sphere moving through an aging system

We have investigated the drag on a sphere falling through a clay suspension that has a yield stress and exhibits rheological aging. The drag force increases with both speed and the rest time between the preparation of the system and the start of the experiment, but there exists a non-zero minimum speed below which steady motion is not possible. We find that only a very thin layer of material around the sphere is fluidized when it moves, while the rest of the suspension is deformed elastically. This is in marked contrast to what is found for yield-stress fluids that do not age.