Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Tolerance for heavy metals by filamentous fungi isolated from a sewage oxidation pond

Metal pollution of the environment, especially at e levated concentrations, is known to adversely affec t microbial activities. However, microorganisms are a versatile group, as they can adapt and grow under various extreme conditions including high metal con centrations. In the present study, fungal strains isolated from the oxidation pond of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka sewage treatment plant were evaluated for their tolerance for different concent rations of metal salts, namely, Cu, Zn and Mn. The fungi isolated and tested belonged to the genera Aspergillus, Penicillium and Cladosporium. The results revealed that metal tolerance by the isolat es was highest for Zn, followed by Mn and then Cu and the isolates tolerated up to 1500 μg/ml of the salt. Tolerance for the metal ions was concentratio n as well as time dependent and also on the isolate t ested. Aspergillus niger and Aspergillus fumigatus were the most tolerant of the metals and exhibited good growth at all metal salt concentrations tested . These fungal isolates showed a high level of tolera nce for the metals tested, which makes them attractive potential candidates for further investi gations regarding their ability to remove metals fr om contaminated wastewaters.
Climate change and bird phenology: a long‐term study in the Iberian Peninsula

Many studies in recent years have demonstrated long‐term temporal trends in biological parameters that can only be explained by climate change. Bird phenology has received great attention, as it studies one of the most conspicuous, popular, and easily observable phenomena in nature. There are many studies of long‐term changes in spring arrival dates, most of which concur with earlier records from the last few decades. However, few data are available for autumn departures or length of stays. Furthermore, existing data offer an equivocal picture. In this study, we analysed a huge database of about 44 000 records for five trans‐Saharan bird species (Ciconia ciconia, Cuculus canorus, Apus apus, Hirundo rustica and Luscinia megarhynchos). Data were collected from over 1300 sites around Spain during the period 1944–2004. Common spring arrival patterns were found in all species. Spring arrival dates have tended to advance since the mid‐1970s. Current dates are similar to those from the 1940s (except for C. ciconia). Thus, the advance of spring migration over the last three decades could be seen as a return to the initial timing of arrival dates, after abnormally delayed arrivals during the 1970s. A strong negative relationship with temperature in Spain at arrival time was observed in all species. A negative relationship with the Sahel Index (a measurement of precipitation in the African Sahel area during the rainy season) for the previous year was also found in C. canorus, A. apus and H. rustica. Regarding autumn departures, all species showed common interdecadal fluctuations, but only H. rustica is leaving earlier Spain at present. All species departed earlier in years that had higher temperatures during their reproductive period. However, only for H. rustica the relation between Spanish temperatures at departure time and the last sightings of individuals was significant. A heterogeneous temporal response for the length of stay was also found: C. ciconia increased, A. apus did not change and H. rustica decreased its stay. This is the first study, based on an extensive bird phenology observational network covering a large region, that shows the most complete and thorough analysis available for the Mediterranean region.
Enhancing productivity and consumer value through implementation of lean manufacturing

Lean manufacturing is one of the leading manufacturing systems which are used in reducing non- value-added activities to improve productivity and customer value. Lean is a systematic loom for eliminating waste through continuous improvement. Leading organizations are following this sophisticated technique to realize the huge improvements in production, quality and consumer service. Although few were succeeded because of modern implementation techniques, excellent leadership and employee involvements. A strong association of using the lean tools is to achieve the desired level of result which focuses on continuous improvement in production process. Lean implementation was the basic concept following as Just-In-Time (JIT), total productive maintenance (TPM), cellular manufacturing, lean implementation is a long-term process in which complete contribution of management support and employee commitments are made to attain the objective of the organization. Even though, the lean approach is not the resolution for all manufacturing problem, it proposes an exclusively flexible solution for assembling more complicated products.
USE OF TOOLS , METHODS AND TECHNIQUES DURING THE FUZZY FRONT END OF INNOVATION : THEIR IMPACT ON INNOVATION PERFORMANCE – A SURVEY BASED EXPLORATORY STUDY OF COMPANIES IN THE BASQUE COUNTRY –

In this communication, the use of different tools, methods and techniques that support the Fuzzy Front End of innovation and its impact on innovation performance is presented. Successful new product and service ideas are generated and selected in the so called Fuzzy Front End of innovation stage – activities undertaken before development decision is made –. The Fuzzy Front End of innovation appears, therefore, as especially important in the innovation process, since decisions made during this stage will determine the path for the whole innovation process. In fact, proficiency during this stage has been specially acknowledged as a critical influencing factor in the challenge of successful innovation. Tools, methods and techniques often appear to be as good supporters of proficiency in any process. In this sense, this paper aims at dealing with one main objective. Having analysed the literature related to different existing tools, methods and techniques that may be used during the Fuzzy Front End of innovation, their state of use in 85 companies set in the Basque Country has been studied, using a survey-based research method. The aforementioned tools, methods and techniques have been analysed in terms of their impact on innovation performance. Furthermore, this research intends to clarify whether the use of tools, methods and techniques during the Fuzzy Front End of innovation positively impacts on innovation performance.
RESONALITY RELATED FACTORS AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS IN TERRITORY FORMATION FOR PHARMACEUTICAL SALES FORCE: AN EMPERICAL INVESTIGATION

Controlling the sales force is one function of management faced by every sales manager, yet a little attention has been paid to the study of personality related factors on sales force control and its implications. The paper is an attempt to study the role played by personality related factors in territory formation and its implications. In this study the sample size is of 500 medical representatives, working in different hospitals in Delhi. The survey was conducted in 2013. The results of the study shows that sales territory formation does not vary significantly with gender but significant differences exists in the mean value of involvement of medical representatives in territory formation across age groups. It was established that there is a significant relationship in the involvement of sales person in territory formation and their educational level. There also exist significant differences in medical representative high in self efficacy and between their age . It was also established that significant differences exists on stress management training of medical representatives in territory formation.
Nutritional evaluation of palm kernel meal types: 2. Effects on live performance and nutrient retention in broiler chicken diets

Studies were conducted to determine the effect of palm kernel meal (PKM) types on productive performance and nutrient retention of broiler chickens. The three PKM types used in this study were obtained from different sources and were processed using different methods or different types of kernel. The results obtained indicated that for the starter phase, Okomu and Presco PKM diets gave mean body weight gain values (g/bird) of 924.1 and 922.0 which were similar to that of control diet (955.1) but superior to that of Envoy PKM diet (823.4). Feed intake values were 1802.0, 2087.1, 2017.8 and 1924.44 g/bird; feed cost per bird (N) was in the order of 94.82, 87.28, 84.38 and 77.02 for control diet, Okomu, Presco and Envoy PKM diets, respectively. For the finishing phase, Okomu and Presco PKM diets which were comparable in all the parameters were superior to Envoy PKM in terms of final body weight and body weight gain. Feed intake values were 2869.5, 3280.9, 3106.4 and 2674.0 g/bird for control diet, Okomu, Presco and Envoy PKM diets (Diets 1, 2, 3 and 4), respectively. Feed cost per bird (N) was 145.93 for Diet 1, compared with 127.45, 119.72 and 99.01 for Okomu, Presco and Envoy PKM diets, respectively. Percentage nutrient retention was optimal for animal performance on the PKM based diets. It can be concluded that mechanically processed PKM can replace 50% of maize in the diet without any adverse effect on performance of broiler chickens.
A conceptual prediction model of seasonal drought processes using atmospheric and oceanic Standardized Anomalies: application in four recent severe drought events in China

Reliable drought prediction is fundamental for end water managers to develop and implement drought mitigation measures. Considering the idea that drought development is closely related to the spatial-temporal evolution of large-scale circulation patterns, we develop a conceptual prediction model of seasonal drought processes based on atmospheric/oceanic Standardized Anomalies (SA). Empirical Orthogonal Function (EOF) analysis was firstly applied to drought-related SA of 200 hPa/500 hPa geo-potential height (HGT) and sea surface temperature (SST), respectively. Subsequently, SA-based predictors were built based on the spatial configuration of the first EOF modes. This drought prediction model is essentially the synchronous statistical relationship between 90-day-accumulated atmospheric/oceanic SA-based predictors and 3-month SPI (SPI3), calibrated by the simple method of stepwise regression. It is forced by seasonal climate forecast models like the NCEP Climate Forecast System Version 2 (CFSv2). It can make seamless drought prediction for operational use after being calibrated year-by-year. Model application during four recent severe drought events in China indicates its good performance at predicting seasonal drought development, despite its weakness in predicting drought severity. Therefore, it can provide some valuable information and is a worthy reference for seasonal water resource management.
INTELLIGENT CONTROLLERS FOR VELOCITY TRACKING OF TWO WHEELED INVERTED PENDULUM MOBILE ROBOT

Velocity tracking is one of the important objectives of vehicle, machines and mobile robots. A two wheeled inverted pendulum (TWIP) is a class of mobile robot that is open loop unstable with high nonlinearities which makes it difficult to control its velocity because of its nature of pitch falling if left unattended. In this work, three soft computing techniques were proposed to track a desired velocity of the TWIP. Fuzzy Logic Control (FLC), Neural Network Inverse Model control (NN) and an Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) were designed and simulated on the TWIP model. All the three controllers have shown practically good performance in tracking the desired speed and keeping the robot in upright position and ANFIS has shown slightly better performance than FLC, while NN consumes more energy.
Frequency stability improvement of micro hydro power system using hybrid SMES and CES based on Cuckoo search algorithm

Micro hydro has been chosen because it has advantages both economically, technically and as well as in terms of environmental friendliness. Micro hydro is suitable to be used in areas that difficult to be reached by the grid. Problems that often occur in the micro hydro system are not the constant rotation of the generator that caused by a change in load demand of the consumer. Thus causing frequency fluctuations in the system that can lead to damage both in the plant and in terms of consumer electrical appliances. The appropriate control technology should be taken to support the optimum performance of micro hydro. Therefore, this study will discuss a strategy of load frequency control by using Energy Storage. Superconducting magnetic energy storage (SMES) and capacitor energy storage (CES) are devices that can store energy in the form of a fast magnetic field in the superconducting coil. For the optimum performance, it is necessary to get the optimum tuning of SMES and CES parameters. The artificial intelligence methods, Cuckoo Search Algorithm (CSA) are used to obtain the optimum parameters in the micro hydro system. The simulation results show that the application of the CSA that use to tune the parameters of hybrid SMES-CES-PID can reduce overshoot oscillation of frequency response in micro hydro power plant.
Decoupling of Standard Implementation from Certification: Does Quality of ISO 14001 Implementation Affect Facilities’ Environmental Performance?

The literature on certifiable management standards has not paid sufficient attention to implementation of standard requirements in certified firms. Firms that obtain standard certification to achieve the legitimacy benefits of certification may not implement standard requirements sufficiently to realize the standardâ€™s intended performance outcomes. We argue that such decoupling of implementation from certification threatens the effectiveness of certifiable standards as governance mechanisms for firmsâ€™ environmental conduct because standard certification may not accurately signal firmsâ€™ superior environmental performance to external stakeholders. Empirical findings based on the ISO 14001 standard at the facility level support this view: Quality of standard implementation affects facilitiesâ€™ environmental performance, and environmental performance of certified and non-certified facilities does not differ significantly for the overall sample and low-quality implementers, while high-quality implementers have better environmental performance than their non-certified counterparts. We provide recommendations for increasing the effectiveness of governance systems for firm conduct based on certifiable standards.
Optimal Tuning of PI Controller Parameters for Three- Phase AC-DC-AC Converter Based on Particle Swarm Algorithm

Usually proportional - integral (PI) controller tuning rules are derived based on linear models of the plant or process, without taking nonlinearities into account. Hence, the best control performance cannot be ensured. This paper presents optimal tuning method based on more accurat e nonlinear models of the three - phase voltage regulator converter. This nonlinear model is considered as objective function with input arguments of proportional gain and integral gain, besides its output is the integral of time multiply squared error (ITSE) of PI controller. The measure of ITSE error is used to depict the system performance i.e. the fitness function. Using optimization method of particle swarm optimization (PSO), the performance index of ITSE is minimized to zero by finding the optimal PI tuning. The fitness function evaluates the performance of a particle to determine whether the best fitting solution is achieved. Simulation results are provided based on MATLAB Simulink.
Recovery of speech signal from contaminated input

In this paper, investigation is made on the application of an adaptive FIR filter to estimate the desired audio signal, in this case speech signal, from an input of the signal contaminated with background music. Results show that the signal to noise ratio is significantly increased. Informal listening tests also show that very significant improvement to the quality of the recovered signal can be achieved. The condition for the success of the method hinges on the availability of information of the interfering source such as the background music.
Identification of blue high proper motion objects in the Tycho-2 and 2MASS catalogues using Virtual Observatory tools

With available Virtual Observatory tools, we looked for new bright blue high proper motion objects in the entire sky: white dwarfs, hot subdwarfs, runaway OB stars, and early-type stars in nearby young moving groups. We performed an all-sky cross-match between the optical Tycho-2 and near-infrared 2MASS catalogues with Aladin, and selected objects with proper motions >50mas/yr and colours Vt-Ks<-0.5mag with TOPCAT. We also collected multi-wavelength photometry, constructed the spectral energy distributions and estimated effective temperatures from fits to atmospheric models with VOSA for the most interesting targets. We assembled a sample of 32 bright blue high proper motion objects, including ten sdO/B subdwarfs, nine DA white dwarfs, five young early-type stars (two of which are runaway stars), two blue horizontal branch stars, one star with poor information, and five objects reported for the first time in this work. These last five objects have magnitudes Bt~11.0-11.6mag, effective temperatures ~24,000-30,000K, and are located in the region of known white dwarfs and hot subdwarfs in a reduced proper motion-colour diagram. We confirmed the hot subdwarf nature of one of the new objects, Albus 5, with public far-ultraviolet spectroscopic data obtained with FUSE.
Economic Structure, Technology Diffusion and Convergence: The Case of the Italian Regions

Over the years, ItalyÂ’s regional disparities have been the object of much investigation in the literature. Recent evidence points to a revival of the convergence process, which had come to a halt in the mid-1970s, and renews the interest in the subject. This paper aims at contributing to the debate. Endorsing the critiques of the neoclassical assumption of technology as a public good, we investigate the link between economiesÂ’ structural characteristics and their growth performance. Specifically, treating technology as sector-specific and modelling technological spillovers as a positive function of the degree of similarity between economiesÂ’ sectoral features, a modified version of the Solow model is put forward and used to derive an Â“extendedÂ” convergence equation. The latter is then estimated by means of Panel Data procedures and data on the Italian regions over the 1970-1995 period. The results bring empirical support to our approach. From a theoretical viewpoint, our model suggests that the effects of technology diffusion on the convergence process are twofold. Firstly, if technological progress is partly dependent on external innovations, the temporal evolution of each economyÂ’s productivity level, and its speed of convergence to the steady state value, cannot be ascribed solely to the existence of diminishing returns to capital, as suggested by Neoclassical Growth Theory, but is affected by technology diffusion as well. The difficulty in disentangling the effects of the two factors on the convergence rate remains, but the Â“extendedÂ” convergence equation arrived at reveals that the size of technological spillovers will have a level effect on productivity. Secondly, treating technological progress as sector dependent, our model implies potential steady-state growth rate heterogeneity. Thus, the estimated convergence rate can be ascribed to the concept of Â“Weak Conditional ConvergenceÂ” [Islam (2003)], with each economy converging to its own steady state growth rate, which is more likely to be different from the others the more diverse the steady state production structures. These arguments lend support to the concept of Â“Club ConvergenceÂ”.
A Non-Tariff Protectionist Bias in Majoritarian Politics : Government Subsidies and Electoral Institutions 1

Governments elected by majoritarian rules are, according to conventional wisdom, more protectionist than governments elected by proportional rules. However, existing tests of this claim examine only one possible form of trade protection: tariffs. This leaves open the possibility that governments in majoritarian systems provide no more protection than governments in proportional systems but simply use tariffs more often than other forms of trade protection. Does the protectionist bias in majoritarian politics extend beyond tariffs? The current study addresses this question by examining an increasingly important form of trade protection: subsidies. In a sample of 68 countries from 1990 to 2006, spending on subsidies is found to be higher in majoritarian systems than in proportional systems, holding all else equal. The implication is that the protectionist bias in majoritarian systems does in fact extend beyond tariffs.
Fast and Localized 31 P Saturation Transfer Measurement at 7 T Reveals Slower Hepatic Metabolic Rates in Patients with Steatohepatitis

Invasive liver biopsy is currently the only method used for distinction between non- alcoholic fatty liver (NAFL) and steatohepatitis (NASH). Phosphorus magnetic resonance spectroscopy ( 31 P-MRS) with saturation transfer (ST) technique enables a non-invasive in vivo measurement of hepatic energy metabolism alterations that can indicate liver diseases. Ten suspected NAFL/NASH patients and four healthy volunteers were measured by 31 P-MRS 1D-ISIS ST on a 7 T MR system. All patients underwent a liver biopsy for diagnostic purposes. Significantly lower exchange rate constants (p<0.01) were found in NASH patients when compared to healthy volunteers and also to NAFL patients. Strong correlation was also found between the chemical exchange rate and steatosis degree. Thus, we believe that the 31 P-
Factors Influencing Methane (CH4) and Nitrous oxide (N2O) Emissions from Soils: A Review

Methane (CH 4 ) and nitrous oxide (N 2 O) are the two most important non-carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) greenhouse gases (GHGs) that play a critical role in shaping the global climate. Their concentrations in the atmosphere have been significantly increased by human activities. CH 4 has contributed to an estimated 18–20% of post-industrial anthropogenic global warming and is 25 times more effective in absorbing radiation that atmospheric CO 2 . Its production and consumption in soils is affected by numerous factors including water table depth. Nitrous oxide is one of the key ozone (O 3 ) depleting gases, constituting 7% of the anthropogenic greenhouse effect. On a molecular basis, N 2 O has 298 and 16 times higher global warming potential than that of CO 2 and CH 4 respectively over a 100-year period. Nitrous oxide is produced in soils by denitrification and nitrification processes. It is affected by many physical and biochemical factors such aeration/moisture status of the soil.