Gymnema sylvestre (Retz.) R. Br. ex Schult is a highly demanded antidiabetic medicinal herb native to India. There are no improved varieties available and the plant is still collected from the wild and therefore it is important to estimate the genetic variability and heritability parameters for devising appropriate crop improvement strategy. The present study was undertaken to assess the genetic variability, heritability, character association and path analysis for growth, yield and bioactive traits in 35 accessions of G. sylvestre collected from Indian South Peninsular region. Genetic variability parameters: genotypic variance, phenotypic variance, genotypic coefficient of variation (GCV), phenotypic coefficient of variation (PCV), broad-sense heritability, genetic advance and genetic advance as per cent over mean of yield and quality related characters were computed to understand the extent of variability present. High levels of GCV and PCV (>20%) were observed for most of the traits. Leaf length, leaf area, leaf yield and gymnemagenin content reported with high heritability (>60%) and genetic advance over mean (>30%) suggest that variation in these traits is influenced predominantly by the genetic factors making selection more effective in improving them. The correlation and path analysis studies highlighted the importance of selecting leaf length, leaf breadth, leaf area index, fresh leaf yield and gymnemagenin content for improving dry leaf yield of G. sylvestre. The study also identified promising morphotypes (IIHR-GS-27 and IIHR-GS-9) and chemotypes (IIHR-GS-44) which can be utilized for the commercial exploitation or can serve as pre-breeding materials in the crop improvement programmes.

We sought to examine the effects of daily consumption of macadamia nuts on body weight and composition, plasma lipids and glycaemic parameters in a free-living environment in overweight and obese adults at elevated cardiometabolic risk. Utilising a randomised cross-over design, thirty-five adults with abdominal obesity consumed their usual diet plus macadamia nuts (~15 % of daily calories) for 8 weeks (intervention) and their usual diet without nuts for 8 weeks (control), with a 2-week washout. Body composition was determined by bioelectrical impedance; dietary intake was assessed with 24-h dietary recalls. Consumption of macadamia nuts led to increased total fat and MUFA intake while SFA intake was unaltered. With mixed model regression analysis, no significant changes in mean weight, BMI, waist circumference, percent body fat or glycaemic parameters, and non-significant reductions in plasma total cholesterol of 2⋅1 % (−4⋅3 mg/dl; 95 % CI −14⋅8, 6⋅1) and low-density lipoprotein (LDL-C) of 4 % (−4⋅7 mg/dl; 95 % CI −14⋅3, 4⋅8) were observed. Cholesterol-lowering effects were modified by adiposity: greater lipid lowering occurred in those with overweight v. obesity, and in those with less than the median percent body fat. Daily consumption of macadamia nuts does not lead to gains in weight or body fat under free-living conditions in overweight or obese adults; non-significant cholesterol lowering occurred without altering saturated fat intake of similar magnitude to cholesterol lowering seen with other nuts.

Clinical Trial Registry Number and Website: NCT03801837 https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03801837?term = macadamia + nut&draw = 2&rank = 1

Fasting is related to glucose intolerance and insulin resistance, but it is unknown whether the duration of fasting influences these factors. We explored whether prolonged fasting increases norepinephrine and ketone concentrations and decreases core temperature to a greater extent than short-term fasting; if so, this should lead to improved glucose tolerance. Forty-three healthy young adult males were randomly assigned to undergo a 2-d fast, 6-d fast or the usual diet. Changes in rectal temperature (TR), ketone and catecholamine concentrations, glucose tolerance and insulin release in response to an oral glucose tolerance test were assessed. Both fasting trials increased ketone concentration, and the effect was larger after the 6-d fast (P < 0·05). TR and epinephrine concentration increased only after the 2-d fast (P < 0·05). Both fasting trials increased the glucose area under the curve (AUC) (P < 0·05), but the AUC remained higher than the baseline value after participants returned to their usual diet in the 2-d fast group (P < 0·05). Neither fasting had an immediate effect on the insulin AUC, although it increased after return to their usual diet in the 6-d fast group (P < 0·05). These data suggest that the 2-d fast elicited residual impaired glucose tolerance, which may be linked to greater perceived stress during short-term fasting, as shown by the epinephrine response and change in core temperature. By contrast, prolonged fasting seemed to evoke an adaptive residual mechanism that is related to improved insulin release and maintained glucose tolerance.

Second language (L2) listening requires efficient processing of continuing incoming information (Vandergrift & Goh, 2012). Even so, research into individual differences in L2 listening has mostly shed light on the role of linguistic knowledge measured without time pressure (e.g., Mecarty, 2000; Wang & Treffers-Daller, 2017; cf. Vafaee & Suzuki, 2020), leaving the role of processing speed and automaticity largely unexplored. To close this gap, we explored the determinants of successful listening using three processing tasks at lexical, syntactic, and propositional levels. Participants were 44 Chinese learners of English. Response accuracy afforded measures of vocabulary size, syntactic parsing skills, and formulation of propositional meaning. Reaction times and the coefficient of variation (Segalowitz & Segalowitz, 1993) afforded processing speed and automaticity measures at each level. We found a hierarchical relationship between different levels of processing, whereby lower-level, lexical effects cascade up and are mediated by propositional comprehension in accounting for listening comprehension. The results highlight the importance of considering processing accuracy and speed at different levels of the linguistic hierarchy to explain variability among L2 listeners. Different from most previous studies, we argue for a need to consider the temporal aspects of processing, along with linguistic knowledge, in modeling L2 listening.

In a family, parameterized by θ, of non-negative random variables with finite, positive second moment, Taylor's law (TL) asserts that the population variance is proportional to a power of the population mean as θ varies: σ2 (θ) = a[μ(θ)]b, a > 0. TL, sometimes called fluctuation scaling, holds widely in science, probability theory, and stochastic processes. Here we report diverse examples of TL with b = 2 (equivalent to a constant coefficient of variation) arising from a difference of random variables in normed vector spaces of dimension 1 and larger. In these examples, we compute a exactly using, in some cases, a simple, new technique. These examples may prove useful in future models that involve differences of random variables, including models of the spatial distribution and migration of human populations.

USDA uses the concept of “publish-ability” rather than statistical reliability of an estimate for quality validation of USDA estimates, which is solely based on the sample size and the coefficient of variation (CV). We demonstrate conceptually how the reliability of the sample mean can be tested by estimating the upper and lower bounds of the confidence interval for an unknown population mean using the CV. However, the reliability test for the sample mean can be made only under the normality assumption. USDA multiple-way Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS) estimates are used to illustrate the relative measure of precision for sample-based estimators.

When fire swept through a workshop at Ambelikou Aletri on Cyprus in the nineteenth or twentieth century BC it brought a sudden halt to pottery production, leaving the latest batch of recently fired vessels. The remains of the kiln and its immediate surroundings provide a rare opportunity to gain direct insight into the technology and organisation of a Middle Bronze Age pottery workshop in the eastern Mediterranean. Analysis of the batch of cutaway-mouthed jugs adjacent to the kiln reveals a level of standardisation focused more on vessel shape than capacity, and shows that at a detailed level, no two jugs were alike. This pottery production site provides vital background for the study of contemporary pottery assemblages on Cyprus and elsewhere in the broader region.

For the classical model of risk theory, we consider the covariance between the surplus prior to and at ruin, given that ruin occurs. A general expression for this covariance is given when the initial surplus u is zero, and we show that the covariance (and hence the correlation coefficient) between these two variables is positive, zero or negative according to the equilibrium distribution of the claim size distribution having a coefficient of variation greater than, equal to, or less than one. For positive values of u, the formula for the covariance may not always lead to explicit results and we thus also study its asymptotic behaviour. Our results are illustrated by a number of examples.

The study was carried out to provide information on uniformity of commercial pigs on some of the most important traits determining pork quality: carcass, loin, ham and shoulder weights, fatness, drip loss, pH and colour. Three batches of pigs raised at the same farm and slaughtered at four different dates in the same commercial abattoir were considered. Batches included halothane-free females and castrated males, Duroc and Pietrain sire lines and two slaughter weights, but a common maternal line. The first batch was obtained using commercial Duroc sire boars, and included a total of 112 animals (56 castrated males and 56 females). The second batch used Duroc and Pietrain sire boars with the target to achieve two different final weights (105 and 115 kg live weight); 128 animals were controlled (64 castrated males and 64 females), 16 for each combination of sire boar, sex and final weight. The last batch used only Pietrain sire boars with 96 controlled pigs (48 castrated males and 48 females). The uniformity was measured by the coefficient of variation (CV) and the coefficient of dispersion (CD) for all data available, and for groups of common sex, sire breed and slaughter weight. Differences in uniformity were tested among traits and groups by using confidence intervals (CIs) at 95% confidence level (CI95%) for the CV and CD. Results showed a significantly lower uniformity for drip loss (CV = 40.4%, CI95% 36.9% to 44.7%; CD = 32.1%, CI95% 28.7% to 35.4%) and backfat (CV = 22.8%, CI95% 21.1% to 24.8%; CD = 18.3%, CI95% 17.1% to 20.2%) the pH being the most uniform trait (CV = 3.2%, CI95% 3.0% to 3.5%; CD = 2.6%, CI95% 2.4% to 2.9%). When comparing different ‘sire breed–sex–slaughter weight’ groups, no consistent sex and slaughter weight differences in uniformity were found, but animals from Pietrain sire breed showed a tendency to be less uniform for carcass traits than animals from Duroc sire breed. Nevertheless, variability within those groups was very high and often similar to that observed when considering all the animals from all the groups. Small differences were found comparing uniformity when using the CV or the CD. CIs of these coefficients have proved to be a simple and useful tool for testing differences in uniformity.

Aerial surveys of harbour seals (Phoca vitulina) are usually carried out to provide an index of population size. This can be normalized, either by design or by post-hoc analysis to reduce the effects that date, time of day, tide and weather might have on the number of seals counted. In order for long-term trends to be determined from these counts it is assumed that the mean number of seals at a particular site does not vary during the survey period, and that the start and duration of the survey window does not vary with location or between years. This study used a combination of repeat land-based and aerial surveys to test the assumption for constancy of counts during the survey period. The study focused on harbour seal abundance at haul-out sites around the Isle of Skye in north-west Scotland. The coefficient of variation in these counts was estimated to be 15%, based on repeat aerial surveys using thermal imaging. Land-based counts were used to examine the effect of covariates on seal numbers using generalized additive modelling. This site-specific model predicted that the current aerial survey window for harbour seals in the UK, which is a three-week period during the moult, is about a week too early and that count variation could be reduced by surveying 1 1/2 hours earlier in the tidal cycle. Furthermore, the pupping period showed even higher (though more variable) abundance of hauled out seals than during the moult.

Different lineages experience different rates of phenotypic diversification, resulting in greater or lower variance in the expression of phenotypic traits among the species within a lineage. Here, morphological diversification is investigated in 14 different trematode families, based on a dataset comprising morphometric data on body size and 4 anatomical structures (oral sucker, ventral sucker, pharynx, cirrus sac) from 386 species. Three hypotheses are tested and subsequently rejected based on the empirical evidence. First, the degree of morphological variation in all traits within a trematode family, measured as the coefficient of variation among species, appears independent of the average body size of species belonging to that family. Second, patterns of morphological diversification appear similar whether endothermic or ectothermic vertebrates are used as definitive hosts. Third, phylogenetically older trematode lineages did not display greater morphological variation than younger, more derived ones, ruling out evolutionary time as an explanation. The results are consistent with developmental constraints acting on morphological diversification, since for some pairs of traits, variation in one trait is not independent of variation in another trait. More importantly, across most families, variation in body size was significantly more pronounced than variation in the relative sizes of the other morphological features. Trematode body size therefore varies widely while the general body architecture of the family is maintained. The fact that the evolution of the body plan is more conservative than that of body size suggests that the range of morphologies that can evolve in trematodes is constrained.

The characterization of the exponential distribution via the coefficient of the variation of the blocking time in a queueing system with an unreliable server, as given by Lin (1993), is improved by substantially weakening the conditions. Based on the coefficient of variation of certain random variables, including the blocking time, the normal service time and the minimum of the normal service and the server failure times, two new characterizations of the exponential distribution are obtained.

This paper considers reinsurance retention limits in cases where the cedent has a choice between a pure quota-share treaty, a pure excess of loss treaty or a combination of the two. Our primary aim is to find the combination of retention limits which minimizes the skewness coefficient of the insurer's retained risk subject to constraints on the variance and the expected value of his retained risk. The results are given without specifying precisely how the excess of loss reinsurance premium is calculated. It is also shown that, depending to some extent on the constraint on the variance, the solution to the problem is a pure excess of loss treaty if the excess of loss premium is calculated using the expected value or standard deviation principle but that this need not be true if the variance principle is used.