Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Suppressing soil-borne diseases with residue management and organic amendments

Changes in agricultural practices with time have led to a decline in soil structure and with it, an increase in soil-borne plant diseases. Agricultural practices such as incorporating organic amendments and managing the type and quantity of crop residue, have a direct impact on plant health and crop productivity. Soil management practices involving tillage, rotation, and burning will impact the amount and quality of organic matter that is returned to the soil. These practices influence pathogen viability and distribution, nutrient availability, and the release of biologically active substances from both crop residues and soil microorganisms as illustrated by the model system of C chliobolus sativus on the development of common root rot in cereals. The application of organic amendments, manures and composts that are rich in nitrogen, may reduce soil-borne diseases by releasing allelochemicals generated during product storage or by subsequent microbial decomposition. The modes of action for disease suppression are elucidated for a number of diseases including verticillium wilt and common scab of potato. Developing disease suppressive soils by introducing organic amendments and crop residue management takes time, but the benefits accumulate across successive years improving soil health and structure. Crown Copyright © 2003 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
High salicylic acid concentration alters the electron flow associated with photosystem II in barley

In this study, the effects of exogenously applied salicylic acid (0.5 and 5 mM SA) on the rates of photosystem II (PSII) activity was analysed in 4-week-old barley ( Hordeum vulgare‘ Bahman’ ) seedlings using chlorophyll (Chl) a fluorescence transient ( OJIP ) measurements. No evident changes in Chl and carotenoid contents as well as chlorophyll fluorescence transient curves were observed in either of the studied concentrations after 24 h of SA application. After 5 d, low SA concentration (0.5 mM) increased PSII activity, Chl b and carotenoid contents in barley seedlings. In contrary, 5 days after 5 mM SA treatment, the maximal quantum efficiency of PSII ( F v / F m ) and the Performance Index (PI ABS ), as an indicator of PSII structure and functioning, were significantly decreased. This lower F v / F m and PI ABS coupled with lower levels of Chl b and carotenoids, and lower values of photosynthetic electron transport chain components including the electron transport flux ( φ E o ) and the inferred oxygen evolving complex activity ( F v / F o ). By monitoring the chlorophyll a fluorescence rise kinetics, from the initial “ O ” level to the “ P ” (the peak) level, a dramatic increase in “ OJ ” phase was detected, which coincides with an increased photo-reduction of Q A as a result of blockage of electron flow. This study provided the evidence that the high concentration of SA induced damage to different sites of the PSII.
Financial Literacy and Firm performance: The moderating role of financial capital availability and resource flexibility

Financial literacy, financial capital availability and resource flexibility are typically modelled as separate antecedents of firm performance. However, the boundary conditions for such models are less examined in a developing country context where financial literacy has been argued to be weak. Accordingly, drawing on RBV, we examined the performance implications of financial capital availability and resource flexibility on the financial literacy-firm performance relationship of entrepreneurial firms operating in a less developed market setting. Using a survey-based approach and employing OLS, we examined 298 entrepreneurial firms operating Ghana, a sub-Saharan African country. Our findings indicate that financial literacy improves firm performance and particularly so when resources are flexible and entrepreneurs are able to access finance with ease.
Changing chain: past, present and future of the Scotia Arc's and Antarctica's shallow benthic communities*

The Scotia Arc links Patagonia to the Antarctic Peninsula. This island chain has changed considerably since Antarctica’s geographic and thermal isolation from other land and water masses. Now its rates of air, land and fresh-water climate change are among the highest measured. This review examines work on the shallow water benthos of this region in the context of climate change. In summer, primary productivity is as intense as anywhere, whilst in winter the water reaches unprecedented clarity. Suspension feeders may eat for just a few months but others feed all year. Growth and reproduction are up to 50x slower than non-polar rates. Life here is in the slow lane. There is intense summer disturbance from ice-scour and wave action. This has erased shore zonation and created it below the surface. In contrast to summer disturbance, the winter is among the calmest and most thermally stable environments, when the area is overlain by fast ice. Whilst few animal phyla or species are represented on land, phyletic richness—and in some groups species richness—rivals that of tropical regions. Data showing clines in benthic richness at several taxonomic levels across the Patagonia-South Georgia-Signy Is. -Adelaide Is. chain and 50 years of ice-sheet retreat are presented.
Metodología para extracción de tópicos relevantes de la red social Twitter

Existe un rapido incremento en la produccion de informacion y datos de manera virtual, debido a sitios de microblogging como Twitter, red social que produce en promedio 6,000 tweets por segundo, y hasta 500 millones de tweets al dia. Razon por la cual esta y muchas otras redes sociales presentan una sobrecarga de contenidos, dificultando a los usuarios la identificacion de topicos de informacion por la gran cantidad de tweets hablando de diferentes temas. Debido a esta incertidumbre que perjudica a los mismos usuarios que han creado el contenido, se propone un metodo que a traves de la seleccion de perfiles de usuarios expertos en deportes y politica, infiere cuales son los topicos mas representativos que han ocurrido en un marco de tiempo de 1 dia. Esto se calcula tomando en consideracion la cantidad de veces que este topico ha sido mencionado por los expertos en sus timelines. Este experimento incluyo un dataset extraido de Twitter, que contiene 5,815 tweets referentes a deportes y 4,648 tweets referentes a politica. Todos los tweets fueron obtenidos de timelines de usuarios seleccionados por los investigadores, que fueron considerados como expertos en sus respectivos temas debido al contenido de sus tweets. Los resultados muestran que la seleccion efectiva de los usuarios junto con el indice de relevancia implementado para los topicos puede ayudar a encontrar con mayor facilidad topicos importantes tanto en tema deportivo, como politico
Bias and Changes in Perceived Intensity of Verbal Qualifiers Effected by Scale Orientation

The objective of this study is to examine whether manipulating the orientation of a rating scale impacts on the perceived intensity of the verbal qualifiers. An experiment is designed to assess the perception of intensities of verbal qualifiers in an agreement scale. A first finding is that participants seem to adopt one of two response strategies. Those who show the ’extreme null-point strategy’ report perceived intensities that monotonically increase along with the scale from ’fully disagree’ to ’fully agree’. However, other respondents seem to adopt a ’middle null-point strategy’, where the highest perceived intensity coincides with both extreme qualifiers of the scale and the lowest intensity is experienced for qualifiers near the middle. An orientation effect is supported for the ’extreme null-point strategy’ group, and manifests itself in less agreement about the intensity of the qualifiers when placed on a decremental scale (e.g. fully agree - rather agree - neutral - rather disagree - fully disagree) as opposed to an incremental scale (e.g. fully disagree - rather disagree - neutral - rather agree - fully agree). Next, the existence of a primacy-effect, an orientation effect found in previous research, was tested by means of a web survey-experiment and is rejected in favour of a more differentiated effect.
GEOGRAPHY OF A SPORTS METROPOLIS

This study analyses the sports infrastructure of Hamburg, Germany, from the residents’ perspective. Empirical evidence is provided for the Sports Place Theory developed by BALE (2003) using a micro-level dataset of 1,319 sports facilities, which is merged with highly disaggregated data on population, socio-demographic characteristics and land values. In line with the theory, small and medium facilities on average are found to have catchment areas ranging from 1,000 to 2,500m. Similarly, large facilities carry out services within an area of up to 5,000m. Based on implicit travel costs, locations’ endowment of sports infrastructure is captured by potentiality variables, while accounting for natural and unnatural barriers. Given potential demand, central areas are found to be relatively underprovided with a sports infrastructure compared to peripheral areas where opportunity cost in the form of price of land is lower. The determinants of spatial distribution vary systematically across types of sports fcilities. Publicly provided open sports fields and sport halls tend to be concentrated in areas of relativelylow income which is in line with their social infrastructure character, emphasized by local authorities. In contrast, there is a clear tendency for market allocated tennis facilities to follow purchasing power. Areas with higher proportions of foreigners are subject to relatively lower provision of a sports infrastructure, which contradicts the stated ambitions of planning authorities. To meet the implicit call for action, detailed maps of relative supply indicating privileged and disadvantaged areas offer useful guidance.
EFFECTS OF HEARING AIDS ON TINNITUS IN GERIATRIC PATIENTS WITH AGE-RELATED HEARING LOSS

1 Ankara Numune E¤itim ve Araflt›rma Hastanesi, Kulak Burun Bo¤az Klini¤i ANKARA 2 Ankara Numune E¤itim ve Araflt›rma Hastanesi, Odyoloji, Klini¤i ANKARA 3 Niflantafl› Üniversitesi Meslek Yüksekokulu, Odyoloji Klini¤i ‹STANBUL 4 Amasya Üniversitesi T›p Fakültesi, Kulak Burun Bo¤az Anabilim Dal› AMASYA 5 Lokman Hekim Sincan Hastanesi, Kulak Burun Bo¤az Klini¤i ANKARA Ayd›n ACAR1 Hasan fiAH‹N2 Rauf O¤uzhan KUM1 Zeynel ÖZTÜRK3 Melih ÇAYÖNÜ4 Fulya EKER1 Celil GÖÇER5 EFFECTS OF HEARING AIDS ON TINNITUS IN GERIATRIC PATIENTS WITH AGE-RELATED HEARING LOSS
Get rich or die tryin’ : a semiotic approach to the construct of wealth in rap music.

Get Rich or Die Tryin’: A Semiotic Approach to the Construct of Wealth in Rap Music Kristine Ann Davis, M.A. Mentor: Sara J. Stone, Ph.D. For the past 30 years, rap music has made its way into the mainstream of America, taking an increasingly prominent place in popular culture, particularly for youth, its main consumers. This thesis looks at wealth through the lens of semiotics, an important component of critical/cultural theory, using a hermeneutical analysis of 11 rap songs, spanning the last decade of rap music to find signification and representation of wealth in the rap song lyrics. The research finds three important themes of wealth relationship between wealth and the opposite sex, wealth that garners respect from other people, and wealth as a signifier for “living the good life” and five signifiers of wealth – money, cars, attire, liquor, and bling.
Tail probabilities for the null distribution of scanning statistics

This paper is concerned with statistics that scan a multidimensional spatial region to detect a signal against a noisy background. The background is modelled as independent observations from an exponential family of distributions with a known 'null' value of the natural parameter, while the signal is given by independent observations from the same exponential family, but with a different value of the parameter on a particular subregion of the spatial domain. The main result is an extension to multidimensional time of the method of Pollak and Yakir, which relies on a change of measure motivated by change-point analysis, to evaluate approximately the null distribution of the likelihood ratio statistic. Both large-deviation and Poisson approximations are obtained.
Risk factors for ischaemic and intracerebral haemorrhagic stroke: A study from north eastern India

Background: Several risk factors like age, sex, hypertension, diabetes, hyperlipidaemia, smoking and alcohol intake have been previously been associated with stroke. However, differences have been postulated between the risk factors and the type of stroke Materials and Methods: Prospective observational study in 200 patients with stroke aged ? 18years of age. Patients with meningitis, head trauma, intracranial abscess and tumour were excluded. Routine biochemical, haematological and radiological investigations were done in all cases. The qualitative variables were analysed by chi-square tests. The quantitative variables were analysed by using paired t test and a p value of less than 0.05 was taken as significant. Results: The mean age was 60.912. 9 years with a male to female ratio of 3.16:1. 52% of the stroke patients were haemorrhagic stroke while the rest 48 % were ischaemic stroke. The overall mean age of infarct cases was more than that of cases with haemorrhage (62.711.8 vs 59 13.6). Hypertension was found to be associated significantly higher in haemorrhagic stroke than ischaemic stroke (p<0.01). Diabetes mellitus and hyperlipidaemia was significantly more common among infarct cases than haemorrhagic cases (p <0.01) Conclusion: Overall mean age is higher in ischaemic stroke than haemorrhagic stroke. Hypertension was more commonly associated with haemorrhagic stroke while diabetes mellitus and dyslipidaemia were more commonly associated ischaemic strokes.
Evaluation of Antibiotic Consumption at Rakovica Community Health Center from 2011 to 2015

Abstract Antibacterial drugs are among the major discoveries of the 20th century because they significantly reduced the rate of morbidity and mortality as well as the risk of infections related to invasive medical procedures. Indiscriminate and wrongful use of these powerful life-saving drugs has led to the development of resistance of numerous microorganisms, resulting in an increase in the number of hospital-acquired infections with a fatal outcome. Thus, it is very important to establish the volume of antibiotic consumption and surveillance of antimicrobial resistance in order to rationalize the use of this important group of medications. The usage unique ATC/DDD methodology results expressed as Defined Daily Doses (DDD)/1000 inhabitants per day (DID) has enabled the comparison of antibiotic consumption in Serbia to that in other countries for a better understanding of our results. The community health center in Rakovica provides treatment for approximately 70,820 patients. The volume of overall antibiotic consumption has been calculated as well as the use of certain antibiotics in the total consumption and comparison of the guides for good clinical practice. The most prescribed antibiotics were antibiotics for diseases of the respiratory system. The most prescribed groups of antibiotics were penicillin drugs, which are an optimal choice as per the guides for good clinical practice. Amoxicillin are the most frequently prescribed individual antibiotic. A yearly increase in prescribing penicillin was observed. A rise in consumption of all generations of quinolones was observed, particularly for levofloxacine, which is not in accordance with the recommendations.
Application of a modified Griffith criterion to the evolution of fractal damage during compressional rock failure

A modified Griffith criterion for a fractal ensemble of cracks is applied to the interpretation of Acoustic Emission (AE) statistics during the compressional deformation of intact and artificially pre-cut rock specimens in the laboratory. A mean energy release rate per unit crack surface area [G] is recovered from the observed AE event rate N and the seismic b value, by calculating an inferred mean crack length [c] and measuring the differential stress sigma for a range of experimental conditions. Temporal variations in [G] under compressive deformation show very similar trends to those predicted by a synoptic model determined by direct extrapolation from observations of subcritical crack growth under tension. (In the tensile case, deformation is centred on a dominant macrocrack and the stress intensity K, which scales as the square root of G, is the relevant measured variable.)The three independent variables measured during the tests (sigma, N, b) are reduced to points that map out a path through a 3-D phase space ([G], N, b), which depends on the material type and the experimental conditions. 2-D slices through this phase space [([G], N), ([G], b)] are compared with results from the tensile tests [(K, N), (K, b)]. The event rate N is found to scale with square-root [G] according to a power law, with an exponent n' which is smaller than that for tensile fracture, reflecting the greater stability of compressional rock fracture in its early stages. The effective subcritical crack growth index n' is correlated with the material type and degree of apparent 'ductility' on a macroscopic scale, with more brittle behaviour corresponding to higher n'. The value of n' is similar on unloading of the stress after dynamic faulting as on the loading portion, though the curve is systematically offset, most probably due to the material weakening associated with faulting. The model does not apply near the period of dynamic failure, where strong local interactions are dominant. The seismic b value is also found to scale negatively with square root [G], in a manner similar to experiments where K can be measured independently. The acceleration of the mean seismogenic crack length [c] = f(t) has a similar power-law form to that predicted from Charles' law for a single tensile macrocrack, with an implied subcritical crack growth index n smaller than that for fracture in compression. The extra dimension introduced by the time dependence of [c] allows an independent check on the validity of the theory used to calculate [G]. In particular n' from the diagram ([c], t) is found to be similar in magnitude to the exponent obtained from the event rate dependence ([G], N), a phenomenon first discovered by empirical observation of tensile subcritical crack growth.
Performance of super hybrid rice cultivars grown under no-tillage and direct seeding

Good progress has been made in the super hybrid rice (Oryza sativa L.) breeding in China. However, rice yield not only depends on the genetic characteristics but also on the agronomic practices. No-tillage and direct seeding (NTDS) is a simplified cultivation technology that greatly simplifies both land preparation and crop establishment. Aiming to determine the grain yield performance of super hybrid rice under NTDS and to identify critical factors that determine grain yield, field experiments were conducted in Nanxian, Hunan Province, China in 2009 and 2010. Two super hybrid cultivars, Liangyoupeijiu and Y-liangyou 1, were grown under conventional tillage and transplanting (CTTP) and NTDS. Grain yield, yield components, biomass production, crop growth rate and biomass accumulation during sowing to heading (HD) and HD to maturity were measured for each cultivar. There was no difference in grain yield under NTDS and CTTP. However, grain yield differed with cultivar and year. Y-liangyou 1 produced 4 % higher grain yield than Liangyoupeijiu in 2009, whereas in 2010 both cultivars yielded similarly. Grain yields of both cultivars were higher in 2009 than in 2010. Higher grain yield of Y-liangyou 1 in 2009 was associated with higher spikelet filling (spikelet filling percentage and grain weight), which resulted from higher biomass production. Crop growth rate after HD was critical for biomass production by the super hybrid rice. We suggest that increasing the crop growth rate after HD is an effective approach to increase grain yield of super hybrid rice under NTDS.
Consumption, investment and unemployment: SVAR tests of the effects of changes in the consumption-saving pattern

Abstract In this paper, we provide evidence supporting the hypothesis that permanent shifts in the consumption-saving pattern will have permanent effects on investment, with subsequent consequences for the unemployment rate, by estimating a structural vector autoregression model for the Spanish economy. Our results suggest a significant impact of consumption shocks on unemployment through changes in investment.
Effect of educational nursing program on quality of life for patients with type II diabetes mellitus at Assiut University Hospital

Background: Diabetes mellitus constantly changes a patient’s life. Patient’s self care, consisting of daily insulin injections or oral anti-diabetic agents, self monitoring of blood glucose and diabetic diet has an impact on QOL. The aim of the present study was to assess quality of life for patients with type II diabetes mellitus, to develop and implement an educational nursing program for patients with type II diabetes mellitus, to evaluate the effect of applying the educational nursing program on quality of life for patients with type II diabetes mellitus pre and after two months from application of educational program.Methods: The study was conducted in the internal medicine department, internal medicine and diabetes clinic at University Hospital (Assiut–Egypt). Sixty adult patients were divided randomly equally into two groups (study group and control group) thirty for each group. The following tools were utilized for data collection: first tool “Structured patient interview questionnaire sheet”; it included two parts (socio-demographic characteristic and medical data), second tool “World Health Organization Quality of life (WHOQOL-WHO) scale”. Results: In the control group 40% of diabetic patients had good quality of life score while in the study group 100% had good quality of life after application of the educational program.Conclusions: The results of the present study concluded that: according to the control group, there was no statistically significant difference pre and post program in all domains of quality of life scale. According to the study group there was a highly significant effect of educational program on promotion of quality of life in physical, psychological, and social domains scale. Recommendations: Providing a written educational nursing program is of great importance for the patients.
The First Specimen of Annularia spinulosa Sternberg from the Lower Permian Abo Formation, New Mexico, and Implications for Rarity in the Plant Fossil Record

We document the first record of Annularia cf. spinulosa from the red-bed facies of the lower Permian Abo Formation in New Mexico. The record is in the Cañon de Espinoso Member of the Abo Formation northeast of Socorro and is associated with a low diversity tetrapod footprint assemblage dominated by Dromopus and a low diversity paleofloral assemblage dominated by Supaia. Calamitaleans are generally rare in the Abo Formation, which is unusual for floras of this age, even in western Pangea. The discovery of Annularia cf. spinulosa indicates that these plants likely were represented by small numbers and were widely dispersed within the Abo landscape, which was dominated throughout its known extent by walchian conifers and Supaia.
Prevalence of Malaria Parasites among Nnamdi Azikwe

The prevalence of malaria parasites and antimalarial drug of choice were investigated among students of Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Anambra State between February and May, 2008. A total of 800 blood samples were randomly collected from students aged 17-31 years. Thick films were prepared and microscopic examination carried out. In addition, structured questionnaires were administered to the same students whose blood were being screened. The result showed that a total of 512 (64%) students made